Nachrichten - News - Noticias
 published: 2006-06-03

Living the Covenant of Love

Testimonies during the Vigil of the Schoenstatt Movement

 

Nacho y Pablo, misioneros en Roma

Nacho and Pablo, youth missionaries in Rome

Nacho und Pablo, Missionare in Rom

 

Una Familia de la parroquia de Santa Gemma, Belmonte, misioneros de la Campaña

A family from St. Gemma’s, Belmonte, missionaries of the Campaign

Eine Familie aus der Pfarrei Santa Gemma, Belmonte, Missionare der Kampagne

 
 

Andrea, el hijo: somos misioneros como San Pablo...

Andrea, the youngest child of the family: we are missionaries like St. Paul

Andrea, der Jüngste: Wir sind Missionare wie der heilige Paulus

 
 

Dra. Gertrud Pollak: comunión de los Movimientos

Dr. Gertrud Pollak: communion of the Movements

Dr. Gertrud Pollak: Miteinander der Bewegungen

 
 

Gerhard Proß: un testimonio impactante por parte de un miembro de las iglesias de la reforma

Gerhard Proß: a moving testimony of a member of the churches of the reformation

Gerhard Proß gab spontan ein beeindruckendes Zeugnis als Protestant

 

Matrimonio de Chile: la vida familiar

Couple from Chile: family life

Ehepaar aus Chile: Familienleben

 
 

Matrimonio de Alemania: Santuario Hogar

Couple from Germany: Home Shrine

Ehepaar aus Deutschland: Hausheiligtum

Fotos: POS Fischer © 2006

Vigilia: Album de fotos – photo albumFotoalbum

Vídeo

 

 

 

Testimony of Missionaries from Portugal and Spain

We are Nacho and Pablo, two young men from Madrid. We are representing the students of the world in carrying out a dream, or perhaps it would be more true to say, a prophesy of Fr Kentenich. We go out in groups of three missionaries to spend a semester or a year in another country. Our only goal is to awaken new life wherever the Schoenstatt Family needs this tiny spark. Our goal is always the same . To give what has made us rich. We want to give the Blessed Mother to the world, and help to found and develop the Schoenstatt Youth Movement.

We are part of the returning river, which is coming powerfully to Europe like the fire of the Apostles., following in the footsteps of the young people of Latin America. The mission in the spirit of 31 May began some years ago in places like Milwaukee, Mexico and Cuba. Then the young people began to knock at the doors of Europe by opening missions in Madrid and Lisbon. They inspired us Portuguese and Spanish youth to start a new project in Rome . the Pietra Nuova. Why are there no Schoenstatt Youth in Rome, the cradle of the Church?. This question burned in our hearts and gave rise to the dream to be the seed that dies. To be what we should be in order to set the world ablaze. To be guardians of tomorrow. To be a rock on which the future Schoenstatt Youth and the Schoenstatt Family in Italy can build. To turn the dream into reality required a death-leap into the Father’s hand. In September we set off for Rome. Yet to move from our plans into God’s plans required a further death-leap, and we are learning how to do this. The reality was very different from what we had imagined. Yet step-by-step we are trying to make our original contribution through our joy and our songs. You can see this through very different activities, for instance, we prepared an international Mass for students from all over Europe, gradually the people came to the shrine to pray, and in Holy Week we had our first mission to students in Sicily.We have discovered that our mission consists in spreading fire, seeing to it that the hearts of the people of Rome fall in love with the shrine. We have discovered that the Church needs us, that Schoenstatt has to be a young, vital and daring answer to those needs. Dare the death-leap!

Testimony to the work of the Pilgrim Mother in Italy

My wife, Gianna, and I, Pietro, and our children Marta and Andrea. We have come from the Matri Ecclesiae shrine in Belmonte and are missionaries of the Pilgrim Mother of Schoenstatt. As a family we started to pray together at home, which is something we only did at Mass in the past. We turn off the TV and leave aside a few other pleasures, in order to devote some of our time to prayer to the Blessed Mother with the gentle melody of the Rosary . a custom our grandparents loved, but which we had lost for senseless and incomprehensible reasons. Everything is going very well. In Italy about 5000 families from Sicily to Venice receive the Pilgrim Mother, and in some parishes the 18th of every month is kept as a day dedicated to her. The shrine in Belmonte is a place of peace for us. As we watch the International Centre going up, we are sure that the Blessed Mother will allow us to grow personally, as a family and as a community.

(Gianna): For me, as a mother, she has become a new friend to whom I can talk wherever I am and work, at home or in the office. I tell her everything I have in my heart.

(Marta): She is my friend, she caresses my heart when I am afraid.

(Andrea): We are doing something similar to St Paul. He went out as a missionary and proclaimed Jesus. The only difference I that we do it through and with the help of the Pilgrim Mother. So we are also missionaries, but in Italy!

