18 December 2025 · 2025-12 newsletter
United in the Covenant – Pilgrims of Hope
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
I wish you all many graces and blessings from our Shrines on this 18th December as we continue our journey through Advent and approach the season of Christmas. I am sure you are looking forward to being able to gather with family and friends to celebrate this holy and blessed season.
However, could I ask you to take a few minutes to “listen” to a Christmas meditation by Fr. Kentenich that you might like to reflect upon as we approach the Christmas season:
(A Christmas meditation by Father Joseph Kentenich)
During the season of Advent, we have frequently heard that the degree of our longing is the degree of fulfilment. Abundant graces are in store for us.
Degree of Longing Equals the Degree of Fulfilment
The degree of our longing! Did not our longing grow, Sunday after Sunday, week after week – the longing for the Redeemer, the longing for redemption? Redemption from guilt and failure, redemption from half-heartedness and superficiality, from inordinate pleasure and enslavement to material things.
Yes, could we not say that the hunger for God has grown stronger day after day?
Once again, since the degree of longing determines the degree of fulfilment, how much will we open our hearts during this time? Therefore, we gladly follow the call and the encouragement of the shepherds, as we have heard in the gospel. The exhortation to hurry to Bethlehem to absorb all that had occurred there, to see and to listen to all that Our Lord has told us.
And what did Our Lord say? What did He proclaim to the shepherds through the angels? They were to go to Bethlehem, where they would find a little child lying in the manger, and this small child is GOD!
God in Swaddling Clothes
The great God – God in swaddling clothes. After we have used the Advent season to strengthen and deepen our longing, we are immediately confronted with a strange, weighty word: God in swaddling clothes! What an awesome, striking, incomprehensible mystery: God in swaddling clothes! The eternal, the infinite God, Light from Light – God, who is the centre of the entire history of salvation and the history of the world! Of him John the Baptist speaks: “One more powerful than I is to come after me. I am not fit to stoop and untie His sandal straps.” (Mk 1:7)
- Why does the statement, ‘God in swaddling clothes’ sound strange?
- Why did God, the centre of all history, choose to be a child in swaddling clothes?
Blessed Mother,
in Bethlehem in a poor
and little stable
you give birth
to the Lord of the world
for us all.
Just as you showed him
to the shepherds
and the magi
and humbly bowed
before him in adoration,
let us always be
his loving instruments
and carry him
deeply into human hearts.
(Heavenwards, P.94 Third Joyful Mystery)
On behalf of all those involved in preparing the monthly newsletters, we pray that Our Blessed Mother and her Son will be with each of you and your families, as we continue our journey through Advent to the Holy Season of Christmas.
May our Blessed Mother and her Son, send you and your family, rich blessings and graces from the shrine and continue to be with you in the coming year.
United in our covenant,
Shirley Hall
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections