Page 127 - 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 125

CHAPTER 19 THE MEETING AND THE MEMBER 125
an absolute privacy. Recourse should at once be had to the
Spiritual Director (or, if he be unavailable, to some other
competent adviser) who will decide the point.

21. Freedom of speech. Is it in order to voice one’s
disagree ment with the methods of the meeting? The
atmosphere of the praesidium should not be regimental but
rather “family” in its character.
Therefore “fair comment” should be welcomed from the
members. But obviously such comment must never be
challenging in its tone or wanting in respect to the officers.

22. The Meeting the mainstay of membership. It is the
human tendency to be impatient for visible results, and then
to grow dis satisfied with whatever is obtained. Again, visible
results are an uncertain test of successful work. One member
secures them at a touch, while the heroic perseverance of
another remains barren. A sense of wasted effort is followed
by abandonment of the work, so that the work which is
valued purely from the aspect of results, is a quicksand which
will not support for long the ordinary membership. Such a
support is essential. Legionaries will find it in the wealth of
prayer, the ritual, the distinctive atmosphere, the reports of
duty done, the blessed comradeship, the magnetism of
discipline, the lively interest, and the very orderliness, which
each week go to make up their praesidium meeting.
No thought there of waste of effort to unloosen member -
ship, but everything to bind it fast! As meeting succeeds
meeting in regular succession, there comes the sense of
smoothly running machinery surely attaining the end for
which it was contrived, and giving that fixed assurance of
successful working upon which a persevering membership
depends. Let the legionaries cast their thoughts a little further,
and see in this mechanism Mary’s engine of war for the
extension of her Son’s dominion. They are its parts. Its
working depends upon the manner in which they lend
themselves to it. Their faithful membership means its perfect
working, which Mary utilises to achieve the results which she
desires. These will be perfect results, for “it is Mary alone who
knows perfectly where lies the greatest glory of the Most
High.” (St. Louis-Marie de Montfort)