The Monastery of the Infant Jesus is pleased to announce the election of our new prioress, Sr. Mary Rose. For the last six years she has served the community as our sub-prioress (in addition to many other duties) and we are confident she is well-prepared to be our new leader.
Our outgoing prioress is Sr. Mary Margaret, who served for six years and six years before that as sub-prioress. Throughout her six years as prioress, she saw the community through many changes and challenges, including COVID, big maintenance projects, and the addition of three new nuns to our monastery. We thank her for all that she has done for the community.
Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and others followers of Jesus, signifies the end of the Easter season and is always a special celebration in the Monastery.
The chapel altar decorated for Pentecost
Every year on this solemnity, every sister is given a special card during midmorning prayer.
2025 Pentecost card
On the back of each card is a different gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit.
At evening recreation, we share with each other what the Holy Spirit has specially given us.
Throughout the next year, we reflect on the special way that the Holy Spirit is working in our lives to help us in our monastic community and to strengthen our relationship with God.
This was Sr. Mary Margaret’s last Mother’s Day as prioress, so we wanted to make it a special day for her.
Sr. Mary Margaret enjoys some Mother’s Day gifts.
We love watching movies together, so we saw Saving Mr. Banks, a moving story about the making of the film Mary Poppins. (The community’s response: “Now we want to see Mary Poppins!”)
Sr. Marie Augustine cooks a special Mother’s Day dinner.
At noon, we gathered in the community room to eat a delicious dinner. We enjoyed talking and laughing together.
In the evening, we had games: The Mother’s Day Olympics! We divided into two teams–the Immas (Aramaic for “mother”, as we’ve learned from the TV show The Chosen) and the Miteras (Greek for “mother”)–and played a variety of “sports”.
Sr. Carmen Gloria and Sr. Mary Gabriel invented the games.
First, the team members bounced ping pong balls on a table to try to get them to land in an egg carton.
Sr. Mary Therese explains the chicken game to the teams. How many eggs can they get the chicken to lay?
Then the teams competed to see who could do best at the bean bag toss.
Sr. Maria Rosario tosses the bean bags into the “corn hole”.
Next, we played a version of miniature golf, in which the teams swept ping pong balls into a box with tiny doors. (Mothers do a lot of sweeping, don’t they?)
Sr. Mary Pauline sweeps a ball into the box. The sisters did very well with this game!
Next was the blind toss. One sister would sit in a chair and throw ping pong balls behind her without looking, while a teammate would try to catch it with a hat. Luckily, our nuns are spry and caught almost every ball!
We brought out some fun music for our final games. First, in a version of musical chairs, three nuns from each team stood around a table with five little duckies on it. When the music (“Baby Elephant Walk”) stopped, they each had to grab a duck. The one left without a toy was out, and we kept reducing the ducks until there was only one winner. Play nice, sisters!
Sr. Mary Gabriel, Sr. Mary Margaret, and Sr. Carmen Gloria pose with the rubber duckies.
Finally, we played “hot duckie” (like “hot potato”) with the sisters sitting in a circle passing around the duckie. When the “Pink Panther Theme” stopped, the one with the duckie was out until there was only one winner.
In the end, Sr. Mary Margaret’s team, the Immas, won, but at the Mother’s Day Olympics everyone is a winner and we all got prizes. We all had fun and enjoyed spending the day together.
Sr. Mary Rose and Sr. Mary Margaret enjoyed our Mother’s Day celebration.
This year’s Easter celebration was beautiful, as always.
The chapel, decorated beautifully by our sacristan, Sr. Carmen Gloria.
After the solemnity of the Triduum, we celebrated the Easter Vigil Mass and concluded with our traditional midnight breakfast.
Sr. Miriam, Sr. Maria Rosario, and Sr. Maria Cabrini enjoy the Easter meal.
Sr. Bernadette Marie and Sr. Mary Giuse prepare the Easter dinner for us.
The novitiate worked very hard to decorate the refectory for Easter. This year, they made special mini Easter baskets woven out of various colors of yarn, and when the week was over we were allowed to keep them or send them to family or friends.
At the head of the refectory, the novitiate put up an elaborate display with an Easter cross surrounded by flowers.
Sr. Mary Christine designed the refectory decorations.
At the end of Easter week, we received special visitors: the Puerto Rican active Dominican sisters who live in Paris, TX. They brought a discernment group with them.
The group poses outside out monastery.
We enjoyed talking to the young women in the parlor. They were lovely and seemed very interested in religious life.
After our meeting, they joined us for midday prayer in the chapel.
The Dominican sisters brought an early Mother’s Day gift for our prioress, Sr. Mary Margaret.
