Last night was May Crowning at our parish and Olivia, who made her First Communion last week, was chosen to be in the Queen’s Court. That means she and three other children from second grade were “attendants” to the two eighth-grade students who did the actual crowning of Mary. She was so thrilled to be chosen for this, to sit on the altar in a special spot, and to lead a decade of the Rosary with the Queen’s Court.
The service was really beautiful and a reminder to me of the many traditional rituals in our Church that must be preserved for all time because they are just too wonderful to lose or even to lessen in importance. Praying the Glorious Mysteries together, followed by Benediction, was a throw-back to my own childhood, when these types of services didn’t seem so rare.
As I always say, whenever I attend something like this, it’s amazing to me to see — and hear — how much people love to sing the old hymns and say the old prayers. There’s no hemming and hawing and wondering how the melody goes. Everyone joins in with enthusiasm. That’s not to say that old is always better, but old is often good and we shouldn’t forget that.
