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En varias ocasiones, Santa Francisca Romana recibió al Niño Jesús de manos de la Virgen Posted by Hello

Servitas: Dios en honor de su Madre

Fr. Suárez then analyzes the role of Mary with regard to the Order of her Servants. According to the LDO, it was in honor of Mary that God decreed to found a new Order. And Mary prepares for the following out of God’s will by selecting the seven Florentine merchants, by gathering them together, by intervening with regard to the name, rule, and habit of the Order, and finally by giving a "light" to the Order, St. Philip Benizi. Fr. Suarez then concludes that Mary is the true and only foundress of the Order.22

This parallels the Dominican experience in which Mary obtains from her Son the Order of Friar Preachers.23 This same understanding of the role of Our Lady in the foundation of a religious Order can be found also in more recent times. The Ven. Jean Claude Marie Colin, the founder and first superior general of the Marists, formulated a declaration at the chapter of 1872 that: "The undersigned members of the General Chapter of the Society of Mary, declare to all Marists, present and to come, that they are happy solemnly to recognize that Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, is their true Foundress, and to choose her again, by an act entirely spontaneous, as their first and perpetual Superior."24 That the human founder or foundress of the religious order should consider God himself, Jesus, or Mary as the true founder or foundress should not surprise us. Fabio Ciardi in his study on founders as men of the Spirit gives as the first general characteristic of founders of religious orders that they themselves feel so inspired by the Spirit that they truly see themselves as mere instruments in the hands of God.25

Fr. Suárez continues his summary of the relationship of Our Lady to the Order she had founded—according to the LDO—by noting that, after the actual foundation, Our Lady, as every other founder, exercises a special mediation in heaven between her servants and God.26

Mary also occupied a privileged place in the lives of Servite saints and blesseds before they entered the Order. She intervened at their births in some symbolic way. At an early age they manifested a particular love for her which brought them little-by-little to dedicate themselves to her completely. After their entrance into the Order she continued her care, helping them to realize in the most perfect and complete way possible the ideal proposed to them.27

Fr. Suárez concludes that, according to the Legenda, the servitium Dominae nostrae is not presented as an end in itself but as a means of realizing the true ideal of all Christian life, the Servitium Domini. Mary truly leads her servants to the Lord.28

It is striking, for example, that when the LDO presents the life of St. Philip Benizi and St. Alexis as models for those who wish to serve Our Lady faithfully, it presents, not a series of Marian devotions, but their entire life as religious. St. Philip (par. 4) is the first and highest model for the Order, for "he gave himself without stint to its essential obligations, and in so doing served Our Lady faithfully and perfectly" (emphasis added). The "essential obligations" are spelled out immediately after: the living out of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Chapter five of the LDO describes in considerable detail the way Saint Alexis lived the common life, not wanting any special treatment regarding food, clothing, comforts, or physical labor, in spite of his considerable age (according to the LDO he was one hundred-and-ten when he died). It was precisely in fulfilling well the duties of everyday conventual life that "he left an example to do likewise to all friars who want to serve Our Lady faithfully" (emphasis added).

Thus we may say that the service of Our Lady to which they pledged themselves by their profession as her Servants led them to fulfill perfectly the obligations of religious life. And of course they expressed this devotion to Our Lady also in various devotional acts during the day, as specified in the first chapter of the Servite Constitutions.

22 Suárez, "Spiritualità mariana," Studi Storici O.S.M. 10 (1960): 9-10.

23 The first section of the Vitae Fratrum is entitled "Quod Domina nostra ordinem fratrum praedicatorum impetravit a filio (Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica, 1:5). This same thought is repeated by a certain unnamed monk (p. 7) and again on pages 8-9.

24 Marcellin Gury, The Life of the Venerable Father Colin, translated by a religious of the same society (St. Louis: Herder, 1909), 336.

25 See Fabio Ciardi, I fondatori uomini dello Spirito: Per una teologia del carisma di fondatore (Rome: Città Nuova, 1982), esp. pp. 120-131. His conclusion (p. 131) is that there is a "convincimento di ogni fondatore sull’origine divine della propria famigilia religiosa e sulla propria strumentalità sulla grandezza dell’opera di Dio e sulla propria nullità."

26 Suárez, "Spiritualità mariana," Studi Storici O.S.M. 10 (1960): 15.

27 Suárez, "Spiritualità mariana," Studi Storici O.S.M. 10 (1960): 34.

28 Suárez, "Spiritualità mariana," Studi Storici O.S.M. 10 (1960): 37-38.

Universidad marianista. Dayton. Ohio.

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