Who are the Traditional Redemptorist Missioners?

We are religious priests and brothers with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and perseverance, living a community life according to the original Rule and authentic spirituality of St. Alphonsus de Liguori. We are associated with the Society of St. Pius X, and exclusively use the Tridentine liturgical rites.

St. Alphonsus begins his Rule saying: “The end of the Institute of the Most Holy Redeemer is no other than to unite Priests to live together, and earnestly strive to imitate the virtues and example of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, devoting themselves specially to the preaching of the word of God to the poor.”

God calls us to be His ambassadors, exercising primarily the spiritual works of mercy to the souls of the spiritually poor and abandoned. This is done principally through preaching Parish Missions and retreats.

St. Alphonsus de Liguori founded the Redemptorist Fathers near Naples, Italy in 1732, a year after having founded the Redemptoristine nuns, a strictly cloistered order, whose vocation is to pray and sacrifice themselves for the poor and most abandoned souls, in imitation of the hidden life of the Redeemer.

St. Clement Hofbauer was the first to take the Redemptorists out of Italy, to northern Europe. The first Redemptorist Fathers then came to the USA in 1832. St. John Nepomuc Neumann, fourth bishop of Philadelphia, and Blessed Fr. Francis Xavier Seelos, are two of the best known Redemptorists in America.

Then, in the aftermath of the doctrinal ambiguities and liturgical anarchy of Vatican II, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre helped start the Traditional Redemptorist Missioners in 1988, to assure that our authentic Redemptorist spirituality and the original Rule of St. Alphonsus would continue to bear fruit for the Church.

 Part of the “direct imitation” of Jesus Christ is preaching the same subjects that marked Our Lord’s sermons: conversion and means of perseverance.

To help souls turn back to God, Jesus spoke of the Eternal Truths: death, judgment, Heaven, and hell. These topics are not so much meant to inspire fear as love for God: by removing the obstacles to His grace, we open ourselves to loving God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Once the obstacles to the love of God have been removed by making a general confession, the sermons next turn to the means of persevering in God’s grace and friendship: devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist, devotion to the Passion of Our Lord, the necessity of prayer, the importance of good resolutions, and of course devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary – because if we stay close to the Mother of God, she will help us stay close to her divine Son.