The Original Shrine as a Real Place Inside our Hearts

SOUTH AFRICA, Sarah-Leah Pimentel. The latest news on the negotiations for the Original Shrine made me think about what we are striving for. But it also made me think about my personal history and my current attachment to the Original Shrine. When I first came to know Schoenstatt, I heard about the Original Shrine and in my limited understanding of the life of the Movement at the time, it seemed little more to me than a historical place. I first visited the Original Shrine in 2000 but was still too poorly formed to recognize it for what it really was. My real and deep attachment to it only developed when I lived in that place of grace for nine months. It was through the grace present in our place of origin that my vision was transformed. For me, now, the Original Shrine is no longer a place that is bound by time and distance. Today the Original Shrine lives inside of me.

Is the Original Shrine already present in our hearts?

So why am I telling this story? Because I began thinking about many of our Schoenstatt family members around the world. I’ve been blessed to able to visit the people in some of these places and I am always inspired by their deep, deep love for the Blessed Mother, their commitment to the Schoenstatt Work and, most importantly, the conviction with which they live their Covenant of Love. I have seen how the Schoenstatt Shrine in their towns is the heart of the Family and they diligently bring their contributions to the Capital of Grace in their home shrines each day. Many of them or even most of them have never visited the Original Shrine. It is a great desire in their hearts to be in the place where Schoenstatt was born, to walk in Fr. Kentenich’s footsteps and renew the Covenant of Love for the next hundred years.

But how REAL is the Original Shrine to the thousands of our Family members who haven’t had the opportunity to visit it? Is it a place that resides in our dreams and towards which we strive or is it a place that is ALREADY present in our hearts? And here I’m speaking about more than our heart shrines.

Conquering our Home

I’m asking this question in light of Jubilee 2014 but also in light of the latest developments in conquering the Original Shrine. If the Original Shrine is a REAL place inside of us, then we know what we are fighting for. To use the analogy of war, many wars have been won by less able armies, simply because they were fighting for their homes. We too, may not be the strongest fighters because our love is not yet complete. But if our hearts are in the right place – in our Mother’s heart inside the Original Shrine – then we will win the battle because we’re fighting for our home. 

And maybe what we need at this time, is more ‘soldiers.’ Many will come to their birth place, their home, for the first time on 18 October 2014 and, like me, will be transformed, and the Original Shrine will no longer be a place that lived in our dreams, but it will become a REAL tangible place that will live inside us forever. By that act of transformation, thousands more Schoenstatt members will want to increase their strivings to conquer our birth place.

Jubilee 2014 as a beginning, not an end

Perhaps in some of our preparation for Jubilee 2014, we’re seeing our pilgrimage to Original Schoenstatt and the Jubilee 2014 celebrations as the culmination of our preparations and then we go home and all goes back to normal. We talk about renewing the Covenant for the next 100 years, but if we don’t have tangible goals of how we’re going to do this, then perhaps we run the risk of falling back into a lukewarm love. However, if we see Jubilee2014 instead as the BEGINNING of our continued journey in the Covenant and we have a goal to work towards – conquering the Original Shrine – then we are more likely to continue to strive as we have been in the last three years of our preparations for 2014.

So perhaps the Blessed Mother is deliberately holding out on allowing the Original Shrine to belong to us. Perhaps she wants us to come and visit her in our ‘home town’. And when we return to our countries, the feeling that we are somehow in exile will compel us to continue with our increased strivings so that we can win back the home that lives inside our hearts.