Click this   Visitation report to praesidium

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The Legion of Mary is an association of Catholics who, with the sanction of the Church and under the powerful leadership of Mary Immaculate; Mediatrix of all Graces, have formed themselves into a legion for service to the Church and Our Lady.

The object of the Legion of Mary is the Glory of God through the holiness of its members developed by prayer and active co-operation, under ecclesiastical guidance, in Mary’s and the Church’s work of crushing the head of the serpent and advancing the reign of Christ.

The Legionaries hope to render themselves worthy of their great heavenly Queen by their loyalty, their virtues, and their courage.

The Legion is built on two masterpieces of organization — the Roman Legion and the modern Society of St Vincent de Paul. From the Roman Legion comes the call for loyalty, courage, and discipline. From Fredrick Ozanam’s St Vincent de Paul Society comes its spiritual, adaptability, fraternal charity, the personal report at the weekly meeting, and visiting in pairs during their assigned work.

The Legion of Mary was founded by Frank Duff on the eve of Our Lady’s Nativity, September 7 1921 in Dublin Ireland. Today the Legion is the largest lay organization in the Catholic Church carrying out a universal spiritual apostolate.

The basic unit of the Legion of Mary is the Praesidium, a Roman army term indicating a frontier guard, a bulwark for defense, a symbol of courage.

The primary obligation set by the Legion as a standard procedure is regular attendance at the weekly meeting, a brief weekly report, and accepting the spiritual work of bringing Christ to souls and souls to Christ. This work is assigned by the spiritual director or the president and is usually done in pairs.

If you have any questions about the Legion of Mary or the Maria Legionis Magazine,  please visit our website at

 www.legionofmarymichigan.org

 or you can contact us at

 legiomariaemichigan@yahoo.com

From the Bishop’s Office: (P.B. for April 13, 2009)

Dear Pastors, In this Jubilee Year dedicated to St. Paul, I would like to see the New Evangelization, initiated by Pope John Paul and reinforced by Pope Benedict, bear fruit in our diocese. A recent poll indicated that the second largest religious denomination in America today is comprised of inactive Catholics.

The Legion of Mary has always had this apostolic outreach as a central component of their mission to serve the Church. This lay apostolate has an excellent record of working with the local pastor in reaching out to lapsed Catholics.

Accordingly, I encourage all parishes to have an active praesidium of the Legion of Mary, either by renewing a dormant unit or founding a new one. Mr. Charles Kane, the president of the Jacksonville Curia of the L of M, will be contacting you in the near future to help you set up a new (or renewed) praesidium, and even to help you recruit members, if necessary.

    —Bishop Victor Galeone

The Rosary by Patricia O’Hara (taken from paper delivered to Pauline Circle)

The Rosary prayer appears to have evolved through many centuries.  Certain Characteristics of the Prayer e.g. using beads were much in evidence from earliest Christian times and even in pre-Christian times.  The late Fr. Patrick Peyton (known as The Rosary Priest) states that “it is generally agreed by scholars that a system for counting repetitive prayers began with the Hindus some nine centuries before Christ.”  Many centuries later St. Francis Xavier and his Jesuit companions were astonished to see that rosaries were universally familiar to the Buddhists of Japan.

In pre-Christian times, pagans used to crown their statues with roses to symbolize the rendering of their hearts to the gods.  With the coming of Christianity, the fusing of their love for false gods with their hatred for the early Christians led to the Roman persecutions.  During these persecutions, Christian virgins, dressed in their best and crowned with roses, went to their martyrdom in the sandy arena of the Coliseum.  Their brethren in the Faith later collected these crowns of roses and prayed before them, saying one prayer per rose.  Among these prayers, that which held the foremost place in Christian hearts from the beginning was the one that flowed from the lips of Our Divine Redeemer Himself; Our Father – Pater Noster.  The monks who could not read replaced the recitation of the Psalms with the repetition of the Our Father.  Since there are 150 Psalms in the Bible, they prayed a series of the 150 Our Fathers, which they called the “Psalter of Christ.”

At an early stage among the monastic orders the practice of counting prayers established itself.

In the 11th Century, some hermits and laymen began to recite “Our Lady’s Psalter,” that is , 150 salutations “Hail Mary Full of Grace.” as in the first part of the “Hail Mary” instead of the 150 Our Fathers.  They divided these salutations into three series of 50, which they termed “rosaries’ or “crowns” because of the custom of crowning Our Lady’s statues with flowers.  With the passage of time the Church added the Holy Name of Jesus to the 1st part of the “Hail Mary”and the 2nd part of the prayer petitioning Mary’s intercession – “holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death’ was a prayer in common use from earlier centuries.

In 1214 according to pious tradition the Blessed Virgin Mary herself consecrated this devotion by appearing to St. Dominic of Guzman, founder of the Dominicans, and giving him the Rosary in its present form as a weapon to combat the Albigensian heresy that was devastating southern France.  St. Dominic withdrew into a forest near Toulouse where he prayed unceasingly for three Days and three nights.  Tradition tells us that Our Lady appeared to him while he prayed.  She spoke to him gently and said”My son, prayer and penance are the only way to win souls.  Pray my Psalter and teach it to your people.  That prayer will never fail.  Make clear to them the mysteries of their religion, the divine truths that God has revealed but that they cannot understand.  Teach them to picture in their minds the events of my Son’s life.”  Dominic began at once to preach as he had been directed by the Blessed Mother.  Dominic taught his listeners to picture the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as they prayed the Rosary.

