Fr. Alberto Eronti. Last year, I wrote in an article that the entire Family should walk toward the Jubilee of the first Schoenstatt century in the hand of the Father of the Family. Why? Because we want to fulfill his mandate: “Each generation is called to re-found Schoenstatt.”
Father would say that “each generation is a child of its time,” therefore, it is necessary that the charism of Schoenstatt is in his/her heart and that he/she may enrich it with his/her own contributions. Thus, with generation after generation, Schoenstatt responds to the times. It affirms and enriches itself. It manifests itself as a grace and blessing in the Church and in the social community.
But this is not possible without loyal communion with the bearer of the charism. It is as if we were asked to “enter” Father, to have an intense dialogue with him in order to conclude with him and like him on what Schoenstatt’s contribution to the Church and society is at the beginning of the second century.
When Father Kentenich was ordained to the prieshood and he began his pastoral work, Europe – and as a matter of fact, the East – was shaking in its foundations. There were movements of disintegration, the end of a long process which traveled toward a new beginning. Our Father perceived these movements with rare clarity. We call this ability of his, “prophecy.”
It is about a supernatural gift which allows one to read in the deepest events which occur with time, revealing their meaning and their demands for the disciples of Jesus Christ. The prophetic gift supposes two parts or times: 1st perceive from God’s point of view and diagnose the positive and negative forces of the times. 2nd to know how to respond, stressing the positive and affirming the forces which can heal the negative.
The young Father Kentenich perceived all of this and delved into the happenings of the times. Simultaneously he was being named “Spiritual Director” of the Pallottine seminary. This was Providential. In his contact with those youths, he perceived in their souls the impact of what was occuring in Europe.
The youths received in their interior – “the microcosm” – the impacts: of the times, the “macrocosm.” The Founder then questioned himself on how to educate, how to prepare those youths so that the future commotions would not overcome them, dragging them toward the growing disintegration.
We know the first proposal as the “Pre-Founding Document of Schoenstatt.” The entire document is important, but the central phrase is surprising and reads thus: “Under the protection of Mary we want to learn to educate ourselves to become firm, free, priestly personalities.” (Pre-Founding Document)
This phrase contains in itself the totality of Father Kentenich’s prophetic perception: it has to do with the covenant between grace and the effort of man, between the supernatural action and the human action. This already contains here what we will later call “covenant spirituality.” Perceived in this phrase is the fundamental “key” of what the spirituality, pedagogy and mission of the Schoenstatt Family will be.
For the powers of separation and disintegration (he will later call it inorganic thinking), he proposes unity and integration.
He wagers on self-knowledge and self-education for the integration of the person with himself/herself.
Integration of the person with the supernatural, lived “under the protection of Mary.”
Integration with others and with creation, formulated as: “we want to learn” and “self-education is an imperative of the times.”
It is about a Covenant united to a place. It is not a “charism in the wind,” it is a charism rooted and offered from a place: the Shrine.
Integration is the key word, it contains the answer to disintegration. The soul of the integration is love, the Covenant of Love.
A Covenant of Love which will begin between Mary and the sodalists, and which will develop into what we propose to call “a covenant culture.”
Why Mary? Because Mary is the only totally integrated creature. Integrated with herself, with God, with others, with creation. The first Marian dogma: the Immaculate Conception, refers to this integration. In Mary being the Immaculata, she is Humanity ransomed, re-integrated; she is the redeemed world, the world which shines in her as beauty and harmony, order and peace.
One must point out that redemption is given to us by the Son of God made Man, but the full realization of the redemption at the human level, has only been given in the most beautiful creation of God: Mary. She is revealed to us as the Woman daughter, wife and mother.
But the Father of our Family not only stresses the supernatural: “Under the protection of Mary…..” He also points out the horizontal. He does it in the two basic dimension of the natural order of the human being: the relationship with himself/herself and with his/her surroundings. This is with persons and with creation.
