“Members of secular institutes are ‘in the world and not of the world, but for the world.'”
They live in whatever providential circumstances God gives them, but they wholly consecrate their lives to God through the evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience, and chastity. They are the newest vocation in the Catholic Church, and many say they are the vocation of the new millennium.
Each secular institute bears the unique charism of its founders and traditions, and each celebrates its “communion” by annual retreats, meetings, common daily prayer, and friendships that evolve quite naturally from living a similar life in God despite differences in profession or work in the world. A web of connectedness grows over time, linking the members to one another inextricably. For all consecrated seculars, the vocation undergirds all they undertake because it becomes the essence of what they are in God’s eye.” – USCCB Conference of Secular Institutes