Checking Your Compass
Marist Moment: Checking Your Compass
When we set out on a journey - it is helpful to know the destination. In years past we used to make sure we took a map and consulted the compass - we needed to at least start facing in the right direction! Sometimes comfort can set our direction. We need to constantly remind ourselves to check our bearings. These series of Marist Way reflections can help us.
A popular Marist Book called ‘Bearings’ offers some thoughtful ideas on the Marist Way of looking at and living life.
Checking Your Compass
The book takes its title from the traveller's art: wise pilgrims “set their bearings” at the start of a journey and consult their compass along the way to be sure they are still on course. The final bearing of the Marist Way is exactly this readiness — to keep moving toward wherever the need is greatest, and to keep checking that comfort has not quietly taken the helm.
The Constitutions say Marists “attend especially to the most neglected, the poor, and those who suffer injustice… ready to carry out these tasks anywhere and at any time.” The early missionaries took this literally. Antoine Garin, asked to abandon a mission he loved, wrote to his mother that a missionary “must attach himself not to places or people, but to the salvation of souls.” Jean-Baptiste Petitjean described religious life as being “everywhere as if you were in transit… It hurts, of course, but while it hurts, the spirit is joyful, the heart expands.” And he named the deepest truth of all: “To leave one's fatherland, that is only one sacrifice… But to leave oneself every day, that is the great sacrifice.”
Few of us will sail to distant islands. But every life contains its Oceania: the need nobody wants to meet, the person nobody visits, the task with no glamour attached. Bishop Patelisio Finau of Tonga challenged “heavenly Christians” who are not “concerned with the real matters of this world and justice.” The Marist question is always concrete: what is the most urgent, most neglected need within my reach — and am I free enough to respond promptly?
This is why Marists keep returning to their sources, as a sailor returns to the compass. Direction, not perfection, is what matters: still going Mary's way, one adjusted course at a time.
Marist Reflection Question
What is the most urgent and most neglected need within my actual reach right now — and what attachment (to comfort, routine, reputation or plans) keeps me from responding to it promptly?
Marist Practice
Once a week — Sunday evening works well — take five minutes to “check your bearings”: ask, in the light of this week, “How am I called to act?”, and set one concrete course-correction for the week ahead.
Marist Resources Download
This resource comes from a Marist Spirituality Series: ‘Bearings’ by Craig Larkin. Click here for full reflection guide
