In time the Covenant of Love becomes dynamic through practical faith in Divine Providence, that, according to Father Kentenich, is one of the most important “charisms” of Schoenstatt.
Through practical faith in Divine Providence, the certainty that God not only takes care of mankind and the world is understood; rather it expresses and manifests his desires in such a way that man can understand it and respond.
Practical faith in Divine Providence is faith that God who is wise, powerful and loyal has a plan of love for humanity and for each person within it. We are talking about “practical” faith in the sense that we can know that plan and form our real life according to it through the light of faith, the voices of the times, and of the soul and of being.
Practical faith in Divine Providence leads us to actively seek the will of God in life and its events, and to filially and effectively respond to it. It is a “receptacle”, which if it is open to receive God’s guidance and abandons itself to His will, and if it becomes “activated”, will actively seek this will and try to carry it out.
Voices of the times, the soul and of being
God governs the world through secondary causes. God intervenes in the concrete history of the world, of communities, of each person. The person who is guided by practical faith in Divine Providence tries to detect the presence and wishes of God manifested through events, the signs of the time, or in the circumstances; through these, one perceives his will.
God also speaks to us interiorly through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. Whoever is guided by faith in Divine Providence seeks to discern the will of God through the desires of their heart, and through the impulses that beat within them.
The voices of being: this is what God tells us through the ” order of being” in the natural and supernatural realities. The will of God is inscribed into the structure of things like people’s nature, which consists of the embedded thoughts of God, and as such, are the embodied desires of God. In other words, according to a Thomist adage, the order of being should be followed by the order of actions.
The God of life speaks to us…
The God of life wants to communicate with man through life. A key moment is the conviction of being able to discover God’s footsteps everywhere: what is within us interiorly, in encounters with other people, with creation; in the small and great events of history, in the scientific and technical processes.
The “voice of God” is like the blades of the windmill that receive the wind and transform it into energy, that is what we discover in our own hearts and our surroundings as signs of the time that appeals to us and at the same time gives us the strength and energy to respond to it in our lives.
The search for footsteps has emerged from this conviction as a proven method so that when we encounter each other in dialogue, together we can discover the “God of Life”.
Fr. Guillermo Carmona, ” What is Schoenstatt?”
Fr. Rafael Fernández, “150 questions about Schoenstatt”
Hubertus Brantzen: Search for footsteps
