St. John the Baptist and the Legion

Concilium Allocutio December 2011

By Fr. Bede McGregor O.P.

Spiritual Director to the Legion of Mary

St. John the Baptist and the Legion

Those who enter into the spirit of the season of Advent will notice the major part St. John the Baptist plays in this season. This fact is easy to understand since his special vocation was to prepare the chosen people and indeed the whole world for the coming of Jesus, the promised Messiah. And it is still his mission today. So since Advent is about preparing for the coming of Jesus into our lives today who better to help us to personally prepare than St. John. Therefore the Church places before us in so many scripture readings during Advent the figure of John the Baptist: his character, mission and words. Put very simply his whole identity is concerned with pointing to Jesus. He must increase and I must decrease. Frank Duff sees those words as a good description of the life and vocation of the legionary.

I must admit that it was only while trying over the years to understand and live the season of Advent according to the Liturgy that I began to understand more the reasons why the Legion gives such an important place to St. John the Baptist in its essential scheme of things. According to the Handbook St. John the Baptist is more intimately bound up with the devotional scheme of the Legion than any of its other patrons with the exception of St. Joseph. So he takes precedence over Sts. Peter and Paul, St. John the Evangelist and even over St. Louis Marie de Montfort the great tutor of the Legion.

Of course, Our Lady is not one of the patrons of the Legion, she is our queen and mother and Foundress and indeed the Mother of God Himself and therefore in a class of her own. Therefore our response to her is utterly different in comparison with our patrons. Nevertheless we have to ask ourselves whether we in fact give St. John the Baptist his rightful place in our lives as legionaries and remember the reasons why we do so. We do pray to him every day in the Tessera but is he really one of our great friends and examples?

The Handbook tells us that he was the type of all legionaries, that is, a forerunner of the Lord, going before him to prepare his way and make straight his paths. He was a model of unshakable strength and devotion to his cause for which he was ready to die and for which he did die.

An important note for legionaries is his special relationship to Our Lady. He leapt in the womb of his mother when Our Lady spoke to Elizabeth and Mary played a very influential role in his first weeks and months of life. That special intimacy with Mary would shape all his life.

There is a pivotal paragraph in the Handbook that is worth calling to mind at this time in Advent and on the doorstep of Christmas. It says ‘that the episode of the Visitation exhibits Our Lady in her capacity as Mediatrix for the first time, and St. John as the first beneficiary. Thereby was St. John exhibited from the first as a special patron of legionaries and of all legionary contacts, of the work of visitation in all its forms, and indeed of all legionary actions - those being but efforts to co-operate in Mary’s mediatorial office.’

I suppose one of the difficulties in our approach to St. John is that we may be inclined to think of him as someone in the past and not intimately present to our lives and work today. We know theoretically that the Word of God is alive and active and that our Lord is not only speaking to his contemporaries but actually speaking to us too here and now in the sacrament of sacred scripture. It is the same with the saints; they are not only figures of the past but are intimately involved in our lives and work as dynamic members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Cardinal Danielou puts it succinctly when he writes: ‘If Jesus is perpetually ‘he who comes’ likewise St. John is he who ever precedes him. For the economy of the historical Incarnation of Christ is continued in his Mystical Body.’

The practical realisation of the truth that Our Lord, Our Lady and all the saints are closer to us today in the Mystical Body of Christ than our next door neighbour or indeed our own family members would transform the way we live our Christian and legionary life. This is not just a new theological idea but it goes back to the scriptures and the great fathers of the Church.

Let us conclude with a quotation from Origen found in the Handbook that illuminates the point I have been trying to make. ‘I believe that the mystery of John is still being accomplished in the world of today. Whoever is to believe in Christ Jesus, the spirit and virtue of John must first come into his soul and prepare for the Lord a perfect people, make straight the paths in the rough places of his heart and smooth the ways. Up to this day the spirit and virtue of John go before the coming of the Lord and Saviour.’

A happy and holy Christmas to you all and may St. John the Baptist prepare you well to receive all the graces and blessings that Our Lord is coming once more to give you.