ARGENTINA, Mercedes and Fernando Bonorino. On September 25, 2012, Guillermo Echevarría returned to the house of the Father. Providence wanted him to depart on the day on which Argentina celebrates the Feast of the Virgin of Saint Nicolas’ Rosary.
Guillermo was born on February 16, 1936, in a wholesome, happy and profoundly Christian family, where he received much love. Those Marian values that he received from his parents and from the Marist Brothers by whom he was taught, were profoundly rooted in his heart. For him, marriage and the family were sacred. He had great love for his work and his Nation, and respect and delicacy in treating women; he was a proper Marian man.
He had always been in love with Mary. Since his youth, he asked Her to help with exams – “Even when I had not studied very much!” – he would say smiling. His confidence in the Mother of God was so great that when he began courting, he placed Her as the foundation of his courtship from the first day. He gave Ana a carved picture of the Virgin. Every time they visited during the courtship, they met and bid farewell close to Mary.
“May devotion to the Most Holy Virgin extend throughout the world like a trail of gunpowder”
Many times, he confessed his greatest desire to Ana: “May devotion to the Most Holy Virgin extend throughout the world like a trail of gunpowder”.
During the first years of their marriage, Guillermo and Ana discovered the Rosary together – after they heard a talk – and they began to pray it and meditate upon it with their small children, trying to teach them to live what was contemplated in each mystery. It was then when they were looking for a Marian priest to enthrone a beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy, which Guillermo had inherited from his parents, that Guillermo and Ana had their first contact with Father Esteban Uriburu and through him with Father Kentenich, the Shrine and the Blessed Mother: with Schoenstatt.
Guillermo found the channel, where he could direct and nourish the great desire of his heart through Father Kentenich and his call to announce the glories of Mary, to pull her triumphant carriage, to spread the love of Mary, and to lead others to live what he was experiencing in his own family life. He and Ana quickly joined an Apostolic League couples’ group, where today, after thirty-six years they had continued to work united by the desire of living and spreading the Schoenstatt message. Two years later, they sealed a Covenant of Love with Mary in the National Shrine and – along with the picture that had been enthroned in Guillermo and Ana’s home – Father Esteban Uriburu blessed their Homeshrine.
To the ends of the world
The graces of sending forth were immediate. Through the text of one of Father Kentenich’s talks, Guillermo and Ana discovered the Rosary of Instruments as the way to make the Covenant of Love alive, by praying and living the mysteries of the Gospel and by offering this prayer and this life to the capital of grace to help Mary on her great mission to transform the world. They talked to Father Esteban about this. Father was always attentive to the voices of the times to discover God’s will; he had noticed a significant interest for the Rosary by several youths, and he saw the voice of God in Guillermo and Ana’s enthusiasm. In March 1983, he proposed that they start a Rosary initiative for the youths from the Shrine. To inspire them, he gave them the picture of the Rosary Campaign, that John Pozzobon had providentially given him a short time before. They had the inspiration to crown that Pilgrim MTA as Queen of the Rosary, to ask that She give impetus to the Rosary Movement and for Adoration of the Eucharist that Father Kentenich had called for from Santa María, Brazil, in 1952. They worked with great enthusiasm, and they organized conferences for youths. They did this with much life and joy through jokes, anecdotes and concrete examples of daily life. Guillermo, Ana, and Father Esteban were opening a road of life for these young people, one of Covenant in embodying the mysteries of the Rosary in offering them to the capital of grace. Guillermo and Ana consecrated themselves in the Shrine “to pray and live the Rosary and to take it to others” and they told the Virgin: “You can send those who consecrate themselves today to the ends of the earth” (FJK) . Without knowing it, they were experiencing the beginning of the expansion of the Campaign to the world. Upon seeing the fruits that the crowning of the Virgin gave, Ana wrote a letter asking John Pozzobon for twenty-five Pilgrim MTAs to send them to the Shrines of America and to crown them asking Mary, as Queen of the Rosary, to give the grace of praying and living it in Covenant with Her, as it was being done in Argentina.
They discovered the “saint of the new evangelization”
John prepared the twenty-five Pilgrim MTAs, and he invited Guillermo and Ana to go to Brazil to get them. In March 1984, accompanied and supported by Father Esteban Uriburu, they traveled to Santa María, Brazil; they took a group of thirty people, to get the first twenty-five Pilgrim MTAs of the Campaign that would depart to the world. The meeting with John was transcendental in Guillermo’s life. Along with Ana, they discovered in him an instrument that clearly embodied all of the Schoenstatt spirituality. They understood that the Virgin had prepared a definitive model of what She wanted to give on the way of the Pilgrim MTA. Guillermo had found the mission of his life and since then, he gave himself completely to it with all his heart’s strength. That year, they traveled to Santa María three times with Father Esteban to be with John Pozzobon and to immerse themselves with the spirit of his Campaign to take it to the world.
And the mission began. They did not spare any effort: in prayer, in apostolic work, in the generosity with which they offered their material resources, their time, and their efforts. They made Pilgrim MTAs, they gave talks, organized retreats, wrote letters, and they welcomed lay people and priests, who came from the interior of the country or from other countries, to their home to pass on the mission to them. Thus, Pilgrim MTAs taking the Campaign to Cuba, Norway, Poland India, China…departed from their Homeshrine. They worked untiringly. They printed brochures; they created videos about John Pozzobon and the Campaign. They traveled to take the Campaign to Paraguay and Germany and to promote it in Uruguay and Chile. In 1985, during Father Kentenich’s centennial in Germany, many will remember them walking from one place to another with the large International Pilgrim Auxiliary MTA that John Pozzobon had given them to carry the mission forward. There, with Father Esteban, they contacted many priests and lay Schoenstatters from different countries, who were enthusiastic about beginning the Campaign in their nation. In this way, at the end of the year of 1985, the Campaign had reached twenty-two countries on five continents.
