Why the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church Fits Perfectly With 60 Years of Liturgical Reform

National Catholic Register, 9 June 2025

Today’s feast is directly linked to the jubilee years of 1975 and 2000, making its observance this jubilee year a particular occasion for gratitude

The feast of Mary, Mother of the Church was inserted into the General Roman Calendar by Pope Francis in 2018, but has its roots in the reform of the liturgical calendar in 1969 and the Jubilee Year of 1975. 

Given her presence at Pentecost — the “birthday” of the Church — the celebration of Mary under the title Mother of the Church falls on the next day, the Monday after Pentecost — June 9 this year. 

Marian feast days have developed over the centuries, often with local customs or historical events taking on wider significance. Consider the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, now set for Sept. 12. It had some local observances in the 15th century, with the date set close to the Nativity of Mary (Sept. 8), as the bestowal of the name was proximate to the birth.

After the victory of King Jan Sobieski of Poland over the Turks at Vienna on Sept. 12,  1683, Pope Innocent XI wished to commemorate the event with a feast. (Some have speculated that the 9/11 terrorists chose the date of their attack to coincide with this anniversary.) 

In 1684, Innocent established the feast of the Holy Name of Mary for the Sunday after the Nativity of Mary. In the 20th century, the date was fixed for Sept. 12 to avoid coinciding with a Sunday. The calendar reforms of 1969 eliminated the feast from the General Roman Calendar, which must be observed everywhere. It was returned in the revisions made in the Jubilee Year 2000. 

The feast of Mary, Mother of the Church is connected to the Jubilee Year 1975. After the Second Vatican Council, there was a burst of liturgical creativity. As one would expect, there were mixed results. On the positive side, it included the development of new sets of particular prayers (“propers”) for Masses on various occasions. Given that Pope St. Paul VI had formally declared Mary to be “Mother of the Church” on Nov. 21,  1964, during Vatican II, a suitable development was an optional Mass for Mary under that title. 

For the Jubilee Year 1975, the Holy See approved that particular set of Mass propers, but a priest would have to make a special search for the texts. In the Great Jubilee 2000, that votive Mass for Mary, Mother of the Church, was included in the Roman Missal used every day in every parish, so it became easily accessible.

Thus, when Pope Francis inserted the feast into the universal calendar in 2018, priests already had the necessary prayers in the Missal. The date was fixed for Monday after Pentecost; the relevant decree stated that “as a caring guide to the emerging Church Mary had already begun her mission in the Upper Room, praying with the Apostles while awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).”

The preface for the Mass is more comprehensive than was usually the case in prior centuries, a characteristic of the new Mass propers drawn up to honor the Blessed Mother. It gives a poetic panorama of the whole of Mary’s life, from “receiving [the] Word in her Immaculate Heart” to “giving birth to the Creator” as “she nurtured the beginnings of the Church.”

The preface goes on to speak of Mary “standing beside the Cross” where she was given to the Apostle John as his mother, and accompanying “the Apostles [who] awaited the Spirit ... [joining] her supplication to the prayers of the disciples and so became the pattern of the Church at prayer.” 

The preface concludes with a reference to the Assumption and Mary’s role as powerful intercessor, who “accompanies [the] pilgrim Church with a mother’s love and watches in kindness over the Church’s homeward steps.”

That preface is one of the richest in the Roman Missal, a crown of the new Mass propers developed for the Blessed Mother, one of the loveliest fruits of the post-conciliar liturgical renewal.

The reform of the liturgical calendar brought a certain order to the Marian feasts, which Paul VI emphasized in his 1974 apostolic exhortation on Marian devotion, Marialis Cultus.

By way of example, for centuries the Visitation was celebrated on July 2, the day after the octave of the Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24). That was odd, as the biblical account makes it clear that Mary departed from Elizabeth’s home before John was born (Luke 1:56-57). 

Paul VI put that right with his revision of the calendar in 1969, moving the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to May 31, closing the Marian month and now falling between the Annunciation (March 25) and John’s birth, as happened in Luke’s Gospel. Previously, May 31 had been the feast of the Queenship of Mary, which was consequently moved to a much more fitting date, Aug. 22, the octave of the Assumption (Aug. 15). The fourth and fifth Glorious Mysteries now are set together liturgically.

Other changes linked the cult of Mary in the calendar more closely to the mystery of Christ Jesus. The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (previously in August) now follows the day after the solemn feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, uniting both the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart in the calendar. (The month of August is still dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a relic of the earlier date of the feast.)

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