The Assumptionists are a Roman Catholic religious family, a community of apostolic brothers and priests.

Our religious family was founded 150 years ago in the south of France by the Venerable Emmanuel d'Alzon, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Nîmes.

We are formally called Augustinians of the Assumption. Our Rule of Life, together with our spirituality, is based on the writings and theology of Saint Augustine (d. 430 A.D.). We are convinced that living together in a spirit of brotherly love has much apostolic value and can be a sign of the Kingdom of God in today's societies. Accordingly, community life has a great deal of importance for us. Assumptionists focus their apostolic energies in three main directions: ecumenism, work with the poor, and serious study in the broadest sense of the word.

The Assumptionists have never limited themselves to defined types of apostolic works. Our motto is Adveniat Regnum Tuum - Thy Kingdom Come. Accordingly, all that advances the coming of the Reign of God has always been deemed worthy of our apostolic energy. From the very beginning, the Assumptionists have been in charge of a wide variety of apostolic works. This continues to be true to this very day. Emmanuel d'Alzon wrote,
"Our spiritual life, our religious substance, our reason for being as Augustinians of the Assumption is to be found in our motto
Adveniat Regnum Tuum
the coming ofthe Reign of God in our souls, the coming of the Reign of God in the world."

Even though we were founded in France (and that is where we are still most numerous), we have quickly expanded to all continents and are today present in a variety of locations all over the world.

We have five "sister" Congregations of women, with whom we often work and who share with us much of our spirituality:

• The Religious of the Assumption
  
• The Little Sisters of the Assumption
  
• The Oblates of the Assumption
  
• The Orantes of the Assumption
  
• The Sisters of Saint Joan of Arc
  

A Life Lived in Community

As sons and disciples of Saint Augustine, the Assumptionists live their faith, prayer and apostolate in community. Is this ideal lived out every day? Not always. It is a daily choice, an act of faith, a road that cleaves to the Gospel. As brothers, we share everything that makes up the life of a family: everyday chores - grocery shopping, cooking, housework, money problems, news, worries, relaxation - and at the center, faith and hope in Jesus Christ. This way of life helps us to rediscover the demands of everyday fraternal evangelical life - truth in relationships, spontaneity, gracious listening, mutual acceptance and forgiveness. The source and summit of our life together is the Eucharist. "No one can experience the joy of this life unless he commits his whole person to it," says our Rule of Life. Emmanuel d'Alzon wrote to his religious, "We shall ask the Spirit of Love to unite us to God, to Jesus Christ, to our brothers."

The Great Causes of God and Man

The Assumptionist Community exists for the coming of the Kingdom. The spirit of the Founder impels us to make the great causes of God and of Man our very own, to go wherever God is threatened in Man and Man is threatened as the image of God. We must give proof of boldness, initiative and selflessness, in fidelity to the teaching and orientation of the Church (Rule of Life, n.4). In a world where we share the quest and efforts of the human family to become fully human, we recognize in Jesus Christ the perfect man, and we find in God the deepest motivation for our life and action. God wants to make all human beings his people, his friend, his sons and daughters. (Rule of Life, n. 23)
By being faithful to God in our choices, in our daily work, in our openness to others and our availability in times of need, our whole life, under the action of the Holy Spirit, becomes an encounter with God. (Rule of Life, n. 45)

The Spirit of the Assumptionist Family

"One mind and one heart intent upon God." (Rule of St Augustine) The great passion of the Assumptionist Family is the Kingdom of God. It is God's great plan for the entire human race, manifested in Jesus Christ and made present by His Church. As the Revealer, he makes perfectly clear what it is that dishonors God and Man, so as to bring remedy to it. A world glutted with riches but in which people are dying of hunger is simply unacceptable. The Reign of God is the Assumption Family's great passion. It opens up vast horizons, broad and distant vistas, carried out in great programs as well as humble accomplishments. But from the beginning to the end, it is the work of God.

That is why his messenger must be in deep harmony with the Kingdom he is proclaiming, after the example of Jesus, the supreme Apostle. To follow in his footsteps, to adopt his sentiments and ways of being and acting is imperative. Emmanuel d'Alzon repeats this constantly: "Before working to make Jesus Christ reign over others, be sure he reigns over you." And again: "Let us pay little heed to our own concerns, as long as Jesus Christ is proclaimed."

