Frank Duff Prayer

God our Father, You inspired your servant Frank Duff with a profound insight into the mystery of your Church, the Body of Christ, and of the place of Mary the Mother of Jesus in this mystery. In his immense desire to share this insight with others and in filial dependence on Mary he formed her Legion.

Here we have what might be called the founding message of the Legion and the key to our own Legion of Mary life. The primary principle of the founder was not a mere pragmatic one. In other words, apostolic outreach was not the driving force that moved Frank Duff to give birth to the Legion of Mary. Rather was it that others might share his vision. Frank was a prophet, a mystic with a dream that brought him to the heart of the Church the Body of Christ and the role of Mary in that Mother and Child Scheme of Salvation. That dream, that vision is our privilege to share and to promote. The vision is described in the Legion of Mary Handbook in the section entitled:

Mary and the Mystical Body of Christ: The various offices which Mary fulfilled, of nourishing, tending, and loving the actual body of her Divine Son, are still her offices in regard to each member of the Mystical Body, the least brethren as well as the most honourable. So that, when "the members may have the same care for one another" (1 Cor 12:25), they do not act independently of Mary, even when, through thoughtlessness or ignorance, they fail to recognise her presence.

They but join their efforts to Mary's efforts. It is already her work, and she has been exquisitely busied on it from the time of the Annunciation to this very day.

Legion work, can never be chore or a mere service. We have been chosen to share a work already in the hands and the heart of our heavenly Mother. In a sense she has need of no one, but it is God’s plan and purpose that we should have the privilege of lending her our hands and hearts.

The Legion system embodies a profound spirituality a whole mystical way of life. While it inserts us into the institutional life of the church, it immerses us in the mystery of the Church as the Body of Christ, making us members of that body and taking us to its very heart which is the Immaculate Heart of his Mother.

Every meeting , every prayer and every breath we breathe in our Legion life, is more than a simple devotional exercise. It is a sharing in the very life of Christ. Like St. Paul we can exclaim: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Gal 2:20