Continuing the excerpts from the book of Msgr. Peter Wolf describing Fr. Kentenich’s relationship to and thinking on the Shrine we learn this week of the importance of a discovery Fr. Kentenich made in a newspaper – a pilgrimage place built up in Italy. I don’t want to spoil the story… So read on…

Fr. Andrew

From One Annunciation Hour to Another

When I now think of our Family history – it is a well-known expression – the great hour of Annunciation in Schoenstatt’s history was 18 October [1914]. However, I would like to add immediately that we deceive ourselves if we think we are dealing here with only one hour of Annunciation. It doesn’t exist on its own. The encounter between this world and the next, this hour of Annunciation, was repeated on countless occasions in our Family history.

If we want to study it more closely, and make a comparison, I think I would have to reach back – this may surprise you – to 18 July 1914. Do you know what happened at that time? It is the 18 July today. The newspaper, the “Allgemeine Rundschau” in which the article on Bartolo Longo appeared, was dated 18 July 1914. If you know the structure of my soul somewhat, you won’t find it difficult – perhaps at most because I was still very young at the time. However, a special gift given to me in my cradle enables me to look behind everything that has happened in my life, behind the least detail; I always simply looked for God’s message. The angel of the Lord brought a message to Mary!

So, in the fullest sense of the word, you may interpret it as a message from God for me. What sort of angel was that? The writer – I can’t remember his name at the moment, at any rate he was a Capuchin – had published a brief article. Who was the angel of the Lord? It was a converted lawyer.

And now the answer – again and again you will find the same response: The Blessed Mother thought about it. This reflection obviously took some time, longer than is usual in my life. From 18 July to 18 October is quite a considerable time. I reflected: What does God want to tell me through this article?

You can feel how strong the encounter was between the divine and the human, between this world and the next. Later, also when we discussed our history together, I constantly repeated: I believe that the “deathleap” for the mind, which I dared to undertake at that time, has never been repeated to the same extent. The deathleap for the will and heart could have been greater later on.

I reflected. Well, what did I think? You can read it up in the Founding Document. I thought: Would it not be possible? What is not possible? You have to keep in mind my attitude of soul at the time. It was the profound conviction that the Blessed Mother, as the great educator, wanted to take over the responsibility for my task as an educator.

It is all so simple, so natural; however it always touches the supernatural. That is the most important point. These weren’t just purely natural thoughts; there was always a search that reached into another world. God would increasingly need to give us all such a charism. So, what did God want to say?

You can well imagine my calculation. In the Pre-Founding Document we said: Under the protection of the Blessed Mother we want to educate ourselves. We can understand this very well, because in the meantime we have personally been active in education, also when we think of ourselves. 1912-1914, about two years, had been enough to show us that nothing much was going on with our self-education under the protection of the Blessed Mother. On the other hand, however, we admitted – that was our thinking: Hasn’t God richly blessed our efforts at self-education in these two years? Reflection: Couldn’t that be the case? If someone managed to draw down the Blessed Mother over there [in Pompeii], although more as a miracle worker, why shouldn’t it be possible to draw down the Blessed Mother here, here to this group? She would have free rein among us and not just give us her protection from heaven. She had to descend as the educator of our youth and work miracles of education from this shrine.

How simple the reasoning is! However, I must always emphasise that we are all the time dealing with grasping the supernatural. And now, simply based on these weak and truly short-term reflections, we said: Why not? Reflected: Why shouldn’t she be able to do this as well? If she was drawn down over there to work miracles, why couldn’t we also draw her down? God had obviously blessed our small beginnings.

Besides this – now comes the question as to how the Blessed Mother did it. Consider: Couldn’t that be the case? Then the question. Which question? You can read it all in the Founding Document. It is the question – now comes the metaphysician: Are we dealing with, or could we be dealing with, a law in God’s kingdom?

Of course it is true, also what has just been described so simply: Look at what midgets we are, still today! Even more so when we think of the great task. You can well imagine the whole generation of that time. Of course, it was all beautifully imagined, well considered: Something like that could be the case. But now the question. An angel wasn’t asked, God was asked how he worked in history: Hasn’t it always been true that God loves to choose what is small when compared with the great people in the world, and to work something exceedingly great through the little ones?

Can you notice how this was an hour of Annunciation? The angel of the Lord brought Mary a message. It was followed on 18 October 1914 by the great act, the greatness of which perhaps hardly anyone guessed at the time; just as little as anyone guessed it when the great hour of Annunciation had dawned for the Blessed Mother and for the whole order of salvation.

An hour of Annunciation – what do I want? Perhaps you could go there and follow my line of reasoning. What I am aiming at is that we should move completely in the other world, without which we cannot cope with the world in which are moving with our feet. An hour of Annunciation.

How often that hour of Annunciation was repeated! Allow me to ask you again to make a comparison all the time with the life of the Blessed Mother. It is actually very simple. In the time that followed, also with the Blessed Mother, angels weren’t constantly fluttering down from heaven. Although there were secondary causes, I like to think that it was just the same as was the case with us. Now you can proceed step by step. I don’t have to explain the great act of 18 October 1914.

I want to go to a year later, a few months later. The angel of the Lord brought a message. What sort of message was it? You can feel that there was always a search: What does the supernatural world want from this world? What sort of messenger was it?

A simple book you can only find in second-hand bookshops. It was a book by Fr Hattler about Fr Rem and his Marian Conferences. It is extremely important to take in how small and tiny messages from the supernatural world were repeatedly heard in this world, and time and again examined in this world. Can you also notice what Ingolstadt and the “Schoenstatt-Ingolstadt Parallel” meant for us at that time? The Parallel in itself is the answer. Through everything God placed on our path he always wanted to say something to us. Behind it there was always an intellect, although naturally not to be compared with the intellect of the Blessed Mother. But there was always the deep reflection: What does God want? What did he want to say through this or that? These were always answers that increasingly pointed to a single, great idea of God.

Let us now recall: What was the answer? Of course, I first reflect, asked and then acted. Reflected – there was always this simple consistency: Wouldn’t it be possible? If at the beginning of the modern era the Blessed Mother worked such great things in Ingolstadt for the renewal of Germany, especially for southern Germany – she did do it! – and if we now draw her down to us here, why shouldn’t it be possible for her to carry out, and want to carry out, a similar task for the whole of Germany in our modern era?

Allow me to repeat that on the whole such very small and insignificant starting points are no cause for coming to such a conclusion. You can tell this to later generations. So I don’t take it amiss if someone says: The discrepency between cause and effect is so great – either it was imagination, the expression of self-seeking, self-glorification, the influence of the devil, or from Almighty God, wasn’t it? Of course, if you were now to ask: How was it with the Blessed Mother? Of course, no one dares to make such a comparison. However, from a certain point-of-view that was the case.

I think we have all of us to conquer this for ourselves again: to be at home in another, supernatural, divine world. Unless this is given to us – I think you will admit this immediately – we can pack and go; we can return home. It would be better to remain where we were; we won’t need any more battles; we will at least have enough to eat and drink, and later on someone will care for us. No, no! That is the great thing, that is the world!

From: Joseph Kentenich, Address at the Foundation of the Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers in the Waukesha shrine, USA, on 18 July 1965.