Allocutio 28 Apr 17- Theology of the Apostolate p. 32-33 ch 4 pt 1
A copy of “Theology of the Apostolate” by Cardinal Suenens can be found in the following link
“And I realize, that the secret of a perfect legionary service consists in a complete union with her who is so completely united to Thee”
How many of you feel that the sentence above sounds familiar? Where have you heard that sentence before?
It is in our legion promise.
I came across this book of “Theology of the Apostolate” when I read through handbook ch 13. I was looking for a topic of allocutio and tried to continue the reading from last week’s. I read through ch 13 about membership, and this book gets a special mention in this chapter. Interestingly enough, this book apparently dissects in depth what is the meaning our Legionary Promise.
Today allocutio will focus on how our relationship with Our Lady should be. Last week we talked about the external aim of the legion, it was about how we should bring Love of God to people around us. Last week allocutio also suggested that whenever we face difficulties, we are encouraged to turn back to Mother Mary and pray to her to “Lead Us” in our mission. But, is our relationship to Mother Mary limited to merely Leader and Follower relationship? We have heard that we should be in union with Mary. How does this union like?
The answer can be found in today’s reading. Cardinal Suenens tried to illustrate how a complete union with Our Lady would closely resemble to. As the book mentions that every Christians claim that Mother Mary is their mother and we are Her children. If we draw this equivalence in our life, as we grow up, eventually children will leave their parents, including our Mother. We grow to become more and more independent each day until we come to a point that we are almost detached from our parents.
Another parallel that is presented by the book is a child of a month year old. We are so fragile and utterly dependent on our Mother. We cannot walk, we cannot eat by ourselves, and we cannot speak. We depend on our Mother to feed us, to try to understand what we want whenever we are crying. This is not yet close. We still can survive, we can still breathe on our own, and someone can still take care of us if our Mother left us. There is still a little degree of independence here.
Interestingly enough, the book tries to take us a step further to a time when we are still in our Mother’s womb. “In sinu Matris” In our mother’s womb we are in total dependence to our Mother. We just can’t live without her. We breathe through her. The divine reality is of course much greater than this, however this is the closest we can describe with human understanding.
Unlike our earthly life, when we become more and more independent as we grow, in our supernatural life and relationship with Christ, we should become more and more dependent as we grow more mature. We are all continually in the process of being born in Our Lady’s womb.
Let us recall our Legionary promise that we have taken. To be functional and to perform our duty as legionary we once pledged that we want to be in complete union with Her. As we have spent many years in Legion of Mary, as we grow in our devotion to Her, have we become like the earthly ‘we’ who think that we have become more and more independent in rendering our legionary service? Or perhaps we should be reminded to turn back to Her and realize that we are in total dependence in Her Womb.
-Felix-