Rolling the Snowball Again
Marist Moment: Rolling the Snowball
Everything starts small - and then gathers momentum. Sometimes a movement stops - and then needs something to get going again. A vision needs to be seen and appreciated again. A spark needs to be fanned into a flame. Mary’s way and movement needs to get rolling again.
A popular Marist Book called ‘The Age of Mary’ offers some thoughtful ideas on the Marist Way of looking at and living life.
The Snowball — Hearing the Call Again
Every great movement begins small. Around 1815 a group of seminarians in Lyon looked out at a France ravaged by revolution and, even more, by ideas that were quietly turning people away from faith. They did not panic. They believed that Mary, the mother of mercy, was taking a personal interest in their moment of history — replacing severity with compassion, opening the doors of a very clerical Church to everyone, teaching a triumphant Church to become humble again so that the Word could actually be heard.
Snijders begins his book with disarming honesty: somewhere along the slope, the snowball slowed down. The vision faded. But the task did not disappear. Our world — sincere, humane, hungry for authenticity, yet living as if God were absent — is exactly the world the first Marists felt called to love. Perhaps, he suggests, all we need is to hear the call again, stripped of its nineteenth-century moralising and restated in a language we understand.
That is an invitation full of hope. Marist spirituality does not ask us to condemn the modern world or to escape from it. It asks us to look at our neighbours, our workplaces, and our own families the way Mary looked at the early Church: with patience, tenderness, and quiet confidence that God is at work. The snowball can roll again — and it starts with ordinary people willing to listen.
Marist reflection question:
Where in my daily world — home, work, neighbourhood — do I sense people who are sincere and searching, yet distant from God? How might Mary be looking at them?
Marist practice:
Once each day this week, pause and silently pray for one person you meet who seems far from faith — not to fix them, but simply to hold them in Mary’s kind of love.
Marist Resources Download
This resource comes from a Marist Spirituality Series: ‘The Age of Mary’ by Jan Snijders. Click here for full reflection guide
