The season of Advent offers substantial amounts of reflective materials, both on the readings of the significant Sundays of these times and the images and stories that prepare us for Christmas and the birth of Jesus. For Marists, looking at the way that St Marcellin reflected on Advent can give us keen insights in his complex character, as well offer some personally reflective resources.
Marcellin was known to draw upon the common Christian spirituality of the era, that drew on the three images of the Crib, the Cross and the Altar as the three most important aspects of the life, message and person of Jesus Christ. His devotion to Jesus is well documented, including in this passage from the Br Jean-Baptiste Furet biography:
“To know, love and imitate Jesus Christ: that is the sum of virtue and of holiness. Father Champagnat knew this truth well and constantly resorted to the life of our divine Saviour for the subject of his meditations. He had a particular devotion to the Child Jesus and each year prepared carefully for the feast of his birth, celebrating it with all possible solemnity. On Christmas eve, he would have a crib made, to represent that divine birth with its accompanying circumstances; he joined with the community in adoring the divine Child lying in the crib on a little straw and addressed to him the most fervent prayers.
"Oh, Brothers", he exclaimed when talking about this feast, "look at the divine Child, lying in a crib and completely helpless; his tiny outstretched hands invite us to approach him, not so that we can share his poverty, but so that he can enrich us with his favours and graces.
He became a child and reduced himself to this state of abjection so that we might love him and be free from all fear. There is nothing so lovable as a child; his innocence, his simplicity, his gentleness, his caresses and even his weakness are capable of touching and winning the hardest and cruellest of hearts.
How, then, can we not help loving Jesus, who became a child to stimulate our confidence, to demonstrate the excess of his love and to let us see that he can refuse us nothing? No-one is easier to get on with and more pliant than a child; he gives all, he pardons all, he forgets all; the merest trifle delights him, calms him and fills him with happiness; in his heart is neither guile nor rancour, for he is all tenderness, all sweetness. Let us go, then, to the divine Child, who has every perfection, human and divine, but let us do so by the path he took in coming to us, that is, the path of humility and mortification; we should ask him for those virtues, for his love and all that we need: he can refuse us nothing.".”
The only other substantive information that Br Jean-Baptiste Furet offers in his book about Champagnat during the Advent season is a reflection credited to Marcellin, reflecting on the Gospel from the second Sunday of Advent of that time, Luke 7:18-35. It provides a particular snapshot of Marcellin’s spirituality, which can be described, at times, as austere, context-specific and individually theological. It also provided an interesting insight into Marcellin’s personal faith and mindset:
We shall conclude the life of our venerated Father by summarizing an impressive instruction which he gave to the Brothers on the subject of constancy, while explaining the gospel for the second Sunday of Advent. "Constancy", he reminded them, “is a virtue that is absolutely necessary to a Christian to save his soul, and even more to a Religious to persevere in his vocation and acquire the perfection of his state. Our Lord's conduct in today's gospel is a convincing proof of this truth. The divine Master pronounces a magnificent eulogy of St John Baptist and before the assembled crowd, declares him to be the greatest of the children of men.
Now, what is it that he particularly praises in the holy Precursor? Is it his innocence, which was such that he probably never in his life committed even a single, fully deliberate venial sin? No. Is it his humility, which was so profound that he considered himself unworthy to untie the straps of Christ's shoes? No. The divine Saviour does not mention humility in his praise of St John. Is it his love of chastity, which led him to reprimand Herod fearlessly for his criminal behaviour? No. In this case; Jesus does not extol the virtue of chastity, however grand and sublime this virtue may be; all his praise is for the constancy of the holy Precursor.
To draw attention to the invincible firmness of St John, Our Lord questions those who surround him, and asks: 'What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind? No; such a fickle and frivolous character, would not have been so great a spur to your curiosity and admiration. But, what did you go out to see? You went to see a man who is constant in the practice of the rarest and most heroic virtues; a man who never wavers in fulfilling the mission entrusted to him by God; who perseveres in the vocation and austere mode of life that he has embraced; who is steadfast in serving God, in edifying his neighbour, in reproving and correcting sinners and in supporting with unalterable patience and perfect resignation, the persecutions of the wicked: such is the man you went to see.
But why is Our Lord so lavish in his praise of constancy? Because, in some way, this virtue includes all the others and because the others are worthless without it. The important thing, according to St Augustine, is not to begin well but to finish well, for we have Christ's assurance that only the one who perseveres to the end will be saved. Besides, this virtue has to be practised every day and at every instant. In fact, the life of a Christian and still more that of a Religious, is a continual combat. To correct our defects, to practise virtue and to save our souls, we must do ourselves constant violence and struggle against all that surrounds us. We must struggle, for example:
1. Against ourselves, against our passions and our evil tendencies and against all our senses in order to maintain them in restraint and subjection.
2. Against the devil, that roaring lion who never sleeps, who is ceaselessly on the prowl to devour us; against that seducer of the children of God, that angel of darkness who transforms himself into an angel of light so as to hi de his snares 'and catch us more easily in his toils.
3. Against the world and its vanities, its maxims and its scandals; against the bad example of those of our confreres who neglect their duty and the prescriptions of the Rule; against relatives and friends so that we may not be motivated by considerations of flesh and blood, and may love them only in and for God; against those who make themselves our enemies, rendering them good in exchange for evil and, in this way, as the Apostle says, heaping coals of fire upon their heads.
4. Against all the creatures and objects around us, so that our hearts may not be attached to them and that, instead, we may use them simply as means to go to God and to work out our salvation.
5. Finally, we should struggle, with a holy violence, against God himself; we do this by our fervent prayers, by supporting with patience and resignation, the worries, dislikes, aridity, temptations and all the trials to which Providence may choose to subject us.
Now, only unshakable firmness and unflagging constancy can sustain us in such a violent and enduring struggle. It is too much for the inconstant, the faint-hearted and the cowardly; that is why the y are in great danger of being lost, and it is to them that Our Lord is speaking in these frightening words: 'Those who put their hands to the plough and look back, that is, those who are inconstant, are not fit for the kingdom of Heaven.
May your Advent continue to be a time of joy, peace, hope and love.
