31 January 2024 · 2024-01 newsletter
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Welcome to our first Schoenstatt Movement Newsletter for 2024 – the 18th January. I wish you and your family many blessings and graces from the Shrine for this day and for this year.
I hope that you had a very blessed, happy, and holy Christmas with family and friends, and that you have had a good start to this new year. For those who have been on holidays, (or are still on holidays), I hope that this has been a restful and enjoyable time for you and your family.
2024 Theme
In our Australian Schoenstatt Family this year, our theme is:
Walking together Loving the Church.
During this year we will explore further what this means, both through the Covenant videos, in our covenant discussions (on Covenant Sundays) and hopefully, also in our groups.
This month of January: Second Milestone
This month we also commemorate Schoenstatt’s second Milestone, 20th January, 1942. Such is its importance that Father Kentenich often spoke of it as “the axis of Schoenstatt’s history” and the “interwovenness” of fates between himself and his Schoenstatt Family.
“Interwovenness”
This milestone asks us to look at what the Covenant of Love means for us in our life and what responsibility do we take to continue the work of our Father even during difficult and frustrating experiences that may come our way. This year we want to look at how we can ‘walk together’, and what this “interwovenness” of fates means for us as members of Schoenstatt?
“We could ponder, for example, who do we have in mind when we speak of ‘walking together’? For us as members of Schoenstatt, does this mean first and foremost, walking together with Our Blessed Mother and with our Father and Founder in the Covenant of Love. Do we also see it as “walking together” with members of the Schoenstatt group to which we belong (or the Pilgrim Mother Circle), our Schoenstatt Family in our State, or across Australia? This could be something that you might like to ponder yourself or discuss in your group.
“Loving the Church”
This month I would like to focus on the second part of the motto, “Loving the Church” from the viewpoint of Father Kentenich. We know that this was very important to him and that in fact, the sarcophagus in which he is buried, bears these words, “Dilexit Ecclesiam” (He Loved the Church). Already while in Milwaukee, Fr. Kentenich had indicated the epitaph that he wanted on his tombstone. It was Dilexit Ecclesiam. He expressed this wish many times, and his love for the Church was reflected in the way in which he lived his life, especially during his time of exile in Milwaukee when many accusations were made against his person and against Schoenstatt, and even during the time in Rome before his return to Schoenstatt on Christmas Eve, 1965.
Already in the first days after his return from exile he said:
“It is absolutely clear that we are at the threshold of a new era in our family history (….) More than anything else I would like to write on the coming years, on the door posts of the coming years and decades the words I once wrote for the Holy Office: Dilexit Ecclesiam. (….) I would like to have these words engraved on my tombstone and to know that they will be remembered in the times to come: Dilexit Ecclesiam – he loved the Church, the Church which nailed the family to the cross.
Dilexit Ecclesiam. And what does this love look like, this love for the Church? During these days I have been able to tell you – sometimes one way, sometimes another – what I promised the Holy Father on the occasion of my unexpected audience with him on December 22nd.
In the years to come we want to use every means available, we as a whole family, that is, as the entire family that has been removed from the cross, to help the popes realize the post-conciliar mission of the Church. And again: Truly, Dilexit Ecclesiam! Love for the Church has urged us to call this work into existence, or better: God decided to give us this mission for the Church’s well-being.
Dilexit Ecclesiam – love for the Church has urged us even to go the Lord’s way of the cross, to accept the cross and crucifixion of Our Lord from [the hands of] the Church. Dilexit Ecclesiam! Dilexit Ecclesiam! Love for the Church now urges us to love with infinite tenderness the same Church which persecuted us, to forget the past, and to now work with all our might so that our family would fulfill its great mission to help the Church victoriously reach the shore of the newest world, that is, to realize the ideal of the new Church, of the Church on the newest shore.”
Talk to the Schoenstatt Family, Schoenstatt, Germany, December 31, 1965. Translation: Fr Jonathan Niehaus.
This Church on the Newest Shore
I believe that it is now up to us during this year to reflect on and discuss what this Church on the newest shore should look like.
For example, do we see it as a Church that is inclusive and welcoming to all, a humble and healing Church, a listening Church, a Church that reaches to the margins, a Church that is renewed in Spirit and prayer. And at the same time, we also want to look at what we can do to see that this Church to which we belong is all these things.
In pondering what I could present in this first Covenant article for 2024, and mindful of our theme / motto for this year, I picked a card from the “Father messages” in the hope that it might inspire me. The message from Father Kentenich read:
“Everything for Schoenstatt!
Schoenstatt for the Church
The Church for the Triune God”
For me this sums up very succinctly our mission for this year.
So, in the spirit of the 20th January, 1942, with faith in our Covenant of Love, and the loving Providence of God, I wish each of you many blessings and graces from the Shrine for this Covenant Day and throughout the coming month.
United in our covenant,
Shirley Hall
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections