Address at the Acies of the Legion of Mary

As spoken by Most Rev. BISHOP CHARLES H. HELMSING, DD in St. Louis Cathedral, St. Louis, Missouri, taken from Maria Legionis September 1985. North Americain Edition

We are here this afternoon for the 50th time in this Archdiocese for our Acies. It was the Spring of 1934 that the very first meeting of this kind was held in Immaculate Conception Church. The Legion had begun following Father Joe Donovan's visit to Paris and then to Ireland in the Summer of 31. In the ensuing months he wrote about the Legion as he experienced it. It became known and he did something aboutit; he started the first praesidium at De Paul Hospital in connection with the Social Service department and then from that initial praesidium several others were formed: Immaculate Conception Parish, South St. Louis; St. Margaret's; the Cathedral here; Helpers of the Holy Souls. I forget exactly how many there were. There were just a handful but from that initial gathering near the Feast of the Annunciation in 1934 gatherings like this have taken place each year and they have spread throughout the Senatus area. The Senatus was formed in December 1945 just before Cardinal Glennon was called to his eternal reward; it was his authorization, and you know the rest.

It is a joy to be with you, to be invited by your president and to be invited also by Archbishop May, and I am grateful for this opportunity, not merely to reminisce, but to ask Our Lady to help us all grow in her love. These post-Vatican II days everyone speaks on renewal. There is only one way of renewal and that is for those of us in any society or congregation or association to try to recapture the charism, the spirit of the founder. And that charism is beautifully found in the life of the late beloved saintly Frank Duff. I hope that many of you have read the Legion pamphlet, the De Montfort way, and you will then appreciate how devotion to Mary, or as the Second Vatican Council puts it, how our appreciation of the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Mystery of Christ and the Church does grow in human lives. Frank Duff humbly but sincerely states his own growth. As every son and daughter of Erin, Frank Duff loved Mary. He learned the Hail Mary at his mother's knee; he learned the Rosary and loved it, and he said many prayers to Our Lady, I am sure. But when he heard about total consecration to Mary, and was invited by a dear friend to read St. Louis DeMontfort's True Devotion and his secret of Mary, he said something inside rebelled. It is exaggerated he tells us, he said to himself, but his friend, said "now Frank, get back and study and pray." He says he read and re-read the treatises and then the friend told him to study A Treatise on Mariology, the Theology of Mary. Why she has such a sublime place in the Church and in the teaching of the Church and why devotion to her is so important, and after this study and much prayer he said he realized that it must be this way. There is no other way, for to be true followers of Christ we must accept the plan that Christ Himself set up in choosing Mary to be His mother, and there is nothing that stresses this more sublimely or accurately than the 8th chapter of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Church. That 8th chapter is the longest, the most exact, and the most wonderful treatise on Mary ever given to us by the full authority of the Catholic Church. Somehow the devil got in and twisted people's imagining to think that the Second Vatican Council downgraded Mary, and the specious argument was that the Fathers of the Council did not give Mary a separate treatment. They did not. After sincere debate and discussion and voting Pope John XXIII agreed, that the Treatise on Mary must be always included in our understanding of the Church, its mystery, its nature, its mission, and consequently we have this chapter.

To summarize it it means simply that we must understand that first of all Mary is God's mother. We would not have Jesus, the Son of God made man, in our own human nature who came to share His divine nature with us through the life of grace, if Mary had said no on that first Annuniciation day. God might have asked someone else, but actually she consented and it is because of that that the divine maternity is the key to our understanding of Mary. When Mary consented to mother Jesus, she was told his name which means Yahweh saves, the Lord saves. He would be the saviour and consequently as time went on and she proceeded always in faith on her pilgrimage of faith, she understood that he would be the suffering servant of the Lord. That he would be like a lamb led to the slaughter and open not his mouth to complain, that his reconciling love would be something that would reach our minds and hearts and move them to true love. Mary consented to all that that implied and the Council document points out how closely she was associated in the work of the Redemption, so much so that the saints and theologians have not considered it amiss to refer to her as the co-Redemptrix. We have only one Redeemer, of course, but Mary's association with her Divine Son, her consent to it, was so wonderful and perfect that we owe under her with her Divine Son the redeeming love that has made us children of God and brothers and sisters of her Divine Son.

