{{month}}

The Vocation of
a Legionary

Dear {{name}},

August is a month thick with callings. A brilliant young lawyer lays his sword on Our Lady’s altar and walks out of the courts for ever. A country curate who had struggled through every examination he ever sat is sent to a village of some two hundred souls, and ends as the confessor of a nation. A friar steps forward out of the ranks at Auschwitz and asks to die in another man’s place. A mother who wept over her son for the best part of thirty years is buried at Ostia with her prayer answered at last.

Not one of them was given an easy road. Not one of them walked it alone.

We hear the word vocation and think at once of the priesthood or the convent — and please God, may the saints of this month win us many. But Our Lord has never called a few and left the rest of us idle. At our Baptism each of us was called; at Confirmation each of us was sent. The only question still open is where, and with whom, and under whose banner we mean to serve.

A post, not a pastime

To become a legionary is not to join a society. It is to take up a post. The word praesidium is a soldier’s word — a garrison, a guard set over a place that must not be lost — and it is also the word of the oldest prayer the Church addresses to Our Lady: Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, we fly to thy protection. A legionary is simply someone who has taken a position under Mary’s protection, and who does not leave it.

What is asked is not extraordinary: the weekly praesidium meeting, the Catena said each day, two hours of apostolic work given in her name, the daily Rosary. What is extraordinary is what Our Lady proves able to do with so little — a knock on a door, a hospital visit, a word said gently at the right moment — when it is placed in her hands.

Across the world the Legion counts some ten million members. Only three million of them are active. The harvest has not grown smaller in our day; it is the labourers who have. And if active membership is more than your health or your circumstances allow just now, there is a second rank that no legionary in the field could do without: the auxiliary member, who fights the same battle on her knees.

St Alphonsus Liguori — his feast opens the month, on the 1st of August

The Saints of August

August is among the fuller months of the Church’s year, and it carries an unusual number of the saints a legionary has reason to love. Here is the whole month at a glance, with the rank the Church gives to each day — keep it by you, and you will not let one of them slip past.

On a Sunday the Sunday itself takes precedence, and any memorial falling that day is set aside for the year.

Every day with its full title and rank, on the website.

The Assumption on the 15th, and her Queenship on the 22nd

Twenty Years at Her Service

The Comitium says thank you — and goodbye — to Fr Martin Graham

Fr Martin Graham — Spiritual Director of the Immaculata Comitium for twenty years

This month the Immaculata Comitium must do the thing it would most gladly have put off a while longer: say goodbye to Fr Martin Graham, who lays down the office of our Spiritual Director after twenty years.

Month after month for twenty years he took his place at the Comitium — not at a single praesidium, but at the council through which the Legion is governed across this diocese. There was the spiritual word, prepared and given. And then the far less visible work that follows it: officers to be guided, difficulties to be untied, and every decision of any weight taken by the Legion in Down and Connor over two decades weighed, first, with him in the room.

That is a particular kind of service, and an easy one to overlook, because its fruits never carry the name of the man who counselled them. A Comitium’s decisions are what raise up a praesidium, or hold one together through a hard year, or send legionaries into a work nobody had thought of before. For twenty years the judgement behind those decisions has been steady, unhurried, and offered without the least wish to be seen offering it.

We will feel the absence of him. That is not a complaint; it is the only honest measure of what we were given.

Father, on behalf of the officers of the Comitium and of every praesidium under it: thank you. You leave Our Lady’s Legion in Down and Connor stronger than you found it, and — the last and best thing a spiritual director can leave behind — well able to go on without you. Go with her blessing, and with the prayers of the legionaries you spent twenty years forming.

Three Conversations, Three Callings

Our podcast — the world’s first English-language podcast given entirely to the Legion of Mary, and the work of the Our Lady Queen of Peace Praesidium — now has three episodes waiting for you. Taken together they are three answers to the one question this month asks.

Episode I

Twenty Years at Her Service

Fr Martin Graham · Spiritual Director

Our first conversation, released on the Feast of the Visitation — and, as it turns out, the best possible companion to the farewell above. A priest’s account of two decades given to Our Lady’s Legion in this diocese.

► Watch on YouTube  ·  ♫ Spotify: Part 1 / Part 2  ·  Episode page →

Episode II

His Life, in His Own Words

Richard Harrington · Our Lady Queen of Apostles Praesidium

A fellow legionary — Catholic publisher, writer and educator, a County Meath man who has made his home in Belfast — tells the story of his faith, and what a life given to Christ through Mary actually looks like from day to day.

► Watch on YouTube  ·  ♫ Spotify: Part 1 / Part 2  ·  Episode page →

Episode III

For the Greater Glory of God

Felipe Cunha · released on the Feast of St Ignatius, 31 July

A Brazilian layman who crossed an ocean and made Belfast his home — a testimony of faith, work, and the daily resolve to give everything back ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Released on the feast of St Ignatius, to whom the Church owes that motto.

► Watch on YouTube  ·  ♫ Spotify: Part 1 / Part 2  ·  Episode page →

Upcoming

Three Days for the Diary

Two of them fall during the Belfast Fleadh, when the city fills with people who may not have been near a church in years — and one is a full day for young adults at the end of the month.

The Story of Ireland

Friday 7 August · 7.30pm

St Paul’s Parish Centre, Falls Road, Belfast

Bishop Alan McGuckian leads an evening on the ties between Irish culture, history and the Catholic faith, with Irish music and refreshments.

Everyone is welcome — no booking needed.

Encounter at the Fleadh

Saturday 8 August · after the 5.30pm Vigil Mass, until 9.30pm

St Mary’s, Chapel Lane, Belfast

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Confession, reflective music, and street outreach to those at the Fleadh Cheoil — the Legion at its own work, in the middle of the city.

Everyone is welcome — no booking needed.

Embrace the Grace

Saturday 29 August · 9.30am – 6.00pm

De Montfort House, Morning Star Avenue, Dublin 7, D07 VA03

The Legion’s Young Adult Catholic Conference (18–40) — a full day of talks, prayer and company. Standard ticket €20.

Register on Eventbrite →

Quae est ista quae progréditur quasi auróra consúrgens, pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol, terríbilis ut castrórum acies ordináta?

Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array?
Antiphon of the Catena Legionis, said by every legionary each day.

With our prayers and yours,

The Immaculata Comitium
Legion of Mary — Diocese of Down and Connor

Every gift helps the Legion’s work here at home.

Legio Mariae

Through Mary to Jesus

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