It could be put like this: a group of ordinary people from the world of their times gather together to remember Jesus, and form a communion of mind, heart, and love. This “community” was simply a gathering or a grouping, not a building or a structured group. And in that community of love – called a “church” – the Gospel was heard, transforming the lives of the people who then submerged themselves in their world, and began to transform it.

So it was a like a cycle: men and women from the world – gather in a communion – are transformed by the Gospel – submerge themselves in their world – and transform the world which becomes another communion – where the Gospel is heard, and so on.

The essential point is that the Gospels were written originally not for individuals, but for these “churches” or communities.

Even today, if the gospel is to be heard effectively, it is to be heard in the “community”.

So, the first requirement is to build a community of people who form “church”. And since the world from which people come and to which they return is constantly changing, so will the shape and texture of the “church” constantly change.

The Society of Mary’s origins lie precisely at a moment of extraordinary change in the history of Western civilisation: the great cultural shift of the Enlightenment. The world in which men and women lived was evolving into something quite different: a world which no longer assumed that God had an intimate part in their lives; a world which was jealous of its freedom and independence, and hypersensitive to any authority. At base, it was a world which was becoming more and more allergic to the Church as it was perceived, and Colin seemed to have an intuitive grasp of what was happening around him.

Given his temperament, Fr Colin could easily have joined those who saw this as the end of the world and the time for Divine Judgement.

In fact, the remarkable thing is that he saw his age as a time of challenge to present the Gospel in a new way. He caught the wave without knowing on what part of the shore it might cast him. He realised that the work ahead is to begin a new “church” where the Gospel can be heard.

The task is to enable “church” to happen in our day, because it is only when church happens that the Gospel can be proclaimed, heard, believed and inculturated.

No related posts.

The specific task of Marists is to be there – as Mary was at the beginning – wherever ‘church’ is coming into being, and enabling Mary’s spirit and attitude to touch this emerging Church.

This appears clearly from what Jean-Claude Colin retained of the words Courveille heard at Le Puy, although much of the point is lost in the English translation. Mary’s words are recorded as: “was the mainstay of the new-born Church.” What translates into English as “new-born Church” is, in the original French “Eglise naissante”, which really means “the church in the process of being born”.

This makes a significant difference to our understanding of Mary’s place in the church. Mary’s concern at the beginning was not simply for the Church which had already come into existence, but for the Church in the very process of coming into existence.

And today and for the future Mary is concerned for the places where the Church is coming into being.

The Marist pioneers spoke of this as “the Work of Mary” which they described in this way: that there be a group of people – a Society – whose task on earth is to support the Church in the same way as Mary did at the beginning; that there be a group of people who would be present wherever the new Church is coming to birth, and like a good midwife assist this Church into life.

This is why to the end of his life Colin envisaged the Marist project as a vast enterprise embracing all people: priests, religious and lay people, all working for the same goal. In our times, there are many places where the Church is being born or re-born, where it is emerging or re-emerging. There are individuals who are searching for God or rediscovering their faith. There are individuals and groups who find themselves on the edge of the official church and who struggle to find a community in which they can hear the Good News spoken to them. There are whole countries which are emerging from non-belief or from suppression of faith.

Colin’s insight in that Mary is especially concerned to gather these people, and to be among them by means of the men and women who bear her name and marks of her personality.

However much they may feel their personal weakness or the smallness of their numbers, Marists are invited to take part in this work, and to do it with urgency.

No related posts.

The characteristic feature will be that the person who lives by this spirit will appear to be unnoticed while doing a great deal of good for others. Jean-Claude Colin found a way to describe this approach in a short phrase: “hidden and unknown in this world”.

Though not the motto of the Society of Mary, “hidden and unknown in this world” has become a consecrated phrase in Marist thinking, and is in fact the touchstone of a life lived for God, a life whose focus of attention is the true needs of the other.

Probably the phrase crystallised in Colin’s mind during his years at Cerdon as he was putting together the first ideas on the Society. Interestingly, the first written record of the phrase is found in a letter written by Jeanne-Marie Chavoin to Bishop Devie in 1824, which indicates that this was a phrase obviously used at Cerdon and one whose importance was not lost of Jeanne-Marie Chavoin who understood so well the thinking of Jean-Claude Colin.

At the end of his life, Colin himself said, “When God speaks to a soul He says many things in a few words: for example that phrase “Hidden and unknown in the world”. All of Colin’s life had been spent in unpacking the layers of meaning and significance in that phrase.

The mystery is that the God at work in this world of fractured faith is not a God who wishes to impose on us.

