January Allocutio 2025

Allocutio January 2025

By Fr. Bernardo Denardo

On Christmas Eve we have started the Jubilee Year. To commemorate 2025 years of the birth of Christ, the Church being the “universal sacrament of salvation” (Ad Gentes 1) for the world, wants to show once again the mercy of God by this outpouring of special grace during the whole year. The ordinary way in which the Church grants this grace is through the administration of the sacraments, the extraordinary way is through the indulgences we can obtain every day this year. Like in the previous centuries, since the tradition of the Jubilees started, the Church has never stopped showing the world the Merciful Face of the Father Who is always ready to welcome everybody always forgiving and bringing reconciliation, peace and love.

The Church exists to continue the work of Jesus Christ and his ministry of salvation, and She does that proclaiming the Good News and welcoming everybody, responding to the commandment of Our Lord’s Last Will, when he ordered his disciples “Go out to the whole world, proclaim the Gospel to all creation” (Mk 16:15). That means, that the main and primary mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, once communities have been established only then begins the mission of welcoming and nurturing those communities.

Before undertaking this mission the apostles lived with Jesus, were trained by Him, witnessed the miracles he performed and heard his teachings. Finally they saw the realisation of the love He had for them when He died on the Cross and Rose up from the Death. They knew Jesus, they loved Him. That knowledge and love was what prompted them to preach the Gospel, we know too that in order to achieve that, they needed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, their human strengths were now enough to enable them to undertake the titanic mission of evangelising the world. As we know very well at Pentecost Our Lady was present for the Coming of the Holy Spirit, and till the moment of Her Ascension she continued to be present with the early Church. The physical presence of Our Lady in the early Church, her assistance, her advice and her participation in the work of evangelisation was of tremendous importance, and it is something that actually happened and sometimes we tend to forget.

We are all also disciples of Christ, and the more we know Him and love Him, the more we want others to know Him and love Him too, we realize that the happiness we experience must be shared. The same happens with Our Blessed Mother, as our love for Her grows and we discover more about Her, we feel prompted to tell it to everybody.

All of us baptised members of the Mystical Body of Christ, take part in the task evangelisation through our different vocations, and have chosen to do this, in a more specific way taking the way of life proposed by the Legion of Mary. Convinced that the fulfilment of the Legion system will lead us to holiness, we participate in the mission of proclaiming the Good News, through the different apostolates we undertake. The more we know the Legion of Mary, the life of its Founder the Servant of God Frank Duff, his writings and his spirituality, the more we love the Legion. Gradually we are more and more blessed through our Legion membership, and as a natural consequence we feel the necessity to share this with others and out of love for souls we want more people to become members.

This process of extension of the Legion begins obviously in our own praesidium, making the best efforts to recruit new members, both active and auxiliaries, and continues in our own councils, by the formation of new praesidia. This will eventually bring the necessity of establishing new councils. Every new member, every new praesidium and every new council means having more people involved in the work of evangelisation, it means more souls being saved.

One of the greatest benefits of being members of the Legion of Mary is that it puts us immediately in touch with the rest of the world, keeping the right balance of focusing our work in our places but looking at what happens in the rest of the world. By being members of a praesidium we know that we have a higher council that is in touch with another one in our own area, in our country and eventually with Concilium. That keeps our mission local and our vision universal. We should be all thinking how to reach out to our next parish, diocese and country without the Legion and work to establish it there. We must look around and see how many parishes close to us don’t have the Legion, how many dioceses in our countries don’t have any praesidia, how many vast areas don’t have any Legion presence, and start to take action and undertake the work of make those parishes, dioceses and countries enjoy the presence of the Legion of Mary.

The beginning of the year and especially this Jubilee year, gives us an opportunity to plan things, to be aware of the state of the Legion in our own areas and to think about how we are going to spread the Legion in places where it is not present.

Referring to planning, in one of his last articles called Widening our horizons, Frank Duff wrote, “If the Legion could become that much absorbed in the winning of souls, it is certain that the Holy Spirit would fill it with His Power and perhaps convert the world. Actually this is the petition with which the Legion prayer begins. Therefore it is not altogether as a joke that I suggest that an Atlas of the world might be a companion document to the Handbook”. And in his final address delivered at the Annual Conference of Peregrinatio Pro Christo on 25th of October 1980 he wrote, “can we induce every legionary in this dreaming about souls? If each one could be induced to pray for a minute a day over a map of the world, it would afford an opening for the maternal operations of Mary”.

This year the best way to celebrate the Jubilee is by spreading the Legion, by recruiting new members, establishing new praesidia and new councils. Every new legionary is a new catholic working for his/her own sanctification and irradiating the graces involved in this process with his/her family, friends, colleagues, etc. Every new praesidium is the same but multiplied and even more with every new council being established, the work of evangelistion enlarges and the souls reached out too. More and more people will become aware of the Mercy of God and will receive the grace prepared for them by receiving the sacraments.

During this year of the Jubilee our main contribution to the life of the Church is to extend the Legion of Mary.