when the grand master comes calling
When the Grand Master Comes Calling The following is based on articles previously submitted by Stewart W. Miner, PGM and Grand Historian, and Mansour Hatefi, PGM and Grand Secretary.
“ The Grand Master shall make a grand visitation, attended by his officers, to each constituent Lodge, at least once a year, ten days previous notice having been given to the Master of the Lodge.”
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o states section 22 of our Grand Lodge Code. But what constitutes a Grand Visitation? While the Code obligates the Grand Master and his officers to make Grand Visitations, it does not stipulate when, how, or in what manner the visits are to be accomplished. These details have been left to the discretion of our Grand Masters. As a result, visitation schedules and substance have varied; the former more than the latter.
Lodge when there were only a handful of lodges to visit. In 1825 the Grand Master completed his visits prior to the May 3rd Semi-Annual Communication. However, as the number of lodges increased, scheduling became a more formidable issue, eventually inducing the Grand Lodge, in the year 1900, to move its annual communication to December in order to reserve October and November for Grand Visitations.
Such visitations The proliferation by the Grand Masof lodges over time ter, usually with raised another issue, the officers of the particularly when Grand Lodge, have the number of lodges thus been a part of increased to a total Masonry in this jurisof 48. How could diction for 192 years. Grand Master Gleason with Worshipful Master Maurice A. the Grand Master Herbert at the Grand Visitation of Anacostia Lodge No. 21 They did not begin squeeze in visitations immediately, however, and it was not until 1818 to lodges individually, within such a restricted period that the first of these visitations were actually made. of time, and still attend to his other duties, Masonic Since then every Grand Master, in adherence to the and civil? He couldn’t, of course, and this naturally will of Grand Lodge, has struggled to schedule his led to visitations in which two, three, four, or five visitations in a manner that commands the favorable lodges, or all at once, as in 2005, were visited simulattention of the brethren. taneously. The visitation schedule was not an issue of any great consequence in the early years of the Grand
The Voice of Freemasonry
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The move of the annual communication from November to December was ostensibly made to
