The figure of the missionary almost seems like a relic of an age long gone in the minds of some. The Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the missionary nature of the Church caused significant shifts in the concept of the “missionary” among congregations and societies with a missionary charism. Moreover, the majority of vocations in missionary communities today come from the global South, while many European and North American countries have seen steep declines in vocations.

Nonetheless, the Spirit is still calling young men from across the world to the missionary vocation — including myself! Here I share my experience of the Spiritan missionary vocation in hopes that it may be witness to the meaning of mission today.

Called to Be a Spiritan

The Congregation of the Holy Spirit traces its origins to the foundation of the Seminary of the Holy Spirit in Paris on Pentecost 1703. Servant of God Claude François Poullart des Places, himself a seminarian at the time, established the seminary to train poor seminarians to serve the poor through a rigorous and orthodox course of study. After nearly dying during the French Revolution and struggling to re-emerge in the following decades, the congregation was rejuvenated in the mid-19th century when it was joined to the Society of the Holy Heart of Mary, founded by Venerable Francis Mary Paul Libermann, a convert from Judaism, and two friends.

The congregation received new life in its mission and charism, which is the “evangelization of the poor” (Spiritan Rule of Life, No. 4). Our spirituality is defined as “practical union,” an integration of our apostolic work with our prayer life to form a dynamic unit (No. 5).

I first encountered the Spiritans when I began a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2013 at Duquesne University, which was founded by the congregation. Despite having a relatively a-religious upbringing and a misguided adolescence, I began to take my faith seriously at Duquesne, ultimately discerning that I had a calling to the Spiritans. I left pharmacy school and entered formation in August 2016.

Sent to Chicago in August 2018 for my novitiate, I professed first vows July 22, 2019, the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. I then spent two years in Trinidad studying theology at the Seminary of St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs while living and ministering in one of our parishes with seven other Spiritan seminarians. Thereafter, I lived for two years in Brazil for my pastoral mission experience. I principally served in a Spiritan parish in the urban periphery of São Paulo, but also had a brief experience with my confreres in the Amazon. More recently, I was sent back to Chicago in August 2023 to complete my theological training, professed final vows in June 2024 and was ordained a deacon in May 2025.

Expanding Horizons

From my youngest years, I’ve always been curious about geography — not just territories and places but the cultures, histories and languages of innumerable places across the world. Reading about the shape of lands and the lives of people who had radically different understandings of the world captured my imagination and cultivated an interest in what existed beyond my own geographic and cultural horizons.

Yet, beginning in my transition from secondary school to college, I also had a profound sense of the banality of popular American culture. I detected a general notion that the immediate is the only thing that matters, resulting in an acute shallowness, a common feature of our postmodern society, in which one’s individual will is confused with morality and a meaningful life, in which the phrase “I want it” is considered enough justification to do nearly anything. Further, I perceived that capitalism dominated everything, even the definition of the human person. From a capitalist standpoint, one’s entire existence is assumed to be a process of trading as many pieces of paper (currency) as possible until one dies, a perspective that can only collapse into capitalistic nihilism.

However, as I set out to truly live my faith and discern my vocation, that sense of the horizon rose once more. First, the stories of Spiritan missionaries from around the world piqued my geographic and cultural fascinations. Second, the possibility of a form of life that might transcend the shallowness I had previously perceived ignited something within my inner core. After Communion at the papal Mass during the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September 2015, these two horizons met in a moment of providential kairos. I recognized that the Spirit was drawing me outside of my current situation and into a different life, from the melancholic comfort of banality into the joyful ambiguity of life lived to the fullest. All I could do was weep — weep in sorrow for the old that I would lose and in joy for the new that was to come.

Reimagining Mission

Entering formation in August 2016, I was excited to get down to the work of “mission.” There was just one problem: my concept of mission and the missionary. I had erroneously considered the missionary to be a heroic figure who travels far to the missions and experiences arduous labors against which he emerges victorious. It was almost as if the missionary represented Hercules rather than the apostles!

I had imagined missions, but needed to transcend that mentality and grasp the reality of mission itself — to move from a problematic, egocentric hero narrative to a focus on the Gospel of Christ Jesus. The former almost has a sense of Pelagianism in it (among other problematic overtones), while the latter demands that we sense the winds of the Spirit and attune the sails of our heart to catch them. The former tries to light a fire with no tools; the latter is attentive to the sparks that the Spirit strikes on the flint of our hearts, ready to set the kindling of our being ablaze with zeal.

