Creating a May Altar to Honor Mary

I’m on a Pinterest role lately! And all it took was one Dorian Speed to provide the inspiration … or should I call that pinspiration? Dorian designed an awesome blog link-up called ”Pinisher” — an eight-week movement to get Pinterest slackers like me to finish a project. Each week has a theme --- week 1 was food (read all about my quinoa “mac” & cheese here), this week’s theme is home. Given the month of May is dedicated to Mary and I’ve pinned a few family altar ideas, I set out to create a May altar in my home to honor Mary.

My oldest child and I went on a scavenger hunt throughout our house and collected a few Mary-centric items --- a statue of Our Lady of Grace, piece of art depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe, hand-painted tile of the Madonna and child, a few rosaries, and the Just Like Mary children’s book. I also added a flowery wreath and votive candle for added touch.

While out at the grocery store, we bought three roses for our altar: red symbolizing Mary’s beauty and perfection, pink symbolizing her grace and elegance, and yellow symbolizing joy and friendship. Hopefully as the month progresses and temperatures warm, we’ll find some spring blooming flowers from our gardens and add those to our altar as well.

Our altar sits in our family’s prayer room. The next logical step is to actually gather the family around the May altar and pray a Hail Mary. Pope Francis recently tweeted,

“It would be a good idea, during May, for families to say the Rosary together. Prayer strengthens family life.”

Who knows, maybe one Hail Mary will lead to another … and another … and another, and by May 31we’ll have worked our way up to full Rosary. No matter, I’m glad we have our May altar to provide a beautiful backdrop for our family’s prayer time.