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A Plea from the Heart of the Church - Will You Help Miles Jes Find a Home in Rome? Please consider doing something that will make an eternal difference. Miles Jesu needs your urgent help to obtain a Seminary / Formation Center / General House in Rome. We are close to being able to obtain a much-needed property which will be Miles Jesu's 'home in Rome' - the geographical heart of the Church. This facility will serve as the international Formation Center for our members and missionary teams, as well as the training house for our seminarians. Also it will be our General House, where the worldwide apostolic activities of all the Miles Jesu communities will be coordinated. All this activity will be aided immeasurable by having a central headquarters located in the See of St. Peter. Wonâ??t you help make this urgent need a reality? At present, our seminarians and other members in Rome are sleeping 12 to a room. Thanks be to our merciful Lord, Who has blessed us with vocations, such that we are now 'bursting at the seams' in our rented quarters. Now is the time to act. After a four-year search, a suitable property has finally been found, but if we do not move to buy it now, we risk losing what is in many ways an ideal facility. Here are 3 ways you can help us make a global impact for the good of souls: 1) Consider your own gift this Lent and Easter. Perhaps you have been experiencing an interior prompting to give more to the Lord. As Mother Theresa said, we should give until it hurts. Of course, donations of any size are welcome and appreciated. Please prayerfully consider how you might aid this urgent appeal and give a gift of eternal value to the Church. From this Seminary, Formation Center and General House, countless Soldiers of Jesus (Miles Jesu) will be sent out to many nations for the salvation of many souls. 2) Contact people you know who might be willing to invest some of their treasure for the Lord. Gifts of $1 million, 500,000, 100,000 and 50,000 are needed now. Benefactors who help with such gifts will be remembered on a special plaque in the Miles Jesu Blessed Sacrament chapel in Rome. Please write letters, make calls, send emails, and talk with people about how Miles Jesu is training vanguard apostles faithful to the Holy Father and the Magisterium. A donation for this Center would be a lasting gift to God, producing holy missionaries and priests to faithfully serve the Church for generations to come. 3) Pray and sacrifice for this intention. God and the Blessed Mother are faithful, and our prayers cannot go unheard! If you or someone you know is interested to help, please contact Fr. Romeo Salcido, MJ, at 773-426-0754. Please send your tax-deductible donations (USA) to: Checks should be made out to 'Miles Jesu' with 'Seminary Fund' on the memo line. * * * * A Hectic Schedule Blessed be the name of Jesus! And hello from the Miles Jesu seminary program in Rome! Our second semester of the academic year is in full swing. That means the Miles Jesu seminariansâ "boot camp" is in session. To give you a taste of the seminary life in Rome, here is a brief description of our daily schedule. We get out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and at 5:15 we meet in the 'chapel' (a small converted living room) for an hour of adoration with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. At 6:15 Mass begins. Mass is celebrated in Latin Monday through Friday, in Spanish on Saturday and English on Sunday. After Mass, another half hour of prayer is made in thanksgiving for receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion. At 7:00, there is just time for a quick breakfast, and of course a good strong cup of coffee. It is common to hear members of the community often giving thanks to God for creating coffee, without which the morning schedule would be pretty tough to follow. (We also thank God for our dear friend Graziella, an elderly Italian neighbor who keeps us stocked up.) By 7:30, the theology students are out the door to catch the train, then transfer to the Metro train to get to downtown Rome, so that they can walk to the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, commonly called the Angelicum. This is the university where Pope John Paul II studied in Rome. After four hours of classes the students return home for lunch around 1:45. Often lunch is accompanied by a formational reading or discussion of the day's lectures. Then, after washing the dishes, the students have time for studies and work, as well as a visit to Our Lord in chapel. By lunch time, the philosophy students have left for the university. Their classes are in the afternoon, so they use the morning hours for study, work and prayer. At 7:00 p.m. we meet again in the chapel for evening prayer, which lasts for 45 minutes and ends with the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and then the prayers to St. Joseph for all of our benefactors throughout the world. After night prayers, we then begin the 'Grand Silence,' a period of silence and time for a light dinner, prayer, spiritual reading and preparation for the next day. The philosophy students, after attending classes and Benediction services at the University chapel, arrive home around 8:30 p.m. Lights are out at 10 p.m. Saturday arrives and it is dedicated to cleaning and housework as well as going to the market to beg for food. All the members of the community take turns begging, since it is very important for our formation. In it we are trained to rely not so much on limited human resources as on the unlimited providence of our Father in heaven as manifested in the generosity of our fellow man. Also, this practice of begging for our food, as well as our other practices of poverty such as using donated or second-hand clothes and not receiving salaries or allowances, help us use any donations we receive for the apostolic works of Miles Jesu. Saturday ends with all-night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which leads to Sunday morning Benediction and Mass. Sunday, the day of rest, arrives not a day too soon! We are quite busy here in Rome, but not too busy to take the time to thank all of you for your help and pray for your intentions. Please keep us in your prayers too, and please know how much we appreciate your support of the Miles Jesu seminary program. May Our Lord and Our Lady bless you for your generosity in providing more good priests to serve the Church. |