Alive MARIANIST CULTURE, FAITH AND ... - The Marianists

Brother Stephen Glodek
A MESSAGE FROM THE P ROVINCIAL
My Dear Friends,
Greetings and blessings to you. I recently returned from a month-long visit to our Marianist
District of Eastern Africa: Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. I carried home from my visit an almost
overwhelming sense of the fragility of life. How fragile is the peace between nations, the relationships
between people, the ability to provide adequate food for a family, the opportunity to raise
a family in security and so many other daily experiences we take for granted.
One of the people who understood fragility in the depths of her heart was Mary.
Her Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke is a song acknowledging fragility. Mary sings
that God has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden. And it is God who will turn
our human notions of fragility topsy-turvy. God will call the lowly, blessed. God will
move rulers from their thrones and enthrone the lowly. God will feed the hungry and
send the sated away empty.
In our daily lives, it is often difficult to experience this upending by our God. Life
seems to trudge on. How do we move out of the experience of fragility to the experience
of hope and praise that Mary portrays? Perhaps a place to begin is to cultivate gratitude
in our lives. The simple exercise of expressing “thank you” is a starting point. How often
during the day do we acknowledge the simple gifts that other people give us: the
thoughtful gesture, the simple smile, the unsought kindness? Thank you draws us out
of ourselves to experience fragility as opening a door of awareness. Gratefulness opens us to see
that all of life — health, material goods, relationships, even the love of God — is a gift. We have
done nothing to deserve or earn the most important things in our lives: the love of our God, our
faith and the love of others that sustains us.
The Benedictine monk, David Steindl-Rast, entitled one of his books, Gratefulness: The Heart
of Prayer. When we experience the painful fragility of life, we can work at being more aware of
the gifts that the moment and the people around us provide. In that growing awareness we
become more alert to the Giver of all gifts and the Strengthener of all fragility. As we bow our
heads in prayer, maybe one day we can sing about it like Mary did!
Thank you for your kindness and generosity to the Marianists and our mission.
Affectionately,
Stephen Glodek, SM
Provincial