31 January 2022 · 2022-01 newsletter
“Schoenstatt’s Way: Authentic Witness to Holiness”
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Welcome to our first Schoenstatt Movement Newsletter for 2022 – the 18th January. I wish you and your family many blessings and graces from the Shrine for this day and for the coming weeks.
I hope that you have all had a good start to 2022 and for those of you who have been on holidays, (or are still on holidays), I hope that this has been a restful and enjoyable time for you and your family.
As we look back over the past 12 months, it has been for many of us once again a challenging year. I think that after the past two years and the impact that COVID has had on many of our lives, it has been a time when we have come to appreciate once again what is important to us. In particular, many have realised the importance of family and close friends and the desire to stay connected with those who are important in our lives. And it would seem that we still need to stay alert and be prepared for whatever may come in regard to COVID during this year.
Over the last year we explored what is one of Schoenstatt’s gifts to the church – the lived home shrine, the church of the home, the “Domestic Church”. In the Covenant Sunday presentations we focussed on the importance of our families, trying to deepen our understanding of the Domestic Church and develop a deeper appreciation of the importance of the Home Shrine.
This past year has also given us a stronger sense of community and in particular our national Schoenstatt Family.
Now that we are more conscious of the importance of our Home shrine and the strength we draw from our Home shrines, we want to focus during this year on sharing Schoenstatt and our Catholic faith with others. We want to learn more about what it means to be an evangelising community. Thus, our theme for this year is:
“Schoenstatt’s Way: Authentic Witness to Holiness”
While we know that Schoenstatt is a Marian movement, it is also an apostolic movement of renewal. One of the graces we receive from the Shrine is the grace of apostolic fruitfulness. This grace of apostolic zeal or fruitfulness enables us to share our faith with others and give witness to it in a way that may not only change our own life, but the lives of others as well.
Schoenstatt’s Call and Mission can be summed up as:
As a chosen work and instrument in the hand of Mary, we wish to work totally and untiringly for the Marian transformation of the world in Christ from Schoenstatt.
This description of Schoenstatt’s mission (already used in the 1920s) indicates both source and aim: Its source is the covenant of love with the MTA, where she has entrusted her work and instruments with a specific task. Its aim is to transform the world in Christ through Mary.
The source of our strength that sustains us to be instruments in the hands of Mary and our apostolic fruitfulness, is the Covenant of Love with our Mother Thrice Admirable.
During the October Week 1950, Father Kentenich said
“When you see the Schoenstatt Family as a whole you have to say: From the beginning its great mission was to understand itself as an instrument in the hands of the Blessed Mother; it believed that the Blessed Mother wants to carry out her great mission in our present times through us – to an outstanding degree through our Family.
Can I say of myself that God has given me a great mission in Christ and through the Blessed Mother? Must I not also learn to say of myself, must I not also educate myself in such a way that I can honestly and truthfully say with full and clear knowledge: I have chosen the best part, I have accepted this mission?
United with our father and founder and in the hands of Our Blessed Mother may we have the courage to say our yes to the mission that God has given to each one of us.
I wish you many graces from our Schoenstatt Shrines, our home shrines and our heart shrines. May we continue to pray with each other, and for each other. We remember especially those of our Schoenstatt Family who are struggling in any way at this time.
In covenant loyalty, may we remain, as Australian Schoenstatt Family:
“One heart in the Father, for the Family of God”
Shirley Hall
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