Sr Myra Niland, who is currently working in Northern Ireland, believes that in the Marist charism there is hope for our communities and for the secular world of our times.
We of the 21st century western world live in a culture where consciousness of God has almost disappeared from the places where people work, recreate and live their lives and where families and close friends are less likely to be vehicles of faith for the younger generation. As disciples of Jesus, we are part of the diminishing community of believers who experience themselves afloat on this sea of secularity. Where then do I find signs and projects that give me hope that God’s plan of salvation is breaking through in this secular environment?
A deep awareness of our Marist calling.
Firstly, I feel anchored in knowing that we Marists are loved and called by a gracious choice to follow Christ, to participate in his saving mission to all by living the Gospel as Mary did. This conviction gives direction to my life and fills me with confidence. In the climate of today I feel the need to nourish that calling and frequently look to Mary, a 1st century Jewish woman who lived in Roman occupied Palestine; there, together with a small minority group, she succeeded in keeping alive the hope that God’s promise of a new reality for her people would eventually unfold. It is encouraging to reflect that it was within this context she discerned God’s ‘gracious choice’ of her in the realization of his saving plan in Christ.
An appreciation of God’s hidden activity
I find hope, too, in the project outlined for us in our constitutions: “our lives have no meaning if they do not proclaim Jesus Christ present in the world, transforming and saving it”. We are privileged to be given Mary from whom we can learn how to be attentive to the manifestations of the presence of God’s kingdom without our making it explicitly present. She who nourished her God hidden in the silence and stillness of her womb creates for us a vision within which we are able to bless and honour God’s hidden presence in the goodness, energy, zest, and the values of human dignity, freedom, as well as the good fruits of our nature and enterprise that we perceive within secularity. It is very positive and hopeful to find Marists who appreciate the goodness and beauties there is in the human heart and see there the mystery of love that goes beyond each person.
Journeying towards spiritual maturity
The lives of many Marists reveal that their calling is a source of life not only for themselves but for others. They have come to a deep personal experience of a loving and compassionate God that has energized and centred their lives; in the area of spiritual accompaniment and guidance they help many who are coming to recognize in themselves a deep yearning for a God other than the God they rightly rejected and whose image had inhibited them from surrendering to the work of grace.
Witness of life
Throughout the congregation there is a new awareness of the richness embedded in our charism for life and mission. For me this is a sign of hope that allows me to look with confidence into the future. Together with friends and lay Marists we have drawn fresh strength from the sources that were highlighted during the Jeanne-Marie Chavoin Year. It is hopeful to see how many people find the vision of our founders relevant in the context of the present-day culture.
It is particularly heartwarming to find the apostolic thrust of the formula ‘hidden and unknown’ being lived out by Marists today. It shines forth from those who are willing to walk with the displaced and vulnerable and who, without quenching the smoking flax, can listen to and feel the deep-down pain of those who, lost in a spiritual wilderness, are not satisfied with merely accumulating consumer goods. By the simplicity of their own lives and without pretence or sense of superiority, these Marists help our consumerist society to say: “I have enough! I am enough as I am with the life that has been given”.
A similar aspect of Marist spirituality is evident too in the attitudes and dispositions of those who carry out ordinary tasks in everyday living and often in extremely trying situations with extraordinary generosity, compassion and fidelity. They are the heart of communities that seek to be more life giving for all the members. Concrete experiences of self-sacrificing love, spontaneity, joy and an openness that welcomes difference as gift speak in quiet and convincing ways a language of witness and solidarity that can still be heard in our secularized society.
Despite the fact that there is much in our world and society to be concerned about we rest assured that Mary will support the hope of those who continue her Work in making Christ present there transforming and saving it.
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