Incarnate Word Missionaries - Who are we?

"We, the missionaries, inspired by the charism and mission of the Incarnate Word, choose to live in community and walk in solidarity with the economically poor and marginalized, in order to be transformed by them and to transform unjust social structures that keep people economically poor and marginalized."

IWM Mission Statement

For more than 130 years, the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word has had as its charism the call to make the love of God, as shown in the Incarnate, a real and tangible presence in the world today. The mission of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word is to actualize the saving and healing love of the Incarnate Word by promoting human dignity. Our missionaries are an extension of this mission and desire.

Incarnate Word Missionaries (IWM) was founded in 1987 as a result of six enthusiastic lay men and women with the aspiration to go out into the world and serve as missionaries. With the help of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, these trailblazers were able to plug into the important ministries and adopt the missionary spirit and incarnational spirituality of the Sisters.

Today there are missionaries serving in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Zambia, Tanzania and the United States. Missionaries serve in varying capacities, ministering in health care, education, pastoral work, parish ministry, prevention projects for HIV/AIDS, orphans and vulnerable children, outreach to women, children, and victims of abuse. Missionaries share their lives, their time, their energy and their abilities to help others realize the real and tangible love of Christ in the world. Incarnate Word Missionaries are called to respond to the needs of the poor in the continual process of giving and receiving when persons from different cultures mutually discover each other's worth, dignity and God-given potential.

Our Incarnate Word Missionaries choose to work, live and learn in a cross-cultural setting, which demands that they listen first and then act, remaining open to different ways of living and perceiving the world. They take on the role of missionary - and as such, as a respresentative of both the larger Catholic Church and of the Congregations of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. Missionaries live in intentional community, oftentimes sacrificing so as to put the good of all before the good of one. Prayer, reflection, simple living, the pursuit of social justice, honoring the dignity of each person, supporting CCVI ministries, specifically serving in areas of economic poverty, and constantly striving to deepen the sense of community are commitments that our missionaries choose to accept and embrace. Through solidarity missionaries seek to live a preferential option for the poor, which means following Christ's example of deliberately choosing to walk with the economically poor and marginalized.

Through the gospels and the world around us, missionaries come to know in Christ, the Incarnate Word, a God who knows and shares our human experience and walks with us in our joys and struggles. This inspires us as members of the Incarnate Word family to make the love of God, as shown in the Incarnation. a real and tangible presence in the world today.

By way of this blog you will meet our missionaries and learn about what they are doing, whom they are meeting, the relationships they are forming, and how they are being transformed. For more information on the background of each of missionaries, please visit http://www.iwmissions.org/, where we invite you to get to know our nine lay missionaries through their photos and biographies.