During my novitiate, I was confronted with this house built on sand. To be blunt, no one can be a hero in novitiate; there is no victory in prayer and meditation, nor in studying the Spiritan Rule of Life and Spiritan history, nor in gardening and house chores. But, in that space, two realities became evident. First, there is no real sustenance or truth to one’s vocation without love, received and shared (cf. Eph 4:15). One must be evangelized by divine love in one’s heart, or run the risk of pride, undue cynicism and/or self-centeredness that is toxic to holiness.

Following Father Libermann, the holiness of the missionary is crucial to the mission itself, and such holiness is impossible apart from the grace of God’s love. Second, we are not people whose lives have a mission. Rather, life itself is a mission, a sending from the love of the Father in the Spirit to proclaim Christ and serve others as he did (cf. Gaudete et Exsultate, No. 27). In accord with a general trend in the Church’s missiology over the last several decades that prefers to discuss mission as a singular reality rather than individual missions, the notion that I would be sent to a mission became increasingly strange to me and has only grown stranger. It creates a problematic center-periphery paradigm that attributes Christ’s commission to the apostles to a select few.

However, by assuming my baptismal identity and deepening it as a Spiritan, I came to discover more fully my participation in the mission of salvation entrusted to the whole Church by Christ himself, a common participation that involves the entirety of the People of God journeying together in faith and hope for the kingdom. Indeed, after making vows and living Spiritan life more fully, I have only deepened my resolve in these two principles: the necessity of divine love and the united nature of the mission of the Church.

Encounters and Re-encounters

After professing first vows, I was eager to begin living Spiritan life and experience the beauty and grace of the diversity inherent in the global Church. However, I found myself principally encountering others instead of engaging in proselytizing acts, trying to understand people, histories, cultures and concepts so that I may truly journey in communion with the portion of the People of God among whom I found myself.

Here, the image of the individualist missionary “hero” unveils itself as isolating, reifying an alienated relationship between the missionary and the People of God. On the contrary, Spiritan missionary life requires an openness to encounter and re-encounter. We must first admit that we are strangers in a different land and proceed with humility, respect and the courage to be open to others. As in the meeting between Peter and Cornelius, there will be some misunderstandings (cf. Acts 10:25-26), but without inculturation our pastoral action will be fruitless.

However, the encounter with a new reality invites re-encounters with the Gospel, with the Spirit’s vibrance, with the providential goodness of the Father, and even with our image of Christ. A missionary, thus, is re-evangelized and transformed. For example, the witness of devotion to Our Lady in Brazil, especially to the country’s patroness, Our Lady of Aparecida, caused me to re-examine the place of Marian devotion in my life and Spiritan tradition. It brought me to re-encounter the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Francis Libermann’s thought and, thus, awakened a stronger personal devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as my model of fidelity to the Holy Spirit and of apostolic life.

Not all re-encounters are comfortable though. In my return to the United States, I consistently find myself culturally dislocated, feeling somewhat distant from American culture. However, this has allowed me to see the needs of evangelization here in a new light: the need to be attentive to the growing curiosity about tradition, the mental health crisis among young people, the awakening desire for meaningful relationships, the importance of education that truly forms the human person instead of perpetuating unconscious ignorance, and the cry for justice.

St. Paul as a Model

As I moved closer to my diaconate ordination, toward a configuration to service in proclaiming the Gospel, in liturgy and in charitable works, I increasingly reflected on St. Paul. Perhaps this reflection was somewhat ironic since Paul isn’t generally remembered as an ordained minister in patristic thought, but two major factors generated this interest.

First, Paul existed at the intersection of several different cultures in the diaspora, in Judea and among Gentiles. Yet, in this matrix, his base conviction in the Gospel of Christ, rooted in his encounter with the risen and glorified Lord, blossomed into creative thought that pulled from a variety of elements for the sake of evangelization, for the sake of bringing the people among whom he had established communities to an encounter with and understanding of Jesus Christ. Reflecting on this helped me deepen my knowledge of how other cultures have transformed me and, indeed, influenced my proclamation of the Gospel.

Second, Paul consistently placed himself at the service of evangelization, even to the point of self-endangerment. Reflecting on this generated in me a deeper courage to go forth boldly in proclamation and service to spread the very same Gospel that Paul proclaimed.

Together, they excited me to be ordained and serve the Church as a deacon. Even though my diaconate may only last about one year, I am praying that it will be a deeply fruitful time in experiencing life as an ordained minister in the Church and as a Spiritan missionary.

Please pray for me as I go forward, that, like Paul, my resolve may remain strong and my life may be an evangelizing sign of the joy and power of life in the Spirit of Christ and give glory to God the Father. 

MATTHEW BROEREN, CSSp, was ordained as a transitional deacon May 24, 2025, at the Duquesne University Chapel of the Holy Spirit.