Our next Marist Blesseds
Dear Marist brothers and friends. Cordial greetings to you all. May Jesus, Mary and Marcellin accompany you and bless you. I aminviting you to look back to 28 October 2007, when 47 of our brothers were beatified in Rome, and I am also inviting you to recover ever so slightly… the enthusiasm, devotion and joy which was ours in living this event, whether from a distance or close up.
Let us now centre our attention on what is happening very soon, on 13 October 2013. We will be celebrating the beatification of 66 brothers and 2 lay Marist martyrs, faithful witnesses of the faith which lit up their existence and led them to the total gift of their lives, confessing by their deaths their total option for the person of Christ.
I would also invite you to move beyond a certain scepticism, with regard to persons and events so remote from us in space and time. My invitation is based on the fact that they are not only our predecessors having left traces of their passage on this world, but especially brothers, our brothers, members of our family, our predecessors, leaving us an extraordinary sense of Marist consecrated life, given to God and to others according to the charism inherited from Saint Marcellin Champagnat.
Let us recall the words of the hymn sung in honour of our brother martyrs beatified in 2007: « they fixed their eyes on Christ, without ever turning back… »
May we all, as members of this MaristInstitute, take an interest in the event and rejoice in the beatification of our martyrs, which is nothing other than the official and public recognition of their holiness on the part of the Church.
Today, 20 September, when I am writing these lines, we remember the anniversary of the deaths of Br Eusebio and 59 other Marist Brother martyrs, whose cause of beatification is being taken up again, after at least four years of « pause ».
As we see, brothers and Marist friends, the Marist vocation continues to appear to us as a good tree bearing good fruit.
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Br Luis Jorge Flores Aceves, Postulator General
20 September 2013
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