The Legion: A leaven in the lump of the Church

Today, in the reading from the handbook assigned for spiritual reading, we began a lengthy section devoted to the importance of the meeting in the life of the member of the Legion of Mary. This constitutes an exceedingly good time to focus our meditation once again on the Legion meeting's quasi-liturgical nature. The reason this is so is because the Legion's life in the life of the Church is an analogy. Just as the Christian's personal fruitfulness and spiritual health are dependent on his or her attendance at Church services, so too does the legionary's fruitfulness and spiritual health depend on his or her attendance at the weekly meeting.

As we have already pointed out in several other places, the Legion's meeting is first of all a prayer meeting, and not only a prayer meeting, but one that is based on an ancient Vespers service. We can simply restate the argument once again. Cast your eyes momentarily on the structure of the Office of Vespers in the Roman Rite. There, you find a service that consists of the usual beginning, psalmody, a short reading, the Magnificat (the Song of the Most Holy Mother of God), a litany and concluding prayers. This structure is very clearly present in the Legion meeting, except that five decades of the Rosary replace the psalmody. The Vespers is one of the constituent services during the day, which make up what is called The Prayer of the Church, or the Liturgy of the Hours. This daily round of services is intended to sanctify time in the this world of decay, while the Mass, on the other hand, does not belong to time, but raises us up above and beyond time to the realities of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the first centuries of the Church's existence, after Our Lord's Ascension into Heaven, Christians were absolutely convinced of the necessity of attending the Church's services. The reasoning was simple and Pauline. The Church is the Body of Christ. The health of any part of that Body depends on it communion with the rest of the Body. Any time that a part of the Body is separated from the Body, that part withers and dies, because it no longer has the life of the Body in it. No only that, but the health of any part of the Body is dependent on the degree of its participation in the Body. Those parts that have good circulation thrive and grow strong, while those parts that have poor circulation fall into sickness. Based on this simple reasoning, the Early Christians were convinced of the necessity to stand as often as possible in the presence of the Lord in the Church's services. What makes this even more amazing is the fact that, for much of this period, being present at Christian services was a life and death decision. Every member of the liturgical assembly knew people who had been killed for their faith in Christ. The remembered them in the context of the services and they asked for their prayers. They stood there with the knowledge that they too might meet the same fate. Naturally, those liturgical assemblies were small, intimate matters in which everybody knew everybody else and knew them well. They were conscious of one another's presence, those who were physically present in the synaxis and those who were spiritually present, although they had already entered the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Legion's meeting is an analogy of the Church's pure liturgical life. It is before an altar. It is a small, intimate matter, and although it is not quite a life and death decision (at least here in the United States), it is a commitment to following Christ under the leadership of His Holy Mother. Thus, it does not replace the Church's services, but augments them. In most parishes, the weekly services gather hundreds of people together. It is no longer a small, intimate and committed group bound together in common purpose. Many attendees at weekly Mass are unconvinced that their fecundity and health depend on their communion with the Church. They come to punch their ticket for another week, but live their lives from Sunday to Sunday in forgetfulness of God. The purpose of the Legion and its meetings is not judge such, but to help them. In the first centuries of the Church, the small meetings of Christians were a leaven in the lump of the whole of human society. Eventually, that leaven transformed that society into a Christian civilization. In an analogous way, the Legion now stands in the position to be a leaven in the lump of the Church.

By way of this analogy, we can see how important the Legion's weekly meeting is in the life of the individual legionary and how important his or her life is in the life of the Church. The Legion continuously strives to increase its legionaries communion with the Body of Christ. This is the reason why what is called praetorian membership is so recommended, because it increases the circulation of the individual legionary in the life of the Church through the Church's services, the daily Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.