The Legion in the Parish
Concilium Allocutio July 2011
By Fr. Bede McGregor O.P.
Spiritual Director to the Legion of Mary
The Legion in the Parish
‘Suggestions as to Works’ is one of the longest chapters in the Handbook and could provide a helpful sort of examination of conscience concerning the apostolic work legionaries are actually doing or not doing in their praesidium. The very first suggestion in this chapter thirty-seven is the apostolate in the parish. I think it would be very useful for every praesidium to ask itself what it is really contributing to the parish or what it should or could be doing for the parish. Is the praesidium or praesidia truly a leaven in the parish or is it just another society tucked away in the background with very little impact. Is it, in fact, a burden or a blessing on the priest?
As we all know, the parish is the normal and natural environment of the Legion and union and collaboration with the priests of the parish are essential to the life of the Legion. To more deeply understand the role of the Legion in the parish it might be helpful to grasp what it means to be a parish and what it means to be a priest. Well, on one occasion a seminarian asked Frank Duff: ‘Could you sketch briefly what you consider would be an ideal priest?” Towards the end of this reply Frank Duff said: ‘You can see, if you put the whole picture together like that, it is that God works in and through the priest. That is the truth that he is supposed to be the sort of incarnation of Our Lord. He is supposed to be, to use a phrase of my own, “Christ on the spot”, a local Christ.’ In less colloquial terms the priest is the sacramental presence of the Risen Lord as Head of the Church. He is an ‘Alter Christus, another Christ.’ This pivotal idea was at the root of Frank Duff’s radical attitude and alignment with the priest and the one he wished to be at the heart of the Legion. And the parish is the reality of the universal church in a particular place or among a particular people. It is the presence of the Mystical Body of Christ - priest and people together. The Legion praesidium is a cell of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the parish.
With that background I want to briefly reflect on just one primordial characteristic that Christ, the Church, and the Legion have in common if they are to be understood at all. That characteristic is catholicity. Christ died for every single human being; he loved each one without exception, the good, the bad and the indifferent. It wasn’t any kind of love. It was a love that is infinite, passionate and intensely personal. He has given absolutely everything for the salvation of souls. He founded the Church to be a sacrament of this love and a real presence of his will to save all. The Church has no other reason for existence apart from sharing this good news - which is the work of evangelisation. The Church must be radically catholic; universal in its outreach to every soul. Now the parish is the Catholic Church in a particular place and therefore must have this character of universality. It must be profoundly concerned not only for practising Catholics, but for the lapsed, our separated brethren, the non-Christians, the atheists and agnostics, the functional and dysfunctional, everyone living within the parish. Frank Duff’s vision of the Legion embodied this catholic mark of the Church and therefore parish. The Legion is called to be the outreach of the parish to those who in various ways and degrees are not involved in the Church or are alienated from her. Let me quote from the Handbook which in turn is quoting Blessed Pope John Paul: ‘In the present circumstances the lay faithful have the ability to do very much and therefore ought to do very much towards the growth of an authentic ecclesial communion in their parishes in order to reawaken missionary zeal towards non-believers, and believers themselves who have abandoned the faith or grown lax in the Christian life.’
We all know how encouraged Frank Duff was with these words of Blessed Pope John XXIII: ‘The Legion of Mary presents the true face of the Catholic Church.’ My question is: does every praesidium in every parish in the world manifest the missionary nature of the Church? How many members of the praesidium are engaged with non-believers, the lapsed or non-Christians? To put it another way: is the Legion everywhere taking on board its traditional commitment to what is now called the New Evangelisation? It would be a tremendous blessing for the Church if during this year when we are recalling and renewing the charism of Frank Duff and the Legion that we emphasised the missionary nature of the Legion. I think the Legion has a great role in helping the priest to be in practise a truly Catholic priest and a parish to be a truly Catholic parish.
I always feel bluntly challenged when I re-read the words of St. Francis Xavier so often quoted by Frank Duff: ‘Souls! Soul! Souls! To travel the whole world over, to suffer everything and then at the end of it all to have won a soul. Oh what a triumph.’ And our Founder adds: ‘Such is the value of one soul, one soul!’ As a minimum ideal, every one of us should be praying and working for the salvation of at least one soul. Every parish would then be at least moving towards being a missionary parish and the Legion would be a major instrument in bringing this about. Let us all get dug into the New Evangelisation. Let us ask Our Lady for the grace to help her in her mothering of every soul especially those who most need the experience of her motherly heart. Amen.
