ECUADOR, Mónica Maruri. During this jubilee year of Schoenstatt Ecuador, we look back upon those who believed without seeing. In this case, we look back at a young girl, now a mother and grandmother, who along with her mother and other members of her family and friends first believed. In addition they also decided to erect three tents and build a throne for the Mother Thrice Admirable of Schoenstatt.
Leticia Quiróz de Zambrano inspires us with her smile and her strong and joyful song. She encourages us to continue forward, to get on the cross and to give everything. She asks us to “let nothing go to waste,” to take God’s love into every moment of our lives.
Below is her testimony encouraging us to continue forward, to love more, better, and above all to give thanks to God for our Founding Father.
Upon meditating and looking with gratitude on Schoenstatt’s path through my life, I can summarize it by saying with our Father: “Profound gratitude, secret desire, and joyful hope.” And to see the phrase accomplished which says: “You looked at us because we were small, giving us the holy mission,” and to exclaim with our Blessed Mother, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.” (Lk.1,38)
To speak about my personal experience with Father is to speak about the development of my life, of that slow and profound growth of Schoenstatt in Guayaqui, Eucador. Father was “The Founder” for me, but as Schoenstatt was cultivated in my heart, without realizing it, I began loving the agent, the instrument, the Father who took, developed, and gave his life for the Schoenstatt Mission: That New Man, who in solidarity rooted and developed in himself and his surroundings a new world, and this was through the Covenant with our Mother Thrice Admirable and in our small Shrine.
Why Father Kentenich should be canonized
Everything, everything that I have, what I am, what I will be until my last breath is fruit of the Covenant, of that inseparable union of God’s Plan with the Shrine, with Father’s heart inscribed in Hers. That is the reason I can say that I live to embrace the cross each day, to elevate it, to proclaim the infinite mercy of God, who is Love, to the world that the prodigal son embraces each day.
Father is a Saint, because like Christ, he lived in obedience to the desires of God the Father. He should be canonized because he [had and] has a gift for the Church:
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The Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother that is indivisibly united to Christ in the Shrine as a point of support, as a home She shelters, transforms, and sends forth; She prepares, presents and offers the offering each day.
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We have received the Mission from Father: The New Man in the New Community immersed daily in the Plan of Redemption.
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A Family convoked by God to consume itself until the Church becomes a community of love.
