Do Give This Much Thought ...

THE MISSIONARY CENACLE FAMILY - An Historical Sketch

Father Thomas Augustine Judge was a realist. He knew that the future of the Cenacle would depend upon the apostolic quality of his followers, their dependence on the Spirit of God, their interdependence one with another, and their capacity to pass the torch of discipleship to a new generation of Christians. He believed that even after death, apostleship can continue through others whom our virtue has attracted to the service of God. "What more beautiful legacy can you leave," he asks, "than that of an example and life fragrant and rich in the Cenacle traditions. "

"Do give this much thought..." is not simply the title of this brief article; it is the imperative desire of our founder that charges each of us to hold ourselves responsible for the future of the Cenacle. It is a heart's summary of hope for the future. Even the barest outline of Missionary Cenacle history shows how deeply this hope was sealed in faith.

When Thomas Augustine Judge was ordained a Vincentian priest at the dawn of the twentieth century, the Church in the United States faced the task of absorbing thousands of immigrants from the Catholic countries of eastern and southern Europe. During the early years of his priesthood, the Church experienced the revival of Nativism, active proselytizing of Catholic immigrants, and the erosion of Catholic faith among the uninstructed, the indifferent, and those Americanized Catholics who reacted to the apparent foreignness and paternalism of the Church.

A ministry experience of ten years, and the daily struggle with these issues as they touched the lives of the people he served, convinced Father Judge that the priest by himself was insufficient to meet the pastoral needs of the day. He realized that the latent, but undirected, power for good present in the laity must be tapped. Therefore, at a time when the lay apostolate was a considerable innovation, Father Judge preached apostolic involvement to the general body of the laity.

On April 11, 1909, at a meeting in 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 apostolic band, later known and accepted in the Church as the Cenacle Lay Apostolate.

Father Judge became their example of missionary zeal and personal prayer. He taught them that the essence of apostolic spirituality resides in devotion to the Trinity, and that this devotion must find its expression in love and concern for one's neighbor--especially those who have the greatest spiritual and temporal need, or those who are least appealing.

Between the years 1910 and 1915, when Father Judge was an active member of the Vincentian mission band, he established lay apostolate groups in major cities and small towns from Maine to West Virginia. During these years, with special counsel from Father Judge, some laity gave themselves completely to the work of the Missionary Cenacle in communal apostolic life. 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. 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. By 1915, when Father Judge was unexpectedly assigned to a rural Vincentian mission in Opelika, Alabama, some of the men and women he had nurtured in the apostolate 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 distinct religious apostolic life emerged.

Principally for legal purposes, members of the Cenacle in Alabama were incorporated in February, 1918 under the title "Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity." The incorporation was specific at the time to the "Catholic ladies" working in Alabama, but this same title represented the pivotal devotion and apostolic thrust of both the men's and women's emerging religious communities. For some time the name was employed by both groups.

Very soon, the call to mission spread beyond Alabama as bishops and pastors from other parts of the country asked for the services of the Missionary Servants. Father Judge counseled both men and women of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity that their central mission to humanity was to be servants of the Triune God in the lives of the people they served. How they were to be such servants, he expressed in two guiding principles: preservation of the faith, and zeal for the abandoned. He noted further that they were to "serve the Church... to think with the Church... to have at heart what the Church has at heart."

Approbation of the life and mission of the Cenacle began with the blessing of Bishop Edward P. Allen of Mobile and, in the course of some years, was variously expressed in commendations from other members of the hierarchy. What Father Judge came to call the "Missionary Cenacle Family" grew steadily. He promoted it with all the zeal of a spiritual giant and he spoke of it often with strong affection:

Within this Cenacle family was a young woman of unusual natural talent and extraordinary spiritual leadership. Louise Margaret Keasey, a school teacher from Butler, Pennsylvania, 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. By 1919, she 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.

