Jan Hulshof sm

We seem to have here in Luke 11:27f. a variant of the saying on the true kinsfolk of Jesus in Luke 8:19f. In Luke 8 it is the visit of the relatives of Jesus who wish to see Him, that provides the occasion for the saying concerning the true kinsfolk of Jesus: ?My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act upon it?. In Luke 11 it is the cry of the woman from the crowd extolling the privileges of the mother of Jesus that provides the occasion for the saying: ?Rather blest are they who hear the word of God and keep it.? This cry of the woman from the crowd is very expressive and typical of oriental culture. There are three elements in her cry. First of all what she really wants to extol is not the mother but the son. Secondly she extols the son by extolling the mother. And in the third place she extols the mother by extolling the physical symbols of motherhood and fertility: the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him. There are quite a number of parallels in rabbinical literature. For instance Rabbi Abba b. Zutra said (about 270) a similar word about Rahel, the mother of Joseph and there also the mother is extolled because of the son: ?Blest are the breasts that nursed him and blessed is the womb that bore him?.

This is the second of the three summary passages which outline the chief characteristics of the Jerusalem community. The first summary of Acts 2:42-47 underlines the adherence of the first Christians to the teachings of the Twelve; the centering of their life on the breaking of the bread; a distribution of goods that led wealthier believers to sell their properties in order to support the poor members of the community; their daily attendance at the Temple, which shows that in the very beginning there was little or no thought of a definitive separation between Christians and Jews; their common meals; their praising of God and their increase in numbers resulting from the quality of community life. The second summary of Acts 4:32-35, which we read above, starts with the famous words: ‘The community of believers were of one heart and one mind’. It highlights again the distribution of goods among the members of the community and it speaks of the powerful witnessing to the resurrection of the Lord by the apostles. The third summary, of Acts 5:12-16, underscores the Twelve as the bulwark of the Jerusalem community and their charismatic power to heal the sick and it speaks again of the great numbers of men and women that were continually added to the Lord. Scripture scholars assure us that these summaries are not just meant as historic descriptions of something that happened in the past.

The Acts of the Apostles portray the community of Jerusalem as a kind of ‘paradise lost’ and a paradise to be regained. We are called to keep alive the vision of community as it was lived in the golden age of the beginning and as it will be realised at the end of time. What do these summaries tell us? First of all that each Christian community is based on communion with God and on communion among its members: on the Word of God, the teaching of the apostle’s and worship on the one hand and on the sharing of houses, money and food on the other hand. Both dimensions, the divine and the human, come together in the breaking of the bread. Thirdly these summaries tell us that a Christian community is not a closed circuit, but open to the outside world, to every man and woman. A Christian community is called in this world to bear witness to the resurrection of the Lord with powerful signs and wonders. These summaries tell us that the Jerusalem Church did not bother too much about itself, it existed for an aim outside itself. It did not bother about numbers. It did just what it was called to do: to worship God, live out the Gospel and bear witness to the resurrection. This Church did not sell itself, but bore witness to the Lord. It did not attract people by propaganda and publicity, but by its very life, and so new members, men and women, were added ‘by the Lord’ (Acts 2:47) and ‘to the Lord’ (Acts 5:14).

No doubt our Founders were very much inspired by the early Church. Colin referred several times to the words ‘Cor unum et anima una’ of Acts 4:32. When he wrote his rule in Cerdon, the reference to the apostolic community was a guiding principle, not invented by himself but received from on high: That is what he said to his secretaries in 1869: ‘I had received the command to look only to the apostles and to no other religious society’ . This is not a casual remark. The reference to the community of the apostles returns several times during Fr. Colin's generalate. Two years after the approval of the Society Fr. Colin remarks: ‘When I first presented my request to Rome, it was with the great hope that, through it, the last centuries of the world would see what the first century witnessed: the multitude of believers having but one heart and one soul .’ When Colin said these words, he had already experienced on a small scale that they were not just theory. His residence was in La Capucinière in Belley. He lived there as a Superior of the house in his first three years as Superior General. A biographer of Colin, writing of this community, said: . . . the family spirit, with its deep affection and the relaxed and cordial atmosphere that characterised mutual relationships, was one of the charms of life at La Capucinière. Despite difference of age or social condition, these theology students, who sometimes originated from 20 different dioceses, made only one heart and one soul.