God has endowed each person with reason and conscience and has allowed each one the freedom to decide, and the space to do so, never forcing, never dominating, but always encouraging, waiting, watching.

This attitude of watching and waiting is one that Christian tradition has applied especially to Mary. It is the special characteristic of a mother to let go, to leave free, to wait and watch.

Colin had another way of expressing the same idea: “We must win souls by submitting to them.” Though Marists find their place “in this world” they take a specific stance in this world: a stance which places more attention on the situation of the other person, a stance which thinks only of helping the God hidden in the other person’s life to emerge.

To be “hidden and unknown” as one does “an enormous amount of good” is a sure sign that one’s focus of attention is indeed on the needs of the other.

No related posts.

No related posts.

No related posts.

Colin saw his age as one of “pride, madness and unbelief” where the human sickness had reached as far as the head. The spirit of the Revolution had left its mark; by means of power and violence a new form of society was to be established. Freedom, equality, fraternity were to be enforced with passionate effort – even with bloodshed.

Unfortunately, the church’s reaction to this new problem was not much better; she too stooped to using a similarly heavy-handed approach, with fiery sermons, imposition of spiritual power, stirring up guilt, and so on.

Father Colin was convinced that the biggest obstacle to the Church’s credibility was often the lives and attitudes of the priests and religious, who often enough seemed to be furthering their own recognition rather than promoting the Kingdom of God.

The solution lay with people whose attitude did not place them at centre-stage; and more than that, whose attitude flowed from recognising that Mary is the Mother of Mercy.

It may be significant that the day that the first 20 Marists made their first professions was the feast of Our Lady of Mercy. But one this is clear: their understanding of Mary as a Mother of Mercy goes back to the first revelation of Le Puy, when she was heard to say: “Here is what I want…….”

What she wants is that all be gathered and brought to heaven, so that in the last days, as at the beginning, all will be united in mind and heart. Colin frequently uses the word “gathering” to describe the attitude of men and women called Marists. This word “gathering” and the other words he uses to described the activity of Marists – “uniting, “harmonising”, “in the bosom”, “en embrace open to all” – are all distinctively “feminine” in tone, and the significant thing is that they are the sort of words used in the Scriptures to describe the attitude of God towards the sinner.

When Colin asks Marists to be “instruments of divine mercy”, he is asking them to portray the “feminine features” of God, and to help to build a church which is not perceived in terms of power, planning, control, administration and competitiveness, but rather in terms of community, compassion, simplicity, mercy and fellowship.

No related posts.

More importantly, he doesn’t leave his followers without spiritual resources for meeting this age in a compassionate way.

Once again, we are led back to the experience of Jesus in his preparation for mission. Between his calling by the Father and his being sent on Mission, Jesus was “led by the Spirit into the desert in order to be tempted there”. In the desert, Jesus struggled against three temptations: the temptation to greed, looking after His own interests (“turn these stones into bread”); the temptation to pride, doing the spectacular thing (“throw yourself from the pinnacle”); and the temptation to impose Himself on others, and control their lives (“I will give you all the kingdoms of the world”).

Jesus struggled against these three temptations, and won the victory through His commitment to live for “God alone”.

He emerged from the desert and began to preach with authenticity and authority.

If we are to speak of a spirituality of Jesus, or a Christian spirituality, its centre is probably somewhere here in this experience of Jesus.

Jesus resisted those self-seeking attitudes which destroy inner freedom and He committed Himself to live for the God who loves and forgives unconditionally.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to absorb these attitudes of Jesus. Mary herself learnt these attitudes, bringing to them her own qualities as woman, as mother, as support of the newly-emerging Church.

To speak of a Marist spirituality, then, is to speak of a way of being a disciple of Jesus, based on Mary’s discipleship of Him.

Again, Colin’s insight is simple and practical. He invites Marists, following in the footsteps of Mary, to keep their eyes fixed on God alone and on the Kingdom, taking a personal stand against the crippling forces of greed, pride and power; and he urges them to approach the people of our times with delicacy and sensitivity, winning others over by putting themselves in their shoes, rather than by imposing – even in the name of truth.

No related posts.

Jean Coste points out further that each of these convictions of Jean-Claude Colin was founded on a significant personal experience; each was related to the attitude of Mary as Colin understood it; and each found some concrete expression in the Rule he wrote for the priests and brothers of the Society of Mary.

Chief among the experiences of Colin were his personal background, and two incidents which profoundly marked him.

Years after the event, Colin spoke of a traumatic experience which occurred when he was a young man. He was sick, and presumed to be dying, and was horrified to discover that those who gathered round his bedside could talk only about who was to receive his inheritance at his death.

