Fr. Richard Henkes, S.A.C., A Picture of His Life A Picture of His Life | Page 27

to graduate from the school and wanted to become a missionary. He
struggled. Learning cost a lot of energy. His comrades and friends
provided him with a little substitute family. Events also created emo-
tional ties.
There was the official inauguration of the house on December
8, 1912, including a great feast. And there were the meetings of the
various student groups, later the “Marian Congregation,” to whose
missionary section Richard belonged. At times, he was a treasurer,
temporarily a group leader. He grew in responsibility. He gave lectures
on mission and mission - methods in Turkey, China, Mongolia, Ti-
bet, Korea and Japan. He read about distant worlds and the students
discussed intensely how to implant Christianity in foreign cultures.
The talks with vacationing missionaries from Cameroon extended the
horizon even more.
In this world of time away and of missionary zeal came an im-
portant event: Father Josef Kentenich became spiritual director in
Vallendar. He had mastered the Marian piety of the congregational
groups and the ideas of contemporary pedagogy. He understood how
to create networking and local ties, a sense of missionary expansion,
and a sense of home attachment. The meeting place of the boys would
be the St. Michael’s chapel, the former cemetery chapel of the Au-
gustine nuns, with the image of Mary as the “Dreimal Wunderbare
Mutter”; Mater ter admirabilis; MTA (Mother Thrice Admirable).
The picture and the abbreviation would leave a mental image in the
minds of the boys and would connect what Fr. Kentenich had taught
them.
In the midst of pluralism in the twentieth century, Kentenich saw
“much inner-emptiness” among people. That is why he sought to ed-
ucate his students to take responsibility for their lives and to embrace
for themselves the spirituality of the community. His students were to
be “self-sufficient and self-motivating people...free personalities [who
lived] under the protection of Mary.” The spiritual director strongly
affected the hearts of his students. He frequently used keywords such
as “self-conquest,” “self-promotion,” and “character formation.” The
individuals and the groups gave themselves ‘ideals,’ which they often
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