Page 12 - 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 11

CHAPTER 2 OBJECT 11
Circumstances which one would regard as accidental
determined this date, which seemed at the time less
appropriate than the following day would have been. In after
years only—when countless proofs of a truly maternal love
had made one reflect—was it realised that not the least
exquisite touch of Mary’s hand had been shown in the
moment of the Legion’s birth. Of the evening and the
morning was the first day made (Gen 1:5), and surely the first,
and not the last fragrances of the feast which honours her
own Nativity were appropriate to the first moments of an
organisation, whose first and constant aim has been to
reproduce in itself the likeness of Mary, thus best to magnify
the Lord and bring him to men.
“Mary is the Mother of all the members of the Saviour, because by
her charity she has co-operated in the birth of the faithful in the
Church. Mary is the living mould of God, that is to say, it is in her
alone that the God Man was naturally formed without losing a
feature, so to speak, of His Godhead; and it is in her alone that man
can be properly and in a life-like way formed into God, so far as
human nature is capable of this by the grace of Jesus Christ.” (St.
Augustine)
“What a beautiful work of mercy and so appropriate to make
known to many people who do not understand it, the true face of the
Catholic Church.” (Bl. John XXIII)

2

OBJECT

The object of the Legion of Mary is the glory of God
through the holiness of its members developed by prayer and
active co-operation, under ecclesiastical guidance, in Mary’s
and the Church’s work of crushing the head of the serpent
and advancing the reign of Christ.
Subject to the approval of the Concilium, and to the
restrictions specified in the official handbook of the Legion,
the Legion of Mary is at the disposal of the bishop of the