Immaculate Conception and the Legion
The Legion is steeped in the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is not simply a doctrine that we assent to with our mind or accept with our heart. It is a doctrine that the Legion translates into habitual action. It is the dynamic principle of its apostolic action or the soul of its apostolate. The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception is a radical and all pervasive dimension of the inner life of our Founder, the Servant of God Frank: Duff. If the Handbook of the Legion is in many ways the spiritual autobiography of Frank Duff, then we can see so clearly the striking place that this Marian Dogma plays in his life and that of the Legion.
The Handbook tells us: ‘At the very first meeting, the members prayed and deliberated round a little altar of the Immaculate Conception identical with that which now forms the centre of every Legion meeting. Moreover, the very first breath of the Legion may be said to have been drawn in an ejaculation in honour of this privilege of Our Lady, which formed the preparation for all the dignities and all the privileges afterwards accorded to her.’ So from the very beginning wherever and whenever legionaries meet together they look to Mary Immaculate.
For Frank: Duff the Immaculate Conception is above all a person. He loved her and with his whole mind and heart, indeed with his whole being he was consecrated to her as the Woman of Genesis, the New Eve, the Mother of God, the Mother of his very soul given to him by God, the Mother of Divine Grace and the Mediatrix of all graces. And the text of scripture that he seems to put before legionaries, as the best entrance to the spirit of the Legion, is the text from Genesis: ‘I will put enmities between you and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; She shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.’ Frank preferred this interpretation of the Vulgate perhaps because it is the one used by Pope Pius IX in the Bull defining the Immaculate Conception, it is also the interpretation preferred by many of the Fathers of the Church, Cardinal Newman one of his favourite authors defends this translation and of cou.rse it is the interpretation followed by S1. Louis Marie de Montfort.
If there had been even the slightest moral fault in Mary and even if it was only for a split second, then for that brief moment she would have not been at enmity with Satan but subject to him. This would be unthinkable in the Mother of God. So she was indeed created Mary Immaculate. It was not just freedom from sin but total opposition to sin in her very identity and from the first moment of her existence. As legionaries of Mary, we wish to share her total abhorrence of sin. Nothing destroys the human person as profoundly as sin and that is one of the reasons we join in the warfare against it in ourselves and in wherever we find it.
But the Immaculate Conception is not only about freedom from the least shadow of sin, it is also about the fullness of grace in Mary. She is given all the grace she needs to be the worthy Mother of God and the Mother of every human person. She proclaims by her very being the primacy of grace in the plan of God. Grace has the last word over sin. This victory over sin comes through Mary. God has chosen her to be the instrument of all the graces merited by the passion and death of Our Lord. The legionary is called to be an instrument of grace in our world with Mary, through Mary and in total dependence on Mary. We are not simply in the business of seeking out evil and condemning it. Our primary role is to be apostles of grace. The joy of the Gospel must be our identifying trademark. We must proclaim in our lives and in the gentleness of our words that victory comes through Mary, that there is well-founded hope even in the worst possible situations. In other words we must embody the spirit of the Immaculate Conception.
That is at the heart of our devotion to the Miraculous Medal that indispensable sacramental of our Legion Apostolate. When we distribute the Miraculous Medal it would be sad if we did not explain the meaning of the Medal. If we neglect to present the extraordinary riches of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, we would be depriving others of an immense hope and the good news that with Mary they can overcome every obstacle to union with Our Lord and with each other in Him.
Finally, we know that no one has ever been more deeply aware that they have been redeemed by the redemptive suffering of Jesus than Mary. So her whole life is a Magnificat of thanksgiving and of praising the mercy of God. That is why she loves to call herself the Immaculate Conception because it points to Jesus and his redemptive love, not only for her, but for all mankind. We too, together with Mary, must proclaim the ~mmaculate Conception. We too as legionaries must be channels of God’s Mercy in union with her. The Legion began as ‘The Association of Our Lady of Mercy’ and although the Legion did not wish to be identified with only one particular title of Mary but desired to be immersed with everything associated with Mary, it must never forget that mercy must always be one of the most beautiful characteristics of the legionary soul and its apostolate.
