SECTION 2: FORMATION AND TESTING Chapter 1: Thinking, Judging, Feeling and Acting as Mary
Please join in prayer:
Holy Spirit, breathe the spirit of Mary into me.
We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God, Despise not our petitions in our necessities, But deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.
With the last chapter we finished our discussion of choice. Does anyone wish to share anything about that topic or about the invitations for this past month?
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Let’s continue with our references for the first chapter in this section, “Formation and Testing.”
Scripture: “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.” Ezekiel 36:26
Church Documents: “The Virgin Mother is constantly present on this journey of faith of the People of God towards the light.” John Paul II, Mother of the Redeemer, encyclical, 1987
Marist Documents: “If therefore they are and wish to be true children of this dear Mother, let them continually strive to draw upon her spirit and breathe it: a spirit of humility, self-denial, intimate union with God, and the most ardent love of neighbour;and so they must think as Mary, judge as Mary, feel and act as Mary in allthings. . .” Constitutions of the Society of Mary, #49, 1872
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THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES:
Review Why Formation? Formation = Change The Spirit of Mary
REVIEW
In Section One, we discussed choice. God calls each of us, and we, in turn, choose how to respond to God’s call.
With this chapter we begin consideration of formation and testing, the second of the experiences of every disciple of Jesus. Remember, the experiences of choice, formation and mission are not always neatly separated and can overlap.
In the first section we recognized that the People of God are called to a universal mission to love God and neighbor, and that a spirituality is a particular way of relating to God and our neighbor.
We might describe our situation now this way: “Yes, the spirituality of the Marists, the idea of taking Mary’s name and doing her work as a way of relating to God and others, appeals to me. But how do I actually do these things?”
WHY FORMATION?
The learning of the how of our vocation is called “formation.” We laity seldom apply the word “formation” to ourselves. If we use the word at all, we probably apply it to people who are ordained and/or vowed religious. Yet God is always forming and testing all of us. God wants us to become better lovers—lovers of both God and our brothers and sisters. This idea that lay people need formation corresponds with our understanding of the role and mission of the laity. Lay people are active members of the Church with equal responsibility along with the ordained and with vowed religious for helping others know and love God.
We know that priests, sisters and brothers do not stop studying, working and submitting to evaluation. They constantly work to understand not only the teachings of the Church but also the characteristics of the world of their times and places. We lay people have equal responsibility for the Church. Don’t we need training also? As much training as we can get?
Indeed, John Paul II includes an entire chapter on formation of the laity in his teaching titled “The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People.” Here are some quotations from that document:
People are approached in liberty by God who calls everyone to grow, develop and bear fruit. A person cannot put off a response nor cast off personal responsibility in the matter.
It is not a question of simply knowing what God wants from each of us in the various situations of life. The individual must do what God wants . . .
. . . to act in fidelity to God’s will requires a capability for acting and the developing of that capability.
That we are “approached in liberty” means God respects our free will.
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FORMATION = CHANGE
Obviously, we are talking about change—that most difficult thing to do. When we submit to being formed, we submit ourselves to ideas and experiences that will change us. We expect experiences that will change us. We deliberately walk into experiences that will change us.
This part of our experience as a disciple of Jesus can be scary because we don’t know what the future holds if we accept the changes God has in mind for us. The changes may be difficult, may not be to our liking at all, and probably will require us to look deeply inside ourselves. But there’s one thing we know for certain. Whatever changes God has in mind come from God’s infinite and unconditional love for us.
As we cooperate with the formation God has planned for us, we become more like God. Our understanding of God, other people and ourselves increases.
Most of us are familiar with prayers like these:
Make me a channel of your peace. Mold me, use me. Do to your servant, Lord, whatever is to your greater glory. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people.
When we pray in this manner, we are asking God for formative experiences. What do you think about this idea that the laity experience formation and have a duty to seek all the knowledge and experience they can obtain about both the Church and the world?
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THE SPIRIT OF MARY
To summarize from a manual for Marists written some years ago: Those who would call themselves by the name Marist have an obligation to change and to put on the mind of Mary and have their hearts beat in unison with hers.
Briefly, Marists become Mary’s presence in the Church and in the world by taking on her spirit. So, we are talking about allowing, indeed seeking, change in ourselves by trying to understand the spirit of Mary, by sincerely praying for the gift of her spirit.
Can we imagine a greater gift of love from God than to be formed into a person with the spirit of Mary, the mother of Jesus?
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Think, judge, feel and act as Mary
Let’s read again the Marist reference for this chapter:
If therefore they are and wish to be true children of this dear Mother, let them continually strive to draw upon her spirit and breathe it: a spirit of humility, self-denial, intimate union with God, and the most ardent love of neighbour; and so they must think as Mary, judge as Mary, feel and act as Mary in all things. . .
Constitutions of the Society of Mary, #49, 1872
Father Colin tells us that the how of being Marist is to “think, judge, feel and act as Mary.” The word “judge” in this expression means to evaluate. It means to work to understand what people are thinking, seeing, hearing and experiencing. “Judge”in this context does not mean to draw conclusions about other people.
Let’s read from Like a Bridge, pages 80-83. Please share your thoughts anytime during this reading.
