Mercy As Your Signature
Marist Moment: Mercy As Your Signature
Mercy is a word that has its root meaning in the Hebrew language for ‘womb’. It’s a word that describes the very nature of God toward us. It’s also the signature mark of a Mum and her love for her children. No wonder Fr Colin invites Mercy to be the signature of every Marist.
A popular Marist Book called ‘Bearings’ offers some thoughtful ideas on the Marist Way of looking at and living life.
Mercy As Your Signature
Colin wanted his Marists to be, in his own words, “instruments of divine mercy.” The stories in Bearings show how recognizable that mercy became. The French intellectual Jean Guitton once helped a friend return to the Church after many years away. When the friend described how compassionately the priest had received his confession, Guitton interrupted: “Then the priest to whom you confessed was a Marist priest.” He had guessed correctly. Mercy had become a style you could identify.
In Sydney, Fr Jean Pierre Piquet spent fifty-four years as a confessor at St Patrick's church. To him went “the drunkard… the shamefaced man from a distant parish… the tired and distressed poor.” His colleagues thought his methods too quick and his penances too light, but as one layman wrote, “the French priest induced more people to make amends… than all those who angrily rebuked the sinners. He loosed their sins and later went into their homes, as a friend, making things straight.”
This is Mary's way of relating to broken people. The Marist François Marc described the “Marian Church” as one that “despairs of no one, and does not quench the smoking flax. When she sees someone on the side of the road wounded by life, she is moved by compassion and with infinite tenderness tends their wounds.”
Every one of us stands somewhere on both sides of this exchange: needing mercy, and able to give it. The Marist Way invites you to let the mercy you have received from God overflow — at your kitchen table, in traffic, with the colleague everyone has written off. Mercy, freely received, is given freely.
Marist Reflection Question
Who in my daily life most needs to meet a merciful face rather than a judgment — and what has stopped me from being that face until now?
Marist Practice
Each time you feel criticism rising this week — toward a family member, colleague or stranger — pause, breathe, and choose one small gesture of mercy instead: a kind word, a patient silence, a second chance.
Marist Resources Download
This resource comes from a Marist Spirituality Series: ‘Bearings’ by Craig Larkin. Click here for full reflection guide
