On Christmas Eve, we crossed the threshold of the Holy Year 2025 with many believers worldwide. As brothers and sisters of the worldwide Schoenstatt Family, we place our covenant of love as a reason for hope and the charism of our Father and Founder / for a family-like Church and world. On the threshold of the Holy Year, Fr. Josef Fleischlin ISch created a picture that strongly expresses this hope: Fr. Joseph Kentenich as a pilgrim of hope from the shrine. Fr. Fleischlin writes:
“I have experienced Fr. Kentenich throughout his life as a tireless pilgrim for the Blessed Mother’s mission from the shrine. That is why he also spoke of the milestones in our Schoenstatt history: first leading to the shrine and then setting out from the shrine into the wide world to help found shrines of the MTA everywhere to bring the world home to the Father through Jesus and Mary in the Holy Spirit.”
Fr. Kentenich was a tireless pilgrim, both in his younger years when Schoenstatt was taking shape, in the years when the Movement flourished in and around the Covenant Home (Bundesheim), and after his return from Dachau and from Milwaukee – always on the road to the people with the fire of love in his heart. A man of new beginnings. He was inspired by the hope of giving the covenant of love to people, to bring them into a relationship with the Blessed Mother and bring them together in family-like, sustainable communities.
The statue of Father Kentenich
In the picture, we see Father Kentenich as a pilgrim, passionately on the way, a prophet on the move, driven by his mission. Are we going with him? He constantly looks around for allies and asks for them from the Blessed Mother, for whom he walks. Father Fleischlin writes:
“Antonio Borges created the Father statue at the beginning of the seventies for my course ideal “Exeuntes in Promissionibus Patris” (Going forth – and setting out – in the promises of the Father), understood above all as our Father’s vision of the Blessed Mother’s work from the shrine for our time and world. (As committed Schoenstatt Pallottines, we were carried by our Father’s words: “Let us believe in Schoenstatt and Pallotti and never let this sign of unity be taken away from us”).
The old gate to the meadow around the Original Shrine and the direct proximity of the Blessed Mother from Schoenstatt offer a very symbolic backdrop this year. Through this gate, we enter, as it were, into the sphere of action of the grace of this special place; through it, we also step into the world, invited to give the covenant of love to other people. We want to become people on the go, as our Father was, as Mary was, and also Jesus – the God-man – in tireless going to those in need. God on the way.
Pictures of the Holy Year
The little picture with a pilgrim’s prayer can be ordered in the sacristy of the Original Shrine from January 2025. Half of the proceeds will go to the initiative “We are all Schoenstatt” and thus to the Original Shrine.
Order: Alicja Kostka – Admirabilis Edition, e-mail: admirabilis2014@gmail.com, or purchase directly in the sacristy of the Original Shrine.
Translation: Sr. M. Lourdes Macías