Imagine Mum welcoming you home……. you get the sense that the door is never closed. This attitude of Mercy and welcome becomes a signature of Marist ministry and the Marist Way. Practically it gets expressed as a ministry to the gaps; the forgotten, the absent. While mainstream ministry may be warming up the people in the church, a Mum’s attention is also concerned for those who aren’t coming home. There is work to be done. What is needed is a certain type of people who can become instruments of divine mercy.

The Marist Way exists as a solution to a challenge; people turning away from God, no longer able to find God, leaving the Church. The Enlightenment and French Revolution are simply technical words for a period of time where God became lost or irrelevant. The mission is not so much to a place but a time - an experience - and the world is waiting for a response.

Perhaps we are either surviving or thriving; coasting comfortably or pursuing passionately. We all inherit situations and circumstances, the difference is how we respond. Creatively living what we have received from our past and applying that in a new and fruitful way today is a call we are all invited to respond to.

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 common marist phrase is being ‘hidden and unknown’. But this is not really about hiding, being away from activity, being super prayerful and contemplative. We will be ‘hidden’ so that God is ‘seen’. It begins with an interior attitude grown in prayer and goes out with an external movement in mission. Marist’s really are both contemplatives in action; like Mary at Nazareth and Pentecost.

When Colin listened to his experience of Mary teaching him about her spirit, an key reflection was marist’s were to be ‘instruments of divine mercy’. Mercy was the priority. Nobody was too small, too late, or too lost!

For Colin, the dream was for the largest group of Marists to be Lay Marists. If Mary’s spirit and presence was to get into every home, street corner and workplace, it would be Lay people who would carry it there. This was a very radical vision during Colin’s time, so big in fact that it was unheard of for a religious order to include priests, brothers, sisters and lay people all together as one family. But such is the Marist vision. It became symbolised by a tree with many branches.

When people meet you - what is their experience? An interesting question. For Marists, the hope is a welcoming and joy-full presence that causes people to ponder a dream of a church and people who extend the welcoming arms of a Mother to her children.

What would it look like if Mary were actually present and living in our midst, in your family, in your parish, in your workplace? Marist spirituality takes this question seriously and personally; it becomes an idea that takes root in real life so that Mary becomes present through her sons and daughters - Marist’s. And it sparks an even bigger idea: what would happen if the world was Mary’s parish?

What will the end of time actually look like…… movies often paint a scene of disaster, but Fr Colin, aware of Mary’s presence as a Mother to the Church, shares an alternative; everyone is gathered home. This future vision shapes today’s hope and action. It forms the basis of a special marist phrase to be ‘one heart and mind’.