These celebrations keep our Covenant alive

Meditations during the third Night of the Shrines

“Hall of Fame” – los heroes de Schoenstatt “Hall of Fame” – the heroes of Schoenstatt “Hall of Fame” – es ist wieder Zeit der Helden
Jovenes hacen fila para entrar al Santuario Original Young people standing in line to enter the Original Shrine Jugendliche umstehen das Urheiligtum Fotos: POS Fischer © 2007
Adoración del Santisimo Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament Anbetung des Allerheiligsten Foto: Martin Schneider © 2007

SOUTH AFRICA, Sarah-Leah Pimentel. Can anyone remember the enormous poster of our MTA that the group from Portugal brought with them to the Schoenstatt Youth Festival in August 2005? It was so big that a few days later, the overhead cameras in Marienfeld at the World Youth Day Mass picked it up and broadcast it on German television. And what about the three thousand small Pilgrim Mothers that were shipped from Brazil, so that each participant at the Youth Festival, was able to take a Pilgrim Mother to WYD and pass Mother and Son onto a stranger in Cologne? Is anybody still in touch with the person to whom their Pilgrim Mother was given?

I remember carrying my Pilgrim Mother for four days, waiting for the right person to give her to…she ended up going home with a South African architect from Cape Town, South Africa. I wanted to give her to someone from some exotic place who had never heard of Schoenstatt before, but after attending a beautiful midnight Mass at the Cathedral in Spanish with this Cape Tonian the night before going to Marienfeld for the Vigil, I knew he was the one! I then spent two years trying to get in touch with him again and failed. I’m sure that it’s not a coincidence that we met again on Facebook less than a week ago.

These are the visible signs that the energy of the Covenant of Love for the Youth of the World continues to live on as we, less than an hour from now will begin the celebration of third Night of the Shrines. Schoenstatt Youth from all over the world will gather at the Shrines in their home towns and unite spiritually with their representatives in Schoenstatt’s original place and truly become faces for (y)our faith. These celebrations keep our Covenant alive, unite us as a real family of brothers and sisters bound by a common ideal and give us new impulses to continue in our mission.

I wonder which effect the 3,000 Schoenstatt Youth had...

But what about the thousands of other youth, who before the last WYD in Cologne had never even heard of Schoenstatt or had never thought they have a loving Mother who guides them lovingly by the hand closer to the Son, and through him to the Father? In the words of Fr Kentenich "with Mary through Christ in the Holy Spirit to the Father." I often wonder what effect 3000 Schoenstatt Youth had on the 1.2 million youth who were in Cologne with us. And what effect they had on their friends and youth in their home countries after their return.

At Schoenstatt’s October Week 2005, I had the experience of telling the German Schoenstatt Family gathered in the Pilgrim Church about the 5000 "non-Schoenstatt" groups that visited Schoenstatt in the days leading up to WYD and how in many conversations, the young people I spoke to were keen to find out more about Schoenstatt in their countries. They wanted to connect with the Movement in Australia, Portugal, Hungary, France, Spain, England and Italy because they discovered a living faith in Schoenstatt, where young people were excited about their faith and found ways to live it out in practical ways.

Admittedly, those were days of much excitement and the very air was saturated with euphoria, but as the pilgrims went home and settled back into normal life, it is so easy to get caught up the pressures of everyday life that we forget how we can change the world in little ways everyday. On this, the third Night of the Shrines, I want to encourage every young person, to recommit themselves to the ideal of International Schoenstatt Youth – You and me for them, because we are the face through which many people will come to know Christ, people who would never know him otherwise.