Father Thomas Judge
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Father Thomas Judge was a handsome, charismatic speaker with a compelling vision and keen wit, who attracted thousands to the causes he espoused. He was a man of intense courage, valor and vision.
Born in Boston in 1868 of Irish immigrant parents, he was one of five children. When Tom was only eighteen his father died and he had to leave school to help support the family. By 1890 the family had stabilized sufficiently for him to do what he had silently dreamt of for many years: becoming a Vincentian priest.
Ordained in 1899, Father Judge showed, from the earliest days of his priesthood, an intense interest in what he called leakage from the Church: hundreds of thousands of baptized Catholics, many of them newly arrived immigrants, lost to the faith through neglect, ignorance or the negative effects of their new environment. He slowly came to one outstanding conviction ... the only realistic solution to the needs of Gods abandoned people was a missionary minded, highly spiritual, zealous Catholic laity. Every Catholic is called to be an apostle!
Father Judge began organizing, in 1909, groups of dedicated lay missionaries in the northeastern United States. Their gatherings became known as Missionary Cenacles after the Upper Room where the Holy Spirit came upon the first Apostles. Sent as pastor, in 1915, to the Vincentian mission in Opelika, Alabama, he quickly saw that he alone could never effect any change in an area rife with anti-Catholic hatred. He sought the help of the Missionary Cenacle members from the north. The first six volunteers arrived in January 1916. They stayed and many other apostolic-minded men and women began to follow.
By 1919, some of the early women volunteers banded together under Father Judge's direction to form a religious community dedicated to the work of the Missionary Cenacle. They took the title Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity. In 1924 some of the men volunteers became the first Missionary Servant priests and brothers. This community took the title of Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. These two groups, along with lay missionaries now known as the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate and members of the Blessed Trinity Missionary Institute (a secular institute founded in 1964), are known as the Missionary Cenacle Family.
Father Judge continued to guide the growing movement. He traveled continuously, writing, preaching, visiting the different missionary works and initiating new ones throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. He died on November 23, 1933, worn out by a life of intense missionary labor.
[edit] Relevant links
Servants of the Trinity official web site: http://www.mssst.org/
Father Judge alumni and friends message board: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/father_judge/
