Category: monastic life

Your Name Will Be…

Sr. Mary Pauline of the Holy Spirit, O.P.!

Sr. Mary Christine, Sr. Mary Pauline, and Sr. Mary Margaret

We had a festive day all day (well, we worked in between times) with delicious meals, a beautiful ceremony, and a fun tea party in the novitiate.

Breakfast in the refectory

Sister’s place mat, with art by aspirant Michelle and lettering by Sr. Maria Goretti. When we saw it, some of us were sure her name would have something to do with Fatima! (It didn’t–she just has a devotion to Our Lady.)

Sr. Marie Augustine busy in the kitchen preparing our dinner

The ceremony was held at 10:30 AM in the Chapter Hall. Since Sr. Mary Pauline is a finally professed religious, she will wear our black veil (even though this year is her constitutional novitiate year, as we explained in a previous post).

Sister received her new habit from Sr. Mary Margaret, and she left to change, with Sr. Mary Christine’s help.

We waited expectantly as Sister left to get dressed in our habit, and returned.

We each gave her the kiss of peace, still wondering, “What will her name be??”

As we finished singing “Ubi caritas”, Sister came to the center for the moment of truth.

Finally, it came!

She was clearly thrilled to hear her new name–and so were we!

We have a tradition where the sisters make guesses about a novice’s new name, and the box was conveniently placed outside the community room. Sr. Mary Margaret brought it to the ceremony and entertained us by reading the guesses afterwards.

Interestingly, a number of sisters guessed the mystery would be the Holy Spirit…but no one guessed Pauline (or even Paul)!

The novitiate sisters decorated Sr. Mary Pauline’s cell so elaborately that she had to move to the cell next door for a while.

After dinner, the professed sisters came over for a tea party, where we watched Sr. Mary Pauline open her gifts and drank tea and had homemade cookies. Sr. Maria Goretti even entertained us on the accordion! It was an afternoon we will long remember.

Please pray for our three novitiate sisters, and for Sr. Mary Christine, our novice directress, and Sr. Marie Augustine, who helps out. They would like to have more companions–and we would, too. Pray also for their perseverance!

Solemn Chapter of the Annunciation, 2023

Early this morning we had our traditional solemn chapter of the Annunciation. We have solemn chapter twice a year–on March 24 (the day before the Annunciation) and on December 24 (the day before Christmas). For March 24, a sister is asked to sing the account of the Annunciation to Mary from Luke’s Gospel, and on December 24 a sister sings the Christmas Proclamation. We know it looks like we had chapter in the middle of the night, but it was really about 6:30 AM.

Sister Mary Gabriel did a beautiful job singing the Gospel!

Sr. Margarita gave an excellent sermon centered on Mary’s fiat.

This is probably the last time you will see Sr. Margarita in this habit, because tomorrow she will receive our habit (same Dominican habit, just a different style) and her new name. We are all wondering what her name will be! Even Sr. Margarita doesn’t know for sure–she asked Sr. Mary Margaret to choose for her! We will try to post some pictures–and solve the mystery of the name–this weekend.

The ceremony will be at 10:30 AM in the same room you see above–the Chapter Hall. Please keep Sr. Margarita in your prayers as she concludes her retreat and prepares for a new beginning!

What’s Going On in the Novitiate?

Sr. Maria Goretti, Michelle, Sr. Margarita, Sarah, Sr. Marie Augustine, Sr. Mary Christine

Good question! We’re happy to say we have two sisters who are transferring to our community and two aspirants at present, with hopes for more. God is really blessing us! And Sr. Margarita will be receiving our community’s habit on March 25–along with a new name. We don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll keep you posted!

The sisters who live in the novitiate have their own dormitory, community room, library and classroom all in one convenient building. They spend most of their time there, although they join the professed sisters for evening recreation, meals, and (of course) prayers.

Our community policy is that a transfer from an active community of religious sisters spends about 6 months to a year as a visitor–that’s why we have the two sisters wearing their original habits. After receiving our habit, they remain in the novitiate for one year (required by our constitutions) and then spend a second year in the novitiate before they make the move over to the professed, where they spend some time integrating into the community before they make solemn vows. It’s a process, but the sisters who have done it say it’s worth it!

An aspirant comes for a specified length of time to get to know the community (and allow us to get to know her). If all goes well, they may return for the next step of religious formation–the postulancy, which lasts a year. After this, the postulant is clothed in the habit and receives her religious name.

Our novitiate has been having a lot of fun!

Recreation in the community room

Enjoying the cool March weather in the novitiate courtyard

The novitiate keeps the garden outside their building looking good.

Sarah and Michelle, our two latest aspirants. Please keep them in your prayers as they discern!

