Prioritize the Interior Life

"... I am sick with Love. " --Song of Songs 5:8

“Be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers” (1 Peter 4:7). We are committed to mental prayer within a daily holy hour, daily meditation, a daily rosary, eucharistic adoration, and frequent confession of our sins. Our missionaries are convicted of the universal call to contemplation and they strive to be more and more transformed into the person of Christ in this life.  We strive to live a joyful life filled with constant prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. Overwhelmed by His goodness, all of our missionary activity is an overflow of His radical love for us. We root our evangelization in the instruction and inspiration we receive in prayer from the Holy Spirit, the principal agent of evangelization (Pope St. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi 75). We know too that Christ was not only the most joyful man who ever lived, but also the man who experienced the greatest sorrow from His love for us in our sins. We know that true love is sacrificial and that in missions we make sacrifices from love. Our love has an ascetical character as we grow in virtue, letting charity form all the actions we take, so that our love can not only purify our hearts but the hearts of those we serve. The primacy of prayer in the christian life is reflected in our schedule and practice, and through that divine intimacy we participate in the crucified love of Christ that is rooted in the resurrection. This love has the power to restore, redeem, and transform our lives. It is the source and goal of our missionary endeavors.

“He who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to hell but that he brings himself there in his own hands.”

– St. Teresa of Avila

Live Liturgically

We center our lives around the Church’s liturgy. We build our team and ministry schedule around and from the liturgy. We attend mass daily, shift our routine around liturgical events, and strive to bring others into liturgical devotions while respecting the unique interplay between the cultures of the parish and community with the liturgical culture of the Church. We incorporate the divine office, celebrate the lives of the saints, enter into the liturgical seasons, and intentionally embrace the sabbath. We believe the Church as our Mother forms us into her Son primarily through Her prayer and we participate in this both individually and communally. Culture has commonly been defined as “what you celebrate, and what you tolerate.” We embrace a liturgical culture in our team and our families, desiring to live out our Catholic faith to the fullest by taking advantage of all the Church has to offer in her rich traditions. We strive to fast and feast well. We also hope, as pilgrims on this earth, to heal society from within in such a way as to center it around the liturgical worship of the Church, which is the prayer of Christ to the Father in the Spirit for the redemption of the world. Through our active participation in the Church’s prayer, the liturgy disciples us as a community toward union with Christ. We believe through the Holy Spirit the liturgy has been imbued with a formative quality upon our lives. We strive to integrate that prayer into our manner of living starting with the individual, then the family, then the community, and ultimately the entire world. This liturgical rhythm of prayer keeps our minds renewed in Christ and His works, providing a spiritual tether that allows us to live in the world but not of it.

“Prefer nothing to the love of Christ" (Rule 72: 11; cf. 4: 21) and “let nothing be preferred to the Work of God" [that is, the liturgical prayer of the Church] (43, 3).

--St. Benedict

Prioritize the Family

The family is referred to as the Domestic Church or little church. This is the foundation of any civilization and its health is vital to the world. The family is the principal place of evangelization because it is the first society. We stand in solidarity with Pope Benedict XVI who said, “The new evangelization depends largely on the Domestic Church.”

This primacy of the family doesn’t mean we never make sacrifices as a family. Just as individuals make sacrifices for the gospel, so do families! This sacrificial love looks different than our brothers and sisters in Christ who are set aside for the priesthood or religious life. The health of our families, body, mind, and soul, comes first. We do what is first best for the family to thrive and then we allow mission to overflow from that. As an apostolate, we cater to the family and make sure that our events are as family friendly as possible. This doesn’t mean that we only do family events, it just means we seek to understand families and accompany them where they are. We prioritize family life over the money we make, the success we get from a productive business, the television or streaming platforms that we consume, or the cultural expectations of a good life. We believe for the laity that the greatest witness to holiness is a healthy family life rooted in Christ and His Church. Pope Benedict XVI boldly stated “Matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a ‘Good News’ for the world of today, especially the dechristianized world.” The family is the greatest and first school of virtue because it is the school of love. We help couples strengthen marriages, stay in love with their spouses, and empower them to raise their kids virtuously in the faith. Evangelizing families requires perseverance, endurance, and a commitment to accompany amidst the unique circumstances and challenges of family life. It takes time and is a long game of missionary pursuit. We recognize every families circumstances are unique, but we know families, just as individuals are called to holiness and need accompaniment to enter fully into the life Christ has planned for them. 

