Spirituality
Our Rule of Life
As members of the Corpus Christi Movement, we will be obedient to our Ordinaries and live and work under their protection, and with their blessing.
In the daily celebration of the Holy Mass and an hour of Eucharist Adoration we will find the center of our lives, and we will grow in the Love of Jesus, nourishing ourselves with His Love, and seeking to spread this Love to the souls entrusted to our care.
Putting our trust in Jesus and in Divine Providence we will go “in haste” like Mary, who went to serve her cousin, Elizabeth. We will go wherever there is ” the greatest need” of our priestly ministry.
In our ministry, besides serving the people entrusted to our own pastoral care and the members of the Movement, we shall also remain very specially open to be available to assist and serve the Missionaries of Charity family and the poorest of the poor they serve, so that we can all grow in holiness.
Some of the members will have the possibility of making a deeper consecration by taking a private vow of wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor, in the spirit of the Missionaries of Charity, as much as their lives as diocesan priests will permit.
With missionary zeal and love we will seek the spiritually and materially poorest of the poor, wherever they are and whoever they are. We will make every effort to simplify our own lifestyles, giving away with joy superfluous material things.
As a family we will take Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as our Mother and Cause of our Joy, to guide our Movement, and St. Joseph will be our Protector and Guardian. We, as brother priests in the Movement, will make every effort to help each other to grow in holiness and in the Love of Jesus and each other.
We will help families to pray and we will teach children the faith and we will encourage Confession and Holy Communion, as a way to inflame the love for Christ throughout the world.
The members of the Movement will be adopted by religious sisters, as priests were adopted by St. Therese, the Little Flower.
Teresa explained to the Sisters the meaning of “Spiritual Adoption” in this way:
Priests will be adopted by sisters one by one
No correspondence – but real prayer and penance for that priest that he may be holy like Little Flower (St. Therese of the Child Jesus) was praying for priests.
Really pray for that priest I will give you. Concentrate on that priest – really pray, really remember him in Holy Mass, and put him in the Chalice also.
In her autobiography St Therese of the Child Jesus writes:
If holy priests, whom Jesus in His Gospel calls the “salt of the earth”, show in their conduct their extreme need for prayers, what is to be said of those who are tepid?
Didn’t Jesus say too: “If the salt loses its savor, wherewith will it be salted?”
How beautiful is the vocation, O Mother, which has as its aim the preservation of the salt destined for souls! This is Carmel’s vocation since the sole purpose of our prayers and sacrifices is to be the apostle of the apostles.
We are to pray for them while they are preaching to souls through their words and especially their example.
As your adopted sister prays for you and offers sacrifices so that you may be a holy, priest may you also pray for her as St. Therese writes:
I wanted only one priest as a brother to remember me each day at the holy altar. May this spiritual union help you to be zealous for God’s house!
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