Jan Hulshof sm

2.1 'Come, Now! I will send you…' (Ex.3,10)
2.2 Our Marist Call Today.

'Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, 'I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned'. When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, 'Moses!, Moses!' he answered, 'Hear I am' God said, 'Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father, he continued, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.' Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. But the Lord said, 'I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and to lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. So indeed the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to the Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.'

At the beginning of everything, there is the mysterious voice that has called Moses, as it has called Abraham, the father of faith. This mysterious and merciful voice calls Moses to bring his people together and to lead them from suffering, slavery and oppression into a good and spacious land. Saint Luke in telling us the Announcement of the Birth of Jesus is very much aware that the same voice which called Abraham and Moses, calls also Mary, the mother of faith. 'Is anything for the Lord too marvellous to do?, said the Lord to Abraham as the angel says to Mary: 'For nothing is impossible with God' A. Feuillet, in his study on Jesus and his mother, recalls: 'This reminiscence of Genesis 18:14 is full of sense: to the act of faith of Abraham, starting point of the Old Covenant, corresponds the act of faith of Mary, starting point of the New Covenant'. Several scholars have shown how the story in Luke of the announcement of the birth of Jesus is rooted in stories in the Old Testament of special calls or special births, not only the birth of Isaac (Gen. 17-18), but also the call of Moses (EX. 3-4), the call of Gidion (Jgs. 6) and the birth of Samson (Jgs 13).

Each of these four stories has a structure that we find also in the narrative of the announcement of the birth of Jesus:

a) VOICE: the apparition of the divine, called 'God' (Gen. 17:1), at times in the shape of the 'Angel of the Lord' (Ex. 2; Jgs 6:12; Jgs 13:3) or more specifically of the 'angel Gabriel' (Lk 1, 26-28);

b) TREMOR: the tremor caused by the appearance of the divine reality, Abram prostrating himself (Gen. 17:3), Moses removing his sandals and hiding his face (Ex 3: 5, 6), Gidion bewildered that he has seen the angel of the Lord face to face (Jgs 6: 22-24), the wife of Manoah finding the appearance of the angel of the Lord 'terrible indeed' (Jgs 13:6), Manoah and his wife prostrating themselves (Jgs 13:20), and Mary being 'deeply troubled' (Lk 1:29);

c) MESSAGE: the divine message or order: that Abram is to become the father of a host of nations (Gen. 17:4), that Moses has to go to Pharaoh (EX. 3:10) that Gideon has to save Israel from the power of Midian (Jgs 6:14) that the wife of Manoah will conceive and bear a son (Jgs 13:3), that the virgin Mary will conceive and bear a son (Lk. 1:31);

d) OBJECTION: the objection of the person visited: we hear about the age of Abram (Gen. 17:17), about the identity crises of Moses asking 'Who am I? (Ex. 3:11) since he is slow of speech and tongue (Ex. 4:10), about the poor family background of Gidion (Jgs.6:15) and about the virginity of Mary (Lk. 1:34);

e) SIGN: finally the proof or sign: the circumcision as mark of the covenant between God and Abraham (Gen. 17:11), a whole series of signs that confirm the call of Moses. God will be worshipped on the mountain of Horeb (Ex. 3:12). Miracles happen with the staff and the hand of Moses (Ex. 4: 1-8). Water is changed into blood (Ex.4:9). Fire comes from the rock and consumes the meat and unleavened cakes of Gideon (Jgs. 6:16-21). The angel of the Lord ascends in the flame of the altar built by Manoah (Jgs.13:20) and Mary is told that Elizabeth conceives a son in her old age.

I believe that each of us should meditate his or her own life in the mirror of these biblical vocation stories. Where do I trace the mysterious voice that interrupts the many voices that surround me day after day? Where do I experience perplexity and embarrassment in the face of the absoluteness of God's call? (tremor) Where am I called to throw the centre of my existence inside out and to move towards the other (Message)? What is my insecurity (objection) 'Who am I?' What is for me the sign of God's comforting presence: 'I'll be with you!'

This is also a vocation story. There is a messenger who appears: There is a kind of absolute moral evidence which causes great perplexity. There is a kind of message, an order; go and see that man. There is a fundamental feeling of doubt and a strong objection 'Who am I?' Finally there is a kind of confirming sign that the trip should come off - the woman behind her who gave the final push.

