Page 21 - 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 20

20 THE DEVOTIONAL OUTLOOK OF THE LEGION CHAPTER 5
is the channel of every grace which Jesus Christ has won. We
receive nothing which we do not owe to a positive
intervention on her part. She does not content herself with
trans mitting all: she obtains all for us. Penetrated with belief
in this office of Mary, the Legion enjoins it as a special
devotion for all its members.
“Judge as to the ardent love with which God would have us
honour Mary seeing that he has set in her the fullness of all good: in
such manner that all we have of hope, all of grace, all of salvation
all—I say and let us doubt it not — flows to us from her.” (St. Bernard:
Sermo de Aquaeductu)

3. MARY IMMACULATE
A second aspect of Legion devotion is towards the
Immaculate Conception. At the very first meeting, the
members prayed and deliberated round a little altar of the
Immaculate Conception identical with that which now forms
the centre of every Legion meeting. Moreover, the very first
breath of the Legion may be said to have been drawn in an
invocation in honour of this privilege of Our Lady, which
formed the preparation for all the dignities and all the
privileges afterwards accorded to her.
The Immaculate Conception is referred to by God in the
same sentence in which Mary herself is first promised to us.
The privilege is part of Mary: Mary is the Immaculate
Conception; and, together with the privilege, prophecy is
made of its heavenly sequel: the Divine Maternity, the
crushing of the serpent’s head in Redemption, and Mary’s
Motherhood of men.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and
you will strike his heel.” (Gen 3:15)
To these words, addressed to Satan by Almighty God, the
Legion turns as the source of its confidence and strength in its
warfare with sin. It aims with all its heart to become in
fullness the seed, the children of Mary, for there is the pledge
of victory. In the measure that it makes her more and more its
mother, is the Legion’s enmity with the powers of evil
intensified and victory made more complete.