IN FEW WORDS, Fr. Joaquín Alliende L. We know that our founder taught Latin in Ehrenbreitstein. He later maintained that he preferred that certain branches of theology be taught in Latin, for reasons of linguistic precision.
I clearly remember the prior of a Carthusian monastery set in a snowy forest. On Christmas Eve, I heard him say: “Kentenich is a neo-scholastic thinker, and as such, he does not interest me.” I felt that this monk fell into the trap of judging a book by its cover. While in some ways Kentenich’s themes are borrowed from times long past, his message is relevant for several centuries, as he dared to maintain.
The goal defines the means
The question is more serious than it seems, because our founder referred to the key issues of his work, using the German word: “Ziel,” meaning goal or aim. Saying it, a central Latin proverb echoed in his mind: “finis causa causarum.” Today it could be translated as: the goal defines the means. A very simple example: if I decide to urgently go to Paris, this goal determines what clothes I will wear, what time I will get up, what ticket I will request at the counter…all of this to accomplish my objective quickly.
Here Schoenstatt’s entire existence in time is at stake
A charismatic founder has an obligation to define the aims of the Work he founds. If he doesn’t do this, he is setting his foundation up for a quick failure. Our father was very clear; he had three goals or aims: the new person in the new community, the salvific mission of the West to help redeem the West, the Universal Apostolic World Confederation, as an inheritance of Saint Vincent Pallotti. This is the game plan for Schoenstatt’s existence in time. Cutting away at these goals, to adapt them to what we can well enough today to what I believe, feel, hear, sense, and exemplify, is to diminish or entirely extinguish the pentecostal fire that conquered the Shrine on the 18th of October 1914.
Original: Spanish – Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA
