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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 300

300 CARDINAL POINTS OF THE LEGION APOSTOLATE CHAPTER 39
impelled in varying degrees to approximate to that headline.
One sign that an effective headline has been set is that many
will openly and with good heart seek to follow it. Another,
and more common, sign will be that symptoms of dissent will
be evoked. For such a headline is a protest against the lower
standards. It is a sting to the popular conscience, and like
every other sting, it will provoke the healthy reaction of
discomfort and protest, soon to be followed by the upward
urge. But if there is no reaction of any kind, it proves that no
effective headline has been set.
Therefore, there is no need to be unduly disconcerted
should legionary activities stir up some little criticism;
provided always that defective methods are not responsible
for that criticism. Bear always in mind another great principle
which must govern apostolic effort: “Men are conquered only
by love and kindness, by quiet discreet example which does
not humiliate them and does not constrain them to give in.
They dislike to be attacked by the man who has no other idea
but to overcome them.” (Giosue Borsi)

23. THERE NEED NEVER BE DISCOURAGEMENT
Sometimes the most devoted labours, heroically prolonged,
show little fruit. Legionaries do not set their hearts on visible
results, but nevertheless it would not be for their good to work
with a sense of frustration. It will console them, and it will
nerve them to still more strenuous efforts, if they reflect that
even a single sin prevented represents an infinite gain. For that
sin would be an immeasurable evil, dragging in its train an
endless series of calamitous con sequences. “However tiny the
mass, it plays its part in the balance of the stars. Thus, in a way
that only Thy mind, O Lord, can perceive and measure, the
slightest movement of my little pen running across the paper
is connected with the motions of the spheres, and contributes
to, and is a part thereof. The same takes place in the world of
intellect. Ideas live and have their most complex adventures in
that world of intellect, a world immeasurably superior to the
material world; a world united and compact also in its vast,
plenteous, and most varied complexity. As in the material and
intellectual worlds, so it is in the infinitely greater moral
world.” (Giosue Borsi) Each sin shakes that world. It inflicts