The Oratory of the Good Shepherd (OGS)
is an Anglican Religious Community of professed brothers, both ordained and lay, founded at Cambridge University in 1913. We have provinces in Europe, Australia, North America, and South Africa. Bound together by a common Rule, Oratorians pursue a consecrated life of service in dedication to Jesus the Good Shepherd, as guided by the Seven Notes.
Although brothers generally do not live in community, they are grouped into ‘colleges’ and gather regularly for prayer and fellowship. There are also formal chapter meetings and retreats as provinces and the worldwide Oratory. Moreover, the Rule does make provision for members living together or in close proximity and sharing in a common work, living a common life and even sharing a common purse. This flexibility of modes of living the Oratory life is one of its great strengths.
As well as celibate brothers, the Oratory family includes Companions – lay and ordained, men and women, married and single – who have their own Rule and report to one of the professed brethren.
We hope that our website will give you a glimpse into our shared life. Please do get in touch if you want to explore further.
“Just over a hundred years ago, a group of clergymen in Cambridge decided to explore how to live out their priestly vocation while also holding to some of the disciplines of the monastic life. In the Church of England at the time it was quite an adventurous thing to do. There were some religious orders for men, but none that specifically looked at the question of how you might live out these deep formative disciplines within the ordinary business of pastoral ministry. That’s been the guiding principle of the Oratory all through the decades: to discover how to introduce the monastic freedoms, as well as the monastic disciplines, into the daily life of Christians. The Oratory is primarily a group of priests, but increasingly there are lay people who are full participants, and Companions and Associates who share the life and share the vision. From that small group in Cambridge just over a hundred years ago, the Oratory has grown to be an international, interracial, intercultural society. And at a time when a lot of people are asking, ‘How do we tap into the sources of monastic wisdom, how do we lead a more well-shaped, well-resourced Christian life of prayer and liturgy?’, what the Oratory has done, is doing, and will do is a really vital life-giving contribution to the experience of the entire church.”
