“Tasting God” was a special phrase of Colin. He would share insightfully to only want to help young people ‘taste God’. After that gift and experience, God could continue this work in their hearts. Marist’s are to first ‘taste God’ themselves so as to be able to truly give this experience to others. You cannot give what you have not got. If the heart begins each day and rests frequently in prayer with God, this would flow out into a fruitful life of leading others to God.

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

Tasting God

Colin had a striking phrase for the interior life: he spoke of people who had learned to “taste God.” Of one confrere he said: “Father Frémont is a man of God… he tasted God, he made his novitiate as a man of God.” That taste proved to be the one thing tragedy could not take away. Years later, on a mission where five years of labour had produced not a single convert, Frémont could still write with peace: “Our need to pray is not so as to spur us to action… but so as to teach us how to make sense of our uselessness… Let his will be done.”

Perhaps the most moving prayer story in Bearings concerns Wiremu Te Awhitu, the first Māori Marist priest. A stroke robbed him of speech, and he lived his last decades in an isolated river village, enclosed in silence. Visitors arriving unannounced found him seated in his kitchen, the Bible open on his knees, “praying with an intensity which struck us so much that we remained for a moment without daring to tell him that we were there.” The poet James K. Baxter, who attended his halting Masses, wrote: “His few words have the weight of wedges splitting timber. His soul speaks of God because it is at rest in God.”

Marist prayer is not complicated. The novice master Denis Maîtrepierre told his novices: “Love God, without wanting to know how or where we stand in His love. Love Him — that's enough.” And he prized above all “peace, joy and expansion of heart.”

The Marist Way cannot be sustained on goodwill alone. Hidden service, patient mercy and real simplicity all flow from a heart that returns, daily and quietly, to God.

Marist Reflection Question

When have I genuinely “tasted God” — and what simple daily rhythm of prayer would help me return to that place, especially when life feels useless or dry?

Marist Practice

Set aside ten unhurried minutes each day this week with an open Bible — no agenda, no outcomes — and end each evening with one question: where did I meet God today?

Tasting God

Tasting God

Checking Your Compass

Living Simply