Happy Birthday Mary and the Legion of Mary
On this Feast of the Nativity and 85th Anniversary of the Legion, let us pray for a renewed Spirit in the Legion, a spread of the Legion of Mary in Tidewater, but also throughout the world, for our Legion brothers, sisters, and fathers who are sick or who have departed us in these 85 years, for all us active and auxiliary members now to continue in the Spirit of our Lady and of the Legion in our works and prayers, for all those who the Legion has touched in any way, and for many many more years.
From the Opening Chapter in the Legion Handbook…
The first corporate act of those legionaries was to go on their knees. The earnest young heads were bent down. The invocation and prayer of the Holy Spirit were said; and then through the fingers which had, during the day, been toilsomely employed, slipped the beads of the simplest of all devotions. When the final ejaculations died away, they sat up, and under the auspices of Mary (as represented by her statue), they set themselves to the consideration of how they could best please God and make him loved in his world. From that discussion came forth the Legion of Mary, as it is today, in all its features.
What a wonder ! Who, contemplating those inconspicuous persons - so simply engaged - could in his wildest moments imagine what a destiny waited just a little along the road? Who among them could think that they were inaugurating a system which was to be a new world-force, possessing - if faithfully and forcefully administered - the power, in Mary, of imparting life and sweetness and hope to the nations? Yet so it was to be.
That first enrolment of legionaries of Mary took place at Myra House, Francis Street, Dublin, Ireland, at 8 p.m. on 7 September, 1921, the eve of the feast of Our Lady’s Nativity. From the title of the parent branch, that is, Our Lady of Mercy, the organisation was for a time known as “The Association of Our Lady of Mercy.”