18 August 2025 · 2025-08 newsletter
United in the Covenant – Pilgrims of Hope
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
Greetings and blessings from our Schoenstatt Shrines for this Covenant Day – 18th August. On Friday we commemorated the Solemnity of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
This Feast Day should be a sign of great hope and joy for us because it is a reminder that God not only showed his merciful love for Mary throughout her life, but he also shows His merciful love for us during our life.
It is an affirmation of the dignity of all human life and a sign of hope for us during our pilgrimage on earth.
We see this dignity reflected especially in the life of Our Lady and in the way in which she always responded to the will of God with a joyful “yes”.
It is Mary’s wholehearted willingness to participate in God’s purpose that makes her bodily assumption into heaven a beacon of hope for everyone.
In fulfilling the mission given to Our Blessed Mother by the Heavenly Father, Mary became a perfect and authentic witness to holiness.
The Church looks at the Blessed Mother as a sign of true hope and comfort for the pilgrim people of God.
In speaking about Mary’s role for mankind, Father Kentenich said in 1954:
“When we now ask Our Lord why He draws His Mother so closely to Himself, why He united her so intimately with His own Person and His work – all in all, why He places her so much in the foreground that He would give her to us from the cross as His last will and testament, then He will answer very clearly and certainly: It is the plan of the Eternal Father.
God created human society in the image of the Triune God. Just as the Blessed Trinity is bound together in the manner of a family, human society should also be a family. In this family Mary is the Mother. ……. Mary is not like a signpost on the road which points the direction but then stays behind without accompanying the hiker.
Just as a mother in the natural order takes her children with her to God, so does the heavenly Mother. The more we are at home in her heart, the more quickly and surely will she find us a home with herself in God.
God could also draw us directly to Himself without a magnet, which means He could give us graces without Mary. But since He has decided it differently, we must follow the law which He has given.
St. Bernard tells us: God simply determined that all graces should come to us through Mary. And Leo XIII points out that graces flow from the heart of Mary. God gives us the graces, Our Lord has merited them for us, and the Blessed Virgin intercedes them for us. Because God has decided it should be that way, we are simply dependent on her and her love for us, and our love for her cannot be great enough.…… It is always God who gives us grace; it is always the God-Man who has merited the graces for us; and it is the Blessed Mother who intercedes for us and who, in a certain sense, has even co-merited them for us under the cross. Therefore, whoever gives and consecrates themself to Our Lady and who prays to her gives a wholehearted yes to the complete plan of God and may consequently expect an immense divine blessing.”
(From: “Mary, Our Mother and Educator”, P.39-40)
During this coming month may our Blessed Mother take us more deeply into the Covenant of Love with her, and help us to see God as a loving, merciful Father who only wants what is best for each one of us in all situations.
As Pilgrims of hope, let us pray:
Blessed Mother……
Let us walk like you
through life,
let us mirror you forever,
strong and noble,
meek and mild,
peace and love
be our endeavour.
Walk in us through our world,
make it ready for the Lord.
Amen
United in our covenant,
Shirley Hall
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