Christ

April 29, 2021 By Magdalena Rosario Lira

Youth in Chaco, Argentina: For everything or nothing

On April 2, 3 and 4, in Resistencia City, 48 young people between the ages of 18 and 28 said yes to fully experiencing the spirit of the Holy Week .

Estefanía Cuneo
28 April 2021

It has been more than ten years since the University Missions Ita Pater ita Mater -Muipim- became an important part of the identity shared by the Feminine and Masculine Youth of the Schoenstatt Family in Chaco, Argentina.

The missions began thanks to the inspiration felt by some youth who took part in the Catholic University Missions in Paraguay. The experience of love, the profound call to the mission and the desire to surrender to the MTA was so great that when they returned, they wanted others to be able to experience that ardor. The name reflects the filial ideal “Yes Father, yes Mother.”

Since the very beginning, this mission has been an entryway for youth while offering them Schoenstatt’s charisma. Thanks to Father Jaime Mora who wanted to lend a hand to the Church and went along with them, more than 10 sites and towns were visited in which harsh realities were encountered in remote and forgotten communities with considerable material and spiritual needs.

The mission is characterized for its simplicity: To live each Holy Week with Christ, with oneself and with your brothers and sisters. To be able to detach oneself and become an instrument.

A strong missionary trend

So far, around 800 missionaries have lived this experience and around 1200 families have been touched by the missions.

This year the missions were held in a very particular way due to the situation we are all facing. On April 2, 3 and 4, in Resistencia, 48 young people between the ages of 18 and 28 said yes to fully experiencing the spirit of the Holy Week.

Guided by God, ignited by the love for Christ, with the yearning to leave traces of mercy and hope in society, the youth were encouraged to live the encounter in times of the pandemic in a camp-like way.

Love for everything or nothing

Throughout those days, they accompanied Jesus in his most sublime surrender to love. They meditated on the inspirational motto that pushed them to live a different Holy Week: “Guided by God, for everything or nothing“. To put oneself at stake, to give oneself generously, to love, with the certainty that God is the one who calls and the one who leads the way.

Father Kentenich used to say: “If God gave us this mission, He has to take care of things, He has to clarify things.“

The whole project was all-or-nothing, each decision implied a leap into the void, from the planning and coordination to experiencing the camp-retreat. Waiting for responses and recommendations from the authorities, adapting the mission format, visiting the picnic areas, etc. Everything up to the last minute was difficult but God took care of opening doors and gave us his paternal love up to the last second.

For Christ there are no half measures

His love is all-or-nothing and calls for the rediscovery of values and applying them to life.

Ita Pater Ita Mater

The missions have witnessed countless miracles of conversion and transformation. From the profound encounter with God, the desire to share is born.

How many hearts have generously allowed themselves to be molded by Him!

The days went by in an atmosphere of prayer, closeness and joy of sharing. It was possible to experience the graces brough about by the daily dedication of many people who through their material and spiritual collaboration were instruments in this experience.

From the Shrine, Mary gives back in graces.

The most beautiful and valuable thing about the great family, the Church, is the bonds of love that know no time, distance, age or borders. All of our offerings are the guarantee and the foundation for the conquest and future construction of our longed-for daughter Shrine.

“Guided by God, for everything or nothing”

Translated by Maribel Acarón

April 2, 2021 By Sr. M. Cacilda Becker

Behold your Mother

It is Good Friday, April 2nd, 1915, in a small town located in Vallendar, Germany. A group of young seminarians, together with their spiritual director, Father Kentenich, had sealed a Covenant of Love with Mary five months before, had invited her to establish her home in a small chapel, and are searching for an image of the Blessed Mother to place in the chapel. During that Good Friday they relived the Passion of Christ.

Sister M. Nilza P. da Silva
April 2021

It is Good Friday; we are enveloped in the Calvary’s atmosphere. We experience the passion and death of Christ, God’s son, who loved us until the very end. Raised on the cross, totally stripped of his dignity, his rights, even his robes, there is only one thing that remains as his: his Mother. No one can take that away from him! She is totally his and nothing in this world can take Her away from him.,

Then, Jesus surprises us once again, even at this time of a most dreadful suffering, he willingly gives us his most precious gift: “Behold your Mother”. His love for us is perfect, he does not keep anything for himself. And John “took her into his home” (Jn 19,27).

She is and acts as our Mother

Mary assumes her role as mother of each member of the Mystical Body of Christ. As his collaborator, she continues loving and guiding each child engendered by her Son’s sacrifice. Throughout history we see how she loves us until the very end, just like Jesus did, keeping nothing for herself. Following Jesus’ example, she gives her all so that we may experience the Father’s merciful love. She remains beside each of her children’s cross and guides them towards the morning of the resurrection.

Behold our mother, our MTA

It is Good Friday, April 2nd, 1915, in a small town in Vallendar, Germany. A group of young seminarians, together with their spiritual director, Father Kentenich, had sealed a Covenant of Love with Mary five months before, had invited her to establish her home in a small chapel, and are searching for an image of the Blessed Mother to place in the chapel. During that Good Friday they relived the Passion of Christ. The priest and the young seminarians want to take part in Jesus’s suffering as vividly as possible. They are spiritually present at the Golgotha, on Calvary hill, as they listen once again to Jesus’ testament of love: “Behold your Mother”. (Jn 19:27)

The seminarians were busy with the preparations for that day’s sacred liturgy. Brothers Joseph and Christian went to the train station to pick up a package that had arrived for Father Kentenich: the Blessed Mother’s image which had been sent by Father Eugene Huggle, one of the professors at the Seminar, to be enthroned in the chapel. Since the brothers were not the recipient indicated on the package, the station’s chief refused to give them the package and told them to return the following Monday after the Easter celebration was over. Joseph wants to take the Blessed Mother home and is so persistent that the station’s chief finally agrees to put the large octagonal image in their cart, and it arrives at Schoenstatt within ten minutes.

