18.10.2014 – A Pilgrimage of Unity

Sarah-Leah Pimentel, South Africa. As the Schoenstatt Family in South Africa begins its logistical preparation for next year’s pilgrimage to Schoenstatt — we’re almost 50 so far — I have had several conversations with people about the importance of this pilgrimage in the history of our International Schoenstatt Family.

It seems that there are two main questions that people here in South Africa (and perhaps in other parts of the world too) have.  The first question is: will it be worthwhile for me to go all the way to Germany on this pilgrimage and be in Schoenstatt on 18 October 2014, when it will be really crowded and I may not even get a chance to spend some quiet time in the Original Shrine?  The second question is related: wouldn’t it be better to go to Schoenstatt at some other time in 2014 when I will still be able to receive the Jubilee graces but will at least be certain that I can spend real time in the Original Shrine and all of our holy places?

I cannot imagine being anywhere else by the Original Shrine

Even though I cannot imagine myself being anywhere else but the Original Shrine on 18.10.2014 and cannot wait to meet the thousands of other Schoenstatt pilgrims from all over the world, I had to step back a little from my involvement in this pilgrimage and recognize that my enthusiasm is perhaps coloured by my experiences as an interpreter at Conference 2014, when our hearts were set on fire when we began to imagine what our Jubilee celebrations would be like.

For many of us, this pilgrimage may be the only time we will ever visit the Original Shrine, which we have heard so much about from the moment we first encountered Schoenstatt in our home countries.  To go on pilgrimage to Original Schoenstatt is for many of us the dream of a lifetime, so of course we want that experience to be memorable and special, so that in future years we can remember it as a time of deep personal encounter with our Mother Thrice Admirable in the place where it all started.

Yes, a personal encounter is an important element of any religious pilgrimage, because we expect that the pilgrimage experience will bring about a change in our lives and in our relationship with God.  But in many ways, this pilgrimage is very different from other pilgrimages we may make to Rome or the Holy Land.

“Gift and challenge of family unity”

First of all, we are already on pilgrimage. We began our pilgrimage to the Original Shrine three years ago when we started our spiritual preparation, focusing on the currents of life that flow through our Covenant of Love – the shrine, our father and founder, and our missionary calling.  A pilgrimage to the Original Shrine — in person or from our daughter shrines, home shrines and heart shrines — will be the final step of this pilgrimage, in which we celebrate the “gift and challenge of family unity” (Message 2014).  If we have been sincere in our spiritual preparation, then these last three years will have been a series of personal encounters with the our Mother and Queen with whom we sealed our Covenant of Love.  And now we are being called to meet the MTA through one another.

More than a personal encounter, the great gathering of all of Schoenstatt’s children around the Original Shrine, in unity with all of those who cannot make the journey to Schoenstatt, will be our gift of love to the Blessed Mother.  Our pilgrimage will be our gift of love to one another because in our encounters during those days in Schoenstatt and Rome, we will be able to share our personal experiences of the many different ways we live our Covenant of Love in our home countries.  It will be a rich time of exchange when we will encourage one another to continue our Covenant journey and to take back the flames enkindled in those encounters and share them with the Family in our countries.

The second part of the Pilgrimage to Rome will be a gift of love for the Church, where we once again recommit ourselves as instruments of service to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church whose faith we profess.  It will be a gift for the world, because in as much as we are renewed, we also want to share the treasure of our Covenant of Love with the world through the renewal of hearts.  But this renewal requires practical and visible signs.  One of the most visible signs that often attracts people to the Shrine is the bond family unity that we have.

But our family unity is also a challenge.  There have been times when we have not lived in unity with one another.  Sometimes, our human weaknesses pulled us away from one another.  Some may have left our ranks because we failed them in some way.  At times, we lost sight of Fr. Kentenich’s prophetic vision of our Family’s mission for the world.  Infighting amongst ourselves also “diminished the strength of our love” and what we “built with one hand we abruptly destroyed with the other” (from the Evening Consecration, Heavenwards).

Our pilgrimage as an act of reconciliation

These challenges remind us that we cannot go forward into the future without placing our Movement once again firmly into the hands of the Blessed Mother.  Our common pilgrimage to Schoenstatt on 18.10.2014 will also be an act of contrition, an act of reconciliation with one another and a moment of healing for all the past hurts that we may have inflicted on one another.

In this light, our pilgrimage to the Original Shrine becomes an act of forgiveness and a new start.  We will renew our Covenant of Love with our MTA and with one another in the shadow of the Original Shrine as ONE INTERNATIONAL SCHOENSTATT FAMILY and we will begin again, forming the foundations for the next 100 years.  From the Original Shrine, we will go out in unity, freed from the “hidden reservations” that made our “hearts tired and cold.”

Freed from these chains of bondage, we will be able to unite ourselves once more to another and to our Mother’s heart so that we can once again hear clearly what she wants for our family in the coming century.

For these reasons, as many of us as possible must gather around the Original Shrine on 18.10.2014 so that the words of our founder’s prayer will also be true for us:

“In the future it will be different.

We will avoid all self-deception

and solely follow the ideal

which shines forth to us everywhere.” (Evening Consecration, Heavenwards)