Here we don't have to think of world-shaking experiences. God calls people in many ways, every day. Not long ago I heard a story about a special call. In one of our parishes the parish priest attended a meeting of the women members of the visiting group for the sick and the elderly. One of the women told the story of a man who had been living in one of the apartments where she lived. One night he had come home drunk. His wife started to rail at him and he started to beat her. The next morning it turned out that she had died from a cerebral haemorrhage. He got three years. The woman told his story in the visiting group and one of the women immediately said: They should have given him ten years instead of three. The priest did not react to it but asked; Do you think you should visit him? There was only silence. Afterwards the woman concerned told the priest that, when he asked the group 'Do you think you should visit him?, it suddenly was perfectly clear to her that she herself should go and see him. So the next Saturday she went to visit him. (Nevertheless she felt prepared to visit the old and the sick but not prepared to visit criminals in prison). When she discovered how the man in the prison reacted to her visit, she went to see him every month.

In meditating these five confirming signs we can also recall the spiritual experience of the first Marists. At the very beginning there was the mysterious voice heard by Courveille: 'I was the support of the new-born Church. I shall be also at the end of time!'. There was the experience of Fr. Colin being embraced by a forceful reality, far stronger than his own self: 'The movement that brought me to this business was less a voluntary one involving my own choice, than an interior movement, I would say nearly irresistible'. The mere idea of the Society fills his heart not so much with tremor as with consolation, confidence, joy and sweetness. There is the message, 'conviction that the Society was in the designs of God, and that it would succeed, although I did not know how and by what means nor whether my work for it would be of any use some day.' Colin has the 'Who am I?' (objection)experience: 'When composing his rules he was sometimes sickened by the feeling of his unworthiness and his inability; then he would fall on his knees before the image of Mary and, his eyes fervently fixed on her, would cry out, 'Who am I to do your work?' At several times he receives clear signs that he is on the right track. When visiting Cerdon this summer we went by the hill of La Coria, where Fr. Colin one early morning during the summer of 1823, on his way to Belley, felt a sudden and invincible repugnance: 'On one of the trips I made for the society, and I made many, it seemed to me that all the demons were after me to prevent me from making it. Yes, I really believe it was so. I felt weighed down! …I couldn't hold myself up. I felt an invincible repugnance!…After twenty minutes on the road I threw myself upon my knees in the moon-light, in the middle of the road, and I said, 'My God, if it is not your will, then I won't do it. But if you want it, give me back my strength and thus show me whether it is your will. 'All at once, I felt relieved, gay buoyant; I ran like a hare.'

Meditating the different elements of each vocation, we should take into account that the theme of call and vocation is not very popular in our culture. Openness for this theme supposes openness for the presence of the Other in my life. But the emphasis in our culture is often more on the self than on the other, whether the word 'other' is written with capital letter or with minuscule. The idea of 'being called' often has made way for 'self-determination' and the idea of mission for 'self-fulfilment'. Many people don't like to be called. And many religious don't like to call either (which is part of our vocations problem). We don't like to call others because we know that most people don't like to be called. They want to remain where they are. They don't want to go where the others are, where the Other is. Faith for them is a shop, where they walk in, free of any commitment and where they get out as soon as somebody starts asking: 'What do you want, sir? Can I help you?' This is in our individualised society an unspoken law, a silent agreement: 'I leave you in peace, I don't bother you about what you do and what you think: Don't bother me about what I do and about what I think.'

But we all know how much we owe to those who, at the right moment, dare to interrupt our monologue and to disturb this silent agreement. On television I heard a black American woman, who became a famous singer, saying: 'My whole life I'll be grateful to the conductor of our church choir. I was still a teenager when he said to me: You have a beautiful voice. You must train that voice. Take singing lessons. I didn't feel like doing so. His challenge thwarted my plans and I would no longer lead a life of ease. But he said to me: 'Use that voice!' That's how I discovered my vocation!' Daily life can easily become a kind of monologue, by which one talks to oneself and by which one just talks himself into believing that the way he goes is the way God wants him to go. We need to be interrupted by calls from across the street. God is not afraid to interrupt us in our monologue. A hermit in the desert went to a spiritual leader and said to him: 'God calls me to join the monastery'. The spiritual director said: 'If you are always alone, you speak to yourself. How do you know you are not kidding yourself into imagining that it is God who calls you? The hermit said: When I try to speak, God cuts me short and interrupts me.' Then his director let him go.

