Three
years later as he knelt before her statue he received a very
clear message distinctly "in the heart", as he put it. In
the message Mary expressed her desire "in this age of unbelief"
to have a society, one which would bear her name, Society
of Mary" and which would do battle against unbelief. Its members
calling themselves "Marists".
Courveille and eleven other young men in the seminary with him felt themselves inspired to dedicate themselves to founding the Society of Mary in July 1816 at the shrine of Our Lady of
Fourvière, overlooking Lyons. As it turned out, John Claude Courveille was never to found the Society or become a Marist, but some of the basic inspirations of the Marist movement had remained with that group and were to be developed by them.
New names emerge, men and women who are actually to found the Society in its various branches: Saint Marcellin Champagnat, began to establish the Marist teaching brothers in 1816, the very year after the Fourviere pledge. Venerable John Claude Colin was deputised to work on a Constitution for the Marist group and negotiate approval of the Society with the authorities in Rome. Jeanne Marie Chavoin afterwards known as Mother St. Joseph, worked together with John Claude Colin to found the Marist Sisters. Finally, from a group of interested priests, which included Marcellin Champagnat, he established the Marist Fathers.
In January 1836 the Pope confided the missions of Western Oceania in the South Pacific to this new group of Marist Fathers and the following April Rome approved the Society of Mary, Marist Fathers. The following September the first twenty Marist Fathers made their profession and Fr. Colin was elected as the First Superior General. On Christmas Eve 1836, the first group of Marist missionaries left for the missions in Western Oceania in the South Pacific.
Meantime, various groups of lay people began to associate with the society and live the gospel in a Marist spirit. In due course St. Peter Julian Eymard, their director, gave these a rule. From one of these lay groups, another branch of the Marist family was founded, the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary.
Marists have been around for about a hundred and ninety years, but they are very much part of the MODERN world. "In an age of unbelief…" the first Marists wanted to rescue the faith of people to whom God might send them. In God's plan, things do not always work out just the way we anticipate. Marists however, strive to respond faithfully to that vocation in this present age.
