GERMANY, mda. This coming Sunday, 8 September, Rector Michael Gerber, a priest of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests, will be ordained Bishop in the Freiburg Cathedral at 2.30 p.m. local time. His episcopal ordination will be broadcast live in the Internet and can be followed on www.ebfr.de and www.katolisch.de.
Fr Michael Gerber will approach his ordination day in the fullest sense of the word: He will set out on foot on Thursday, 9th, from his hope town Oberkirch and walk the 78 kilometres on pilgrimage to his episcopal ordination in Freiburg. The Archdiocese published details on this pilgrimage on Wednesday, 4th, in Freiburg. At the same time Fr Gerber presented his episcopal coat of arms and his crosier, which has been carved from chestnut wood that comes from his home in the Renchtal.
Simplicity and companionship on the way: “Pilgrimage is an image of the Church”
Pilgrimage has become very important in the past years and decades. While I was studying, and as an assistant priest, it was a very intensive experience for me to set out on pilgrimage with young people year after year in the week of Pentecost. Also in the time between my ordination to the priesthood and my First Holy Mass I set out on pilgrimage from Freiburg to Oberkirch, where we were able to celebrate my First Mass on Pentecost Sunday 1997. I was deeply impressed by the way various friends and associates walked part of the way with me,” the new Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Freiburg said. That is why in the run-up to his episcopal ordination he wants to undertake a three-day pilgrimage, “For me pilgrimage is an important image of the Church – as the Second Vatican Council re-discovered. An essential part of pilgrimage is simplicity, the spontaneous and unplanned encounter with people, and experiences. An intensive companionship on the way is also part of it, as is the repeated experience that the God of life is in our midst.” Together with a group of pilgrims her will walk from his home in Oberkirch to Freiburt in the days before his episcopal ordination.
The image of the pilgrim Church, which Pope Francis has repeatedly emphasised since the beginning of his pontificate, and which the Second Vatican Council re-discovered, is an essential part of Fr Josef Kentenich’s image of the Church, as he stressed in a talk for the symbolic laying of the foundation stone of the Matrie Ecclesiae Shrine in Rome on 8 December 1965. This is also a reason why the international Schoenstatt Movement is celebrating its jubilee in 2014 and its preparations for it as a pilgrimage.
The individual stages along the way:
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First stage on 5 September in the direction of Freiburg along the Kandelhoehenweg (ca. 25 km over the Mooskopf) to Gengenbach.
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Second stage on Friday, 6 September, from Haslach to Waldkirch (ca. 31 km over the “Hoehenhaeuser”).
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Third stage on Saturday morning, 7 September, starting at the station in Waldkirch and walking to Merzhausen vial the Loretto Mountain to the Freiburg Cathedral (ca. 22 km).
Holy Mass and times of prayer
5 September, 9 a.m.: Pilgrimage Mass, Schoenstatt Centre Marienfried in Oberkirch
8 p.m.: Night prayer in the parish church at Gengenbach
6 September: Holy Mass will be celebrated on the way
8 p.m. Night prayer in the City chapel of “Our Lady” in Waldkirch, Lange Strasse (do not confuse it with the parish church of St Margaret!)
7 September, 3 p.m.: Holy Mass in the “Shrine of Vocation” (Schoenstatt shrine) in Merzhausen
6 p.m.: Solemn vespers in the Seminar Church of the Borromaeus College, Schoferstr. 1.
Source: Archdiocese of Freiburg
Translation Celina M. Garza San Antonio TX USA
