IN A FEW WORDS, Fr. Joaquin Alliende. At the start of October, from every quarter one could hear: “Our Mother will surprise us with great gifts.” And so it was. In our Schoenstatt Land, we experienced that the “Home Song” is a tangible and prophetic reality. Rome allowed us to feel that the Church-family is the way of the future. It will demand of us a vital deepening of the attachment with the “paternal principle” of the People of God, the Holy Father.
Practical faith in Divine Providence is our compass. We want to respond with the same ‘fiat’ as the Blessed Mother. And with the ‘volo’ (I want) of Christ himself who fought for the Father’s cause. She is the Woman clothed with the sun at the heart of the battle, because she gave birth to the Child, who “will rule all nations with an iron sceptre.” (Rev. 12.5)
Let us take Chile as an example. This will help us to focus better on the next step towards concrete action. In this country, our Movement is the largest and most widespread in the Catholic Church. The Chilean Government is actively promoting destructive pro-abortion legislation. Are we going to lament and become scandalized merely in a contemplative fashion? Or will Schoenstatt say: “fiat” and “volo.” Or better yet it would say: “volo” and “fiat.” Perhaps it will take a bold decision. It would be a strategic option pointing in the direction of “Schoenstatt, soul of the world.” It would be “Schoenstatt that goes out,” in an area in which our families and all lay people could become protagonists, both within and outside our Movement. Of course, this task does not belong to Schoenstatt alone. On the contrary. It would be a Schoenstatt that moves those who will act, on a topic that is objectively dramatic.
It could well be that in the Chilean case is not applicable to everyone. But what is applicable to everyone is a post-jubilee self-questioning. The providential question cannot be routine or lukewarm. It should ‘bite us,’ silence us. Jesus manifested himself to us in the Founding Document. In it is the horizon of the new, shining Tabor, paschal and hopeful. The 2014 Jubilee not only confirmed us, but it also challenged us to up the pace.
It is already Advent, a time of interiority and desire. Mary’s question about the Incarnation of the Word resounds: “How will this be…” (Lk 1.34). It is an impossible act. She questioned, reflected, believed and accepted. A new creation has begun, “more beautiful than the first” (liturgy for the fourth Sunday of Advent). “What will a Schoenstatt that goes out be like?” “How will this be if I….?”
Original: Spanish. Translation: Sarah-Leah Pimentel, South Africa
