Motherhood of souls

Motherhood of souls is Mary’s essential function. Without participation in that, there can be no real union with her. True devotion comprises the service of souls. It is not enough to praise, we are called to imitate, identify with Mary herself. She is a Queen Mother with a family as extensive as the whole Kingdom of God. Just as it is not enough to pray, thy kingdom come ,so we have to work to bring about that Kingdom. We have to play an active part. St. Paul used the daring expression: I fill up in my body what is wanting to the passion of Christ. Without our Legion apostolate of sharing in the motherhood of Mary, there would be something wanting to our devotion.

A mere verbal offering of our services to Mary can be as empty. Apostolic duties will not descend from Heaven on those who content themselves with waiting passively for that to happen. Those who stand idly by will continue in their state of unemployment. The only effective method of offering ourselves as apostles is to undertake apostleship. We have just to take the first simple step in faith and love and at once Mary embraces our activity and incorporates it in her motherhood.

How could the Virgin so powerful be dependent on the aid of persons so weak? It is a part of the divine arrangement which requires human co-operation. Mary's treasury of grace is superabundant, but she cannot spend from it without our help. If she could use her power according to her heart alone, the world would be converted in the twinkling of an eye. But she has to wait till the human agencies are available to her. Deprived of them, she cannot fulfil her motherhood, and souls starve and die.
Legionaries are no dead instruments of Mary's action. There is question of a living and life-giving co-operation with her for the purpose of enriching and ransoming souls. Where the spirit of this partnership is honoured, Mary is never be found wanting. The fate of the enterprise may be said to depend entirely on the legionary, so that he must bring to it all his/her intelligence and strength, perfected by careful method and by perseverance.

One must pray as if all depended on that prayer and nothing on one's own efforts, and then one must strive as if absolutely everything depended on that striving.
There is nothing lost of anything which is committed to the hands of the careful housewife of Nazareth. The legionary looks to Mary to supernaturalise the natural. She who is full of grace will see it that our human endeavour walks hand in hand with the grace of God