The Marian Feasts and How to Keep Them
The Mother of God is honored in every season. Her feasts are set like jewels through the year, and to keep them is to walk the year at her side. Tota pulchra es, Maria — you are all beautiful, Mary — and the Church says it again and again, in a hundred feasts and a hundred titles.
The year opens with her
On the first of January the Church keeps the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God — the oldest Marian feast of all, placing the whole new year under her mantle. It is fitting that we begin the year by naming her what she is: Theotokos, God-bearer.
The Annunciation
On the twenty-fifth of March, nine months before Christmas, heaven waits on a young woman's fiat. Her yes at Nazareth is the hinge on which our salvation turns. A home that keeps this feast keeps the memory that God asks, and does not force.
The Assumption
On the fifteenth of August, the Church proclaims what she has always believed: that Our Lady was taken up, body and soul, into heaven. She who bore the Author of Life did not see corruption. It is a feast of hope — a promise of where her children are bound.
Our Lady of Sorrows, and the Holy Rosary
September keeps her sorrows; October, her Rosary. The two belong together: the Mother who stood at the foot of the Cross is the same Mother who hands us the beads and walks us through her Son's life, decade by decade.
The Immaculate Conception, and Guadalupe
December holds two of her greatest feasts within four days. On the eighth, the Immaculate Conception — she who was preserved from sin from the first moment of her existence. On the twelfth, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who came to Tepeyac and left her image on a peasant's tilma, where it remains to this day.
Keeping her feasts at home
Honor her as you would honor any beloved mother on her day: with flowers, with a candle, with her image given the place of honor. An image of Our Lady in her many titles lets your family meet her again and again through the year, each feast a different window onto the same face.
Explore our full Marian art collection and keep her near through every season.