A novice during those years wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘How wonderful, how good, to live as only one heart and soul: cor unum et anima una. It is a sight that at my first coming to this house made an extraordinary impression on me’ . In the spring of 1841 we hear the words which have become so well known in our Society: ‘As for ourselves, we do not take any congregation for our model, we have no other model than the new-born Church. The Society began like the Church; we must be like the apostles and those who joined them and were already numerous: Cor unum et anima una. They loved each other like brothers’ . On 23rd September 1846 Fr. Colin, according to Mayet, said ‘in a somewhat mysterious and uneasy manner’ that ‘ in our very earliest days’ it was ‘foretold that the Society of Mary was to take as a model none of the congregations which preceded it: no, nothing of all that; but that our model, our only model, was to be and indeed was the early Church .’ Four days later the same topic returns: ‘You know that we must have no other model than the early Church’ . As Fr. Coste has remarked. Fr. Colin perceived this reference to the Jerusalem community as a directive coming from on high and governing the whole of his work.’ ‘What Colin felt was expected of him, Fr. Coste says, was not that he should pick up here and there elements of a good legislative text, but that he should take his inspiration from the primitive Church to produce something new, to express a form of life capable or renewing the impact of the first community; it was this that mattered, not the fact of adding one more congregation to those registered in the offices of the Holy See.’

Number 109 of the summarium of 1833 contains, according to Coste, a strong indication that the primitive rule already contained such a reference to the Church of the Acts of the Apostles. The Summarium clearly expresses the hope of seeing come about '‘at the end of time what was seen at the beginning’ the ‘cor unum et anima una’ of Acts, 4,32. We find the words ‘one heart and one mind’ in the spiritual Testament of Fr. Champagnat of 6th June 1840: ‘Be of one heart and one mind. Have the world say of the little Brothers of Mary, what they said of the first Christians: See how they love one another’. And the expression turns up also in the last recorded words of Jeanne-Marie Chavoin of 29th June 1858: ‘Always be a bond of union between your sisters so that all may have but one heart and one soul and so draw down heaven’s blessing on this house’.

Not long ago we meditated the texts of the Acts of the Apostles with a group of younger lay Marists. At once I discovered that each generation has its own sensitivity to certain aspects of the Scripture. When we recalled how much the unity of heart and soul had been underlined by our founders, a young student said: ‘I feel always a bit anxious and short of breath, when people start talking about how fine it is to be united. It makes me feel like in a classroom or in a scouting group where we had to wear the same uniform. I don’t like too much unity, I like to be different. I need a bit of space between myself and others.’ When we entered the matter further, we discovered that we don’t call our congregation a unity, but rather a community, that the word ‘communion’ is to be preferred to ‘unity’; that ‘communion’ implies a relationship between people who are different and whose differences should be an enrichment of the group and not just a problem to overcome; and finally that the first Summarium of the Acts of the Apostles says that the Christians devoted themselves, not to unity, but to ‘koinonia’, which means ‘communion’ (2:42). As a matter of fact also in ecumenical circles people more and more discover that Jesus’ prayer for ‘unity’ has to be understood in terms of ‘communion’ rather than ‘uniformity’.

In 1964 patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople was asked by a journalist of the catholic French newspaper ‘La Croix’: ‘Do you believe that there will soon come a reunification of the Greek Orthodox Church with the Church of Rome? Athenagoras answered: ‘There has never been unity!’ Then he said to the surprised reporter: ‘There was a time we lived in communion and there will be a time we shall live in communion again'. I believe, by the way, that mothers are more sensitive to differences than fathers are. In our parish, there was a mother with four children. The oldest girl had gone to a convent, the youngest boy was in prison. The second girl was a drug addict and the oldest boy earned a decent living and had a fine family. The mother used to say: ‘How different they are and how different they were already when I got them. But I love them all the same. I think mothers are artists of otherness. I can’t help for recalling a word of Fr. Colin: ‘The congregation of Jesus is a single 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.’ ‘Koinonia’, ‘communion’ implies openness to all kinds of people.

