PARAGUAY, Father Antonio Cosp. I attended the first great Schoenstatt centenary. On November 16, 1985, we commemorated the founder’s 100 years. The celebration in Schoenstatt (in September of that year) was very international. A group of Paraguayans also participated. An immense gratitude was felt for having Father Kentenich as our father. His mission of life was so remarkable that he gave birth to a family filled with ideals, of giving of self, with strong missionary awareness. This Jubilee of the shrine and of the Covenant on October 18th finds us in a similar situation.
But now we are only more grown-up and extended throughout the world. What crossed Father Kentenich’s mind and heart on that 1914?
1. His priestly vocation had almost ended. The superiors saw him as self-absorbed, as a fighter when it was about ideas to be defended.
2. His affective life healed; his mind was ordered, thanks to living such a close attachment to the Blessed Mother, and he was ordained in 1910.
3. He thought that the young boys, who were entrusted to him, had similar problems, and he had the healing tools in his autobiography.
Father Kentenich experienced the problems of the modern world
In a word, our beloved Father Joseph experienced the problems of the modern world. God gave him a healing road so that he could apply it to the young boys. Therefore on that July 18, 1914 when he read the article about the Pompeii shrine through the initiative of the now Blessed Bartolo Longo, his heart leaped: “Why can’t our little chapel that we are fixing become Mary’s shrine where the young boys can follow the road that he did?”
The prelude was the missionary association, so that the young boys would learn to live and enrich themselves from the community; then the pre-founding act in 1912 with the self-education challenge beneath the protection of Mary, and finally to win the boys so that all of them would pray to the Virgin to make the little chapel and heart her home and as a home for the boys.
In the years after the founding document, few recalled it
Little by little, above all Joseph Engling, they became attached to the shrine. But few of them recalled the founding document in the years that followed.
Yes, they contributed to the capital of grace. Yes, they visited what was then called the MTA. But it wasn’t until 1929, on the 15th anniversary of the shrine that it occurred to them to celebrate every 18th of October. Father Kentenich did not impose…he evoked life, but he waited for this to take its initiatives.
The phenomena of the 18th of October
And it is superb that it is our diocesan and national shrine, the Shrine of Tuparenda, which welcomes the most pilgrims every 18th of October… I even believe, that the Original Shrine will not beat us this year. With holy pride for our holy history, we revise every day and above all on every 18th of the month by renewing our covenant and contributing to the capital of grace.
Father Antonio Cosp is the National Director of the Schoenstatt Movement in Paraguay and he is a member of the schoenstatt.org editorial team.
Original: Spanish – Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA
