mda. We are reaching the finishing line of the Jubilee – the sign was given at the evening blessing at the Original Shrine on the eve of 18 September, because the feast, as Rector Egon M. Zillekens says, begins with vespers and the evening blessing. On this occasion the volunteers for 2014 each lit a votive candle and placed them around the Original Shrine. While in Schoenstatt and around the world more and more paper is produced, and more and more commissions organise more and more, what actually matters are two questions: What do we expect from the Blessed Mother, and where will I be at the Jubilee? I want to be there, as Fr Zillekens said in his brief address at Holy Mass in the morning of 18 September. He then related how people can be very personally “inside” while the covenant of love is being renewed at the beginning of the next hundred years of this river of grace and life “which lives on as vibrantly as at the beginning. We are amazed to see how profound faith in the reality of the covenant of love with Mary motivates and inspires our actions all over the world, and how it is the source of our fruitfulness and the practical form of our way of following Christ” (Message 2014).
My name on the wall of the Original Shrine
He talked about the spontaneous spiritual current that arose last October. At that time an opening was discovered in the wall during the essential renovation of the Original Shrine – it was site of the old chimney. “We spontaneously began to fill this hole”, Fr Zillekens went on, “with photos, with letters, with thanksgiving, with promises… When we informed people about it via the internet, the emails arrived from all over the world, with more arriving each day. When the printer no longer managed to print all that arrived day and night, we finally put them all on a memory stick and placed it in the wall of the Original Shrine in the hope that the MTA could read it. Now the wall of the Original Shrine contains all this as well …”
Even weeks after the opening had been closed, emails continued to arrive. They were added to another way of “being very personally present”, which had started very quietly, when they were placed in the jar in the Original Shrine. The “Hotline to the Original Shrine” this is called. 10.800 emails have arrived since October last year, and they have passed directly from schoenstatt.org to the Original Shrine. Ventura Torres from Chile brings the whole pile of printed pages to the Original Shrine week after week, and places them – unread, of course – into the jar. They contain requests, trust, thanksgiving, questions, cares, renewal of the covenant of love, in short, everything that moves us here and now. They are a dialogue between two covenant partners, very personal, loving, real and confidential. That is my jubilee, and this is how I am personally present.
My name on the altar
“Then, a few days ago, I was in the Original Shrine when there was nothing else in there than the wooden altar, because the shrine was being painted inside,” Fr Zillekens continued.
“A few young women arrived who simply went behind the altar and wrote their names on the wood.
A confrere and I then spontaneously did it as well.”
The article that related this incident is one of the most popular of the last months.
To write my name personally, to sign my covenant again with my handwritten name, to be there!
Where will I be at the Jubilee? With my name behind the altar.
That’s where I am.
An intiative of Team 2014
So now there is an initiative coming from Team 2014, Fr Zillekens recalls. “During the Jubilee days the route to the Original Shrine will pass a huge roll of parchment with the text of the Founding Document. All will have an opportunity to sign their name under it and in this way express: I personally seal the covenant of love of 18 October 2014 with my name. The roll of names will be carried into the Original Shrine”, we are told in the official Newsletter 2014. Those who are unable to come, can also be there by adding their name to the form on the official website on the Jubilee. All the names will be saved on a memory card and taken to the Original Shrine on 18 October 2014.
Where will I be at the Jubilee?
Some Argentineans will bring a huge bunch of rainbow-coloured silk flowers to the Original Shrine on 18 October. Each flower will represent a person who wants to be personally present, with their first and surnames, through praying the Rosary.
My Jubilee took place in a prison when I renewed the covenant of love with a prisoner, someone related. I am present through my solidarity house in Paraguay which bears the name of my home shrine, my personal mission in life. I await the grace of 2014 during the audience in Rome through what Pope Francis says, one of the translators at Conference 2014 remarked. Lourdes O from Paraguay will be present through the ticket she gave someone who would never have been able to go to the Jubilee, because she herself is unable to go on health grounds. Again others will be present when they join the 60.000 pilgrims in Tuparenda on 18 October, or when they are working for others all on their own, or in the streets, or in their home shrines. They will renew their covenant of love as they hold their consecration medal or the Unity Cross.
All of me without reserve.
Original: German – Translation: M. Cole, UK
Video (schoenstatt-tv) Holy Mass 09.18.2014
