mda. Facebook is buying Whatsapp, the German carnival is setting out on its final spurt, there is doping in Sochi, trees are being felled at the Original Shrine: Subjects that have brought the media, social networks and conversations to red heat in these days. … Yet there is the tremendously formative force of solidarity – covenant solidarity, in which the eyes and heart reach “perhaps even further afield” – reaching beyond our immediate concerns and motivating us to get beyond what moves us directly. The relatives of a German Schoenstatt Family are involved in a fatal accident in Argentina and immediately within 24 hours the internet quakes with offers from German-speaking priests and lay people, greetings full of comfort and concern, and above all prayers not only in Argentina, but also in Spain, Paraguay, Brazil, South Africa … “The Cross of the East in the shrine in Belmonte comes from Kiev”, wrote Fr Stephan Mueller to schoenstatt.org. “It immediately inspires us to pray in solidarity with the people Kiev’s Independence Square and the whole of the Ukraine.”
In his General Audience last Wednesday on St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said he was following the events in the capital of Kiev “with worried heart”. “I encourage all parties to end all violence and search for unity and peace for the country.” He said that he was close to the people of Ukraine and was praying for the victims of violence and their families, as well as all the wounded.
Schoenstatters in Belmonte and throughout the world do not leave him alone with his prayers for the Ukraine, or for the people in the many other countries in which war and civil war leave people dead and maimed, destroying what had been built up over many years. Overnight people lose their “possessions, home, freedom, rights and justice”, as Fr Kentenich described it in the concentration camp at Dachau, and crying need causes people to emigrate at the risk of their lives from Central Africa, South Sudan, Venezuela, Syria, Ceuta, Lampedusa …
We bring them into the Original Shrine
Tomorrow the prayers and gifts, requests and promises from all over the world, which are taken week after week to the Original Shrine, are written down and placed in the jar. These sheets of paper bring together the subjects that move wide-open hearts to solidarity in these days. It is possible that never before have so many people, and certainly never so many people in danger to life and their very existence, come together in the Original Shrine. Perhaps the doors of many other shrines will open for them and for Pope Francis and the Cardinals of the universal Church who are meeting in Rome in these days to discuss the future of the family and a pastoral practice full of love, mercy and solidarity.
