Page 200 - 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 195

CHAPTER 33 BASIC DUTIES OF LEGIONARIES 195
of daily recitation. Let the idea of a chain, composed of links
— each link vital to perfection — be to each legionary an
admonition against forming a broken link in the Legion’s
chain of daily prayer.
Legionaries whom circumstances have forced to relinquish
active membership (and even those whom less weighty
reasons have caused to forsake the ranks) should still keep up
this beautiful practice and preserve at least this bond with the
Legion unbroken during life.
“When I converse familiarly with Jesus, each time I will do this in
Mary’s name, and partly in her person. Through me she desires to re-
live those hours of sweet intimacy and of ineffable tenderness which
she spent in Nazareth with her beloved Child. With my aid, she
would once more talk delightedly with him; thanks to me, she would
embrace him and press him to her bosom, as once she did at
Nazareth.” (De Jaegher: The Virtue of Trust)

7. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS
Legionaries are ready enough to honour in a general way
the duty of loving their fellow-members, but sometimes do
not remember that it must include an attitude of kindliness
towards seeming short comings. Failure in this direction will
deprive the praesidium of grace, and may have the dire effect
of causing others to discon tinue membership.
And, on the other hand, all should be sensible enough to
realise that their membership is something quite independent
alike of the fact that they have a President or colleague whom
they find pleasant or the reverse, and of real or imagined
slights or lack of appreciation, or of disagreements, or
rebukes, or of other accidental circumstances.
Self-suppression must be the basis of all work in common.
Without it even the best workers may threaten the
organisation. Those serve the Legion best, who moderate their
own individuality and adapt themselves most completely and
most harmoniously to the system. On the other hand, he that
says something or does something that departs from the
sweetness which should character ise the Legion, may be
opening an artery with fatal results. Let all, then, watch that
they do those things which fall to the centre, not from it.
When discussing the attitude of legionary to legionary there
is special need to refer to what are lightly, but incorrectly, called