The Associates of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph are women and men who, for evangelical motives, wish to share the spirituality, charism and mission of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph.

This status belongs to those who identify with the spirit and charism of the R.H.S.J.’s and who after a period of orientation and mutual evaluation, desire to live the spirituality and collaborate in the mission, without any canonical, financial or legal obligations.

These persons ordinarily commit themselves for one or two years without being bound by vows. This commitment is renewable.

General objective
To provide lay people and clerics with the opportunity to respond to a call from God to share in the spirituality, charism and mission of our Congregation

Specific Objectives
A) Give Associates the possibility of deepening their baptismal commitment in the Church.
B) Help Associates to live their faith in the unity and freedom of the children of God.
C) Invite the Associates to share in the RHSJ mission in our contemporary world.

In Communion with the Laity
(Starting Afresh from Christ #31)
The experience of communion among consecrated persons results in an even greater openness to all other members of the Church.

We can see that a new type of communion and collaboration within the various vocations and state of life especially among consecrated persons and laity is beginning. Monastic and contemplative Institutes can offer the laity a relationship that is primarily spiritual and the necessary spaces for silence and prayer. Institutes committed to the apostolate can involve them in forms of pastoral collaboration. Members of Secular Institutes, lay or clerical, relate to other members of the faithful at the level of everyday life.

The new phenomenon being experienced in these days is that some members of the laity are asking to participate in the charismatic ideals of Institutes. This has given rise to interesting initiatives and new institutional forms of association.

Communion and mutuality in the Church are never one way streets. In this new climate of ecclesial communion, priests, religious ans laity can once again find the just relationships of communion and a renewed experience of evangelical communion and mutual charismatic esteem resulting in a complementarity which respects the differences.