Servants of Mary in the Heart of the World
The Secular Order of the Servants of Mary (OSSM) is a community of Catholic lay men and women who, united by Baptism and guided by the Holy Spirit on the path to holiness, desire to follow Jesus Christ in the world according to the spirituality of the Order of Servants of Mary.
Secular Servites do not leave their families, professions, parishes, or ordinary responsibilities in order to become Servites. Rather, they seek to live their baptismal vocation within family and social life, following the path opened by the Seven Holy Founders and drawing abiding inspiration from Holy Mary, Mother and Servant of the Lord. This is the identity given explicitly by the 1995 Rule of Life.
The Secular Order is therefore not simply a Marian devotional society. It is a genuine expression of the one Servite vocation shared throughout the Servite Family. The Rule teaches that religious and lay branches express, according to their own state of life, this common vocation.
One Servite Family
The Secular Servite vocation belongs to a spiritual family whose origins reach back to thirteenth-century Florence.
According to the tradition of the Order, the Seven Holy Founders were themselves laymen before the establishment of their religious community. In a society deeply divided by conflict, they embraced prayer, penance, poverty and fraternal communion, eventually withdrawing to Monte Senario. From this beginning developed the Order of the Servants of Mary.
Lay people continued to associate themselves with the spirituality and mission of the Servants of Mary. In 1424, Pope Martin V confirmed the organization of what was then known as the Servite Third Order. More than five centuries later, following the renewal of the Church's understanding of the vocation of the laity, a revised Rule of Life was approved by the Holy See on April 29, 1995, becoming the Rule governing the modern Secular Order.
Today, Secular Servites continue that vocation as members of the wider Servite Family while remaining fully immersed in secular life.
The Servite Charism
The Servite Handbook summarizes the charism of the Servants of Mary through three fundamental elements:
Fraternity • Mary • Service
These are not separate devotions or activities. Together they shape the Servite way of following Christ.
Fraternity means that we do not pursue holiness alone. The Seven Holy Founders gave a striking witness of evangelical communion in a divided society. Servite fraternity seeks to extend that communion beyond the community itself by cultivating peace, justice, compassion, hospitality and friendship. The Order considers fraternal communion so fundamental that its official spirituality describes it as an essential element of authentic Servite life.
Mary is our abiding inspiration. Her openness to God's Word, her fiat, her service, her hope and especially her compassionate presence beside her suffering Son form the heart of the Servite response to the Gospel.
Service flows from Christ himself, who came to serve. Inspired by Christ the Servant and Mary the Handmaid of the Lord, Servites seek to serve God, the Church, their brothers and sisters and the human family—particularly the poor, sick, suffering and those in need.
The OSSM Rule of Life
The 1995 Rule of Life of the Secular Order of the Servants of Mary (OSSM) is the spiritual guide for lay men and women who desire to follow Jesus Christ more closely while remaining fully engaged in their ordinary family, professional, and social lives. Approved by the Holy See on April 29, 1995, the Rule expresses the essential elements of Servite spirituality specifically for the secular vocation.
At the heart of the Rule is the call to bring the evangelical commandment of love to fulfillment. To love God and one another after the example of Christ. Mary, particularly in her steadfast presence at the foot of the Cross, accompanies and inspires this way of discipleship and compassionate service.
The Rule is not intended to remove Secular Servites from the world, but to help them live the Gospel within it. Their daily work, relationships, families, prayer, service, joys, and sufferings become places in which their Servite vocation is lived.
