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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 59

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THE LEGION APOSTOLATE

1. ITS DIGNITY
To portray the dignity of the apostolate to which the
Legion summons its members, and its importance to the
Church, one can find no more emphatic words than the
following authoritative declarations:
“From the fact of their union with Christ the head, flows
the laymen’s right and duty to be apostles. Inserted as they
are in the Mystical Body of Christ by baptism and
strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit in confirmation,
it is by the Lord himself that they are assigned to the
apostolate. If they are consecrated a kingly priesthood and a
holy nation (cf 1 Pet 2:4-10), it is in order that they may in all
their actions offer spiritual sacrifices and bear witness to
Christ all the world over. Charity, which is, as it were, the soul
of the whole apostolate, is given to them and nourished in
them by the sacraments, the Eucharist above all.” (AA 3)
“Pope Pius XII once stated: ‘The faithful, more precisely the
lay faith ful, find themselves on the front lines of the Church’s
life; for them the Church is the animating principle for
human society. Therefore, they in particular, ought to have
an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the
Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community
of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the
head of all, and of the bishops in communion with him.
These are the Church . . .’ ” (CL 9).
“Mary exercises over the human race a moral influence which we
cannot better determine than by comparing it to those physical forces
of attraction, affinity and cohesion, which in the order of nature
unite together bodies and the parts of which they are composed. . . .
We believe we have shown that Mary took part in all the great
movements which constitute the life of societies and their real
civilisation.” (Petitalot)

2. AN APOSTOLIC LAITY ESSENTIAL
The proposition is ventured upon that the health of a
Catholic community depends upon the presence of a large
apostolic class — belonging to the laity, yet sharing the

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