18 August 2022 · 2022-08 newsletter
“Schoenstatt’s Way: Authentic Witness to Holiness”
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings for this Covenant Day – 18th August. During this year we have been focusing on our Schoenstatt spirituality as a way to be authentic witnesses to our faith and so live our apostolate more fully.
On Monday of this week we celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This Feast day should be a sign of great hope for us all, because it is a reminder to us that God not only showed his merciful love for Mary throughout her life, but he also shows His merciful love for us during our life. This Feast day is also an affirmation of the dignity of all human life. We see this dignity reflected especially in the life of Our Lady and in the way that she always responded to the will of God with a joyful “yes”. Mary fulfilled the mission given to her by the Heavenly Father and became a perfect and authentic witness to holiness.
In speaking at the blessing of an MTA picture for a Home Shrine of a Schoenstatt Family on 31st May, 1966, Father Kentenich referred to the part that we should play in fulfilling Our Lady’s mission from Schoenstatt
“If we consider how Schoenstatt came into existence, I think I may say that it happened analogously to the way our little families become Schoenstatt Families. Expressed simply, we could say that Our Lady has always been aware of her divinely appointed mission for our times. But in carrying out this mission she is dependent on instruments. Although God is almighty and is therefore able to govern the world without mediators, he nevertheless laid down a law which St Augustine expressed in these thoughts: He who created you without your co-operation, will not redeem you without your co-operation.
A great law! This applies to anyone who has a mission in God’s Kingdom. It also applies to Our Lady. If she is to give birth to Christ for every generation, the coming generations as well, we may take it for granted that she will not do it without instruments, without human co-operation. Therefore we can imagine to ourselves that in 1914 she went through the world and sought instruments.
While on this search, she, so to speak, got “stuck” at Schoenstatt, descending to the shrine because she wanted to live with us. She wanted to dwell here in order to educate us according to her plans, and then to use us as her instruments in her mission for our times.
(Extract from: “Our Marian Mission”, Fr. Joseph Kentenich, 31st May, 1966)
You can’t light a fire with an icicle.
Unless I am personally on fire before God and for God,
how can I set others light for God?(Fr. Kentenich, 1939)
In this coming month, may you all receive many blessings and graces from our Shrines. We pray for our Schoenstatt family and our own families and friends. Could I ask you to also pray for all those members of our Schoenstatt family who at this time are struggling with illness or in any other ways
United in our Covenant of Love,
Shirley Hall
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections