Allocutio at Concilium - October 2013 by Fr. Bede McGregor, OP
Mary and the Year of Faith
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On Sunday the 13th of October 2013 Pope Francis consecrated the Church and the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as part of the celebration of the Year of Faith. So following the example of the Holy Father let us reflect in this allocutio on the connection between Mary and faith and what it really means to consecrate ourselves to her. It is Mary who brings the most radical and well founded hope into the world when she brings Jesus among us. There cannot be any greater gift that the world and each one of us can receive than the gift of Jesus and there is no greater gift that we can give to another than Jesus. True devotion to Mary basically consists in sharing in Mary’s maternal vocation to bring Jesus into the lives of all those whom the providence of God brings us into contact with. But at the deepest centre of Mary’s vocation and ours is faith. We are called not only to deepen and renew our faith but also to share it with others. Sharing our faith will lead to deepening it. That is the experience of the Legion all over the world. The opposite is also true: if we don’t share our faith we will be in real danger of losing it.
But what is this faith that legionaries keep on praying for every day and talking about among themselves and with others? Let me paraphrase the words of Pope Francis that he spoke in a homily during the world youth day in Brazil. Faith accomplishes a revolution in us, it removes us from the centre and puts God at the centre; faith immerses us in God’s limitless and personal love for us and gives us security, strength and hope. Seemingly nothing has changed; yet in the depths of our being everything is different. In Christological terms faith means that the most fundamental reality in our lives is our relationship with Christ, our friendship with Jesus. Everything else in our lives stems from Christ, our Lord and God, our best and intimate friend and Saviour. Faith penetrates the whole of our existence and not just one or other department.
And where do we find such faith in all its fullness and magnificence? We find it sublimely in Mary. Her relationship to Jesus is absolutely primary in her very heart and soul. It is this faith of Mary that inspires the Church and is a central focal point of Legion spirituality. We meditate on the ‘yes’ of her faith in the Incarnation and the total plan of God; she believed that her child was God and continued to believe in his Divinity during the long years at Nazareth despite the human ordinariness of the outward appearances of their daily lives. She believed in him when he was being bludgeoned to death on Calvary; she was the only one who believed in Him on Holy Saturday when he was dead and buried in the closed tomb; she believed in Him with exultant joy in the Resurrection and Ascension. We simply do not know Mary at all if we do not know her faith: her total and all embracing conviction that Jesus her Son is her God and Saviour and the greatest friend of her heart. The prayer of the Legion and indeed of every Christian is to ask Mary for some share in her faith in Jesus.
The faith of Mary leads us on to the question of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. What is the real meaning of Pope Francis consecrating the world to the Immaculate heart of Mary or indeed what is the significance of the annual consecration we legionaries make to the Heart of Mary at our Acies ceremony? Well, if we look into the heart of Mary what do we find? We find nothing but Jesus and she sees every one of us and everything else only in Him. As Pope Francis puts it so bluntly, simply and profoundly: ‘it is a fact: Mary always brings us to Jesus.’ So if we entrust ourselves totally to the heart of Mary we are giving her the opportunity of introducing us directly to Jesus because there is nothing else in the heart of Mary except Jesus and with him the Father and the Holy Spirit. As St. Louis Marie de Montfort would say: Mary is the infallible and most effective way of entering into an habitual relationship of friendship with our Lord. We give everything we are and that we have to Mary and she purifies and elevates it and gives it necessarily and immediately to Jesus. Indeed we cannot be truly Christians without Mary.
It is precisely because of her relationship to Jesus that Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces. There is no grace whatsoever apart from our Lord and his paschal mystery and it is Mary who gives Jesus to each and every one of us. During this year of faith and in all the years ahead let us give Mary her God given place in our journey of faith. Let me conclude by quoting once more that tremendous passage in the Handbook on Mary’s place in the economy of salvation: ‘The Legion’s trust in Mary is limitless, knowing that by the ordinance of God, her power is without limit. All that he could give to Mary, he has given to her. All that she was capable of receiving she has received in plenitude. For us God has constituted her a special means of grace. Operating in union with her we approach him more effectively, and hence win grace more freely. Indeed, we place ourselves in the very flood-tide of grace, for she is the spouse of the Holy Spirit: she is the channel of every grace which Jesus Christ has won. We receive nothing which we do not owe to a positive intervention on her part. She does not content herself with transmitting all; she obtains all for us.’ We can never really know the spirituality of the Legion without making our own this doctrinal insight concerning Mary and her place in our lives.
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