Dear all, when you listen to this piece of Allocutio, I will still be on the plane. I have a lot of different experiences during this long holiday, in particular, I met some friends who have emigrated overseas and felt their difficulties in making a choice.
Today, we have selected Chapter 4 (4) of the Handbook as our Spiritual Reading, the heading of which reads: “Must live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” The focus of the text is: the secret of all success with others lies in the establishment of personal contact, the contact of love and sympathy. This love must be more than an appearance. It must be able to stand up to the tests that real friendships can bear. This will frequently involve little mortifications. At the bottom of all really fruitful work must be the readiness to give oneself entirely. The Legionary who somewhere sets up the barrier, will accomplish only the trivial.
In the past year, the Hong Kong Legion of Mary has experienced “raising of status”, “splitting of curiae”, “extension” etc., which exposed us to various spiritual challenges. As people nowadays ae more concerned with their “personal wish”, hence, in their Legionary lives, they would add in their personal desire in one way or another or put their personal requests as the praesidium’s requirements. This is absolutely understandable. “Individualism” takes an important role in the ideology of contemporary society. However, we need to think deeply whether this ideology of individualism is applicable to Legionary lives!
The Church is a Godly organization, the reason being that the Most Holy Trinity is present in the Church, Jesus Christ has built the Church with His own blood for the love of us, and so that we will have a “new life”. This “new life” is different from the physical life in this world. The “new life” demands that “love” be of utmost importance because Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.
In the Legion of Mary’s inner life, I can see that some members of different curiae or praesidia have been occupied by “secularization” or “personalization”, which created a lot of problems in the organization. Regia officers have been exhausted in facing these problems for the past few months, while maintaining the standard of “love” and “consideration” which was really hard for them. These problems have not yet been fully solved but created some negative elements in the Legion of Mary. These include some actions encouraging “division”, and meaningless gossips. All these are very destructive, not only on a particular person, but to the whole organization of the Legion of Mary.
Regia officers have devoted their personal wishes, time and efforts for the protection of the organization’s dignity and mission. I urge every member to pray for the cause of the Legion of Mary so that we become a real soldier under the flag of Our Lady, and the children whom God loves.
Spiritual Director
Fr. Francis Tam
15 January 2023