Novena for Fathers

Invitation to pray for fathers

PARAGUAY, During the nine days (of June9th to the 18^th), the Newspaper, ABC Color, of Paraguay, published a series of reflections and prayers with the title: A novena for papa (daddy)" based on the meditations of Father Joseph Kentenich, founder of the international Schoenstatt Work, "outstanding educator of a wide and prophetic vision, son before God, and father for men", as they say.

A central trait of the prophecy of Father Kentenich is the criticism of a culture that diminishes the value or denies the father figure in the natural family as well as in the Church and society. An essential part of the Schoenstatt message is to regain the importance of the father as a decisive factor for the ability of man to bond. In a message to the Schoenstatt Movement (09/85), John Paul II said: "In this bonding of attachments, your founder stressed the importance of a filial paternal bond and for cultivating the family spirit as a privileged means for experiencing the revealed message: God is Father, God is not loneliness, rather he is family".

One of the nuclear messages of the Schoenstatt Movement is the paternity of God and of his earthly images, his transparencies as ways of vital importance to awaken, in a living and effective manner, a profound and intimate filialness before God the Father.

The paternal traits of God

Thousands and thousands of men have no idea about the paternal traits of God, because they never have experienced something of Him, of his paternity in a human father. The great mission of the Mother of God from our shrines, from his shrines is to make known the Kingdom of the Father: the healthy lordship wanted by God, of our earthly fathers; on one side, in the Family, and on the other side, also in the State.

We invite you to pray as a family or in the intimacy of your hearts, for our living or deceased fathers: an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be. Let us pray for our father to express gratitude to God and to pray that through him each father, through his love and fidelity, will show us something of the beautiful paternal and loyal love of God; let us pray for the wounded relationship that we have with him, so it will heal, for ourselves and for all the men of the nation, so that they will assume their paternity and be good fathers.

Translation: Celina Garza, Harlingen,TX, USA

Text of the Novena