Today's reading from the handbook gives us an opportunity to look at the concept of culture. It is this concept that is at the basis of what the handbook is talking about today. The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as "the arts, social institutions and achievements of a given people." While I agree with this definition as far as it goes, I would define this very important concept somewhat differently. Culture is first and foremost "shared experience." Shared experience has various different consequences like common outlook and cultural memory. All of these together, because they come from shared experience, are organs of culture.
A lot of times, European and other world cultures look kind of silly to Americans, because they seem to require a high degree of conformity. Everybody dresses up in the same costumes and does the same dances. On the other hand, Europeans and others will often say that Americans don't have a culture, because American culture (again, shared experience) is more subtle and more difficult to detect. Rooted as it is in rugged individualism, and therefore lacking the uniformity and conformity so often seen in other cultures, its backbone is an idea, an ideal and a spirit. Nevertheless, in all the cases in which culture is operative, what are we witnessing going on between the group and the individual member? It is formation. The group is forming its members into good members of its society, thus propagating itself as a culture.
It is, of course, not just national groups and tribes that have culture and seek to propagate that culture, in order to strengthen the cohesion of the group. The Church also has culture, and there are various cultures within the Church. I think for example of the culture of Benedictinism that has played such an important role in the history of the Church, of Europe and of the world. One of the great ideals of Benedictine culture is stability. Stability in the monastic sense means that the monk joins a specific monastery and remains in that same house until his death. The monk, in other words, places himself in a position to be formed by the culture of his particular monastic community to the exclusion of all other influences.
In the same way, the Legion of Mary has a particular culture in which its members have to be formed, in order for those members to become good members of the Legion's society. For obvious reasons, a Benedictine monastery is much more immersive an experience than the Legion is able to require of her individual members. No, the means by which the culture of the Legion of Mary is passed to its members is through the meeting. It is the meeting that forms members of the Legion of Mary into good members.
In a sense, the culture of the Legion is similar in many ways to Benedictinism, because of its intensely local focus. While it is true that individual members are formed as members of the extended, worldwide body of the Legion, they are also formed as members of the particular, local praesidium through the culture of that praesidium, which is, of course, largely the same as its neighbors, but has a different cultural memory, containing, for example, anecdotes about a former member riding his bike up the state prison to visit the prisoners.
The purpose of culture is to form, but the members of a culture have to make themselves available to be formed. Otherwise, culture cannot do its work. This is the point that the handbook is at pains to stress when it continually reminds about the importance of attendance at the meetings.
We must constantly turn our eyes to the One Who is enthroned at the center of every Christian culture, God's Messiah truly, substantially present among us: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Our formation is to more than a group. It is to Him, Who became like us in our sufferings and will make us like Him in His glory.
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