Update from Fr. Gonzalo
With great joy, our Schoenstatt Fathers community in Austin would like to celebrate this Christmas together with you.
This year, 2025, has been both a blessing and a challenge for us—full of changes and new responsibilities.
Our fathers serve in many places throughout Texas and across the country, working in parishes and accompanying families and young people. In the midst of so much movement, what sustains us is our faith in the mission entrusted to us. We have seen, time and again, how the Lord works in the lives of the people we accompany every day. He has given us the gift of witnessing His action up close—we have seen Him embrace, forgive, and bless.
To carry out our mission, the Blessed Mother teaches us to imitate Jesus in all things. And like a good Mother, she never lets us settle for comfort or stand still. Yet, as with all things from God, the gift always comes before the task.
She has given us a home right beside hers—a place where she can watch over us closely and constantly remind us of the true source of our life.
Many of you, I imagine, have also experienced the warmth and welcome of our Schoenstatt Shrine. From that place, we continually renew our strength so we can go out and serve in the name of Jesus.
Along with that gift comes a mission. We are deeply aware of how much each one of us needs a spiritual home in our Church and in our community.
A home where everyone can grow in freedom does not come without effort. We must always strive for a Church that lives in the communion proper to the children of God—for a Church that makes space for differences, mutual respect, and the humble courage needed to acknowledge the smallness that “keeps us from being friends.”
I rejoice because that effort has borne fruit: here in our house in Austin, we have a joyful community—one that respects each person’s freedom and encourages one another to follow Jesus more deeply. Our home is filled with laughter, and I am certain that this is, in large part, thanks to the prayers and support of so many of you. I hope that this sense of home can also be felt by those who come from outside.
As Schoenstatt Fathers, we are called to serve from this Shrine. My hope is that, as a community, we may reflect the open arms we ourselves encounter every time we visit the Blessed Mother.
Christmas is a time to “be born again”—to leave behind the smallness of daily life so that the Child Jesus may renew us and lead us once more to the deep meaning of unity, joy, and peace.
Greeting from Fr. Hector
Dear Friends and Family,
This year has been eventful in many different ways, but I will not bore you with all the details. I
have worn a few hats: Associate Pastor at St. Paul Parish in Austin, priest assistant for the
Mothers Federation in Texas and more recently the Delegate Superior of the Schoenstatt
Fathers in the US. Recently I was visiting with my nephrologist and as he reviewed the results of
my latest blood work, he said to me, “Father, for a man of your ‘vintage’, you are doing
remarkably well”! I am indeed grateful for the good health and for being able to minister
effectively in the tasks the Lord has given me. I’m more grateful to my brother Schoenstatt
Fathers who encourage and support me. I’m ever more grateful to all of you, friends and family
who sustain our Schoenstatt Fathers Community with your prayers, sacrifices and financial
support, not to mention those of you in the Austin area who make us a few pounds heavier with
the delicious meals you offer us for our Sunday night gatherings! May your year have been
blessed and may the newborn Savior visit your hearts this Christmas with peace and deep inner
joy!
Merry Christmas, Father Hector
Greeting from Fr. Johnson
Dear Schoenstatt Family,
Merry Christmas! As we look back on the year, I’m especially grateful for the Schoenstatt Fathers who have walked with St Paul for so many years. Their support in Masses, confessions, and keeping Schoenstatt spirituality alive in our parish—along with our visits to the Shrine and the Rosary Campaign—has been a real gift.
A big thanks as well to the Schoenstatt University Men and Women whose Caritas retreats always bring life to our campus. And as we get close to completing our church, we’re deeply thankful for the Fathers’ dedication and love for our community.
Fr. Hector and I are blessed to serve this parish family, and we strive each day to love and support you beyond what words can express.
Wishing you all a blessed and joy-filled Christmas!
With gratitude, Fr Johnson
Reflection by Fr. Rex – Hope Woven in Light
Across the American landscape where urban skylines glitter against the quiet dignity of rural plains, there exists a vocation woven of both fire and gentle light. I often imagined life as serene and untroubled but in truth is a pilgrimage marked by profound consolations and piercing struggles. It is a life lived in the holy rhythm of being poured out and being renewed, of longing for rest yet joyfully rising once more at the gentle, unwavering whisper of God: ‘Go where I send you.’ In the heart of this journey, an unexpected calling woven into my soul a quiet summons from God to cross oceans not as a wanderer, but as a bearer of His tenderness and a witness to His mercy in a land (USA) vast with longing and promise. I walk this soil (Austin, TX) as one entrusted to listen with reverence, serve with joy, and love with Christ’s fearless love, carrying in my heart His enduring promise. Austin, Texas a city humming with creative energy and spiritual hunger for the Schoenstatt has become a lifeline of encounter, a tender force stirring me back into the core of my mission.
For me ministry is often a mosaic of contrasts. One moment I am in boardrooms with executives whose wealth masks unspoken fears; the next, I walk through makeshift shelters where the homeless gather in quiet resilience. When I hear the confessions of teenagers anxious about identity, an elderly widow aching for companionship, a middle-aged father mourning the erosion of his once-stable life, I understand that I am vast, complex, and restless.
In Austin, the Schoenstatt has become a gentle countercurrent to this restless spirit. When the Pilgrim Mother visits homes or working-class neighborhoods, she brings what I long to offer: tenderness without pretense, hope that asks for nothing in return, and a sense of belonging in a world obsessed with individuality. For those who accompany SPMA circles, something luminous happens. They rediscover that their ministry is not a solitary endeavor; it is a shared voyage of grace.
And then came the 75th Anniversary of Schoenstatt Pilgrim Mother Apostolate celebration in Brazil, a gathering that was less an event and more a living tapestry of nations. Priests and lay leaders from twenty-five countries voice as diverse as a single blaze of joy. It was not merely a conference. It was Pentecost. I, in the sultry Brazilian air, thick with the fragrance of roasted coffee and the distant hum of samba, discovered anew what it means to belong to a Church without borders. I listened to testimonies spoken in accents unfamiliar, yet carrying the same unmistakable heartbeat of faith. I prayed in chapels where the flickering candles seemed to inhale the prayers of the world. I went to Brazil expecting a celebration. Instead, I received a new heart and vision. And then there were the silent moments, sitting beneath Brazilian stars that shimmered like a thousand unspoken blessings. I realized that these encounters were not simply cultural exchanges they were sacraments of humanity, signs that God’s Kingdom is already breaking forth in the fragile, luminous spaces where strangers become family.
I, returning to the USA, found that something had shifted within me. My ministry, in Austin already diverse, is now infused with a richer empathy. I recognized the echoes of Brazil in the stories of immigrant families, in the devotion of Hispanic communities, in the young Americans searching for meaning.
As the country tilts again toward the shimmering promise of Christmas lights appearing on porches, carols threading through winter air, I, across the USA carry a quiet and renewed hope. I saw that the Church thrives wherever hearts dare to walk together. I learned that spiritual motherhood knows no boundaries. I tasted the joy of nations gathered like a new Bethlehem diverse, imperfect, and radiant.
And now, I, standing on the threshold of the Christmas season, see more clearly what Emmanuel truly means: God with us, in every culture, in every story, in every pilgrim who dares to believe.