On the 12th of February this year your president Mary McAleese delivered in Rome an inspiring address to missionaries: ‘Mission-A Hand of Friendship Across the Divide’, where she explained how much the future of our world depends on our capacity ‘to teach the next generation respect, real respect for difference – to take from them and to bury the old bastions of contempt.’ ‘How wonderful it would be if religion – the source of so much conflict in the past – could in future become the source of unity – if the wasteful quest for uniformity could become a radical call to acceptance of diversity as the essential prelude to unity. ’ To be of one heart and one soul obviously is the fruit of immense learning and suffering. This applies to the world as a whole, to the Churches, to religious communities and to families as well.

Of course, we should not believe the reference to the first community of Jerusalem to be an exclusive Marist ear-mark. Fr. Colin is not the first founder to draw inspiration from the vision of the Jerusalem community in order to renew Christian life. We read in the ‘Life of St. Augustine’ by Possidius: ‘As soon he had become a priest, Augustine founded a monastery on the grounds of the church of Hippo. He went to live there together with the other servants of God following the way and the guidelines established at the times of the saint apostles. The gist of it is: ‘None in this community could claim anything as his own, but they were to have everything in common and everybody was to get what he needed (Acts 4:32-35).’ In the very first Chapter of his Rule, St. Augustine says that the monks have to be ‘Cor unum et anima una’ in God. After St. Augustine the memory of the Jerusalem community has become an inspiring driving force of many communities. What is typical for Colin is the way he links the first community with the mother of Jesus: ‘Cor unum et anima una'. They loved each other like brothers. And they, ah! no one knows what devotion the apostles had for the blessed Virgin! What tenderness for this divine mother! How they had recourse to her! This relationship of devotion and support between Mary and the apostles is even stronger these last times. In his closing address at the retreat of 1847 Fr. Colin says to the Marists who are going to leave in various directions: ‘Yes, Messieurs, cor unum it anima una’: we shall not be united in body, in the same place . . . , but very much so in heart and mind’ . . . ‘Let us then all be cor unum et anima una in this divine heart, in the heart of our Mother’ .

Mary inspired the primitive Church with its essential features: sense of mercy, openness for all kinds of people, desire to be ‘cor unum et anima una’., preference for the hidden values of the unlettered and the poor, ardent zeal to bear witness to the resurrection of the Lord. Mary inspires the Church of these last times with the same attitudes. I notice that quite a few Marists are not really at ease with the way Fr. Colin associates the Jerusalem community with Mary. Apart from Acts 1:14 there seems to be no biblical base for it. And the works of Maria de Agreda are not really fit to fill the vacuum. This is not the right time to dwell on this question. The only thing I want to say is that the vision of Fr. Colin is not just the product of personal piety. One only needs to read the beautiful patristic study of Hugo Rahner ‘Our Lady and the Church’ , to become aware of a vast iconographic, liturgical and theological tradition that seems to blend the figures of Eve, Mary and the Church. Rahner refers, for instance, to the spiritual commentary on the Acts of the Apostles by Arator, a poet of the VI century. Arator tells how the apostles, after the Ascension of Jesus, return to the gates of Jerusalem, where they will receive the Holy Spirit. In the mystical sense of the word, they return to the Gate from where Christ, distributor of the Spirit, comes towards us, they return to Mary, the Mother of the Church. And therefore Arator extols the Holy Virgin, round whom the apostles and the faithful rally. She is the Gate, the Beginning of the Ecclesia. And he contemplates in one sole vision the beginning and the end, the conception of Christ and Pentecost, in as far as Pentecost implies the birth of the spirit which enlightens all people.

