SPAIN, org. In his pastoral projection for the month of July 2014, the Director of the Schoenstatt Movement in Spain, Father Carlos Padilla, offers the Schoenstatt Family of Spain and the readers of our schoenstatt.org webpage, an important and actual motivation at the service of life and of the Jubilee pilgrimage – exactly 100 days from October 18, 2014. His starting point is the Jubilee gift from the Schoenstatt Family of Spain to form a web of living shrines, a web of life, a missionary web. “During this month we want to prepare ourselves as a Schoenstatt Family of Spain for the consecration as a web of living shrines on the 18th of September. It is the gift that we want to give Mary in October as a Spanish family”. The consecration ceremony will be on the 18th of September, after the Mass at the usual time, in the shrines of Pozuelo and Serrano. In Valdoreix (Barcelona) it will be Saturday, September 20, at 7:00 p.m.
On the 18th of September we will consecrate the web of living Shrines that we want to give Mary during her jubilee year.
This month we want to prepare our heart for this consecration. The desire of the heart is to become a living Shrine consecrated to Mary. To be living Shrines means to belong entirely to Mary, to be God property. Our heart is sacred ground. To consecrate our heart as a shrine is to recognize that in our smallness God takes us and makes us his property. We are sacred; the heart of others is also sacred ground. We are a shrine of Mary, sacred, alive. God and Mary live in me; they fill everything, even the most hidden corners. I can go to pray with God in my soul. It implies to open the doors so that He can invade everything. In this way, God goes out to encounter of the other through me.
We are called to give others the graces that we receive in the Shrine.
The first grace that we have experienced is to be sheltered. In the Shrine we rest because Mary accepts us just as we are. We have made our dwelling there. She knows us, she does not ask us for explanations, or asks, she does not accuse, she is quiet and she waits, she loves in silence, she respects our time. Father Kentenich reminds of the ideal that should move our life: «The Lord has given us Mary’s heart as a home. It is a safe home, a protected land, because God himself built it this way for us. Whoever lives there is safe» [1]. We are safe in Mary, in the Shrine. There we rest. How many times have we rested in the Shrine! How joyfully we have left our fears and worries in her hands! That is how we would like for many to rest in us. That our life may be a place of repose for many. That we can welcome as Mary welcomes. And to see men/women as She sees, with purity of heart.
In the second place we want to give the grace of transformation with our life.
Only love transforms the heart of man. We have been transformed through the love of concrete people. We have experienced Mary’s love in our lives and in this way things have begun to change. It is a love that converts the soul. A love that take us out of our mediocrity. Love raises, elevates, it gives fullness to life. Love dignifies, it takes the best of our soul, and it makes us better. When we feel loved and accepted we are able to give more, we want to give more, we are not content to be mediocre. Transformation does not happen at will. In that way the accomplishments are scarce. God carries out the true transformation in us. With his infinite love. Christ’s love transformed his disciples. Christ and Mary’s love in the Shrine transforms us. We want to give our transformed love in God’s hands. Our love will transform other hearts.
In the third place we want to give the grace of sending forth.
Mary sends us forth from the Shrine. Many times we have had the need to share what we experience. We have not approached the Shrine to be comfortable, in peace, to be living room Christians so that no one will bother us. Jesus wants the world to burn in flames. He wants us to give our all and not keep anything. Father Kentenich said: «When I keep something of my giving for me, I run the risk of always remaining as a caricature of what I should have become, of never realizing the ideal that God planned for me when he created me, of distorting the ideal that God want to see carried out in me»[2]. If we do not give our all, we run the risk of not allowing God to act. We interfere with the work of art that he wants to make in our life. Mary wants us to go out, that we go to encounter the man/woman who needs her love so much. She does want us to rest comfortably. The daughter Shrine cannot move. One must move to get there. One brings other there. A living shrine is always moving. It does not tire. It acts; it brings the lost and hopeless men/women. We are that living shrine that reaches the world.
At the same time, all of us, as a Schoenstatt Family, form a large living shrine.
Each one contributes something different. Our personal charisma, that talent that God has entrusted to us, the seed that he wants us to sow. When we bless our home shrine as a family we usually suggest that each one think about a symbol in the shrine with which one identifies him/herself. What part of the shrine do we want to be? What is our contribution, our personal ideal? We all form a living shrine. Without us the shrine is incomplete, something is lacking, our original way of loving, of giving life. In this web of living shrines we want to leave our personal, original, unique mark. In that web we express the most valuable thing that we give Mary through a photo or a symbol. What do I contribute? Am I giving my originality? We all form a part of this web from the respect and the acceptance of everyone.
[1] J. Kentenich, My heart shrine
[2] J. Kentenich, Talk 1966
Original: Spanish – Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA
