Our spirituality is marked by the fact that as a couple, our way to God is together.
Christ is present in our love in every sphere of our life. This especially holds true for the marriage bond. Just as Christ loves His Church without reserve, so too, do we love each other and remain loyally together in joy and suffering. In this way the covenant with God is applied to our covenant with each other. The covenant of love with Our Lady is thereby our source of strength.
God is interested in us and wants to work through us. If like Mary, we get involved, then we become His instruments. He can bring new life through us, in our children, but also further a field. He hands over to us responsibility for creation and wants us to serve life.
Through the appropriate attachment to people and the world we will find our way to God. Our motto is: “to do everyday things extraordinary well”. We try to search for traces of God in our lives in all that we encounter in order to recognise God’s will for us and to act accordingly.
In the Covenant of Love
God entered a covenant of love with His creatures. It is our task to make the world aware of this covenant of love:
“God created man in His own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, He called him at the same time for love.
God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.”
“Schoenstatt’s message is to lead the world once again into a deeply grasping covenant with our Blessed Mother, so that the covenant of love with the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit becomes and remains deep, unbreakable, never to be lost…The loss of heart and meaning within our world will be overcome when we are convinced that our loving God entered into a covenant of love with His creation. …God’s covenant of love! It is our task to make the world aware of this covenant of love. This we can do when we bring the world once again into a covenant of love with the Blessed Mother.”
At the service of life
The fundamental task of marriage and family life is to serve life.
With the creation of man and woman in His own image and likeness, God crowns and brings to perfection the work of His hands … “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.´”
Thus the fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator – that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.
Fecundity is the fruit and the sign of conjugal love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses…
However, the fruitfulness of conjugal love is not restricted solely to the procreation of children, … it is enlarged and enriched by all those fruits of moral, spiritual and supernatural life which the father and mother are called to hand on to their children, and through the children to the Church and to the world.”
In everyday life
To seek, find and love God in all things, places and events:
“We must deliberately struggle for an autonomous lay piety, for an autonomous piety for couples. Yes, I would add here, not just for the natural family but specifically for married couples. Just think about it, everything that is open to us couples, which is not for others, in other words our conjugal rights, begs the question: How do I use this to become holy? ”
Living the faith…
As a Domestic Church, as a “Church in miniature” faith plays a central role in our married and family life. Everyday anew we try to discover God in our daily life and try to make our contact with Him come alive.
…and passing it on (our apostolate)
The family is the core cell of the Church and society. A new Christian social order can therefore only come about with the renewal of marriage and family life. Herein lies the emphasis and starting point for our personal, as well as our community apostolate.
The starting point is our own family. Husband and wife try to discover more and more their God-willed loving relationship to each other as well as their relationship as a father and mother to and with their children. For their children, they become as parents, the first pathway to God and in this way have an alternate way to proclaiming the Gospel.
Structuring our life in such a way according to our faith will have a radiating effect on other families as well as on our surroundings.
As a community we bear a special responsibility for the entire Schoenstatt Family Movement. Furthermore, we try to get involved as much as possible in catechism classes, marriage preparation courses and other forms of training for couples and families, such as courses on the theology of the body with emphasis on natural family planning.
With Mary
Our Lady holds a very high position of honor within our family. She, to whom God entrusted the fullness of life from the beginning, is our mother and educator, our model and helpline. She is totally open to and directed towards God, “the permanent companion and helpmate of Christ within the entire work of salvation.” She is however, at the same time wife and mother, and is there for all of humanity.
The new covenant and Christ’s incarnation was made possible through her yes to the will of God. Our yes to each other is a renewal of this covenant. As Mary bore Christ and brought Him to the people, we should do this in a similar way through our marriage and family life. Just as the two-in-oneness of Jesus and Mary is an indissoluble sign of love and loyalty so too, should the two- in-oneness be between husband and wife. Through our covenant of love with Our Lady and our consecration to her we ask for the strength required to live our life as a couple and family.
“She strides as the great educator of the people through the world. She wants to bear Christ anew in order to save the endangered Christian personality and the threatened order of our world and society.”
“Our Lady wants to withdraw to our little shrine. From here she can educate families, inspire them anew so that they too can become deeply religious people. She also wants to take a little of the educational work out of their hands of father and mother.”
“Let us walk like you through life. Let us mirror you forever, strong and noble meek and mild, peace and love be our endeavour. In us go through our world and make it ready for the Lord.”
