17 March 2023 · 2023-03 newsletter
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Wishing you many blessings for this Covenant Day- the 18th March. Although it doesn’t seem so long ago we were celebrating the season of Christmas, we are now in Lent and preparing for the great feast of Easter. During Lent we are asked to give special attention to our prayer life, fasting and good deeds.
In 1954 Father Kentenich was asked to prepare a number of Lenten sermons for the parishioners of Holy Cross Church in Milwaukee. In these sermons we can see that they all lead to the cornerstone of his own deep Marian conviction: The God-willed role of Mary in the plan of salvation. It is this role – mandated by our dying Lord’s words “Behold your Mother” and mysteriously decreed by God’s own election in how His universe should be – that brings her to us as Mother and Educator, as the one who rightfully calls us to a covenant of love with her.
Father Kentenich wrote:
“Our task is to adapt our personal image of Mary, i.e., the picture of her we carry (in our hearts), to match the image of her which God Himself has designed and brought to realization in the course of time. This image is contained in our Covenant of Love with Mary as our Mother and Educator. The covenant of love which exists between Mother and child on the objective level, is acknowledged in the consecration in a conscious, voluntary, and unconditional manner, and is made the personal and permanent form of living and acting for time and eternity.
Consequently, it may, will, and must be considered the classical answer to the testament of our dying Lord, “Ecce Mater tua! Ecce filius tuus!”, and be considered the most perfect, appropriate, and timely imitation of St. John’s example as he describes it in such unmistakable terms: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19,27).
(…..) “Ecce Mater tua.” These are among the most consoling words Our Lord ever spoke to us during His fruitful life. Because it is so important, and because, according to the divine plan, it should be so deeply impressed upon our souls, Our Lord drew it into His last will and testament with the words from His dying lips. And because it is obviously God’s intention in the coming time to glorify His Blessed Mother in a special way as the Mother of all Christians, these next one hundred years – such is our confident belief – will be a Marian century during which the Blessed Mother will prove her power, wisdom, and kindness in a unique way.
When we now ask Our Lord why He draws His Mother so closely to Himself, why He united her so intimately with His own Person and His work – all in all, why He places her so much in the foreground that He would give her to us from the cross as His last will and testament, then He will answer very clearly and certainly: It is the plan of the Eternal Father. God created human society in the image of the Triune God. Just as the Blessed Trinity is bound together in the manner of a family, human society should also be a family. In this family Mary is the Mother. She is the magnet, she is the lure, the line, and the sinker which God has let down to earth and uses to draw human hearts to Himself and, through her, bring them into an intimate union of love with Himself. Mary is not like a signpost on the road which points the direction but then stays behind without accompanying the hiker. Just as a mother in the natural order takes her children with her to God, so does the heavenly Mother. The more we are at home in her heart, the more quickly and surely will she find us a home with herself in God. God could also draw us directly to Himself without a magnet,
Since God has given us Mary as Mother, as Mother in the truest sense of the word He also wants us to love her genuinely in that capacity, just as He expects us to love our own mother because she gave us our natural life, nourishment, and education.. Mary is and will always be our Mother Thrice Admirable!
She uses her influence, as always, for the sole purpose of leading her followers to Christ and – in Him – to the Father. She does this in the very same way that – in accordance with God’s designs – any good Christian mother considers it her favourite task to lead her children to their father.”
(“Mary, Mother and Educator”, Lenten homilies 1954, Fr. J. Kentenich, Pp.12, 39, 44, 45,173)
Wishing you all many blessings and graces from the Shrine during this Lenten season. May Our Blessed Mother be with us all and help us to prepare worthily for the great blessings of Easter.
United in our covenant,
Shirley Hall
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