There is one other element which is quite original for Colin - Model for the whole people of God. Colin does not see the Jerusalem community as a model only for religious, but as a model for the Church at large. In Church history the memory of the Jerusalem community lived on especially in religious communities. Originally, however, the Jerusalem community was not the model of a religious community, but of the Christian community as such, the community of believers called to be different from the world and its way of life. When in the third and fourth century gradually many people became Christians, the zeal of the Christian communities was fading. Christians began to live in a Christian empire. They were no longer different from the world. At that time Christians went to the desert in order to live a life different from the world. Communities of monks turned up. From now on the ideal of Acts was lived out in religious communities.

What I find interesting is Fr. Colin's hope, expressed in number 109 of the summarium of 1833, of seeing come about, through the Third Order of Mary, what was seen at the beginning: the whole Church living ‘cor unum et anima una’. The ideal of the Jerusalem community was given back to the people of God, men and women, children, and old people, lay people and priests, sinners and just. And the Society of Mary is called to prepare this new people of God. In the eyes of Colin our Society therefore is nothing else but an experimental garden, a testing station, to try out in daily life the model of this Marian Church. This Marian Church is an evangelising Church. It attracts people from outside, not by propaganda or publicity, but because it answers the deepest longings of people. It is a Church full of mercy, not a closed circuit, but open to all kind of people. In this Church exist communion and solidarity, especially with those most in need. In this Church there is a real communion, first of all between rich and poor, but also between women and men, between lay people and ordained ministers and finally between the different particular Churches.

The phrase 'Of one heart and one mind' indicates an ideal. But it can also be misunderstood. A community of Christians is not just a club for sociable company. As soon as it becomes inward directed it looses its strength. A community is directed towards a reality that goes far beyond itself. If we forget this, we easily get entangled in all kinds of conflicts and problems. A community is directed towards a reality that is bigger than itself. We call it the Kingdom of God. Therefore we call a community, missionary.

The communion with God and with others needs to be celebrated, explicitly and regularly in prayer, in worship, in the Eucharist. Prayer and worship therefore always have been and are still today our first priority. This is what the first Christians felt. This is what we feel today. Thirty years ago some Christians were so impressed by Marxist criticism of religion that they almost felt inclined to apologise for praying and not spending all their time in social action. I remember discussions in the sixties at the university of Munster, where young priests were questioning seriously the usefulness of praying with the sick in the hospital instead of analysing and fighting the economic, social and psychological conditions that make people ill in our capitalist society. Diametrically opposed to this very secular mentality is the insight of all the religions that there are sufferings and sorrows that can only be healed by prayer. Sometimes heaven can only be cracked by prayer, as it is shown in a Chassidic Tale.

Wise people have always known that prayer and social awareness shouldn’t be put off against one another. They rather reinforce each other. Jean Vanier says that often a community stops crying to God when it has itself stopped hearing the cry of the poor, when it has become self-satisfied and set for a way of ease and security. It is when we are aware of the distress and misery of our people and of their suffering, when we see them in need and sense our own inability to do much about it, that we will cry loudly to God. When a community really is in touch with people in need, their cry becomes its own. Indeed, when all the treasures of Grace seem to be locked, we need experts to open them. Prayer and worship are a first priority of every Christian community and of course also of every Marist community as our Constitutions clearly point out, especially in the section ‘Everyday Life’ (114-115)

What does the memory of the Jerusalem community bring about in our lives? We got very much used to the word ‘mission’ as the crux, the essence of our Marist vocation. In our constitutions there is no word that occurs so often, apart from the name Mary and, believe it or not, the word ‘provincial’. The frequent use of the word ‘mission’ is a message in itself. For Colin, Chavoin and Champagnat our Society was not a purely inner communion of men and women imbued with the same spirit, no matter what work they did. The Society for them was a religious body called to carry out a mission for the good of the whole people of God at this crucial watershed in history. So we understand why our new Constitutions use the word ‘mission’ so often. Still, the word runs the risk of misunderstanding. ‘Mission’ is not equivalent to ‘missionary activities’. We are missionary, first of all through our lives and only at a later stage also through our activities. A Marist can fulfil his mission entirely, even if, for whatever reason, he doesn’t take part in any missionary activity. But no Marist, as active as he might be, can fulfil his mission, if his life itself is not evangelical, if he is not really devoted to prayer, to the sharing of goods, to the sharing of life. That’s why the memory of the Jerusalem community is decisive. It shows that everything begins with common worship, brotherly love, mutual solidarity: the sharing of prayer, goods and life. This is the heart of the primary mission of every religious community.