Therefore, the words: “to learn to educate ourselves…..,” is a personal and irreplaceble option. It is nothing more nor nothing less than the fulfillment of what Jesus calls a commandment “like the first…..to love oneself.” So to speak, it is about sealing a Covenant of Love with oneself. A healthy covenant for a healthy love and a full realization as a person. The fruitfulness is: the integrated man and woman.
But man is not an island, he lives in community and must learn to live in community. Thus Father proposes his way of thinking and acting, leading us to the community dimension: “We want to learn. Not only you, but also I. We want to learn from one another…..” (Pre-Founding Document). He shows us the value, the radical importance of others in the education of each person.
Lacking would be to add, and in fact Father Kentenich does it, what we today call ecology. This is how to deal with what is created.
Do we perceive in what we have said the basis for living and creating a “covenant culture?” Covenant of Love with Mary – as representative of the supernatural world – Covenant of Love with oneself, with others and with creation, on the natural level.
“Covenant culture” presupposes as a base the integration of the natural and the supernatural, of the body and the spirit. Neither man nor the natural level are the guarantee for “covenant culture,” only God.
God is an integrated God, Three Persons who are One. The mystery of the Trinity is the source of all integration. The Trinity is the perfect covenant: Three who in Love give themselves are One.
If we now go to the Document which we call “Founding Document,” we will see that the expression “self-education” is included in a superior and supernatural dimension: sanctification.
We read the text: “Acceleration of the development of our own sanctification…..” (‘Program,’ Founding Document).
Why “acceleration?” Because the times are accelerating and, therefore, one must respond proportionately. In a time of disintegration, massification, relativism, and the loss of the sense for what is sacred, one cannot respond with only the mere natural will. It is not enough. One must turn in total radicalism to the divine powers.
In the birth of Schoenstatt, the Father and Founder not only stresses “sanctity,” but “sanctity for.” Sanctity to transform. Transform what? Transform “our Chapel into a place of pilgrimage,” which supposes “to urge our Lady and Queen to erect her throne here in a special way, to distribute her treasures, and to work miracles of grace.
Thus the “covenant culture” has a home, the Shrine; it has a place, the Valley of Schoenstatt; it has a name which is a symbol in totality, Tabor. This “sanctity” is life, and the Virgin tells us where and how to live it. The “where” is daily life. Life! My life! Our life as sons and daughters of God, of husbands and wives, of fathers and mothers of our children, of forgers of society by means of “a faithful fulfillment of your duties according to your state of life.” Undoubtedly you will remember our Father and Founder’s expression in a letter which – from exile – he wrote to a German priest working in Chile: “I have traveled part of the world, raking to find partners for the mission.” We have also been “hooked by Father’s rake.” He “hooked” us in his gardener’s rake so that we could help him fulfill his mission which is nothing other than the mission of the Blessed Virgin for the present time. It is the Mission of the Immaculata because it is a mission for and by the petitioned integrity. Furthermore, one cannot speak of “Covenant culture” if one does not speak of Mary, if one does not speak of the Covenant of Love with Mary in the Shrine. But neither can one speak of “covenant culture” if one does not speak of the woman, of the leading essential feminine role in the Church and society for the present time. The home is the first and the essential crib for “covenant culture.” The woman is essentially a crib. A crib for man. This truth indicates the first confines where to build “covenant culture.” Later, undoubtedly, come the other confines. They are all those places where we are present, but this culture has need of the “eternal feminine” and it is shaped in the family home. The “covenant culture” is like the embroidery of an enormous tablecloth: it takes a long time to make, it demands patience and dedication. The beauty of the completed project has as a base an enormous investment of time and love. When Father Kentenich would affirm that “the universe of the Immaculata is the motherland where Schoenstatt was born,” he was telling us that only in Mary and with Mary can Schoenstatt collaborate in the formation of a new world. A world which begins in each one of Schoenstatt’s children and extends toward their families, the Family and “beyond” and makes us like Father…..creators of a new culture for a new world. The known expression: “Schoenstatt, heart of the Church; so that the Church may be the soul of the world,” is showing us the importance of the motto: “Father, lead us toward a Covenant culture. We remain in this…..
