Lisa Small, a Consecrated Woman of Regnum Christi and the director of Communications for their North American Territory, often gets asked, “What exactly do Consecrated Women do?” So in collaboration with the Regnum Christi Federation, she worked to develop a great new resource to answer that question, a digital and print booklet called CRC IMPACT.
CRC IMPACT shares the stories and missions of 12 Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi in the North American Territory, and includes a directory of all of their communities and the evangelizing programs they are involved with. The Consecrated Women you’ll meet in CRC IMPACT have varied backgrounds and diverse missions in the Church, but evident in all of them are the common threads of the Regnum Christi Charism and a new mature confidence in their unique identity as lay consecrated women who are part of a broader Spiritual Family.
Kathleen Murphy, territorial director of the North American Territory, introduces the stories in a letter at the beginning of the booklet and invites people to get to know the Consecrated Women, “We evangelize in schools, parishes, diocesan offices, youth programs, spiritual direction, preaching, and giving retreats – endeavoring to respond to the needs of the Church and society with our charism, and bring people to a deep encounter with Christ. In this collection of testimonies, we hope to honor God and the work he is doing through these 12 Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi. We pray that God continues to bless the impact they are making on countless young people, families, and women in our territory and around the whole world.”
In each story you’ll find a woman who has embraced her vocation to live completely for God, while still being present in the secular world. These women do not shy away from the complex and challenging realities of our culture, instead they lean in with innovative and deep ways to evangelize, accompanying people on their faith journeys.
“Am I loved?… Do I matter?… Am I enough?” These are some of the most intimate questions on the hearts of today’s adolescents, and ones which Emily Roman, a campus minister at Pinecrest Academy in Cumming, Georgia, tries to help high school students find answers to. “There was a time that I didn’t believe that God could want me,” one student wrote to Emily a week before graduation. “But the way you smiled at me made me believe that he does.”
Tammy Grady, who just celebrated her 25th anniversary of consecration and works as an Associate Vocations Director for the Diocese of Dallas, shares what makes her passionate about her mission, “There are young people still today who want to know where the Lord is leading them, to put God first in their life, to make a difference in this world. I feel like I’m walking on sacred ground, helping them to see where the Lord has been leading them.”
“I’ve come to realize that just as Jesus personally accompanied and formed His own disciples, this is also at the heart of who a Consecrated Woman is—a spiritual mother that encounters, forms, and accompanies others by meeting us where we are and embracing us,” explains Mary Smith, a Consecrated Woman living and working in Washington, DC, “I am not intimated by the secular world. I feel comfortable bringing God to people who need Him, but don’t realize they need God. The human heart is hungry for God, even if they don’t realize it.”
Emily, Tammy, and Mary are three of the Consecrated Women you’ll meet in CRC IMPACT. Lisa Small hopes this tool will be a helpful way for people to get to know them and the vocation they share with 85 others in this territory. She also sees CRC IMPACT as a great way to introduce others to the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, whether they are young women discerning a vocation, diocesan and religious clergy, parents of youth in the schools, programs, and missions they work in, or people who may want to support their evangelizing mission.
CRC IMPACT can be found here, on the website of the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi. If you’d like print copies you can contact Lisa Small for details on how to order them.
You can also check out RC IMPACT which shares the evangelizing mission of the Regnum Christi Federation through stories of evangelization lived out by members of three different vocations — lay members, Consecrated Women, and priests of the Legionaries of Christ.