In a very profound sense a community does not only have a missionary project, it is a missionary project. A community is more than a home base for missionary activities. It is a mission in itself. Communion and mission are two aspects of the same reality. If people, because they are totally wrapped up in their activities, neglect their community, they do harm to their mission. If people are totally wrapped up in their mutual relations and forget about the outside world, they do harm to their community. Jean Vanier, the founder of the ark-communities tries to explain why. He refers to Bruno Bettleheim who said that he was convinced that communal life can flourish only if it exists for an aim outside itself. ‘Community is viable if it is the outgrowth of a deep involvement in a purpose which is other than, or above, that of being a community. ’ Jean Vanier comments: ‘The more authentic and creative a community is in its search for the essential, the more its members are called beyond their own concerns and tend to unite. The more lukewarm a community becomes towards its original goals, the more danger there is of its membership crumbling, and of tensions. Its members will no longer talk about how they can best respond to the call of God and the poor. They will talk instead about themselves and their problems, their wealth or their poverty, the structures of the community. There is a vital like between the two poles of community; its goal and the unity of its members’ . In the Acts of the Apostles, the goal of the Jerusalem community is not community in itself, but communion with God and communion with others.

The communion with God and with men needs to be lived out in our witness. ‘With power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus . . .’ Evangelisation is our third priority. It is a matter of communication, of dialogue, of listening and speaking. But how to evangelise today? People today are more conscious of their independence and freedom than ever before. The verb ‘evangelise’ doesn’t tolerate the passive voice, a direct object. People don’t like to be worked on by evangelists. More than ever before they refuse to be overshouted. We know that the problem of evangelisation will not be solved by amplifiers. The problem is not that the message is not heard, but that the message that people hear is no answer to their needs. In present day Europe many of the people who never go to any Church are searching for authenticity, freedom, peace, friendship, healing and reconciliation. All research points in that direction. But whatever they are looking for, they want to be respected in their autonomy and in their freedom of conscience.

This throws the Church off balance because it does not allow for the sort of social control on which it traditionally relied. Still, I am sure Jesus would say to many people today what he said to the scribe: ‘You are not far from the reign of God’ . Aren’t they quite close to Jesus? Doesn’t he himself invite them to exercise their own responsibility, where He downgrades the importance of all earthly fathers, teachers and masters, where He fights the hypocrites, stands up for the purity of human intentions and calls people to a new justice? We should recognise that the emphasis on freedom and authenticity is basically a Gospel value. Jesus challenges people to convert from what is not authentic, not truthful and from whatever amounts to pure formalities. He calls them to return to the pure but hidden origin of their lives, the mystery that He calls ‘Our Father’ . Yes, to many people today whom we call ‘unchurched’ Jesus would say: ‘You are not far from the reign of God’. How should we have the right to disagree with Him? In this situation it’s worthwhile to listen to our Constitutions. They tell that we can learn from Fr. Colin, and like him from Mary, how to approach the work of evangelisation. The spirit of ‘hidden and unknown’ should help us to be gentle with other people, respectful of their freedom, and sensitive to their point of view. So our spiritual tradition can help us to announce the Gospel in such a way that our message strikes a chord with the deeper desires of people in our time. Our own spiritual tradition is a school to train us in attitudes that are basic for evangelisation in a secularised world, especially among youth.

