XVII. Our Legion May Reassemble Without the Loss of Any One

From the Series: Beneath the Standard of Mary – The Heart and Voice of an Auxiliary Member

Not any “one.” That is what this prayer asks for. Not most of us, or just the faithful ones, the consistent ones, the ones who never missed a meeting or let their Rosary gather dust. No, we are talking about every single one of us. Our Legion may reassemble without the loss of anyone.

I pray for this every day.

I pray for the souls who have given Jesus zero percent of their lives or their time. The ones who have handed everything over to the world, their time, their energy, their hope, their future, and who are utterly convinced that what they have accumulated in this world is enough. The expensive car. The big house. The bank account with the impressive number. The resume full of accomplishments that impressed everyone in the room. I pray for those people not with judgment but with a genuine ache in my heart because I know something they do not yet know. All of it decays, and in the reality of it all, means nothing. Every single bit of it. They do not understand that the things of this world do not follow you out the door when your time here is finished. And if you have spent your whole life gathering things that cannot come with you, you will arrive at eternity with empty hands.

That is the greatest loss I can imagine. Not poverty or illness. Not the hard things life throws at all of us equally. The greatest loss is arriving at the end without having prepared for what comes after.

But here is what moves me about this final prayer. It is not only for the ones far outside the faith. Our Lady is also praying for us, the ones already in the circle, already carrying the Rosary, already gathered under her standard. Because Saint Bridget of Sweden understood something that should keep all of us honest. God sees what is in our hearts. He sees behind the curtain. He knows the difference between a performance and a surrender. And so, we pray, even for ourselves, maybe especially for ourselves, that our love is real, that our commitment runs all the way down, that we are not simply going through the motions of a faith life while our hearts have quietly drifted somewhere else.

Time has a way of making this urgent.

I had a friend when I was a teenager. His name was Sammy Belotti. He was an old man when I knew him, seventies or eighties, somewhere in there, and one day we were sitting together, and he said something to me that I have never once forgotten. He said Jim, let me tell you something about time. It waits for no man. It just keeps going and going and going. Before you blink your eyes ten years go by. You blink again and thirty or forty years go by. Trust me when I say time goes very very fast. Enjoy your life and be aware that time moves that way.

I was a teenager when he told me that. I had no framework yet for understanding what he meant. I fully understand now.

My first wife, Chrissy, and I were together for thirty years. We raised a family and built a life. We made rosaries and prayed and served and I genuinely believed we would always be together. And then cancer took her from us. And those thirty years, all of it, every ordinary Tuesday, every celebration, every decade of the Rosary prayed together, feel like a different life in a different place at a different time. And yet I can close my eyes right now and relive moments from forty years ago as clearly as if they happened this morning. That is what time does. It moves without stopping and it takes everything with it and then one day you look back and the distance between here and there takes your breath away.

I have been going to the Shrine for twenty-five years. It does not feel like twenty-five years. I have been living in Tonawanda for six years and I cannot account for where that time went. My rosary makers groups, three of them now over the span of my ministry, each lasted for many years and then changed and then became something new. The last time I was with my Pennsylvania group, the one where my children sat around the table making rosaries with young hands, was more than twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years. Gone like that.

This is why the prayer matters so much to me.

Because in five years, in ten years, in twenty, everything could look completely different. People move, they age, and they get sick. Priorities shift and finances change and the group that gathered faithfully every week finds itself scattered across different states and different seasons of life. Nothing stays the same forever. Not the people, the places, or the circumstances. Change is the one guarantee this life offers every single one of us without exception.

And so, we pray that no matter how far we scatter, no matter how much changes, no matter how many years pass between now and the moment we are called home, that we all make it. That not one is lost. That when Our Lady finally gathers her children around her at the end of all things, every name on the list is accounted for. Every one of us is there. Every soul that carried her Rosary and prayed her prayer and tried, imperfectly, humanly, stubbornly tried, to live a life worthy of the One who first loved us.

That is the hope this prayer carries. That is what we are asking for every time we say these words together.

Our Legion may reassemble without the loss of anyone.

Not one of us left behind or forgotten. Not one too far gone for the mercy of God and the intercession of a Mother who never stops looking for her children no matter how long they have been away.

Thank you for staying on this journey with me through this most amazing prayer. If you aren’t already a Legionary, consider joining the Legion of Mary.