17 January 2023 · 2023-01 newsletter
In the busy times of Christmas it is often hard for a mother/ grandmother to find some time to fully live up to her ‘Personal Ideal’ and ‘Branch Ideal’. So it was truly lovely to sit outside the front of my house contemplating the huge ‘Lilli Pilli’ in full flower there. But it wasn’t the beauty of the eye that was truly captivating this time. It was the sound coming from the tree as the traffic lulled and other noises settled – I was struck by the sound of ‘humming bees’! There was so….. many of them doing their work of fertilising the flowers to make the fruit which will later on turn my lawn to a ‘rosy (pink) hew’ (from the carol, “When a child is born”) and provide much needed food for the animals and birds around us. When I pasted the photo here, I thought how that tree for me at that moment was the ‘Living Monstrance’ both in ‘look and feel’. Which leads me to think that this is what being a ’Living Monstrance’, the ideal of the Mother’s Branch, is truly all about.
In the ‘Schoenstatt Mother’s Branch Wisconsin’ article online I read, it expresses the thought above well.
“As women and mothers in this time and age, we too want to become a little Mary, a Living Monstrance. We want to imitate our mother in the virtues of prayer, love, joy, kindness, and her many other virtues. She will transform our being and help us become more like her. We look to Mary and follow her example of service to others especially in our own families. We are instruments in the hands of our Mother doing our ordinary work extraordinarily well”.
I had been serving my family for three days non-stop and the need to find meditative space was great.
“In 1946, Fr. Kentenich gave a talk on the Living Monstrance. In this talk the Schoenstatt Mothers who were present heard words which seemed to be a special call for them. They became inspired to take up the monstrance ideal as their own. They worked spiritually and materially for the monstrance and the monstrance ideal. They strove to become a little Mary, a Living Monstrance. Years later, the Schoenstatt Mothers presented the gift of the beautiful monstrance to the Adoration Sisters for the future Adoration Church in [Schoenstatt,] Germany.”
Yes- God gives us the greatest gift of all, our children and grandchildren. We have the task of helping to raise them; we can only do this with the help of Mary, our Mother. She is the great educator who teaches us how to help our children to love God by being kind, gentle, and respectful to[ward them] and others. Our Mother had a great respect, admiration, and love for St. Joseph, her husband; therefore, she also teaches us to care for our husbands as she did, and help them, through our example as wives, to become good fathers to our children. Let us be a vessel of joy and love, a joyful Living Monstrance, a Christ-bearer, Christ-bringer and Christ-server. Let our attitude be like Mary’s in our everyday struggles; we want to say a loving yes to what God may ask of us.
You are the Monstrance,
Pure and sublime,
In perfect integrity,
God’s holy Shrine,
Who has born Christ, The Lord.(Father Joseph Kentenich)
https://bit.ly/3QIxqlS
Amen: Angela
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections