SPAIN, org. In his pastoral projection for the month of May 2014, the Director of the Schoenstatt Movement in Spain, Father Carlos Padilla, offers the Schoenstatt Family of Spain and all readers of our schoenstatt.org webpage, an important and actual impulse at the service of life and the Jubilee pilgrimage. His starting point is the Jubilee gift of the Schoenstatt Family of Spain in forming a web of living shrines, a web of life, a missionary web. On the way to 2014, this month has been dedicated to the pilgrimage, to what it means to go on pilgrimage.
We are living a year of graces, a year of life. We continue building our web of living shrines.
We take another step on our way toward the Jubilee. During this month, we approach the wounded heart of Christ. We want to place the entire Schoenstatt Family in his heart, especially those persons who need it most. We are on pilgrimage as a Family. Jesus comes to meet us and walk with us, as he did with the disciples at Emmaus, setting our hearts on fire. We walk with Him. He approaches us. Father Kentenich would say: “Christ is at the same time a port toward which we set the prow and source of energies for the undertaking; Christ is the model for our style of interior and exterior life.” We want to rest in his wounded heart, in the cleft of his soul, in the open crevice at his side. To rest there where we are loved as we are, respected in our poverty, loved in our smallness. We look at Jesus joyfully. We wish we could learn to see as He sees us. May our vision change and become more like his. Jesus looks at us with tenderness, with mercy, with much peace and joy. He is moved when He looks at us because He sees how much we are in need. The heart of Jesus breaks upon seeing our pain, our impotence, our fears, our hearts. He breaks when he sees that we break, that we are not able to detach ourselves from our securities. During this month, we want to detach ourselves from what binds us and trust in his plans.
Jesus wants to enter, tear us up, open us, take us out of our rigid and formal plans.
Yes, during this month, we look at Jesus and He looks at us. We contemplate Him in the Eucharist, and He lowers himself even unto our flesh. We adore Him in silence, and He reposes in our life. We submerge ourselves into his silence. He is with us. He is present in the Shrine. He remains in order to make of our Shrine a holy Cenacle. There we kneel. He kneels there and washes our feet. He listens to our words. He embraces our questions, our doubts and fears. It is the month to give Him all we have. We like to control everything in life. We make plans; we look to see how we can walk securely. We want certainties, and we do not kiss our cross. Jesus embraces everything we offer Him. We inscribe ourselves into his heart, and there we are secure. Our dreams and wishes are kept there. All which He has sown in our life belongs to Him. Our heart in his heart. Our life in his life. That is how Jesus is. Always open. Always disposed to listening to the beating of our heart. Always thirsty. We are also thirsty. Thirst and water. He needs our water. We search for his source, his well. We want more; we need more. During this month we look at Jesus. Our plans rest in Him.
It is the month of charity.
Jesus is charity. Charity is the love of God that descends unto us, becomes flesh, remains in the Eucharist, in the parted bread, in the overflowing blood. Charity is a grace, a gift, a mission. It is the love that overflows all desires, heals all wounds. In the charity of Jesus, we seek peace. His charity becomes a source of life for us. We want to learn to love as Jesus loves. May his charity be our charity. His way of loving, his sentiments. We do not have the sentiments of Jesus. Envy, jealousies, rage, rancor, violence, criticism, rejection do not form part of the sentiments of Christ. We know what does not pertain to Him. We want to learn to live with his sentiments. Benevolence, humility, patience, hope, closeness, welcome, peace, smiles, joy, passion, meekness. Yes, we want to live as He lived. Inherit his way, to live in his footsteps, to make his mission ours. Father Kentenich says: “Behold here our desire: to put on Christ, to be like Him, to journey through the world as other Christs” [1]. We have the mission to take Christ to so many hearts, which do not know Him; they have not seen his face, they have not touched his hands, they have not kissed his feet. We do it in those who each day show us Christ. We want to also be Christ for so many men who live without direction, disoriented and lost. Jesus awaits us with his open empty hands, wounds, to embrace us in his as we are. Without reproach. With peace and with a smile.
[1] Joseph Kentenich, CHRIST MY LIFE
Original Spanish: Translation: Carlos Cantú, Schoenstatt Family Federation, La Feria, Texas USA
