BOLIVIA, Roberto Henestrosa •
An Open Shrine
Schoenstatt without a shrine is like drinking lemonade without ice or soda without carbonation… However we invite you to take a look at our wayside shrine…
This November the Bolivian Santa Cruz de la Sierra Family will celebrate twenty years of founding. We have five hectares of land in the midst of a natural paradise, where the world’s largest wayside shrine is constructed. We do not have a shrine even though the Santa Cruz Family has become a pillar in the local church. We have grown in numbers, and with laypeople’s committed efforts, we are entirely self-managed.
She wants something more
It is simple; the Blessed Mother wants something more from us, surely it will be something very big, which is why she is making us wait so long. We dream of having a retreat house, a training center, and who knows perhaps a swimming pool to take advantage of the Santa Cruz’s hot afternoons as a family. Above all, we dream of having a shrine surrounded by palm trees and tajibos, where people who seek shelter in the Blessed Mother’s arms can come on pilgrimage and leave interiorly transformed with the great desire to be apostles.
You that have a Shrine…
I write these lines as a call to all those who can enjoy opening that wooden door to enter any time you wish and see her there, crowned, surrounded by flowers, escorted by Vincent Pallotti and St. Michael the Archangel. Next time you enter your Shrine, I invite you to feel the weight of a triumphant history this little chapel carries, and to appreciate all the lives that have be offered up for the mission giving you the opportunity to form your lives in the shadow of a shrine.
Photos:
Original: Spanish. 27 June 2017. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA. Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA
