19 May 2022 · 2022-05 newsletter
For Christians the relationship with God is kept alive by thinking about the moments of his special intervention with us and with the activity of our daily lives lived in consciousness of Him. It is important then to be attuned to the ‘inbreak of the divine’ as God unfolds his Covenant with the Church.
Last month we looked at the question “Why a Camino around the Schoenstatt property” here at the Mulgoa Shrine. When moments of God’s special intervention are remembered especially in tune with Mary’s identity and mission they draw into focus, God’s Divine Providence, Mary’s intercession and an understanding in ourselves that we are being called to remember the amazing love Christ and his Mother have for us.
In the Old Testament, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David are historical figures who all understood the importance of Covenant history and God’s love for them through the Covenant. Having had the privilege of singing the Exultet at the Easter Vigil there are many acts of God and his love that are sung of in this liturgy:
- This is the night you lead our fore-bears….from slavery in Egypt…and made them pass dry shod through the Red Sea.
- This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.
- This is the night that ….sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices… the gloom of sin, leading (us) to grace and to his holy ones.
Continuing with the verses from the New Testament we are reminded that:
- The truly necessary sin of Adam (is) destroyed completely by the death of Christ
- This night: restores innocence to the fallen and joy to mourners
- Things of heaven are wed to those of earth and divine to the human.
Schoenstatt’s history “is seen in light of a practical faith in Divine Providence”. The idea of calling to mind the people that have had much to do with our own Australian history and recalling what happened to them and how they understood their identity and mission is exactly the same as recalling the moments in the Old and New Testaments when the well – known greats of the testaments truly understood God’s Providence in their lives.
Fr. Kentenich himself understood that certain documents and central events had come together and these came to be important moments in Schoenstatt’s early history. They are found in the “Founding Documents” which record ’four significant milestones’ of history that need to be remembered. These documents keep Schoenstatt’s Covenant Spirituality true to the concrete history of the covenant of love with the Mother Thrice Admirable and this has been for many, and can be for others, “a school” (of thought) that helps us grow in the covenant with God.
So far our “Camino History Short Meditative Walks” have brought us into contact with Sr. Bonitas, Joseph Engling, and Father Carl Boes an ordained priest and Schoenstatt Father. They are educational figures of our Australian Schoenstatt History and by June we will have included Father John Evans, our first Australian Schoenstatt Father.
Let all of us remember that Father Kentenich began present day Schoenstatt spirituality with the question “What is our aim?” and formulated the ‘program/process’ of “Under the protection of Mary we want to learn to educate ourselves to become firm, free priestly personalities”. Using the history being presented through the short walks and concentration on our Australian founding figures as inspiration along with the meditative symbols in the Shrine is a ‘Way” to grow in knowledge of Schoenstatt and what makes a Schoenstatt person tick.
The above reflection has drawn partly from Question 162 in Fr. Jonathan Niehaus’s Book “200 Questions about Schoenstatt”.
Filed underNewsletter · Reflections