Childhood family experiences with Father Kentenich

mkf. “Where ever he would show up, soon there were crowds popping up out of the blue…” Seems the story goes on, like Schoenstatt family life sown by Fr. Kentenich in the pioneer couples’ ranks goes on: When Bernhard and Elisabeth Neiser asked Mike and Marge Fenelon whether they would be willing to share their childhood experiences of Father Kentenich in Milwaukee with a “little group” at the Family House, they gladly agreed … just to share on February 10, 2010, and not “just” for some 150 or so people in the Family House, but also for a world wide audience via Livestream. At the end, all agreed that this had been a very special family experience. The story goes on.

During the time he spent in Milwaukee, Father Kentenich could give a lot of time to the families.

The “Monday Night Talks” are well known: Father Kentenich talked to American families on the impact of Schoenstatt’s spirituality for practical family life.

Those couples, which regularly visited these talks, later were called pioneer couples. Father Kentenich also accompanied many families in their spiritual journey, and visited them at home. Today these families still reflect his fatherly presence.

Mary and Richard Fenelon, parents of twelve children, belonged to this group.

The photo with their son Mike, walking hand in hand with Father Kentenich, is known all over the world.

Mike later married Marge Yank, whose parents also belonged to the pioneer couples – “Father brought us together,” they said. Now, both are members of the Institute of Families and parents of two adult children.

A family get-together

February 10, 8.00 PM, the Families’ House: while book racks and poster stands are moved, more and more and more chairs are carried by, doors are opened to widen the available space, microphone and loudspeakers are desperately searched for, and people keep pouring in.

There are: some Polish families who came to the Polish Holy Mass before, Girls from Chile – participants of the Schoenstatt Time, volunteers from Argentina, Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary (many!), Schoenstatt Fathers, families of the Institute – along them also Luis and Teresita Perez from Puerto Rico who had brought the Father Symbol from their country to Schoenstatt – League families, Institute Priests with their General Director: Mons. Peter Wolf, Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary candidates from Nigeria, the Philippines, and Poland, Brothers of Mary, members of the Institute Our Lady of Schoenstatt, and pilgrims…

The only one missing is Birgitt Winter who was asked to work as interpreter, but who was stuck on the road from Mount Moriah to the Families’ House, and whom for the first part of the presentation Sr. Marion McClay replaces. Everything is improvisation, all family, all “oh-so-normal”, all joy, all transmitted live to people around the world, who since the announcement in schoenstatt.de had claimed transmission. And got it.

They were so taken by his personality…

“I struggled to understand, but just looking at the photos they showed made me feel so close to Father Kentenich,” commented Ines Petiti from Argentina who watched the presentation via Livestream. Marge and Mike Fenelon guided their audience with photos of Father Kentenich with their families: at and around the Shrine, in their home shrines, through the experiences they remember from their parents being young couples who found help and inspiration in Father Kentenich’s teaching and in his fatherly presence, and themselves being children who just loved Father Kentenich and felt loved and accepted by him.

In the course of some ninety minutes of sharing, there was a growing awareness of how it must have been living with a “Father” just around the corner, a father who was just waiting for you, without needing schedules and appointments, a father who visited your home and did not expect it to be neat and tidy to perfection; a father who enjoyed little Bernard wanting to be “Father Kentenich” in the living shrine and who just smiled at a young man who told him he would prefer the Legion of Mary to Schoenstatt, still… and who half a year later had sealed his Covenant of Love, Blank Check and Inscriptio: “Father won.” The audience can imagine how Father Kentenich talked with young parents on marriage and education issues, and why “our parents were so taken by that, nobody had ever talked like that.”

He needs us

Francisco Grondona from Argentina – celebrating his birthday this day – needed a while to get accustomed to “the boy on my favorite Father Kentenich picture” sitting in front of him as an adult and father of two adult children. Mike Fenelon shared that he himself did not really remember the moment when Father Kentenich – during one of the many visits to some piece of land, searching for a place for the Schoenstatt Shrine – took his hand. His family had no idea of this photo until long after Father Kentenich’s death, when Fr. Tieck brought this picture to a meeting of American Institute Families, showing it as symbol for the father-child-relationship. “I know that boy,” Mrs. Fenelon exclaimed. It was her son. And it took some more years to find out, thanks to Sr. Petra, that it had not been little Mike who searched Father Kentenich’s hand, but Father Kentenich who had searched the little boy’s arm while walking on rough ground… “He needs us, as children.”

Schoenstatt Family life goes on

For many, the last testimony given by the Fenelon’s, was the most impressive one. For one year, Marge’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Yank, lived with her daughter’s family, as age took its toll on them. They moved in along with the home shrine that had been their cradle of sanctity throughout so many years, they lived out of the graces of their home shrine – and they died there within a few weeks in summer of 2009. The priest, who was with Mrs. Yank before her death, experienced this encounter as a moment of grace – for himself.

After the presentation, many asked Mike Fenelon to sign the pictures of Fathers Kentenich and himself … and he did so patiently, even as some asked not just for one but for twenty. Sr. Damiana Czogala from Poland “conquers” a personal greeting written on two cards for a young couple that feels the vocation to begin with the Institute in Poland.

While a joyful and family like conversation goes on, Francisco and Diego, who started the ” 100 everyday life Schoenstatt saints for the Covenant of Love’s 100th birthday” project on schoenstatt.de during the time of working as volunteers at the Press Office, say: We need to ask them to write a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Yank… as our first couple among the “everyday sanctity saints”.

Video (62 minutes) en schoenstatt-tv.de (10.02.2010)