LIFE IN UNION WITH MARY TRANSFORMS THE COMMUNITY (An Allocution to the Legion of Mary)

Today's reading from the handbook is concerned with the role of the Legion of Mary as a leaven in the society at large. It describes the way that the work of individual members, which occupies only a few hours a week, becomes itself a leaven in that individual's life, so that the whole of life becomes changed and ennobled by the spirit behind the work. Then too, the influence of such changed lives, changes other lives and brings about the transformation of the community and society at large. As the handbook puts it, by the action of the Legion, the whole community is put at the service of God.

 

One particularly interesting thing about this description is the way that, along with active members and auxiliaries, people who are served by the Legion are, in as sense, mystically assimilated to the Legion.

 

The exact way that this "leaven in the community" works can be perceived when we consider it Marian dimensions. In his work entitled Life of Union with Mary, Father Emile Neubert describes the way that St. Louis Marie Grignion de Monfort and his followers, most especially the twentieth-century Marian mystic Mother Angela Sorazu, developed the practice of what is variously called "Marian communions or Marian aspirations." This practice as described by numerous spiritual writers involves the invitation to the Most Holy Mother of God to take possession of one's whole being, replacing one's whole life with her life. The spiritual writer Msgr. Edouard Poppe says roughly the same in his book entitled Une ame d'apotre (The Soul of an Apostle). There, he says: "Absorbing Mary means to draw all her thoughts into our mind, her sentiments into our heart, her strength into our will, her spirit into our whole being."

Neubert is careful to clarify that we are not talking about something analogous to receiving the Lord in Holy Communion, because what is being referred to here is merely a communion with the soul of Mary. However, despite its delimitations, it is an exceedingly powerful practice that, as Neubert goes on to note: "gradually transforms our soul into a completely Marian soul which will live in union with the soul of our heavenly Mother. She establishes it in a habitual condition of fresh vigor, harmony, and peace above all, in a disposition of love and intimacy in our relations with Jesus."

 

The question is then, "what would the larger community be like if there was a certain number of individuals within it who were committed to working in and through this practice?" Well, that is precisely the issue to which the reading from the handbook is addressed. The legionary begins to act in and through the Most Holy Mother of God in his or her work, but that practice, like leaven, spread to the rest of life.