The mission of Schoenstatt
The history and the growth of the Schoenstatt International revealed the divine initiative of the Schoenstatt movements for its being and existence. God chose Father Joseph Kentenich and made him a priest and father in Jesus Christ and led him to the covenant of love with Blessed Mother. Through him, Mary with her motherly love brought Schoenstatt into being, founded our community, and entrusted to it the “Mission of Mount Sion.”
Our faith-filled conviction in the loyal effective presence of the Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen and victress of Schoenstatt in her Sion Shrine allows us, her weak instruments, to say “with joyful hope and confidence of the victory, we go with Mary into the newest times”.
In 1968 Father Joseph Kentenich formed our community of priest with the mission expressed in Latin terms: Pars motrix et centralis. As part of the Schoenstatt Family, the institute shares with all the communities of this work a common origin in the covenant of love with Our Lady, a common spiritual center in the Original Shrine, a common charismatic founder and, through him, the same spirituality, pedagogy, and mission. The institute—as is the whole Apostolic Schoenstatt Movement—is united with and gratefully indebted to the person and mission of St. Vincent Pallotti.
Together with the Schoenstatt Family, our institute believes it is called to contribute, as a work and instrument of the Blessed Mother, to the Marian formation of the world through Christ. We fulfill this mission by working for the following aims of Schoenstatt pointed out by our founder:
- To form, both in our own ranks and in the Church, (the new man in the new community) with universal apostolic character, working like a leaven in the world and working for the construction of a new Christian social order.
- Together with the other Schoenstatt institutes, our secular institute has the mission to realize and proclaim the harmony between secular and consecration to God. As a community consecrated to God without vows, we want to be an intermediary between the religious and the secular, between the religious priests and secular priests.
- The founder designated the specific being and mission of the Pars motrix et centralis of the Schoenstatt Work with the biblical name Mount Sion. In so doing he gave us a prophetic task which we are called to fulfill according to his expectation as a priestly community of Father and fathers. We view this task as his legacy to us, his Schoenstatt Fathers. It is our way of sharing in his charism. We have been entrusted with guaranteeing his fruitfulness in the Church.
- With the Shrine of the Blessed Mother at its center, Mount Sion—in connection with the Original Shrine—is called to be the center of the worldwide [Schoenstatt] work, a “city of the living God” (Heb 12, 22), an image of the eternal city of Sion1, whose light is the Here we make our covenant of love with Mary, the Queen of Mount Sion, and ally ourselves with our Father and Founder.
- As sons and family of our spiritual father, we are called to bea classical embodiment of the ideals of the Schoenstatt Family, to be its living and unifying center.
- As priestly fathers3 we are called to be a Cenacle community whose men are filled with life and spirit and who build up the [Schoenstatt] Work, serving it as educators and leaders in the spirit of the founder and assuming a principle responsibility for the fulfillment of its mission.
- As a priestly community of Father and fathers we are called to represent the spirit and symbolism of Mount Sion—to be a living Sion.