19 July 2021 · 2021-07 newsletter
Family, be what you are: Domestic Church
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings on this Covenant Day – 18th July. This month we are blessed to be able to celebrate our Covenant Sunday on the 18th. It is a day when we unite as an Australian Schoenstatt Family to renew and celebrate our Covenant of Love. In these difficult COVID times, it doesn’t matter whether we do this together with others at one of our shrines, or via the Zoom gathering at home or in front of our home shrine or Pilgrim Mother Shrine.
We each made our Covenant of Love with our Blessed Mother in her Shrine and that makes us members of our Schoenstatt Family and it unites us also with our father and founder – Father Kentenich – as well as also with each other.
On June 20, 1956, during a Conference for couples in Milwaukee, USA, Father Kentenich said:
“It is customary for us to see our shrine as the very place where the Blessed Mother accomplishes in our present time what she accomplished in the past at the places she stayed during her life on earth. Where did the Blessed Mother stay during her lifetime, where was she active and effective? Oh, we just have to mention one or the other place; we think of Nazareth, we think of Bethlehem, we think of Golgotha, we also think of the Cenacle, the Upper Room……
Well, how does the Blessed Mother appear before us? …How do we see the Blessed Mother here in our shrine? The way the Scriptures paint her picture. The Child is in her arms. What does the picture remind us of, the Child in her arms? Of Bethlehem. “Your shrine is our Bethlehem.” We ponder and remind ourselves that by virtue of the covenant of love, the Blessed Mother gives us her gifts. Exchange of gifts; that’s what we called the covenant of love. What then does she give us here in this shrine? The Child in her arms. How often she has given us her Child! How often she has given us her Child in Holy Communion. How often has she given us her Child? As often as we have discovered Christ’s countenance in a neighbour.”
(From: “With Mary into the New Millennium”, P130, 131)
In the spirit of unity, could I ask you to please continue to pray for those members of our Schoenstatt Family who are struggling at this time in any way, especially with illness, either themselves or members of their family. May our Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen and Victress of Schoenstatt, shower on us from her shrines, graces and blessings especially on this Covenant Day and in this coming month.
United in Covenant Loyalty,
Shirley Hall
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