Sarah-Leah Pimentel. During a series of talks on Fr. Kentenich given by Fr. Werner Kuller a few weeks ago to the Schoenstatt Family in Johannesburg, we received an invitation: to make a Covenant of Love with our father and founder.
While many of our Union branches have already done this, it was a novel concept for many other members of our Family. One member asked: “Sometimes, the circumstances of our lives and our busyness make it difficult enough to live our Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother. Do I really want to seal a Covenant of Love with Fr. Kentenich? That is yet another person that I need to remember in my daily prayers and spend time with him.”
This was the best question that anybody could have asked that weekend. It is a good question because it begs a far deeper reflection. On the surface, this question may point towards our imperfection in light of the exemplary life led by Fr. Kentenich, our inability to really accept our founder as someone who is very close to us, or a limit to the boundaries of our initial Covenant of Love. But as I went home, this question kept coming back to me and eventually I was asking the same question.
And then I realized that the issue was not so much about making a Covenant of Love with Fr. Kentenich as it was about the way in which we are living out our Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother as well as with and for each other as a Schoenstatt Family, both locally and internationally.
Our Covenant of Love is not only a personal ‘contract’ between me and the Blessed Mother. It is an agreement that encompasses the entire heavenly realm as well as the entire earthly realm. We accept it that when we make our Covenant of Love, we seal it also with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We enter into our Covenant of Love because we want to bring the joys and sufferings of our lives to our Mother in the Shrine as contributions to the Capital of Grace for the salvation of the world. This means that I make my Covenant of Love not only for myself, my self-sanctification and self-education, but primarily because I realize that my journey of faith is not a solitary one. It is a pilgrimage that I make together with my family members who are also living out their Covenant of Love.
We need only look to Fr. Kentenich as a perfect example of this. In a prayer for the Schoenstatt Family, in Heavenwards (‘Father, look upon our Family’), father does not ask for a release from his sufferings nor does he ask that his trials become a means of self-sanctification. No, instead he asks that in his own weakness God can show mercy on his family. A small extract of this prayer clearly expresses the sentiment that is visible throughout:
“When temptation threatens to overcome me
And Satan and the world do not depart;
Father, look with mercy on our family
and for its sake reveal your wondrous love.”
In all things, Fr. Kentenich lived his Covenant of Love for his family, the Schoenstatt Family. In another part of this same prayer, he explains this further:
“I am so intimately united with my own
that we have always seen ourselves as one.
Their sanctity is my life and inspiration;
I would gladly give my life for them.”
Through his life, Fr. Kentenich showed us how to live out the Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother but also how to live it for one another, thereby adding many contributions to the Capital of Grace and building up the Schoenstatt Work by drawing many hearts to Our Lady, as promised in the Founding Document.
In thankfulness for those who lived their Covenant for me
I would not be here today, sharing my thoughts with you if it wasn’t for the people who lived their Covenant of Love with and for me, whether directly or indirectly. I think of those who brought me to Schoenstatt step by step, from the first meeting at a day for high school girls, the invitation to become a leader of the Girls’ Youth and the deep friendship that continues to grow as a result of the confidence placed in me all those years ago, to the Sister who, on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, told me that she had a spare dress for me if I ever wanted to join the Sisters of Mary! I never did join the Sisters’ community but her comment stayed with me all these years, because her words implied that she wanted me as a part of her Family.
I can never forget the 19 wonderful people from all over the world that I lived with for nine months in 2005 in Schoenstatt and who changed me forever. They are my closest friends, closer than friends, they’ve become my brothers and sisters. I think of the members of my Family who identified hidden skills and talents and found ways in which I could use them as a service and a gift to the rest of my Family. I think of my own League group whose commitment to their Covenant of Love gives me the strength to continue to live out my Covenant on days when my heart is tired and cold. I think with gratitude of members of my local Schoenstatt Family who have passed on into eternity. In life they helped to build the foundations for the Movement in Johannesburg and who continue to build it through their prayers.
All these people live their Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother. But they also live it with me and for me. In turn, I try (some days better than others) to live my Covenant with and for the members of my Family, those who live close by and those who are across the ocean, those I have known and those I may meet in the future and for the thousands of Schoenstatt members who I may never meet.
A Covenant of Love with Fr. Kentenich?
I think back to the question posed at the start: “Do I have the time and energy to make a Covenant of Love with Fr. Kentenich?” It is a question that we could all ask ourselves in this year in which we reflect on the father current as part of our 2014 preparation.
The answer can perhaps be found by reflecting on several other questions: How am I currently living my Covenant of Love? Am I living it in unity with the Schoenstatt Family? Through my Covenant, do I put aside my personal wishes and desires so that I can do what is best by my family? Do I live that Covenant for all the members of my Family? If I can answer yes to these questions, then I am already also living my Covenant with and for Fr. Kentenich who is the head of this family.
And perhaps this can be my gift to him in the year of the father current…
