Page 286 - 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 281

CHAPTER 39 CARDINAL POINTS OF THE LEGION APOSTOLATE 281
“The great master of Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, has a
delightful phrase in a commentary on the Annunciation portion of
the Gospel, which, rendered freely, says that Mary’s Son gives
infinitude to his Mother’s excellency, there being also in the tree
which produces the fruit some of that infinite perfection which
belongs properly to the fruit.
In practice the Catholic Church looks upon the Mother of God as
being an unbounded power in the realm of grace. She is considered as
the Mother of the redeemed on account of the universality of her
grace. In virtue of her divine motherhood, Mary is simply the vastest,
the most efficient, the most universal supernatural power in Heaven
and on earth, outside the Three Divine Persons.” (Vonier: The Divine
Motherhood)

2. INFINITE PATIENCE AND SWEETNESS MUST BE
LAVISHED ON A PRICELESS SOUL
The note of sternness must be banished from the legionary
mission. Qualities essential to success, and above all when
dealing with the outcast and the sinner, are those of
sympathy and unvary ing gentleness. Constantly in the affairs
of life, we persuade ourselves that particular cases are subjects
for rebuke or for the cutting word, and we use those words,
and later are left regretting. Possibly in every case a mistake
has been made. Why cannot we remember in time that it is
from rough usage — all no doubt well-deserved — that the
hardness and perversity of which we complain have grown
up! The flower that would have opened under the influence
of the gentle warmth of softness and compassion closes
tightly in the colder air. On the other hand, the air of
sympathy which the good legionary carries with him, the
willingness to listen, to enter whole heartedly into the case as
put before him, are sweetly irresistible, and the most
hardened person, completely taken off his (or her) balance,
yields in five minutes ground which a year of exhortation and
abuse would have failed to gain.
Those difficult types of people are usually trembling on the
verge of rage. He who further irritates them causes them to
sin and hardens their resistance. He who would help them
must lead them in the opposite way. He can only do this by
treating them with extreme forbearance and respect.
Every legionary ought to burn into his soul these words
applied by the Church to Our Blessed Lady: “For the memory