Who calls me? It was a delicate question for Bonhoeffer. In 1939 he left Germany and had many reasons for it. He got a call from America for an important lecture tour. He booked on a passenger boat 'Bremen'. The ship was on the way out and Bonhoeffer was more and more faced with an embarrassing question: 'Is it God who calls me to leave Germany in this crucial moment?' Aware of the danger of self-deception he wrote to the Association of protestant ministers to which he belonged, a letter that is a moving testimony of his interior struggle: 'Great programs always lead us there, where We are. We, however, should let ourselves be found where He is. Whether you work there in Germany or I in America, we are both just there where He is. He takes us with Him. Or did I nevertheless try to flee the place where He is, the place where He is for me? No, God says to me: 'You are my servant'. Afterwards he was pressed on every hand by his American friends to stay in America and there to take up some tasks suitable to his ecumenical awareness and his sensitivity for church life in other countries. He resolved to return to Germany, took one of the last ships back to Germany and wrote in his diary: 'Since coming on board my inner disruption about the future has disappeared'.

Often we don't like to be called. And often we don't like to call. Calling someone is felt like an infringement on human freedom. But we can call someone and at the same time respect his freedom. God doesn't compel Abraham, Moses or Mary. But he solicits their obedience. This element appears most clearly in the narrative of the announcement of the birth of Jesus. The answer of Mary 'I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say' (Lk. 1:38) is of crucial importance in the history of salvation. God does not compel us. He respects our freedom, but, for sure, He calls us. Jesus doesn't compel his disciples to follow Him. But, for sure, He calls them: 'He then went up the mountain and summoned those he himself had decided on, who came and joined him' (Mk. 3:13). Jesus doesn't press his message on his disciples. He respects their freedom and He confronts them with their freedom: 'Do you want to leave me too?' (John 6:67). But, for sure, He is not afraid to call them. He knows that if He wouldn't dare ever to call us, to point out a way for us to go, a direction to choose, he would also harm our freedom. I can only opt for a road if I know that road. And to know that road, often I need somebody to tell me that there is a road. That's how I find my way. If that director of the choir would not have challenged that teenage-girl, she probably never would have become a famous singer. Things start to move, as soon as there is a voice or a Voice that calls. This insight is essential for our vocation ministry. Often we hesitate to point out the road of religious life. We hesitate because we don't want to harm their freedom. And we forget that by not calling them we also harm their freedom, because we keep from them one fascinating option to shape their lives.

So the biblical vocation stories remind us this morning of something very fundamental in the heart of our human existence: that the human person is not a monad which has its centre of gravity in itself, but is depending on a Voice that comes to him from the other side and draws him towards the other side, towards the 'Other' written with capital, and the 'others' written with minuscule. Every calling creates a centre of gravity outside myself. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Samson, Mary: Again and again God calls men and women to bring his people together and to lead his people from suffering and slavery into a new and spacious land. Along the centuries, sufferings and slavery take different shapes and forms, they reach from the slavery of hunger and oppression to the slavery of addiction, of moral licentiousness and religious indifference and ignorance. The history of our Marist vocation is part of this history of mercy, communion and liberation. How and where did it start?

There is a link between the call of Moses and of the first Marists. Fr. Colin had a deeply biblical spirituality, but this did not mean that, in his writings or teachings, he used to analyse the biblical basis of Marist charism. He rather lived the biblical message as he found it in the liturgy, in the breviary and in his spiritual reading. Still quite a number of quotes are to be found in his Constitutions and spiritual talks. So twice in his spiritual talks we find references to the call of Moses. This is the case, when Fr. Colin refers to God's promise to Moses: 'I shall be with you' (Ex. 3:12). It could also be a reference to Deuteronomy 31:23 or to Judges 6:16, where we find the same promise, but it is most probably a reference to the story of Moses. 'I shall be with you!'. Fr Colin refers to these words of God, spoken to Moses, in order to support Marist missionaries, called to carry out the work of God as Moses was. He says on the occasion of Peter Chanel's martyrdom: 'Messieurs, the religious vows are a grace which calls us to great works, to great sacrifices, to great deprivations. But when we know the one who is calling us, when we know that God is everywhere with us - ego ero tecum (I shall be with you) - what, then should we fear.' In the same text we find another link with the story of Moses: the objection of Moses 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?' (Ex. 3:11) In the words of Fr. Colin: 'We must put the man in us aside, and so ask ourselves when we are in the pulpit: Who am I to announce to these souls the good news, to distribute among them the bread of the word of God?' The same quote 'Ego ero tecum' returns in a talk about home missions: 'Surely God does not entrust a man with a task above his strength? Surely, he will be with the man to whom he has entrusted it? Ego ero tecum.' And here again the objections and the embarrassment of the one who is sent, returns: 'A departing missionary is conscious of his weakness - woe to him if he were not!' These few remarks about the quote 'Ego ero tecum' show that the first Marists, almost intuitively, saw their call in the perspective of the great biblical vocation stories.

