THE SCHOENSTATT MOVEMENT

During a time of radical change in world history, Father Joseph Kentenich (1885 – 1968), together with young men from the Marian Sodality of the Pallottine Seminary in Vallendar, sealed a covenant of love with the Mother of God in the small up-to-then abandoned chapel. Father Kentenich was convinced that the Blessed Mother wanted to actively participate in shaping Christianity in the modern times. Father Kentenich and the seminarians offered their prayers and sacrifices with the intention that the small chapel would become a place of grace and pilgrimage. Their constant striving for holiness was their part of the commitment in this covenant or exchange with the Blessed Mother. In turn, Mary should intercede the religious and moral renewal of peoples and nations as well as the education of their character into priestly personalities.

The Original Shrine in Schoenstatt with its replicas in various countries of the world has become a place of grace. It is also the spiritual home and local center of the Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt. The shrine is also seen as a spiritual workshop or cradle of sanctity, where the core of the Christian person is formed after the example of Mary.

The covenant of love with Mary is a personal consecration and commitment with the fountain of graces that flows from the Schoenstatt Shrine. Therefore, those who enter into this exchange of hearts, interests, and goods with the Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen, and Victress of Schoenstatt, also establish a bond with the Schoenstatt Shrine and with the founder.

The covenant of love is not only the spiritual way of life of the Schoenstatt Movement, it also is the original core of its apostolic goals and the bond that brings together members, branches, and communities into a family-like unity.

Permanently and inseparably connected to the person, life, and teaching of its founder, the Schoenstatt Movement shares in his charism: to faithfully preserve and offer to the universal Church a natural-supernatural bond with God and people through the covenant of love with Mary. In its commitment to serve the Church, it is guided by the fundamental attitude which characterized Father Kentenich: Dilexit Ecclesiam (He loved the Church).[1]

[1] Preamble of the General Statute of the Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt as of 2018