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286 CARDINAL POINTS OF THE LEGION APOSTOLATE CHAPTER 39
mimic warfare the vast, adventurous Christian campaign. So
the Legion formula demands effort in all circumstances and at
all costs — effort as a first principle. Both naturally and
supernaturally the repudiation of impossibility is the key to
the possible. That attitude alone can solve the problems. It
can go further, for definitely it is a hearing of the Gospel cry
that with God no work shall be impossible. It is the believing
response to our Lord’s own call for the faith that casts the
mountain into the sea.
To think of spiritual conquest without at the same time
stiffening one’s spirit into that indomitable attitude would be
sheerly fantastic.
Appreciating this, the Legion’s primary preoccupation is
that strengthening of its members’ spirit.
“Every impossibility is divisible into thirty-nine steps, of
which each step is possible” — declares a legionary slogan
with seeming self-contradiction. Yet that idea is supremely
sensible. It forms the ground work of achievement. It
summarises the philosophy of success. For if the mind is
stunned by the contemplation of the apparently impossible,
the body will relax into a sympathetic inactivity. In such
circumstances every difficulty is plainly an impossibility.
When faced with such — says that wise slogan — divide it up;
divide and conquer. You cannot at one bound ascend to the
top of a house, but you can get there by the stairway — a step
at a time. Similarly, in the teeth of your difficulty, take one
step. There is no need yet to worry about the next step; so
concentrate on that first one. When taken, a second step will
immediately or soon suggest itself. Take it and a third will
show — and then another. And after a series of them —
perhaps not the full thirty-nine steps of the slogan, which
only has in mind the play of that name — one finds that one
has passed through the portals of the impossible and entered
into very promising land.
Observe: the stress is set on action. No matter what may be
the degree of the difficulty, a step must be taken. Of course,
the step should be as effective as it can be. But if an effective
step is not in view, then we must take a less effective one. And
if the latter be not available, then some active gesture (that is,
not merely a prayer) must be made which, though of no
apparent practical value, at least tends towards or has some