On the weekend of May 1-4, we held our first Family Missions with the Schoenstatt Family of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the town of Brandsen, with a group of more than 100 missionaries.
After a period of discernment and preparation, which was not very long but quite intense, we decided to live this transformative experience that unites us as a Family and makes us, in the words of Pope Francis, a “Church on the go” to encounter our brothers and sisters, bringing the presence of the Blessed Mother and offering the joy of our shared faith. Thus, we wanted to bring to life the motto that inspired us during those days and evokes the jubilee year we are living and the essence of what it means to be missionaries as a family: “Home in Covenant, Enkindle Hope.”
A surprising experience of synodality
This has been a foundational experience for us. We are aware that Family Missions are a current of life that has been going on for 26 uninterrupted years in Argentina and have multiplied and borne fruit throughout the country.
That is why we also wanted to live this experience in the city of Buenos Aires and offer it as a way to spread and strengthen the faith of families, especially young families with children.
It is amazing that we were able to receive the gift of sharing the beauty of the Family Missionary vocation, uniting all ages and all states of life in a profound experience of community: families with children, young people and seniors, lay people and consecrated persons, members of the Schoenstatt Family from Belgrano, Confidentia, Zona Mater, La Plata, and San Isidro, and even the members of the Pilgrim Mother Apostolate and the parish community from the town of Bransdsen. And we must not forget to mention that the Schoenstatt Fathers, the Schoenstatt Federation of Priests, and the Sisters of Mary accompanied us during the missions. We even welcomed a religious sister from the Company of Mary who wanted to join us as a missionary during those days. It was a true experience of synodality!
Adriana Guerra, from Belgrano, tells us: “I hadn’t been on a mission since I was young. Today, at 56, I thought that perhaps it was too late for me. Missions are usually for young people. But Schoenstatt offered me the opportunity to go on a mission again. It was a double experience: sharing with the local people, but at the same time creating family ties, living the same spirit of community with a shared ideal that was prayed and lived… And, as the young people sang over and over again: ‘And so discover that fire that cries out in the soul, ‘I am a missionary’.”
A renovating experience full of joy
I think this experience of ecclesial and family communion was something extraordinary. It is a special grace that I believe God wants to give us in this type of missionary experience, which is also a tangible, vital, and concrete expression of what the Schoenstatt Family aspires to be as a charism within the Church. Because that is what it is all about: being able to live in the concrete reality of an apostolic experience that means being family, sharing faith and daily life. Thus, we were united in moments of prayer, meals, and domestic work; in the missionary work of visiting neighbors door to door, the hospital, the nursing home, and the plaza, going out to meet others, be they children, youth, or elderly, healthy or sick, together with the image of the Pilgrim Mother of Schoenstatt.
Maríla and Antonio Laquaniti, a missionary couple from Confidentia, say: “It was a renovating experience full of joy! With the task we were given, we were able to witness God’s providence and the generosity of all those who supported these missions. We highlight the willingness of everyone, children, youth, and adults alike, to go out and meet the people of the community with enthusiasm and dedication. We hope that the bonds created will be strengthened. We loved being a part of it!”
A surprise from Divine Providence: The relics of a holy family
Personally, I was surprised by how Providence arranged things so that we could take with us on this mission the relics of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and her parents, St. Marie-Azélie Guérin and Louis Martin, who were canonized as a married couple. In short, the Universal Patroness of Missions and a Holy Couple. These same relics made a pilgrimage through the streets of Brandsen accompanied by the parish communities on the day when, as Providence would have it, the diocesan bishop and the religious communities of the diocese gathered at the Carmel of St. Teresa, which is right there in Brandsen!
The Carmelite nuns were grateful to receive the relics along with the visit of the missionaries and the bishop. To conclude the pilgrimage, which had departed from the central parish of Brandsen, there was a Mass presided over by Monsignor Juan Ignacio Liebana in the parish of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Saint Thérèse welcomed Saint Thérèse!
María José Esposito, from Belgrano, sums it up: “It was only four days, but they were filled with life, with God, with dedication, with encounters. What struck me most was the joy with which each day was lived. From the youngest to the oldest, who were over 80, we all went out enthusiastically to do missionary work. We were entire families, young people, married couples, consecrated persons, united in the same mission. There was an atmosphere of fraternity, of living community. The prayers with the Blessed Sacrament were the heart of each day: they filled our souls to go out and give our all together with the missionaries. I return from this mission with a magnified heart.”
The joy and harmony we experienced during those days are difficult to explain. They can only be truly understood when they are lived. And they are the fruit, I repeat, of a special grace that the Blessed Mother gives us in these experiences because, I believe, she wants to encourage us to be “missionary disciples” and “pilgrims of hope” sustained by the Covenant of Love and the experience of being Family, in order to give to so many who seek and need it, the very thing that we experience through our charism.
Translation: Maribel Acaron
