Allocutio at April 2015 Concilium Meeting by Fr. Bede McGregor, OP
Let Spirit of Easter be the Spirit the Legion
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At its most authentic the Legion seeks to live at the heart of the Church. She seeks to live at the contemplative heart of the Church: that is together with Mary to be totally focused on Jesus, to abide in Him, to make our home in Him, the place in which we are most at ease, secure and utterly loved. She seeks to live at the apostolic heart of the Church totally committed to the salvation of all souls without any exceptions. The best way to be at the heart of the Church in every way is by appropriating as deeply as possible the graces of the Paschal Mystery, to let the graces of Easter radically transform our interior life.
The spirit of Easter and indeed the whole Christian life can be summed up in the one word. A word that has a long history in the Old Testament and takes on a whole new meaning in the New Testament and that word is “Alleluia” – which translated into English means “Praised be God” which includes a strong note of joy and thanksgiving and absolute hope.
St. Augustine, the fourth century Bishop of Hippo, told the people of his Diocese that: ‘We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.’ And this is true of the people of every Christian gathering, in every parish, in every Diocese and indeed in every praesidium throughout the Legion world and every one of its councils. But why is Alleluia the great acclamation of Eastertide and the prayer of every mature Christian? Well, we arrive at the empty tomb and the crucified Christ is not there. He has risen as he said. That is the central truth of our Catholic faith. Let us listen to St. Paul: ‘If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching has been in vain and your faith is in vain… then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men the most to be pitied.’ (1Cor:15). To be a Christian means to be called to bear witness to the risen Christ and to be a legionary is to be a specialist in bearing witness to the presence of the risen Lord.
One of the most precious truths of our faith accentuated so much in the Legion spirituality and strongly asserted in the Standing Instruction goes as follows: ‘the performance of a substantial active legionary work, in a spirit of faith, and in union with Mary, in such fashion that in those worked for and in one’s fellow members, the person of Our Lord is once again seen and served by Mary, His Mother.’ It was one of the outstanding characteristics of the spiritual portrait of Frank Duff that he developed the gift of habitually seeing the Risen Lord in all those he met, especially where the Lord seemed to be heavily disguised. It is also one of the goals that every good legionary seeks to attain with the special help of Mary. But we are called not only to see Christ in our neighbour but also in ourselves. As St. Paul says: ‘I live now not I but Christ lives in me.’ To sum up what I have been trying to say so far: the spirit of Easter and therefore the spirit of the Legion is the spirit and life of the Mystical Body of the Risen Lord. Easter did not only take place 2,000 years ago, Jesus is still risen and is present among us and in us and for us here and now today. This is the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, so dear and indispensable to the spirit and life of the Legion.
But what precisely does the Resurrection of Jesus say to us today and why does it give birth to a never ending Alleluia? Well, it is good to remember that our Christian faith has its beginnings in a cemetery, a place that seems to shout out that everything is dead and buried and there is no future for mankind that things have come to a final and irrevocable end. So that life is ultimately meaningless. But the resurrection of Jesus is God’s revelation to us that death does not have the last word. There is life beyond death, eternal life and a place of eternal Alleluia. This is the ultimate reason for our Christian joy and our absolute hope. The risen Lord is alive and accompanies us on our journey to heaven if we allow him to live in us and for us in His Mystical Body of the Church. This is the main theme of the Acts of the Apostles that we read in our celebration of the Eucharist throughout Eastertide. We legionaries must try and enter ever more deeply into the truth and reality of the paschal mystery that brings to birth the Mystical Body of Christ.
In this Allocutio I am stressing the supreme importance that all apostolate of every kind must ultimately be a witness to the Resurrection of Christ, but the Paschal Mystery of course must include the passion and death of Christ on the Cross. Those two truths of our faith are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other. Sometimes our non-Christian brothers and sisters, especially our Muslim friends ask why we pick out the horrific and brutal death of Christ on the Cross and wear its symbol as a badge of honour? There are several reasons but the main one is that the figure on the crucifix is God made man and He is demonstrating that God loves us poor sinners infinitely, passionately and personally and there is absolutely nothing that He would not do for us and has not in fact already done for us. The truth is found in so many places in the Handbook. Let me just quote a few lines from the section entitled: ‘The mark of the Cross is a sign of hope.’ ‘It must always be remembered that the work of the Lord will bear the Lord’s own mark, the mark of the Cross.’ Without that imprint, the supernatural character of the work may be doubted: true results not be forthcoming. Let us proclaim our Easter Faith; Christ died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
