Souls are not approached except through Mary
Concilium Allocutio July 2010
By Fr. Bede McGregor O.P.
Spiritual Director to the Legion of Mary
Souls are not approached except through Mary
Today in this year of going back to basics as a means of renewal in the Legion throughout the world we move from the four sections of the Standing Instruction to Chapter thirty-nine of the Handbook. It is entitled Cardinal points of the Legion Apostolate and the first section begins with the heading: ‘Souls are not approached except with Mary’.
This is one of the most important statements of the Handbook. It expresses a principle and truth that shaped the whole inner and outer life of the Servant of God, Frank Duff. It encapsulates the meaning and methods of evangelisation according to the spirit of the Legion of Mary. There can be no true evangelisation without Mary. Recent Popes have called Our Lady the ‘Star of Evangelisation’. She throws light on the very nature of evangelisation and she accompanies every form and activity of evangelisation and apostolate.
The reasoning behind this basic principle of evangelisation is quite simple. God Himself associated Mary from all eternity with the Incarnation and Redemption God willed in one eternal decree both Jesus and Mary. As the Handbook puts it: ‘For God Himself has thought fit to arrange that no foreshadowing or coming or giving or manifestation of Jesus should be without Mary’. God chose Mary as the instrument for bringing Jesus into the world. He chose her to be the Mother of the Redeemer. Jesus enters history through the power of the Holy Spirit and the totally free consent of Mary. She consents to surrender her maternal rights over her Son so that he may die for us on the Cross. God does not approach mankind through Christ and his work of redemption except through Mary. As Pope John Paul II puts it so beautifully: ‘the redemption took place beneath the heart of Mary’.
The Handbook points out that God could have dispensed with Mary altogether and indeed could have dispensed with Jesus Himself. But God decided to send his Son into the world through Mary and he associates her with all that Jesus does for us in his death and resurrection. This is God’s eternal plan that Jesus, God Incarnate, does not approach souls except through Mary. It is therefore imperative for the Legion to root itself in God’s plans and methods for the evangelisation and the salvation of the world. We shall have to come back to this principle of the absolute inseparability of Mary and Jesus in the salvation of the world.
But let us for the time being ask the question: how exactly, practically speaking does Mary approach souls? The answer to that question provides a blueprint for the whole Legion Apostolate or what we call more often today, evangelisation. First and foremost, Mary is totally focused on Jesus. Her role is to bring Jesus into the world, to bring Jesus into the centre of every human life. In union with Mary that is also the goal of all Legion activity - the purpose of evangelisation. Mary’s approach to souls is a maternal one. Mothers do not deal in abstractions, they deal with each individual child, and they deal with persons in intimate personal contact. That is pre-eminently the case with Mary, the Mother of the Church and of all mankind. It is also the nature of a true mother that all her actions spring from her heart and she can wish for nothing else but the good of the child, especially its eternal good. It is also supremely important that a mother never gives up on her child no matter what the circumstances may be. The Legion seeks to share in Mary’s maternity of souls and therefore seeks to bring all the characteristics of Mary’s approach to souls into play. It is a magnificent ideal that our Founder puts before the Legion and we need to keep going back to it for inspiration and guidance.
