The Neylière project

There is a place, there is a house, there is an heritage without whom the Neylière project would not exist. This project is born in the place of La Neylière. It could not take shape without this house renovated to welcome the participants of the project and their hosts. It joins in the loyalty the inheritance received from the Marists who are present in this place since 1854.

All the associations which make live La Neylière and activities which they arouse find their coherence in this project Neylière.

A place
In the heart of the Monts du Lyonnais, It offers to the visitors the peace convenient to the rest and to the meditation, the numerous paths accessible to the walkers and the possible insertion in a country rich in clubs and societies and in initiatives of all kinds.

This place is appreciated by the people and the groups which come to live a time of spiritual retreat there and it is sometimes seen frequently by pilgrims of St Jacques who join Le Puy en Velay – and more often still joined by chaplaincies of middle schools and high schools or parochial groups which find an enabling environment for their prayer and their exchanges there.

A house
Bought in 1850 by Jean-Claude Colin, the house welcomed him four years later when he resigned from his responsibility of upper general. The founder of the Marists stayed there until he dies in 1875.

In this house of the Marists’ family, the room and the office whom Jean-Claude Colin occupied on the first floor of the main building are well known of the people who visit the Colin Museum, as well as the chapel and its stained-glass windows or the oratory with its fresco.

Oceania, first earth of mission for the Marists at the time of their foundation, is made present by the Museum which was created by Father Patrick O’ Reilly. This Marist, member of the Company of Océanistes, favored in his lifetime and beyond his death the creation of permanent links with the main cultural institutions in connection with Oceania. This house is at present in connection with the Museum of Primitive arts, Quai Branly in Paris, and the Museum of Confluences in Lyon.

An inheritance
The contemporary Marists keep faithfully the inheritance received from Jean-Claude Colin and from his companions:

This is reflected with both museums, presence of a permanent community, a significant number of sessions, pensions or chapters show it which gather for a while in La Neylière the Marists come from Europe and from all the continents.

A project
Place of visits, sessions and pilgrimages, La Neylière maintains living being the tradition Marist. That’s why the Marists wanted widely to support, including financially, the necessary works of restoration and they asked that La Neylière is a house of welcoming family for all the friends of the family and also the friends of friends… (1) The non-Marists and the non-Christians as much as the believers can be received in the house of family, which they spend simply one time in this place of spirituality or which they ask to visit museums.

The welcome of the simple visitors as much as that of the pilgrims is the reason for being of this house and associations: they are in the service of the convivance and of the exchange of the experiences as much as the cultural and spiritual activities which have a place important for La Neylière.

This project of a welcome house opened testifies of an inheritance which is always alive in the various continents where there are communities Marists and brotherhoods of laymen: La Neylière appears as source the place, loved by the Marists of the whole world, and the place appreciated by their friends!

(1) The Marists remember themselves the question, often quoted, from Cardinal Castracane of Rome to our founder: thus everybody will be a Marist? And Colin’s answer: hey yes, Eminence, yourself can be … This joke is meaningful: it is the opening in all which characterizes the Marists, not the sectarianism!

September 2015