Further than that Jesus ascended to glory, we read in the Scripture, is always living to make intercession for us. And we know from faith that that mother who shared so intimately in His redeeming work is now body and soul taken up to heaven, and just as he is always living to make intercession for us, so one with Him she is our intercessor, our mother of Perpetual Help. She is entitled to be called the Adjutrix, the one who helps and the Mediatrix of all graces.

Frank Duff's appreciation of Mary grew until that September 7, 1921 when he, (15 all together) met on the First Vespers of the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady and started the Legion. Only later did they find in their discussions that everyone of them had gone through the same journey that Frank Duff had gone. All of them had undertaken the true devotion to Mary according to St. Louis deMontfort and it is no wonder therefore that in the Legion Handbook, which the principal editor and author is beloved Frank Duff, that we are told of the Legionary Duty to Mary, Chapter 27 in your Handbook.

And I would urge you, dear legionaries, both active and auxiliary, please don't neglect that chapter. Read it and re-read it, and as you read in there the words of Dante, give to Mary that long study and profound love that will help you understand the charism of our founder, Frank Duff. It will help you to understand the real heart and soul and spirit of the Legion. I have heard in recent years many pleas, oh the Legion has to be updated; they have to re-write that Handbook. Please don't! That Legion Handbook is not to be re-edited or reprinted. It is meant as a prayerbook; it is meant as a meditation book; it is a narrative of the Legion's history and if you take it a little at a time in your meetings and in your private reading and meditation you will be renewed as no society in the Church has been renewed. You will be slaves of Jesus and Mary, slaves of love, and everything else will follow.

Frank Duff in those early days also wrote a pamphlet entitled, "Can we be Saints?" And he gives a resounding, "Yes, all of us can become saints. What is the formula?" And he answers very simply, "It is this type of devotion. This deep faith and love, this imitation of Mary's faith and loyalty to God's will, this surrender to Jesus through Mary. But it also means organization. We read in the Gospel the words of Jesus "the children of this generation are wiser than the children of light." We know that any successful business operation means meetings, it means organization. It means discipline. it means following a set pattern of life and work and you have it, dear legionaries, in your Legion of Mary. It is given to you following that twenty seventh chapter, "Basic Duties of legionaries", and those duties are summarized in your standing instruction read at the first meeting of every month. You know what they are, you hear it. Legion duty requires the regular attendance at weekly meetings, the rendering there a report of work done, the assignment carried out, it means secrecy for the sake of safeguarding reputations and the character of others, especially the poor and underprivileged for whom you work. It means a simple prayer obligation of the magnificat every day. The Legion Catena, the chain prayer of the Legion, that simple prayer of thanks of Our Lady in praise of the privileges that were hers.

The Iegion knows that frequently members begin with a disorganized life and the Legion must give discipline, and we are here this afternoon to go up to the standard of our Legion, before the image of our Lady, Mediatrix of all graces, and repeat those beautiful words, "I am all yours, my Queen, my Mother, and all that I have is yours". You are aware, most of you at least, that those words are the episcopal model of Pope John Paul II, "totus tuus sum ego, Regina et Mater, et omnia mea tua." He simply uses the first two words, Totus Tuus, which means all yours or entirely yours. When a Bishop chooses a motto when he is consecrated, ordained a bishop, he does so as a brief expression of his own aspirations, and I am sure that as every Bishop tries to live his motto, Pope John Paul makes that renewal of his consecration to Mary constantly, many times a day. It is evident in all his homilies, in all his talks, all his exhortations to us. It is something that we can all copy when we think of him and his marvellous leadership. What an exemplar of Mary's piety, devotion and faith. But above all, study that 27th chapter. In it you will learn how to know Mary, how to love her, how to copy her great humility, how to give yourselves totally to her, and then if you carry out your basic duties as Legionaries as you find them in the Handbook, you are going to be amazed how your organization grows and perseveres.

In recent years as I have been attending the annual Acies I have been impressed with the perseverance of Legionaries, the presence of octogenarians, septogenarians, people who have been in the Legion, when I come to St. Louis periodically for a visit with my family or an occasion like this, I meet old friends of the Legion, the most wonderful friends who touched my life and I hope have been touched by my life, as well.

