Sarah-Leah Pimentel. A little over a week ago, I went onto the Spanish page on www.schoenstatt.de, looking for articles that still needed translating into English. I found one, called ‘{cms_selflink page=”a-new-nation” text=”Patria Nueva“},’ an apostolic project started by the Schoenstatt Youth aiming to renew Argentinean society and develop a greater sense of national responsibility. The context for the article was the upcoming 200th anniversary of Argentina’s nationhood. Finding the project interesting, I translated it and sent it off to the Press Office without giving it much thought.
One week later, on a cold spring evening I found myself in Schoenstatt for a short weekend visit. During the day I heard that the Argentinean community in Schoenstatt was to gather in the Mother Shrine at 8pm so that they can be united in spirit with their compatriots in Argentina, who at that very moment were participating in various Masses throughout their country to give thanks for the country’s 200 years and to ask Our Lady of Lujan, the Patroness of Argentina, for her continued guidance over the nation.
Making the connection between the celebration in the shrine and the article I had translated the previous week when I had learnt about Argentina’s bicentenary for the first time, I felt a connection to this event and wanted to join the Argentineans in Schoenstatt to pray for their country on this important milestone. At 8pm I was at the Mother Shrine and witnessed something so beautiful that I was glad I had come. I watched a small community of people with a deep love for their country come together to pray and give each other warmth even though they were all far away from their loved ones on this important day. The celebration was simple and unrehearsed but this made it even more beautiful. It was the experience of a family coming together to pray for other members of their family who are far away.
Not as visitors but as members of the family
It was even more beautiful to see that, like me, others had also come to share with this moment of joy and prayer with the Argentineans even though some could not speak Spanish, let alone understand the prayers and songs, while others threw themselves wholeheartedly into the celebration, not as visitors but as members of the family.
The short social gathering afterwards where everyone shared some snacks and tried the traditional Argentinean drink, mate, meant that by the end of the evening it didn’t matter that not everyone spoke the same language. As the goodbyes were said, it was clear that nobody was a stranger anymore, but rather members of the same family, the international Schoenstatt Family.
This simple experience I had in Schoenstatt last weekend gave me a glimpse of what 18 October 2014 might be like when the entire Schoenstatt Family, representing many different cultures and speaking so many different languages, comes together in the Mother Shrine and in unity with all the other shrines across the world to renew the Covenant of Love with one voice – the voice of a united family.
Message 2014: the gift and challenge of family unity
The thought of family unity made me turn back to the Message of the 2014 Conference which took place in January last year and set into motion the preparations for Schoenstatt’s centenary celebrations. As I re-read the text, I was drawn to one of the currents of life that we are working towards in preparation for 18 October 2014 – the gift and challenge of family unity. In particular, I was struck by the apparent contradiction that describes our family unity both as a ‘gift’ and a ‘challenge’. How can something that is a gift also be a challenge?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that sometimes, we are so wrapped up in our own lives, in the events around our individual shrines that we forget that we have a large family spread throughout the world. Perhaps this constant focus on ourselves causes us to become estranged from the rest of our family. In the same way as we are often aware of the presence of our own family members but rarely pick up the phone to and find out how they’re doing, so too with our Schoenstatt Family. We acknowledge that the Family is spread throughout the world but don’t take the time to find out more about the life of the Family in these other places.
Reaching out
Our international family is a gift from God through which we can share our experiences and experience a spiritual kinship that is often difficult to find in many modern societies. But it is also a challenge that requires effort on our part to reach out a hand to our Covenant brothers and sisters, especially when they are so far away, or who do not speak our language or share our culture.
But perhaps more and more, as we head towards 2014, we can look for opportunities, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, where we can reach out to other members of our Family and share in their celebrations, their difficulties and the unique accent in which the Covenant of Love has manifested itself through them.
