Long Overdue Update

Sharing the Real Presence

This newsletter features a story from Robert showing how God is in control of our lives and a story from Griffin about how we must never neglect to meditate on Christ Passion. We invite you to get involved in some of our upcoming events and those who you can keep in prayer. Please continue keeping us and those we are ministering to in your prayers. We hope these newsletters can encourage you and our readers to grow in faith and in zeal for the work of the salvation of souls that is so needed in our church.

In this newsletter

1. Update about the Missionaries of the Real Presence

2. Upcoming Events

3. Prayer Intentions

Update about the Missionaries of the Real Presence

It has been a busy few months with a lot happening and we have not really taken the time to update people via our newsletter. The biggest piece of news is that we are moving parishes to St Anthony's Parish on the Southside of Milwaukee. This will be a big change, but one that we believe will be good for the missionaries and our discernment of this new community. We are thankful for the past year and a half at St Catherine's parish. Moving to St Anthony's will help us to focus more on the formation of the community as Fr Rafael Rodriguez, is the new pastor there who helped us start the Missionaries of the Real Presence at his former parish. Fr Rafael used to be a formator at the seminaries here in Milwaukee for much of his priesthood and helped us with much of our formation for the first year of our mission when we lived with him at the St Rose Rectory. We will now have a similar setup at St Anthony's Rectory where he will be able to help the missionaries with our formation. This is something that we have realized the need for more and better formation of the missionaries while at St Catherine's Parish. We will be adjusting our daily schedule to allow for mornings each day Monday through Friday to be focused on formation, prayer and work around the house and our apostolate time every day but Sunday will be dedicated to street evangelization and other direct forms of evangelization with those outside of the church. We have been discerning whether we are supposed to be more like canons regular being more attached to a specific church and praying all the divine office at that church each day or like the mendicants and we believe that we should remain praying the office at set times, but praying at different locations based on our apostolate. We plan now to pray Morning Prayer and Office of Readings every morning at St. Anthony's along with Adoration and daily Mass. We will pray Daytime Prayer at whichever parish that we are doing apostolate that day at followed by about four hours of evangelization work and end the time at the parish with Evening Prayer. We plan to be at St Casimir in the Riverwest neighborhood every Tuesday, We will be on the Northside at Mother of Good Counsel Parish every Wednesday, UW Milwaukee Newman Center and the Eastside every Saturday, St Anthony's on the Southside every Monday and Thursday and Rotating to different parishes on Friday. As there become more missionaries, we may be able to go to different parishes regularly or particular parishes more frequently. We believe that serving at a few different parishes will help us to discern what kind of populations that we are called to serve if any one particular or if it is something that we can do at any urban parish that will support us. We believe that God has been calling us to take more of the model of the Mendicants itinerant preachers.

Upcoming Events

Missionary Associates - Join us this Thursday, September 21st for this month's meeting of the Missionary Associates. We will have a new location for this months meeting at St Anthony's Parish. This is for people who volunteer with the missionaries or are interested in volunteering/supporting our work. We hope that this continues building up the community around the missionaries, getting to know others, and energizing more people to start working for the salvation of souls here in Milwaukee. This occurs on the 3rd Thursday of every month.

The schedule for the event is as follows:

Evening Prayer 5:30pm - 5:45 pm

Short talk by one of the missionaries 5:50 pm - 6:10 pm

Dinner and socializing 6:15 pm onward

Missionaries Moving Day

We will be moving from St Catherine's parish to St Anthony's parish on Saturday September 23rd. We will attend Mass at the UW Milwaukee Newman Center at 9 am and after Mass we will carpool to St Catherine's and pick up a U-Haul for some of the big items. We will provide lunch for all who come to help move. We will then go to St Anthony's to move everything in. Anyone is welcome to come help move.

Going away party with St Catherine's neighbors

The St Catherine's neighborhood has gotten used to celebrating different Catholic feast days with grilling out and games. We will have one final grill out for the Feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Thursday September 14th. We will have daytime prayer at 12:00 pm noon then we will beginning grilling, eating, playing games in the church yard and saying our goodbyes to the neighbors. Activities will be going on until Evening Prayer at 5:30 pm

Prayer Intentions

We would encourage our readers to pray for those who we have been working with in our outreach ministry. There is much fruit happening with the missionaries and we need your prayers!

Please keep those who have expressed interest in learning more about Catholicism in prayer

James, Alexis, Esha, Flo, Nickolas, Tracey, Robert, Lucious, Ellie, Cortes, Lawrence, Antoine, Deshawn, Cornell, Edward, Michael, Timayah, Myricle, Stephanie, Christine, Tina, John, Queda, Sarah, Jonnie, Jordan, Tony, Ashley, Juan, Jahi, Sherice, Mario, Timisha, Charlos, Johnny, Jerry , Jordan, Lance, Matthew, David, Jerry, Valerie, Nicholas, Elijah, Kelly, Charlos, Erica, Amanda, Gail, Annie, Monique, Christopher, Eve, Christopher, Page, Kevin, Roshawnda, Clenzo, Keter, Howard, Marquez, Cathy, Janett, Debarla, Anthony, Sebastian, Colleen

Please keep those who have started individual catechism classes and are preparing to become Catholic in prayer

Matthew, Isreal, Shaela, Michael, Darien, Brintee, Deshawn, David, IC, Curtis, Antoine, Micah

Please keep those who have stopped classes or we have lost contact with in prayer.

Vershonda, Johnny, Ohmad, Lance, Tremon, Candy, Jamie, Taylor

Please keep those who are fallen away Catholics that we have met and those who have expressed desire to come back to confession and church in prayer

Mary, Brandon, Jordan, Ed, Theodore, Shantae, Storm, Treesha, Max, Wilson, Blessing, Terrie, Johanne, Ken, O, Jack, Deja, Dolly, Alicia, Jennie, Ed, Bob, Ken, Tom, Jenny, Jack, Anthony, Deja, Catherine, Mary, Jodee, Jerry, Diana, Georgia, Thorne, Mike, Johanne, Lisa, Joyce, Dawn, Wayne, Tracy, Fae, Lettie, Terri, Joe, Jennie, Ed, Arturo, John, John, Teresa

Please keep those who have recently returned to the Catholic Church and the Sacraments

Paul, Natalie, Tom, Terri

Those who are in special need of prayer

Robert, Tyrone, Candy, Jonnie, Jamie, Jake, Bud, Deshawn, Anthony

Please pray for any men who are discerning becoming a missionary

Click Here to pray for those who we met in our first year while at St Rose of Lima Parish

About the Missionaries of the Real Presence

The Missionaries of the Real Presence are a group of lay men who live in common at the Visitation House next to St. Catherine Catholic Parish in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as they discern a charism for a new religious community to be contemplative missionaries for Urban Evangelization. We are dedicated to prayer through daily recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours in the church open to the public and evangelization to the neighborhoods surrounding our parish.

Support the Mission, Join the Mission

If you appreciate the work we are doing, consider supporting our mission financially Here.

Volunteer with us with our street ministry and teaching catechism Here

If reading about some of our stories inspires you, come and see what life as a missionary is like and visit us for a day or longer for prayer and ministry as you discern Here.

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