During this time, there was another young school teacher in the Cenacle lay branch whose spiritual dynamism and zeal paralleled that of Mother Boniface. Margaret Healy of the Brooklyn Cenacle was filled with an eagerness to sacrifice herself for the love of God. She had a keen desire to become a member of this new religious community. To her amazement, Father Judge discouraged the idea and told Margaret not to "go South." He suggested that she had a "special task to accomplish as a lay missionary" and that her place was "in the world," encouraging the development of the Missionary Cenacle family, particularly the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate. What at the time may have appeared simply as the insight of a good spiritual director, became in the obedient response of this laywoman, a prophecy born of the Spirit. Through many difficult years, Margaret Healy (known to most Cenacle members as "Doctor Healy" - a title earned through her doctorate in history from Fordham University in 1925) was like the spiritual glue of the Cenacle Family: bonding members of the different branches, fostering vocations to religious branches, alerting the hearts of countless students in her classes to the needs of the church, and becoming the personification of Cenacle apostolic spirituality among the laity.

Both Mother Boniface and Margaret Healy became friends, prayerful allies of Father Judge and sharing, no doubt, an informal council--the distant prototype perhaps of today's Missionary Cenacle Family Council. In January 1928, Margaret was appointed the General Custodian of the lay branch with the complete confidence of both Father Judge and Mother Boniface. She held this position for many years, encouraging between times the formation of a lay branch of the Cenacle offering the profession of evangelical counsels with life in the world. The Pious Union, first called the Missionary Cenacle Institute, was brought forward in 1950 through the interest and encouragement of the General Custodians of the ST's (priests and Brothers); the MSBT's (Sisters) and the MCA (laity). This "new" Cenacle life, later known as Blessed Trinity Missionary Institute, is, so to speak, a gift of the Cenacle Family to itself It was certainly close to the spirit and insight that had long occupied Father Judge and was lived personally by Dr. Margaret Healy.

Yet, it seems fair to say that Father Judge did not set out with a preconceived plan to found the Missionary Cenacle Family, or to put himself forward in any way. Rather, he was preoccupied with a desire to give spiritual nourishment to those people who were deprived of it or who rejected it for whatever reason. He was alive with an ardent love for the Church-something that seemed to "haunt" him all the days of his life. And he was particularly concerned in the earliest years of his priesthood with a lay movement sponsored by his beloved Vincentian Community: the Archconfraternity of the Holy Agony. It was the combination of these loves that led him to recruit some hand picked women from the Archconfraternity of Saint John's Parish, Brooklyn, New York for much needed local missionary work there.

In the first decade of his priesthood, Father Judge had tried, through his superiors, to enliven the Archconfraternity and to give it an apostolic base. Within his own Vincentian community, he was unsuccessful in this regard, and by hindsight, we might see this as the hand of God offering the possibility for the birth of the Missionary Cenacle Family. Had Father Judge been successful in his internal efforts with the Archconfraternity, it is doubtful that the need for the Cenacle would have come about.

His desire expressed in his own words at a later time was to invite the laity into his priesthood, that is, to work with him for the preservation of the faith. This is the comprehensive idea of ministry that he transmitted to the Cenacle family and it is linked with his understanding of the role of the laity in the mission of the Church, This is how he phrased the link in speaking to delegates to the Catholic Charities Convention meeting in Philadelphia in 1923:

Father Judge did not think of the laity in terms of "helping" the priest in his ministry, although he sometimes had to express himself this way. The whole tone of his priestly life was really to evoke an apostolic spirit in the laity that is proper to them. These words addressed to lay men and women are a clear measure of his intention:

And he continues: "...through numberless ways," you can show that "the Church is Helpful... the Church is health-giving... the Church is soul-saving. " The language may not be felicitous today, but it contains the passion of his love for the Church and his appreciation of the laity within its life.

The best summation of Father Judge's general intent comes from his own lips: "Make every Catholic an apostle," This thinking, coupled with his very active work in promoting the Cenacle Lay Apostolate, was surely the reason behind his being sent away at a time when his inspiration of the laity was the provocation of some pastors. What better way to remove him from contact with large numbers of Catholics than to send him to a rural, and at the time, a crippled Vincentian mission in Alabama. No doubt his long-suffering superiors expected that he would expend his best energies in bringing some life to that mission. And he did.

In Alabama, Father Judge continued to operate within the same vision of priest and laity being co-laborers in the Church's mission. He called for some volunteers to come south- some women came in direct response to his plea; some men followed him south as though they had advance knowledge that they were following a mystic. We all know what followed. We never tire of telling the story; even in this brief history, we may be forgiven for repeating it in different words.

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 a 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 Cenacle Lay Apostolate as well. Father Judge wrote to the Cenacle at large and he did not hide his feelings:

Also in that same year, Father Judge was permitted by his Vincentian superiors to give full time to the work of directing the Cenacle.

Late in the decade of the twenties, in a year inglorious to the world for its financial crash, the first priests and brothers of the Missionary Cenacle Family received canonical status from Rome and were established as a clerical institute under the title of "Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity."

Mother Boniface died in 1931. Less than three months after her death, in February 1932, the sisters received canonical status from Rome under the original title, "Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity." Father Judge had worked for this; it was a definite and specific decision of his to seek canonical status and when it came he was overjoyed, for the new status incorporated the old from which it had evolved. The Cenacle Lay Apostolate was to remain and the rules of both religious congregations assert that members will foster and train lay apostles for the mission of the Church, with particular reference to the Cenacle laity.

Some years earlier, in 1918, Father Judge had said: "For a long time, I have been praying and praying that God would work out for us the perfection of the Cenacle organization." Now, very near the end of his pastoral ministry, he was witnessing that perfection. He had the Missionary Cenacle Family, a miniature of the Church in mission. Father Judge charged the religious members of the Family to be the sanctuary where the fire of the Cenacle spirit is kept. Father Judge died in 1933.

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Missionary Cenacle Family continued its growth. In 1958, each of the religious congregations, the one of priests and Brothers, and the other of Sisters, received Pontifical Status and the Decree of Praise from Rome. The original Cenacle Lay Apostolate is now known as the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate. It has given birth to the Blessed Trinity Missionary Institute which was canonically erected in the Archdiocese of New York in 1964.

Dr. Healy who had labored lovingly for the BTMI, and the Cenacle generally, lived on to experience both the joy of Cenacle growth and the pain of strained relationships that followed upon the loss of the charismatic founder. Margaret had the grace to live into old age as the amiable and welcoming friend of Cenacle persons--whatever their personal views or positions. She died at the MSBT Motherhouse in 1982.

Between the mid-thirties and the mid-seventies, the "family idea" that was so dear to Father Judge met with tensions, some disillusionment, personality conflicts, the search for autonomy, and canonical restrictions that seemed to wound the sense of the whole as family. This situation is candidly acknowledged in the "Joint Council Statement on Family Spirit" of 1977:

Nevertheless, this same document records with gratitude how "members of the communities kept the embers of joint cooperation living." Beyond this, individual members, whether through personal friendship, shared love of a ministry, and/or appreciation of the various vocational calls within the Cenacle, corresponded, met, labored and prayed together to whatever extent was possible. The family gatherings at the annual feasts of Pentecost and Christ the King--held now for several decades--are notable for inspiring lay and religious members.

There were efforts by those in office as well: at times, there were meetings of the General Custodians; in the 1950's a joint council (ST's and MSBT'S) meeting was held, but its relation to the MCF, if any, is unrecorded. In February 1963, there was a meeting of the General Councils of the ST's, MSBT's and the MCA. In October 1968, a Joint Council meeting met with little apparent success.

Then, as a result of interest in shared ministries, the Fifth General Cenacle of the ST's called for top-level and community-wide discussions with the MSBT'S, the BTMI and the MCA. A similar call had been issued by the MSBT General Cenacle.

In the Fall of 1973, a Joint Council meeting was held. It was a new beginning. At this meeting it was agreed to meet regularly and to delay any business until participants could relate as a group. Although the underlying theme that had initiated the meetings was shared ministries, it opened up other questions about prayer, spirituality, etc. Because of the need to resolve their own distinct issues, the Joint Council did not pursue the idea of meeting with the other branches.

