IN FEW WORDS, Fr. Joaquín Alliende Luco. It is an avalanche of images and brutal texts. It is Cain destroying Abel. It hurts us so much that we instinctively protect ourselves. We wish we did not have to suffer with those heart-rending humans in Syria. Understandable, but dangerous. By not having to cry so much with others, we are capable of drugging ourselves and vanishing the atrocious reality of hell.
In our October of 1914, the frontlines of the war were some one hundred kilometers away from Schoenstatt. Some mothers approached the area of the Original Shrine. They are dressed in mourning. Their soldier sons had just died. They had brought them wounded to the building of the original School of Theology, which had been transformed into an emergency hospital. Each wants to take the body of her son. This very legitimate pain can also hold us back, keeping us from looking even deeper.
Our father approaches this matter in the original Founding Document: “Without sin, there would be no war. This is valid in general, but especially now, for the actual murder of peoples. This tells us how repugnant sin must be, since it brings with it horrible consequences.”
Today, I read on the social websites: “In Syria, the Christians suffer martyrdom. In Maaloula, they just crucified two youths for not renouncing Christ. In Abra, two pregnant women, for being faithful to Jesus, they tore out the babies from their wombs. They hung the babies in the trees from their umbilical cords.”
Our father repeated throughout the years, “never forget: Schoenstatt was born in times of war, it is a child of war. She will be faithful to her own vocation while she is not absent from the battles of the present history, from the struggle between the Woman clothed with the Sun and the demonic Dragon.”
Here and there I hear some Schoenstatters say of themselves: “We have become bourgeois (following the easy path in life). If we compare ourselves with Mario Hiriart, our love has become bland.”
Translation from the Spanish: Carlos Cantú, Schoenstatt Family Federation, La Feria, Texas USA 05222014
