The Man of La Mancha had his “impossible dreams.” (“The Impossible Dream” [The Quest] is the name of the famed song from that musical.) We, as Legion members, come face to face with our “impossible dreams,” too: feeling the desire to see some good accomplished, yet experiencing frustration because every attempt to make that good materialize has failed –with little or no hope of success remaining. Consider these examples. I want to convert a faithful Muslim, but he has told me that he will never, ever, ever consider becoming a Christian. I have tried to bring a person in an invalid marriage back to the Church, but the woman has made it clear that she does not want an annulment or the Church’s sacraments again – period. I would like to invite the eighty percent of my Parish who have “fallen away” back to Sunday Mass, but I am only one person. I want to have a recruiting drive for active Legion members at my church, yet the last five have yielded absolutely no interest at all.
The Legion Handbook among its “Cardinal Points” in chapter 39, part four (on “Symbolic Action”), acknowledges the reality of such “impossible dreams” and, more importantly, gives members insight as to how they should be understood and approached. Two particular points raised in that section are worthy of our consideration. Firstly, the Handbook asks us to be careful about labeling any situation “impossible,” remembering that nothing is beyond God’s power to accomplish. Certainly, we have enough proof from the Bible to support such a belief. There we read on page after page about the incredible feats God was able to perform in history: like getting Israel through the Red Sea (Exodus 14), like bringing a dead boy, laid out for his funeral, back to life (Luke 7), and like Jesus raising Himself from the dead by His power as God (Luke 24). Each of these instances certainly involved people who thought were in an “impossible” situation: the Hebrew people, trapped against a body of water and with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit; the widow of Nain ready to bury the son she herself had seen die; and the disciples of Jesus knowing that His body had been in the tomb three days and surely must be decaying. They likely thought to themselves, “There’s no way out of this one. It’s humanly impossible.” But did they not learn soon enough that what was impossible for human beings was not impossible for God? These and the other miracles in the Bible remind us how powerful our God is. The Handbook is only asking us in the Legion not to forget that this same God is ours. Since He is, then how could we ever apply the adjective “impossible” to any situation we face?
The second point is equally critical. Remembering that we have a God who can do the impossible, we must never fail to give God the opportunity to act marvelously by giving up on any situation. That is what we do when we walk away from the stubborn person, the difficult case, or any other challenging situation: we deprive God of the material to work His miracles! Think about it: In the Gospels, it was only because the apostles brought forward five loaves and two fish – and did so knowing that it was insufficient for feeding a crowd of such a size – that the Lord was able to multiply that meagre food and make it more than enough to satisfy at least 5000 people (John 6). In addition, it was only because Mary insisted that the waiters at the wedding feast of Cana fill those jars with water – and to do so, even though she had just been told by Jesus that “His hour had not yet come” – that water was able to become the best of wine and save the celebration (John 2). When we persevere in our toughest cases, we are giving Jesus “the bread and fish” and “the water” for making a miracle again happen in that instance. We are giving God the chance, as the Handbook remarks, to “explode the impossibility which is of our own imagining” (H, 287).
St. Francis of Assisi, commenting on the facing of incredible challenges, once counseled, “Start by doing what’s necessary; then [continue by doing] what’s possible; and suddenly you [find yourself] doing the impossible!” That is the spirit with which Legionaries should approach their “impossible dreams.” We must rally ourselves never to give up on any given situation, remembering, as St. Gabriel the Archangel said to Mary, “Nothing is impossible for God” (Luke 1:37). And because of this, nothing should be impossible for a legionary who believes, either.
19 February, 2017: Rev. Frank Giuffre/Philadelphia Senatus
Reading: Handbook, pp. 285-286 [Chapter 39, Section 4/”Symbolic Action”]