“But you surely know that we must love God more than we love our family, and that we must be ready to let go of everything on this earth and that is dear to us rather than to offend God in the least.” 

–Blessed Franz

Foster Ownership of the Great Commission

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." --Matthew 28:19

When Pentecost came the Holy Spirit gave the disciples the power to be witnesses for Christ. Similar to the prophets of the Old Testament, St. Paul reminds us as Christians to, “pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy” (1 Cor 14:1). As Christians we witness to the gospel with words and deeds, which means the entirety of our lives. We are called to be prophetic witnesses to the Good News. We want to be a light on a lampstand to the world. We do this through building a community that evangelizes and takes ownership of that responsibility. 

Through our baptism, each of us has a personal obligation to participate in the mission of Christ. The Church has one vision: to see missionary disciples made of all nations so that all can fully embrace life as children of God. 

The Great Commission was given to the Church as an institution and to the Christian as a person. We each have a unique obligation to embrace and participate in the mission of Christ. Flowing from our divine intimacy with Jesus we embrace the call to accompany others in the Church in discovering Christ’s love for them and how He desires that love to bear fruit of unique apostolates in the world to sanctify the temporal order. We do not believe we raise up disciples on our own, but we strive to intentionally cooperate with God’s grace as He seeks to raise up His people to go out to the ends of the earth proclaiming the good news and setting captives free. Allowing our apostolate to become enculturated wherever the Lord brings us, we foster ownership of this invitation in each parish and community we enter.

“Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians” 

- St. Francis Xavier, S.J.

Build the City of God

We strive to build a society where it is easy to do what is good. We affirm St. Thomas Aquinas when he states that the end of politics is living well together unto virtue. This includes where and how we spend money, where we choose to live, the jobs we have and how we participate in our local community. We desire for our work, our money and every part of our lives to bow in worship of Jesus. We are committed to using our time, talent, and treasure for building the City of God and not the City of Man so as to live the radical call of the Gospel. As Pope St. John Paul II said, the laity “especially are called ‘to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering these in accordance with the will of God.’” (Redemptoris Missio 71). As Christians we know that our excess wealth belongs to the poor in justice and we are committed to living simply for the gospel and for others. By living a “faith-inspired frugality” that understands Christ’s poverty to be embraced by all members of the Church we, with St. Paul, strive to “become all things to all men,” so that we “might by all means save some… for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor 9:22-23).

We believe that the social teachings of our church are not optional. To separate the social message from the faith message of the gospel is to divide the good news in half, making the proclamation of the Church unintelligible and uncompelling.

We desire to not only help sanctify individuals, families, and parishes through the gospel, but to help sanctify our businesses, politics, education, institutions, and towns. The Church exists for the sake of sanctifying the world, holiness is not limited to the four walls of the parish church, but through the faithful it is meant to pervade every aspect of our lives as leaven to raise up the world to God! Jesus Christ is King of the universe, which includes the social order of our town. Though His kingdom is not of this world, as baptized Christians we bring His kingdom to others through our lives in order to transform the world, eliminating structural sins and consecrating our private and public life to God. This is the call of the laity, to sanctify the temporal order, and we hope to accompany those we journey with in doing so in their unique circumstances and spheres of influence.

A city is “an association of men bound by a common love.. Two loves have made the two cities. Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city; and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city.”

–St. Augustine