About twenty-five years ago, when I was a student in Canada, from time to time I had the opportunity to go over from Ottawa to Montreal. We would spend the day doing interesting things in the city and then arrive back in Ottawa fairly late at night. The last thing that we would do in the city, typically, was to pay a visit to Montreal's new cathedral, Notre-Dame Reine de la Monde. In those days, every night (with the exception of certain vacation days), the Archbishop of Montreal, Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, would come to the cathedral and pray five decades of the Rosary. After the Rosary was completed, he would sit down on his throne and give a sermon to the small group of elderly people gathered there.
Today, in the handbook we began to read the description of the legionary meeting. What is not said in the handbook, but is worth noting, is that the meeting takes a quasi-liturgical form. It is, in fact, patterned on a Vespers service, in which five decades of the Rosary replace the psalmody. Otherwise, all the usual furniture of Vespers is present: the introduction "O God, come to my assistance"; the hymn, the Magnificat with its antiphon, the concluding prayers with its collect.
Once we advert to the meeting's quasi-liturgical structure, we can begin to see the many parallels between it and the Church's liturgical services. First of all, there is the presence of the altar. Just as the altar is the center of the liturgical services, so is Our Lady's altar the center of the legionary meeting, for, as the handbook goes on to suggest, she has gathered us together to do the work of "practical worship." Just as in the Church's Liturgy, we bring offerings to the altar, in an analogous way, we bring offerings to the meeting as well, namely, the works that have been accomplished in the preceding week. These offerings are mingled with the incense of our prayer, as we present them to the Most High through His Most Holy Mother.
In the Church's liturgical services, after we have presented our offerings, we receive from God grace and blessing in answer to our prayers. Analogously, in the meeting, legionaries receive a new assignment for the present week and, not just presumably, but certainly, the grace and blessing that is necessary to the work's completion.
In the Church's historic Liturgies, offertory processions are traditionally moments of decision. This is so, because the offerings represent ourselves. When the bread and wine are offered in the Mass, we are to join our entire selves to that offering. The question to each of us is: Will you offer yourself together with Christ? The further question is: Will you hold anything back? The fate of those who hold anything back is clear. The story of Ananias and Sapphira from the Book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles tells us one and then the other was carried out dead. What is the fate of those who hold something back? They drop dead. In other words, making a partial offering to God is soul-destroying, because it denies the fundamental meaning of reality itself, for it claims, "I have things that are not from God."
Again, in an analogous way, in the legionary meeting, the reports on the various assignments that were given for the previous week are offerings to God. The work itself was an offering, but the report is the token of that work. The same two questions are appropriate in due proportion: Will you offer yourself together with Christ? and will you hold anything back? In other words, the legionary meeting is an extension of Christ's self-offering, which is re-presented in the Liturgy. This is precisely consistent with Chrysostom's own commentary on the Eucharistic Liturgy, wherein he says that the purpose of the dismissal at the conclusion of the rite is not so that the Liturgy may end, but so that, with the doors of the church being opened, it might continue, flowing out into the space beyond the church.
Let us reflect for a moment upon the figure that is presented by the arrangement of the meeting. The image of the Mother of God stands at one end of the table, where the altar is set up. We all, gathered around this table are members of the Body of Christ. The Mother of God has a special role in the Body. It is St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, who calls her the "neck" of that Body, because all of God's graces come to us through her. In other words, what is invisible here is the Head, Christ Himself, Who stands behind His Most Holy Mother and acts in her.
In the Church's Liturgies, Christ is revealed to us as the axis and meaning of everything that exists. In Cardinal Turcotte's nightly Rosaries and sermons our orientation towards Christ, our ultimate meaning, was strengthened and solidified. No devotion more than the Rosary puts Christ in the center of our experience, because the Gospel is applied to life and life is submitted to the Gospel. So it is too for the legionary meeting. May the total offerings of our lives be acceptable, our reasonable worship.
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