SPAIN, org. In his pastoral projection for the month of January 2014, the Director of the Schoenstatt Movement in Spain, Father Carlos Padilla, offers the Spanish Schoenstatt Family and all visitors to the schoenstatt.org webpage, an important and actual stimulus for the service of life and for the Jubilee Pilgrimage. His starting point is the Jubilee gift from the Schoenstatt Family in Spain to form a web of living shrines, a web of life, a missionary web. He connects it to the anniversary of the 20th of January – Father Kentenich’s decision to renounce all human means for avoiding his entrance into Dachau Concentration Camp in 1942 – and the stimulus from Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium on unity and diversity and how to avoid the danger of uniformity.
We have begun our Jubilee Year with great joy
We only have nine months left to participate in the great celebration of October 18th. Grateful, filled with joy, we journey in this year of grace that has just begun. God is merciful and He shows us his love. The Shrine pours out its graces, which fortify us in our aspiring toward sanctity. We want to form a web of living shrines as a gift for Mary in the Shrine. On the 18th of September, we will consecrate ourselves as living shrines, as the Schoenstatt Family of Spain: A web of life, a missionary web.
We want that web to unite us as Family in order to be a testimony of unity in the Church. Pope Francis said in his apostolic exhortation: “Diversity has to always be reconciled with the help of the Holy Spirit; only He can arouse diversity, plurality, multiplicity and, at the same time, create unity. On the other hand, when we are the ones who aspire to diversity, and we close ourselves within our peculiarities, our exclusivity, we provoke division and, on the other hand, when we are the ones who want to build unity with our human plans, we end up imposing uniformity, homologation.”
We want to ask for the grace of unity in diversity. We form a web of life united in the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary, in the Shrine, unites us and gives us the grace to remain united in Christ. In our communities, how are we preparing this consecration as a network of living shrines?
What gestures of unity do I want to give to Mary in the Shrine?
This January, we accompany Father Kentenich in the milestone of January 20, 1942.
In the jail at Koblenz, he abandoned himself trusting in the hands of Mary. His inner freedom invites us to trust, to leave our life in the hands of God, to give Him the reins of our life. Because, as Father Kentenich said, “we do not want to be like those who in prayer know how to say much in regard to total surrender, and nevertheless, gather the strings of the world to make the coach reverse when God begins to take our prayer seriously and does what He wants with us.” (J. Kentenich, ‘Letters from Carmel,’ 1941-42)
We want to learn to trust. In this time of crisis, of difficulties, we pronounce anew our radical “Yes,” our faithful “Yes.” Our “Yes” to our personal journey, to our vocation. Our “Yes” to the life we are called to live, with its concerns and joys. Our “Yes” to our weaknesses and strengths. Our “Yes” to our daily sacrifices, to our crosses, to the moments of jubilee. Our simple and daring “Yes” like that of Father Kentenich’s throughout his life. Like the “Yes” of the martyrs who knew how to remain faithful until the end of their lives amidst difficulties and persecutions. That “Yes” is not improvised; it is taught. We unite, at the beginning of the year, to so many saints who, in key moments of their lives, were strong and pronounced with depth the most important “Yes” of their lives. Before that moment, they had pronounced their “Yes” daily to marital love, a daily and simple “Yes,” a “Yes” that passes unperceived but which demands great bravery of the heart.
The martyrs of the Church teach us to live with radicalism
We are enthused by great ideals and the heart is filled with dreams. But then we have to live the daily difficulties day by day, and we become bourgeois (smug). God asks us for the radicalism of a heart that surrenders itself completely, the radicalism of the martyrs. Spain is a land of martyrs. Schoenstatt has formed many martyrs in love. That is our martyr, that of love. Father Kentenich said: “May each day be for you a burning ember which burns all that is worldly and mediocre which is in the soul and may it develop all which is eternal and divine, in order to make in this way an ardent flame.” (J. Kentenich, ‘Letters from Carmel,’ 1941-42)
It is a joyful “Yes” which we pronounce. We strive with the smallest, we give our life and our fidelity is at play. God speaks to us in daily life. He asks of us that generous and constant “Yes.” The “Yes” of love that renounces self and is an offering. Mary’s fiat renewed each morning and each evening. She kept all these words in her heart. From Nazareth to Ein Karem, from Bethlehem to Egypt, from Bethany to Golgotha. She, kneeling confidently, renews her “Yes” and remains faithful and firm at the foot of the Cross. In the Shrine, Mary teaches us to say “Yes” to God. She forms us, educates us, and gives us her pure heart.
Are we radical in the surrender of our love? Is our heart confidant and anchored in God?
Original: Spanish. Translation: Carlos Cantú, La Feria, USA