By 1977 the Joint Council seems to have been interested in promoting shared ministry wherever possible (this concerned primarily members of the religious communities). The administrations were conscious of the struggle that this would entail and of the need for serious preparation that would begin early in the apostolic formation of candidates, and of "collaborative study, research and dialogue." Actually, their statement reflects some efforts that had been underway for much of the decade: aspects of novitiate programs that were shared by members of both religious communities; research and dialogue that was being carried on by various members, committees and commissions- lay ministries "promotion" to which both congregations had assigned personnel, cooperation in vocation recruitment, and many other areas in which members of the Cenacle family had labored together.

Yet, the 1977 Joint Council Statement can be viewed as the watershed capturing the sentiments and renewing the hopes expressed by Father Judge about the family spirit in his conference of May 1924. What makes the 1977 document so significant is that it comes from the religious leadership as a formal statement of their conviction and intent with respect to the Cenacle family. Furthermore, the Joint Council members who prepared the statement on family spirit showed their sincerity by calling for a meeting of the Councils of the Missionary Cenacle Family the Fall of that same year. The General Councils of the MCA and the BTMI were invited to meet with the General Councils of the ST's and MSBT'S. This was an historic meeting; the BTMI had not existed as such in earlier times when Cenacle religious and laity had met in council with Father Judge and Mother Boniface. It was also historic in that it followed upon a Joint Statement that desired to make "this family spirit a vibrant reality so that the life of the Missionary Cenacle will be an authentic gospel witness in the church."

From 1977 until 1995, the General Councils of the ST's and MSBT's met regularly under the name "Joint Council." This Joint Council also met regularly with the General Councils of the MCA and the BTMI. These meetings of the four General Councils of the Missionary Cenacle Family, directly or indirectly, made great headway in promoting the family spirit, in developing our common bonds, and in exploring Cenacle spirituality and ministry.

Father Judge held that "prayer for one another is a mark of God's favor upon the Cenacles. " In this spirit, the MCF Council decided to offer a special prayer for the Cenacle Family at each of its meetings. Written by one of the Council members for this original purpose about 1990-91, the prayer was later distributed throughout the Missionary Cenacle.

As the decade of the nineties opened, the General Councils of the four branches of the Missionary Cenacle Family adopted the following statement on "Future Vision for the Cenacle Family: "

Five years after this pronouncement, the members of the Missionary Cenacle Family Councils made a significant decision: to function as a single Council so that they could speak with one voice. While each branch maintains its own identity and will deal in Council with its distinct issues, the Missionary Cenacle Family Council, as a single entity, "Will focus on exploring our Mission as a Family in the Church, and how we as a Family Council implement this mission based on the priorities of Family Council, not those of each Branch...... (1995).

Just a year earlier, what has been called "the challenge of Arbuckle" was experienced by the General Council members of the four branches of the Missionary Cenacle Family (I 994). Father Gerald Arbuckle, an internationally known anthropologist, was engaged to lead a workshop for the four General Councils in exploring the history, present status, and direction in which the Missionary Cenacle Family is moving. The initiative for this workshop came from the General Custodian of the MCA. It was then fully supported by all the branches, both in their participation and their subsequent determination to take up the challenge which reads in part:

This challenge was not entirely new to the members of the Family Council, nor to the Cenacle Family at large. It has been prepared for in a number of ways, some of which are already mentioned. In addition, the Trinity Mission Center at Stirling, NJ is viewed as a Family project, Saint Joseph's Shrine in Stirling, NJ hosts various family activities and engages Cenacle Family personnel; Trinita in CT; Holy Trinity, Al; and the Cenacle Family development projects in Puerto Rico are further examples of current MCF cooperation. Offices for the MCA and the Missionary Cenacle Press are provided by the religious branches. Formation and spirituality programs have been a family affair with members serving on committees for retreats, for the Missionary Cenacle Volunteers, and for Missionary Cenacle Family Conferences.

The Conferences have had remarkable success and impact, both in strengthening the ties of family members and in attracting potential vocations. The first MCF Conference, held in Philadelphia in October 1990 had as its major theme "Our Charisma in the 90's". It attracted almost 300 persons from all branches. Insights, learning, socializing, and Cenacle enthusiasm ran high. Requests for more resulted in a second Conference in Eiffel, Alabama in October 1994 for which the Conference Committee anticipated the new millennium with the theme: "Our Cenacle Family's Mission in the Twenty-first Century." The Family gathering "Jubilee/Jubileo 2000" is coming. It signals the bilingual, international flavor of the Missionary Cenacle together with the hope and determination to take counsel on an even wider scale: "...on the gift which the Missionary Cenacle Family is to the Mission of the Church in the Third Millennium."

