16 October 2023 · 2023-10 newsletter
“You are our Letter” 2 Cor 3:2-3
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings on this very special Covenant Day when we remember and celebrate the foundation of Schoenstatt on 18th October 1914. Today, we pray especially that Our Blessed Mother will send us many blessings and graces from her Schoenstatt Shrines, and in particular, from the original shrine in Schoenstatt, Germany.
Today we celebrate not only Schoenstatt’s founding but also the Covenant of Love which inspires its entire spirituality.
Time and again Father Kentenich pointed out that the Covenant of Love with the Mother of God is an expression, means, and protection of the Covenant of Love with the Triune God. Everything comes from Him and returns to Him. The Mother of God does not keep anyone for herself but leads all to the Triune God.
Already in 1933 Father Kentenich had said:
“Schoenstatt stands or falls with the people who really strive for holiness, and who connect this striving for holiness with our shrine. These are things that have always been there and have always been at work. …”
Still today, the fruitfulness of the Schoenstatt apostolate and the shrine as a place of grace and pilgrimage, continue to depend on the constant striving for holiness of those committed to Schoenstatt and our Mother Thrice Admirable in the shrine.
For us, “in one another, with one another, for one another in the heart of God”, in the Covenant of Love, expresses the mission that Father Kentenich gave us here in Australia. We define this mission as: “One Heart in the Father for the Family of God.”
On this Foundation Day we not only give special thanks to our Blessed Mother for all the gifts and graces she continues to give us from her shrines, but we also give thanks for our Father and Founder and for his deep trust in God and the mission he was given.
May we be even more closely united in our Covenant of Love as we renew our mission for Schoenstatt and the Church: “Loyalty for loyalty, heroic loyalty for heroic loyalty”
United in our Covenant,
Shirley Hall
"The Blessed Mother has given us to each other, and we want to be faithful to each other: in one another, with one another, for one another in the heart of God."
J. Kentenich, 20.8.1947
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections