Page 166 - 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 161

CHAPTER 28 GOVERNMENT OF THE LEGION 161
friendship (things proper to small numbers); but that when
the numbers grow large, and criticism and disagreements
operate, the weaknesses in that charity tend to declare
themselves with most unhappy results. “God Himself and
charity are one and the same thing,” says St. Bernard. “Where
charity does not reign, the passions and lusts of the flesh rule.
The torch of faith, if it be not lighted by the fire of charity,
will never last long enough to guide us to eternal
happiness . . . There is no true virtue without charity.”
It is of little use for legionaries to read the above
pronouncements of danger, and then to vow that amongst
them “such shall never be.” It can be, and will be if there are
defects of charity at their meetings, if the supernatural spirit is
allowed to weaken there. Vigilance must never relax. We read
in history that the Roman Legion never passed a night, even
in the longest marches, without pitching a camp, entrenching
it, and fortifying it most elaborately; and this even though
only a single night would be spent in it, even though the
enemy was afar, even in time of peace. With some approach
to this exact discipline, let the Legion of Mary apply itself to
the protection of its camps (which are its assemblies) against
the possibility of invasion by this fatal spirit of “the world.”
This protection will lie in the exclusion of all words and
attitudes which are hostile to charity, and, generally, in the
saturation of the meetings with the spirit of prayer and full
Legion devotion.
“Grace, no less than nature, has its feelings and its affections. It has
its love, its zeal, its hopes, its joys, its sorrows. Now, those ‘feelings’ of
grace have always been in their fullness in Our Blessed Lady, who
lived much more by the life of grace than by the life of nature. The
vast majority of the faithful are rather in the state of grace than in the
life of grace. Quite different to them, the Holy Virgin has been always
in grace and—more than that—in the life of grace, and in the very
perfection of that life of grace, during the whole of her time on
earth.” (Gibieuf: De la Vièrge Souffrante au pied de la Croix)

2. THE CURIA AND THE COMITIUM
1. When two or more praesidia have been established in any
city, town, or district, a governing body termed the Curia
should be set up. The Curia shall be composed of all the officers
(Spiritual Directors included) of the praesidia in its area.