CHILE, Fr. Juan Ignacio Pacheco •
Concluding the month of the Mission with a meeting of the Family in Bellavista, we continue moving forward during the year. The Mass of May 31st once again placed us in the importance of our Father and Founder’s legacy for the times we are living. To love, to live and to think organically is a call to coherence and authenticity of life which makes it urgent for us to take up again in the social context which we are now experiencing in our country. The talk is about the lack of transparency in politics; dirty money used to finance campaigns; violence in our streets after the student demonstrations with fatalities; Chilean cinema denouncing the corruption of some priests with the consequent promotion of a lack of confidence in our Church; Pope Francis writing about mercy, giving us a clue for resolving so much discouragement and lack of hope; and on the other hand, in our International Schoenstatt Family, a post-Jubilee conference evaluating the days of grace experienced last October. It is as if it were a whirlwind of the voices of the times which far from overwhelming us should encourage us in this second half of the year which we have begun. There is so much to do! The feast of Pentecost should give us light to enlighten our intelligence so that we can be aware that not all is lost…..the strength to encourage us to beat pessimism and the piety and the fear of God to continue conducting ourselves as children, today more than ever; the lack of confidence in our institutions should awaken us to personal action which changes that perception from the starting point of what each one can do in his job, in his state of being, in his way of living life…..in such a way that we change the “all” for the “some;” not all politicians are corrupt, not all priests are pedofiles, not all students who demonstrate are delinquents…..it is the time to stand, but not because of the coming America Cup, but because it depends on us for the the system to change.
We should take seriously the highlights of our post-Jubilee evaluations: centrality of the Shrine; Covenant of Love for all; Father Kentenich’s prophetic charism; our pastoral work with the shrines will have to converge; our focuses on the branches; our style of life. We sometimes speak so much about our “super pedagogy,” but we do not put it into practice in what is most essential: “juridical attachments as few as necessary, freedom as much as possible, maximum cultivation of the spirit:” how do I live that in my marriage, in my family, in my personal life!…..how much freedom exists there, sometimes enslaved by our own self-demands which lead to nothing; what are the values we want to live as boyfriend/girlfriend or as a marriage; how many norms exist in the life of my group, in my branch, in our communities and which sometimes do not respond to life; where is the experience of our spirituality, of God and attachments, of the personal God who goes out to encounter me…..
We speak of a Schoenstatt on the way, but first I have to enter, I have to stand to search for the entrance to my Personal Ideal, of my Covenant of Love, of my attachment to the Blessed Mother, of my Marian style of living centered more on what others need than on my own interests….. In summary, there is so much to do before going out, but what is important is not to die with the intent and to trust in the power of our instrumentality, another pillar of our Schoenstatt faith; to believe we can play and turn this team around which would seem to be losing. Stand to shout out the victory of our God! There is still time! Ask yourself what, through your originality, can you contribute towards hope!
Fr. Juan Ignacio Pacheco, Editors` Note, magazine VINCULO, June 2015
Original Spanish. Translation: Carlos Cantú, La Feria, Texas USA