The General Chapter of 1993 reminds us that the secularised world in which we live, first took its shape in the Age of Enlightenment and French Revolution. The Marist project started in the period of Restoration, when Europeans defined anew their position in the face of what had happened during the period of Enlightenment and Revolution. The ideas of the new philosophies of the Enlightenment and the events of the Revolution had drastically changed Western Europe and shaped the world in which we live today. In that sense we are facing more or less the same challenge the first Marists did, as the General Chapter of 1993 says:

Here we feel the deep concern for the many people in our European societies who are alienated from their faith and from the Church.

The first Marists were not going to publish theological or sociological treatises on the cultural changes in Europe in their time. Struck by the needs and the distress of their fellow men they trust the Voice saying: 'I was the support of the new-born Church; I shall be also at the end of time'. They go out to call people, some to conversion, others to perseverance. Mary teaches them a language, not of fear but of compassion. They will be nothing but instruments of mercy, a mercy that does not humiliate people, but lifts them up. They recognise in Mary a model of life and pastoral commitment. She is the ideal they keep in mind and with whom they identify. It is her spirit they breathe in and out.

In the age of Mary the outreach of God's mercy is symbolised by the wide mantle of Mary, Mother of grace, that here is a norm for everybody - the people of God, the people in the world, religious, priests and lay people, man and woman, old and young, the just and the sinners. They are convinced that God is no less at work in this present age than in the so called Christian civilisation, and that the Marists are called to announce the Gospel to people of this age who after all are their brothers. In these very last times Mary is going to double her efforts to protect the just and to save the unjust. She does not ask the Marists to withdraw from the world, she sends them into this new world to witness to the Kingdom, hidden in this secularised world as the mustard seed in the field and the leaven in the three measures of meal. He sends them to bring together the people of God in a Marian way.

When we look for the mission to which Marists are called, what is decisive is not the missionary methodology, i.e. the question of what methods to use, but the missionary goal, what fields to farm, namely: to gather the just and the unjust into the one Marian people of God. What characterises the Society of Mary is not a specific work, in spite of the traditional esteem for education, home missions and foreign missions, but rather the belief that in a very special way the modern times bring about a 'kairos', a decisive moment in which a decisive battle is waged. This battle is not against the adherents of other religions, not against the heretics, but against unbelief in the heart of the believers themselves. The mission of the Society has to be seen in the light of the growing indifference and unchurched attitude which accompanies the birth of modern European society.

So this missionary perspective is essential and the question whether to accept or to give up certain works has to be decided according to the fundamental criterion, namely; which work best serves our mission. John Paul 11 has coined a phrase to mark the missionary challenge our modern European society implies. He talks about 'new evangelisation'. The new constitutions tell us in number 5 that like the first Marists we too 'are determined to fulfil Mary's desire to be through us a support for the Church in these uncertain times' and in number 8 that Marists 'come to share Mary's zeal for her Son's mission in his struggle against evil and to respond with promptness to the most urgent needs of God's people.' The new constitutions avoid pessimistic undertones about modern culture, which make themselves heard when Colin, and also John Paul 11, on some occasions, talk about modern society. But apart from that, when our constitutions speak about 'mission' they touch substantial elements of what is contained in the expression 'new evangelisation' liked so much by John Paul 11.

Mary unknown and hidden among the first disciples, is for the first Marists 'the icon' of Gods presence in this new world, which requires a hidden way of apostolic work. The emphasis on 'ignoti et quasi occulti' (hidden and as it were unknown) does not say that Marists have to withdraw from the world and even less it is meant to justify cowardliness or laziness. It does not mean the strategy of withdrawal, but the strategy of attack: 'really in actual fact, Messieurs, it is the way to take over everything. It was the approach that the Church followed, and you know that we must have no other model than the early Church'. But it is a special strategy, that respects people as they are and where they are. People today will not discover the traces of God's presence through preachers who impose themselves on their audience or who use spectacular forms of propaganda. Recently I spent one day in Egmond aan Zee, where the Dutch Benedictines have a monastery. In the village, a seaside resort, a protestant evangelisation team was very active. They had organised a kind of procession headed by a nice band. Somebody in a bear's suit danced behind the music, followed by a crowd of children. At the marketplace the procession came to an end, the music stopped, and as everybody shut up, the bear took off his head, looked at the kids, looked at us and at once we all heard the bear's deep bass: 'Do you know Jesus?' I found it amusing rather than edifying and most of the people shook their heads. I am ready to give the benefit of the doubt to each creative evangelisation programme, especially for children, but I still believe that Fr. Colin got down to the crux of the matter when he said that we are not going to win the hearts of people by spectacles and propaganda, but only through the unobtrusive apostolate of faith, sacrifice and prayer. Marists will trust in the God who enlightens men's hearts from the inside. In these last times, in which the final salvation of our world is at stake, the models of the past centuries no longer work. The only model is the new-born Church of the beginnings. Marists are called to begin a new Church as it were.

