Posted On 2017-05-04 In Kentenich

The “Father Joseph Kentenich Reading Club” is founded in Encarnación

PARAGUAY, Sonia and José Zaracho •

After a great deal of contemplating as to how we could weave together some lines about everything that she has taught us, transmitted, and shown us about our Father and Founder… today, almost a month since her visit, I can transcribe what Maria Fischer’s visit, on 13 March, meant to the Diocese of Encarnación. For the third consecutive year, her visits to our country have now become customary; Maria enters Paraguay at the same place, Posadas, Argentina, the place from which our Father and Founder Joseph Kentenich turned his gaze on Paraguay!

We had agreed with Maria that she would present two talks for the Movement here in the diocese. The first one, to set the “Communication Team” in motion, since there is no better way to begin a work of this nature, than in receiving her wise experience… And so it was that she presented us with a magnificent talk regarding Kentenich Communication.

 

To Conquer Father’s Corner

The second conference was about Fr. Joseph Kentenich, since we wanted to know him better, attach ourselves to him, and we wanted to spiritually conquer Father’s Corner that we have incorporated into the Blessed Mother’s Little House. This place is part of the House that the Movement occupies here in Encarnación, and this corner exactly faces what had been the Port of Posadas staircase, from where Fr. Kentenich gazed at Paraguay.

To read and to know Father

This is what we talked about since Maria arrived in our city; we gave her the details, of what we wanted to carry out. Then she, with her usual originality, told me: “I know how we will do it! Will you lend me your Kentenich Reader books?” I brought them, she looked at them, she glanced at them, and she chose Volume 3, she marked some paragraphs, and she said to me: “Can you copy these paragraphs? You will see how it turns out.” On the way to the Blessed Mother’s Little House and with curiosity running high as to how this would develop, she told us: “We will carry it out as a reading Workshop to learn to read Father, like they do in the Family Academies. We should know how to put ourselves into his mindset and therefore think like Father thought and see what is Father telling me? Then we will have a group discussion, but about what struck each one personally. Lastly we will share our own experiences from Father’s words and from the pointed question: Now what?

We carried out Maria’s presentation; we distributed the sheets with the texts chosen from Volume 3: Following our Prophet, Kentenich Reader. Maria presented the introduction, she explained the subject of the reading and how the follow-up would be.

The first Father Joseph Kentenich Reading Club in South America

It was pleasant reading carried out in paragraphs by all present. The development of the workshop was very dynamic; we came to a discussion that was very fruitful, since everyone discovered what Fr. Kentenich was telling each person.  We put ourselves in the Prophet’s, our Father and Founder’s shoes… and it was here that Mary gave that touch of grace – indescribable joy, for me, and I believe for everyone there, with her always serene, slow voice, pausing she told us: “You have the privilege of being the first Father Joseph Kentenich Reading Club founded in South America! And it is precisely at the place where Father’s gazed. Where perhaps you thought about it differently, but wanted to attach yourselves to him in this very beautiful Father’s Corner that you have here?”

Nobody knew this news until that moment that on 14 March 2017, on the banks of the flowing Río Paraná in this riverside city, Encarnación, the “First Father Joseph Kentenich Reading Club” came to be with Maria Fischer and the members of the Schoenstatt Family founding it. We felt as if we were in the little chapel with him, and that we were the Sodalists! What a great task the Father and Founder entrusted to us, what a mission he is giving us from this Fr. JK Reading Club! Perhaps it will be the motor that will move the attachments to accomplish his canonization, or perhaps, it will be for the conquest of the desired Shrine of the South…

To make the Founder and the Schoenstatt Work known to others

Today we are proud to be the First Frather Joseph Kentenich Reading Club, and we are very committed to carrying out this task responsibly. We have formed our Club with its respective tasks for this year: to attach ourselves profoundly to our Father and Founder, to make his life, pedagogy, and this beautiful Schoenstatt Work that he founded known to everyone in order to form new men/women, to fill the wide halls of our Holy Church.

We are left with the great joy of sharing wonderful days of invaluable richness in knowledge and that unique energy that only Maria Fischer could transmit to us. We are left with the desire for her to continue visiting our beloved Diocese of Encarnación.  From our farewell embrace flows the repeated: “Until next year!”

 

Original: Spanish, 21.04.2017 . Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, Tx USA, and Carlos Cantú, La Feria, Texas USA – Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA,

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