Category: monastic life

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.

Sr. Mary Margaret’s Feast Day, 2022

Wow–how time flies! It’s been a while now since we celebrated Sister’s feast day, but we’ve just been super busy. We had a nice, laid-back kind of day, with gifts in the morning, an ice cream treat in the afternoon, and a little entertainment in the evening. The entertainment included a short play pondering what might have happened if St. Margaret of Hungary (Sr. Mary Margaret’s patron) had gone on a talk show. To give you a hint, the play was entitled, “I’m Your Mother, and I Don’t Want You To Be a Nun!” Don’t worry–it has a happy, monastic ending!

We would like to share some pictures from the gift opening in the morning. All the gifts you will see here were made by the sisters. Sr. Mary Margaret uses these lovely handmade items as gifts for benefactors and prizes in our popular summer raffle.

Everyone gathered around the feast day table to see the gifts…and Sister’s reactions!

A darling hat and scarf set.

The ever popular sock animals!

A nice warm poncho.

It fits–can I keep it??

Possibly a future raffle prize?

The next day, Sunday, we enjoyed a movie together as a community to conclude our celebration. Sr. Mary Margaret had a great time and so did we all!

The Gang’s All Here

Wow! We’ve had a busy time recently, with Sr. Mary Margaret’s feast day celebration and several women visiting to learn more about our cloistered Dominican life on Lotus Lane! In fact, one of our aspirants graciously took this group photo of the community which we’d like to share with you all.

There are a few sisters in this picture who aren’t on our website Community page yet, but we’ll post them soon!

If you’re interested in finding out more about our community and our Dominican way of life, please visit our website and consider writing (or calling) our vocation directress. We’d love to hear from you!