For more information and to register please click here

CLICK HERE to register

CLICK HERE to download prayers!

Watch live @ https://www.facebook.com/schoenstatt.lamar.tx

The Blessed Mother came to dwell in our house through the Home Shrine in the year 2005.  Although, I was the only one in Schoenstatt at the time (Mothers Branch), my family welcomed the Blessed Mother. In a few years everyone was drawn into Schoenstatt!  Our daughters grew up in the SGY and my husband and I joined the Family Branch about 10 years ago.

We decided on the name of our home shrine primarily for two reasons:

• Bethlehem is the cradle of sanctity and we strive to be saints formed by the Blessed Mother from this graced filled place.
• Bethlehem is the place where Mary gave birth to the Savior. We discerned that our mission is to “birth” Christ to each person we encounter.

For the first year, our home shrine was placed in the master bedroom. Then during Lent while praying in the home shrine, I was wondering what to give up or sacrifice? I heard the Blessed Mother urging me to move the home shrine downstairs where all the family could easily access her. This I did not want to do! This was my shrine, my place of grace and solitude.  Such a sacrifice, I thought…

Our home shrine relocated to the core of our house. From every outside door you can see the MTA as you enter. Just like the dinner table, it has become the area of many family discussions, decisions, prayers, celebrations, and personal reflections. Both front door guests and back door visitors can be greeted by our home shrine. This has brought numerous questions over the years from visitors and given us the opportunity to share a little about our Catholic faith.  Moving and sharing the home shrine was such a small sacrifice in return for countless graces and blessings.

Over the past 16 years as the Blessed Mother has dwelled in our home shrine, she has also taken up residence in our hearts. “Mother takes perfect care” … each family member’s heart shrine has developed in its own individual manner and authentic timing.

Kim and Julianne Davis, Diocesan Leaders, Family Branch, NTX

Greetings from the Confidentia Shrine,

Yesterday we celebrated Valentine’s Day, in two days begins the season of Lent, followed by our monthly covenant day. What do all three have in common? All three focus on the last part of our year’s motto!

Saint Valentine is associated with courtly love and as an intercessor to turn to when seeking love. According to legend, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment, giving them to persecuted Christians. This custom may be a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine’s Day. Since Valentine refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, he was imprisoned. His last paper heart, he gave to the blind daughter of the jailer signed with “Your Valentine.” As he was executed and surrendering his life for love of the true God, the girl received her sight back.

Lent is the prime season for Christians to focus on charity. The CCC tells us that charity “is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (1822). Jesus taught us the new commandment to love one another as he has loved us (see Jn 15:9,12). “Christ’s supreme sacrifice on the cross revealed what true love is all about: to make of oneself a gift to others.

The Apostle Paul has given us an incomparable depiction of charity: “Charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. … If I . . . have not charity, I am nothing” (1Cor 13:1-13).

The person who exemplified charity most exquisitely is the Blessed Mother. We have made a covenant of love with her so she can purify our hearts from all selfish desires and to put order in our hearts and lives – as individuals, and as families. Her love can transform our hearts enabling them to be more generous in giving of ourselves. Let us unite then by renewing our covenant of love with her and asking her help to lead from the shrine … with charity to all!

With prayers for a fruitful Lent,

Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary

Click here to read letter from Sr. M. Virginia Riedl, Provincial Superior

CLICK HERE to download prayers!

Watch live @ https://www.facebook.com/schoenstatt.lamar.tx

Because of the COVID-19 regulations, we are currently not having the Covenant Holy Mass on the 18th of the month in our Confidentia Shrine.

The Shrine is open everyday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. Masks are required in order to come in.

Our store is open on the following days and hours:

Tuesday through Sunday

• 10:30 am – 12:00 noon
• 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Questions?? Please contact us at (361) 729-2019

We encountered the Blessed Mother in 1996, through some homeschooling friends of ours. However, unbeknownst to us, Schoenstatt really entered our lives a few years before. We were experiencing difficulties in our extended family, and after sharing our concerns with a dear friend, we had been given the Schoenstatt novena to Our Mother Thrice Admirable, without knowing anything of the Schoenstatt Movement. We experienced so many miracles through her intercession, that when we did meet the Schoenstatt Movement through our friends, we were very open and ready to make our covenant of love, with open hearts for the home shrine a year later!

It seems that God’s plans are so perfectly put together. Looking back, we can see how our dedication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (which we had made with the help of the Schoenstatt Family and the Sisters of Charity) had also prepared a place in our home and in our hearts for all the gifts that God wished to share with our young family. It was as if Jesus said: Here I am, and I bring along my Mother to help you.

As the journey began, and as we were so open to inviting Jesus and his Blessed Mother into our homes and our lives, we truly did not realize the great powerful gifts we were given. But a different world unfolded day by day in our little home and in our hearts. She became more and more present in our daily lives and we now cannot imagine life without her, here in our Cana Home Shrine. We grew up in the Shadow of the Cana Home Shrine, all decisions and all-important family discussions took place here, as well as daily prayers and family routines. Annual liturgical practices were celebrated here. Decorations to match the change of the liturgical seasons were acquired – rituals for Lent, Easter, All Saints, First Communions, Confirmations, May Crowning, Graduations, sending off of children with blessings, important decisions, petitions, thanksgivings, simply daily greetings – all took place in our Cana Home Shrine. Through our MTA’s intercession, her request to our Lord They have no wine we entered into that first miracle each time. She wishes to accompany us in our marriage and family journey and for that we are so ever grateful for our Blessed Mother.

We have seen many miracles in our children, in our lives, and in the lives of those who come to our home and present their hearts to her here. She is real and she has the heart of a very tender loving mother, and she wants to help all her children, all the children of God, so that we may join her forever in his heavenly kingdom. Do not be afraid to experience Our Mother!! What a blessing she is to us all.

With heartfelt love, we thank you Mother dear, with you to guide us we need have no fear, when all around seemed dark and drear and gray, you stood as beacon for a brighter day. Your smile illumined every wakeful hour, you did uphold us with your gentle power. Thanks, a thousand thanks to you, to God shall be now and for all eternity. Amen.

Lisa and Mike Arth, Apostolic Family Federation, Southlake, TX

The name of our home shrine was chosen after much thought. There is, it seems to us, a lack of purity and an absence of belief in God in the world. Faith is a gift – one that the Blessed Mother wants to offer us through her immaculate presence in our home. This gift then becomes, through us, part of our hearts, our home, and our church community. From there it spreads into the whole world.

Our home shrine was dedicated during the Marian Year on October 3, 1987. It is a refuge. Here we experience the presence of the Triune God, the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and the Angels and Saints. In our home shrine we strive to cooperate with God in becoming one with him according to his holy will. The Immaculate Heart of Mary is thereby victorious through us and in us.

In our Victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Home Shrine we:

• Encounter the mission, vision, and charisma of our founder, Father Joseph Kentenich.
• Receive the graces of the Original Shrine and the graces connected to the mission of our home shrine.
• Are united with all the daughter and home shrines around the world.
• Gather personally and spiritually with the Schoenstatt Family.
• Welcome other people to come and enjoy the peace and graces that the Blessed Mother gives to her children who open their hearts.
• Evangelize with our devotions, talks, and visits.

Sanjuana and Guadalupe Serrano, Women’s League, Laredo, TX