New Marist wineskins: The evolving role of the Marist Brothers within a broader ecclesial community

The Marists were one of the ecclesial families to emerge from the extraordinary spiritual and missionary renewal currents flowing through the nineteenth-century French Church, and more specifically its Lyonnais fervour. Their founders imagined a new way of being Church, one that was self-consciously Marian both in its intent and in its character. They saw themselves sharing in the eternal 'work of Mary', as they called it, of mothering Christ-life to birth, of nurturing its growth in themselves and in others, and of standing with the Church as it came to be. Their spirituality emphasised the mercy of God, which they sought to incarnate in affective, relational and immanent ways. They wanted especially to go to people whose circumstances caused them to be furthest from the knowledge of God and the care of the Church and, taking the 'Magnificat' as their charter, they were fired to make real for them the closeness of a loving, faithful and just God. They imagined themselves as a broad movement of people-lay, clergy and religious-structured in a fairly non-hierarchical, complementary and interdependent way. Disappointingly for them, however, the Vatican authorities of the time did not warm to their proposed sense of 'communio'. But now, two centuries later, in a post-Vatican II context, Marists are being afforded the opportunity to be creatively faithful to their founding vision.