Order and peace: The cosmos, the Church and the meeting

Today's reading from the handbook was, once again, concerned with the meeting and its central importance in the life of the Legion of Mary. Today was particularly emphasized the importance of a sense of order, because the Legion's milieu is characterized by order. In this way, the Legion system shares a great commonality with the Church as a whole, but also the entire cosmos. Indeed, the very word "cosmos" signifies order. The original word appears in very, very early Greek, in which its first usage is attested as a robe. Before one goes out in public, one "orders" him or herself by putting on his or her robe. Apparently, the analogy of the entire universe as a robe was common and stretched across cultural boundaries in the ancient Near East, for, in the Psalms we read: "Long ago You (God) founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will remain. They will all grow old like a garment. You will change them like clothes that are changed, but You neither change nor have an end.

Indeed, order is fundamental to every level of Creation, because it is order alone that conveys intelligibility. Only ordered things are understandable. Only things that have form can be known. God's fundamental work in Creation was making order out of a primeval chaos. The very beginning of the Bible, the first verse of the Book of Genesis gives us the mysterious words: "In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth, and the Earth was tohu bohu...." This Hebrew expression is usually translated as something like "formless and void." Yes, in the beginning, God created everything out of nothing, but this verse is specifically talking about creating order, making the nascent universe understandable. For whom did God labor so much to make His new Creation intelligible? Whom did He appoint at once as the interpreter of all His works? The one created in His Image and Likeness. Yes, in fact, He appointed the man in the beginning to do very similar work. He placed him in the Garden in order to tend and care for it. There is a very great distinction between farmers and gardeners. Farming is what the man inherited after falling into sin. It is toil, as God warned the man it would be when He said, "cursed is the ground because of you. Thorns and thistles will it bring forth for you. Of the sweat of your face you will eat of it all the days of your life." Gardening, on the other hand, is about "cosmos," that is, order and arrangement.

As one made in the perfect likeness of God, many spiritual authors have speculated on the circumstances and conditions of the various homes of the Most Holy Mother of God, most especially that home she created and maintained for the Lord Jesus and St. Joseph in Nazareth of Galilee, the very same home in which the Incarnate God grew up among human beings as fully human. The spiritual writers agree that this home was a place of profound order and, therefore, a place of profound peace. There is an essential connection between order and peace, because, again, only order is intelligible, and we only feel peace in the midst of circumstances that we understand. That which is unintelligible is always threatening. True peace always springs from order. The inverse is never true. Peace never brings forth order, but always order, peace. It is important for us to realize this, because order is a thing that must be strived after. We must work for it. Only having exerted the effort can we reap the harvest of peace. According to the testimony of the spiritual writers and mystics, the Most Holy Mother of God exerted great effort, worked diligently, and her house was a house of peace that sprang from its harmony and order.

The handbook's vision of the Legion meeting is such that the meeting is intensely ordered, everything set within very specific parameters. If all things in the meeting are kept within their assigned limits, the byproduct, just as it was in the Holy House of Nazareth, is peace. Herein is a mystical connection. The meeting is like a mystical evening in the Holy House, in the company of the Holy Family. In spite of all of the martial language in which it is described the martial experience of the meeting gives way (at some point in its practice) to that of the family. The experience becomes very similar to that pictured in the Holy Trinity icon so much beloved by Eastern Christians in which the front of the table is left open, so that the one who prays before the icon can approach the table and share the fellowship of the Three Divine Persons.