One Tree, Three Branches

For Colin, the dream was for the largest group of Marists to be Lay Marists. If Mary’s spirit and presence was to get into every home, street corner and workplace, it would be Lay people who would carry it there. This was a very radical vision during Colin’s time, so big in fact that it was unheard of for a religious order to include priests, brothers, sisters and lay people all together as one family. But such is the Marist vision. It became symbolised by a tree with many branches.

A popular Marist Book called ‘Marist Laity’ offers some thoughtful ideas on the Marist Way of looking at and living life.

One Tree, Three Branches

To describe the Society of Mary, Father Colin used the image of a tree with three branches: the priests and brothers, the sisters, and the laity. All are part of the same tree, drawing from the same sap, nourished by one Marist spirituality and sharing one Marist mission. This was astonishing in his time — and it is still rare. When McKay explained it to the International Director of the Franciscan Third Order, he was told that such full inclusion of the laity was true for St Francis, but almost unheard of elsewhere.

For Colin the laity are not helpers on the boundaries of the Society; they are at its very heart, heirs to the full Marist inheritance. There is no two-tiered spirituality here — one level for clergy and religious, a lesser one for everyone else. Colin even said there would be more saints among the lay branch than among the other two. Indeed, McKay writes that where a vigorous Marist lay movement does not exist, the Society itself does not fully exist — it is like a tree with a fruit-bearing branch missing.

A Marist missionary once climbed into the mountains of Mindanao and introduced himself to a young Filipino girl as a Marist priest. She replied simply: 'I'm a Marist too. Quite a few of us around here are Marists.' That quiet confidence is your inheritance as well. Lay Marist life is not a diluted version of something else. It is a full vocation, complete in itself.

Marist Reflection Question

Do I truly believe that my lay life — my family, work, friendships, and struggles — is a full vocation and a full sharing in Mary's work, not a second-best?

Marist Practice.

This week, choose one ordinary duty — preparing a meal, a work task, caring for someone — and do it consciously as your Marist mission, offering it to God through Mary as you begin.

One Tree, Three Branches

Instruments of Divine Mercy

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