Page 190 - 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 185

CHAPTER 32 OBJECTIONS WHICH MAY BE ANTICIPATED 185
A genuine difficulty in finding members would indicate an
extraordinarily low spiritual standard in that locality, and so
far from proving the need for inaction, would demonstrate
conclusively the paramount need for a branch of the Legion
to play the part of a good leaven. Mentally digest the fact that
the leaven is our Lord’s prescription for raising standards. (Mt
13:33) Let it be remembered that a praesidium can be formed
with as few as four or five or six members. When these apply
themselves to the work and understand its requirements, they
will quickly find and introduce other suitable members.

3. “The Legion visitation would be resented”
Were such indeed to be the case, the conclusion indicated
is that other work should be selected, not that the idea of the
Legion (with all its possibilities of good to members and
community) should be abandoned. Be it stated, however, that
nowhere so far, has the Legion experienced a permanent or
general difficulty in this matter of its visitation. Assuming
that the visitation is being undertaken in the true spirit of the
Legion apostolate, it may ordinarily be taken that a coldness
towards the legionaries testifies to the existence of religious
indifference or worse, so that, just where the legionaries are
least desired, exists the greatest need for their labours. Initial
difficulties of this description do not justify the
discontinuance of the visitation. Almost invariably, have the
legionaries who braved these icy barriers, been able to thaw
them, and to remove as well the graver underlying causes.
Full weight should be given to the fact that the home is
spiritually the strategic point. To hold the home is to capture
society. To win the home one must go to it.

4. “Young people have to work hard during the day and
require their free time for rest”
How reasonable this sounds, yet if acted upon, it would
leave the world a religious wilderness, for it is not by the
leisured that the Church’s work is done. Moreover, is it not
true that the high spirited young give their free hours to more
or less disordered amusement than to genuine rest? In such an
alternation between a day of toil and an evening of pleasure, it