20 June 2023 · 2023-06 newsletter
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings for this Covenant Day – 18th June.
On Friday (16th of June) we celebrated the Solemnity of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Last Sunday, 11th June, we celebrated the Solemnity of The Most Holy Body & Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).
These two feast days remind us of the great love that Christ has for each of us. Father Kentenich believed that love for Mary leads us to a profound and warm love for Jesus Christ.
According to Fr. Kentenich’s thinking, getting to know Christ and the various stages of his life should lead to an ever-greater love and commitment to Christ. His main concern was the reality expressed by St Paul in the words: "It is no longer I that live, Christ lives in me" (Gal 2,20). He believed that Christ should become the goal, the source of strength and the lifestyle of Christians. He alone deserves to be the focal point of our thinking, hearts, and lives.
He believed that a living union with Christ should find expression in a noble, even divine feeling about life as an outflow of the freedom and dignity of being a child of God.
During the time of his separation from his work and exile in Milwaukee (1952-1965), he consciously posed the question as to how the Schoenstatt Movement sees Christ.
He answered this question by pointing to the three dimensions of Schoenstatt’s image of Christ and its Christ-oriented spirituality (his relationship to the Father in heaven, to Mary and to human beings).
Father Kentenich believed that every encounter with Christ should draw us more deeply into his task and lead us to share in his responsibility out of a vital solidarity with him.
However, the new flowering of Christianity will not be possible unless many believers place themselves at Christ’s disposal as Mary did. Then, like her and with her, they will bear Christ into the world so that he can become the Lord of the new era.
(Extracts from Foreword to: “Christ my Life”)
In a retreat for the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary in 1950, Father Kentenich said:
“I think that our Lord is the great example for what we say so often: We have to become a child with a single, great love. What is this single, great love? "Yes, Father, yes, may your will be done, no matter whether it brings me joy, or suffering.”
Our Lord was faithful. Above all he was faithful to his mission to the extreme. If we apply this to ourselves: Some of us live in the past, some enthuse about the future. What about our Lord? …He surrendered himself faithfully to God at every moment. Notice how our Lord lived constantly with the father, but also how he always wanted to do his will. He impressed on us: "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord’, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" (see Mt 7,21) loves me. And at the end of his life: "I have finished the work you gave me to do." (…)
Christ remained true to his love, he loved them even to the extent of consuming all his strength, that is, to an endless degree. Faithful to his task, faithful to his mission, but also faithful to his love. He loved his own to the end, also in duration, indeed even to the end of his life and beyond. In the Old Testament we read: "I have loved you with an everlasting love, and in my mercy, I have drawn you to myself" (Cf. Jer. 31: 3).
We should note two things: We may hold onto this truth: I, too, am the object of our Lord’s faithful love. This is all the more true because I have made a covenant of love, and through this bridal covenant of love I have offered him my heart, and he has offered me his heart. This tremendously profound faithfulness is the source of great joy to me because I am the object of this faithfulness. On the other hand, (…) we must see to it that also our own souls are filled with a deep, deep faithfulness.
“Christ my Life”, Selected texts from Fr. Kentenich Retreat for Sisters of Mary, 25-27.8.1950, P.22,23
Till our next Covenant day I wish you many graces and blessings from the shrine through our Covenant of Love with our Blessed Mother. May she continue to help us remember that each of us is the object of our Lord’s faithful love.
United in our Covenant,
Shirley Hall
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