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Matachines 2011

Last night we were delighted to welcome the matachines from St. Andrew\’s parish here in Lufkin.

They wore exceptionally beautiful costumes, as you can see…
and danced in the traditional style. Note the very young matachine at the end of the line!
It was a privilege and a delight to see them honor Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lord in our chapel! Thank you so much!
You can see last year\’s visit from the matachines from St. Patrick\’s parish (with more information about matachines in general) HERE.

Christmas Novena

It\’s time again for our Christmas novena, which starts today and runs through December 24. This includes all our prayers and sung Masses, as well as our special novena prayer. We will be remembering you all, the readers of this blog, in a special way this year! May God bless you all and give you a joyful and blessed Christmas!

St. Lucy

There are many saints with the name Lucy–there\’s even a Dominican Lucy, Blessed Lucy of Narni (we\’re not making this up!), but the Lucy we remember today is a virgin martyr from the early days of Christianity. She is the patroness of people who are blind, because according to legend, her eyes were put out. Today we pray especially for all who are blind or having trouble with their vision–physical or spiritual. May St. Lucy enlighten these days of Advent for us all!

Welcome, Sor Irma!

Sor Irma, O.P. comes to us from the Dominican monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena in Puebla, Mexico. She will be staying with us here in Lufkin for about six months, learning English among other things, and we are delighted to have her! She is already praying the rosary with us (in English, that is) and singing a little at Mass, and she only arrived on Monday. We are so happy to renew and strengthen our ties to our Dominican nuns in Mexico, and pray Sor Irma will have a pleasant and helpful time here at our monastery. Please keep her in your prayers as well!

A Lot to be Thankful For…

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday and hope you did too! 
Sr. Bernadette Marie and Sr. Mary Gabriel make a wish!
 Sr. Mary Veronica and one of the turkeys she prepared…
We always eat in the community room on Thanksgiving…which gives us an opportunity to talk while we eat (a rare privilege!)
Sr. Maria Rosario and Sr. Mary Catherine enjoying the delicious meal
Many thanks to our friends who helped make our Thanksgiving dinner possible! We are so grateful to all of you! May God bless you abundantly!

Retreat with Fr. Gabriel O\’Donnell, OP

We should admit right now that this picture was NOT taken at our monastery…none of the pictures we took turned out, unfortunately. But we still want to show you Father Gabriel O\’Donnell, OP (if you don\’t know him already). He gave us a marvelous retreat on the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and the cardinal virtues (prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance), relating them to the monastic life–and he added a talk on humility as well, which was most welcome! Fr. Gabriel is the academic dean at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC and we are so grateful he was able to take some time out of his busy schedule to come and give us this retreat. We hope you will be able to return to see us again one day soon, Father!