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A Marist, as we are learning, does more than imitate a list of specific virtues of Mary, but the virtues listed in the Constitution are central characteristics of the spirit of Mary and are deserving of study.
A spirit of humility
Humility is a virtue through which we evaluate ourselves at our true worth by keeping in mind our worth in God’s eyes. Humble people recognize their total dependence on God and acknowledge the gifts God has given them. Humble people place both themselves and their gifts at the service of God.
False humility denies the gifts and abilities God has given us. Statements such as, “I can’t do anything,” or “I don’t know what good I can do,” are examples of false humility.
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Self-denial
Perhaps the form of self-denial that most often comes to mind is fasting during Lent. We deny ourselves food or other things that we particularly like such as cigarettes, candy or television.
But self-denial can take many forms. A young mother denies herself an incredible amount of personal freedom when she nurses an infant for weeks or months. A father denies himself evenings of entertainment with co-workers in order to spend time with his family.
We can deny ourselves anything that is showy or what social scientists call “conspicuous consumption.” We can hide our contributions to charity and deny ourselves honors and compliments. We deny ourselves a certain level of comfort whenever we go to sick or grieving people and share their suffering with them. Nighttime adorers of the Blessed Sacrament and parents of infants deny themselves sleep.
Jesus denied himself the status of being God in order to walk among us as a human person. He denied himself the very power of God and placed himself in the hands of evil men and died for us. In the next chapter we will study an aspect of self-denial that is central to the Marist spirituality. It’s called being “hidden and unknown in the world.”
Let’s discuss the many ways that people can deny themselves as an expression of love for God and others.
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Intimate union with God
This phrase suggests such a close relationship with God that we can say we have tasted God. Phrases such as this one refer to deep, spiritual experiences that come only from God. We cannot cause these spiritual experiences; we can only open ourselves to them. We open ourselves through prayer and by being quiet before God. Remember the passage from Ezekiel. God alone can put a new spirit in us.
We also open ourselves to God when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable before others. It is difficult to visit the sick, the dying, the grieving or the imprisoned precisely because doing so awakens our own strong feelings related to our own experiences. When we truly suffer with others we allow ourselves to become vulnerable before them and God. We also discover how alike we all are; we share the limitations of our humanity with others. There is no attempt to deny our human condition.
God allows intimate spiritual encounters for the purpose of energizing us and drawing us closer to our Creator. Intimate spiritual experiences with God never happen for their own sake, and they are not to be used to draw attention to ourselves. They are part of the training we have been discussing in this chapter. They are one way that God may choose to change us.
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The most ardent love of neighbor
God is love. God is the source of love. We can’t love God until we have experienced God’s love for us. God can give us the experience of feeling encompassed by divine love, but often God chooses to love us through other people. Once we have experienced love from any source, our natural response is to return love. Once we begin to realize God’s great love for us, we, therefore, desire to love God in return. But God doesn’t love us just for our sake. God wants the love we receive to flow through us to others.
A young man once asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answered:
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all yoursoul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. Matthew 22:36-40
Vatican II addressed this topic of love of neighbor this way:
. . . everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as another self . . . and
Today there is an inescapable duty to make ourselves the neighbor of every man, no matter who he is, and if we meet him, to come to his aid in a positive way . . . Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 1965
Do you think it possible that some people don’t believe in God or are afraid of God because they have had so few experiences of being loved by the rest of us?
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QUIET TIME
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Let’s review the invitations for this chapter.
Closing prayer: Holy Spirit who formed Mary, please form me.
Thank you for coming.
The Pondering Page for Quiet Time
Thinking, Judging, Feeling and Acting as Mary
To be Marist is to be Mary right here and right now.
Think about this short way of expressing the idea of taking on the spirit of Mary.Concentrate on your own breathing. Imagine breathing out whatever is not of the spirit of Mary and breathing in whatever is of the spirit of Mary.
INVITATIONS
Prayer: Let’s compose short prayers this month that ask God to form us and other short prayers that ask Mary to help us in this effort. Several prayers are suggested in this chapter. Say these prayers every day.
Reading: Read the articles in A Certain Way on pages 162-3. Record what impresses you most in these articles. There may be ideas in these articles that will help you compose the short prayers suggested above.
Action: Some practice exercises for “thinking, judging, feeling and acting as Mary”:
Consider a situation from your past. Describe how people saw that situation, how they reacted, and how they tried to solve whatever problems existed. Then apply Father Colin’s instruction to think, judge, feel and act as Mary to the same situation. What are the differences?
Consider a person or a situation in your life right now. Try to approach the person or situation as Mary would. Be specific. How would Mary think about this? How would Mary feel about this? Where would her sympathies lie? What specific actions, if any, might she take? What would her prayers be for the people involved?
Consider a situation from the news media that you don’t have to deal with directly. Apply the standard: think, judge, feel and act as Mary to that situation. How would you act in the same situation? How would you advise people in this situation?
Record your thoughts and experiences. If possible, share your experiences with others.
Our Marist Ways . . . . . . include prayer for others every day. Many Marists pray three Hail Marys and the short prayer at the beginning of this chapter (We fly to your patronage) morning and evening for the conversion of all the peoples of the world.
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