> The Engling Stone – The search for Joseph Engling

The Engling Stone –
Dedication on Gaudete Sunday

The search for Joseph Engling

“When our young men set off for France, their dearest wish was to find Joseph Engling’s remains and bring them home. He had made his last entries (in his spiritual daily order) at Eswars, near Cambrai. So they went there. Their painstaking research yielded nothing although they were able to pinpont the place almost exactly where Joseph had written for the last time in his diary. The young Schoenstatters sat there in the growing darkness of a summer evening and re-lived the horrors of the great war, which seeing the battlefields had brought alive in their souls. They had Engling’s last report with them. One of them read it out loud in the light of his pocket torch and all reflected on his words.

Joseph’s last spiritual daily schedule showed what a vibrant and rich spiritual life he was leading shortly before his death. It is impossible to gauge what it cost him to keep his inner life so disciplined in the harsh conditions of wartime service. His resolution, “Each hour I will repeat with my lips: God is with me; our loving father sees how I can ennoble my innate ability to love in the best interests of others” shows how nobly and supernaturally he was in his striving until the last moment of his life.

The little group in a distant country were surrounded by Engling’s spirit and enkindled in them a holy longing for exalted freedom of God’s children. Engling’s spirit returned with the boys as they returned home to Schoenstatt, and with it the fresh and youthful life and strength of the founding period. However, his body remained in France. The idea of bringing him home gave us no rest. A few months later (1935) another group set out. Once again they looked for him with utmost zeal. They dug at various sites, but also this time they had no success. One of their achievements was the discovery that the information of the company commander about the time of Joseph’s death was incorrect. They now knew the place where Joseph had fallen as well as the approximate time of his death. But the question remained: Will we never be allowed to bury him under the high pinetrees near the Schoenstatt shrine? Will he have to remain in a foreign land until the last day? Was it in order to carry out a task for his Mother on theother side of the German border?”