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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 28

28 THE DUTY OF LEGIONARIES TOWARDS MARY CHAPTER 6
world. Yet, it is noble and strong, and confers a strange
nobility and strength on those who seek it and practise it.
In the Legion system, humility plays a unique part. In the
first place, it is an essential instrument of the legionary
apostolate. For, the effecting and developing of the personal
contact, on which the Legion relies so largely in its work, calls
for workers with gentle, unassuming manners such as are
derived only from true humility of heart. But humility is
more to the Legion than a mere instrument of its external
action. It is the very cradle of that action. Without humility
there can be no effective legionary action.
Christ, says St. Thomas Aquinas, recommended to us
humility above all things, for thereby is removed the chief
impediment to the salvation of men. All the other virtues
derive their value from it. Only when humility exists will God
bestow his favours. When it fades, those gifts will be
withdrawn. The Incarnation, the source of all graces,
depended on it. Mary says, in the “Magnificat,” that in her
God has shown might in his arm, that is, he has exerted in
her his very omni potence. And she proclaims the reason. It
was her lowliness which had won his regard and brought him
down to terminate the old world and begin the new.
But how could Mary be a model of humility, considering
that her treasury of perfections was altogether im -
measurable — touching in fact the very borders of infinity,
and that she knew it? She was humble because she was
likewise aware that she was more perfectly redeemed than any
other of the children of men. She owed every gleam of her
inconceivable sanctity to the merits of her Son, and that
thought was ever vivid in her mind. Her peerless intellect was
full of the realisation that as she had received more, so no
other creature stood as much in God’s debt as she. Hence her
attitude of exquisite and graceful humility was effortless and
constant.
Studying her, therefore, the legionary will learn that the
essence of true humility is the recognition and unaffected
acknowledgment of what one really is before God; the
understanding that one’s worthlessness alone is one’s own.
Everything else is God’s free gift to the soul: his to increase,
diminish, or withdraw completely, just as he alone gave it. A
sense of one’s subjection will show itself in a marked