The Kingdom of God is the password for the Assumption Family, indelibly stamping its whole life. Study, prayer and action - these form the rhythm of our days, constituting for us three distinct yet mutually interrelated forms of the same passion for the Kingdom. In an apostolic community, mission and prayer continually interact. The mission of each member nourishes fraternal life, which in turn stimulates the mission. For apostolic activities must be concerted, shared and evaluated in a climate of fraternal candor and prayer. This faith-sharing is important in an apostolic community. It is thus that the community becomes "one mind and one heart intent on God." (Rule of St Augustine)

Three Hallmarks of Assumptionist Spirituality

The Assumptionist Spirit and our Augustinian heritage can be summed up in three words: Truth, Charity and Unity. The life and the work an Assumptionist does is marked by a strong doctrinal, social and ecumenical character. These three hallmarks are the signature of the Assumptionist Family. They have had a profound influence on its history and given birth to many of its works, from the most scholarly to the most unpretentious. Very often an Assumptionist's mission is to specialize in one of the three - as a teacher, scholar or university professor, preacher or journalist. Others, as men directly involved in social action, fight the ills of our society. Finally, some of us work through ecumenism for unity of all Christians. But each of us must bear the imprint of all these three aspects. For when truth is cut off from charity and unity, it degenerates into haughty self-sufficiency. Charity that does not take truth and justice into account does not deserve to be called charity. And unity without charity is short-lived. This is a lofty road, great and arduous, but it leads far and high.

Our Superior General, Fr. Claude Maréchal, wrote recently with regard to our ecumenical aspect,
"The ecumenical spirit, which we want to be ours, rejects intolerance, narrowness of vision, sectarianism, prejudice and exclusivism. It seeks to understand before passing judgement. It is welcoming and open to dialogue. It listens more than it speaks. It has such reverence for God and truth that it can never consider its own experience as the norm for measuring everything."
(Letter of the Superior General, 1990)

Teaching At All Levels

The Assumtionists have run and sponsored, for nearly a century, an extensive network of high schools, mostly in France but in other countries as well. The initial aim of this work was to provide poor youths from the countryside with an affordable education, while at the same time encouraging them to think about the possibility of a specific call to priesthood or brotherhood, whether it be with the Assumptionists or not. This approach has given the Church countless priests who have served in the Assumptionist Family as well as in many other congregations and dioceses. We have also founded high schools, mostly in cities, which aimed at giving a Christian education to the children of the elite of society, hoping in the process to increase the influence of Christian life on society when these children become adults and take their place in society.

Today, the Assumptionist Family worldwide is actively involved in eduction and we are running a number of schools around the world. In our schools and colleges, Assumptionists and lay professors are invited to form a real teaching community inspired by the Gospel. They strive to build a Catholic educational institution which provides good teaching as well as a solid Christian formation for its students. Lay persons collaborate with the religious on the faculty, staff and administration of these schools and colleges. With trust and candor, the Congregation and the lay collaborators have, through serious discussion, worked out a plan of Christian education to be put into practice. This plan stresses the ideas precious to the Assumtionist Family: evangelical inspiration, collaboration, and the family spirit which has been ours from the first.

Assumptionist Apostolates

The Assumptionist Family has been multi-faceted since its beginnings. Our founder never limited us to one type of apostolic work. All our activities are at the service of the Kingdom of God, but they are broad in scope: from theological scholarship to foreign missions, with a real propensity for the Eastern Churches and the search for Christian unity; nurturing vocations for the service of the Church; the communication of the Christian message by the spoken and written word in education and the media; serving as parish priests, social workers, scientists, campus ministers... the list goes on...

The criteria for an Assumptionist? Aptitude and desire, but above all a passion to bring the message and wisdom of Jesus Christ to today's world. As Emmanuel d'Alzon wrote:
Our Lord said: "I have come to set a fire." Whoever wants to join in the work of Jesus Christ must be ablaze with an immense love. That is the Apostle's cry: "The love of Christ impels us."

From the very beginning, the Assumptionists have been engaged in a wide variety of apostolic works. All that advances the coming of the Reign of God has always been deemed worthy of our apostolic energy. This continues to be true to this very day. Some of us are teachers, engineers, wood-workers, journalists ; others are missionaries, pilgrimage directors, hospital chaplains, parish priests. Our activities run the gamut from theological research to foreign missions. We place particular emphasis on work for unity and relations with the Eastern churches, on fostering vocations in the Church and on the communication of the Christian message through social work, the media, preaching and teaching.

