Community Life

A shared life of community, prayer & service 

Our Augustinian charism is part of what makes our congregation unique. We are an apostolic and not a monastic community, but our work is rooted in the Rule of St. Augustine that our founder, Father d’Alzon, adopted for his new community. This means that, like Augustine, we place a high priority on the common life: common prayer, meals, work, and recreation. Our shared life is at the heart of who we are as brothers, striving to be of one mind and heart, intent on God. We value hospitality, and men in discernment with us have often remarked that they feel like part of a family among us.

“I was attracted to the Assumptionists’ balance between active and contemplative life,” says current postulant Brian Verzella, “as well by their vibrant and close-knit community.”

Father Richard Lamoureux, A.A., former superior of the congregation, agrees with Brian about the unique balance our congregation strikes.

“The Assumption is traditional,” Father Richard explains, “in its embrace of St. Augustine and monastic values like study, contemplation, silence, fraternal life, and common prayer, and in its emphasis on Jesus Christ and on love of the Church and the Pope. But it is modern in its desire to renew society through the truth and the brilliant light of the eternal Word, using a language and means that will reach the people of our day.”

One expression of our community life can be found in Boston, MA, where the Assumptionist Center serves as our provincial headquarters and also as our house of formation for scholastic brothers studying theology at Boston College. What is more, this unique community welcomes lay students and working professionals, who live, pray, eat, and study alongside our seminarians. The Center provides regular programming of prayer and Sunday conversations on church- or theology-related topics, so that “together,” in the words of Father Donald Espinosa, A.A., “we can learn what it means to be Church.”

Young Assumptionists in Mexico.