By Father Joseph Kentenich

About the Author, Father Joseph Kentenich, father and founder of the Schoenstatt Movement, an international movement of Catholic renewal, was born in Gymnich, near Cologne, Germany in 1885.  Ordained in 1910, he was still a young priest when he founded the Schoenstatt Movement in 1914 with a handful of high-school boys.  During World War II he was detained by the Nazis from 1941 to 1945, including over three years in the concentration camp in Dachau.  He died in Schoenstatt, West Germany in 1968.

Thirteen of his years spent in Milwaukee (1952-1965), where he wrote this collection of sermons at the request of colleagues.  Originally prepared during Lent of the Marian Year 1954, these sermons present a broad overview of Father Kentenich's perception of Mary's role as Mother of God and Christianity, and Educator in the existential crises of the modern day.  A devoted son of Mary himself, Father Kentenich gives the firm basis for a relationship with her such as he experienced it, including the fundamental building block of the entire Schoenstatt spirituality: the covenant of love with Mary.