Dear Schoenstatt Family,

With affection, I wish blessings to all on this Covenant Day!

Once again, we want to renew our Covenant of Love with the Mother of God in the Schoenstatt Shrine. Each one of us will do it in a daughter Shrine somewhere in the world or in the Original Shrine.

The important thing is that we renew the secret strength of our vitality. Without the Covenant of Love, nothing has been done in Schoenstatt. We all know, however, that nothing is done in our lives without the capital of grace. That is part of our commitment to the Mother of God: Nothing without You, Nothing without us!

Small, but also great resolutions

In our Family we express the capital of Grace daily, with small, daily resolutions. But also great resolutions that perhaps occupy our whole life.

We know that Mary is always faithful to the Covenant “with abundant graces and blessings.” We, on the other hand, who wish to be her little instruments, are limited by our fragility. But we place ourselves daily in her hands, for our smallness attracts the heart of the God, The Father, and the Mother of God.

In this way, everything makes sense

The material for our capital of grace is found in the daily life of our lives. In this way, every joy, every love, every pain, every apostolate, every work that we have to do makes sense. It is not difficult to find the material of our capital of grace; it is only necessary to observe, with the eyes of God, what we have to live.

In this way, our whole life takes on meaning, and even the greatest difficulties we have to face receive an enlightening light from our Covenant of Love.

Simple daily contact from our heart

Mother, I know that you are always watching over me in all circumstances: this is our daily invocation. If we root our love in her heart and her Son, we live in an atmosphere that allows us to pass through the fire. Therefore, our attachment to God does not consist in pure supposition about his existence and his properties but in the simple daily contact from our heart to the heart of Mary and her Son. In this, we find our home, our human and divine shelter, and in this way, we make our pilgrimage towards the home of heaven.

However, we need this vital contact with God to be concrete in the contact of love with our brothers and sisters. St. John warns us gravely: “Whoever says I love God and does not love his brothers is a liar.” (1Jn. 4:20) Our entire capital of grace is thus oriented to concrete love our neighbor. And that is the dynamic of the Covenant; the Shrine attracts us to the Mother of God, and the Mother of God sends us to offer everything out of love for our neighbor. Communion with God is mysteriously communicated through communion with our brothers and sisters.

May this Covenant Day renew our willingness to live in that exchange with our dear Mother of God and with the Merciful Father, in favor of all, leaving no one person out but drawing all to the Triune God.

Fr. Alejandro Blanco
International Schoenstatt Federation of Priests
Secretary General