john-michael-talbot2.jpgJohn Michael Talbot will give a free concert at St. Pius V Church in St. Louis on Tuesday, Sept.16. The concert will begin at 7 p.m. at the church, located at 3310 S. Grand Blvd. A ticket is required for admission. Free-will offerings taken at the concert will go to rebuild the Little Portion Hermitage Monastery in Eureka Springs, Ark., destroyed in a fire April 28.

The monastery is home for the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, an integrated monastic community founded by Talbot. Talbot's music includes such pieces as: Come, Worship the Lord, Holy Is His Name, Only in God, and Wonderful Counselor.

Joyce Park, a parishioner at St. John the Evangelist in Carrollton, is a member of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. Park said the Brothers and Sisters of Charity is a Christian-based monastic community with celibate brothers and sisters, singles and families. The brothers live in individual hermitages and the sisters live in a community building on the monastery grounds. There are also families and single members who live on the grounds.

"Domestics, like me, live in our own homes, and some are married," said Park, who teaches PSR at her parish. She and her husband, who is a Presbyterian, have been married 24 years.

The brothers and sisters and others who live on the monastery grounds come together for prayer, recreation and work. Members who live throughout the country get together with others in their area in cell groups to meet and pray.

"To my knowledge, I'm the only one in the Springfield diocese," said Park, who joins members from the St. Louis area by way of a conference call, when they meet. "The meetings are at night, and it is pretty far to drive back home at night," she said.

Unlike the sisters and brothers who wear habits similar to the Carmelites, "domestic members, like me, don't wear a habit or veil. We do have a white tunic, brown in winter that we wear when we are at the monastery." She will wear her tunic at the concert.

Park was in the military, stationed in Germany, when she first got interested in the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. "I went to the retreat center in Eureka Springs for a Palm Sunday retreat, and felt it was very well done, a very open community." She ended up doing some of her postulant work by e-mail.

For tickets contact Park at (217) 942-3799, or write her at R.R. 1, Box 190, Carrollton, IL 62016.