She agrees to be taken home

And so, the Blessed Mother arrives to take possession of her throne of grace. She is wrapped up, placed in a cart, without making any noise, attracting no attention. Thus, on that unforgettable day 106 years ago, that sacred moment in Christ’s passion is relived. On the day he leaves this world, he offers his mother to us as our Mother, and she arrives without us noticing. Her Son is the focus. That day they meditate on Christ’s suffering as they stand by the cross. The MTA’s image arrives as a sacred legacy of that unparalleled point in time. It feels like Jesus is telling Father Kentenich: “Behold your Mother”. Due to the Holy Week’s celebrations, the image is enthroned in the small chapel on April 11, the Sunday after Easter, on the Feast of the Divine Mercy.

He takes her home. To the small chapel, the home where she acts as educator and dispenses abundant graces. To the home in his heart, to the home in the heart of every seminarian, and, even today, he continues taking her to the home of everyone who seals the Covenant of Love. She comes to stay with her children, in their tribulations and life’s trials, so that they can be touched by the Father’s merciful love and experience each day the resurrection to a new life in Christ.

She came to form her children in the image of Christ

She arrives with her heroic Son on Good Friday and transforms the small chapel into her own Mount Tabor. In 1947, Father Kentenich said in Brazil: “Our Mount Tabor must radiate our Blessed Mother’s glory. What does the fullness of Mary’s glory consist of? How do we see her before us? She is the remarkable woman formed and capable of forming others in the image of Christ. Her main task is to bring Christ to the world”.

We are part of this history

As on April 2, 1915, it is Good Friday once more. Jesus gives us his mother once again, giving us her presence in the Shrine. Let us allow ourselves to be educated by her! Let us bring her into the home that is in our heart, and she will reveal her glory in us and in our family. Let us allow ourselves to be taken to the Shrine by the words of Father Kentenich, to whom the image of our Blessed Mother was entrusted:

“If you want to understand her well, you have to penetrate profoundly into these three truths:

Christ, the ideal of our life

Christ, the foundation of our life

Christ, the form of our life.

For Mary, Christ became her life’s ideal and its foundation, to the point of adopting Jesus’ form in her life. This is the great importance that the Mother of God has for us in relation to Jesus. We do not want to focus on her. We know that her whole being and her whole person always point to Jesus. We see her as the bearer of Christ because she took the form of Christ and is capable of being formed in the image of Christ”.

Bibliographic source:

Tabor Our Mission, Words by Father Kentenich in Brazil

A new vision, a new life. Father Jonathan Niehaus

Final text by F. Kentenich: Brazil, 1947

March 25, 2021 By Magdalena Rosario Lira

Serving the light within her

March 25, day of the Annunciation. Mary, a woman of faith, full of the Holy Spirit who accepts God's will and gives Jesus' light to the world.

Sister M. Lourdes Macías Graue
25 March 2021

Every year we celebrate with joy the feast of the Annunciation, where we relive when Mary, recognizing the great gift that God gives her of being the mother of his son, listens to the message, closes her eyes, internalizes it and, opening her eyes, pronounces her “Yes, I do”.

Through her acceptance she opens herself totally to God’s will and assumes her mission to serve the Light within her.

God, who has called Mary by her name because he knows her personally, can entrust to her the greatest treasure He possesses, his own son.

For this reason, the angel’s Annunciation to Mary is one of the most contemplated and meditated mysteries. It incorporates both the love of God for Mary (and in her for all mankind) and the love of Mary (and, along with her, the love of all mankind) for God our Lord.

Mary’s “I do” is a calling and a response, revelation and acceptance, choice and responsibility, mission and commitment.

To live is to be called and loved by someone for something, for a mission. Every man and every woman are created in the heart of God to fulfill His eternal plan and their journey through life should be the realization of God’s dream in history. The call is clear, certain, and constant. And the answer?

Following Mary’s example, many people, men and women, have decided to follow God’s call and serve the one who is the light, Christ.

We can say that the call to Mary through the angel is indicative of God’s actions towards man. We can observe this mainly in these three characteristics:

First, we could say that God has a preference for the humble, the insignificant, the simple. That is why he chooses Mary, the handmaid of the Lord. She is humble because she knows the infinite gap there is between God and her. Mary feels she is a simple and insignificant daughter of her people. That is why she is troubled when the angel greets her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

A second characteristic: For the truly great events in history and in our lives, God does not choose the turmoil and turbulence of the world, but rather chooses isolation and serenity. The greatest moments are often the most peaceful and unseen. This is also true for this unique encounter between heaven and earth: it takes place in the privacy and peace of Mary’s house, ignored by the world.

As a third point, the Annunciation reveals to us that God takes man and his freedom seriously. That is why he does not want to carry out his plans of salvation without man’s free collaboration and consent.

In the Gospel scene, God’s respect for the dignity and freedom of human beings is remarkably expressed. God gives Mary the possibility of accepting or rejecting her mission. God places humanity’s destiny in the hands of this humble virgin.

Mary’s response at this decisive hour is an example for all of us: “Yes, I will, let it be done to me according to your word”. She accepts, even though she does not see or understand. This is why the most extraordinary thing about Mary at the hour of the Annunciation is her faith.