Marist Brothers' Foundation Day

January 2, 2010

The Little Brothers of Mary, known better as The Marist Brothers of the Schools, celebrate their 194th "birthday" today. This also the Solemnity of the Epiphany in many dioceses of the United States. The two events complement each other, for since their founding, the Marist Brothers, like the Magi, have labored to bring they youth whom they teach as gifts to Jesus. Our reflection today is authored by Br. Thomas Long, President of Central Catholic High School.

Early this Advent, an elderly and frail man rose to speak to a packed room at the Mount Manresa Retreat House on Staten Island, New York. Poet, legendary peace activist, and Jesuit priest, Father Dan Berrigan’s message to his audience was characteristically clear and simple: “You have no right to tie yourself in knots because you want to know the outcome of what you are doing. Let it go. Let it go into Christ. Let it go into the generations. Let it go into the children. Each of us must think, ‘I am going to turn swords into plowshares. I may never see the transformation myself. It makes no difference. I shall do it.’”

On January 2, 1817, a young and recently ordained priest serving a backwater parish in rural France invited two young men (one a boy, really) to live in a small house near his rectory. They formed the nucleus of a band of brothers Father Marcellin Champagnat had envisioned for some time. Country boys more accustomed to work in the fields than in a classroom, their purpose: to make Jesus known and loved among young people, especially the poor, and to provide these children an education their chaotic society could not. When Father Champagnat died 23 years later, his movement remained essentially a local phenomenon. He did not live to see the Marist Brothers blossom into an international religious community with members and lay associates on every continent, educating hundreds of thousands of young people each year.

The Gospel tells us that the seeds we sow will be harvested by hands other than our own. This is a tough pill to swallow, particularly in an age when “measurable outcomes” are king. But as we relearn again and again, God’s ways are not our ways.

As we continue to bask in the glow of this holy season, we remember Mary, our good mother, who had no idea to what she said “yes” when she accepted the invitation to be the mother of Jesus. Could she possibly have foreseen his early adolescent “temple incident,” much less his controversial, itinerant ministry, his execution at the hands of Roman occupiers, his death and resurrection? Could she have known that the unwed mother would give birth to the savior of humankind?

“You have no right to tie yourself in knots because you want to know the outcome of what you are doing. Let it go. Let it go into Christ. Let it go into the children. I may never see the transformation myself. It makes no difference. I shall do it.”

Bro. Thomas P. Long, F.M.S.
President