Sharing the Real Presence
This newsletter features an update on the missionaries moving parishes and some of our discernment with the community. We invite you to get involved in some of our upcoming events. Please continue keeping us and those we are ministering to in your prayers. We hope these newsletters can encourage you and our readers to grow in faith and in zeal for the work of the salvation of souls that is so needed in our church.
In this newsletter
Update about the Missionaries of the Real Presence
Upcoming Events
Prayer Intentions
Update about the Missionaries of the Real Presence
It has been a busy few months with a lot happening and we have not really taken the time to update you via our newsletter.
The biggest piece of news is that we are moving to St Anthony's Parish on the Southside of Milwaukee. This will be a big change, but one that we believe will be good for the missionaries and our discernment of this new community.
We are very thankful for the past year and a half at St Catherine's Parish. Moving to St Anthony's will help us to focus more on the formation of our community. Fr. Rafael Rodriguez, recently appointed new pastor at St. Anthony’s, helped us start the Missionaries of the Real Presence at his former parish. He served as formator at Saint Francis de Sales and Sacred Heart seminaries here in Milwaukee for much of his priesthood, and helped us with much of our formation for the first year of our mission when we lived at the St Rose of Lima Rectory. We will now have a similar setup at St Anthony's Rectory which will function as the missionaries residence and house of formation.
We will be adjusting our daily schedule to allow for mornings Monday through Friday to be focused on prayer, house work and human, spiritual, and intellectual formation. Our apostolate time will be in the afternoon every day but Sunday, and will be dedicated to street evangelization and other direct forms of evangelization with those outside of the church.
There have been many different apostolates that we have been involved in over the past two and a half years and we have realized that we can't do it all and must focus in on what it is that God is calling us to. We have seen that the street evangelization apostolate has borne supernatural fruit whereas many of the others were bearing some fruit, but more so on a natural level.
We have been discerning whether we are supposed to be more like canons regular, more attached to a specific church and praying all the divine office at that church each day or like the mendicants and not specifically attached to one parish. We now believe that God has been calling us to be a mendicant community serving at different Catholic parishes.
We plan now to pray Morning Prayer and Office of Readings every morning at St. Anthony's along with Adoration and daily Mass and we will pray Daytime Prayer and Evening Prayer at whichever parish that we are doing apostolate that day. We plan to be at St Casimir Catholic Church in the Riverwest neighborhood every Tuesday. We will be on the Northside at Mother of Good Counsel Parish every Wednesday, UW Milwaukee Newman Center and the Eastside every Saturday, St Anthony's on the Southside every Monday and Thursday and rotating to different parishes on Friday.
As there become more missionaries, we may be able to go to different parishes regularly or particular parishes more frequently. We hope that more people can join us in the apostolate from and to different areas of the city.
We believe that serving at a few different parishes will help us to discern what kind of populations that we are called to serve if any one in particular or if it is something that we can do at any urban parish that will request and support our apostolate. Again, we believe that God has been calling us to take more of the model of the mendicant itinerant preachers.
Your prayers and support are very important to us. We continue to pray for you and for all those in most need in the margins of society.
Upcoming Events
Missionary Associates - Please note, this month the Missionary associates dinner will be the 4th Thursday on September 28th to allow us to move into St Anthony's before the event. We will have a new location for this months meeting at St Anthony's Parish. The address of the Church is 1711 S 9th St. Milwaukee, WI 53204. This is for people who volunteer with the missionaries or are interested in volunteering/supporting our work. We hope that this continues building up the community around the missionaries, getting to know others, and energizing more people to start working for the salvation of souls here in Milwaukee. This normally occurs on the 3rd Thursday of every month, but we are considering moving it to another day. Take the poll below and select all options that will work for you if you want to come. (note we have excluded days that will not work for the Missionaries)
The schedule for the event is as follows:
Evening Prayer in the church 5:30pm - 5:45 pm
Short talk by one of the missionaries 5:50 pm - 6:10 pm
Dinner and socializing 6:15 pm onward
What Evening works best for future Missionary Associates Dinners?
Thursday
Monday
Friday
Saturday
You can vote for more than one answer.
Missionaries Moving Day
We will be moving from St Catherine's parish to St Anthony's parish on Saturday September 23rd. We will attend Mass at the UW Milwaukee Newman Center at 9 am and after Mass we will carpool to St Catherine's and pick up a U-Haul for some of the big items. We will provide lunch for all who come to help move. We will then go to St Anthony's to move everything in. Anyone is welcome to come help move.
New Address for the Missionaries
Missionaries of the Real Presence
1711 S 9th St.
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Going away party with St Catherine's neighbors
The St Catherine's neighborhood has gotten used to celebrating different Catholic feast days with grilling out and games. We will have one final grill out for the Feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Thursday September 14th. We will have daytime prayer at 12:00 pm noon then we will beginning grilling, eating, playing games in the church yard and saying our goodbyes to the neighbors. Activities will be going on until Evening Prayer at 5:30 pm.
Prayer Intentions
The most time consuming part of the newsletter that we have found it difficult to keep updated is to include names to pray for. This was probably the biggest hold up in sending out the monthly newsletter. There are many people who are left out, people listed multiple times because different missionaries recorded them down differently. We have decided to not include specific names to pray for. If you would like us to continue including names, please reach out to us or let us know in the poll below and we will share a few names of those who could really use prayer.
Would you like us to include some prayer intentions in each newsletter?
Yes
No
About the Missionaries of the Real Presence
The Missionaries of the Real Presence are a group of lay men who live in common at St Anthony Parish in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as they discern a charism for a new religious community to be contemplative missionaries for Urban Evangelization. We are dedicated to prayer through daily chanted Liturgy of the Hours in the church open to the public and evangelization to the neighborhoods surrounding the parishes we serve in.
Support the Mission, Join the Mission
If you appreciate the work we are doing, consider supporting our mission financially Here.
Volunteer with us with our street ministry and house visits Here
If reading about some of our stories inspires you, come and see what life as a missionary is like and visit us for a day or longer for prayer and ministry as you discern Here.
If you liked this newsletter from the Missionaries of the Real Presence, consider subscribing and sharing with your friends.