Our Apostolate
In accord with c. 298 the MSJB may engage in an apostolate that will strengthen and build-up the Roman Catholic Church by conducting parish missions, conferences and retreats with the Holy Mass and Sacraments according to the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite, with the liturgical books of 1962 being normative; teaching catechism; teaching in colleges and seminaries; and staffing chapels, oratories, and shrines in an effort to provide a spiritual home for those who have an attraction and attachment for the liturgy, devotion, and catechesis normative before the Second Vatican Council.
“To give a parish mission or retreat is to open upon the people of a parish all the channels of grace at once, through which the grace of God courses and finds its way into souls. It is a time to make the words of the Holy Gospel resound with greater insistence and force. It is to multiply the holy sighs of prayer which take heaven by storm. It is to establish in the parish, in opposition to the flood of weaknesses, prejudices, and allurements of the world, a divine current which sweeps up the faithful, the indifferent, and even the impious and brings them back to happiness and wins them over to the fulfillment of their duties.”
* To schedule a traditional parish mission or retreat please see our contact page.
The Nature of a True Missionary
by Fr. Jean Baptiste Rauzan
It will be useful to consider at a glance what our religious congregation desires of us, provided that our weakness be not alarmed by the high goal which she sets before us. No one is expected to be without defect, nor is anyone expected to have already achieved perfection. Let our shortcomings enlighten us with true humility. In our faults, may they not be too serious, let us be like the traveler who having stumbled, rises and walks more cautiously. Courage and especially perseverance in courage will gradually form the perfect missionary.
We place before our eyes without ceasing that passage from the Epistle to the Philippians containing a most loving exhortation in these words: “For the rest, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever just, whatever holy, whatever lovable…, think upon these things” (Phil 4:8).
Whatever is true. Love and zeal for truth; a frank and open character neither desiring to be a partaker of secrets yet at the same time being a trustworthy custodian of them; in action and word without dissimulation, without guile, cunning ways which sooner or later provoke indignation and contempt, we should always be straight and sincere.
All that is honest. Zeal for the norms of morality, so that we will not permit them to be broken in our presence observing good manners, preserving our good reputation, pure in intention, noble and disinterested in ideals: “the good odor of virtue”: and everything which might edify our neighbor.
Whatever is just. To render to everyone his due in honor, respect, affection and gratitude; acquitting with scrupulous exactness all our obligations; an extreme degree of honesty, never permitting what we would consider unjust or improper if done to us to befall out neighbor: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” as Jesus Christ said, “for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12).
Whatever is holy: faithful to grace, seek it and calling it down upon us in our different actions, accomplishing always in all things the holy will of God, accepting in advance the trials which He deigns to send us, be they tribulations, sorrows, humiliations or persecutions.
Whatever makes us lovable: seriousness, modesty, equanimity in disposition, affability, loyalty, generosity, an obliging disposition, tender compassion for the afflicted especially sinners, in a word, charity, which becomes ‘all things to all’ according to the example of the Apostle.
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