You are here:
The Original Shrine – a Shrine for Everyone
A hundred years ago, in 1912, the Schoenstatt Movement began to develop from the youth work of Fr Joseph Kentenich, the Spiritual Director of the Pallottine Boarding School. In 1914 the ancient cemetery chapel was discovered and placed at the disposal of the students as their meeting room. Through the Founding Document that chapel was to become a place of pilgrimage and grace for the widest circles.
In the course of the past century these tiny beginnings have developed into a Movement and Family that has spread to every continent and many cultures. Little shrines, and huge Centres, have been built all over the world, yet all owe their origin, buildings and effectiveness to the place of origin, and exist in intimate, graced connection with it.
There is probably no place of pilgrimage in the entire Church that is as international as the Schoenstatt Shrine, because this shrine has been established in so many countries. Although the Original Shrine is in Germany and is seen as the national shrine of the German Schoenstatt Family, yet according to its specific character – also as the guarantor and measure for all the shrines in the world (there are about 200 at present) – it is the shrine of the "International" (that was founded in the concentration camp at Dachau).
Against this historical background the Original Shrine, by its very nature and with its unique position and influence, is "a shrine for everyone". All other shrines have a very definite context and aim. They have been planned and built for dioceses, regions, or entire nations, or for communities and definite projects. In keeping with its fundamental character the Original Shrine is international in its orientation.
It is there for everyone, that is, all people and races, all religions, all social classes – the rich and the poor, those with a job and beggars, the healthy and the sick, the old and the young, simply everyone who allows themselves to be drawn there by the Blessed Mother in order to be educated by her and led to God.
When the Original Shrine is given step by step to the Schoenstatt Movement, the Family as a whole will be faced with a huge challenge. It has to see to it that our Original Shrine is truly and effectively open to everyone, and that its vital originality is not only understood, but also experienced. We can be sure that Mary, the Mother and Educator, the Queen of the Apostles, will reward everything that is done in this regard. She has promised and promises "to draw youthful hearts to herself."
25 March 2012, Fr Michael Johannes Marmann
