Episode 53: "On September 15, 1968, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, immediately after celebrating the holy sacrifice of the Mass, Father Kentenich was called home to the heavenly Father. At his request, the words Dilexit Ecclesiam (he loved the Church), were inscribed on his tomb." - from the website schoenstattsistersofmary.us/our-founder/
Join author and host Julia Monnin* on this episode as she shares a reflection on the Mystery of the Cross, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, and a pivotal moment in the young life of Schoenstatt's founder Fr. Joseph Kentenich. May we be filled with hope even in the sorrowful times of our lives as we remember that God doesn't always take the pain away (because doing so would take away our humanity), but that He does "enter into the loneliness of ruined love as one who shares the sorrow, as a consolation."
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“God did not work . . . in such a way as to make sorrow vanish and to change the system, so that there is no longer any need for consolation. That would be to take away our humanity. And this is what we secretly desire. Yes, being human is too burdensome for us. But if our humanity were taken away from us, we would cease to be human beings and the world would become inhuman. God did not work that way. He chose a wiser way that was more difficult in many respects but, for precisely that reason, better, more divine. He did not take away our humanity but shares it with us. He entered into the loneliness of ruined love as one who shares the sorrow, as a consolation. This is the divine way of redemption. Maybe from this we can best understand what redemption means in the Christian sense: not a magical transformation of the world, not that our humanity is taken away from us, but that we are consoled, that God shares with us the burden of life, and that now the light of his compassionate love remains forever in our midst.” – Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) from a homily titled “How God Comforts” in the book On Love: Selected Writings
*Learn more about Julia's books, podcasts, and blog at theworldisnoisy.com
