Page 328 - 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 323

CHAPTER 40 GO PREACH THE GOSPEL 323
tried and tested instrument for winning converts and
ensuring their perseverance. Local in membership, with
missionary leaders initially as Spiritual Directors, it will
instruct, form and move new converts to evangelise
continually and systematically. Unlike the missionary, its
members do not penetrate society from the outside. They are
already there, able, with due formation, to act as light, salt
and leaven in the community, in the manner of the first
Christians.
Legion expansion
As the number and quality of legionaries grow, it will be
necessary, in order to ensure proper training, to increase the
number of praesidia. Perhaps the Spiritual Directors may be
able to assume control of more than one praesidium each.
Perhaps too, it may be possible to utilise catechists and other
experienced persons in the capacity of Presidents for the
training and inspiring of praesidia. Each new praesidium
means ten to twenty soldiers of the faith in action.
Success in the policy of multiplying praesidia would mean
then, in the course of time, each priest would be organising
the efforts of a great number of apostolic workers. The result
would be that he would veritably play in all but the supreme
functions a part analogous to that of a diocesan bishop. As for
the bishop, he would find himself in possession of an
innumerable and irresistible hierarchy of workers for the
faith, through whom he would be able to preach the gospel to
every person in his territory.
What is here proposed is not an untried plan but the fruit
of many years of successful experience of evangelisation on
the mission fields under varied conditions.

A definite duty for each legionary
In the plan proposed, a well defined sphere of action would
be assigned to each legionary. Each area of work would be
surveyed and reduced to terms of individual duties for
assignment to the legionaries, each one of whom would be
held strictly responsible for their proper performance.
Legionaries must be made to realise that in the discharge of
their duties they freely place themselves at the disposal of the
priest. Through him they are in communion with the