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OUR LADY'S MONTH

Canon Jeremy Davies, Precentor (Tuesday 2nd May 2006)

Unaccountably the Cathedral has never, in recent years at least, celebrated a patronal festival. The Cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of the Assumption, and the Feast of the Assumption has always stuck in the gullet of our scripturally unimaginative forebears, so August 15th (the date of the Feast of the Assumption) may not have been considered appropriate for Cathedral junketings. In any case, that date falls in the chorister holidays, and other Marian festivals either fall in Lent or Easter week or are for some other reason found. My predecessor, Charles Moxon, helped to remedy the deficiency by introducing Cathedral Day (as a substitute for a patronal day), which was usually celebrated on a weekend nearest to the date of the Cathedral’s foundation in late September. And in the last twenty years we have tried to recapture our Marian heritage by celebrating as many of the several Mary festivals as exuberantly as we could - always for instance marking the eve of a Mary feast with a procession to the statue of Our Lady in the Trinity Chapel (what would be the Lady Chapel if the whole Cathedral were not dedicated to her). However, May is called Our Lady’s Month and we are taking the opportunity to correct this lacuna in our observance. On May 21st we are keeping our patronal (or matronal) festival with a special service in place of evensong to celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary. There will be a procession through the building with stations for reflection and music (rather like one of our Christmas carol processions). The girl choristers will sing at this Festival and the Dean’s Chorister (the senior girl chorister) will have a central part to play – rather as the Bishop’s Chorister does at the Boy Bishop ceremony in December. We hope that, having got beyond the theological and churchmanship issues that have made Mary – for all her obedience and gentleness in the biblical narrative – such a divisive figure in the past, we may celebrate our patron saint again as the personification of God-filled humanity.

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