20 June 2022 · 2022-06 newsletter
“Schoenstatt’s Way: Authentic Witness to Holiness”
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Wishing you many blessings for this Covenant day – 18th June. We recently celebrated several solemnities, including the Ascension of the Lord, Pentecost Sunday and then last Sunday, the Feast of the Holy Trinity.
All these solemnities are very much at the heart of our faith. They are also very much a part of the life of our Blessed Mother. They exemplify for us that if we give ourselves completely to the Mother of God, she leads us not just to her Son, she also leads us via her Son to the Holy Spirit and the Heavenly Father – to the Triune God.
During his life, Father Kentenich directed his Schoenstatt Family time and again to the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. He saw Mary in her manifold relationship to the mystery of the Trinity and he wanted his spiritual family to see itself as an image of the Triune God and to take its bearings from this reality. In the course of Schoenstatt’s founding period, the covenant of love with the Blessed Mother developed into a covenant of love with the Triune God.
When speaking to the Schoenstatt Family in May 1966, Father Kentenich said:
“Woman, here is your son” (Jn. 19:26 f). Isn’t this the moment that a covenant of love is constituted; isn’t this the great commission, that the Blessed Mother should make a covenant of love with all of God’s children here on earth!
Why does she want to draw people to herself? To begin with, because it is her task. If I were to express it differently, in more ethical terms, I’d say: God means to use the Blessed Mother, our Mother Thrice Admirable and Queen of Schoenstatt, as she is enthroned and lives in the shrine as a magnet. God wants to use her as a magnet; through her he wants to draw people to himself; from the hands of the Blessed Mother, from the heart of the Blessed Mother the Triune God accepts these hearts. According to our way of thinking, the covenant of love with her is meant to be an expression of the covenant of love with our Lord and the Triune God; at the same time it means to be a protection of the covenant of love with the Triune God and with our Lord and, ultimately, keeping intact the covenant of love that these youthful hearts make with the Triune God and our Lord. (…)
We are attached to Our Blessed Mother because it is her task to draw the hearts of people to herself and to lead them through her heart into the heart of the Triune God; she does not keep these hearts for herself. The covenant of love with the Blessed Mother offers us the best guarantee for taking the covenant of love with our Lord and with the eternal God and Father seriously… “
J. Kentenich Conference for the Schoenstatt Family, May 1, 1966
O Triune God, be eternally praised for all the great things you have done for us: For giving Schoenstatt a Mother and for immersing us, through her, deeply into Christ. We praise you because Mary’s life has given us the norm for our daily living and brought the splendour of Christ the Sun so humanly near to us.
Our Covenant of Love, unites us as a family centred on Our Mother Thrice Admirable, and through her, with the Blessed Trinity. We ask Our Mother Thrice Admirable to bless each of us and our families.
We ask her to take special care of those in our own families and the Schoenstatt Family, who are struggling at this time with illness or in any other ways.
May each of you receive many blessings and graces from our Shrines on this Covenant Day and for the remainder of this month.
Shirley Hall
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