Called & Consecrated

01/25/2026

01/23/2026

Registration is now open for 2026! We are pleased to announce that this year's conference will be hosted by St. Mark's, Loomis, from October 5-7. Take a look!

November 24–26A Discernment Conference hosted by the Diocese of San Joaquin REGISTER Meet our Speakers The Rev. Ben Jefferies The Rev. Dr. Greg Peters Mother Miriam, C.S.M. The Rev. Brandon LeTourneau Mr. Nathaniel Marshall The Rev. Timothy Matkin “It is not, therefore, some few in the Church wh...

11/28/2025

We’re so thankful to our friends over at Anglican Compass for providing us with copies of their republication of ‘A Garden Enclosed: Practical Studies in Religious Life.” You can read Fr. Brandon LeTourneau’s introduction to the text here:

https://anglicancompass.com/a-garden-enclosed/

11/27/2025

Fr. Macias has written out some of the highlights of the conference. Take a look!

Yesterday, I drove down to Fresno to attend the Called & Consecrated, a discernment conference hosted by the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. The speakers led an important conversation on the n…

11/26/2025

Final day of the Conference! Thank you to everyone who has participated.

11/26/2025

Thank you to everyone who joined us for day two!

11/25/2025

A very successful first day! Thank you so much to all of our speakers for sharing their insights with us and answering very hard hitting questions. See you all tomorrow for another packed day!

09/09/2025

We're only two months away! Don't forget to register for this year's conference!

08/15/2025

"But can we not serve God without taking such formidable vows?"

Certainly. In fact, the vast majority of men and women in the Church have always served God without any such vows. It is a special vocation and is not intended for all. But from apostolic times there have been those who have heard in their hearts the voice of God calling them to leave father and mother, sister and brother, family and children, house and lands, all things, in short, and to follow Him in complete and loving surrender of body, soul and spirit. And human experience shows that any such dedication has indefinitely more force and permanence if it is sealed and secured by a life-vow.

Nor is it experience alone that witnesses to the value of a life-vow in Religion. Where God asks it, the instincts of human love demand this response. If a man loves, he always desires to express that love by giving himself without reserve to the object of his love.

Say to a man about to marry a noble woman: "You must go slow. Do not give yourself up all at once. Have a trial marriage for a year and see how it works before committing yourself for life"; and he would feel insulted. Love demands that he give himself up wholly, and love for God cannot ask less of us than human love.

So the heart that truly loves our Lord scorns to make a half-offering. This is the test of love. Anything short of this shows it to be a calculating, commercial thing which neither God nor man would accept. It must also be remembered that as Christians we are all bound under our vows of baptism which are more far-reaching and irrevocably binding than any other vows that could possibly be made.

In answer to this instinct, the Church has never permitted those who give themselves to this Life without taking vows to assume the name of "Religious." The essence of the Religious Life lies in the life-vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. The pledge is given to God once for all and can never be taken back. However saintly men or women may be, however strict a life they may live under Rule, without taking their vows they can no more be Religious than a man can be a priest' without being ordained, though he may have the profoundest' knowledge of theology and the, deepest love for souls.

–Shirley Carter Hughson, O.H.C., 1948.

08/14/2025

How do you know that you have a call?

God calls in different ways. Often the call is not unlike that to some other vocation; there is an inward urge, an impulse, which seeks expression in some special way, much as the painter or musician seeks it in his art. At other times a verse of Scripture arrests attention, as with St. Anthony or St. Francis, and a new and personal meaning is revealed. Sometimes it is another's example or suggestion.

Many years ago in one of the leading colleges for women, there was inscribed upon the walls of the chapel this text: "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." In those good old days attendance at daily morning prayers was considered a necessary part of a liberal education, and as the years went by, one student after another, meditating on this text day after day, was led to answer God's call to the Religious Life.

A "call" to the Religious Life is simple and straightforward, and very much like any other summons in this world. If a father "calls" his son, the boy may refuse, or answer, or delay.

The word "call" has the same meaning in the Religious Life. It may arise in various ways. But whatever the form of the call, the important thing is to answer promptly and generously.

–The Rev. Mother Mary Theodora, C.S.M., 1940.

02/10/2025

Thanks for the shout out! Registration is now open!

November 24–26A Discernment Conference hosted by the Diocese of San Joaquin REGISTER Meet our Speakers The Rev. Ben Jefferies The Rev. Dr. Greg Peters Mother Miriam, C.S.M. The Rev. Brandon LeTourneau Mr. Nathaniel Marshall The Rev. Timothy Matkin “It is not, therefore, some few in the Church wh...

02/10/2025

“We must recognize that God Who has made all manner of beautiful things in nature, has various beautiful works of Grace—that there are those who are called to lead an ordinary life holily; that there are others, for whom God has chosen another life—and if we try to have a Church lacking either of these ways of life, it falls short in usefulness, in beauty, and in full development.”

—Rev. O.P. Ford