A Reflection of our Society on the Eve of the 60^th Anniversary of the 31^st of May

By Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Johannesburg, South Africa

On the eve of the 60^th anniversary of the third milestone in Schoenstatt’s history, more popularly referred to as the 31^st of May 1949, there are celebratory masses and programmes planned all over the Schoenstatt world, not least Chile and, more specifically, Bellavista. The Schoenstatt Family in Ecuador have also chosen this meaningful date for the blessing and dedication of their new shrine.

As we hold these celebrations and give thanks for the many gifts we have received, we are also called to reflect on what the message of the 31^st of May means for us sixty years later and how we are called to continue this mission in our times.

More than half a decade ago, Fr. Kentenich identified "mechanistic thinking" as the greatest problem of the modern age, where man becomes separated from God, from his own transcendental nature, from his fellow man and his surroundings. As his life becomes increasingly compartmentalised, so too, his faith and his Christian life becomes separate from the secular world in which he lives. Such a person loses the ability to love and becomes ever more isolated. Fr. Kentenich’s solution to this "germ," that was contaminating the Western world in particular, is the formation of the "new person in the new society." This "new person" is seen in all of his dimensions simultaneously and each facet of the human person grows to form a unified self that operates in union with his creator and whose heart beats with love for those around him. For this to happen, Fr. Kentenich felt that it was necessary to build up a culture of attachments – attachments to people, to places, to dates and events.

Father’s assessment of his society has become a prophecy that is being fulfilled before our very eyes

While it is certainly presumptuous to outline Fr. Kentenich’s pedagogy of the new person in a single paragraph, it nevertheless calls us to reflect on our own world, which in many ways is very similar to the one Father experienced sixty years ago, but in many ways is also very different. What is nevertheless apparent is that Father’s assessment of his society has become a prophecy that is being fulfilled before our very eyes.

Communities have disintegrated. Small towns around the world are slowly disappearing as job opportunities become scarcer and people are forced to migrate to the cities in search of employment and improved living conditions. These metropolitan centres are impersonal places and the human person becomes increasingly isolated. Gone are small enterprises where employees were part of a "family" and a boss could, in some cases, help to ease the weight of unexpected difficulties by advancing a month’s salary or simply by taking a personal interest in the life of his employees. Instead, we now work for large incorporations where the managing director is unlikely to even know our names.

We live in impersonal apartment blocks with over a hundred neighbours and the local church community may consist of more than a thousand people. In such an environment, it is difficult to form bonds with other people who share similar interests, much less find people with whom we can share our faith and life journeys.

Young people today have tried to reverse this trend by joining sports clubs, gyms and all sorts of social clubs where they can meet others. But many of these places are also sterile and impersonal. While it may be possible to go to a night club to dance and have a few drinks, the noise volume makes it impossible to hold a conversation with anyone short of screaming at them. The dance culture has also changed and today, it is perfectly acceptable for people to dance on their own without a partner by forming dance circles with complete strangers. It is normal to spend an entire evening dancing alongside others without exchanging a single word.

The atomization of person

The internet holds the promise of personal contact and online communities such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter allow people to post their details, join communities (such as "I am a Nutella fan"), play word games and start conversations with someone living on the opposite side of the planet. While it is true that these websites, together with chat facilities such as Skype and Messenger, provide hours of entertainment, the opportunity to meet others online and share experiences, there is also a disturbing element which confirms Fr. Kentenich’s understanding of mechanistic thinking.

On Facebook, for example, I am free to exhibit whichever persona I please. I can create a person that completely different from who I am and I can project a personality and a set of values that are contrary to my own. This allows me to hide from who I really am and while I may be very successful and communicating in this medium to somebody in a faraway city, I may lack all interpersonal skills in my everyday interactions with the people around me. In short, the individual has found a community but remains separated from his own self as he avoids the development of his own character by hiding in a false persona instead. A false attachment is created but real bonds with real people become increasingly elusive.

This is the radical separation of the individual, the "atomization" of the human person that Fr. Kentenich spoke of. We perhaps need to consider the consequences of these modern trends. As the human person becomes increasingly isolated from other real people around him, he becomes accountable to nobody and is responsible for no one. In this vacuum, the individual has ample time to satisfy his own desires. This can take various forms from short-term impersonal sexual encounters to disproportionate expenditure on a hobby. The "I" becomes the focus of every activity but this should not be confused with self-love. Love, St Paul tells us, is generous and kind. Real love cannot be self-contained but must be shared with others. An excessive focus on the self prevents us from loving others, and this goes some way in explaining the reason behind so many failed relationships and marriages in our times. As soon as a partner stops satisfying those personal desires, the "love" (albeit based on a false understanding of love) ends and if love ends, the bond is broken and it is easy to walk away, even if the temporary union has borne fruits such as children.

Called to re-establish bonds of true love, resulting in the restoration of attachments to God, people and events

There are many other examples that can be drawn from the age we live in, but the focus of this reflection is not to become fixated on the ills of our age and to set ourselves apart in self-enclosed communities where we only share our faith and formation with like-minded people. Our father and founder identified social trends in search of terrain in which God’s love for each person and His unique plan for each human life could be revealed. Fr. Kentenich’s vision for the "new person in the new society" represents a proactive attitude to the desire expressed in the Lord’s prayer: thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven or to use Fr. Kentenich’s own words – to seek "unity in the City of God on earth" (Heavenwards, p143).

As we celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the 31^st of May, we are called to reflect on our own lives and the extent to which we have fallen victim to the impersonalised society in which we must live and the degree to which we have been able to be living witnesses for a new kind of person who lives in unity with God, himself and his fellow man. We are also called to reflect on the circles we inhabit and identify the "open doors" through which we can enter and present a new vision of humanity to our brothers and sisters who have lost the ability to love and are imprisoned by loneliness even though they are constantly surrounded by others. Above all, we are called to re-establish bonds of true love, resulting in the restoration of attachments to God, people and events in our own lives and the lives of others.