Posted On 2019-04-20 In Abuses

“As a Family, we go together to the other shore”

CHILE, Fr. Juan Pablo Rovegno, National Director •

Perhaps now more than ever, Schoenstatt is suffering – within the Universal Church, with her and like her – from one of its deepest crises in the face of sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience. The Church and the Movement in Chile are the most affected, with senior representatives having been condemned by Pope Francis and the justice authorities. We publish a text by the Movement director that calls for deep interpretation and conversion. —

 

“As a family, we go together towards the other shore”. With this motto, we hope to inspire our 2019 National Leaders Day. A commission consisting of representatives from the whole Family is working on its form and content. We accompany this process by imploring the Holy Spirit.

Taking to the ocean in the middle of a storm is a necessity, at a time that urges us to take an active part of the ecclesial process we are experiencing. Our own wounds will urge us not to give in to the temptation of immobility or indifference, even worse: sterile defense or to close in on ourselves.

Pope Francis met with representatives from the Universal Church to take responsibility for the drama of abuse, enter deeply into this wound, not only by virtue of “never again” (taking responsibility for this painful reality, setting criteria of truth, justice and reparation), but also to allow ourselves to be enlightened by a new way of being Church, of understanding ourselves, drawing closer to Jesus and others.

There is a fundamental paradigm shift in the perception of reality: just as on the Cross the wounds of Jesus allowed us to understand the depth of God’s love, today the wounds of the victims allow us to return to the most authentic meaning of Jesus’ life and the mission of the Church: identifying with who suffer. The face of Jesus lives in the one who suffers, the one who suffers reflects a God who is neither power nor form, judgment or perfection, but life, humility, service and salvation.

By uniting our journey towards the 31st of May with the ecclesial process we are experiencing, we notice a new form of being Church and Family on the horizon of the other shore, of understanding our being and mission, of capturing our charism more deeply like Mary: becoming instruments to reflect Christ in the world, in our times, in the wounds of humanity. The other shore has much of the Jesus of the Beatitudes; someone for whom human suffering awakens all of his capacity to love.

May the pain of so many and for so long not cease to move us, to understand and share the love of God for everyone with greater depth.

This crisis draws us to a new conversion: to return to Jesus who, in the midst of the storm, meets us and calls us: “Let’s go together towards the other shore”, the shore of a renewed love of God and humanity, as Jesus did.

Source: Vinculo, March 2019

Original: Spanish, 11 April. Translation: Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Cape Town, South Africa

Foto: Peter Llewellyn, iStockGettyImages ID 941014542

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