Carol Mechler from Schoenstatt Illinois says,
” [In 2016], my husband and I attended the Schoenstatt Rosary Campaign convention during which we crowned our Blessed Mother and her auxiliary shrines as “Queen of the Three Graces on the Move.” I went home from the convention with the desire to share Mary’s picture of grace with my family and with my parish. I wanted to share the experience of being surrounded by warmth and love, that God and the Blessed Mother are not ideas but persons who address me personally, who give content and meaning to my life. I wanted to share with courage, confidence, and faithfulness the awareness of the presence of the Mother of God in the picture of grace so others could experience her blessings too, so she could bring her Son and the three pilgrimage graces of the shrine anew to our world.
The blessings and energy from the convention carried me and even affected others in helping to promote the Rosary Campaign’s Pilgrim Mother Apostolate. My sister Chris and I experienced the Holy Spirit going ahead of us. We encountered hearts open to our MTA’s request to welcome her and her Son into their homes, even hearts resistant to Church and religious involvement. As a result of our efforts supported by the Holy Spirit, our MTA and her covenant promises, and the stream of graces from the shrine, we started with four groups of fifteen parish families and 5 family members. These families began to receive monthly visits.
We have a shrine for the individual visits.
In each family group, we have five families with one individual image that rotates among them, once a week. We invite them to sign up for receiving the image twelve times, that is once a month for a full week. They only have to commit for one year.
These monthly visits are accompanied by the Visit Notes meant to educate our people about Schoenstatt, the three graces of the shrine, and the apostolate of the Pilgrim Mother. The first four months we focus on the grace of being at home and these are the topics of the reflection reading material: hospitality, prayer, faith in Divine Providence, and covenant spirituality. The next four months, we focus on the grace inner transformation: forming a new person, child likeness before God, education of our personality, and everyday sanctity. The last four visits, the people reflect on: Father Kentenich and John Pozzobon as models of apostolic fruitfulness, being an instrument in the hands of the MTA, the three pilgrimage graces from the shrine, and how we can be fruitful for the Church by serving and evangelizing.As of 2017, we have expanded now into a second parish, where another group is receiving monthly visits of Mary’s picture of grace. We also want to support a new local pregnancy center in the process of extending our Blessed Mother’s visits. “
VISIT NOTES FOR THE PILGRIM MOTHER APOSTOLATE
Purpose:
1) To give the Blessed Mother, our Pilgrim Mother Thrice Admirable, an opportunity to be Mother and Educator of the Domestic Church,
2) to share the richness of Schoenstatt’s Marian Spirituality,
3) to offer the reader opportunities to experience Schoenstatt spirituality with practical applications,
4) to allow the Blessed Mother opportunities to invite those she visits to enter into a Covenant of Love relationship with her.
5) Each Visit Note is meant to be teaching with a practical application that can be used for one month of spiritual striving.
Topics:
1) Because the Pilgrim Mother Thrice Admirable brings Jesus and the Three Pilgrimage Graces of the Shrine to whomever she visits, she was crowned “Queen of the Three Graces on the Move” in 2016. Therefore, topics regarding the Three Pilgrimage Graces of the Shrine are discussed in the Visit notes so those receiving the Pilgrim Mother Shrine can better understand and benefit from these unique graces God has granted that the Blessed Mother should distribute from her Schoenstatt Shrines.
2) Because Schoenstatt’s Marian Spirituality is based on a Covenant of Love, the Covenant Promises of the Blessed Mother and her covenant Requests are discussed in the Visit Notes and experienced by those receiving the Pilgrim Mother Shrines.
3) Because the Blessed Mother is our Mother and Educator and Mother of the Domestic Church, she wishes to be invited into our lives and into our homes which she will transform (with our cooperation) into a shrine. Thus, topics on the Home Shrine are discussed in the Visit Notes and experienced by those receiving visits of the Pilgrim Mother Thrice Admirable of Schoenstatt.
DEAR MOTHER THRICE ADMIRABLE
Queen and Victress of Schoenstatt and Queen of the Three Graces on the Move, visit us your children. Walk among us, comfort us, care for us, and heal our hearts with motherly love. Bring Jesus into our homes our Domestic Church, into the homes of our dear ones who are sick, into our hospitals and nursing homes, everywhere where you and Jesus are needed. Distribute your Three Graces to warm our cold hearts, to renew us in our faith, and to deepen our personal love for Jesus your Son. With your Three Graces, educate us and form us into the New Persons in the New Community of which our father and founder, Father Joseph Kentenich, spoke about. Intercede for us that the wide halls of the holy Church be filed again to the praise and glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For more information, visit MTAIllinois.us