May, the month of Mary

From: Archdiocese of San Francisco

Visions of Mary: The face of Mary is shown in a detail, side view of “The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,” a painted and gilded statue attributed to Juan Martinez Montanes.

A month for deepest prayer
Popular piety has long dedicated the month of May to Mary, the Mother of God. The month is a powerful incentive to offer more frequent and fervent prayers. It is a month when “our petitions more readily find access to her compassionate heart.”
Pope Paul VI, “Mense Maio,” April 29, 1965

Surpassing grace and humanity
Mary has a unique position among the saints – “exalted, yet still one of us.” The Blessed Virgin is the Mother of the Son of God, the daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit, and her gift of grace “far surpasses all creations” in heaven and on earth. “At the same time, because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved.”
USCCB, “Popular Devotional Practices: Basic Questions and Answers”

Mother and son’s work of salvation
Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. This union of mother and son in the work of salvation is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion, where she endures with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering. After her Son’s Ascension, Mary “aided the beginnings of the church by her prayers.”
From the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”

Painting of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre is seen in a museum of Catholic artifacts and artwork at the cathedral in Santiago, Cuba, Feb. 10.

Mary and the Christ Child are depicted in this detail view of the painting of Our Lady of Brezje at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

Source
.