Held in Father’s hand
We want to live this pilgrimage toward the 2014 Jubilee held in Father’s hand. Don Joao Luis Pozzobon said it beautifully and in a childlike way: “I want to be a small student in the school of the Father and Founder.” This is the attitude which should accompany us throughout these jubilee years and throughout our life! How to understand this “bi-unity” between Father and us? I would want Father himself to explain it and that you would dedicate time to deepen and take his words to heart. Let us read attentively what he tells us.
(1912) “I now place myself completely at your disposal with all that I am and have: my knowledge and ignorance, my ability and inability, but above all, my heart.”
Father offers himself in order to be totally at our disposition. He offers himself with all he is and has. This all includes “above all, my heart.” He invites us to enter his Father heart. I remember how he impressed me when I first met him. He gave me a picture of himself and wrote on the back: “Tecum sum in aeternum” (I am with you in eternity). He wrote the same words to other spiritual children. What did he want to say each time he wrote the words?…..”above all, my heart belongs to you.” It is a way of saying: I love you.
(1935) “The Work which has emerged from here is, simultaneously, a Work from all of you who have collaborated with me. One cannot think of me without thinking of all of you.”
“I think of all those who throughout the years have united their destinies with mine (…..) this is my conviction: the entire Work which has emerged is, likewise, your Work as much as it is mine.”
“…..it is very important to me that we all feel interiorly intertwined with each other, just like the One and Triune God has wanted from eternity (…..) Our reciprocal fidelity will become so much more profound and vigorous the more we clearly perceive how God has intertwined the lives and destinies of each one of us in a singular form…..”
“I must confess to you that you yourselves have exercised an extraordinarily strong influence on my own personal development.”
“…..All of you can tell yourselves…..without me, he personally would not have become what he is today.”
I think that each one, each group and diocesan branch should “enter” into the content of these words of Father. He also asks each one of us to tell him: “Without me, he personally would not have become what he is today.”
The charism and the mission of the Father of the Family is realized according to the measure in which an exchange of hearts is produced, a profound affective attachment. Affectivity well understood is the motor for the effectiveness of the mission. Let us listen to how Father felt and experienced what I have just said:
(1949) “The Blessed Virgin has given us each other. We want to remain reciprocally faithful: one in the other, with the other, for the other, in the heart of God (…..) I do not want to simply be a roadsign along the way. We are next to each other to enkindle each other mutually. We belong to one another now and in eternity…..This is Love’s eternal living one in the other and with the other!…..”
Living one in the other supposes a common place. We know this place: it is the heart.
(1935) (On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his priestly ordination, he also expresses his thanks to the “future generations”). “Likewise, I want to thank those who are still not alive, those who will come. Because, What will become of Schoenstatt if the future generations are not filled and afire by this same spirit which motivates us? It should be a perpetual law that – in the Family – each generation must re-conquer Schoenstatt for themselves. I am grateful to the generations of the coming centuries for the positive work they can develop, but if there is no such positive collaboration, we will find ourselves facing the ruination of the Family. In fact, if God does not give us men who in each new historical age work with the same means, with the same objectives and on the same way, the Work will be a one-day blossom, it will be short-lived. May God – who until now has protected us – and may the Blessed Virgin – who until now has covered us with her mantel – spread their graces and their goodness over us; that by our fidelity in the transmission of the gifts bequeathed to the future generations, that they give us in each coming era men who give their lives for Schoenstatt. From here I want to cordially thank these generations.”
(1950) (Speaking of the “Garden of Mary”) “Do you know what developed later? An extraordinarily strong intertwining of destinies (…..) A Covenant of Love with one another, a living Covenant, profound, efficacious.”
Translation: Carlos Cantú, Schoenstatt Family Federation, La Feria, Texas USA 06252011
