CHILE, Carmen M. Rogers •
The Pilgrim Mother’s adventures and travels do not recognize limits or borders.
It might be in a store in San Martín de los Andes or in the picá de Concón [economical restaurant with excellent and abundant food], in an operating room, a stockbroker’s office, or she welcome you to the only house in a mountain range’s lost corner, or quietly in an elegant living room of that mansion; she is always there.
Pope Francis tells us – Do not be surprised: she is the Pilgrim Mother – reaching out going where she wants and wherever (she wants), without subjecting herself to any indications other than those that are dictated by Love.
Poor missionaries!
They try to program and plan her outings…only until hearing a voice that no one can hear, she escapes the Excel spreadsheet, where they numbered her, and “in haste she sets out on the road.”
The kidnapped Blessed Mother
One of the “Blessed Mother’s reaching out” most delicious adventures is this one – the kidnapped Blessed Mother.
In 1985 the first Pilgrim Mother arrived in Chile after the celebration of Father’s centenary in Schoenstatt and Rome and a “tourist” pilgrimage through the Holy Land and Spain.
Since that one, a few others came that were strictly controlled by the zealous missionaries beginning their apostolate.
In the midst of a celebration to welcome the New Year, 1991, a young family man who was not yet 50 years old had a serious heart attack. The picture of the Pilgrim Mother came ”in haste” from Santiago to his bedside in the intensive care unit at the clinic in Viña del Mar, even before his own mother!
She simply established herself.
Far be it from her generous missionary’s imagination that she would never retrieve it amid protests, messages, prayers, or explanations that failed to move the now healthy man to separate himself from his Little Blessed Mother!
“I do not belong to Schoenstatt,” – he said – “and I do not follow its rules: the Blessed Mother came, and she will stay here.”
Today almost thirty years later, the “Kidnapped Blessed Mother” – which was never listed on the Excel spreadsheet – lives, blesses, and welcomes the children and grandchildren of the “Kidnappers”: my brother Miquel and my sister-in-law.
without number
Original: Spanish, 1 October 2017. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA. Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA
This article was written inspired by:
Reminds me of the story I heard in Johannesburg in the early days of the Pilgrim Mother there. Many Pilgrim Mothers were handed out among migrant workers on the mines. And never seen again. Who knows, to day they might be in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe or blessing the home of a grandchild still in Johannesburg.
The Pilgrim Mother goes where she wants to go and will come home only if she wants to!