Posted On 2017-01-21 In Covenant Life

Two months… and counting until Costa Rica’s Shrine blessing!

COSTA RICA, Gonzalo Vega and Maria Fischer

On the eve of the first Covenant Day of the year 2017, we looked toward Costa Rica, where in two months’ time, on 18 March, Central America’s greatly anticipated first Shrine will be blessed. Many share the dream of a woman from Germany: “May we spiritually unite to the blessing of Costa Rica’s Shrine during all the Covenant Masses, and perhaps, even with some prayer that they are praying in Costa Rica.  Family from Costa Rica will you give us this gift?”

The countdown is rapidly ticking away in Costa Rica, after the many years of waiting for a Shrine. “We are ‘hurrying’ to be ready…the windows will be installed after the blessing, and we still do not have the bell,” Gonzalo Vega said.

On Christmas Eve, 24 December, the Family of Hope Shrine cornerstone was placed at the foot of the Shrine.  “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” (Ps.118:22) is Jesus our Redeemer.  What a meaningful date for this moment!

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Now the foundation is laid, some of the Shrine walls are up and the parking lot is fixed. You can imagine how the place will be with the house (already existing on the grounds when bought). The Shrine, its surroundings…everything breathes that unique atmosphere of seeing a Shrine emerge, of preparing the house so that Mary, the Mother of the Lord and our Mother, may establish herself in her Shrine in this place, just as she did on that 18 October 1914 in a chapel in the Schoenstatt valley.

While everyone hurries to have her house ready, it seems that Mary hurries towards “her 18 October” for Costa Rica and all of Central America, where she has lived in hundreds of Home Shrines for some time…

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For those interested in participating in the blessing: bendicionsantuariocr@gmail.com

Original: Spanish. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA. Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA

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