fma. On the road toward Jubilee 2014, the worldwide Schoenstatt Movement has jointly begun the Year of the Father current; the next step will be the Year of the Shrine current. During the second year of the triennium in the preparation for the renewal of the Covenant of love, the worldwide Movement wants to secure its source of life that is the Shrine.
“Shrine source of life,” the title of the annual anthology of Father Kentenich’s texts related to the Shrine current will be published in the middle of August 2012 in Patris Verlag. Next year (from October 2011 to October 2012) will be dedicated to the Shrine as part of the triennium of 2014. At the request of schoenstatt.org, the retired pastor Oskar Bühler indicated that there will be translations in other languages just as it was with the book about the Father current. The English translation (by Mary Cole, Manchester) will be available in Milwaukee, USA during October week. The Spanish translation will be available in Chile (Editorial Nueva Patris).
“Together, we are well in the Shrine”
It was on August 22, 2010. A wrinkled dusty paper with large brilliant red letters put a nation, and the entire world in ecstasy. It was captured by thousands of cameras, and it was headline news worldwide. The small, wrinkled, dusty paper, that was inelegant, came from the 33 Chilean miners, 700 meters below the earth’s surface, informing their families and the world: “the 33 are well in the refuge.” This is what Father Jose Maria Garcia and Sister M. Lucianne Machens wrote in the preface and then:
When we, the Schoenstatt Family, celebrate the centenary of the covenant of love on 18 October 2014, many hope it will capture the attention of the media. “But it’s not the number of cameras that are directed on us, which is decisive,” wrote Fr Eduardo Auza last year at the opening of the triennium of preparation for 2014, “but that the eyes of the world are directed to what can be read in our hearts and on our lips: ‘We are fine in our shelter,’ in the shrine, all of us together. That is the strong incentive for the renewal that our Family wants to experience, and give to the Church and world.” That is the strong incentive that leads our worldwide Schoenstatt Family from the Year of the Father Current into the Year of the Shrine Current. It is the year in which we look with our Father, Founder and Prophet at the foundations of our covenant of love as our mission, and try to deepen these foundations. The tiny, unspectacular, perhaps even less than elegant, shrine that was born in Father Kentenich’s heart at his consecration as a nine-year-old, and that took shape and form on October 18, 1914, is our “piece of paper” towards which the eyes and cameras of the world must be directed when we celebrate the centenary of the covenant of love – all of us together.
A single shrine that embraces the whole world; a single shrine that heals and sanctifies the world – our globalized, secularized and de-personalized world – because a network of shrines has spread over the whole world; because unseen people on the roadside, in the heart of the city or town, at work, in prisons, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, churches, war zones, and sunk in utter poverty … walk up to the open doors of a shrine. It could be built of stone, it could be a wayside shrine, a home shrine, or a heart shrine, yet it is a shrine that is global, connected to a network, without boundaries, and utterly person-oriented.
It is a shrine that in any of its forms is a place where we encounter God, a place of evangelization. Each shrine, from the Original Shrine to each heart shrine, lives from the contributions of each individual person and the whole Schoenstatt Family. It is a shrine where life becomes the Gospel and the Gospel becomes life. As if this worldwide network were not enough, the Mother Thrice Admirable goes even further, she goes out from the shrine to the people as the Pilgrim Mother of God. This leads us into the missionary current.
With Father Kentenich during the Year of the Shrine current
The following texts of Father Kentenich’s rich inheritance will help on this walk.
Through the initiative of Team 2014, the anthology was compiled by the “Mittelrhein” sector of the Joseph Kentenich Institute and edited by Monsignor Peter Wolf. The editor is the Rector General of the Institute of the Schoenstatt Diocesan Priests and a member of the General Council of the International Schoenstatt Movement.
The German edition was published at Patris-Verlag
ISBN 978-3-87620-376-8
It can be obtained at Patris-Verlag or at any bookstore.
The Spanish edition will be published at Editorial Nueva Patris Chile.
The English edition will be published in Milwaukee, USA.
With material from www.moriah.de and http://www.josef-kentenich-institut.de
Extracts, photos and much more information – only in German
Translation: Celina Garza, San Antonio/Melissa Janknegt, Elgin, USA
