Page 228 - 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 223

CHAPTER 36 PRAESIDIA REQUIRING SPECIAL MENTION 223
3. It is to be regarded as an essential condition that at least
the President of such a praesidium should be an adult. A
second adult officer would be desirable with a view to provid -
ing for the absence of the President, and for the possibilities of
expansion. If these senior legionaries remain members of the
senior praesidium, the work of officering the junior praesidium
satisfies their work obligation. But, if they are members of the
junior praesidium only, they must perform for it a substantial
active work proportioned to their adult capacity. These officers
should, if at all possible, be experienc ed legionaries, who
understand perfectly the Legion system, and who are otherwise
fitted to accomplish in these youthful legionaries the purpose
which the Legion has in view in setting up the praesidium.
That purpose is not primarily the doing of a certain amount of
useful work, but the training and spiritualising of its members,
and the preparing of them to take their place in the ordinary
ranks of the Legion when school-days are finished.
4. Obviously the Allocutio will hold a doubly important
place in the system by reason of the inability of many of the
young legion aries to master the contents of the handbook
through their own reading of it. Therefore, the Spiritual
Director (or in his absence the President) should base every
Allocutio on the handbook. A small section should be read,
and then explained in such a detailed and simple way as to
make it certain that every member fully under stands it. The
handbook should be ploughed through in this way week after
week, from start to finish, and then returned upon. But
indeed, the termination of junior membership comes so
rapidly that there may not be the opportunity of covering the
ground twice for the same legionaries. Each defective
Allocutio, accordingly, repre sents an opportunity thrown
away, a loss which cannot be made good.
5. If the handbook can be systematically studied after the
method recommended in appendix 10, Study of the Faith, it
will provide a most useful course, without being felt to be
“just a school task.” It will be invalu able training to these
future props of the senior Legion.
6. As the works adopted by senior praesidia will probably
not be available for a praesidium of this type, ingenuity will