17 June 2024 · 2024-06 newsletter
Walking Together, Loving the Church
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings for this Covenant Day – 18th June. Since our last Covenant Day, we have celebrated and commemorated the Feast of Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth (31st May), The Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi Sunday – 2nd June), The Sacred Heart of Jesus (7th June) and The Immaculate Heart of Mary (8th June).
All these solemnities are very much at the centre of our faith. They are also very much a part of the life of our Blessed Mother and her Son. They exemplify for us that if we give ourselves completely to the Mother of God, she leads us to her Son, and through her Son to the Holy Spirit and to the Heavenly Father – to the Triune God.
Father Kentenich believed that love for Mary leads us to a profound and warm love for Jesus Christ. During the October Week, 16-20 October 1950, Father Kentenich said:
“Our Blessed Mother’s relationship to Christ is the soul of her soul. If I belong to her, if I accept the objective order of being, my love for Mary, my intimacy with her, must be related to Christ.
That is to say, the vast Christ-river flows more strongly in the Mother of God than in any other created being. In her we find the strongest current, which must take hold of me.
My love for Mary must be related to Christ through and through, and if it is not related to Christ, it has not taken its bearings from the objective order of being.
Everything depends on whether, through the Blessed Mother, we come in an outstanding way into the river bearing us to Christ. It is obvious, through Christ we come to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
……..You cannot imagine any created being who possesses such a burning love for our Lord as the Mother of God. That is why my love for God’s Mother must in the first place be related to Christ, it must lead to a fervent love for Christ and being gripped by love for Christ.
Unless my love for Mary develops in this way, something is lacking.
So how can we describe the instrumental character of my bonding to Mary, my love for Mary? I think I would have to put it this way: It must be a love for Mary that leads to a vital and vitalising bonding with Christ. ….
What does that mean? My whole personality must be re-vitalised through clinging to the living Christ. What does our love for Mary give us? A far-reaching knowledge of Christ.
There is nothing that gives our love for Christ so much warmth as deep love for Mary. ….
When you study our Lady, you are confronted with a far-reaching knowledge of Christ. Perhaps you will now understand a classic statement better:
The way via the Mother of God is the easiest, surest and shortest way to a deep intimacy with Christ and being gripped by God.”
(From: Christ my Life- selected texts from Fr. J. Kentenich)
O Triune God,
be eternally praised
for all the great things
you have done for us:
For giving Schoenstatt a Mother
and for immersing us,
through her,
deeply into Christ.
We praise you
because Mary’s life has given us
the norm for our daily living
and brought
the splendour of Christ the Sun
so humanly
near to us.
For this month
During this coming month we ask our Heavenly Mother to bless each of us and our families. Through our Covenant of Love may we continue to walk together as a Schoenstatt family, centred on Our Mother Thrice Admirable, and through her, with the Blessed Trinity.
We ask her to take special care of those in our own families and the Schoenstatt Family, who are struggling at this time with illness or in any other ways.
May each of you receive many blessings and graces from our Shrines on this Covenant Day and throughout the coming month.
Shirley Hall
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections