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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 32

32 THE DUTY OF LEGIONARIES TOWARDS MARY CHAPTER 6
receive her at all. Obviously devotion to her must attend to
and try to reproduce every aspect of her personality and
mission. It must not chiefly concern itself with what is not the
most important. For instance, it is valuable to regard her as our
exquisite model whose virtues we must draw into ourselves.
But to do that and to do no more would be a partial and
indeed a petty devotion to her. Neither is it enough to pray to
her, even though it be in considerable quantity. Nor is it
enough to know and rejoice at the innumerable and startling
ways in which the Three Divine Persons have encompassed
her, and built upon her, and caused her to reflect their own
attributes. All these tributes of respect are due to her and must
be given to her, but they are no more than parts of the whole.
Adequate devotion to her is only achieved by union with her.
Union necessarily means com munity of life with her; and her
life does not consist mainly in the claiming of admiration but
in the communicating of grace.
Her whole life and destiny have been motherhood, first of
Christ and then of men. For that she was prepared and
brought into existence by the Holy Trinity after an eternal
deliberation (as St. Augustine remarks). On the day of the
Annunciation she entered on her wondrous work and ever
since she has been the busy mother attending to her
household duties. For a while these were contained in
Nazareth, but soon the little house became the whole wide
world, and her Son expanded into mankind. And so it has
continued; all the time her domestic work goes on and
nothing in that Nazareth-grown-big can be performed
without her. Any caring of the Lord’s body is only
supplemental to her care; the apostle only adds himself to her
maternal occupations; and in that sense Our Lady might
declare: “I am Apostleship,” almost as she said: “I am the
Immacu late Conception.”
That motherhood of souls being her essential function and
her very life, it follows that without participation in it there
can be no real union with her. Therefore, let the position be
stated once again: true devotion to Mary must comprise the
service of souls. Mary without motherhood and the Christian
without apostleship, would be analogous ideas. Both the one
and the other would be incomplete, unreal, unsubstantial,
false to the Divine intention.