17 April 2023 · 2023-04 newsletter
YOU ARE OUR LETTER 2 Cor 3:2-3
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
In this Holy Easter Season, I wish you many Blessings and greetings from the Shrine for this Covenant Day – 18th April. I hope that you had a very joy-filled and blessed Easter.
During this year we want to strive to deepen our relationship with Father Kentenich so that we can become more rooted in him and be more fruitful for our movement, the Church, and the world.
However, from the very beginning of Schoenstatt, Father Kentenich never did anything on his own. As he often admitted, he never did anything without the Blessed Mother. But he also never did anything without his Schoenstatt Family. This began already at the beginning of Schoenstatt, when Father Kentenich began working with the boys as their spiritual director.
In what has become known as the Pre-Founding Document (October 27, 1912), Father said:
“We want to learn. Not only you, but also I. We want to learn from each other. For we are never done learning, especially not the art of self-education, which represents the work, the activity which will absorb our whole lifetime.”
In 1935 on the occasion of the celebration of Father Kentenich’s Silver Jubilee of Ordination, he elaborated further about how much he had seen Schoenstatt in the light of not only his mission, but also the mission of the whole Schoenstatt Family.
Although the celebration was focussed on the founder, at the same time through his words, it testified so strongly to his union with his followers that it shed new light on Schoenstatt’s founding process and the specific originality of Schoenstatt’s spirituality – the interweaving of destinies and the organism of bonding. The work of grace in others through him, Fr Kentenich, was later expressed in the phrase, “The founder is the third point of contact”.
On this occasion Father Kentenich said:
“The real reason for this celebration: It is a common jubilee of our loyalty to the interweaving of our destinies.
My whole work as it has developed is equally your work. I don’t know where to begin. Since the whole celebration has more the character of a family celebration, you will not take it amiss if I now speak more in the first person than I usually do.
Last night one of our older members reminded me that at that time, when they were in the war, I must have had a warm heart for them. I quietly and unobtrusively got hold of all sorts of clothing – something to protect the head, a warm vest, etc. It is true, I developed a very warm heart for our youth at that time. But this development continued towards all the people God has given me and who have made demands on me.
You may tell yourselves – all of you who have made demands on me, sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly; all of you can tell yourselves that without you I personally would not be what I am today. You may not underrate this train of thoughts. Let me repeat, if you want to know the source of the riches of my mind and heart, you have it here! My wish and prayer to God is that he will give all future generations the same possibility to serve human souls quietly in the background as I have had. Great riches then flow back to those who try to place themselves with all their abilities at the service of souls.
Community implies the harmony of hearts. If you can say that the Family is distinguished by the deep, inner community of the individual members, it means that to a very large extent this is because most of you have contributed your very best to the Family as a whole……. If you want to thank me for anything, it can only be for one thing – that I have tried to take up everything that was developing in you, to open the way for you, and once it had come alive in the community to some extent, to proclaim it as a motto. So, I could tell you who were the main leaders at that time in our Mission Movement. As the master builder I have also built-up things individually, but when I knew that something sound was developing, I withdrew completely, because I knew it would grow without me.
I know another person who must be addressed. You know her as well. I think that the gratitude expressed to me in these days, and which I have returned to you, has also to be taken up by the whole Family and directed into the heart of our dear Mother Thrice Admirable and Queen of Schoenstatt.
Our promise of loyalty also applies to our common work. Please don’t think that we have already reached the end of our activity! We have a tremendous goal before us. We want to help to create a new type of person such as the Church needs if it is to overcome the severe shocks of our times. We want to help to create a new type of Family, a holy community…. We have to strive for true holiness. Faithfulness to our work, therefore, includes unflinching striving to reach the ideal of our state of life.
But we also want to remain true to the coming generation. We have a task to fulfil for the coming generation. We bear responsibility for the coming generation, for our future history. That is why we try to lead youthful people into our family circle.
(Note: This celebration took place on the 11th August 1935, not on 8 July, the actual day of his ordination.)
As we strive together to be letters of recommendation for Schoenstatt, may our Blessed Mother be with us all. May she lead us and guide us to be true witnesses to the mission given to our father – Fr. Kentenich and which he now passes on to us.
United in our Covenant of Love,
Shirley Hall
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