One of the important results of Marist studies is the discovery that from the very beginning lay Marists have been part of the Marist project. The first Marists feel called to gather the just and the unjust into the one Marian people of God and to be themselves a foreshadowing of the people of God at the end of times: 'so that at the end of time as at the beginning, all the faithful may with God's help be of one heart and one mind in the bosom of the Roman church and that all, walking worthily before God under Mary's guidance, may attain eternal life. For this reason entry into the Society is also open to lay people living in the world in this Confraternity or Third Order of Blessed Mary'. This last phrase from the Summarium of 1833 is significant. In Colin's eyes Marists are no more and no less than the start of the Marian People of God on the way to its fulfilment. Hence his utopian: 'making the whole world Marist'. This sounds rather pretentious. In fact what these words express is the opposite of a far-fetched inflated ego, because they don't aim at the Society itself. The Society can disappear if only God's people will be more like Mary and will live according to her spirit. Colin is carried along by this utopian vision of the people of God led by Mary. He knew intuitively about the relation between Mary and the Church. His utopian vision is close to what the liturgy and the Fathers of the Church say of Mary who already is what the whole Church will be one day, the bride 'without spot or wrinkle' , the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband.

Lay Marists are not the object of the mission of the S.M. but the subject and therefore play an essential role in carrying out the mission of the Society. Here again our spirituality helps us to better understand one of the very crucial developments within our church: the growing insight that the mission of the whole people of God is prior to the distinction between priests and laypeople. It is difficult for us to realise the overpowering force of clericalism in the time before the Council. One of the theologians who did most to fight clericalism, was Yves Congar, who, in 1953, published his pioneering study 'Jalons pour une théologie du laicat' (Paris 1953): Beacons for a Theology of Laity'. At the very beginning he quotes a nice anecdote, reported by the English cardinal and historian Neil Gasquet at the beginning of his study on 'The Layman in the pre-reformation Parish'. A catechumen comes to a catholic priest and asks about the position of the layman in the Catholic Church. The priest answers that, for the layman, there are not one but two positions. In front of the altar he is in a kneeling position and that is his first position. And under the pulpit he is in a sitting position. And that is his second position. Cardinal Gasquet, telling the anecdote, adds a remark. Obviously the priest must have overlooked the third position: of the layman drawing his purse.

Against this background Colin's vision of one Society composed of priests, sisters, brothers and also laypeople was certainly an innovative inspiration which could have been far more productive than it has been in reality. According to Fr. Colin's vision the Society of Mary should anticipate the Marian people of God 'so that at the end of time as at the beginning, all the faithful may with God's help be of one heart and one mind in the bosom of the Roman Church and that all, walking worthily before God under Mary's guidance, may attain eternal life. For this reason entry into the Society is also open to lay people living in the world in this Confraternity of the Third Order of Blessed Mary'. The Third Order is for all who want to be Marist without entering religious life. The Third Order is for all who want to be part of the Marian people of God and to share the work of Mary. It builds bridges to gather God's people. Within the one Society there is room for those who are Marists within a religious community as well as for those who are Marists within their family and their secular profession.

Finally the Marist call is no other than the call of the whole people of God. For Colin the Third Order was never just a pious extension of the Society proper. From the beginning it was an integral part of the original project and the Constitutions of 1987 describe and transmit this broad Marist vision officially in numbers 31 and 32. It is the Third Order that gives the Society hands and feet. She must be given ample scope. The Third Order is necessary because there is no time to lose. The broad structure of the Society, in the eyes of Colin, is in inverse proportion to the short time it has at its disposal to carry out its mission. Every believer is therefore called to take an active part in the work of Mary. In the Society there is room for everyone, because Mary is the Mother of mercy who cares equally for all her children. In this way the Society reflects in its structure the big-heartedness of God that it wants to proclaim. 'The congregation of Jesus is a simple body. With the Jesuits you must have talents and many other things. In the congregation of the blessed Virgin, it is not so. She is the mother of mercy. Her congregation will have several branches. It will be open to all kinds of people'. In this sense there is nothing arcane or secretive about the Marist call. It is coextensive with the call of the people of God.