Apostolate

For 800 years, the Order of Preachers has sought to bring the Truth that is Christ to a world in need of evangelization. In our Congregation’s one hundred and fifty year history, we have lived the motto of the Order, “To contemplate and to give to others the fruits of our contemplation,” by giving the fruits of our contemplation in the apostolate of Catholic education. With love for Truth and dedication to the Church, our sisters have brought generations of young people the message of Christ.

Responding to the call of the new evangelization and to the growing need in the world for witness to the Gospel message, we have extended our presence in schools and missions throughout the United States and across the world.

Our mission encompasses the following goals:

• To enlighten minds and inspire hearts with knowledge and love of the Truth, especially the Person of Christ, the Source of all Truth
• To encourage reverence for the Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and fidelity to the Church
• To promote a greater awareness of the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person
• To provide students with a solid liberal arts education, so that with a strong academic foundation and the development of their personal gifts, they might more freely respond to their God-given vocation
• To promote an authentic Catholic culture, thereby enabling students to appreciate all that is good, true and beautiful
• To strengthen family life by offering support, guidance and instruction to parents in their role as the primary educators of their children

Because of their special consecration, their particular experience of the gifts of the Spirit, their constant listening to the word of God, their practice of discernment, their rich heritage of pedagogical traditions built up since the establishment of their Institute, and their profound grasp of spiritual truth, consecrated persons are able to be especially effective in educational activities and to offer a specific contribution to the work of other educators. …Equipped with this charism, consecrated persons can give life to educational undertakings permeated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity, in which young people are helped to mature humanly under the action of the Spirit. In this way a community of learning becomes an experience of grace, where the teaching program contributes to uniting into a harmonious whole the human and the divine, the Gospel and culture, faith and life. The history of the Church, from antiquity down to our own day, is full of admirable examples of consecrated persons who have sought and continue to seek holiness through their involvement in education, while at the same time proposing holiness as the goal of education. Indeed, many of them have achieved the perfection of charity through teaching. This is one of the most precious gifts which consecrated persons today can offer to young people, instructing them in a way that is full of love, according to the wise counsel of St. John Bosco: “Young people should not only be loved, but should also know that they are loved.” (Consecrated Persons and Their Missions in Schools 96)