SPAIN, Mercedes Alvaredo de Beas •
A few months ago a friend asked me what the Federation was for me. I answered him, without thinking, what came out of my soul. For me the Federation is an apostolic community of brothers and sisters who struggle together to reach sanctity by contributing the best of Schoenstatt in the Church. —
And so it was in the shadow of the Shrine on an “ordinary” February 18th that a new milestone for the future course VI of the Family Federation of Spain emerged.
Amidst laughter and nerves
Three couples were introduced: barefoot (they played a joke on us and made us take off our shoes), to deepen our simplicity and humility. We were peppered with surreal questions to see if we were worthy of the Yes. They put us on the stand to find out who is in charge… It was all very funny and with a great sense of humor… That’s how we are in Spain! And the three couples, dead embarrassed, unsettled and nervous, but united, happy, expectant, excited, afraid and nervous, with desire and strength and confident that this is how it was in the plan…
God has called each one of us by name and some of us responded months ago, others at the last moment and others years ago that little call was already growing in some hearts?
How can we respond to today’s challenges?
But …. Why us? How can we respond to today’s challenges? Will we be able to change the world? To be apostles of Christ in the 21st century?
We speak of the pandemic as a chaos that has decentered us and has taken from us and is taking from us what is most proper to us: our freedom…
We speak of climatic changes, Filomena (the snowfall of January last year that collapsed the city for a week) in the great city of Madrid, never seen before!
Droughts in fields and villages that need water to live…
Erupting volcanoes that carry away everything in front of them…
Wars, assassinations, gender violence, the senselessness of politics and the lies that are intrinsic to it…
With a great desire to do Church
And… within all this chaos, this impotence, this sadness… six postulants find their vocation, with their lives in His hands, with a heart full of longing, with a great desire to change the world, to make church, to take Christ where He is most needed and where He is most needed…
It is not necessary to go outside to be a saint … To aspire to holiness is today and now, it was yesterday and it will be tomorrow! We are not afraid! Upwards towards the highest, towards heaven, towards God!
Photos: Miguel Ángel Rubio, Madrid, España
Original: Spanish, 23.02.2022. Translation: Maria Fischer @schoenstatt.org