‘Through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders occurred among the people’ (Acts 4:33, 5:12). Social justice and education are crucial signs and wonders of our time and they are our fourth priority. They are an integral part of evangelisation. Preaching the Gospel is a particularly difficult task today. People today are more pragmatic than ever before. They don’t like words. They like experience, they like life. But there is a misunderstanding. Evangelisation is not just a matter of words. It’s a matter of words and works. I am struck by the unbreakable link between word and sign, preaching and healing in the life of Jesus, the apostles and the saints. I’m convinced that people became believers through signs rather than through words. They became Christians through the works of mercy, through experiences of healing, nursing, teaching and housing rather than through sermons and discussions. Especially in the beginnings of our Society there has been a particular sensitivity to the needs of the poor, the illiterate, the prisoners, the sick and the homeless. One only has to look at the home missions of the Marist fathers, at the first schools of the Marist brothers, at the fact that visiting the prisoners and the sick is referred to in the Cerdon Constitutions not only as ‘a means’ but as one of the ‘objectives’ of the Society. In the Constitutions of 1872 the visiting of the prisoners and the sick is just one of the various means to obtain the second goal of the Society. Marists in Europe were at that time perhaps already less close to the underprivileged. In the new Constitutions, number 12 mentions the visiting of the sick and the imprisoned as works of mercy, implied in the missionary call of the Marists. There is however a remarkable addition: ‘They attend especially to the most neglected, the poor, and those who suffer injustice. Even though the phrasing sounds somewhat paternalistic, this is the first time the Society’s Constitutions, when speaking about the missionary call of the Marists, bring up the theme of injustice.

Number 111 calls our involvement in matters of justice an integral part of evangelisation. Through this statement the new Constitutions subscribe to the wording of Evangelii Nuntiandi (no 29), which through the Puebla documents acquired such a prominent place in the Church’s policy. Our relationship to the poor, to the illiterate, to the victims of oppression, is not only a matter of mercy but of justice as well. And this commitment to justice is an integral part of evangelisation. For the General Chapter of 1993 the preferential option for the poor and marginalised is one of the important criteria for choosing a ministry. (In the same sense, the Chapter, when establishing basic criteria for choosing a ministry emphasises that we are called ‘ to consecrate ourselves to all forms of education, especially with youth. ) Marists are called ‘to have direct contact with the poor and the marginalised; to pursue action for justice as integral to evangelisation; to find concrete ways to live out our commitment with the poor wherever we minister by being attentive, in the light of the Gospel, to the ways in which the poor analyse the causes of their own impoverishment; by becoming fully aware of the mechanisms which create poverty (e.g. international debt) ’. What the statements concerning a preferential option for the poor really imply, in terms of changes, conversion, and sacrifices, does not appear from the texts.

So we come to the fifth priority, Marists will pray, evangelise, commit themselves to works of justice and education. They also build up the local Christian community. This is the fifth priority. In the spirit of Fr. Colin the type of Christian community to build up, is basically a Marian community, guided by the Queen of the Apostles, hidden and unknown and yet imbuing everything with her spirit. Their sensitivity to the Marian face of the Church should help Marists to build up the Church and to overcome the divisions that hurt the communion of the Church;

- Mary confronts ordained ministers in the Church with the dignity of all who in the Nazareth of their daily lives, far from priests and temple, live in faith, hope and charity. In a Marian Church there is no place for clericalism, neither in its older forms, nor in its newer, more subtle forms. In this sense the General Chapter of 1993 points at ‘the providential coincidence between the Church’s rediscovery of the central importance of the laity . . . and Fr. Colin’s ideas to involve the laity in renewing the Church in the spirit of Mary’

- The utopian vision of the Marian People of God should incite us to a profound ecumenical attitude. As image of the pilgrim Church Mary reminds all the Churches of God that they are still on the way in faith, hope and love. As image of the Church, fulfilled and fully healed, free of spot or wrinkle, she reminds all the Churches that no Church is fully catholic, no Church is fully healed, until it is reconciled and in communion with each of its sister Churches.

- The Church will become a real communion only when men and women in public life as well as in the Church, in the fields of proclamation and service, of liturgy and governance, learn to work together as equals. The Marian profile of the Church, faith, hope and love, should become the more important one. Only then will there be room to shape the ministries, so to speak the Petrine profile, in such a way that the equal dignity of all the baptised is recognised. This is what Marists should be working on.

