Schoenstatt Pilgrimages

Howdy, pilgrims! I’m excited to bring you the first-ever  guest blog post on Pilgrim for Less! Rachel and I go way back, and I even did a pilgrimage report involving her wedding! Ever since I’ve known her, I know that she and her family have been really involved with the Schoenstatt movement. Thanks to them, I’ve gotten to know more about this movement in the Church as a Marian devotion to grow closer to Christ. With dedicated shrines all over the place, including homes, I figured that Schoenstatt lends itself pretty well to going on pilgrimages. In this post, Rachel shares what Schoenstatt is, why visit shrines, and how this devotion can benefit you. Enjoy! ~JR

I became involved with the Schoenstatt community at a pretty young age – 14, to be exact. My parents have always fostered a strong Marian devotion in me, and so when our family came in contact with Schoenstatt and learned that it is a movement specifically dedicated to growing closer to Christ through Mary, we quickly sought after more information. My mom signed my sister and me up for a girls youth summer camp, and the next thing we knew we were loading up a van with a bunch of new teenage friends and trekking down 7 hours to the southern coast of Texas for a week of fun, fellowship, and faith!

Now, I was asked to share my experience of Schoenstatt in terms of making pilgrimages. More specifically, the question was: “Coming from a Schoenstatt perspective, why bother going to visit shrines, and how do you turn such visits into pilgrimages?” In order to do that, I’ll give a brief synopsis of what Schoenstatt is and a little bit of the history behind the movement’s spirituality/Shrine-building nature.

What is Schoenstatt?

Schoenstatt is an official movement of the Catholic Church founded in 1914 by a man named Fr. Joseph Kentenich. He was a priest of the Pallottine community and was serving as the spiritual director for a boy’s minor seminary school in a little town called Vallendar, Germany. As their spiritual father, Fr. Kentenich encouraged the boys to search for freedom in the cheerful service of the Blessed Mother Mary. The boys, inspired by his influence, decided to turn the little garden shed that they used as a meeting space into a humble shrine for their Blessed Mother. Their little sodality of young men soon began to grow. After watching their spiritual fervor increase for some time, Fr. Kentenich proposed that they each make consecrations to Mary (the “Covenant of Love” as he called it) and invite her to not only dwell in their Shrine, but more fully in their hearts and their lives. Based on this spirituality, the group grew over the years and is now a worldwide movement with hundreds of Shrines all around the world! (To learn more about the history and spirituality of Schoenstatt, click here)

Why visit Schoenstatt shrines?

So! Why should you visit these Schoenstatt shrines as pilgrimage places? Well, these little chapels are actually meant for pilgrims. Like, that’s their whole purpose! Fr. Kentenich taught that there are three pilgrimage graces of the Shrine, i.e. when a person visits a place that Mary has chosen to dwell in (and she chooses to do so when she is invited and consistently welcomed there), that person will receive and be impacted by: the grace of a home, the grace of inner transformation, and the grace of apostolic zeal.

A Home

The grace of a home is knowing that Mary accepts and welcomes all pilgrims into her heart and desires to nurture them like the Mother that she is. What especially enhances this experience in a daughter Shrine (i.e. an exact replica of the Original Shrine) is the fact that every daughter Shrine is the same, down to every last statue, symbol, and pew. When I’ve traveled from one Shrine to another, whether it’s in Austin, Texas or Cologne, Germany, I immediately feel at home and at peace upon entering because of the physical (and spiritual) familiarity.

Inner Transformation

The grace of inner transformation follows the grace of the home because Mary, in her Shrine, invites us to be transformed by the love of Christ and interiorly changed into new persons. This is why many pilgrims bring special petitions to the Blessed Mother, often in the form of written intentions on slips of paper – on one side, they will write “What I ask” and on the other side “What I offer.” This exchange is an integral part of the Covenant of Love…it is a giving and receiving of sacrifices and graces, in the effort to be transformed and renewed by Mary and Jesus. These little offerings are left in special jars in the daughter Shrines, and burned once a month on “Covenant Day” (the 18th of each month, in honor of Schoenstatt’s founding on October 18th).

Apostolic Zeal

Lastly, the grace of apostolic zeal is the culmination of the graces of home and inner transformation: you have been received by Mary, invigorated by her love, and now you feel filled with zeal to go out from the Shrine and into the world to do the Blessed Mother’s noble work of bringing more people closer to her Son! In Schoenstatt, the duty of making “disciples of all nations” as Jesus told His apostles is taken very seriously, and we make pilgrimages to the Shrine to remind ourselves of who we are and Who we wish to evangelize for. One of my favorite memories at Schoenstatt girls camps was when we would close our daily Masses with the parading hymn, “Yes, Mother Send Us.” I can still hear a joyful chorus of girls voices singing: “Yes, Mother send us out from here! We want to go into the world! For you have loved and formed and led us all; sent by you we dare to bring your message to our age!”

While the Shrine is a place of grace – a transformative and rejuvenating home – it can only serve its purpose if the people are intentional in their visits. Mary’s presence is due to our invitation and our seeking out…if we come to the little chapels expecting just to see a pretty picture, our hearts will have no room for the graces she wishes to bestow.

Visiting the Original Shrine

I actually had the privilege of visiting the Original Shrine in Germany when I was 18 years old. I and two of my friends decided to spend our summer serving in the community of the Schoenstatt Sisters in Vallendar, Germany. During that time we were able to make many pilgrimages all around the country and share many wonderful experiences together while journeying to places of grace. It was then that I began to truly understand the depth of Fr. Kentenich’s spirituality and devotion to Mary. By visiting and making intentional pilgrimages to historical places in his life, I learned about how he truly believed that a Shrine could be erected anywhere…not just a daughter Shrine, but a shrine on the side of the road (“Wayside” shrines), a shrine you can carry with you and pass around in a community (“Pilgrim” shrines), a shrine you can bring your family to every day to make offerings and draw strength from (“Home” shrines), and most importantly, a shrine that you erect within yourself to spiritually house the Blessed Mother and her Son, carrying them throughout the world as sort of pilgrims themselves (“Heart” shrines). I highly encourage anyone to make a pilgrimage to a Schoenstatt daughter Shrine (to find locations, click here).

 

Discover the graces that are waiting for you, and then consider the power of erecting little shrines to the Blessed Mother in your own life. Who says you can’t create your own places of pilgrimage?  

 

Rachel in Germany

 

Question for you! Are you part of a movement or actively participating in a devotion that has you visiting shrines?