Allocutio at April 2016 Concilium Meeting by Fr. Bede McGregor
St. Louis Marie de Montfort and the Legion of Mary
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On the 28th of April 1916, exactly three hundred years ago, St. Louis Marie de Montfort died. He was to become and remain a seminal influence in the Universal Church and particularly in the Legion of Mary. In fact it would be impossible to understand the heart of the Legion or the interior life of its founder Frank Duff without some basic knowledge of the teaching and inspiration of de Montfort. It would be a great grace for the Legion if it would use this year as an opportunity of going back to the teaching and guidance of de Montfort as contained in his writings and the Handbook of the Legion. There can be no doubt that wherever and whenever the Legion truly appropriates the teaching of de Montfort it will be reignited and flourish. Without his influence the Legion would lose a great deal of its special charism and inner dynamism.
In a talk to the Montfort Fathers in Bayshore, New York in 1958 Frank Duff said: ‘The Legion of Mary owes, you might say, everything to de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary.’ And in the Handbook he writes: ‘It can be safely asserted that no Saint has played a greater part in the development of the Legion than he.’ The Handbook is full of his spirit. The prayers re-echo his very words. He is really the tutor of the Legion: thus, invocation is due to him by the Legion almost as a matter of moral obligation.’ (Handbook Ch. 24 section 3). Cardinal Suenens writes: ‘It cannot be denied that the Handbook of the Legion of Mary is a striking follow up of the Treatise on the True Devotion. It takes up the same doctrine and carries it over into the field of effective and concrete action, within the reach of all persons of good will.’ Of course there have been developments of the True Devotion, at least in its application to modern times over the last three hundred years and the genius of Frank Duff was to see and develop the True Devotion as a sublime doctrinal foundation for an innovative and practical theology of the lay apostolate that finds its way into the documents of the 11 Vatican Council.
There can be no doubt that the best known gift of de Montfort to the Legion is his knowledge concerning Mary and the way of true devotion to her in the midst of so many false and inauthentic forms of devotion to her. Since the discovery of the book True Devotion to Mary every Pope has spoken favourably of it. Pope Pius 1X claimed it was the best and most acceptable form of devotion to Our Blessed Lady. Pope Pius X1 said: ‘I have known and practiced this Devotion from my childhood.’ Of course there is the powerful witness of Pope St. John Paul, who has written so much and with such authority on the True Devotion and making it a central element in his own inner life and expressing it in his personal motto: ‘Totus Tuus’ I am totally yours Mary. I mention this very briefly so that legionaries can be completely reassured when from time to time they meet someone who suggests that the doctrinal basis of their devotion to Mary is a bit exaggerated and should be changed at least a little.
Obviously, I cannot give an adequate explanation of the True Devotion to Mary here but I strongly recommend that we read and constantly reread Chapter 6, section 5 of the Handbook. Now I just give one quotation from the Handbook that I think sums up the essence of the True Devotion: ‘That Devotion requires the formal entry into a compact with Mary, whereby one gives to her one’s whole self, with all its thoughts and deeds and possessions, both spiritual and temporal, past, present, and future without the reservation of the smallest part or slightest little thing. In a word, the giver places himself/herself in a condition equivalent to that of a slave possessing nothing of his/her own, and wholly dependent on, and utterly at the disposal of Mary.’
It is important if we wish to truly understand the True Devotion to Mary that we do not isolate Mary from the mystery of the Trinity. We have often stressed that Marian Devotion must be absolutely Christocentric. It is most traditionally expressed in the principle: To Jesus through Mary. It is in Jesus that we are enabled to share in the very life of the Trinity. But today I would like to briefly relate to the True Devotion to Mary to True Devotion to the Holy Spirit. As we know, de Montfort refers to the Holy Spirit 74 times in the True Devotion and hardly ever thinks of Mary without some reference to the Holy Spirit. R. Luarentin, the well-known French Mariologist suggests that de Montfort sees Mary as entirely relative to the Holy Spirit. We are familiar with those lovely sentences in the True Devotion like: ‘When the Holy Spirit finds Mary in a soul he hastens there.’ (TD n. 36). Laurentin sums up the mutual attraction and harmony between Mary and the Holy Spirit in de Montfort as follows: ‘The Holy Spirit comes to where Mary is and Mary goes to where the Holy Spirit is. He leads to her and she leads to Him who brings everything about.’
But above all, de Montfort and the Legion see the essential relationship between the Holy Spirit and Mary in the mystery of the Incarnation. The Word becomes flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit and the total and humble cooperation of Mary. That principle remains true for all times and places, for every individual person and community: Jesus comes into our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit and the cooperation of Mary. That is the secret of the Legion apostolate and its spirituality. We owe St. Louis Marie de Montfort a great debt of gratitude for the gift of his teaching and life. So we pray: St. Louis Marie intercede for the Legion of Mary and all those among whom the Legion lives and works. Amen.
