23 December 2024 · 2024-12 newsletter
Walking Together, Loving the Church
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings to you all. The third Sunday of Advent, which was celebrated on the 15th, is often known as Gaudete (“Rejoice”) Sunday when we light a pink candle on the Advent wreath. This candle, represents joy, such as the joy the shepherds experienced when the angel told them that Christ was to be born.
We too rejoice that Jesus’ coming—both his first coming, liturgically, and his second coming, historically—will soon be here.
It seems fitting therefore that this was also our Covenant Sunday for December. We have much to be grateful for. We give thanks to Our Blessed Mother that she said her ‘yes’ to God and became not only the mother of Christ – the Son of God – but also became our mother.
On the Covenant Day of 18th October, Father Alexandre Awi Mello, President of the International Schoenstatt Presidium announced an initiative of great importance for our whole international Schoenstatt Family. In our newsletter last month, details were given of this announcement. The significance of this worldwide campaign is to acknowledge ‘WE ARE ALL SCHOENSTATT”. The intention is to strengthen the bonds of our international family and ensure the future of the mission given to our Father and Founder by the Mother Thrice Admirable.
Everyone who has made the Covenant of Love throughout the world is Schoenstatt and that is why we want to embrace the origins of Schoenstatt, embrace the Original Shrine and promote the Covenant of Love. We want to spread this strong conviction that our charism is important for today’s Church everywhere.
We want to do this with the awareness that we are an international family. That is why this campaign has three focuses:
- the Original Shrine,
- Father Kentenich and the whole process being carried out for his canonization, and
- Schoenstatt International, the schoenstatt.com web page, which needs to be sustained in some way by everyone and supported by everyone.
This means that we all share in the mission given to our Father and Founder through our Mother Thrice Admirable, and we have the responsibility to share this with others in our Church and society. With this in mind, I would like to share with you some words from, Father Kentenich:
“…. May the Blessed Mother bless us, may she lift up her Child and bless us with him and may she place this Child deep in our hearts. She wants to give us this Child – who is so great, helpless and full of grace.
To entrust this Child to our arms, to us just as we are, is an exceedingly great and wonderful reward. She is the official Christ-bearer. Through our consecration she wants to see us in a very definite way at her side. We should become like her, the great Mary, the great Christ-bearer. It is as though our Lady is calling out to us today: In my Child see all that you have heard about true and genuine leadership! If you want to become the leaders of the Family, you must take on the features of the great Leader, you must become inwardly and outwardly like the Leader of the world. He should go before you. You should increasingly bring out his features in yourselves.
So today the Blessed Mother gives us her Child so that we can look at him and increasingly become like him, so that through giving ourselves to Christ, the King, we ourselves may increasingly grow into our leadership tasks. "Christ – Lord of the new era!"
These are the words our Lady wants to call out to us. You give yourselves to him. As a result, you share in his task for our times: Christ should be the Lord of the new era in the whole world.
(Conference for Women’s Union and Sisters of Mary 27-30.12.1933 from “Christ my Life, P.127)
Your shrine is our Bethlehem, pleasing to God
through its sunrise.
There you gave virginal birth to the Lord who
chose you as his Bride and Mother.
In your miraculous fruitfulness you brought forth
the Sun of Righteousness.
You have graciously established Schoenstatt so
that our times can see the Eternal Light.
From there you want to go through our dark world
as the Christ-bearer sent by God.
Jubilantly place the Lord into my soul anew,
so that, like you, I may perfectly resemble him.
Let me be a Christ-bearer for our times,
that they may shine
in the brightest radiance of the sun.
Glory be joyfully given to the Father through
Christ with Mary, highly praised,
in the Holy Spirit full of splendour from the
universe now and in all eternity. Amen
(From ‘Heavenward’, Lauds)
May we never take Christmas for granted but continue to be filled with child-like wonder as we contemplate what God has done for us by becoming one of us. He is one with us, in times of darkness and hardship, in joy and celebration.
As this is our last newsletter for 2024, on behalf of all who are involved in preparing these newsletters, I want to thank all members of our Schoenstatt Family for their support during this year and wish each of you a very happy and holy Christmas. May the Blessed Mother and her Son, send you and your family, rich blessings, and graces from the shrine during this Christmas season and continue to be with you in the coming year.
United in our Covenant,
Shirley Hall
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