Whew… a heavy stuff…. and for many reasons!

The obvious one is that this is a very personal experience of the man… It simply implies that there may be other ways of seeing Marcellin, and in particular, his passion… But I am sure we could agree on this, as it is written in the latest document on Marist spirituality, Water from the Rock: Marcellin is “a man of passion for God and a man of compassion for humanity.”

I will not be surprised if the First Brothers were inspired by Marcellin especially when he said: “Everytime I see young people and children I long to catechize them to make them realize how much Jesus Christ loves them.” Aside from listening to it, they themselves, young as they are, had the first hand experience of the love of Jesus for them in the way Marcellin approached life with them. It seems to me that every encounter with the a young person or a child will be the first and the last opportunity, seemingly with a sense of urgency, to deliver the message of love. But this passion had its roots from his own experience.

 Let me invite you to relive those experiences then…. do you know about his friend who got sick and eventually died when they were still young seminarians?   If not, I am sure you remember the “Montagne” story? It was a tragic experience for Marcellin….. but yet, it was from this experience that his deep compassion for children and young people was confirmed as something that has deeper meaning… a deeper call…. a call with a sense of urgency to share the message…. that is, ¨To make Jesus Christ known and loved.¨

Huh!  ¨To make Jesus Christ known and loved.¨ Had Marcellin missed the experience of being loved by God, he could have hardly told the First Brothers ¨to make Jesus Christ known and loved.¨  This is the mission of the Marist Brothers today…. and this is the reason why we always go back to Marcellin…. because we could always be sure that his experience of Jesus was real and shared….something which is not exclusively personal anymore…. but  something meant for others…. a passion expressed in mission… 

If this  has been the mission of the Brothers since,  I wonder how many people today share in the experience of Marcellin…. and like the First Brothers, you, too, may have been inspired by him.  I will be very interested to hear from your own story. 

But before you start sharing, let me continue and finish first … do you know that Marcellin also had a strategy in keeping alive this passion?  This is his strategy: ¨In order to educate children and young people, you must love them first.¨ Does this sounds like compassion?  Well, i am happy to interpret it that way. 

If you had been to a Marist school, you had known this by heart… I mean, these…. more so if you had been a BMCian/SMCian….

The children and young people Marcellin speaks about today are those who are members of our own family and in our own community…   in our Church…. in our school…..

So, how are you now?  Do these lines from our Founder and Father still resonate in you and in your life?… in your own family?  in your own community, Church or school?

Do you still have the ¨passion for God and compassion for humanity¨ like Marcellin? Let me listen to your story.