We at St. Jerome will add some of the many Religious Orders for both women and men to serve God in our Library of Religious Orders. Hopefully, this list may be of interest to those women and men who wish to follow God in this manner. This list is not exhaustive by any means but represents a sample of the many Religious Orders that are active today. Our focus will be on those Orders within the Diocese of Austin, TX, but we may on occasion add some outside our Diocese. Please visit our Library often as we will update it on a regular basis.

The Library

Apostles of the Interior Life (AVI)

The community was founded in Rome, Italy where there are two houses - the house of formation and the apostolic house. In 2000, the community opened its first house in the United States. The sisters currently serve at the Catholic campus center of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Our Mission

• The Apostles of the Interior Life are consecrated women who dedicate their lives throug the profession of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
• They live in community and have prayer at the center of their day.
• Our apostolate ranges from evangelization to spiritual formation, including spiritual direction. At the heart of their apostolate is the personal relationship, reaching out to people in their various environments and needs, with a particular care for the youth and young adults.
• The Gospel passage that inspires their charism most is the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus one-on-one at the well and cannot help but leave her jar and go announce Him to others right away.

Our Four Pillars

• The four pillars of the sisters' life are prayer, community life, intellectual formation and apostolate. The structure of the daily schedule does not always look the same from day to day or between the different houses, but they all incorporate these four elements.

Sister of Mary Morning Star

Our Mission

• We are contemplative Sisters who live in the heart of the world in order to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for the New Evangelization. As non-cloistered contemplative sisters, we welcome people to our convents and chapels for prayer, lectio divina, or a simple listening ear.
• The four main aspects of the charism are prayer, fraternal charity, search for truth, and manual work. Our contemplative vocation calls us to a life of silent prayer centered on the mystery of the Eucharist, living fraternal charity in joy, mutual trust, and the gift of themselves to our sisters.
• Faithful to the tradition of the Church, especially the documents of Vatican II, and the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and of Aristotle, our formation allows us to read the Word of God as a living word and enter more profoundly into theology.

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Our Contemplative Life

• Institutes completely devoted to contemplation direct the whole of their lives and all their activities to the contemplation of God.
• It is the duty of the consecrated life to show that the Incarnate Son of God is the eschatological goal towards which all things tend, the splendor before which every other light pales, and the infinite beauty which alone can fully satisfy the human heart.
• Monasticism and the contemplative life are a constant reminder that the primacy of God gives full meaning and joy to human lives, because men and women are made for God, and their hearts are restless until they rest in him.

Please see our websites for additional information:
https://www.marymorningstartexas.org/ Waco, TX
https://religiouslife.com/vocation/sisters-of-mary-morning-star-maria-stella-matutina Home Order

Diocese of Austin Reference

As an additional and further reference, the Diocese of Austin has provided a list of links for further information gathering. Please refer to austindiocese.org/religious-communities or by contacting Sr. Silvia Tarafa, the Diocesan Director of the Office of Consecrated and Apostolic Life at 512-949-2446 or by email at [email protected].