USA, Megan McQuaid. “The love that they receive in the shrine is the love that they give in their apostolate, and which they want to renew daily; they want this missionary fire to pass from hand to hand and from heart to heart as a torch that should never be extinguished.” –Fr. Tommy Dell’Oca. The Schoenstatt University branches in Austin, Texas, want to be the next to carry the torch of the missionary fire with a new initiative: the Austin CARITAS Crusade. James Van Matre and other University men and women, inspired by participating in the Schoenstatt university missions in Chile, proposed initiating a similar missionary current in Austin.
The mission would be the first Schoenstatt mission of its kind in the United States, focusing not only on service, but community among the missionaries and spiritual formation in an important aspect of the Schoenstatt spirituality: everyday sanctity. The mission was then named Austin CARITAS Crusade: Catholics Answering the Redeemer’s Invitation To Authentic Sanctity. The fifty or so missionaries will be mostly students from the University of Texas, and will be hosted by east Austin parish Our Lady of Guadalupe. Each morning of the 4-day mission will begin with Mass and a reflection on a spiritual theme for the day, and the missionaries will break up into teams to serve different Austin areas in need, coming back at night for community time and spiritual formation. Some will stay at the parish to help with building maintenance projects. Others will go with St. Vincent de Paul Society to help those in need; a crew will go out each day with Habitat for Humanity and to the Austin state supported living center, a home for adults with disabilities.
Missionary Fire
In the Schoenstatt Movement of Austin, this mission fire is especially important and fuelled by the university branches. The torch is passed often as students graduate and move on, leaving others in their place, sparks to continue the fire. Some of the university students have witnessed first hand the current of the missionary generation while travelling or studying in Chile, participating in the university missions where students go out from Santiago in teams to grow in community sand spirituality. And to serve the poor as witnesses to God’s love. The Blessed Mother has been stoking the missionary fire in Austin for about 5 years now, and it is time that the fire be shared, the current university students feel we have been given so much by the Schoenstatt Movement—so much life love, and self-education…and in the spirit of the covenant we want to take these experiences and share them with our community and diocese through this mission, which will focus not only on service but on personal spiritual and community formation, the great gifts of the Schoenstatt spirituality.
The University leaders in Austin hope that this mission will be an instrument in the hands of the Blessed Mother to form modern every day saints in the Diocese of Austin.
