Author: Texas OP Nuns

This week our Novice Mistress, Sister Mary Rose, is attending the annual Novice Mistress Meeting held at Corpus Christi Monastery in the Bronx. They are having talks in the mornings given by Father Walter Wagner, OP, the current Pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Manhattan. Almost all the Novice Mistresses have been able to attend. We are only missing the ones from Trinidad and Lancaster PA. The meeting is going very well and our hosting community is very warm and welcoming.

The Nuns are making their annual retreat from September 13-20. Many people laugh when they hear the nuns are going on retreat. \”Aren\’t you in a perpetual retreat?!\”  Well, yes. But we do live in community, and sometimes we need more solitude than we normally have; as well as extra silence and time for prayer, reading, and simply resting.

We usually have a \”preached\” retreat in which someone preaches to the entire community twice a day on aspects of the spiritual life, plus the homily at Mass ties in with the theme of the retreat. Another kind of retreat might be a \”directed\” retreat, in which a person might meet daily, or every other day, with a Retreat Master and share privately what he or she has been praying about.

Our retreat Master this year is Father Emmerich Vogt,OP, from the Western Province headquartered in California. We had never met him before so when he arrived Tuesday afternoon we arranged to visit with him, before \”going into the desert\” Wednesday morning. Although Father Vogt is originally from Connecticut, he has lived most of his life in California. He has had various ministries: parish work, Provincial, chaplain for our nuns in Los Angeles, and now giving retreats and workshops throughout the country, and world.

The theme of our retreat is \”Liturgical Asceticism\”.  We are enjoying the retreat and Father Emmerich\’s very thought provoking reflections. He is funny yet profound.

Our new chaplain, Fr. John Lydon, OP, began his ministry with us on August 1. He comes from Philadelphia, but is quite acclimated to living in Louisiana and Texas. Most of his ministry has been in the area of Campus Ministry. It\’s easy to see that he must have done well. He is down to earth and loves people. We thoroughly enjoy his daily homilies and never know what to expect.

By co-incidence, just yesterday our previous Chaplain, Fr. Marcos Ramos, OP, successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The recent hurricane to charge through Texas was not as windy as some, but it was very cruel none the less. We are praying for our many friends and benefactors along the coast who have been flooded by the overabundant water.

During the Hurricane itself we received many phones calls from friends and relatives to check on us to see if we were OK. Yes, we are fine and thank you for your love and concern. We only had a light rain for over a week that amounted to about 2 feet, but fortunately no flooding. Our pond did fill up as you can see.

On August 23, Dominicans around the world celebrate the feast of St. Rose of Lima, the first canonized saint of the Americas. But that day is also the feast day of our own Sister Mary Rose, the Novice Mistress of our monastery. Because of her office, or duty, the sisters in the novitiate always make it a special celebration. This year it was magnificent!

Sister Mary Therese devised two fun and exciting Dominican games. In the first one the Sisters scoured the Novitiate building for clues on the back of Dominican shields telling them how to find the grand prize. After that there was a more \”sedate\” card game. Sad to say, our honoree did not win any of the games.

The Sisters enjoyed hamburgers for dinner and in the afternoon watched a movie, \”The Secret of Ronan Inish\”.

After Vespers, the party sisters returned to the Novitiate for a special supper prepared by Sister Mary Dominic who helps in the Novitiate. She cooked a delicious chicken dish with wine, which turned the chicken purple!

Sometimes we may not know what to think of this feast. But we should always remember that it is a promise to each of us that if we love Christ and try to do God\’s will, one day, we too, will be taken to Heaven.