17 April 2026 · 2026-04 newsletter
Dear Schoenstatt Family and Friends,
As we are still in the holy Easter Season, I wish you many Blessings and greetings from the Shrine for this Covenant Day – 18th April and hope that you had a very joy-filled and blessed Easter.
In our novena for vocations to the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary internationally, and specifically in Australia and the Philippines, we focus this month on the courage of the sisters and their achievements over the past 75 years.
We think of the outreach to Toowoomba, and the courage it took to send sisters to a new field of work when there were so few sisters to accomplish the work here ‘at home’ (in Sydney). It also took courage to listen to the voice of God when in 1993, it was decided to recall the Sisters to Sydney.
Earlier it had taken courage for Sr. M Loretta and Sr. Mariwarda to go back to WA in the late 1970s when they were needed to help in the east of the country. However, with these two enthusiastic Sisters, life in W.A. continued to grow and in 1991 a Shrine was built. We could say that in these outreaches the sisters were courageous in serving the Schoenstatt mission in the spirit of Father Kentenich.
For Father Kentenich perhaps the greatness of his life is to be found in that he had the courage to risk all – the courage to stake everything for God and his cause. Father Kentenich had the courage to try to discover constantly: What does God want? Then having recognized God’s will in the light of faith, he had the courage to do it. He took no notice of the objections raised by human reasoning, nor was he influenced by the agreement or disagreement of the people around him.
He was admired for the atmosphere of calmness and security that always surrounded him, even in the concentration camp and during his fourteen years of exile. We must not forget that at neither of these periods did he have any human guarantee of his return. His only security was the certainty of faith. This is always a lonely certainty and requires the courage to risk all in faith……
In the life of Father Kentenich, the courage to risk all is inseparable from the chapel of grace – the Schoenstatt Shrine. This was where he felt at home. Here the transforming power of grace was revealed to him. Here he repeatedly received the mission of drawing the world, the people of our day, with Mary and Christ, in the Holy Spirit, home to the Eternal Father.
Just as our sisters would have looked to Father Kentenich when they went to spread Schoenstatt further in W.A., and in Toowoomba, let us also ask Our Lady for his courage to risk all in faith – in order to bear witness to the reality of the living God in our world.
(adapted from “The Courage of Faith” Novena – introduction)
I wish you all many blessings and graces from our shrines as we continue in the joy of the Easter season. United in our Covenant of Love, our Blessed Mother, and with our father and founder, may this holy season bring us all hope, peace and joy.
Shirley Hall
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections