Page 313 - 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 308

308 GO PREACH THE GOSPEL CHAPTER 40
Those words supply the Christian keynote. Faith must
strain after people with inextinguishable ardour. Sometimes
that essential note is missing. People are not sought after,
neither those in the fold nor those outside it. But if that
Ascension commandment be disregarded, it will be at a price
— the price of loss of grace, of diminution and decay, even to
the extinction of faith. Look around and see how many places
have already paid that awful price.
When Christ said all, he meant ALL. Actually he had before
his eyes each individual one — “for whom he had worn the
Crown— and borne the Cross, the nails, the lance — the
rabble’s ignominious glance — unnumbered griefs, un -
measured woes — faintings and agonising throes — and death
itself on Calvary.” Labour so great must not be thrown away.
The Precious Blood must now be touched to everyone for
whom it was so prodigally shed. That Christian com mission
drastically drives us out to people everywhere — to the least
ones, to the greatest ones, to those near, to those remote, to
the ordinary people, to the wickedest, to the farthest shack, to
all afflicted creatures, to the diabolical types, to the loneliest
light house, to the leper, to the forgotten sort, to the victims
of drink and vice, to the dangerous classes, to the dwellers in
caves and caravans, to those on the battlefield, to those who
hide, to the avoided places, to the lowest den, to the icy
wastes, to the sun-baked desert, to the densest jungle, to the
dismal swamp, to the uncharted island, to the undis covered
tribe, out into the absolute unknown to find if there is
someone living there, right on to the ends of the earth where
the rainbow rests! No one must evade our search, lest the
gentle Jesus frown upon us.
The Legion must be, so to speak, obsessed by that final
command ment. It must, as a first principle, set out to
establish a contact of some sort with every soul everywhere. If
this be done — and it can be done — then the Lord’s
command will be moving towards fulfil ment.
Our Lord, it will be noted, does not order that every person
be converted, but only that approach be made to every one.
The former may be beyond human possibility. But it is not
impossible to make the approach. And if that all-embracing,
undiscriminating contact be made, what then? It is certain
that there would be an aftermath. For our Blessed Lord does