Allocutio at Concilium - January 2014 - Fr. Bede McGregor, OP

Baptism and Legion Spirituality
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One of the great gifts that God gave to the Church through Blessed John 11 was his teaching on the Rosary and specifically his adding of the five Mysteries of Light to its recitation. It is obvious now that it is an enormous enrichment of the Rosary to meditate on the public life of Jesus because every word of his preaching and his deeds is full of light and grace. It must have been difficult to decide which mysteries of Jesus to include in these Luminous Mysteries, but it is difficult to see how the Baptism of Jesus could have been omitted. Here the mystery of the Trinity and the personal identity of Jesus and his Mission are explicitly revealed. Indeed our own Christian identity and mission is also revealed.

‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ says everything about the identity of Jesus. In this Gospel episode we also learn the specific purpose of the Incarnation. God becomes incarnate not only to be among us and near to us and indeed for us, but he becomes one of us even though we are sinners and he is absolutely free from sin. He joins in the long line of sinners to be baptised by John. Here we have a perpetual reminder not only of the infinite love of God for us, but also his infinite humility. God loves us poor sinners and that is the ultimate reason for the Incarnation. No wonder it was said of Him: ‘He is a friend of sinners and publicans, and eats and drinks with them.’ As he lived among sinners, so he would die on the Cross among them.

Now the Baptism of Jesus is a paradigm of our baptism. In baptism we become in all reality the children of God. In and through Christ we become immersed in the mystery of the Trinity. We become members of the Mystical; Body of Christ, the Church, temples of the Holy Spirit, and Mary becomes our Mother through grace in a new and deeper way. Also, we share in the mission of Christ, namely, in the redemption of each other and the whole world. The last words of the Risen Lord to us sum up his whole life and what he asks us to do: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you, and lo I am with you always, to the end of the age.(Mt.28: 18- 20).

Let us see now how the Legion appropriates the rich teaching of the Church on Baptism. Let us begin by quoting the Handbook: ‘The Legion’s purpose is to help its members and all those in contact with them to live out their Christian vocation to the full. That vocation has its source in baptism. By baptism one is made another Christ. “We have not only become other Christs, but Christ Himself (St. Augustine). So we affirm that our Christian identity is utterly Christocentric through baptism and the purpose of the Legion is to help everyone it meets to live more fully their baptismal consecration. This teaching of the Handbook reflects very precisely the explicit and often repeated teaching of St Louis Marie de Montfort, namely, that the practice of the True Devotion to Mary is geared to enabling us to live more fully and effectively our baptismal vocation.

First of all let us recall a basic principle in the teaching of our great Legion tutor. He says: “If devotion to Our Lady distracts us from Our Lord we would have to reject it as an illusion of the devil. (TD62). Of course it is impossible for Mary to do anything else but lead us to Our Lord.

Now let St Louis Marie de Montfort explain in his own words the role of Mary in the Sacrament of Baptism: ‘As our whole perfection consists in being conformed, united and consecrated to Jesus Christ, it follows that the most perfect of all devotions is clearly the one which conforms, unites and consecrates us most perfectly to Jesus Christ. Now as Mary is of all creatures the most conformed to Jesus Christ, it follows that of all devotions, the one that most consecrates and conforms a soul to Our Lord is the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, his Mother, and that the more is a soul consecrated to Mary, the more will it be consecrated to Jesus Christ.

It is for this reason that the perfect consecration to Jesus is nothing else than a perfect and entire consecration of oneself to the Blessed Virgin, which is the devotion I teach. In other words it is a perfect renewal of the vows and promises of Baptism.’ (TD120) It is this teaching of St. Louis de Montfort that is the basis of the statement in the Handbook that the purpose of the Legion is to enable its members and all those it comes into contact with, to live more fully the multiple graces of their Baptism. We cannot properly understand de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary, or the spirituality of the Legion without profound reference to our baptismal vocation. In recent decades we have recovered to some extent our awareness of the presence and the role of Our Lady to the Sacrament of the Eucharist. We now invoke her as the Woman of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It would be a source of great grace if we can recover our awareness of the role of Mary in our Baptism as one who most effectively helps us to live out our baptismal vows and promises.

Let me conclude with some words of Bl. John Paul 11, quoted in the Handbook: ‘Marian spirituality, like its corresponding spirituality, like its corresponding devotion, finds a very rich source in the historical experiences of individuals and of various Christian communities present among the different peoples and nations of the world. In this regard I would like to recall, among the many witnesses and teachers of this spirituality, the figure of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, who proposes the consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary, as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments.’ (RMat. 45)
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