Page 278 - 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 273

39
CARDINAL POINTS OF THE

LEGION APOSTOLATE

1. SOULS ARE NOT APPROACHED
EXCEPT WITH MARY
Sometimes Mary is kept in the background so as to meet
the prejudices of those who make small account of her. This
method of making Catholic doctrine more acceptable may
accord with human reasonings. It does not reflect the Divine
idea. Those who act in this way do not realise that they might
as well preach Christianity without Christ as ignore Mary’s
part in redemption. For God himself has thought fit to
arrange that no foreshadowing or coming or giving or
manifestation of Jesus should be without Mary.

From the beginning and before the world she was in the
mind of God. — God himself it was who first began to tell of
her and to sketch out for her a destiny unquestionably
unique. For all that greatness of hers had a beginning very far
back. It began before the constitution of the world. From the
first, the idea of Mary was present to the Eternal Father along
with that of the Redeemer, of whose destiny she formed part.
Thus far back had God answered the doubter’s saying: “What
need has God of Mary’s help?” God could have dispensed
with her altogether, just as he might have dispensed with
Jesus himself. But the course which it pleased him to adopt
included Mary. It placed her by the side of the Redeemer from
the very moment in which the Redeemer was himself
decreed. It went further: that plan assigned to her no less a
part than that of Mother of the Redeemer and necessarily,
therefore, of those united to him.
Thus from all eternity Mary was in a position exalted, alone
among creatures, and utterly outside comparison even with
the sublimest among them, different in the Divine idea,
different in the preparation she received; and therefore
fittingly singled out from all others in the first prophecy of
redemption, addressed to Satan: “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)

273