The more things change...

It's Cyber Monday and consumerism continues.  For each sale that is advertised I feel that there is one blog post, Facebook post or tweet encouraging folks to slow down, focus on what is important, and remember the reason for the season.

I think that most of us think that this is a problem that we, as a society, are only experiencing now, but that isn't the case at all.  This has been something that people have been struggling with for decades, generations, centuries.

I go to a Marist parish and work at Marist School, therefore Marist spirituality has a great impact on my day-to-day life.  

Each Sunday in the church bulletin there is a section on Marist Spirituality and this week's section hit me like a ton a bricks.

The spiritual founder of the Society of Mary, Jean Claude Colin found himself in the age of enlightenment.  There were fundamental changes in the eighteenth century in scientific, technological, intellectual and moral ideas.  He described it as follows: "We should be very clear that our age is one of pride and arrogance.  People call it an age of enlightenment, and in material terms that may be true, but in religious terms, it is a century of the profoundest ignorance."  (Founder Speaks Doc. 117:2)

Now I don't know exactly when this Fr. Colin said these words, but the Society of Mary was approved as a religious order by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836.  

The exact words used to describe French society in 1836 could be used to describe American society in 2013 - 177 years later.

The more things change the more things stay the same.

Marists were fighting the good fight then and I continue to fight the good fight now.