Testimony to the new collaboration of the Movements

Dr Gertrud Pollak, Mainz . Institute of our Lady of Schoenstatt At Pentecost 1998 Pope John Paul II asked the spiritual movements to collaborate more closely. As fresh spiritual forces with strong life they have to become visible beyond national boundaries within the Church and be felt as sources of new life generated by the Spirit. Chiara Lubic, the foundress of the Focolare Movement, felt a special responsibility to carry out this commission. She looked for like-minded people and found them in our Movement. Already in June 1999 she visited Schoenstatt with Andrea Riccardi of the Community of San Egidio. As the group stood at the tomb of our founder there was an almost tangible realization that here they were united by the .Dilexit ecclesiam..

Within Europe the seed of this beginning in Rome and at the meeting in Schoenstatt has continued to grow. In May 2004 it became public in Germany. The leaders of more than 170 Christian Movements and communities came to Stuttgart. The subject of the meeting: .To discover and share the richness together. answered their objective very precisely.

In these days it was truly the source of great happiness to see what God’s Spirit has worked today in these very different people and in so many different ways. I was equally impressed by the unconditional openness and the joy we found in one another, as well as by the reverence for our differences you could feel in the way we encountered one another . tangible traces of God.s presence, gifts that the Spirit worked in our midst! Many members of the Schoenstatt Movement were present, and we may be sure that our father and founder was there with us as well, because he wanted all apostolic forces to unite.

However, such spiritual strength many not just be at work behind Church doors. Spiritual Movements have to set their stamp on the society in their countries. The final day in Stuttgart showed this aim clearly in the motto: .Together for Europe.. So that many countries can be united by Christian values; so that Europe has a soul and the whole world a motherly heart!

Testimony of a Chilean Schoenstatt Family

We are Jaime and Alejandra, parents of six children between the ages of 10 and 23 . four girls and two boys. We received our faith from our parents and the Blessed Mother called us to Schoenstatt from her shrine in Montahue in Southern Chile.

We have pastoral tasks in the communities to which we belong . with friends, teaching catechism in the French school, and in the Business Mission in Concepcion, where business people of the region have come together to study Christian social teaching with a view to applying it in their businesses. Our first task is the education of our children. The ideal of our marriage is .to education Christian men and women for the world.. We firmly believe in education through and for freedom, and in educating through our

own example. We make demands on our children, show them their responsibility and their abilities to serve their neighbours. Yet we leave them their freedom.

Once a week we meet in our home shrine. In a prayerful atmosphere we tell one another what is happening with each of us; we bring everything to God and the Blessed mother, and ask for help. Here we pray for God.s grace to solve the problems, inconsistencies, hurts, despondency caused by everyday life. We believe that if, as parents, our lives are permeated by prayer, God will break into the lives of our children. A year ago Jaime had an accident that nearly cost him his life. He was in a coma for nine days. The prayers of an incredible number of people were answered and Jaime is with us today. This trial became an invitation to many of our friends to be converted. God has given us everything. Our own efforts and abilities cannot explain what we have. We experience the twenty-five happy years of marriage, our six children, our work, our friends, and all that we are, as gifts from God.

We experience that we are loved and enriched; we have been called as St Alberto Hurtado said, to love to the limits of pain. We want our family to be a gift to the Church, and pray that God will show each one of us what he wants of us. Many thanks.

Testimony of life in the home shrine

Mr and Mrs Lipp from Germany: Our home shrine is a place of life and love for us and for many. In many of his allocutions, our great Pope John Paul II repeatedly spoke about the importance of the domestic Church. These words of our Holy Father have been realized in an original way in the Schoenstatt home shrines. Since we unite our lives completely with the grace of the shrine,

the covenant of love, we are .the church in miniature.. Our home shrine is a place of encounter . we encounter God, we encounter others, no matter how they live their lives. Our home shrine is a place where Mary.s yes is repeated.

Mary, the Mother of the Lord, has come to us just as she entered into the house of Elizabeth and Zachary, who experienced salvation and blessing. In everyday life we experience that Mary is powerfully and effectively at work; we experience that our imperfections, faults and limitations, indeed death itself, are not the end, but that the hope of making a

success of our lives can repeatedly break through. We experience that Mary repeats her .yes. each day in our .yes. to one another. She helps us to live our yes to each other faithfully .for better or for worse, in sickness

and in health.. We placed Theresa, our daughter, in our home shrine when she we adopted her as a newborn in a Moses basket. We received her gratefully and happily from God.s loving, fatherly hands. For us it was a moment when heaven and earth met.

Our house is a subsidiary of the presbytery. It has become a drop-in centre for many. No aspect of human life is excluded. We discuss bigger and smaller parish projects in our home shrine. We practice with the altar servers and pray the Stations of the Cross with adults and children. We knot Rosaries with the First Communion children and teach them the joys of praying the Rosary. In this way many people come to experience our friendship with Christ, which gives us joy and strength. The covenant of love as a source of strength has not been given to us to keep to ourselves. We have a home and many possibilities to collaborate with others in the community of the Schoenstatt Family League. We work from the family for families . this has become a great value to us, and we want to pass it on. This happens in many ways, including marriage team seminars, where we can pass on our founder.s vision of marriage and family life.

 


Zurück/Back: [Seitenanfang / Top] [letzte Seite / last page] [Homepage]

Last Update: 03.06.2006 Mail: Editor /Webmaster
© 2006 Schönstatt-Bewegung in Deutschland, PressOffice Schönstatt, hbre, All rights reserved, Impressum