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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 172

172 LEGION LOYALTY CHAPTER 29
inclinations to such an extent as to amount to heroism, to be
in fact a sort of martyrdom. And in such terms does St.
Ignatius of Loyola speak of it. “Those,” he says, “who by a
generous effort resolve to obey, acquire great merits; obedience
in its sacrifice resembles martyrdom.” The Legion expects from
its children every where that spirit of heroic and sweet docility
to proper authority of every sort.
The Legion is an army — the army of the Virgin Most
Humble. It must exhibit in its everyday working what is forth -
coming in profusion from any earthly army — heroism and
sacrifice, even supreme sacrifice. Demands of a supremely
exacting character are all the time being made on legionaries,
too. Not so often are they called on to offer their bodies to
laceration and death, like the soldiers of the world. But let
them rise gloriously higher in the things of the spirit. Let
them be ready to offer their feelings, their judgment, their
independence, their pride, their will, to the wounds of
contradiction and the death of a wholehearted submission,
when authority requires.
“Deep harm to disobey, seeing obedience is the bond of
rule,” says Tennyson, but the Legion’s life-line can be
sundered by more than wilful disobedience. The same result is
achieved by the officers whose neglect of the duties of
attendance or correspondence cuts off their praesidia or
councils from the main tide of legionary life. The same deep
harm is done by those, whether officers or members, who
attend their meetings, but whose attitude there — from
whatever cause — is calculated to promote disunion.
“Jesus obeyed his Mother. You have read how all that the
Evangelists tell of Christ’s hidden life at Nazareth with Mary and
Joseph is that ‘He was subject to them’ and ‘advanced in wisdom and
age’ (Lk 2:51-52) Is there anything incompatible with his divinity in
this? Certainly not. The Word is made Flesh; He has stooped so far as
to take a nature like to ours, sin excepted: He came, said he, ‘not to be
ministered unto, but to minister’ (Mt 20:28) to be ‘obedient unto
death’ (Phil 2:8); that is why he willed to obey his Mother. At
Nazareth he obeyed Mary and Joseph, the two privileged beings
whom God had placed near him. In a certain measure, Mary shares in
the authority of the Eternal Father over his Son’s Humanity. Jesus
could say of his Mother what he said of his Father in Heaven: ‘I do
always the things that please him’ (Jn 8:29)” (Blessed Columba
Marmion)