Heroic Childlikness: An Exciting Proposal!

On August 20, 2020 will be celebrated the 71st anniversary of the coronation of the Mother ThriceAdmirable, Queen, and Victress of Schoenstatt at the Tabor Shrine in Santa Maria/RS, Brazil, by the founder of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement, Father Joseph Kentenich.

As Father Kentenich always did, he analyzed the signs of the time, the difficulties and the worries, and he prayed to know what God wanted with all of this. He realized the difficulty, which there was in general, in relating faith and daily life, that is, in maintaining a balance between attachment to God, to one’s neighbor, and to all created things.

It is part of the fundamental experience of each human being, of having bonds within a family, as a means for the development of each unique personality. God uses this same path to come to us and for each person to achieve a personal and deep bond with him.

Father Kentenich, following the teachings of Jesus, points to being a child before God as the ideal and way of life for the Christian. He shows Mary as the one whose mission is to educate those who entrust themselves to her to live the filiality, received in Baptism, to a heroic degree. An attitude of filial surrender, in the light of faith, sees God behind every event – even the most difficult ones – and seeks in everything to do his will, always for love of the Father. Jesus is the model of a beloved and heroic Son who went to the cross for love of his Father.

When he crowned the MTA on August 20, 1949, as Queen of Heroic Childlikeness, Father Kentenich affirmed childlikeness as an essential element of Schoenstatt’s spirituality. “Accept the crown as an expression of the request: Take care that all Schoenstatt children receive and maintain, until the end of time, the grace of heroic childlikeness – and with it the guarantee of an essential element of our spirituality.”

Filiality is a current theme

This time of so many discoveries and so much progress needs childlikness. Being a child is a necessity for the people of today who are facing so many adversities!

Despite being part of a world network of communication, connected, but still separated and distant, more and more the human being feels alone in the world. Modern persons often lack a nest experience that gives security. It is also true that the deterioration of the family nucleus and the loss of strong relationships make the experience of childlikness more difficult. Usually the experience with the supernatural world is based on the experiences of relationships in daily life, especially with a father and a mother, siblings, and friends.

That is why we crown the Mother of God as Queen of Heroic Childlikeness, because she wants to help us cultivate even more healthy bonds to people, places, and ideas. We need to lead people to the Mother of God, so that in her arms, they reinforce their learning, what it is to be a child. This is what the Schoenstatt Movement tries to do in the covenant of love with the Mother Thrice Admirable.

As seven decades ago, the coronation offered by Father Kentenich is current today. In our time, in today’s difficulties, a childish childlikness is not the way. It is necessary to be guided by the Holy Spirit to the heroism of faith and filial love for God. Only those who are profoundly children before God have the strength and security today to prove the faith and apply it in daily life as mature Christians, as protagonists of this necessary social transformation. Mother Thrice Admirable must be, even more today, our Queen of Heroic Childlikeness. Let us allow ourselves to be educated by her!

Sr. M. Rosequiel Fávero and Sr. M. Nilza P. da Silva

The Shrine of São Paulo Celebrates its 50th Anniversary

A "luminous lantern" in the largest metropolis of the Americas

Luisa Monteiro

The Tabor Shrine of Victorious Confidence in the Father, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, commemorated 50 years of existence on July 8, 2020. The activities around this jubilee included three days of preparatory triduum, more than two million prayers gathered for opening day, holy Masses of Commemoration – one of which was presided by Cardinal Don Odilo Scherer -, and one day of sharing shrine experiences. The agenda followed the theme “Anchored to the Father, with the Queen of the Covenant, to turn the shrine into a hidden pearl, a luminous lantern for São Paulo”. This celebration is the apex of three years of preparation, which involved all the branches, communities, and apostolates of the Schoenstatt Work. The shrine, located in the neighborhood of Villa Mariana, was the fourth to be founded in Brazil and the second in the city of São Paulo.

The first event on the jubilee agenda took place twenty days before the anniversary of the inauguration of the shrine. On July 18, the Schoenstatt Family of Villa Mariana, including those devoted to the Pilgrim Mother and the connected dioceses, proposed to pray one million prayers of Confidence for the Mother of God – a goal that was successfully achieved and which resulted in the presentation of 2,345,605 Prayers of Confidence as a gift to the Mother and Queen.

The Blessed Mother goes out to meet her children

The sunny morning of July 5 coincided with the festivities of Jubilee Sunday. With the current pandemic, people were unable to visit the shrine. However, they did not stop greeting the Queen. The picture of the MTA was removed and placed on the road in front of the shrine to bless the community. Many people passed in front of her, in cars and on foot – many came on their knees- and carried flowers and gifts of their offerings to the capital of grace.

For the festivities, a small group composed of the members of the Council of the Schoenstatt Family gathered in the shrine. Those who could not attend because of health measures were fully represented as a table full of gifts, sent by the members of the Movement, was placed next to the shrine. Around the garden, dozens of signs highlighted the name of each branch and diocese. The families were also called to spiritually witness the event, and during the experience day, a scroll with more than seven thousand names of families, sent by the community during the week before the jubilee, was presented to the Blessed Mother.

A new crowning

The Golden Jubilee Holy Mass, presided over by Cardinal Don Odilo Scherer, was witnessed by many from afar. It was a celebration that commemorated the history of a small shrine, whose presence, in the words of the Cardinal “became significant in our city and for many people who found there well-being, joy, and blessing, a refuge for their encounter with God and Our Lady, Mother and Queen of us all.

Don Odilo’s wish is that “the celebration of this 50th Anniversary, may mean a renewal, a deepening of the mission that the shrine and the Movement assume here in São Paulo. So that, in this time of new evangelization, of missionary renewal, we can radiate this presence of grace, of mercy, of the goodness of God throughout our city.

The celebration ended with a new crowning of Mother Thrice Admirable in the shrine, Tabor Shrine of Victorious Confidence in the Father, by Don Odilo. Around the shrine participants raised their pictures of the Blessed Mother, and were joined by spectators and pilgrims from their houses, in their home shrines. The day referred to by many internet users as a “day of heaven on earth”, concluded with the crowning prayer and the beautiful Schoenstatt tradition of consecration of hearts, once again, to the Blessed Mother.

Posted by Santuário de Schoenstatt da Vila Mariana on Sunday, July 5, 2020