SCHOENSTATT, mda. Without the Covenant House and the wonderful infrastructure set up there it would not have been possible to prepare and carry through the Jubilee celebrations in Schoenstatt. We all know this, and we owe the owners and administrators – the Fundación Maria Reina del Trabajo in Chile and the Schoenstatt-Bundesheim International e.V. – our unreserved gratitude. And now? The Jubilee has been and gone. Will the Covenant House fall again into a deep sleep? No, says Fr Egon M. Zillekens after the last meeting of the Bundesheim International e.V. at the beginning of February. The Covenant House will not close. The Fundación in Chile is looking for ways of handing over the Covenant House completely to Schoenstatt, and Fr Zillekens is hopeful that it will work. In the meantime the outlines of what could happen in this house, “our house” in Schoenstatt, can be seen.
On Sunday evening, 1 February, the Blessed Sacrament returned to the oratory in the Covenant House. The members of the Bundesheim International e.V. who were present – Pilar and Luis Jensen, Dr Kleinitzer, Birgitt Winter and Fr Egon M. Zillekens, along with Alicja Kostka, Hanna Grabowska and Mr Butz – celebrated Holy Mass in the oratory of the Covenant House. The monstrance now contains the Host that was consecrated during this Holy Mass. In future, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament will take place again and again, and Holy Mass at times, in this oratory on the same corridor where Fr Kentenich used to live. “We won’t organise it, but wait for initiatives from life”, Fr Zillegens said. Initiatives such as those taken by Alicja Kostka and Hanna Grabowska, who can imagine living in the Covenant House and looking after the life there.
Permanent exhibition: Projects of a Covenant Culture 
A practical initiative is already in preparation: It is planned that in the rooms on either side of the main entrance there is to be an exhibition of the projects displayed in the five tents of a covenant culture at the Jubilee. It will be a display that changes, that lives, and with which we can work, Fr Zillekens noted. “People can also meet in those rooms, have discussions and enjoy a cup of coffee”, he said.
Spend a week next to the founder
We can go on dreaming and planning what could develop in this house for Schoenstatt. Some could imagine it as a sort of communication and service centre that carrys out the dream of “our house in Schoenstatt” providing such services as conference technology, simultaneous translating, a media and telephone centre … “Schoenstatt still doesn’t have a little pub where you can meet in the evening …” This was once a song at the Cologne Schoenstatt Carnival, and it still isn’t there.
Years ago an Argentinean collaborator with schoenstatt.org. dreamt of spending the night in Fr Kentenich’s room. “Perhaps not, but to live for a week next to our founder’s room will soon be on offer,” Fr Zillekens remarked. A quite different retreat in a room next to Fr Kentenich’s room, and simply experience his closeness, encounter …
At the end of Holy Mass the Blessed Mother was crowned and entrusted with all the intentions about the future of the Covenant House. We crowned a simple postcard-sized MTA picture that Mr Arrau had given to the caretaker at the hand-over of the Covenant House in 1998. It had just been re-discovered, somewhat dusty … It was dusted off like the Covenant House and will enter upon the future.
And perhaps …
Who knows, perhaps something completely different is in the plans of Divine Providence. The tide of refugees doesn’t come to an end. Institutions in the Rhineland-Palatinate don’t know how they can get the people through the winter. Someone thought of convents, places of pilgrimage, and found an article written in Advent 2014 about refugees from Iraq, Kosovo … Christians, Muslims … above all people. Perhaps a dream. Perhaps impossible, because although the Covenant House has many beds, there is no running water. Perhaps the impossible will become possible.
“I pray for the victims and I recently encouraged everyone to show their solidarity, so that no one is missing from the necessary rescue initiative.” Those were the words of Pope Francis on 11 February in view of the tragedy near Lampedusa where 300 people died. “Solidarity so that no one is missing from the necessary rescue initiative.”
Perhaps the Covenant House will become “our house in Schoenstatt” for the people from Syria and the Balkans this winter.
Original: German. Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester, UK
