Brief Description of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement

Vivificat! - A Catholic Blog of Commentary and Opinion ^ | 12 January 2006 | Teófilo

[Teófilo]

Folks, I wanted to share with you today some of the tenets of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement, a movement which I joined in my first youth ant that continues to affect me to this day. Most of the information comes from the Schoenstatt Movement of Austin, Texas. The information on the Original Schoenstatt Shrine comes from the website of Schoenstatt in Australia. The excerpt from Joseph Engling and the words from then Cardinal Ratzinger on Fr. Kentenich come from the Schoenstatt Movement's own Official Website.

Origin, Nature, and History of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement

Schoenstatt is an international movement of Catholic Christians who seek God’s presence and attend to God’s work in their daily lives. We understand the Christian life as following Jesus with a readiness and a trust inspired by the example of Mary.

The Schoenstatt Movement is named after the place where it was founded at Schoenstatt, Vallendar. This lies on the Rhine near Koblenz, Germany. [Schoenstatt is German for "beautiful place."]

The movement was founded on the 18th of October, 1914 by a young Pallottine priest, Fr. Joseph Kentenich [1885-1968] and a group of junior seminarians.

The intention was to create “firm, free priestly men and women” through the Covenant of Love with Mary, and invite her to make the Schoenstatt Shrine a place of grace. From there she would form the hearts of people for the renewal of the Church in our time.

Essentially Fr. Kentenich wanted to create a spiritual life that was appropriate for the fast changing conditions of our modern world.

The resolve of the young students was severely tested when many were called to serve in the trenches of the First World War. The Founding Generation produced many heroic lives.

The Original Schoenstatt Shrine

The history of the original Shrine spans centuries. The earliest written mention dates from 1143. At that time a cemetery chapel dedicated to St Michael adjoined the old “Covenant of Our Lady of Schoenstatt”. This chapel was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War and rebuilt in 1681 - only to be leveled again, this time by Napoleon’s invading army. Later it was restored as a place for private devotions and eventually passed into the hands of the Pallottine Fathers.

In 1914 the chapel became a meeting place of the Marian Sodality, a student group at the Pallotine Seminary under the spiritual direction of Father Joseph Kentenich. On October 18 of that same year he inspired the young students to seal a Covenant of Love with Mary, the Blessed Mother. Together they offered her their sincere striving for holiness and asked her in return to make the chapel a place of pilgrimage where she would work her miracles of transformation.

In this way the chapel became a place of grace. A simple way of expressing the covenant of love is “Nothing with you - nothing without us”, that is, nothing without God’s guidance, grace and intervention, and nothing without the human response of love and cooperation.

Schoenstatt’s history and spirituality have unfolded throughout the years in spite of persecution under the Nazi regime and a period of trial during which the Church investigated the Movement.

In 1947 the Church officially recognized the Schoenstatt Shrine as a place of pilgrimage. Since World War II more than 160 exact replicas of the shrine have been built on five different continents.

Joseph Engling: The Founding Document Lived

He is the "founding document lived", according to Father Kentenich who already in the year after Joseph Engling's death, in 1919, began to publish his letters and the notes from his diary in the Schoenstatt magazine "MTA". Joseph Engling, member of the founder generation of Schoenstatt, from a remote village in Eastern Prussia (then Germany, now Poland), was a student at the Pallottine's School in Schoenstatt. He was not present on the 18th of October 1914, when Schoenstatt was founded through the Covenant of Love of Father Kentenich, and a group of students, with the Blessed Mother in the chapel that now is known as "Original Shrine". But he opened his heart without reserve and made Schoenstatt his life; his diary notes and letters are a pure and profound reflection of the impulses given by Father Kentenich. Joseph offered his physical limitations, successes and vast experiences of unsuccessful apostolic commitment, his self-education, and the hardships of his life as a soldier on the battlefields of World War I for the growth and spread of Schoenstatt. On May 31, 1918, he offered his life for this intention. He died on October 4, 1918, near Cambrai, France.

Schoenstatt Between the World Wars

Schoenstatt began to grow as a retreat center that catered to many diverse groups of people. Fr. Kentenich gave many of the talks and retreats developing the Covenant of Love with Mary. He highlighted how the world is moving into a new era and the Church has to give a credible response to the needs of our times.

During the 1930’s the Nazis began to scrutinize the activities of the Schoenstatt Movement. They decided that whoever was won over to Schoenstatt was lost to National Socialism. In 1941 Fr. Kentenich was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp for four years.

In “the hell of Dachau”, he initiated an active apostolate among his fellow prisoners. He wrote theological reflections and prayers, gave regular talks and organized retreats. At the urging of his fellow priests in the concentration camp he wrote a prayer book Heavenward. The spirit of these prayers gave many the strength to preserve their faith and humanity even in Dachau.

Father was released from Dachau on April 6th, 1945. He was 60 years old but did not stop to rest and recover from the brutalities of life in a concentration camp. He moved quickly to strengthen the internal organization of the Schoenstatt Movement in Germany.

After the war Fr. Kentenich started traveling to countries where Schoenstatt had become established. During this period he wrote a letter on ‘mechanistic thinking’ to Church authorities pointing out the dangers of contemporary theological thought which separated the life of God from his creation.

The response to this letter was a Visitation of Schoenstatt by Church authorities who decided to separate Fr. Kentenich from the Schoenstatt work. He was exiled to the Pallottine Province House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for over 14 years.

