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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 228

228 PRAESIDIA REQUIRING SPECIAL MENTION CHAPTER 36
the doing of the least things; being always sweetness and
thoughtfulness itself; working always for Jesus and preserving
the sense of his presence.
(f) On school, for they will have absorbed to some extent
the legionary ideals, and will as a consequence see school,
teachers, books, rules and study in a different light.
Accordingly, they will get things from school which others
would not get. So that, even if the Legion did represent time
taken from study (which is the common objection), the net
effect would be incomparable gain.
(g) On “duty” and “discipline.” These two all-important
things, which are so odious to the young because so
misunderstood by them, will be made comprehensible and
beautiful when linked with those other two words: “Mary”
and “Legion.”
(h) On prayer, when they realise that it is not a mere
custom-imposed task but a source of power, the support of
their work, and their valuable contribution to the Legion
treasury and thence to the Church.

21. Perhaps it is not too much to claim that in the proper
working of a praesidium on the foregoing lines lies one of the
greatest possible educative influences which could be brought
to bear on the young. It will develop in them every quality
which is proper to the Christian character, and will serve as a
mould out of which will come in number holy and reliant
young people, a joy to their parents and superiors, and a
mainstay to the Church.

22. But all this programme, all these hopes, will be
frustrated by the junior praesidium which does not give its
members suitable work or which otherwise neglects the rules.
That praesidium is a deforming mould. It is prejudicing its
members and everybody else against the Legion. It would
represent a service to the Legion to suppress it.
“Youth must not simply be considered as an object of pastoral
concern for the Church: in fact, young people are and ought to be
encouraged to be active on behalf of the Church as leading characters in
evangelisation and participants in the renewal of society. Youth is a time of
an especially intensive discovery of a ‘self’ and ‘a choice of life’. It is a