Fr Mermier had personal devotion to Mother of Compassion/Sorrows and had an altar dedicated to her in the chapel of La Feuillette. Every day he would visit the altar and pray to the mother of Compassion. Fr Mermier considered the devotion to Mother of Compassion as one of the integral expressions of Salesian spirituality. Fr Mermier recalls the fervour with which St Francis de Sales gives insights into the compassionate Mother in his Treatise on the Love of God as she stood at the foot of the Cross on Calvary, the Mount of Lovers.

For his missionaries who had to experience the sufferings of God in the sufferings of humanity, and who were exhorted by Bishop Rey to make their method of approach to sinners like that of St Francis de Sales: full of compassion for sinners, Mary Mother of Compassion was the natural patroness for the congregation that he had founded. Writing to Fr Jacques Martin, the Superior of the Indian Mission, on 21st November 1842, Fr Mermier states: Today, the Feast of the Presentation, I received the authorization for canonically erecting in our chapel the Confraternity of our Lady of Seven Sorrows. It was the devotion of St Francis de Sales.

On 15 September we celebrate this beautiful feast. This celebration reminds us of our call to participate in the redemptive suffering of Jesus for the humanity today. We are called to suffer for others, to suffer for the mission we have been entrusted with and we have taken it up as intrinsic to our missionary and religious commitment. Compassion also means ‘to be with’. It is a call to be with the suffering humanity, our people, our confreres. We are called to be compassionate to people in every sense of the term. In our schools, parishes, formation houses, we must educate people to be compassionate in a world of competition. This is the tradition of life each one of us is called to inherit from our founder and pioneers. It has been a good tradition in the province to renew our religious commitment on the Feast of Mother of Compassion in our apostolic communities and formation houses. It is not that we are unmindful of our commitment to the Lord but rather we re-focus ourselves and this renewal as a community has deep bearing on each one of us. We find the meaning of this renewal in 1 Thessalonians 4:1 “Finally, brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus; we instructed you how to live in the way that pleases God, and you are so living; but make more progress still”.