18 February 2026 · 2026-02 newsletter
For most of us, when we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord on 2 February each year, we think of Jesus as a child, Mary being told by Simeon that “a sword will pierce your heart” and of candles. The latter are the symbol of Christ the light whom Simeon prophesied would be a light for the Gentiles.
However, February 2 is also a significant day for Schoenstatt. In 1942, Fr. Kentenich was in prison in Koblenz and a couple of weeks earlier he had made the decision not to seek a way to avoid being sent to the Concentration Camp.
This decision was based on his desire to fulfil God’s will and to win for his family “the true freedom of the children of God”. Quoted in Brushstrokes No.3 by Fr. Jonathan Niehaus we read what Fr. Kentenich himself said about this time:
“At that time the leaders, especially the priests, were in Schoenstatt. They declared they were ready to make the Inscriptio1. Because I misunderstood – I thought they had made it (the consecration) – the security and confidence grew in me that I will be free and the Family will be free. This was daring. Why daring? Because the reason did not lie in the natural, but in the supernatural order.
After hearing this, I sat down and composed a hymn of thanksgiving for the expected victory on February 2. You will find the hymn in the little prayerbook Heavenwards’.2 (… )
I sent the poem to Schoenstatt. A melody was immediately composed. It all went very quickly. In Schoenstatt there was great confidence that we would celebrate a great victory feast on February 2. What is so special about February 2? It is the Candlemas Vision – a vision of light, a vision of victory. What does light mean? Brightness, victory. I even know of a priest who planned to leave (Schoenstatt) that day to give a retreat, but because he was so confident of the victory on February 2, he stayed home.
So everyone was filled with expectation. Everyone was prepared for victory. But when February 2 came, there were no bells of victory. Instead, on February 2, the decision was made in Berlin that I be sent to Dachau. That’s how it goes in life! But I am still convinced that on February 2 the die was as cast for my liberation. Why? It was decided – very high up – that I be sent to Dachau and not to another camp like Mauthausen. Mauthausen was known as Mordhausen3. That camp was much worse, Why didn’t [my liberation] happen? The condition was not yet fulfilled. Which condition was it? Inscriptio. And it still took a long time until our priests could understand the Inscriptio.”4
Thus, it is that on February 2 each year the Schoenstatt Family likes to pray especially that the “Candlemas Vision” is realised. Seen in this context it means that the Holy Father and officials in Rome receive the ‘light’ to truly recognise the mission of Schoenstatt and Fr. Kentenich, so that our founder may soon be beatified.
1 Inscriptio is the total surrender to God, even to the point of asking for any suffering God may have planned for our lives.
2 Hymn of Thanksgiving, Heavenwards. Pp 164-166.
3 A play on words meaning “Murder”. Mauthausen was on of the Nazi’s main extermination camps.
4 J. Kentenich, talk for couples, February 2, 1959, unpublished transcript
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