But the important thing is to remember that when we began 50 years ago all our members for the most part were young college students and college graduates. They were all youth. It didn't take long until we got older ones. I remember here at the Cathedral we had three senior and one junior praesidia and in one of our prasidia we had a 90 year old man who rubbed shoulders with the rest of us. We had men and women with very little formal education but wise in the things of God. I remember one devoted legionary, once the Legion promise was included in the revised Handbook, he said to me one day, "Father, you know my favorite prayer is that Legion promise. I say it every day." I wonder how many of you say that Legion promise every day. We have had a great resurgence of devotion to the Holy Spirit happily in the post Vatican II Church, but the Legion began with devotion to the Holy Spirit. Its devotion not of enthusiasm in the sense of strong and warm devotion. Frank Duff warns us in the Legion Handbook that our devotion to Mary must be one based on faith. He reminds us that if we build on faith our edifice will grow and reach the heavens just as if we want to build a skyscraper we have to dig deep into the solid cold earth, the hidden foundations, and so it is in your devotion to the Holy Spirit in your devotion to Mary for Mary was perfectly attuned to the Holy Spirit.

I was tempted to tell my own story of devotion to Mary but time will not permit, but I would suggest to you for your own meditation that perhaps you ought to do what Frank Duff did in the de Monfort way, tell your own experience, begin with your first knowledge of Mary, your first simple prayers to her and how that has grown, and I can assure you that after years of study and then the privilege of being at the Second Vatican Council my devotion to Mary has been enhanced by what I experienced there in the debate and the voting on the 8th chapter on the Church. That chapter is a gem, but there are other passages in the Council documents that speak to us of the importance of Mary in the apostolate. First of all, in the apostolate of the laity, the decree on the laity, there is a beautiful concluding paragraph that your apostolate as lay people, whether it be in the secular milieu, in your daily work and tasks, in your share in the work of the Priesthood, that your devotion to Mary must be a copy of her motherly solicitude for all those for whom her Son shed His precious blood. The same advice is given to religious men and women and the same advice is strongly given to priests. We as legionaries should try to point this out and help implement the Second Vatican Council by our great devotion to Mary, by our living the basic duty of Legionaries to Mary, that 27th chapter of your Handbook that I referred to, and that we be the ones to exemplify it in our apostolate, and I say this not only to you active apostles but to you auxiliaries, especially our senior citizens and the retired. Our Holy Father has just given us on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11 th, a beautiful exhortation on the saving value of suffering. When we are unable to carry on the extensive and intensive active work of our younger days, we can be united with Mary the mother of God and her Divine Son in the redeeming work of our Savior.

This afternoon we will be privileged instead of our usual collective act of consecration to carry out our Holy Father's request of us. He asked all the Bishops of the world on the 24th and 25th of this month of March, yesterday's anticipated Feast of the Annunicaion, today this third Sunday of Lent, to make with him, in spirit and in reality, the act of entrustment or consecration to Mary. This act of consecration is simply an acknowledgement of our total dependence on Mary. It is an acknowledgement, something that would be true if we never thought of it or never realized it, but it is so wonderful when we recognize it and carry it out, and that is why the Pope day after day many times a day is repeating the act of filialty and loyalty that you make to Mary this afternoon.

We will now proceed to the standard of the Legion in the presence of Our Lady's Icon, the statue of Our Lady of Grace, and repeat our personal filialty and loyalty to her. We come in from our outposts, our garrisons, our praesidia, where we labor and fight for the cause of Our Lady, the task of crushing the head of the serpent, of sin and deception, the forces of anti-Christ and of the Kingdom of God, and we come in this Acies, this Legion mobilized in great battle array, the hundreds of you here this afternoon, to express to her personally and individually our loyalty to her and then to express all together in the beautiful act composed by our Holy Father, of not only our own consecration but that of the world, and in particular those nations that are alienated from God. The Pope does not mention Russia by name because the errors of Russia have spread to many parts of the world and so he speaks in his beautiful composition of all those who are alienated from God.

Thanks be to God for these 50 years, thanks be to God for you. Above all, thanks be to God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who gave us Mary as His mother and our mother, our coredemptrix and our mediatrix of all graces.

footnote: for more information on the Pope's Consecration of our world to Mary in 1984, see the link below from EWTN library

Consecration of all Individuals and Peoples of the World (Pope John Paul II, 1984)