{"id":39752,"date":"2013-05-28T10:09:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T15:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austincnm.com\/?p=39752"},"modified":"2013-05-28T10:09:05","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T15:09:05","slug":"schoenstatt-spirituality-in-a-nutshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2013\/05\/schoenstatt-spirituality-in-a-nutshell\/","title":{"rendered":"Schoenstatt Spirituality in a Nutshell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Mother<\/a>

“Mother Thrice Admirable”<\/p><\/div>\n

I first learned of the Schoenstatt Movement through articles written by my friend and fellow contributor Rachel<\/a>.\u00a0 After reading excerpts of Fr. Joseph Kentenich’s book, “Everyday Sanctity”, I’ve gained a greater understanding of the rationality behind the movement.<\/p>\n

Schoenstatt was named after a place in Germany of the same name, meaning “beautiful place”, and the founder, Fr. Kentenich, led a rather extraordinary life.\u00a0 Since the guiding principles tend to be the heart and soul of a movement, it is there that I wish to focus this introduction.\u00a0 I’m always on the lookout for practical applications of Catholicism, which is why this Marian movement of lay people particularly interests me.\u00a0 (Not currently a member, I provide the perspective of a revering outsider.)<\/p>\n

Mary Mother of God has been recognized by the Church since the beginning as the greatest intercessor to Jesus and the most direct path to His graces.\u00a0 The Schoenstatt movement deems her “Mother Thrice Admirable” as the advocate of this movement.\u00a0 “Thrice” can be meditated upon in many different ways (mother of God, Christ, and humanity, mother of faith, hope, and charity, etc.).\u00a0 She is primarily recognized in the context of the movement as educator of the human race and the means of accelerated self-sanctification.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, Schoenstatt is a practical movement.\u00a0 It focuses on three dimensions: covenant spirituality, instrument piety, and everyday sanctity.\u00a0 One should “do the ordinary things extraordinarily well”, fulfilling one’s duties as perfectly as possible out of love for God.\u00a0 Through the infusion of faith in one’s life, balance is found in the “God-pleasing harmony between wholehearted attachment to God, work, and fellow man in every circumstance of life”.<\/p>\n

I have a tendency to judge people and organizations in part by how accurately they assess the obstacles to their missions or the problems to be solved.\u00a0 Fr. Kentenich excels here.\u00a0 “One of the most dangerous errors of our age is the separation of morality from religion.”\u00a0 He astutely identifies the two primary spiritual dangers of our age: naturalism and collectivism.\u00a0 Naturalism focuses on the material world, regarding the spiritual world as superfluous and irrelevant.\u00a0 Collectivism sacrifices individual personal identity to an ideologically driven vision of mass society.\u00a0 Against these two errors the Christian humanism of the Schoenstatt Movement is set.<\/p>\n

Attachment to God is the first part of the remedy, an attachment that pervades every aspect of one’s life.\u00a0 One who ardently loves God will not only keep His commands, but will also lovingly seek out and follow His counsels and wishes.<\/p>\n

Fr. Kentenich provides many ways to develop this attachment.\u00a0 One must foster an awareness of God’s love for oneself, and an awareness of being a child of God.\u00a0 “God finds His children irresistible when they admit and accept their helplessness.”\u00a0 He claims that the sacraments, and particularly daily Mass, cultivate a clearer direction from Jesus for one’s life.\u00a0 A personal longing for greatness should be rooted in the heroism of daily life, and the desires that motivate us should correlate to the challenges we face in daily life.<\/p>\n

As with Catholicism in general, prayer within the Schoenstatt Movement is the lifeline of the soul.\u00a0 “Prayer frees the heart from inordinate attachments to earthly goods, unites us with God and opens our hearts to the riches of God’s omnipotence and mercy.”\u00a0 Its close relatives, penance and self-denial, turn us from sin with the resolve to amend our lives.<\/p>\n

This attachment to God is balanced by a God-pleasing attitude toward work and a loving attitude toward others.\u00a0 However mundane it may be, our work should be done well and offered to God.\u00a0 Fr. Kentenich perceptively recommends supplementing an unfulfilling career with contributions of time and talent outside the career toward the common good where greater personal fulfillment may be found.\u00a0 Herein lies one link to the fostering of community, though a more thorough explanation of the focus on service toward one another was lacking in the excerpt I read.<\/p>\n

What I found most helpful was his articulation of the part we play in developing our spirituality:<\/p>\n

We must defend the divine life [within us], increase it and make it fruitful.\u00a0 It faces the threat of many and powerful foes.\u00a0 Those around us are the devil and the spirit of the world, the foes within us are greed and the quest for power and pleasure.\u00a0 We defend ourselves from all these foes with an enlightened and effective practice of self-denial.\u00a0 But we must also increase the divine life in us through good works and the reception of the holy sacraments.\u00a0 It becomes fruitful when we cooperate in the apostolate, extending the reach of the kingdom of God and bringing blessings to others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, these are what I consider to be sound principles behind an instrumental spiritual movement, founded by an insightful and beneficent priest, and open to all faithful Catholics.\u00a0 More information can be found on their international website<\/a> and the local (Austin) web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first learned of the Schoenstatt Movement through articles written by my friend and fellow contributor Rachel.\u00a0 After reading excerpts of Fr. Joseph Kentenich’s book, “Everyday Sanctity”, I’ve gained a greater understanding of the rationality behind the movement. Schoenstatt was named after a place in Germany of the same name, meaning “beautiful place”, and the… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[90],"tags":[1707,74,1128,859],"class_list":{"0":"post-39752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-faith-blog","7":"tag-fr-kentenich","8":"tag-prayer","9":"tag-schoenstatt-movement","10":"tag-spirituality","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":303730,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/303730\/","url_meta":{"origin":39752,"position":0},"title":"Therese of Lisieux & The Marian Jubilee of Mercy","author":"Rachel","date":"October 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"It's possible that St Therese of Lisieux is one of those saints of whom we hear so often that we think, well, we already know that story - next! 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