Christmas
Concilium Allocutio December 2010
By Fr. Bede McGregor O.P.
Spiritual Director to the Legion of Mary
Christmas
First of all let me wish you all and indeed legionaries on all five continents the grace and joy of Christmas in superabundance. Our Founder loved the Christmas season because it puts us in profound and intimate contact with the very heart of God. He writes: ‘The time of Christmas and the Epiphany is one of unmixed happiness. It is one of the few seasons of the Church year, which have that purely blissful note. The sorrowful sequel to the events of this time is still far ahead; we are able to put the thought of it out of our mind and to immerse ourselves in the sheer joy of this period. It is a grace, I think, to be able to feel that joy, because it is an indication that, whatever our defects may be, we are attuned to the church and its life.’
He continues: ‘The very thought of the coming of Our Lord should have the effect of stirring us to our depths. Of all the events it is really the central one - that divine coming among us promised from the very beginning.’ In those two brief quotations we have a crystal clear indication of one of the major characteristics of the interior life of Frank Duff. He considered it a great grace to be in tune with the liturgical year of the Church. The Liturgy was a school that puts one in living contact with the reality of the mysteries of Christ and the graces offered in each one of his mysteries. So it is not surprising that he has written about all the major feasts and seasons of the life of the Church.
Christmas was very special to him. Perhaps one of the reasons for this attraction to Christmas was because it shows so tenderly how the destinies of Jesus and his Mother are eternally entwined. He contemplated in the crib the absolutely central role that Mary has in bringing Christ into our world. While Jesus is the most important figure in the Crib and in our lives it was impossible for Frank to sideline Mary. It is she who makes it possible for Jesus to come among us as one of us. It is the charism of the Legion to be rooted in this doctrinal truth expressed so humanly, so vividly at the scene of the Nativity.
Reading once again the transcripts of various talks Frank gave on Christmas, I am struck by the awe he felt and expressed concerning the infinite humility of God. Humility was a virtue he so admired in Mary and desired to see in the Legionaries of Mary but he saw its ultimate source in the humility of God, in the face of the baby who was God. He gently felt our modern cribs were a sentimental and sanitised version of the real thing. He writes: ‘It was not the picturesque haven shown by the cribs with fragrant straw and nice cradle like manger. The reality was very different. It is described by St. Jerome as being little better than a hole in the ground, and he should know because he lived in it for thirty years when he was translating the bible into Latin. The place was the refuge of animals. We can imagine the rest.’ The babe in swaddling clothes is the radical sign of God’s identification with the poorest of the poor, with the most vulnerable of children but also the convincing sign that no one whatsoever is excluded from access to intimacy with God.
Closely connected with God’s identification with the helpless in the many different ways we can all feel helpless there is a passage in one of his talks on Christmas that Frank sees as particularly important for legionaries. It goes as follows: ‘We are told that the Lord came to those who were least. Into that category entered the shepherds of Judea. These were a despised and rejected caste. The Courts of Justice were forbidden to receive their testimony and they were placed almost on the same level as the heathen. Yet, out of all mankind, it is to those that the Babe stretches out His arms first, and it is they of all mankind who yield the first tribute of honour to Him who has been the expectation of all the nations. This is a fortifying thought to us legionaries whose attention turns so instinctively towards the lesser elements in the population.’ It is certainly a part of the charism of our founder and the Legion that we must be determined that those men, women and children who are economically, socially and culturally poor should not be deprived of the treasures of our Catholic faith and life. Others are called to the tremendous and Gospel task of meeting the material needs of the poor but the Legion is called specifically to meet the spiritual needs of others and help as many people as possible into heaven. We do not duplicate the work of that outstanding movement, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and similar bodies. We are in the business of direct evangelisation especially but not exclusively in the Parish.
The next Synod of the Catholic Church will be on the New Evangelisation and our contribution will best come about by our enthusiasm and fidelity to our own specific charism. The Nativity scene is a vivid teaching on our charism. There we see Jesus who has come into our world through Mary. That is God’s plan for the evangelisation of the world and we must be in tune with it. With Mary, through Mary and in Mary we seek to facilitate a meeting with Our Lord for everyone we come into personal contact with; Jesus is the greatest treasure Mary has and he is our greatest treasure too and with her help we seek to share this treasure with as many people as possible.
