CHILE, Antonio Barbagelata Figari. “Now I simply have to say a yes. Father, not my plans; but rather, God’s. God is Father, God is good, everything he does is good…Human plans are not the good ones, ultimately, it is God’s plan…And as our Father said so many times, ‘And that which is in His plans is what is important.'” These words were said by Mario Hiriart Pulido, Servant of God, in Milwaukee, days before his death on July 15th, 1964.
Several activities emerged to emphasize the fifty years of Mario’ Easter involving dialogues on the 15th of each month with personalities from the cultural, political and religious world, and a pilgrimage of young men and the Mario caravan to Christ the Redeemer. During the year in which the one hundred years of the Covenant of Love is being celebrated in Schoenstatt, these initiatives, carried out every year, are now highlighted recalling the fifty years since Mario Hiriart’s departure to heaven.
Another Joseph Engling
Mario said that communion was a very powerful force that sustained him and impelled him to go on the straight road. With this strength from the Eucharist, Father Joaquín Alliende, the postulator of Mario’s cause, celebrated Holy Mass on the same day, the 15th of July, and on the 20th of July in the Cenacle Shrine, land of this favorite son of Bellavista, Father Raúl Feres celebrated it.
In his introduction to the Holy Mass, Father Joaquin said, “In 1939, Father Kentenich celebrated twenty-five years of the Covenant, and he asked himself how fruitful this Covenant had been. Then he indicated that in this nothing without You and the nothing without us, the Family has the figure of Joseph Engling. Father Kentenich asked himself if in the coming twenty-five years if there would be another Joseph. No one imagined that it would be a Chilean. The day after Mario’s death, Father Humberto Anwandter made a prophetic announcement in a homily: The Second Founding Document text (1939) was fulfilled today, twenty-five years after Father’s question, in the figure of Mario.”
“Mario’s death is an exemplary death and if someone preaches the faith and does not teach death, that means that they have not taught anything. Mario is profoundly Marian, he is another Christ,” Father Joaquin said in his homily.
The first seed
“Mario, in Bellavista, you were the first cluster of grapes, the first wheat made into bread, the first buried seed, you were the sower of the good seed, and as Jesus said in the Gospel reading for July20th , caretaker of the kingdom. Mario is the privileged instrument that God has placed on our road. Mario believes the positive in people, and thus the wheat can grow, making the seed fruitful,” Father Raúl Feres declared in his homily.
After the Eucharist, on both occasions, the participants went to Mario’s tomb joyfully and in procession despite the intense cold, where with a family spirit, they prayed and sang to this brother, “weak clay cup that was transformed close to the Shrine, who, in God’s living chalice on the quiet altar of your daily struggle, was raised as a Covenant offering.”
Thank you Mario, the Family hopes that in the coming fifty years, you will be on the altars along with all the saints, and we will be able to sing that song loudly that you liked so much. “My Schoenstatt brothers forgers of kingdoms, crusader knights of the Queen of heaven…”
Source: Vínculo, Chile
Original: Spanish – Translation Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA
