As we begin the month of May, we enter into a very sacred season, where nature rejoices in light and warmth. For ancient people this time of year was an occasion to hope and celebrate. Bealtaine is the traditional Celtic festival marking the beginning of summer, typically observed on May 1. In ancient Celtic/Gaelic culture in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, it celebrated the transition from the “dark half” of the year to the “light half,” with themes of fertility, growth, abundance, protection of livestock, and the vitality of the land. Traditions often included lighting “bright fires”, driving cattle between or through flames for purification and protection, decorating with May flowers or bushes, visiting holy wells, and communal feasting and rejoicing as nature burst into bloom.
When Christianity spread, it did not fully erase these seasonal observances. Unlike some festivals that were more directly Christianized (e.g., Imbolc blending into St. Brigid’s Day), Bealtaine largely persisted as a folk and agricultural turning point rather than being renamed as a major Church feast. Irish ancestors, who were often “predominantly Christian but with pagan aspects remaining,” continued elements like bonfires and protective rituals, sometimes layering Christian prayers or blessings over them. Over time, the month of May became strongly associated with the Virgin Mary. Practices such as decorating Marian shrines, grottos, altars, and holy wells with flowers echoed older May customs of honouring growth and beauty. Flower processions and crowning statues of Mary blended seamlessly with the season’s exuberance. This time of year, the ordinary is a source of inspiration and hope.
There’s an account in the gospel of how Jesus returned on one occasion to Nazareth, his hometown, and spoke there in the synagogue. Although those who heard his teaching were astounded, their sense of wonder soon turned to rejection. Instead of pride in the local man who makes good, it sounded like, ‘Who does he thinks he is? He’s getting beyond himself. He’s no better than the rest of us’.
The gospel says that Jesus ‘could do no deed of power there’. Not, ‘he did no deed’, but ‘he could do no deed’. It was not a refusal, as if Jesus were in a huff, but a simple inability. An explanation is given: ‘he was amazed at their unbelief’. The failure of Jesus to work miracles in Nazareth is like the “failure” of God to forgive those who don’t ask for forgiveness or those who wilfully refuse to admit it when they know they have done wrong. If the appropriate disposition – faith in him – had been present in his audience, Jesus would have healed. But, ‘God, who created us without us, did not wish to save us without us’. (Saint Augustine)
The Nazarenes’ attitudes hardened from scepticism, to opposition, to disbelief. What was behind this? Was it jealousy? Was it the pettiness of the small town? Was it that they thought little of themselves and their town, perhaps because of hearing it said, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1.46) You can sense their feeling, ‘He’s just one of us. What’s so special about him?’ Was it a refusal to believe that what is ordinary and everyday may be a channel of grace? We find it hard to accept that ordinary people like us can be anything special. We think a special person is someone from far away who looks, speaks, and dresses differently. Yet ordinary people, who are in no way perfect, who are well aware of their limitations, their stupidity, and their sinfulness, do great things.
Many ordinary people are holier than they think they are. There’s no merit in dumbing ourselves down; if we do, we’re dumbing down the grace of God at work in us. Poets – in a different way, perhaps – have understood this. The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, said: ‘The Holy Spirit is in the fields.’ The English poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, also, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God…’ And the English poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote:
‘Earth is crammed with Heaven
and every common bush
on fire with God.
But only he who sees
takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around
and pluck blackberries’.
As we begin this sacred season may we all be filled with every blessing.