Category: Visitors

Annual Retreat 2023

We came out of retreat this morning! Out of the woods, and back into the clearings of civilization (or something).

We had a fantastic retreat preached by Fr. James M. Sullivan, O.P., currently stationed at St. Pius V Church in Providence, RI. Father jokingly said the theme of the retreat would be, “All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned in the Novitiate”, and it truly was a most excellent review of the basic principles and foundations of Dominican life. There were conferences on the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience), the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) and trust in God. Father also gave wonderful homilies every morning. We’re so glad we recorded everything and can listen again some time!

Father giving a conference in our chapel

Father is very animated, so it was a challenge to get pictures during his conferences. So…

…he allowed one of the sisters to snap his picture during a session of private direction.

Thank you for everything, Father Sullivan! We hope to see you again some day!

Into the Woods

It’s that time of year again! Today we’re beginning our annual community retreat, and we’ll be in retreat until June 14. We’re delighted to have Fr. James Sullivan, O.P. as our retreat master, and we look forward to everything he will say to help us grow in our spiritual lives!

You may be wondering–why “into the woods”? Don’t we usually describe retreats as a desert experience? This is much more common, but here in East Texas we’re short on deserts and long (or tall) on pine trees, so we decided to embrace our situation. And after all, the woods can be every bit as wild–if not more so–than the desert. We have all kinds of critters roaming our property, raccoons, opossums, foxes, snakes, bobcats–not to mention the numerous species of birds and some bats! So do keep us in prayer as we go out into the wilderness of the retreat woods, and know that we are all praying for you, too!

A Visit from Fr. Vincent Davila, O.P.

Readers of this blog may remember that Fr. Vincent gave us our annual retreat back in June 2021. We had not seen him since (due to COVID and such), so we were all happy when we learned Fr. Ian asked Fr. Vincent to be our “replacement chaplain” while he was on vacation. Father arrived during our Pentecost retreat and will stay with us until Monday, June 5–that’s when our 2023 retreat master, Fr. James Sullivan, O.P., arrives! We’ll just let you know right now–we have a very busy month coming up!

We enjoyed some recreation with Father in the parlor on Pentecost Sunday. Father told us about the progress he has made on his dissertation. Our monastery seems to be a good place for friars to work on dissertations, articles, and the like–must be the peaceful, quiet atmosphere! The discussion took an unexpected but welcome turn onto the topic of the particular judgment (which happens when you die) and the Last Judgment (which comes at the end of time). We also joked with him, laughing a great deal. A most enjoyable evening!

Thank you so much for spending this time with us, Father Vincent! We enjoy your homilies, and look forward to hopefully reading your dissertation one day if/when you turn it into a book. We keep you in our prayers!

Classes with Fr. Raphael Mary, O.P.

We were happy to welcome Fr. Raphael Mary Salzillo, O.P. to our monastery last week. Father is a Dominican friar belonging to the Western Province (or Holy Name Province) but has been teaching at the University of St. Thomas in Houston for the past four years. We’ve been trying to get him to come for a while, but COVID kept getting in the way.

He gave a fascinating series of classes on Form of the Person and Soul in St. Thomas Aquinas–intense stuff, but Father made it fun with his silly examples (like “Sammy the Squirrel”). We all learned a lot and enjoyed his presentation and style immensely.

Father illustrates the concept of form in Thomas Aquinas using an orange

Father listening intently to one of the many questions we posed to him

Father Raphael Mary also led a small discussion group on the book The Women Are Up To Something, an intriguing study of four women philosophers at Oxford around the time of the second World War: Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgely, Phillipa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. Those who participated enjoyed it very much!

For his last session, Father explained his work with Courage International and Eden Invitation, and asked out prayers for these two groups. We didn’t know too much about these ministries, so we were glad to know about them and will keep their intentions in our prayers.

Thank you so much, Father Raphael Mary, for a fun and educational time! We wish you well in your new assignment in California, and hope we will meet up with you again some day!

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!

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.

Our Renewed Prioress

Things have been very busy here at the Monastery, and one thing we’ve been working on is the election–or we should say, re-election–of our prioress, Sr. Mary Margaret of the Cross Gyovai, O.P. Our community vicar, Fr. Ed Ruane, O.P., came to preside over the election and confirm it.

Still smiling after three years in office!

After the election, we shared some recreation time in our community room. We invited our chaplain, Fr. Ian Bordenave, O.P., to join us–and later he and Fr. Ed stayed for dinner in the community room, too!

The happy end of our election procedings

The following day, Fr. Ian and Fr. Ed concelebrated a Mass in honor of an abbess–with slight adjustments made to accommodate our situation. Traditionally, Dominican nuns have always had a prioress, a nun who is first among equals, rather than an abbess as the head of their communities.

The Fathers are wearing their lovely Dominican vestments

Usually, when a prioress is elected (or re-elected), she has to change job assignments around. This is because once you change one thing, everything else needs to be changed as well! We’ve all been cleaning our various departments and trying to organize things in preparation for a new sister-in-charge, if that happens. So we expect there will be some upheaval in the days to come. However, one thing that never changes is our commitment and devotion to God witnessed through our prayer life and our continual openness to His will. Whatever the future may hold, we know God will be there, and that is good enough for us!

Please do keep Sr. Mary Margaret and all of us in prayer as she embarks on this new three-year term!