The Founding Word
Hello. This is Father Edwin Keel. I am a Marist priest and the Promoter for the
Marist Way. This is the thirty-second in our series of talks on Marist spirituality.
With this talk we are going to begin a meditation on what I call the “founding
word” of our Marist spiritual tradition.
Words are powerful things. Think of how the words “All men are created
equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” have shaped the
nation and the culture of the United States of America, and carried us through a
Revolutionary War, a Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement as we, as a
people, have sought to be true to those founding words. Think of the power in a
speech like the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln or the “I have a Dream”
speech of Martin Luther King Jr. Think of the tragic power of words: of how true
words uttered in inappropriate circumstances can ruin a person’s reputation or even
push them to suicide; and how false words can sometimes lead to a criminal
conviction and even a sentence of death.
There is a powerful “word” that stands at the beginning of the Marist spiritual
movement. It gave rise to the Society of Mary, the Marists. It gave shape and
definition to the Marist spiritual movement. And it has energized Marists, be they
lay people, sisters, brothers, or priests, down through the nearly two hundred years
of Marist service to our Church and our contemporary world. It is a word that a
group of seminarians believed Mary was addressing to them. Here is what they
believed Mary was saying: “I was the support of the newborn Church and I will be
the support of the Church at the end of time”.
The man who eventually became the leader of the group and is recognized as
the founder of the Marists, Fr. Jean-Claude Colin, said that these words “presided
over the first beginnings of the Society of Mary”, and that they served as a
“foundation and encouragement of the Marists at the beginning”. He said that the
early Marists “worked along that line, so to speak”. In fact, Fr. Colin saw all the
salient features of the Society of Mary and of Marist spirituality as linked to,
indeed derived from, this terse message from Mary.
Fr. Colin understood these words of Mary to mean that Jesus had “left his
mother with the newborn Church to form it in its cradle”; and that “she reappears
at end of time to call in those who have not yet entered the Church and to lead back
to the Church those who have left”. Fr. Colin believed that the principle way that
Mary was a “support of the Church” was that Mary’s embrace was “open to all
who would enter”. Thus Mary became for the Marists an image or symbol of an
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inclusive Church. Like Mary, the Church must be solicitous for all of her children,
especially those who have lost their way or gone astray. And it is this openness of
Mary to all, the open arms of her embrace, that led Fr. Colin to emphasize that
Mary is the “Mother of mercy”, that Marists are to become instruments of the
divine mercies, and that Marists are to emphasize mercy in their preaching, their
hearing of confessions, and in all aspects of their ministries.
Fr. Colin and his companions, the first Marists, believed Mary was saying to
them “I want to be the support of the Church now, through you”. They believed
that Mary was asking them to make a new beginning of the Church in these
modern times that seemed to them to be the “last times” before the end. They were
to bring back the enthusiasm, the fervor, the apostolic spirit, indeed the very “faith
of the first believers,” the vigor we see in the Church in its earliest days as
described in the Acts of the Apostles.”
To do this the Marists had to realize that they “belong to a Society that bears
Mary’s name”. And this meant they had to “fill themselves with Mary’s spirit”.
This in turn signified that they had to carry out their ministry as Mary had in the
early Church, doing great things for God but themselves remaining as it were,
“hidden and unknown in this world”.
This has been a thumbnail sketch of what the Society of Mary, the Marists, are
all about. For Fr. Colin, it was all contained in or implied by the words of Mary, “I
was the support of the newborn Church, and I will be the support of the Church at
the end of time”. In subsequent talks we will elaborate on all of this. For this is
Mary’s way. This is the Marist way.
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