There even seemed to be some attempt to prevent him from taking the medicine which would cure him!

This childhood experience created in him an instinctive horror for any form of greed.

Later, he noticed the same spot of greed in meetings of priests, where the two recurring topics of conversation seemed to be money and criticism of bishops.

Probably these two experiences, more than most other experiences in his life, made Colin aware of how easily and subtly the desire for money, power and personal aggrandisement can enter into peoples’ lives, and cripple them spiritually.

Colin was influenced by the writings of Mary of Agreda, a Spanish mystic, and from these writings and from his own personal reflection on the mystery of Mary in the early Church, Colin could see how much these attitudes were at variance with the approach of Mary.

As a young priest at Cerdon, when he was jotting down his first ideas for a Rule for Marists, he laid down specific rules to counter the possibility of these attitudes taking root in Marists’ lives. In fact, some of these rules were unrealistic and were subsequently removed from the Constitutions, but they enshrined a very realistic conviction: that greed, pride and power limit the effectiveness of one who wishes to present the Gospel of Jesus.

No related posts.

What was going on in the mind of this shy young priest as he looked down on the village below?

Colin was a stranger to the place: the countryside was different, the people’s accent was different, their mentality, way of life, interests, were all different.

Yet later he was to say with some pride that he had learned to understand the Cerdonese people. And from being a preacher whose style was wooden and dead, he became the one whom the hardened men liked to listen to. He was the one to whom the bar keepers in the villages liked to go to confession.

In time, he had begun to learn how to speak “a new language” or at least how to understand a different language.  His transformation at Cerdon enabled him to give flesh to the words he spoke.

Contemplating the mystery of Mary in the Church can be an enormously liberating challenge.  A great religious problem facing people before the time of Christ was the problem of God   -  “out there”, beyond their reach, needing to be appeased, ready to judge and punish, and difficult to know or approach.  In Christ, this “God problem” was solved.  In Christ we have been able to see God.  At one moment in time people have heard, seen, touched the very person of God.   The Word of God has become flesh.

Mary, with her YES to God’s invitation to be the mother of Christ, brought God to a level that the world can understand.

Mary gave flesh to the Word.

Today, it is Christ who is hidden and unknown to many. People need to see something of Christ, and they look to Christians to satisfy that need. The goal of the Marist is to give flesh to the Word, to make Christ come alive for people, to “translate the message of the Gospel in terms the world can understand”.

“Something new for our times….” It would be something new if in a world where so many people are searching to overcome the sense of alienation and separation, of emptiness and meaninglessness, there were a group of people who, because of Mary the first disciple of Jesus, took a stand for mercy, compassion, and communion of mind and heart. Then indeed the Word would become flesh, and small steps would be taken to make the world a place where people could experience the presence of the Spirit of Jesus.

No related posts.

Yet when one examines what Colin recommends as “special practices” one finds nothing more or less than what was traditional practice for every Catholic!

Furthermore, in the present Constitutions of the Marist Fathers and Sisters and the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, there is no section devoted to Mary in herself.

In all its years of existence, the Society of Mary has not initiated any special form of devotion or place of devotion to Mary. No significant prayers to Our Lady or books on Our Lady have been written by Marists. Marists have not identified themselves with any particular image or cult of the Blessed Virgin.

It seems that the Society of Mary is a Marian congregation with the least external reference to Mary.

And yet, in a review of Marian Congregations made 60 years ago, a Jesuit researcher said of the Society of Mary: “No other institute seems to us so totally and exclusively Marian”.

How can one explain what seems to be a contradiction?

The clue to this paradox can be seen, again, in the Icons of Our Lady. Instead of focussing attention on Mary, the Marist tries to identify with her, and so tries to be someone whose attention is focussed on the needs of people, and on the “extension and development of the mystery of the Incarnation”.

The Marian Icons of the Eastern Church may help us also to understand another slant given by Colin himself in his Constitutions. Generally, Constitutions of Religious Congregations followed a set pattern. Article 1 of the Constitutions dealt with the aims of the Congregation; Article 11 dealt with the way to achieve those aims; and Article 111 dealt with some distinguishing mark of the Congregation. Significantly, Article 111 of Colin’s Constitutions dealt not with Marists and Our Lady, but with “Relationships with people in the Church and in Society”.

Clearly, Colin saw the best way to describe the Marist was to situate him or her in relationship with the Church, with the world, and with other people. In this way Marists show their devotion to Mary by reflecting her attitudes and way of life in the world.

No related posts.