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One of the great channels of grace for the Legion has always been its deep love of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. And one of the ways we show that love is our fidelity to the teaching authority and guidance of the Church. Another way is our openness to the graces the Church offers us through the celebration of special years. This year we are invited to celebrate the year of Consecrated Life. At the heart of this special invitation of Pope Francis is the conviction that an authentic renewal of the Consecrated Life in all its forms would be an immeasurable blessing for the whole Church. So I would like to share with you some thoughts from Pope Francis and the Handbook as an encouragement to think and pray about the consecrated life in all its forms in the Church and consider how it relates to the Legion.

An obvious way in which religious priests, sisters and brothers and other consecrated persons relate to the Legion is that they often act as Spiritual Directors of praesidia and higher councils of the Legion. We all know from experience how important the Spiritual Director is in the Legion system. The Handbook puts it as follows: ‘As the Legion judges its success entirely according to the spiritual qualities developed in its members and brought to bear by them on the work, it follows that the Spiritual Director on whom the duty primarily falls of inspiring the members with those qualities, is the very mainspring of the praesidium.’ So I suggest that this year we would pray in a special way for our Spiritual Directors, thank God for the ones we have and ask Our Lord and His Mother to give us many more at a time when some praesidia in some parts of the world find it very difficult to get a Spiritual Director.

Another beautiful sign of the intimate relationship between the Legion and the ordained priesthood and the religious life is the magnificent contribution that the Legion makes to consecrated life throughout the universal Church. Legion spirituality not only forms an extraordinary number of men and women, young and old, from all walks of life as lay apostles with an authentic inner life, but it has also proven to be a marvellous breeding ground for vocations to the priesthood and religious life in all its forms throughout the Catholic world. So, I am convinced that religious owe an immense gratitude to the Legion and should have a special predilection for legionaries and their many faceted apostolates. This leads me on to a most profound relationship between religious and the Legion. Priests and religious can be genuine members of the Legion and far from complicating their religious or priestly vocations; this membership will enrich both their vocations and also that of the Legion. The Handbook speaks a great deal about Auxiliary and Adjutorian membership of the Legion. For instance we read as follows: ‘This membership is open to priests, religious and the laity. It consists of those who are unable or unwilling to assume the duties of active membership, but who associate themselves with the Legion by undertaking a service of prayer in its name.’

Of course, the Legion is primarily an association of lay apostles, but it most definitely desires to have priests and religious as Auxiliaries and Adjutorian members. Also priests and religious who are Spiritual Directors at any level of the Legion structures are by that fact also active members and indeed officers in the Legion and therefore should at least be invited to become Praetorian members. Their membership will be a great source of grace for themselves and the Legion.

So, I make this suggestion as a way of Legion participation in the Year of Consecrated Life that every praesidium in the world wide Legion would make a special effort to recruit priests and religious brothers and sisters to some form of Legion membership. And why not recruit Bishops as well. The Legion is present in the vast majority of Dioceses in the world and why not offer their Bishops one of the best things we have to give them, which is Legion membership. Besides a significant number of them were probably legionaries at some stage in their lives. Also, timidity should have no place in the Legion apostolate!

But this recruitment drive among priests, religious and Bishops would obviously require that we restudy what the Handbook has to say on the subject. I found two brief paragraphs particularly helpful in explaining the spirit and practice of this kind of membership of the Legion. They are as follows: ‘This service need not be offered directly on behalf of the Legion. It will suffice to offer it to Our Lady. Therefore it is conceivable that the Legion might receive nothing from it, nor does the Legion desire to receive anything which might do more good elsewhere. But as this service is a legionary one, it is probable that it will incline the Queen of the Legion to have regard for the need of the Legion.

However, it is strongly recommended that this and all other legionary service will be offered to Our Lady as an unreserved gift to be administered according to her intentions. This would lift it to a higher level of generosity and thus greatly enhance its worth. This purpose would be kept in view by saying daily some formula of offering such as the following: ‘Mary Immaculate, Mediatrix of all Graces, I place at your disposal such portion of my prayers, works and sufferings as is permitted to me.’

When the letters of Frank Duff are eventually published, you will find that a substantial number of them are addressed to priests and religious from many different orders and congregations and his gift of friendship with them is truly remarkable. He saw that the Legion had much to receive from them and much to give them. His relationship with the Cistercian monks in Melleray is only just one good example. He especially admired members of Missionary Orders and Societies and was always grateful to them for the way they played a major part in enabling the Legion to exercise its many apostolates to the ends of the world. May this relationship be renewed and deepened in this year of Consecrated Life throughout the Legion world.

Let me quote one passage by way of conclusion that Pope Francis takes from Pope Benedict and which I think has great relevance for everything the Legion seeks to be and do. It goes as follows: ‘It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but by attraction. The consecrated life will not flourish as the result of brilliant vocation programs, but because the young people we meet find us attractive, because they see us as men and women who are happy! Similarly, the apostolic effectiveness of consecrated life does not depend on efficiency of its methods. It depends on the eloquence of your lives, lives which radiate the joy and beauty of living the Gospel and following Christ to the full.’ In other words the Legion too will only successfully recruit new members by radiating a spirit of joy, the joy that comes from belonging in a radical way to Mary, the cause of our joy. Amen.

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