Continuing from last week’s allocutio on the resemblance of the relationship between the Praesidium and the Curia like that of a Mother and a Child, this week’s reading once again draws this idea of nurturing, especially that of the young – the Junior Praesidium in the Legion.
As a Senior Praesidium, we may tend to forget about the Junior Praesidium. However, being part of the Tertiary Curia actually makes us play an important role of needing to engage the Junior Legionaries frequently, such that when these Junior Legionaries finish their education in their schools and enrol in a tertiary institution (such as a University), they are more open to joining a Senior Praesidium, and continuing their Legionary Membership.
While it can be difficult to arrange a suitable timing to engage the Junior Legionaries, I think it has been a great initiative that our Praesidium has managed to engage some Junior Legionaries through a Zoom Rosary to conclude the month of the Rosary, and through Junior Day etc.
However, given the long spaces of time between these engagements with the Junior Legionaries, it can be difficult to build a regular relationship with our Junior Legionaries.
Hence, the most easy and efficacious means of nurturing our Junior Legionaries would be to always pray for them. Thinking from their perspectives and their age group (less than 18 years old), they might be facing many difficulties in school, with exams and stressors, as a growing teenager. Being youth, they are also more prone to leaving the Faith once done with the Sacrament of Confirmation (due to a lack of understanding, a lack of community, or a lack of foundation at home). Hence we must support our young ones with our prayers. Then if God wills and the Holy Spirit arranges, we can find ways and means to actively reach out to them.
The reading also talks about the importance and impact of a good allocutio, especially for Junior Legionaries. Since it is rare for us, in our current situation, to deliver allocutios to Junior Legionaries, we can apply this advice from Frank Duff in another sense:
For example, we must take care to deliver good allocutios (with God’s Grace), for our Praesidium’s probationers who may be new to the Legion, and require guiding steps along the way to understand the works of the Legion. We can also give encouragement to our probationers, to motivate them in their journey in becoming Legionaries (one may face more trials and temptations in the journey of consecrating one’s self to Our Lady (eg. Becoming a Legionary), hence, encouragement from members who are already consecrated to Our Lady is VERY IMPORTANT in preserving charity and motivating the individual who may be discouraged).
We must also take care with how we portray ourselves to fellow young people. Since young people are very impressionable, and there are many other ‘competing’ sources of bad influence on the internet/social media all the time, it is important that we, as older Legionaries, try our best to lead by example and be good role models of the Faith, such that they may have at least 1 role model in their life, and we may hope to inspire the younger ones to follow suit as well.
Finally, the reading also provides suggestions for works to be done by Junior Presidiums. Even though we are not a Junior Praesidium, we too, can look to this list for inspiration for our contact work too. The list particularly highlights the need for 3 types of contact work:
Teaching catechism and recruiting for catechism classes.
Visitation of children in a hospital/in their own homes.
Visitation of the infirmed, the blind, and performing all sorts of needed services for them.
Perhaps, as our very own Praesidium looks to search for contact work that we can carry out together as a Praesidium, we can try exploring contact work in these areas.
Suggested allocated work is to share about the Legion of Mary with a young person OR provide an act of service for a young person.
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