TEACHING

The Assumption has never forgotten that its name and in a way its vocation come from the school where we were founded (Assumption College in Nîmes, France). Though the Assumption was never an exclusively teaching order, the founder wanted all of his religious to be “teachers” in at least the broad sense of that word. Early on d’Alzon concentrated on the education of the leading classes in France, but then later founded minor seminaries (that he called “alumniates”) to educate students of lesser means and even opened a number of orphanages. The Congregation continues to be involved in the world of education, at the secondary and university levels, as school administrators, teachers, chaplains, and leaders of different catechetical and youth movements.

COMMUNICATIONS & MEDIA

The media are heavily criticized today, and in the 19th century the Church was hardly enthusiastic about this form of communication. The Assumptionists were among the first to dedicate themselves to the mass media and to take up the challenge of communicating a Christian position in a secular setting and to encourage genuine dialogue between the Church and the world in which a great variety of people live and work. Admittedly a major ambition! From the primitive working spaces of the “Bonne Presse” publishing house in Paris, France, to the modern, computerized services of “Bayard Presse” today, still in Paris, but in a dozen other countries of the world as well. The challenge remains the same: whether the content is religious or secular, whether it is addressed to young children or senior citizens, it is the same Gospel vision that is at stake. The Assumption wants to be present at the heart of the world, a word more and more taken up with the media.

MISSION WORK

How could you possibly be an apostle of the Kingdom – Thy Kingdom Come ! – without wanting to go where Christ’s good news is hardly known? Some religious families are essentially “missionary”, but again that is not the case with the Assumption. We are “generalists” when it comes to ministry, and so from the beginning we have wanted to travel abroad to work in the “emerging Churches”: in Africa, in China, in Latin America… Now these Churches are forming their own clergy and becoming in turn missionaries. Today, many young people from the Congo, from Madagascar, and now from Russia and Eastern Europe, are committing themselves as well to the Great Mission.

PRESENCE AMONG THE POOR

It is thought to be virtuous not to have any preferences, but we Assumptionists do have one nonetheless. It’s a preference for poor, in response to the Gospel and to the Church calling us today to be on their side. For us too it’s a consequence of our own vow to live as poor men. Some will dedicate themselves full-time to this work: with marginalized people of every kind, in hospitals and in prisons, “worker priests” or volunteers in different organizations… But all of us try to live in union with the poor, because “the poor will always be with us”, because the poor are too often neglected even within the Church. This is a bias that the Assumption encourages.

PILGRIMAGES

It took nerve 130 years ago to launch a pilgrimage movement. Popular in the Middle Ages, pilgrimages had almost faded into oblivion, but the Assumptionists brought them back to life in the 19th century. D’Alzon wanted religion to “get out of the sacristy” and to show itself in the public place. He invited the crowds to gather in Lourdes, at La Salette, in Jerusalem. They even began producing their own magazine, The Pilgrim, still going strong today. These gatherings renewed an old tradition, a form of evangelization still effective today. To be a pilgrim is not just an opportunity to visit the sites, but to move your life from one place to another, perhaps to rediscover a greater source of life.

UNITY

There’s another « pilgrimage » that we easily enough neglect: the call to unity. Ecumenism is not just an old tradition for Assumptionists; it’s an essential part of who we are. From our first missionaries in Bulgaria to the recent episcopal ordination of one of our religious in Turkey, ecumenism has been a priority. How could the Kingdom come if it were proclaimed by divided Christians?

At the beginning of the 20th century, a third of our religious were involved one way or another in ministries in Eastern Europe and the Near East, from Jerusalem to Athens, from Bucharest to St. Petersburg. In the West, other Assumptionists have been involved in research and dialogue in the Anglican and Protestant worlds. After many years of communist persecution, our Eastern mission is once again growing, and the new challenge of relations with the Orthodox Church will demand all of the energy and passion that we can muster.

PARISHES

Are Assumptionists made to be parish priests? Clearly not, if it’s just a matter of doing the work to which diocesan priests are called. But yes, for a particular mission, in a particular way, especially as religious living in apostolic community, with our doctrinal, social and ecumenical concerns. Yes, if it is to work closely with the poor, or with young people, or in “mission” territories. In parishes, our goal is not simply to maintain the structure, but to be imaginative in our methods of evangelization, to speak in a language people understand, to encourage the creation of small communities and the involvement of the laity.