The Missionary Servants (female branch) are an institute of Pontifical Right that follows in the footsteps of the apostles who, filled with the Holy Spirit, went forth from the Cenacle to spread everywhere the knowledge and love of Jesus.

Their specific mission is to preserve the faith in the regions and among spiritually neglected and abandoned groups of people, and especially among the poor.

Their greatest effort is dedicated to developing the missionary spirit among the laity, with the goal that every Catholic be an apostle.

History

Thomas Augustine Judge, founder of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, was ordained a Vincentian priest in Philadelphia in 1899.  At that time the Church in the United States faced the task of absorbing thousands of immigrants from the Catholic countries of eastern and southern Europe.

On April 11, 1909, at a meeting in Saint John the Baptist parish church (Brooklyn, New York), six women responded to his appeal for lay apostles who would share in the mission and ministry of the Church. In the years immediately following, Father Judge’s influence inspired women and men from many walks of life to become members of this lay apostolic band, later known and accepted in the Church as the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate.

In 1912, under the auspices of James Cardinal Gibbons, women associates opened a Missionary Cenacle in Baltimore for the care of homeless and unemployed women, and for work among the Italian immigrants in that city. This was the first time the “Associates” as they were then known, lived together as they worked together.

The year following, another Missionary Cenacle was opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the work of the associates pioneered the Catholic Charitable Bureau of that Diocese. In 1915 Father Judge was unexpectedly assigned to a rural Vincentian mission in Opelika, Alabama.  This is how, in the providence of God, the Missionary Cenacle came to the southern United States.

Some of the men and women who had been nurtured in the apostolate by Father Judge followed him to the heart of the American Southland. Between 1916 and 1918, while the cenacle lay apostolate continued to flourish in the north, a number of lay volunteers gave their lives completely to the Missionary Cenacle, which was taking a different shape in a rural and remote area of the South. The formal beginnings of distinctly religious apostolic life emerged. A form of community life began in both Phenix City and on a plantation in what would become Holy Trinity, Alabama.

Among the volunteers in Alabama was a young woman named Louise (Lulu) Keasey. She was a schoolteacher from Butler, Pennsylvania, who had gone South in 1916 at the age of thirty-one to render whatever service she could to the struggling band and to teach in their mission school in Phenix City, Alabama. She became known as Sister Mary Boniface.

In 1919, Sister Mary Boniface was appointed by Father Judge to be the first General Custodian of the new sisters’ community and received the name Mother Mary Boniface. Under the combined leadership of Father Judge and Mother Boniface, the Missionary Cenacle Family further developed in distinct forms of apostolic life: clergy, religious, and lay.

In the providence of God and in a way humanly unforeseen, two religious communities emerged. Among the members of these infant communities there was a warmth and spiritual camaraderie that closely paralleled the spirit of the infant Church. The two communities, one of men, the other of women, shared the same founder, enjoyed the same heart’s formation from Mother Boniface, participated in the same prayer form, the same apostolate, and even identified themselves by the same name. The men and women were all known as Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity until well into the nineteen-twenties.

The year 1920 itself was a high point year. In that year, the apostolic delegate, Archbishop John Bonzano, wrote to Father Judge approving, not only the newly formed community of women, but the Missionary Cenacle Lay Apostolate as well.

Devotions and Traditions

They have many devotions and traditions, all of which help them to live their missionary calling. They place special focus on their devotion to:

• The Trinity: “We see the Triune God in the glory of all creation and in the faces of the people we are called to serve. The love-relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a model for the family relationship we enjoy with our sisters, as well as with the laity, priests and brothers of the four branches of the Missionary Cenacle Family.”
• The Holy Spirit: “We seek to attract the Holy Spirit so that our own hearts may be enkindled with God’s love and that we may spread this fire to others. We ask to be filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, wisdom and fortitude especially. Together, we have been praying a perpetual novena to the Holy Spirit since 1913.”
• The Eucharist: “It is the sun and center of our lives. Every Missionary Cenacle has a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the food we need to nourish us for our missionary work.”
• The Incarnation: “Celebrating Christmas and the Annunciation remind us that God walked with us in human flesh. God is not distant, but knows and loves us completely. In response, we share that love.”
• A Practice: “Our founder, Father Thomas A. Judge, passed on to them the custom of adopting a practice: A Missionary Servant will, therefore, realize of what value and importance are the exercises of piety, for example, meditation, spiritual reading, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the giving of charity and a practice.” ~Fr. Thomas A. Judge, CM
• Ppractice begins by selecting or being assigned a virtue or an awareness that you are to put into daily practice through prayer and action. Here are some examples of a practice one might adopt: simplicity, charity, patience, kindness, providence of God, hope, the presence of God, devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament, dependence on God, humility, prudence, faith, gratitude, the Cross.

Their spirituality as Missionary Servants is expressed in their Rule of Life. Their Rule of Life explains the charism or gift of their community to the Church in greater detail.

Their Missions

They have missions in the following countries:

United States:

• Alabama
• California
• Connecticut
• Georgia
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania

Mexico:

• Xotepingo, Coyocán, Distrito Federal
• Tepepan, Xochimlco, Distrito Federal

Puerto Rico:

• San Juan
• Ponce