Towards 2014

January 2013 – Number 14

Dear Pilgrims

One year ago we moved into Office 2014. The rooms were quiet and empty and the house was quite cold. It is a different picture now! Heating is on, printers whirring and voices can be heard throughout the Covenant House. Celebrations take place here as well as many encounters on the Journey 2014,

In these days when the Original Shrine is shrouded in snow it’s not backwards that I want to look but forwards. Here in Office 2014 we are looking forward to meetings with those working in the Movement on different continents. We are planning and working on the encounter with those working tirelessly on the Tents of Covenant Culture. Now that many of the elements have been clarified around the great events of 2014 – we are looking forward to sharing the results with you and once again listening to the responses to the proposals.

Year of Mission  – Year of Faith… You really have to have faith as we prepare for the great feast. As you will see below – that faith is confirmed again and again as we journey together toward this time of grace. Keep on praying… our celebration will be great…

I would like to remind you of the competition surrounding Music 2014 – Please pass on the information to musicians and composers – we are all invited to participate in the preparation for the Jubilee – it is our feast….

God bless
Fr. Andrew

With every step we take on our pilgrim way

On Thursday, January 3rd, there was a touching ceremony in the Shrine of Father’s Freedom, in La Plata, Argentina, on the occasion of fixing the cracks of the Shrine.  Some time ago the back wall behind the altar began to crack, cracks became visible in the walls… For the Schoenstatt Family of La Plata, and especially for those who had helped build the shrine almost 50 years ago, this day became a moment of grace, a moment of renewal and re-foundation, and an answer to a motto that had lingered with them for quite a while:  “We need to re-found Schoenstatt.” –  “The message is no less than that we have to re-found Schoenstatt wherever we are; we have to renew its deepest foundations, and although it may seem impossible to us, although we feel that our strength is diminishing, that our community is getting old, that we are running out of ways and strategies…we are called, no more and no less, to do it with what we are and have…”, they said. A member of the National Team 2014 in Argentina commented with deep joy:  “Yes, it is time to become conscious wherever we are that we need to walk towards 2014 as we offer the covenant. Most of all we have to live it in solidarity. It depends on the ardour and passion of each of us whether Schoenstatt will march forward though our times, and whether we accept and carry forward the mission Father Kentenich left to us. In this year of Faith, this year of the missionary current, let us commit ourselves ever more zealously to this mission: Schoenstatt for our Church and world. This is how we can re-found Schoenstatt… Then the MTA will do the rest.”

The core of the jubilee celebration in 2014 of 100 years of the covenant of love in Schoenstatt and Rome, as well as its preparation, is the renewal of the covenant of love as an internationally networked and creative missionary force (Working Document 2014). In the years since Conference 2014 – the assembly of representatives of the Schoenstatt Family from 33 countries – decided that what we will celebrate in 2014 is the covenant of love, so the renewal of this covenant of love is the “Why” and “How” and “Wherefore” of years of spiritual preparation. Some have asked: The renewal of the covenant of love – is that all? Many thousands around the globe have set out and have become, and increasingly want to become pilgrims of faith who answer: Yes, that’s all. Nothing but Schoenstatt. That is what we have to do. The MTA will do the rest.  That is the grace 2014.

Two simple missionaries of the Pilgrim Mother, the only ones in their city,  decided on October 18, 2010: we need to increase the number of people who seal the covenant of love. By Christmas this past year their number had increased by a factor of seven…
A woman in Quatar in the Middle East stumbled upon the international Schoenstatt website and remembered a book she had read years before. She sealed her covenant of love and renews it each time she visits the website.
A Filipino family in Sweden has committed itself to spreading the Pilgrim Mother in their city and sharing the covenant of love “as our contribution to 2014”.
This coming June several ten thousands of men all over Brazil, participants in the Men’s Rosary that was inspired by John Pozzobon, will seal the covenant of love right in the middle of the year of the missionary current.
A business leader from Switzerland, who is working for his company in Africa, experienced a situation of utter need during difficult negotiations in a situation that put many people’s future at risk. One night in the hotel he took his ballpoint pen and drew a crown on the picture of his small Pilgrim MTA. “And she worked. She really works…”
During these January weeks thousands of young people and families are setting put as pilgrims and missionaries to bring faith, inspiration and a helping hand to entire cities. In their hands they carry the Pilgrim Mother, and around their necks a lace with the missionary cross – the symbols of this year of the missionary current and the Jubilee 2014.
The week before the World Youth Day in Rio will be different from all those in the past.
In Brazil the World Youth Day Cross is now called the pilgrim cross… and the week before the World Youth Day will be held as a missionary week. With a bit of faith it is evident that what was given to us at Conference 2014, and all the work done on accents and symbols, was and is in line with what the Church has been preparing at this moment in time.

“The Church, which has received from her Lord the mission to evangelize, knows well that the Gospel is destined for all people, especially the younger generations, to quench that thirst for truth that everyone carries in their heart and that is often obscured by all those things that occupy us in life. This apostolic commitment is all the more necessary when the faith risks being obscured in cultural contexts that hinder its personal roots and its social presence.” Words of our Holy Father that motivate and inspire, but also call for commitment in this year of the missionary current, and in the Year of Faith of the universal Church. Each of the pilgrims is called and trained in the grace of 2014 to be transformed into a bearer of this hope through apostolic commitment to bringing about a Covenant Culture.

The renewal of the covenant means the renewal of Schoenstatt; it means making this covenant our way of life, our way of shaping a new social order and a new world: The covenant creates a culture – a culture of working, leading,  discussing,  educating, researching, of building family life, church life, state life… Covenant Culture. That`s it.

The Covenant of Love unleashes its power in different times and cultures in ever new ways. Despite this, it is always centred on how Mary bears Christ as the answer to the burning questions of the age.

Today the International Schoenstatt Movement faces the challenge of making the Gospel practical to everyday life and shaping a Covenant culture, in five particular areas:
• Marriage and family life;
• The challenges and dynamic of the youth;
•The application and publication of Fr. Kentenich’s thought within the educational field;
• The incorporation of our original charism into the diocesan and universal Church;
• Effective collaboration in the creation of a new social order and a culture inspired by the Covenant.

We bring the diversity of our apostolic projects in these five areas to the jubilee celebrations. In the Covenant of Love we once again place ourselves at the disposal of the Mother Thrice Admirable as her instruments: Your Covenant – our Mission.

In October 2014, the “tents of Covenant culture” will present concrete and real projects so that we can increase international dialogue about the possibilities and practical ideas for apostolic commitment in the 21st century.

https://www.schoenstatt.org/en/schoenstatt-in-action.htm