Sr. Maria Goretti and Sr. Margarita, our two active sisters. Sr. Maria Goretti is a Franciscan and Sr. Margarita is a member of an active Dominican community. Please keep them in your prayers!

Please pray for us, too, that we will be open to the Holy Spirit as we make our own decisions about these women!

Rest in Peace, Sr. Mary Annunciata

Sr. Mary Annunciata of the Holy Spirit, O.P., died on February 22, 2023. She lived 66 years of profession as a Dominican, 45 of these in solemn vows. Sister first entered the Dominican Sisters of Houston, where she taught and served as principal at some of their schools. However, she began to feel her own “call within a call” and transferred to our community. Sister served our community in many and varied ways, including in the demanding roles of novice directress, sub-prioress, and prioress.

Sr. Mary Annunciata was well-known for her love for St. Therese of Lisieux and cats–the latter a characteristic she shared with the late Pope Benedict XVI. She was a deeply spiritual woman and always firm and practical. You can see Sr. Mary Annunciata in our documentary, which is on YouTube (she’s in the section on study). She celebrated her 90th birthday on August 15, 2022. We miss Sr. Mary Annunciata very much, but we take comfort in the fact that she is with God now. May you rest in peace, dear Sr. Mary Annunciata!

Christmas Unwrapped

As always, there’s been a lot going on! We’d like to share some of the highlights of this Christmas season with you. Yes, the Christmas season lasts until the Baptism of the Lord and that’s not until January 9, so for us it’s still Christmas!

We had a beautiful Christmas, with many lovely decorations by our talented sisters and thoughtful gifts from our benefactors.

Tree and nativity scene in our community room

One of our benefactors had these great bags made–one for each of us! Note the Dominican shield!

Everyone loves puzzles!

Fr. Ian gave us a chime to ring at the epiclesis during Mass and at Benediction–much nicer than our old bell.

What could this be? Maybe something to eat?

I think this one’s popcorn…

Might need some help getting this one open.

On December 30, feast of the Holy Family, our bishop Joseph Strickland came to offer Mass and enjoy a visit and “family” meal with us. We were also privileged to have Br. Christopher Kalan, O.Cist., from Our Lady of Dallas Abbey, staying at our monastery for his priestly ordination retreat–so Br. Christopher served as our deacon at Mass and joined us for dinner afterward, as did our chaplain, Fr. Ian.

Bishop Strickland is always so kind and friendly to us, a true spiritual father.

We presented him with an afghan one of our sisters crocheted.

Brother Christopher is a tall man…

…or maybe we are just kind of petite?

We also had a delightful parlor visit with Br. Christopher. (Hope he got enough retreat!) He will be ordained in February, and we hope he will come back to celebrate Mass for us and give us his first blessing.

All together, Christmas has been a season of many blessings. There have been some serious events too, but everything balances out and we are filled with joy and gratitude as we welcome the New Year 2023, when Sr. Mary Therese will make her solemn profession (January 21) and we are expecting some new faces at our monastery!

A New U.S. Citizen!

Sr. Irma Marie is now an American citizen!

Complete with sash, hat, flag, and certificate

Sr. Irma Marie, a native of Puebla, Mexico, has been a member of our monastic community for some time. She began working on her citizenship papers about five years ago, and on Tuesday all her hard work paid off as she was officially sworn in as a United States citizen.

Of course, we had a little party to celebrate the great day!

The festive table

Sister’s card, signed by everyone in the community

The happy new citizen with Sr. Mary Margaret

Now that she is a citizen, Sr. Irma Marie looks forward to getting a driver’s license and registering to vote. We are very proud of Sr. Irma Marie and all her hard work to achieve this goal, and we are grateful to all the people who helped make it happen–and there are many who helped! Thanks to all of you!

On an additional note, although several of us were down with a cold bug for Thanksgiving, we still managed to have a good time!

Delicious!

The majority of our dinner was donated, and as always we are very grateful to all who made our wonderful Thanksgiving meal possible. Thank you so much!

We are overwhelmed by the blessings God has granted us over the last week or so. May he continue to provide faithfully for us, and may we remain faithful to him!

Vocation Visit

A lovely group of young women came to visit us from St. Thomas University in Houston, TX. Fr. John Sica, O.P., a friend of the community and doctoral candidate at the University, helped organize the visit and gave the girls a great talk on Dominican spirituality. We gave some other talks on prayer and monasticism, and showed them our slide show and parts of our documentary (you can see our documentary on YouTube!). They had great questions, which we tried to answer–with the Holy Spirit’s help! Please pray that God will inspire many young women to consider a vocation to the cloistered life.