The simple words of the prayer kept their thoughts on heavenly matters for as long as their beads slipped through their fingers.  The Rosary then became a prayer that everyone could understand.  Those with little learning, or scholars with profound knowledge could now picture the divine life, each in his own way.  So fervently and compellingly did he explain the importance and value of the Holy Rosary that almost all the people of Toulouse embraced it and renounced their false beliefs.   After this brilliant victory of the Faith, obtained by preaching the Rosary, St. Dominic endeavored with renewed fervor to spread such a meritorious devotion.  After his death in 1221, however, as the memory of his preaching gradually faded in the minds of the Christians who had heard him, devotion to the Rosary declined. One century later it was practically buried and forgotten.  To re-establish this devotion in its pristine fervor, Our Lady chose Blessed Alan de la Roche, a Dominican from the monastery at Dinan, France.

In 1464 after apparitions of Our Lord, Our Lady and St. Dominic himself, Blessed Alan solemnly resolved to preach the Rosary incessantly, which he did until his death in 1475, around the time of the founding of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary at the Dominican convent in Cologne.  The erection of Confraternities in many other places led to the printing of numerous books on the Rosary.   The devotion quickly spread throughout Europe.  It is to the Confraternities that the acceptance of the list of fifteen mysteries to be meditated on during the recitation of each Hail Mary is mainly due. 

It is interesting to note that Confraternities or Sodalities of the Holy Rosary still operate in the Anglican Church.  The Australian Directory of Parishes and People gives some precise information about the Sodality as it operates among members of the Traditional Anglican Communion in Australia and the United States.  In 1905 the Sodality of the Living Rosary of Our Lady and St. Dominic was founded among the Anglican Community in the Church of England for the purpose of furthering devotion by means of the Rosary.  The founder William Henry Martin Havergal was the son and grandson of distinguished Anglican clergy.

Pope Paul VI in his apostolic Letter “Marialis Cultus” refers to the Rosary as a Gospel Prayer – the compendium of the entire gospel.  The rosary draws from the gospel the presentation of the mysteries and its main formulas.  From the 15th century to the end of the 20th century the rosary Prayer consisted of 15 mysteries or Decades commemorating major events in the Life of Christ.  Early in this new Millennium Pope John Paul ll in 2002 issued the Apostolic Letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae” and introduced a further 5 decades known as the Luminous Mysteries or the Mysteries of Light which recount some major events from Christ’s Public Life.  This was surely the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, bridging, as the Mysteries do, the time between the infancy, childhood and youth of Christ and His Passion, Death and Resurrection.

The recitation of the Rosary is commonly understood to be the recitation of 5 decades.  The Rosary with the recitation of the our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glorias has the elements of Praise and Petition but also another very important element, namely, contemplation.  Pope Paul VI in Marialis Cultus states: “without this the Rosary is a body without a soul and its recitation is in danger of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas.”  Contemplation does not always happen easily in the midst of a busy noisy world.  The Rosary, however, with its rhythm and structure does provide a very attractive and relatively easy method of appreciating the life of Christ and the story of our redemption.  We traverse the Mysteries in the company of the best teacher of all, She WHO knew Him best, His Mother Mary.

Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter on the Rosary describes it as “simple yet profound – a prayer of great significance destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness.”  It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life.  The individual can pray it alone in Church, at home on the bus, walking or indeed anywhere.  It can ideally be recited by a group or community and frequently by groups in Church either preceding or following on the Sacred Liturgy of Holy Mass.  In former years it was recited by workers in shops, in factories, in offices wither after work or in their lunch break as part of the Industrial Rosary Crusade led by a well known Dominican Fr. Gabriel Harty, O.P.   Perhaps the loveliest gathering of all was the Family Rosary, which was part of our Irish culture for so many centuries.  In a book of Poems entitled “Around the Boree Log” written by an Australian Priest of Irish parentage under the pseudonym John O’Brien, a poem entitled “The Trimmings of the Rosary” gives a very accurate description of the Family Rosary in those far off days.  The trimmings were the prayers personal to each family said at the conclusion of the Rosary Father Patrick Peyton who became known internationally as The Rosary Priest devoted his life to promoting the family Rosary with the slogan – “the family that prays together, stays together”.  What a lovely way it was for a family to bond with each other and with God.

In his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae written in 2002, Pope John Paul II tells us from his youthful years this prayer has held an important place in his spiritual life.  “Twenty-four years ago on 29 October 1978 scarcely tow weeks after my election to the See of Peter, I frankly admitted: “The Rosary is my favorite prayer.  A marvelous prayer!  Marvellousinits simplicity and its depth.”

Later on in the letter he states: “In my testimony of 1978 mentioned above, where I described the Rosary as my favorite prayer, I used an idea to which I would like to return, I said then that”the simple prayer of the Rosary marks the rhythm of human life.”  To pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and his mother. 

Twenty-five years later, thinking back over the difficulties which have also been part of my exercise of the Petrine ministry.  I feel the need to say once more as a warm invitation to everyone to experience it personally: the Rosary does indeed mark the rhythm of human life, bringing it into harmony with the rhythm of God’s own life, in the joyful communion of the Holy Trinity, our life’s destiny and deepest longing.

If you have any questions about the Legion of Mary or the Maria Legionis Magazine,  please visit our website at

 www.legionofmarymichigan.org

 or you can contact us at

 legiomariaemichigan@yahoo.com