17 April 2024 · 2024-04 newsletter
Walking Together, Loving the Church
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Our Covenant of Love
Here in Australia, we celebrate the Covenant of Love on what we call “Covenant Sunday”, that is, the third Sunday of each month. Regardless of when we celebrate our Covenant of Love as a Schoenstatt Family, whether on the 18th of each month, or on the Covenant Sunday, the words of Father Kentenich apply equally about the reason why we should celebrate our Covenant of Love together each month as a Schoenstatt Family and why it is so important for us to renew our Covenant of Love so often.
During a talk to couples in Milwaukee on 25th March 1957, Father Kentenich said:
“It is not as if this renewal were something special for us. We have done it many times in the course of the last years. But there are things, life processes that we cannot repeat often enough. They are all more or less connected with the essence and the individuality of love….
We do not even want to ask a mother how often she brings it to the awareness of her child (that) she loves him/her. The mother can express it a million times in some way: You belong to me, and I belong to you, and the child never tires of accepting all the expressions of love time and again. It is the same with our covenant of love with our dear Blessed Mother. We can renew it a million times, and yet it is (always) new for us.
…… What do we do through our covenant of love? What have we done through our covenant of love? Nothing but recognize the almighty words of the eternal God. Freely we recognized the (Mother of God) as our mother and obliged ourselves to conduct ourselves completely as a child toward her. Therefore, it is appropriate that we renew our covenant of love with her precisely today.
“Whoever has been given a mission must carry it out. Whoever has been given a mission must be faithful to it and do it justice. If we carry out our mission with faith and love, the Family will become a blessing with us and through us for countless people”.
(JK 31.5.1949)
Earlier Father Kentenich had said,
“If I want to be a genuine upholder of our Schoenstatt realm, I must be the embodiment of attachment to the shrine. ….If I want to be someone who upholds the great Movement I will have to be attached to this place with every little fibre of my heart.
Whoever does not love the shrine, whoever only sees the shrine as a symbol of ideas, will never be a support for the Family. They may be interested in the Movement, they may accept the great thoughts gratefully, they may even talk about them with great enthusiasm, but we have to apply them in earnest…. We can’t be hangers on. We have to embody attachment to the shrine.”
(10th December, 1933)
Another question we may ask is, why do we need to bring our contributions to the Capital of Grace?
In 1933 Father Kentenich had said:
“Our place of grace (the shrine) is the result of the co-operation between God and ourselves, between the Blessed Mother and ourselves…. A constant imperative is Co-operation! Nothing without me! Nothing in Schoenstatt may happen without me, that is to say, the river of grace may not be increased or directed out from here without me. The concept “contributions to the capital of grace” expresses the same truth. We all have this task….
This is laid down in the Founding Document. Schoenstatt will cease to be a place of pilgrimage, or to carry out its task in the world, unless the capital of grace is increased, or if what is there is used up and nothing new is added….
I am convinced that there are a huge number of very ordinary people in the background without whom Schoenstatt would not exist. The most necessary and most important people are those who constantly care most for the capital of grace, who unite their hearts and bloodstream with the heart and bloodstream of the capital of grace. …..
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. …”
(Extracts from “His Mission Our Mission, p.64-68), J. Kentenich; talk during Christmas Conference, Schoenstatt, 28 January 1933)
Therefore, we should not come empty-handed to our shrine. Nor should we leave it with empty hands. Our hands are filled with graces. Why do we bring our sacrifices to the shrine? So that they can become a means to sanctify us. We should not ask for this grace for ourselves alone, but also for others, for the whole world. ‘I sanctify myself for them’ (cf Jn 17,19). We bring our sacrifices and place them on the paten on the altar, so that Our Lady can save and sanctify souls. We should renew this attitude every 18th of the month. (Monday Evening Talks, vol 1, 18.2.1956)
United in our Covenant of Love,
Shirley Hall
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