Introduction to Our Province
 | Missionaries of St. Charles Scalabrinians Provincial Residence 546 N. EAST AVENUE OAK PARK IL 60302 (708) 386-4430 |
A Brief Introduction To Our Province – Saint John The Baptist
Our province is located in five countries (USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador). The provincial office is in Oak Park, Illinois located just outside Chicago. Our membership comes from 13 countries and ranges in age from 30 to 88. We currently have 66 members in the province along with 65 students in our Seminaries, as well as several Scalabrinian volunteers who are working with us for at least one year.
Our missionary focus for the last twenty-five years has been to be migrants with the migrants and to be in mission with people on the move along with a special priority for the poorest migrants. What has become very obvious is that as we have taken more missionary risks and made an effort to clarify our Charism we have been blessed with more and more vocations. The blessing is doubled by the fact that we are currently receiving the vocations that match our present need.
Prayer in Honor of Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini
All powerful and merciful God, you gave to the Church Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini as an outstanding teacher of Christian faith, and an untiring promoter of social justice, and you made him Father and Apostle to those migrating to foreign lands; through his intercession grant to us, your children, to follow faithfully his teaching and to imitate his zeal for the salvation of souls. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen
“The field that lies open to your zeal is limitless. There are churches to erect, schools to open, hospitals to build, orphanages to establish. There are numberless sufferings to which the beneficent influence of Christian charity must be brought. How to provide this? Ite! – Go! Divine Providence, which with motherly tenderness watches over the works it inspires, will solve the difficult problem, but you must be careful to respond to its counsels. Act so that everyone will know and love Jesus Christ, so that his Kingdom will spread ever more and more widely… I know that labors await you, and dangers, opposition, struggles and sacrifices; but it is precisely this that should assure you of the rightness of your enterprise and give vigor to your spirit. May the cross be your comfort, your guide and your surest defense” (Scalabrini to the first missionaries).
