by Sr. M. Jessica Swedzinski
For this month of July, when we celebrate our nation’s independence, we invite our readers to pray with Schoenstatt’s founder for our country. For our meditation we will be using a prayer that Father Kentenich wrote during the inception years of the Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt.
Mother Thrice Admirable, Mother of Grace,
Teach us your enemies bravely to face,
Never regarding their number and might,
Spreading your love over the earth’s dark night,
So that the world through you made new
Pay to your Son his homage due.
Mother with your Child from heaven
Descend upon our nation’s plains,
So that in following your footsteps
It may find true and lasting peace.
Mother and Child, united in love –
Through you alone can our nation be healed.
(Father Joseph Kentenich, 1916)
The Background – World War I
What was happening in his world at that time? World War I, called “The Great War,” was raging across Europe. The sheer hell of this warfare involved fighting nearly face to face in trenches and across virtually every mile and every village of Europe, leaving some 20 million people killed and another 20 million wounded. These included 17 million military and 13 million civilians. Nearly one-third of the Hungarian population perished, along with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The Russian and Ottoman Empires were devastated as well. The geographical “beautiful place” of Schoenstatt near Coblence, Germany, on the Rhine River, was located literally in the heart of this war of unbridled hatred, sin, and intrigue.
Father Kentenich was working as an enthusiastic, 30-year-old spiritual director to a feeder school of the Pallottine Seminary. In addition, he was guiding a volunteer handful of young men to offer their energies and services for a mission club recently turned into a Marian sodality. When students celebrated their 18th birthday, they were drafted into military service and sent to one of the fronts to fight in the name of their fatherland.
In the Spiritual Battles of Today
Against a background of warfare like this, we are invited by the heroic, Marian spiritual director to observe, witness, and join a totally different, spiritual battle. One can see that this was a battle plan “for war” as intense as the political leaders under which he lived. It was as all-embracing and studiously pondered as the world war, as all-engaging and needing every ounce of energy concerning the desired end results “of victory.” Yet it was as different as night and day. What could be at the heart of the prayer for his country written a century ago, that we can use as our battle cry for the United States of America and for whichever homeland we hail in this summer of 2021?
In the covenant of love, Father Kentenich invites us to look at the Blessed Virgin Mary as our thrice admirable Mother, as the Mother with the Child from Heaven on her arms. In prayer we are invited to study Schoenstatt’s painting of grace, which has a space for each one of us in the arms of our Mother, alongside her Child Divine. We want to honor Mary as the Queen of our Country. She has the unique spiritual honor to be called upon as our “Mother of Grace” in strife during the heat of the battle, just as a panic-stricken, suffering soldier often calls out for his natural mother as a source of relief.
The prayer petitions: Teach us your enemies bravely to face, Never regarding their number and might. This is not referring to a political body (be it just or unjust) but rather to that gigantic battle between good and evil. It is the battle for eternal souls that Father Kentenich was willing to wage his life’s energies and his very life breath for, be a leading commander, an instrument in the hands of our Mother Thrice Admirable.
The Great Power of Love
During the ending months of the Second World War, Father Kentenich wrote in the introduction to the Way of the Cross of God’s Instruments: “We stand between two mighty powers which oppose one another eternally in battle. In complete freedom we renew our decision for Christ, now and forever.” Well-read and astute in reading the signs of the time through the eyes of a practical belief in divine providence, Father Kentenich would not spend time sizing up the motives of his foes. He rather spent every waking moment spreading the warm, human love that welled up in the hearts of Mary and Jesus to every corner of the earth. With St. Paul he boldly proclaimed: The fundamental law of the world is love. When we can again acknowledge that God is love, then the world will indeed be made new. This is the Good News that Jesus came to proclaim.
The United States of America is a Christian nation. Our Declaration of Independence starts with the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Hopefully the ending lines are also so clearly embedded in our minds, memories, and hearts: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
This is true love – love of God, love of family, love of neighbor, love of country – that goes above and beyond one’s own immediate desires and wishes. This is the mighty power of love that moved Father Kentenich to beseech our Mother with her Child to descend anew into the heart of our nation longing for true and lasting peace. The pure, noble hearts of this great land long for an end to abortion and euthanasia, for a stop to human trafficking and crimes against the human person and human sexuality, for help in combatting substance abuse and mental and psychological illnesses. Our striving in prayer and sacrifice, with discipline and service, will gently force our Mother Thrice Admirable to restore and heal our nation through a love that is rooted in our baptismal covenant with God and expressed in a covenant of love with her.
A Prayer Filled with Personal Meaning
On a personal note, this prayer has always been special to me since my first months of involvement with the Schoenstatt Youth. For the Dedication of our Nation at the 1976 bi-centennial, we wanted to give our MTA a gift of thousands of this prayer prayed by the girls. I could tell you today where I was rock- picking in a corn field with my brothers and parents (as I enlisted their help to swell the number) when we reached the last 10,000th marker for Minnesota.
Full of confidence, we thank in advance for the healing peace she will give to our hearts and to our entire nation.
Mother Thrice Admirable, Mother of Grace,
Teach us your enemies bravely to face,
Never regarding their number and might,
Spreading your love over the earth’s dark night,
So that the world through you made new
Pay to your Son his homage due.
Mother with your Child from heaven
Descend upon our nation’s plains,
So that in following your footsteps
It may find true and lasting peace.
Mother and Child, united in love –
Through you alone can our nation be healed.
(Father Joseph Kentenich, 1916)