Point 1. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, through You Immaculate Conception…

Baptised in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, a member of the Catholic faithful belongs to the Roman Church. He receives from her, with perfect filial docility, the lights of the faith, at the time appointed by God.

Thus, in 1854, Blessed Pope Pius IX, defining the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ushered in a time of unprecedented fecundity for the Church, which Saint Pius X intensified.

It is in this spirit that our Father consecrated the Phalange to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on December 8, 1997, and never ceased to meditate on the ‘secret’ contained in this privilege of the Blessed Virgin, which gives Her preeminence in the Church and in each of our lives.

Thus the grace of baptism, like all graces, is received by the Phalangist ‘through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,’ as Saint Jacinta used to say, and the baptised person becomes, in one common embrace, both a son of God and a child of Mary.

1. Thus, just as a child first knows his mother and only his mother, and learns from her to turn towards his father, the first person of the divine Family to turn her attention to the soul of a newborn is the Blessed Virgin Mary, and this soul will cling to this Immaculate Mother with the spontaneous fervour of a child of grace.

2. A perfect Creature, impervious to evil, the flesh, the world and Satan – She whose beauty, grace, tenderness, gentleness, virginity, fervour and piety move us –, is God’s Companion today and for all eternity. She visibly presides in the stead of the invisible Spirit Who indwells Her and fills Her with His seven gifts. She is the Gate of Heaven, through Whom every Catholic enters into the intimate life of the divine Persons, into that exchange of love between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that theologians call Circumincessant Charity.

Therefore, the Phalangist finds in his consecration to the Immaculate the fullness of the sacrament of his baptism, the absolute value of his own existence, the source of his actions and the ultimate end of his affections. Nothing within him can surpass, equal, let alone contradict this Christian mysticism. Neither science, nor the arts, nor power and honours, nor self-interest, nor the pleasures of this world can divert him from this consecration. On the contrary, everything brings him back to this consecration, which is the centre and crown of his works.

The truths of the Faith are not compartmentalised in the Phalangist’s life; they are not a body of thought that may be conveniently disregarded. On the contrary, the Phalangist’s whole life is animated by his Faith. He nurtures this fidelity with the teaching of Father de Nantes, the Phalange’s founder.

3. A child of Mary, he belongs to the Church, Spouse of Jesus Christ. Catholic by birth or by conversion, but always of tradition – for no one is born a foundling in the order of grace – and faithful to this commitment, he keeps the Catholic Faith, frequents the sacraments, takes part in the Church’s liturgy and submits to the Church’s commandments in both his private and public life, faithfully and openly. The Phalangist develops within himself the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and the moral virtues of prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance. He lives habitually in that peace and joy promised to Christ’s disciples.

4. The Phalangist is supernatural because he orders his earthly life in accordance with the glory of the world Above; because he judges this present age by the traditions of the past wherein appeared the constituent mysteries of salvation; because he finds no permanent dwelling here below, but awaits, beyond death and the history of this world, the coming of the eternal Kingdom in all its fullness.