ROME, mda. At a table to one side there were three small children of a young family busy with their alphabet soup. They picked up an A, a B, an L and an O and they place them on the edge of the plate: A- B- O- L. The missing R was taken from the plate of the younger brother: “Arbol!” (tree in Spanish) the older brother shouts. “There are things that survive through several generations,” my friend opined; and instead of celebrating memories of our time together in the Schoenstatt youth, we suddenly find ourselves with the alphabet soup and children’s television programs. And again to the Schoenstatt youth. “Rome!” shouted the young boy from whom they had taken the R. “Do you remember how we baked the bread with spices in the shape of the Saint Peter’s Cathedral, during vacation?” What a time…bread with spices, in the middle of summer. “And how we thought that there should pasta in the shape of the shrine?” “ ROME”. In Rome there are even some with Saint Peter’s Cathedral on the back.
Perhaps it was something like a memory of the alphabet soup and dreams of pasta or the knowledge that in the meanwhile, there are already shrine cookies everywhere, which gave Father Gerhard Pfenning – of the Schoenstatt Institute of the Diocesan Priests – the idea of pasta with Saint Peter’s and the shrine.
That was the Spanish company. If there is an American one to do that, find that. If not, take the real one which is Pfalznudel.
The GALLO Company makes pasta with designs in the shape of bicycles, churches, fire trucks, bees, bears and elephants, why not shrines? And if there are shrines, then a shrine in Saint Peter’s Square, Schoenstatt within the heart of Church.
With blood in the veins, imagination and some good collaborators, the first design emerged, to give the pasta shape, a label in three languages and it is ready: several boxes of the precious little bags with three colors of pasta.
The members of the General Presidency, with different degrees of jubilation, were the first ones to see them last Monday. As well-educated people, some saved the little bag while you read on the faces of others: “What do you do with this?” “With a little bag for so many?” “Or do I have to prepare them for me alone?”
Be that as it may, they exist- the pasta of our youthful dreams; they are a souvenir for pilgrims who arrive for the Jubilee at Belmonte. They will be in the Belmonte stand in the “Church” Tent of Covenant Culture at the Schoenstatt Jubilee – and – as a special recommendation – they are already in the Belmonte Shop, in the house of the diocesan priests, at Mount Moriah in Schoenstatt. The funds will be for “the shrine of all of us”, in Rome.
Suggestion: whoever wants to share Father Kentenich’s dream of the International Shrine in Rome, can find other opportunities, without having to buy pasta for soup at: www.offerta.roma-belmonte.info .
But a Saint Peter’s Cathedral with a shrine on the plate is something delicious.
Original: German. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA
