Page 100 - 聖母軍團員手冊（英文版，2014年5月-2022年1月更新版）

Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 99

CHAPTER 16 ADDITIONAL GRADES OF MEMBERSHIP 99
this auxiliary service so vital to the Legion, and so valuable to
the auxiliaries themselves. Thereby they are associated to
Legion membership, with share in all the prayers and works
of the Legion.
(e) The discovery, too, has been made that the membership
of the Legion’s auxiliary or praying ranks has the same power
to catch the imagination that active membership possesses.
Persons who other wise would not think of saying the rosary
every day, are found to be faithfully carrying out the
obligations of auxiliary membership, which demands the
daily recitation of all the prayers on the Legion prayer-card,
already detailed. Numbers in infirmaries and other
institutions, who had lost heart, have gained an interest in
life through joining the Legion auxiliaries; while multitudes
in villages, and living otherwise in circumstances which tend
to make religion a tame thing, if not a matter of routine, have
through their auxiliary membership realised that they are of
importance to the Church; and have found themselves taking
a proprietary interest in the Legion, reading with intense
interest any scrap of news about it they chance to see. They
feel themselves to be part of its most distant battles for souls.
They realise it to be dependent upon their prayers. Accounts
from different places of noble and exciting deeds done for
souls fill their drab lives with the throb of those far-distant
doings. Their existences have become transformed by that
most inspiring of ideas, the sense of participation in a
crusade. And even the holiest of lives require the stimulation
of such an idea.
(f) It should be the object of every praesidium to bring
every Catholic in its area into auxiliary membership. Thereby
a favourable soil is provided for the working of other aspects
of the Legion apostolate. A visitation for this purpose,
implying a compliment, will be universally well received and
a goodly response may be anticipated.
(g) To the extent that members of other Catholic societies
and activities are brought into this auxiliary degree, there is
effected a desirable integration of all those activities. They are
thereby united in prayer, sympathy, idealism, under the
auspices of Mary, but without the slightest interference with
their own autonomy or characteristics and without alienating