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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 274

274 CARDINAL POINTS OF THE LEGION APOSTOLATE CHAPTER 39
Here is the future redemption summarised by God himself.
Definitely, Mary is to be in an order of her own; even before
her birth, and ever after, the enemy of Satan; below the
Saviour, but next to him, and like unto him (Gen 2:18), and
remote from all others. Not any prophet — even the Baptist
— is thus set with him, nor king nor leader, nor apostle nor
evangelist — including Peter and Paul themselves; nor the
greatest among the popes and pastors and doctors; nor any
saint; nor David, nor Solomon, nor Moses, nor Abraham. Not
one of them! Alone, out of all creatures that will ever be, she
is divinely designated as the Co-worker of Salvation.

Vividly and unmistakably revealed in prophecy. — The
course of prophecy continues: “The Virgin,” “the Virgin and
Child,” “the Woman,” “Woman and Child,” “the Queen seated
at the right hand of the King,” the constantly recurring
assurance that a woman is to be a prime element of our saving.
What sort of future does this foretell of her? Do not the very
greatest things that can be said of her seem to follow logically
on? Hardly do we realise how crushing, how conclusive is the
bearing of prophecy on this question of the place of Mary in
the Christian religion. A prophecy is a shadow of a thing to
come, a glance which pierces time instead of space, a pale
outline of a distant prospect. Necessarily, a prophecy must be
less vivid, less clear, less real, than the reality of which it speaks.
But necessarily, too, it must preserve harmonious proportion
with that reality. Prophecy which pictured redemption as
wrought by a Woman and her Child together (and no other
with that pair), who crush the head of Satan, would be radically
inconsistent with an actual redemption which relegates the
woman to obscurity. Thus, if prophecy is truly named, and if
Salvation is a lifelong working of the Incarnation and the death
of Jesus Christ into the fabric of the human soul (and Holy
Church and Holy Scripture jointly so declare), then in the
Christian system Mary must be found with Jesus, inseparable
from him in his saving work, the New Eve, dependent on him
but necessary to him — indeed no other than the Mediatrix of
all Graces, as the Catholic Church sums up her gracious office.
If what prophecy had glimpsed is really God’s country, then
those who belittle Mary are aliens to it.