Easter week was a time of celebration, relaxation, and visiting, in which we were reminded of our love for Jesus and why He has brought us all together in community here.
This year we celebrated our prioress Sr. Mary Margaret’s Golden Jubilee of profession. We had several days of celebrations in which our monastery, the Lufkin community, and her family came together to celebrate Sr. Mary Margaret’s monastic life and all that she’s done for us.
First, the nuns celebrated her jubilee with a community feast day full of gifts, treats, and special performances.
We began the day by gathering in our decorated community room to sing a special jubilee song to Sr. Mary Margaret.
Then we all gave her a special greeting.
The morning’s program was a funny skit about Sr. Mary Margaret’s life before she entered the convent, with the nuns playing her and members of her family.
Sr. Mary Margaret enjoyed the “This Is Your Life” skit!
Then we gathered around to enjoy Sr. Mary Margaret opening her gifts. Most of them were handmade by us, and we couldn’t wait to show her what we had done.
Sr. Mary Margaret opening a gift from the nuns.
Sr. Mary Christine enjoys a hat and scarf set made for the Jubilee.
Sr. Mary Margaret received a special Papal Blessing for her Golden Jubilee.
After gifts, we all ate a special meal in the community room. In the afternoon, we watched a montage of pictures of Sr. Mary Margaret’s life, especially her life in the monastery.
In the evening, we gathered back in the community room for another special program, this one about her life in the monastery and all that she’s done for the community. She’s had a very busy fifty years!
A few weeks later, we held another celebration for her family and friends of the Monastery with her Jubilee Mass. She happily renewed her vows. There is a video of the Mass here.
Fr. R.B. Williams, O.P., Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo Nevares of Phoenix, and Fr. Ron Foshage, M.S., concelebrated the Jubilee Mass.
Our local Knights of Columbus served at the Mass.
Sr. Mary Margaret had so many visitors that we had to open up our side of the chapel to let everyone have a seat.
The special meal was provided by our friend Doug Russell and his friends, who also generously set up an eating area in the front of the Monastery so that there was room for all of our visitors.
We had a delicious meal, straight from the grill.
After the meal, we all met in the parlor to greet all of the guests. Sr. Mary Margaret has made many friends during her over fifty years in Lufkin.
What made the day particularly special was that it was the first time her whole family was able to be together in decades.
Sr. Mary Margaret with her siblings Jim, Sherry, and Mike.
We all had a wonderful time and it was a perfect way to celebrate Sr. Mary Margaret’s monastic life and our appreciation for all she’s done for us.
We recently enjoyed a visit with the Dominican novices, friars in formation, of the Southern Province of St. Martin de Porres. Our Monastery of the Infant Jesus is in the Southern Province so we have a very close relationship with these friars. Their novice master, Fr. Francis Orozco, O.P., brought them to visit us so we can meet our new brothers in St. Dominic.
Fr. Francis Orozco with some of his novices
We love to meet the new novices. We always pray for our Dominican priests, and so it’s nice to be able to meet them in person. We had a great time talking about our lives as Dominicans and getting to know the novices personally.
Fr. R.B. Williams, our chaplain, also enjoyed meeting the novices.
We joked that maybe one of them would come back and be our chaplain someday.
God willing, they’ll come back to visit us someday as fully professed Dominicans!
The novitiate made our annual Tet celebration fun and exciting, with games, food and prizes. As usual, we began the evening with delicious treats, a variety of Vietnamese candy and other goodies.
Then the novitiate did a special dance, using flowered branches and flowing ribbons to simulate snakes.
Sr. Mary Pauline, Sr. Mary Christine, Sr. Mary Giuse and Sr. Marie Augustine pose at the end of their impressive snake dance.
Then there were games, all snake themed in honor of this year’s animal. First, there was a snake soccer-like game, where teams tried to push a rubber snake across a table with chop sticks.
Next, there was the snake toss. Each sister had a chance to use a special grabber tool to toss a snake into a bucket. (The rubber snake writhed around like a real one, making the tossing extra dramatic.)
Sr. Mary Therese tries to grab the snake to toss it into the waiting bucket.
It’s a lot harder than it sounds, but we each got three turns and most of us were at least able to hit the bucket, if not actually get the snake in it. We all had fun trying!
Sr. Mary Margaret aims her snake.
Then we had our usual dice game, where we bet on which picture the big dice would land on. At the end of the evening, we all got to pick a prize.
As usual, the evening was a fun celebration and we’re grateful to our Vietnamese sisters for keeping this celebration alive in our monastery.
Dominican Life on Lotus Lane 