GERMANY, fma. “Fifty years of Priesthood in the service of Fr Kentenich” – That was the heading of the hymn sheet for the Holy Mass prepared by the Students and Postulants of the Schoenstatt Fathers in Munich for the solemn celebration in the late afternoon of 30 June. It describes the ministry of the priest celebrating the Golden Jubilee of his ordination, a priest to whom people in Germany, Hungary, and Austria owe their personal growth and the tasks they would never have envisaged for themselves, still less undertaken. They owe the projects of the Academy for Families and even this internet page to his decisive inspiration: Fr Tilmann Beller.
“It was so small when it began, it was drawn wholly from life; but no matter how small it was, it changed and set its stamp on the whole organism. And that disturbs the system. It doesn’t want to change. It objects. That is part of it, but it changes and sets its stamp on everything if you just keep going. It doesn’t matter how small, how imperfect something or someone is.” This was said almost in passing to one of the leaders of the project, and this prophetic charism to interpret life processes within the large Schoenstatt Movement suddenly flashed out.
Many had come on that hot summer’s afternoon to experience this in the way it has always been: sharing and observing life processes, wondering observation, and still more observation and quiet comparison … until late in the evening those who persevered were rewarded with twenty minutes of unadulterated Beller in the shrine.
Growth
Working in Germany with the Youth, developmental work in Austria and Hungary, Leader of the Schoenstatt Movement in Germany, ministry to smaller groups from Munich. In Hungary the Schoenstatt Family had already celebrated the jubilee of their Fr Beller, so mainly friends and guests from Austria and Germany had travelled to Munich for this celebration. After a reception in the grounds around the shrine, and refreshments under the directions of Fr Elmar Busse, the guests related what they had received from Fr Beller and what tasks he had entrusted to them. The rhetoric lecturers at “the Academy” had transferred their annual meeting to Munich “because most of them had been invited by Fr Beller to attend his jubilee celebrations.” “When I heard that Fr Beller was celebrating the jubilee of his ordination, it was obvious that I would travel to Munich”, said Fr Carlos Cox from Chile, who is in Schoenstatt at present.
Most of those who came forward to talk had been asked by Fr Beller to do so, and some only did it because he had asked …
The artist, Michael Fuchs, told us about his desire to discover God in pictures and how he had been inspired by Fr Beller to draw a picture of Fr Kentenich for the commemorative year in 1985. Fr Bernhard Schneider talked about the growth of a group of boys and young men who were looking for “more”, of how Fr Beller had accompanied them on the path of their vocation, and how a number of them wanted “to become priests like Fr Beller.” Women later related similar experiences. They had belonged to the first group of Schoenstatt Girls in Austria.
Josef Wieland (today leader of the Family Federation in Germany with his wife, Rosa Maria), smilingly spoke about how he owed his knowledge of women to Fr Beller. A couple from the group “Management and Family” recounted how their attempt to join the Family Federation had failed, but their growth as a couple and their tasks as business leaders under the inspiration of Fr Beller continues to grow …
Fr Beller’s “lasting foundation”
Martin Herzog, brother-in-law of Fr Beller and former Finance Minister of Baden Wurttemberg, did not keep to the three minutes allotted to every speaker, but it was hardly noticed because his eulogy of the “spiritual head of the family” was so heart-warming and original, and the congratulations of Father’s nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephews, were so cordial. Completely human, completely part of a family.
The family: “Fr Beller’s most lasting foundation”. This is the conviction of Mr & Mrs Fellhofer, Sickinger and Mitter, who successively edited the magazine “The Family as a Vocation”, which was to make Schoenstatt and its family pedagogy known far beyond the Movement itself. With a circulation of 14.000 it reaches a large number of families month after month in order to set its stamp on a family culture in Austria. And beyond. The couples gave Fr Beller a number of pages of the most recent issue of the magazine in which families bore witness to what he had given them.
The foundation of the Academy for Family Pedagogy serves a similar purpose. It started in Vienna, but has in the meantime spread to Germany, Switzerland, Lithuania, Hungary, Croatia and Spain. “Its purpose is to pass on the know-how that has developed in the Schoenstatt Family Movement,” as Eva und Erich Berger put it. Today many couples who are leaders in Schoenstatt’s Family Movement have passed through the Academy. One of the rhetoric lecturers related, “In the discussion one couple said: Fr Kentenich said …, oh, no, Fr Beller said …, no, yes, Fr Kentenich, … it doesn’t matter, they both said the same.”
Not just happy clients, also committed collaborators
Fr Elmar Busse preached at the solemn Mass of celebration and thanksgiving, during which the students and postulants of the Schoenstatt Fathers played and led the singing. He compared Fr Beller to Steve Jobs who invited competent and committed users to help design the Apps. As a result he had not only happy customers (like others who keep their knowledge secret and stress customer service), but acquired committed collaborators. The thesis in the subject of journalism, “Dialogue instead of support”, which Fr Beller has on his conscience, and without which this article would never have been written, dealt with an essential fundamental feature of communication according to Fr Kentenich. And according to Fr Tilmann Beller …
After the festive dinner the discussion in small groups continued … and lasted a long time.
His tremendous closeness to Mary
It was planned that at 10 p.m. those still present would sing two hymns and then receive the blessing. In the distance we could hear the approaching thunderstorm. Some pressed closer to the shrine.
And then Fr Beller spoke. After the first few sentences all squeezed into the shrine – and it wasn’t because of the storm. Today it is a matter of personal affection, of a world in which the one turns to the other and says: I love you! – not as an application of pedagogical method or strategy, but as a powerful river, a divine river. Today we suffer from the almost total loss of human solidarity. Everything depends on one Woman who enters into this world and says: I am the Queen. Pedagogical and psychological principles are insufficient; all that matters is to keep really close to the Mother of God. Closeness to the Blessed Mother means not (just) praying the Rosary or fasting, but loving her and together with her seeking contact with other people: loving what and whom she loves, and how she loves … and counting upon a divine force that enables us to love. This is not only a supernatural mechanism, but a powerful river that flows from us to others and builds them up. “Our tremendous closeness to the Blessed Mother – that is what matters. We are approaching a time of miracles. God has to initiate something. We need a gigantic miracle of global proportions. We believe in miracles. Believe in a miracle. … Let us pray to Fr Kentenich to bless us with the sign of the cross (he can do it; he is one of the powerful ones), and to pray that the Blessed Mother will once again stake everything on a throw of the dice for us and Schoenstatt.”
A Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday morning – with Fr Bernhard Schneider as preacher – helped us to re-live all we had experienced. The farewells lasted a long time. Some felt withdrawal symptoms.
Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester, England