Mary’s Faithful Servant
During many years, along with Father Esteban Uriburu, they dedicated themselves to the expansion and deepening of the Campaign within Argentina, and they supported its spreading out to the rest of the world, collaborating on the team of advisers of the Campaign and the Vice-postulation of the John Pozzobon’s Cause. It was almost thirty years of untiring work, always taking care that the original charism of the Campaign was loyally carried out. Not everything was easy. There were misunderstandings and struggles that caused immense exertion to Guillermo’s sensitive heart. But through the storms, he remained steadfast with great courage, clinging with perseverance to prayer and continuing the apostolic work with enormous humility and simplicity, without using any violence other than the “soft violence” of prayer and sacrifice offered for love. He gave the charism entrusted to him without imposition and with his characteristic kindheartedness. He always told jokes, anecdotes; he enjoyed transmitting the love for Mary and attracting many, bringing them to Her, sure that he was showing them the map to profound happiness.
There are expressions of his love of Mary, of the missionaries and of the Campaign that cannot be erased. Almost all of the testimonies that were received during those days remember him whistling “Maezinha do Ceu” with all his heart, as a tribute to Mary, the song “Maezinha do Ceu” – is almost a hymn of the Campaign – and he was deeply emotional when he meditated on the mysteries of the Rosary on a retreat, and when he crowned the Blessed Sacrament and the Mother Thrice Admirable with the crown of the illuminated Rosary. His love for the missionaries has marked many hearts- for his touching embrace and kiss that he would give each missionary when they consecrated themselves, and he would give them the Rosary: the emotional embrace of a father who bids farewell to a child who is undertaking a mission.
Milwaukee Encounter
Guillermo was an important paternal figure for many of the youths who came to the Campaign and became missionaries and leaders. They consulted with him about the mission and also about big decisions in their lives. Guillermo always took interest in them; he helped them, oriented them, and advised them with enormous kindness and selflessness just as he did with his four children, his parents, siblings, and relatives. He had a profound vocation of fatherhood. A tender and firm father and grandfather, who marked the way and sowed with love.
In this sense, the testimony that he received from Sister Petra about Father Kentenich’s paternity was very important to him when he went on pilgrimage to Milwaukee three years ago, as he traveled to the USA with Ana to visit one of his daughters. Since this trip, every morning, Guillermo transported himself in spirit to the Shrine walking in the hands of Father Kentenich, John Pozzobon, and Father Esteban to adore Jesus and to renew his Covenant of Love.
For Guillermo, Milwaukee signified a very strong encounter with the person of Father Kentenich and through him with God the Father. Since then, he proposed to embody that Gospel phrase, “But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” (Matt.6: 6). And every night, after eating and praying and meditating on the Rosary with Ana, he would retire to “end the day” -he would say – for a frank conversation with God the Father, conversing about the accomplishments and the mistakes of this day, and everything that he had experienced.
It also happened this way on September 21st, but this time it was different. From this time of dialogue with God, Guillermo remained almost unconscious for three days, like someone who is between heaven and earth. During those days Ana, her children and grandchildren, bid him farewell, one by one; he seemed to hear their words and to smile when they sang “Maezinha do Ceu” beside him.
I have had, and I have an ideal that has shaped all of my life
On September 24th close to all of his family, Father Benjamín Pereyra, his spiritual director, administered the Sacrament of Anointing to Guillermo. It was the Feast of the Virgin of Mercy, which providentially – had been the door through which Schoenstatt and the Covenant of Love with the Mother Thrice Admirable entered Guillermo’s life and captivated his heart. On this day, the Virgin wanted to place Guillermo under her mantle and prepare him for his departure to the house of the Father. “Mary, the loyal Mother…never leaves us…” (FJK). “Love for love, loyalty for loyalty” (FJK). Shortly before, Guillermo had written the following in his personal tablet.
“I have had, and I have an ideal that has shaped all of my life. It is an ideal that I have followed and for which I have struggled throughout my life.
Even now, this ideal continues to motivate me. It gives impetus to my work. It has given – and it gives meaning to my present and future life…It is a vocation: to be at the service of Mary, of wanting to sow.”
At dawn on September 25th, on the Feast of the Virgin of the Rosary of Saint Nicolas in Argentina, and surrounded by his children, Guillermo departed joyfully by the hand of Mary toward the eternal Schoenstatt…toward the sea of love and mercy of God’s heart. (Cf FJK)
In the shadow of the Zion Shrine of the Father, close to the place where Father Esteban rests, a grave was opened in the ground for Guillermo. With emotion, we left a rosary and living roses close to him. A sign. The sowing continues. From heaven, Guillermo will continue to crown Mary with the Rosary – as he crowned Her every night when he finished praying it. And he will continue in Mary’s service sowing the love of the Mother Thrice Admirable and of the Rosary lived in Covenant with Her in hearts.
Links videos of Ana and Guillermo (Video)
Part 1 http://youtu.be/soa9gWY8wPY
Part 2 http://youtu.be/8X7Vp_WTFy4
Part 3 http://youtu.be/l46LBswtzsI
Part 4 http://youtu.be/peWeZ0e68UE
In the footsteps of Jesus (Video)
Part 1 http://youtu.be/p4c6SZL3n0M
Part 2 http://youtu.be/-LGRYAp6yAM
Part 3 http://youtu.be/EWZhn54kvU4
John Pozzobon and the Schoenstatt Shrine (Video)
Original: Spanish. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX, USA
