-Rev. Richard G. Wosman, S.M.
St. Mary’s University is a community of learners…scholars… and servants. Some may think it odd I did not describe us a community of faith. Simply put…our common search for meaning provides a context in which we live as learner, scholars, and servants. As a Catholic/Marianist institution of higher learning, our faith, our search for meaning, provides an optic through which we view and understand our Mission. We do not all profess the same creed but each respects the Catholic faith and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at the heart of the university community and its Mission.
Community is the dominant metaphor for the Marianist perspective of education. We often use the word family, but the understanding that we come together to accomplish more than we could ever hope to do alone remains. Chaminade’s vision of education brings together the diverse gifts of many individuals for the good of the community and the larger world.
Recall the following:
the Acts of the Apostles’ description of the early community of believers being of one heart and one mind;
the nature of the Marianist Family which utilizes the gifts of laity and religious;
mixed composition, one of Chaminade’s great gifts to the Society of Mary, which recognizes the complementarity and power of priests and lay religious working and living together, calling each other Brother;
the administration, faculty, and staff here at the university, illustrative of that same spirit of mutual respect for the person and gifts each brings
Each of these images recalls the grace-filled moments actualized when we realize Chaminade’s vision. We cannot escape the human condition with its struggles, but we focus on the power of God’s love that finally brings people of good will together. Chaminade often reminded the Brothers that community is the most excellent penance that leads to the realization of the Mission. The Marianist vision of an educational community requires us to face our struggles with good will and to trust that all things work to the good. (We recall: the early community of believers who tried to be of “one heart and one mind” were fighting among each other a few chapters later, and, a few more chapters later, worked out their differences; the Marianist Family may not begin on the same page, but we end there; believe it or not, the Brothers don’t always agree, but through the bonds of fraternity, work to the good; among ourselves here at the university our disagreements, infrequent though they be, also always work to the good. Marianist educational communities trust in God’s grace, always working toward the full implementation of our Mission.)
That sense of trust permeated the early schools of the Society. Chaminade and his followers—most notably Jean-Baptise Lalanne—envisioned a place where men of letters living the evangelical counsels would provide a living example of the integration of faith and reason in the search for what is worthwhile and true. Their immediate goal was the education of youth as one dimension of transforming the horrors of post-revolutionary France into a new world governed by gospel justice. Their long-term objective was to re-awaken in people an awareness of the divine presence within and among them, leading them to their salvation.
Taking St. Mary’s as one example of a contemporary institution striving for Chaminade’s ideal, we see a great mélange of gifts, talents, perspectives, disciplines, experiences, creeds all working to accomplish a single Mission—the Mission of a Catholic/Marianist institution of high learning to provide an education that produces graduates ready to face the world with the requisite skills to enter any profession and a mind trained to creatively and innovatively transform the world for the good of all, both in this life and the next.
A Marianist education develops a community of faith-filled people who:
gather as learners, facing the questions of the day and discovering solutions that build on the knowledge acquired through classes and experiences;
grow in scholarship, understanding the rich heritage of learning and pushing the boundaries of what is known and what we can be known;
and, recognize and act on the human desire to serve the needs of the human community, trusting in the abiding and multi---faceted presence of God.