All this was preceded in the decade of the eighties by an important milestone in the Missionary Cenacle: Rome's approval of the one Rule of Life for both religious congregations, later adapted and embraced by the lay branches. In 1987, the Symposium on Missionary Cenacle Spirituality was a "first" on several counts: as a collaborative project of all four branches; as a bilingual event, making use of videotaping to allow greater participation; and as an attempt to extend Cenacle family gatherings beyond a single day.

The Missionary Cenacle Spiritual Guides were set in place, Missionary Cenacle Family Retreats were held; the MSBT's distributed a vocation prayer which asked for blessings in this regard especially on the Missionary Cenacle family, and an all-branch Editorial Board was established to promote the publication of Missionary Cenacle Family writings. While having little success at that time, a renewed effort is currently taking place.

A very successful separate publication, however, has been the Missionary Cenacle ORDER, sponsored and prepared by members of the Missionary Cenacle Family and available to all as a source of common daily meditation, principally from the writings of Father Judge, but from Church documents as well. The Missionary Cenacle Press has distributed monographs and other material for the entire family. In addition, full length manuscripts have been written by Cenacle members on Father Judge, Mother Boniface, Dr. Healy, and the Cenacle lay apostolate, all of which witness to the value of a "family working in the Church." Through the initiative and implementation of an MCA member, the Missionary Cenacle Family was introduced to the world on the Internet with its own Home Page, in Spanish and English, carrying emblems of all four branches and a picture of Father Judge (I 996).

Father Judge was exceedingly conscious of the general apostolic role of the laity and from this consciousness, in God's watching, there arose the specific special commitment to Cenacle apostolic spirituality which is called the Missionary Cenacle Family. Yet, his vision was truly catholic and, in his own lifetime, he gave the example that membership in the Missionary Cenacle Family is a vocation which did not relieve one of the responsibility to develop an apostolic spirit in those who might not be interested in this family per se, or who might not be called to it as a way of life.

Thus, the Missionary Cenacle Family has an obligation to foster and develop lay apostles for the mission of the Church. At the same time, members are committed to mission within a family which mutually respects and cherishes one another in distinctness: these differences making it possible for the Missionary Cenacle to be a fuller sign of the Church. Married and celibate laity; clergy, and religious men and women all live various aspects of the one charism whose essence is the same and whose distinct expressions magnify the Lord. In some mysterious and profound way, the Missionary Cenacle Family reflects the image of the Triune God in the world: one life with equal yet varying expressions.

In their unusual first joint letter to the/Cenacle family, the four General Custodians write:

WHO HAVE BEEN OUR COMPANIONS ALONG THE WAY? What is lacking in this brief historical sketch that you might fill in with your anecdotes, your remembrances of individuals and of large or small historical moments in Missionary Cenacle life? Except for the three principals who were so instrumental in the evolution of the Missionary Cenacle Family, no

other individual names appear. This has been deliberate so that you, the reader, may remember flour companions along the way." Who influenced you; nurtured your vocation; worked alongside you; coaxed, cajoled, encouraged, or perhaps reprimanded you? What would you like to tell us about your Missionary Cenacle experiences? How might you describe yourself and your Missionary Cenacle life to a prospective member of the family? How would you like to be remembered by the next generation of the Missionary Cenacle.

By his prayerful attention to the Holy Spirit, Father Judge gave the Missionary Cenacle Family its past; but he also willed it to the future. He told his immediate followers that they should give constant effort to the care of the Missionary Cenacle, he promised that he would give it his constant prayer. We, the current followers in that vision and that consecration, are the inheritors of that promise of prayer and that commitment to the future. "The future is in your hands," he has said. Do give this much thought.

Sister Joseph Miriam Blackwell, MSBT

Original 1984; revised and expanded: August 1998