Legion Loyalty

IT WAS MARY who paved the way to my joining the Annunciation Praesidium of the Legion of Mary of the Holy Spirit Parish. This happened in 2009, right after my graduation from PREX 9, where I was striving to decide which ministry or organization to choose as my vocation.

I did – still do – not know the Legion Handbook by heart. As much as I would like to peruse it extensively so that I may be further equipped with its spirituality, my myriad preoccupation gets in the way. The comfort I get out of the weekly meetings is no small measure of solace that reassures me I can still recall some of its contents. Like the standing instructions, a monthly enumeration of the basic rules of thumb every Legionary worth his salt has to breathe and live by. Things were kosher until, like I needed a breather, a fluke uprooted me out of the present praesidium and replanted me on Tower of Ivory. Where my gut feel confirmed as the place to be. As coincidences would have it, the epiphany was ushered by my re-emergence at the Montfort Center of Spirituality.

At last Sunday’s meeting, (TOI President) Ate Gel did an unusual thing before rendering the Allocutio. She left her seat and went to the podium where there was a microphone awaiting her; the white board behind her had scribblings obviously done by her in preparation for a purpose we would all soon enough get wind of. I braced myself for what I was certain would be an interesting portion of the meeting, not that any encounter before it did not hold my interest.

Her board work had “communicated” above the writings below it. “W” was for the Divine Person, the Word made Flesh. The lower case “word” stood for scriptures, tradition, rituals, preaching, catechesis and service. The third column had LOM tasks whose object was holiness, achieved through corporal and spiritual works. She was relating all her handiwork to the Handbook Study that day which was the teaching of Christian doctrine. The Legion assumes this undertaking, in accordance with Pope John Paul II, who thanks “all lay teachers of catechesis in the parishes, the men and the still more numerous women throughout the world, who are devoting yourselves to the religious education of many generations.” The Pope has a lively awareness of the primary responsibility that rests on him where he finds reasons for pastoral concern but principally a source of joy and hope.

So must the legionaries, Ate Gel says, heed the call of evangelization by Imagineering. By being an imagineer, who devises and implements a new or highly imaginative concept or technology. By being like our parish priest, Fr. Mar, whose homily mentioned the overlying word “communicated” as the means by which we, Christians, should be to one another, communicating the Good News. Not only for the education of all but also for their enlightenment and ennobled spirit.

Which took us to another subject which soon became a whirlpool of wonderful concepts, Lakad-Lugaw kay Maria, but that’s another story. Amen.