**Marist Moment: Doing Good Without Noise**

‘Doing good without noise’ is an image that sums up the Marist Way. It’s another way of exploring one of the most common phrases heard in Marist spirituality - being hidden and unknown. Another image is being like ‘light - helping others see - but itself remaining invisible. Practically it can look simply like getting out of the way so as not to become an obstacle between a person and their encounter with God.

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

Doing Good Without Noise

Of all the phrases Jean-Claude Colin gave his followers, none is more loved than this: Marists are to be “hidden and unknown in the world.” It can sound like a call to timidity. It is the opposite. The Marist philosopher Gabriel Voisine explained it beautifully: to be a person of God is “to move through the world in an invisible and secret way like light. Light makes it possible to perceive things… but itself is not seen.”

The early Marists lived this. Jean-Baptiste Bréhéret spent fifty-four years sailing among the islands of Fiji; asked to write his memoirs, he replied, “I have written them with the keel of my boat on the moving waters of the Pacific.” Jean-Antoine Séon walked barefoot the length of New Zealand, leaving behind “little but a reputation for unusual sanctity”; his biographer says he passed “on silent feet.” When two Marists were sent to a prickly French parish that would have been terrified by the word “missioner,” they simply never used it — and the parish was transformed.

Why this hiddenness? Because it removes the greatest obstacle to the Gospel: ourselves. Nothing in a Marist's manner — neither pride nor ambition — should cause people to resist the goodness of God. Mary never pressed her privileged position as mother of Jesus; she was content to be his disciple. Doing good “with the least possible noise” leaves all the room to God.

For anyone exploring Marist spirituality, this is wonderfully freeing. You do not need a platform, a title or an audience to do Mary's work. The hidden life — the unnoticed kindness, the unsigned gift, the encouragement given in private — is not a lesser life. It may be the most effective one of all.

Marist Reflection Question

Where am I tempted to seek recognition for the good I do — and what would it look like to do that same good “with the least possible noise”?

Marist Practice

Each day this week, do one deliberate act of kindness that no one will ever know about — and resist every urge to mention it afterwards. Let it remain between you and God.

Doing Good Without Noise

Doing Good Without Noise

Mercy As Your Signature

The Work Of Mary