The 2nd Vatican Council realized the importance and vision of Fr. Kentenich’s work. In 1965 he was called to Rome and fully recognized by Pope Paul VI.

Everyday Sanctity

One of the main tasks of the Christian in the modern world is to reintegrate faith and life. Everyday sanctity can be described as doing ordinary work in an extraordinary way or as, "Fulfilling the duties of your state in life as perfectly as possible and out of love for God". We must, first, recognize that God seeks our whole lives, desires to love us in everything we do. When we begin to know that and rejoice in it, then we may live a full Christian life, giving ourselves wholeheartedly in our family life, to our friends, and in our many responsibilities. We shall neither neglect our life within the Church as the Body of Christ nor our calling in the world.

Ideal pedagogy

Our philosophy of education is summed up in the words: “first human, then Christian, then fully human.” Our lived affirmation of the significance and value of all human life is grounded and nurtured by our faith in the teaching of Sacred Scripture and the Church that all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. This faith leads us to affirm three basic principles at the heart of the Christian understanding of human beings. These principles guide us in discerning the unique and eternally significant mission God gives each of us within His vast, beautiful and mysterious universe.

Principle 1: God calls each of us through our life in community to be thoughtful, loving, life-nurturing images of the eternal love and unity of the life-creating Holy Trinity.

Principle 2: God calls us to understand and show in our lives the reconciliation and harmony in Christ of the eternal and this-worldly orders of grace and nature.

Principle 3: Love is the fundamental principle of our life and education.

These principles underlie our work as Catholic educators, form our pedagogical practice, and direct all our curricular and administrative decisions. Our understanding and application of these principles is formed by our faith in Christ the Redeemer of human beings.

For “the truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. Christ, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling”.

To achieve this most high calling as saints manifesting Christ’s redemptive love in all the business of life, we dedicate ourselves to attitudes of priestly fatherliness and priestly motherliness. This priestliness shared by men and women is constituted by a faith nurtured and rooted in the eternal love of God.

This philosophy calls each of us to find effective ways to bring these ideals to life in particular ways of faith and practice. The transition from idea to living reality is accomplished by God’s grace in a multitude of ways:

by the cultivation and expression of an authentic fatherly and motherly priestliness among our educators and parents, by the intimate and knowledgeable involvement of parents in educating and spiritually forming their children to be strong, free, priestly persons, by the nurturing power of a Marian spirituality, and by our emphasis on the domestic church in forming a vital Catholic culture in the home. By these principles and their practical application, and from our lived sacramental communio within the Church, this philosophy is an expression of our practical commitment to educating saints for the renewal of the world.

Covenant

The Covenant of Love with Mary plays a central part in Schoenstatt's spirituality. Like the Great prophets of old, Mary was inspired to give voice to the New Covenant. She is the prototype Christian. Our response to Christ follows, in the power of the same Spirit, her openness to God's message. By way of her assent, her “yes” to Gabriel's message, Christ came into the world. By way of our assent, our “yes,” Christ is born within us. The Covenant of Love developed in the early years of Schoenstatt when the Founder Fr Joseph Kentenich was spiritual director to a junior seminary. He invited the boys in his care to love Mary as Christ did. He urged them to help Mary carry out her part in bringing the world home to Christ and God the Father. In order to do this, they entered into a Covenant with Mary. They invited her to make their Chapel (the Schoenstatt Shrine) a place of grace where she could distribute gifts of grace. To show they were serious in their intentions they started a program of personal spiritual improvement through prayer and sacrifice. The proof that Mary responded to this invitation has unfolded over the years and in the History of Schoenstatt's growth and development.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on Fr. Kentenich

"The future of the Church will depend solely on the vigor of those who have profound roots and who live only by the abundance of their faith.

"It will not depend on those who accomodate themselves to the moment. It will not depend on those who choose the easy road, nor on those who recoil from the passion of the faith; who consider that it is wrong or old-fashioned, who interpret it as tryanny and legalistic for all it demands of man, and that causes sorrow, what it obliges one to do, and which makes one give himself completely. Let us say it in a positive way: the future of the Church will at this time, as always, be cradled by the saints.

"Pope John Paul II during his first visit to Germany, singled out Father Kentenich as a "distinguished priest in recent history." A light radiates from his life, his word, and his work that can be an indication of the way. The axiom which guided him, formed him and with which he formed many is etched on his tomb: Dilexit ecclesiam, "He loved the Church." May Mary, the Mother of the Church, by whom he always allowed himself to be guided protect us and help us; may She, through her faithful servant Father Joseph Kentenich, open to many the way of love of the Church so that a new vigor of faith and a new joy of faith will inundate our people and our country."

Other Sources

- Read more about Fr. Joseph Kentenich.

- Fr. Kentenich's Wikipedia entry.

- Website of Schoenstatt's Female Youth Federation in Puerto Rico

- Schoenstatt Shrine in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, where in 1987 I made my Covenant of Love with the Blessed Mother before the shrine was built, and offered it as a "spiritual foundation stone" for the then yet-to-be-built chapel and for those who were to come after me.

- Aspects of Schoenstatt's Marian Spirituality by Fr. Jonathan Niehaus

- Prologue by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for the novena: "Love the Church with Father Kentenich"

[Teófilo]

Blunders. Typos. Mine.

[Teófilo]

PING!