19 February 2021 · 2021-02 newsletter
Paul and Fiona Webb – Family Branch, Toowoomba, Qld
Gidday all from Toowoomba. We take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones every blessing from our Sacred Heart Parish Church, our Home Shrine and our Heart Shrines. We also take this chance to share some reflections on how we have and will hopefully continue to grow through whatever life throws at us. The plan is to review our thinking going into last year’s national conference, then to look at how we take key learnings forward as a domestic, Schoenstatt and Church family.
2020 Conference prelude – thinking about the impact of COVID going into the conference with the theme of “The Domestic Church and the Home Shrine”.
Our experience has been a distancing from the Church/Parish Community and from sacramental life. Although this is theoretically limiting, there were some elements of "freedom" in our personal acceptance. We found lockdown actually reduced significantly the "ministry duties" of ourselves and our children. Combined with reductions in commitments to other extracurricular activities we actually had more family and home maintenance time.
In a faith sense, there was also a sense of richer spiritual life even without the Mass. Morning consecration and morning offering was not "crammed in" between morning Mass, work etc but rather was (closer to) a considered start to the day. Access to the Divine Office, particularly Morning and Evening Prayer, was better appreciated and this "hidden gem" of ecumenical Church liturgy that can be celebrated at home is better appreciated.
We are not sure of the timing and residual impacts of a post COVID environment, but we hope we can take this family faith experience forward with us. …Morning consecration and Capital of Grace gives an assurance that someone “greater than I” has the big picture in hand so I can focus on my part on this day. The potential of the group is greater than the sum of the potential of the individual parts. … Together Fiona and I have seen God bless our efforts, far exceeding what we could ever have hoped to achieve individually. How do we as a movement garner this collective capacity of a group of wonderful individuals to serve the Church and God’s work on earth
Conference key messages
From keynote address by Sr M. Isabell we heard the family (in all its various iterations) is the oldest, most threatened and yet, (as highlighted by COVID) the most critical element of society. The family, the Domestic Church or Church in miniature is the building cell of society. …ordered to guard, reveal and communicate love.
To know who you are you must first know where you come from. Fr Kentenich (1952) points to the imperative of the formed individual, the formed personality and the formed domestic church. Formation rather than form as the key to bringing Christ to a changing world. The home is the first and the primary school of formation. Formation includes but is also so much more than what we now call education.
From the Home Shrine, the domestic church is a community in dialogue with God. The Home Shrine can be the conduit for the blending of the natural and the supernatural experience in an ever-dynamic faith and secular life….
2021 sharpening the tools from our Schoenstatt Toolbox
During and (God willing) beyond COVID we have the chance to strengthen our faith with the Home Shrine and other tools in the Schoenstatt toolbox. The Shrine, the Home Shrine, the Heart Shrine, personal/couple/group ideal, Capital of Grace and Spiritual Daily Order. Using these tools and sharing our experiences with each other, we can learn, live and share the gems our founder established for us under our Mother’s watchful eye. In the January Newsletter we heard from Shirley how Fr Kentenich found freedom in his decision to accept imprisonment. On covenant Sunday in January we heard from Bernard and Jane how this freedom is sometimes hard to find in the lived domestic church – cos life is messy. But just as we saw Schoenstatt flourish coming out of Dachau, the messiness of family life can be rich and rewarding.
Through the year we will hear more reflections on the lived experience of members of the Schoenstatt family through newsletters and Covenant Sunday sharings. Together we can learn, live and enrich our lived faith reflecting on a number of topics relating to our motto and striving for this year “Family, be what you are: Domestic Church”.
We look forward to sharing the journey with you.
Yours in the Covenant,
Paul and Fiona Webb and family.
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