Page 216 - 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 211

CHAPTER 34 DUTIES OF OFFICES OF PRAESIDIA 211
He will see that they supplement a fearless and thorough
execu tion of their active work by prayer for it and by acts of
self-sacrifice, and he will teach them that it is just at the time
when all ordinary means have failed, when things are
humanly speaking hopeless, that the Queen of the Legion,
their Mother, can be turned to with most certain confidence,
and will grant them the victory.
Essentially it will be the duty of a Spiritual Director of the
Legion of Mary to fill all his members with an enlightened
and most intense love of the Mother of God, and in particular
for those privileges of hers which the Legion specially
honours.
Thus building patiently, fitting stone on stone, he can hope
to erect in each member a fortress of the spirit which nothing
will disintegrate.
As a member of the praesidium, the Spiritual Director will
take part in its transaction of business and in its various
discussions and undertakings, and will be “as necessity
demands, teacher, counsellor and guide” (Pope St. Pius X.) He
should, however, be careful that he does not find himself
assuming as well the duties of President. Should there be a
tendency in this direction, it will not be for the good of the
praesidium. If to his prestige as priest, and his infinitely wider
know ledge of life, is added the taking and conducting of the
business by him, the effect upon the meeting will be
overwhelming. It will be found that the consideration of each
case will take the form of a dialogue between the Spiritual
Director and the legionary con cerned, in which the President
and the members at large will play no part, remaining silent
from a feeling that their intervention would bear the
complexion of an effort to interfere with the judgment of the
Spiritual Director. With the discontinuance of its free and
general discussion of cases, the meeting will have lost what is
at once its chief element of attractiveness, its principal
educative force, and its greatest source of health. Such a
praesidium will do no work on the occasion of the absence of
the Spiritual Director, and may collapse in the event of his
departure.
“He will — as every member is required to do — take the
liveliest interest in everything which is told at the meeting.
But he will not seize on every word as an opportunity for