Prayer, evangelisation, commitment to justice, education and commitment to the local Church are our priorities. But the field is wide and the options are many. What is the decisive criterion for Marists? The General Chapter of 1993 emphasises the apostolate of mercy to those most in need as the first basic criterion for choosing a ministry: ‘We are called to establish future projects to meet real and urgent human needs (Const. 8,14) acknowledging that we are chosen to be instruments of mercy, revealing the maternal face of God’. Mary McAleese to whom I referred earlier, has explained better than any religious author could, what these words of our Constitutions mean: that we are chosen to reveal the maternal face of God. She says:

Our Constitutions remind us of the apostolate of mercy of the first Marists as a founding experience of the Society. ‘Like the first missionaries in Bugey they proclaim the Good News of God's mercy to those most in need’ The first Marists had to define their attitude when they faced the moral rigorism that marked the Church climate in France and elsewhere in the nineteenth century. Fr. Colin himself had learned this moral rigorism in the major seminary, but in the course of the Bugey missions his attitude changed, first in the confessional and then also in his moral preaching. In 1838-1839 he declared: ‘In the Society we shall profess all those opinions which give greatest play to the mercy of God. ’ The attitude of mercy did not only appear in the confessional, but his whole approach was characterised by gentleness and understanding. During our holiday we took a walk that started and finished in Tenay, a Little town in Le Bugey, one of the places where Marists went to preach a mission. At the beginning of the last century some weaving mills had come to the village.

In the Mayet Memoirs we find an echo of the specific problems the Marists had to face there. ‘Father Ducournau said to them, Father, in one parish where I gave a mission there were some factories. The works manager prevented his workers from coming to our talks. What should we have done? Well, in that case, Father Colin replied, ‘a little patience and balm, not speaking out, making excuses for them, expressing regret that the managers’ business did not allow them to arrange suitable times for the workpeople. If some should come, you should compliment them, speak to them kindly, show your gratitude to their masters . . . That happens several times and little by little they all come. The managers are ashamed of their behaviour. While I myself was giving missions, we went once to quite a large town where there were some factories. We adopted that approach and everyone followed the mission. It was at Tenay, near Belley.’ Fr. Colin recalls the Tenay experience in the context of a discussion on the attitudes of the Marists to the rich and to the poor. Colin certainly did not want Marists to be thick with the rich. They should be life Jesus: ‘He was a man of the people. He was always with the poor, he loved the poor, the ordinary people, and he was constantly surrounded by them. Let him be our model.; Still the Marists have to be careful not to reject the rich, who because of their education and pride are far more sensitive to the slightest sign of clericalism. They have to be saved as well:

Some people may think that the preaching of Gods mercy, so characteristic for the apostolate of the first Marists, today has lost its interest. We all know too well that since the second Vatican Council this strict morality has been subject to severe criticism. Some people clearly state today that the post-conciliar criticism of Jansenistic rigorism in its turn has now gone to the other extreme. I know in my country young priests and even bishops who just cynically laugh at the broad-minded Church for all people. Rather than what they call ‘the watered-down Christianity of the masses’ they call for the small flock, for the undiluted wine of strict Gospel morality. Marists will find in their spirituality reasons not to put the problem that way. Do we have to choose between the straight way and the open places? Between Jesus as He drives the money changers out of the temple and Jesus as He eats with publicans and sinners? Only love can reconcile the apparent contradictions of the Gospel. Love asks for more than the law and gives more than what is due. A pastoral approach of compassion does not offer easy compromises with human sinfulness but helps people to grow to their measure of fullness and surrender to God’s love. It will be one of the most demanding challenges for each Marist, individually, and for each Marist community and province, to find concrete ways to turn our preaching of God’s mercy into attitudes, actions, teachings and structures of reconciliation, accompaniment and help and so to contribute to the never ending task of building the community of ‘one heart and one soul’.