Our CHarism
Contemplative missionaries focused on renewal of parish life in poor urban areas. We operate out of St. Catherine's Parish in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee where we build up the parish's prayer life, foster community around the parish, invite our non-Catholic neighbors to join us through street evangelization, and form those who join us through our liturgical life, devotional practices, and religious instruction.
While we are not a religious community currently, we are discerning a charism under the supervision of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to form a new religious community. The current missionaries are living as religious brothers without vows but are open to taking them. Any men who desire to join should also desire to give themselves fully to the service of the Lord and His Church in order to grow in charity through the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience if the Holy Spirit leads us to become a religious order.
Our Spirituality
Prayer
Prayer is the cornerstone of the life in Christ, that same life in Christ that we live within our community and share in our missionary outreach.
Every day we pray the entire divine office together, attend Mass, pray a holy hour, lectio divina, communal rosary and have time for spiritual reading. Our rich prayer life brings us closer to God and the fruits of our prayer can be shared with our community and neighbors.
Besides the routine prayer every interaction is an opportunity for prayer. Whether it is calling for God's assistance for ourselves, praying for every person we meet, or some particular intercession that the person requests, every moment and conversation provides a supply of intentions to pray for. Truly, prayer feeds the mission and the mission feeds the prayer.
We seek to Love authentically by giving all that we can back to God. We desire to grow in closer union to Christ and bring others into this same love that God has shown us first.
We pray the liturgy of the hours together at the same time every day in the church so all people who wish to join into the prayer of the church may benefit. Praying at the same time helps keep things consistent and stable. People in our area are surrounded by instability and the church should stand as a source of stability that we are all looking for.
The sacraments are such an important part of our faith and how God gives us the grace necessary to live the life he is calling us to and giving us a share in His life. We have a strong love for the Eucharist and hope to spread devotion to the Holy Eucharist.
Community Life
We as Catholics live in communion with the entire mystical body of Christ. We carry out the work of the Church in our life and mission. This shared work of the salvation of souls creates the foundation of our community of missionaries.
United by our common faith and mission, we build our community by praying together, working together, eating together, and living together. This unity is sustained only through the grace of God who enables us to live the gospel despite our sinful nature which sows derision and division.
This communal living is the truest foundation and demonstration of our life in faith and life in virtue. For our faith must be tried and our virtue must be developed through the difficulties of a shared life. When we live in community well, we not only live well but provide a living witness of Christ to those we are evangelizing. We build a community rooted in Christ and invite others to live it with us and become Catholic too in word and deed.
Most evenings after dinner, we have some form of formation session or community night. Each week, we study the catechism, have a formation session on an aspect of religious life weekly and another rotating topic. One night a week we have a community night where we will have some leisure activity as a group.
We eat all of our meals together daily. Breakfast is a quiet meal with table reading. Lunch, we invite neighbors to join us for a meal. Dinner is a meal just with the missionaries and occasional invited guests with conversation.
Each missionary has weekly house chores that he is responsible for and they rotate weekly.
Apostolate
The missionaries seek to work with the local parish to build up the prayer life of the parish and evangelize the neighborhood surrounding the parish. The goal of the missionaries is to build up the Catholic Church in the impoverished areas that Catholic presence has dwindled.
The missionaries main work is the salvation of souls and seek to assist the pastor of their parish in this work amongst those who live in the parish. Each parish has a parish boundary and the missionaries seek to serve their parish and reach the people who are nearby their parish because those who live nearby are our neighbors and we should love our neighbor. Because they live nearby, they will also be able to attend more events, prayers and activities throughout the week helping them to grow more in holiness.
Our primary way of evangelization is through encountering our neighbors on the street or at their house. This could be knocking on their doors or asking them a question as they walk by or are outside waiting. We invite them to join us in prayer at the church or to come to our hospitality center, the Visitation House.
The Visitation House serves as a place that the missionaries can collaborate with the parish and help the laity to grow in holiness through the invitation to serve with the missionaries. We invite others to share their gifts and talents at the visitation house by teaching classes on skills and hobbies, giving talks on what is important to them and sharing in our community. This allows us to offer more activities for our neighbors to come to as well as a place that Catholics can share something that seems to have little connection to faith to assist in the sanctification of work for themselves and those in the visitation house. The missionaries would be present to those at the visitation house and encourage those visitors and volunteers to grow deeper in their faith.
We teach the faith to those who we meet that are interested in learning more about the Catholic faith with small catechism classes or inquiry classes.
We also work with the local parish in their needs and may assist in areas such as Music Ministry, Altar Serving, Sacristan, Hospitality, RCIA / Catholic Inquiry Classes, Young Adult Ministry, Repairs and Maintenance.