Today's spiritual reading was about study as a particular thing that a presidium of the Legion of Mary could take up. Various different are given as possible subjects of study, like apologetics, moral theology, dogmatic theology, church history etc.
All of this leads inevitably to a reflection upon the place of study in the Christian life. After all, despite the fact that martial images of Christian life are popular right now, with the Rosary being referred to frequently as a "weapon" by both people within the Church, as well as enemies of the Church, Christians are actually first and foremost, disciples. A disciple is just a Latin word for a student. A disciple is one who submits himself to a course of study, namely a discipline. There's no other way to refer to discipleship in Latin other than disciplina.
The Christian emphasis on learning comes to us from Judaism. Even in the Lord's time, the synagogues, which are so often referred to in the pages of the Gospels, were not so much places of worship as they were of study. The purpose of the synagogue, really then as now, was the study of Torah. The Christ, very early in His ministry, presents Himself as a new Torah when He commands His disciples to "learn of Me." Just as in Judaism of that time, worship became subsumed into study and study into worship. Even today among observant Jews there is very little white space between the concepts. This is the reason why Jewish and Christian worship features multiple readings from sacred texts and then homiliae (that is, conversations) about the meaning of those texts.
The study of Christ is the substance of Christian life, just as the study of Torah is the substance of Jewish life. Nevertheless, we have to be careful that our concept of study is not too delimited. While it is true that we must learn the Word of God (the Incarnate Logos) from the pages of the Scriptures, we also, according to Saint Eprhem the Syrian, are to learn from the other Scripture that God has entrusted to us: nature itself. We are to learn about God through interacting with our world. We are learn about God from the living icons of God, other human persons, in our world. In other words, even Legion assignments are examples of "learning Christ" from the Scriptures and the world, even those assignments where it is incumbent on leagionaries to teach. Why would this be so? Because we are disciples. According to the Teacher, "only one is your teacher, the Christ." When we act as teachers, we only participate in the teaching of Christ for that moment, as King David says in the Psalms, "not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your Name be the glory."
Last week, we had the opportunity to speak about the effective way that the truths of the faith can be taught through our experience. Really, there is no contradiction involved here. Christ, our Teacher, constantly acts in our lives and forms us by means of our experiences. What happens to us, who believe in Christ, is willed by God for our good, our salvation. When we teach, in the Name of Christ, the effective way of doing so is to do what we see Saint Photini, the Samaritan Woman, and the Gerasene demoniac doing: proclaiming what God has done for us and among us. In other words, we are disciples who are relating to others what we have learned.
The fundamental commandment of Christ is "Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me." Sometimes that learning involves teaching, as we see at the end of the same Gospel: "Go into the whole world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all the commandments I have given you." Thus, I disagree somewhat with the handbook's assertion that study can never be considered an assignment. Nay, every legionary assignment must be study.
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