Almost seventy families already have their houses of solidarity 2014. Which Shrine will be present to reach this goal?

PARAGUAY, mda. “A faith received with joy and lived fully and generously can confer a humanizing force on society,” Pope Francis said recently to the managers and laborers of the Terni Steel Mill. A few days later in the Mass Celebrated at Saint Martha, he recalled that the prophet Isaiah had clearly described fasting according to God’s vision: “releasing those bound unjustly,” “setting the oppressed free,” but also “Is it not sharing bread with the hungry, bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house,” “clothing the naked?” And he repeated: “That is the fasting that the Lord wants! Fasting that is concerned about the life of the brother…” Joyfully and in solidarity, motivated by covenant solidarity with Francis, during the first weekend of Lent, eleven more houses of solidarity were built for families who live in extreme poverty in the periphery of Asunción, among them, the first house of solidarity from a Shrine in the United States (Miami). It is a project of Jubilee solidarity by schoenstatt.org that has the goal of presenting Francis with one hundred houses of solidarity, one for each year of “our house in Schoenstatt”.

There are eleven new roofs that shelter the poorest: they were conquered by donors from and on behalf of the Shrines of Miami, the United States of America; Córdoba, Argentina (donation from Switzerland), Brig, Quarten, Fribourg (Switzerland), Herxheim, Liebfrauenhoehe, Cologne, Dietershausen II, Wuerzburg II, and the branch of academic professional women, all of them from Germany.

“Joy is growing within the collaborators, not to mention that of the simple families who receive them!” commented Ani Souberlich.

“Last week we had a terrible storm, many rivers overflowed, and many families lost everything.

But we can joyfully say that almost seventy families already have their houses of solidarity 2014, and during this torrential rain, they were protected, without getting wet and they did not lose their homes!”

A gift of bricks, shingles and solidarity

It is concrete. It is real. It is a gift that cannot be wrapped with wrapping paper, or taken to the altar in a solemn procession. A new “Villa noble de la caridad” (Noble Village of Charity), as John Pozzobon called the handful of little houses that he had built near the Shrine of Santa Maria, as a concrete option for the poor proclaimed a few years before in Puebla.

It emerged as a simple and tangible response to the voices of the times, upon seeing the misery, the extreme poverty of entire families living beneath a plastic sheet barely attached to some stakes…and a call to solidarity by the Schoenstatt Family when the resources that some lay people, who had committed to build thirty houses for the families with the most need among the poorest, had been depleted. But it did not end there. An idea emerged of transforming it into a gift for Francis for the 100^th Anniversary of the Covenant of Love, that covenant that “built” a house and a roof for the nascent Schoenstatt Family…precisely in the year in which it received this house as property after decades of not knowing if it would someday be theirs. It was very simple: the cost of a roof – 200€ was what was lacking after all the donations collected in Paraguay. Two hundred daughter Shrines, one hundred little houses…and the responses arrived. Now there are already seventy little houses.

“The goal is almost reached, one hundred years, one hundred roofs, in gratitude for everything that we receive day by day thanks to the grandiose gift that the Father and Founder Joseph Kentenich gave us when he asked the Most Holy Virgin to establish herself in our Shrine…the Shrine that we have received as a gift on the threshold of the jubilee year!…Thirty roofs are lacking to meet the goal and to complete the gift for Pope Francis! And why not aspire for more?! Which Shrine will say: Present! To reach the goal? Let us not forget that everything that we give Her, She returns a hundredfold!,” Ani wrote. “I pray so that the good God, the Blessed Mother and Father will continue giving the light, joy and the strength that we need to continue to take much joy to many homes, to many concrete people!”

Before the cold weather arrives…

At the beginning of last week, an urgent email arrived from Paraguay: “Would it be possible to send what you have for the roofs this week? It does not matter if there is only enough for four roofs…it still helps! In this way, I can hasten the work before the cold weather arrives!” It is true, that although the fees are high to send a money order of only 800€…it was sent. They are the “roofs” donated by a couple from Austria (“instead of birthday gifts”) and of the Institute of Our Lady of Schoenstatt.

So that it will arrive before the cold weather arrives. That is how email began that was addressed to schoenstatt.org, that received close to the Shrine of all of us in Rome (which also has its solidarity house) with the petition: “…before the cold weather arrives.” How much life has awakened since that message…how much solidarity, how much joy, how much faith! And for many donors, these families who live in the own homes –named “Manchester” or “Madrid”, “Shrine of Families”, “Original Shrine” or Florianópolis” – are brothers/sisters. Body of Christ, as Francis would say.

What Shrine will say “present!” to reach the goal? And perhaps surpass it…

Our shrine is present

∩ = future shrine

Original: Spanish – Translation Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA