The world today is wounded. Today more than ever there are people who need to feel the love of the Mother, the touch of mercy in a world that rejects the different … it is required that each one first recognize his wounded heart …to be able to accompany the wounded heart of his brother or sister and …be able to see in his neighbor the living face of Christ.

Stabat Mater
Can the human heart refrain?
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother’s pain untold?

In a rapidly changing world, the Marist priests and brothers follow in Mary’s footsteps keeping their eyes fixed on Jesus alone and “understand that Mary is the one who knows that we worship a God for “whom nothing is impossible.”

Stabat Mater
Is there one who would not weep,
Whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ’s dear Mother to behold?

The word Marist is composed of the first three letters of Mary’s name, and the last three letters of Christ’s name. You may begin by looking at Mary, but you always end up looking at Christ.

Stabat Mater
Christ above in torment hangs,
She beneath beholds the pangs,
Of her dying glorious Son.

“For the Marists, the first one who followed Christ in his ‘self-emptying’ was Mary. … She was content not to be seen and made ‘no noise’, as Fr. Colin, SM liked to say: Here is the pattern for the Marists. …in recommending the ‘hidden and unknown’, wants us to empty ourselves, so that, as far as possible, there are only Jesus, his Father and their Spirit working through us. Then egos, ambitions, sensitivities, self-seeking, self-regard, will not get in the way of God’s grace, of which we are to be ministers.”

Stabat Mater
O how sad and sore distressed
Was that Mother, highly blest
Of the sole-begotten One.