100 houses in solidarity for the centenary of our House of Solidarity

COVENANT SOLIDARITY, mda. “It is exciting to see how good the houses are!…and the happy face of the little girl who is doing her homework.  How many houses more are lacking?…to see how to promote them more and to finish the 100,” wrote Kiki Tagle, from Santiago, Chile, of the first course of Family Federation from Chile, when she saw the newest photos of the new Houses of Solidarity in Paraguay in construction, in context of the Jubilee gift for Pope Francis, by the collaborators and readers of schoenstatt.org.  Last weekend the houses of solidarity for the Shrines of Cambrai, France; Betania (Mothers’ Federation, Germany), Paderborn-Benhausen (Germany), Koblenz-Metternich, Tuparendá (Paraguay), Ulm-Soeflingen (Germany, second house) were built.  Next weekend the work of Houses of Solidarity continues with houses for the Cenacle Shrine of Providencia (Chile), from the Shrine of Family Federation, the Shrine of Weiskirchen (Germany) – and of the first Home shrine, the “Alcántara” Home shrine in Madrid, Spain.

After a break in construction due to heat and storms, the first weekend of May – the month of Mary, the month of the Mother, month of the Nation in Paraguay – saw a dozen volunteers go out to the periphery with building material for the simple houses and clothes for families who live in a misery that is hard to imagine, beneath plastic and with the little they have that is taken again by storms or overflowing arroyos.

All weariness was repaid today by the smiles of these children

“The Sunday before the sun peeked out, but the road of red dirt was impassable, so if God wills it this coming weekend we will begin to work,” Ani Souberlich wrote last week. “Holy Week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday it rained all day, for 24 hours, this allowed many of us to truly have days of prayer and rest…since one could not go outside the streets of Asunción and if you were outside of or tried to go beyond to the outskirts on a dirt road, and so long, the vehicle would be stuck in red mud! This weekend it was possible to go out… The people were hopeful and happy because a small change was coming to their lives. This little girl who was doing her homework using a chair as a table is a reflection of her desire to study and to get ahead. I cannot explain joyful face of the little girl who received a necklace, a little purse and a bracelet, and the clothes that we gathered and took were also a cause of joy and gratitude!” commented Ani Souberich. “All weariness was repaid today by the smiles of these children. What a desire to go to Schoenstatt for the Jubilee to kneel at Father’s tomb and tell him THANK YOU for the miracle of the roofs!”

100 Houses of Solidarity for the centenary of our House of Solidarity that is our Original Shrine.

The Jubilee of the Covenant of Love will be celebrated in October of 2014 in Schoenstatt and in Rome, it will be celebrated at the same time or on other dates in Santiago, in Miami, in Buenos Aires, in Vienna, in Bujumbura…in the streets of red dirt on the outskirts of Asunción, where a very simple gift as well as one of solidarity is born.  It is concrete.  It is real.  It is a gift that cannot be wrapped in gift-wrapping paper, or taken to the altar in solemn procession.  A new “Villa noble de la caridad”  (Noble Village of Charity) is what John Pozzobon called the handful of houses he built close to the Shrine of Santa Maria as a way of making an option for the poor, which had been proclaimed shortly before in Puebla, concrete.  A  “Pope Francis” jubilee city is born.

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 plastic sheeting barely tied to some stakes…and a call to solidarity of the Schoenstatt Family when the resources that some lay people had committed to build thirty houses for the neediest families among the most poor were exhausted. But it did not end there.

The idea emerged to transform it into a gift for Francis for the one hundred years of the Covenant of Love, that covenant that “built” a house with 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 ever belong to it.  The cost of the roof was very simple – what was left after all the donations gathered in Paraguay – were 200 euros.  Two hundred daughter Shrines, one hundred little houses…the response arrived.  Now there are already eighty-two little houses.

What will remain of the Jubilee

“It is beautiful to see… how a group of Covenant people makes an effort to build 100 Houses of Solidarity, for the centenary of our House of Solidarity, which is our Original Shrine,”  Father José María García wrote in his Easter Greeting 2014, and he adds:  “I just returned from the meeting of the archpriesthood of Madrid, and I found out that one of the legacies of World Youth Day Madrid were houses of solidarity for victims of the crisis!

It is still not known what will remain as a legacy of the Jubilee of the Covenant of Love that the all of Schoenstatt is preparing to celebrate in October.  But something is already certain: these one hundred Houses of Solidarity are something that will remain of the Jubilee.  In these houses of solidarity, which carry the names of shrines, families will live beneath a roof and be protected from the wind and the rain, when all the flowers of the Jubilee have already withered… What remains of the Jubilee? This is what I will communicate among the people who I still want to recruit to donate a house,” commented Ursula Sundarp happily.

Jubilee gift from the Mothers’ Federation of Germany

Ursula Sundarp motivated her community, the Mothers’ Federation, to make a concrete and apostolic gift possible for the Jubilee, by committing themselves with the “Houses of Solidarity.”  She relates:  “From March 30^th to April 4^th, the Mothers’ Federation from Germany celebrated a workshop at the Marienland training center.  It was already a joy to be able to celebrate these very special days with members of the community of all ages.  The days were marked by the Jubilee year.  Everyone came well prepared to give the Virgin gratitude and the common gift for Schoenstatt’s 100th Anniversary – the covenant of love among us, expressed in the symbol of the scepter, which has great meaning for the community…The last day we were introduced, through all the prayers and celebration in the ‘nothing without us.’  I commented about the initiative ‘100 houses for the 100 years of the shrine.’  In gratitude for everything that we had been given in the workshop, on the natural level as well as the supernatural, they were willing to donate a house in Paraguay from our shrine Betania.

The mothers were so generous that they collected more than the necessary amount.  It arrived precisely in time to make it possible for a little boy in Paraguay to attend one year of school.  It is a joy to be able to experience that ‘the covenant among us’ has widened in a practical way, that the Mothers’ Federation ‘together,’ with a donation for the homeless and for the children support the work that emerged from members of the Family Movement and of pilgrims, that is from the Boys’ Youth of Paraguay.

And as is often said, the example was contagious and there are more houses in the making…”

Can the Home Shrines also participate?

“Life is what happens while you endeavor to make other plans,” John Lennon said. In so many stages of the adventure of the Houses of Solidarity, history was lived.  It began with an urgency to build thirty houses before winter.  It continued with an idea, with a dream of giving Francis a real gift, of solidarity, of jubilee:  “100 houses of solidarity for the centenary of our House of Solidarity, which is our Original Shrine.  Almost 80 houses were donated, from daughter Shrines in Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, the United States, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany…

And an email arrived from a family in Madrid, Spain, precisely on Easter Sunday:  “Good day and Happy Easter of Resurrection:  We would like to give a donation of 200 €, from a Home Shrine named “Alcántara”, in Madrid, Spain, for a house of solidarity in Paraguay, within the project of the 100 houses of solidarity….” Thus from the home shrine, home-shrines are built.

Perhaps the dream is too daring.  What would our world be like if every Schoenstatt home shrine had a house of solidarity…we could change the world, we could shelter so many families in the truest sense of the word…Then our network of home shrines would be transformed into a network of solidarity.  It would be too much if this dream came true one day, a Home Shrine named “Alcántara” will sign as the one that inspired all of this by simply beginning…

“When you dream alone, it is only a dream; when you dream with others, it is the beginning of reality”  (Dom Helder Camara).

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

Our Shrine participates:

∩ = future shrine

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A. Souberlich/M. Fischer

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