23 September 2022 · 2022-09 newsletter
Joseph Engling, was a member of the founding generation of Schoenstatt. He came from a remote village in Eastern Prussia (then Germany, now Poland) and was a student at the Pallottine’s School in Schoenstatt.
Although Joseph was not present in the Shrine on the 18th of October 1914, he entered deeply into the covenant of love with Our Lady and made Schoenstatt his life. His diary notes and letters are a pure and profound reflection of the impulses given by Father Kentenich.
Soon after the founding of Schoenstatt the first sodalists from the “Marian Sodality” were drafted into military service; from the school benches and the security of the little chapel near the House of Studies into the war. Thus, with the other soldier-sodalists in the barracks and at the front, Schoenstatt grew beyond the walls of the House of Studies in Vallendar.
Joseph offered his physical limitations, successes and vast experiences of unsuccessful apostolic commitment, his self-education, and the hardships of his life as a soldier on the battlefields of World War I for the growth and spread of Schoenstatt. On May 31, 1918, he offered his life for this intention. This consecration has now become known as the “Joseph Engling Act”.
The prayer in which Joseph had offered his life to the Mother Thrice Admirable for the work of his spiritual father, (Fr. Kentenich) read: “I give myself to you anew as your sacrifice. I offer you everything I am and have, my body and my soul with all its abilities, all my possessions and goods, my freedom, my will. I want to be totally yours. I am yours. Use me and whatever is mine entirely as pleases you. But if it can be reconciled with your plans, let me be a sacrifice for the aims which you have assigned to our sodality. In humility, your unworthy servant, Joseph Engling’
Joseph had a constant dialogue with the Blessed Mother in the shrine and with his “Pater Spiritual” (Fr. Kentenich). In a letter to Father Kentenich, 20th May, 1918, Joseph wrote:
“A few days ago when the grenades were exploding near me to the left and to the right, I prayed as usual to my little Mother and placed myself in our chapel. There I felt so close to my beloved little Mother as never before – a great longing for her shrine, for you and the beloved fellow students often comes over me”
On 30th July, 1918 Joseph was in Schoenstatt for a few days before he had to leave again. When leaving, his Spiritual Director (Fr. Kentenich) accompanied him part of the way.
A memorial stone now marks the place to which Fr. Kentenich usually accompanied the sodalists after their visits to Schoenstatt to return to their barracks or to travel to the front. He went along with them, exteriorly only part of the way, but interiorly he accompanied them further.
It was Joseph’s last visit to Schoenstatt… On 4th October, 1918 he died near Cambrai, France. His death, coupled with the total offering of his life on 31st May, 1918 for our Mother Thrice Admirable and for her mission, gave the Schoenstatt Movement its first outstanding witness.
We can learn much from the short life of Joseph and the seriousness with which he accepted the mission he had been given.
The axis of his life was a living faithfulness to the Mother Thrice Admirable in her shrine and to the founder. In the relationship of Joseph to his spiritual father it was evident that one could only enter wholly into Schoenstatt, in the way God had designed, by being united with the founder. The offer of the sacrifice of his life to Our Lady, was offered expressly for the Movement founded by his spiritual father.
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