Sr. Mary Annunciata recently celebrated a big birthday! She is now 89 years old and going strong. A good friend sent her this lovely bouquet of yellow flowers–yellow is Sister’s favorite color.
Sister still comes to community exercises, including prayer, adoration, meals and recreation. She is especially delightful at recreation, where she keeps her companions laughing with her unique sense of humor!
Sr. Mary Annunciata is a wonderful example of the way a nun’s vocation flowers over time, becoming more and more open to God’s love and grace, so that she is able to give to the world a glimpse of the unending beauty of Jesus Christ. We wish you many years, Sr. Mary Annunciata!
We always celebrate the feast of St. Dominic with special solemnity, but this year has been extra-special as we also celebrate the 800th anniversary of Dominic’s dies natalis, or “birth into heaven”. The theme proposed by the Order for this year is “At Table With Dominic”, and uses the image above as its visual presentation–the mascarella table, a painting of Dominic and his friars eating a meal together. The actual date of Dominic’s death is August 6, but since the Transfiguration now falls on that date, we celebrate Dominic on August 8.
We began the day with a lovely Mass celebrated by our chaplain, Fr. Ian Bordenave.
Fr, Ian in the beautifully decorated sanctuary of our chapelSr. Mary Rose did her usual excellent job as lector
Following Mass, breakfast, and prayers (we can’t omit these important things!) we all gathered in the community room to play Domingo!–which is, of course, a Dominican themed bingo game, using famous events, places, people and so on instead of numbers. A good time was had by all, and everyone won a prize!
We were delighted to have the whole Dominican family present at Mass, including our local chapter of the Dominican Laity and our good friends, the Dominican Sisters of Fatima.
The sisters brought us many lovely gifts, including this plant!
We had a delicious treat of milkshakes in the afternoon, and in the evening we watched the movie “Dominic: Light of the Church”, by the Dominican province in the Philippines. It was very good!
The day concluded with our usual prayers of Compline. At the end of Compline, we always sing a hymn to St. Dominic–most days, this is “O Lumen Ecclesiae”, “Light of the Church”. May Dominic light the way for the Church and for all people for many more years to come!
As our chaplain, Fr. Ian, reminded us, a death in the monastery is always bittersweet. We mourn the loss of our sister, and yet we rejoice that she has gone home to God. In the spirit of hope and expectation, we celebrated Sr. Mary Regina’s funeral on Tuesday. The bishop of our diocese of Tyler, TX, Bishop Joseph Strickland, was on hand as main celebrant and he was joined by Fr. Ian our chaplain, Fr. Tom Edelen, and Fr. Ron Foshage, M.S.
We are fortunate to have our own cemetery within our enclosure, and that is where Sister was laid to rest. After the funeral, we met briefly with Bishop Strickland in the community room. The rest of the day was spent in much-needed rest (most of us had spent time throughout the night in vigil with Sister’s body) and ended with a circle recreation at night, as we all reminisced about Sr. Mary Regina, remembering her many talents and good qualities, the things she did as part of our community, and her steadfast devotion to prayer, especially in the last years of her life. May you rest in peace, Sister Mary Regina!
Sister was an amazing person! She had many talents, including cooking, playing the organ, sewing, doing various kinds of handwork, and even set design for the plays we put on! We don’t have too many pictures of Sister in her early days, since she came from another monastery, but we’d like to share a few of the ones we have.
Sister was a joy to live with and we miss her a lot!
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Our dear Sr. Mary Regina died on August 4, 2021. She was 85 years old and had been professed 63 years.
Sister entered the Dominican monastery in Cincinnati, OH in 1955 and came to Lufkin in 1989 when that monastery had to close. We were privileged to live with Sister, who gave a wonderful example of patience, abandonment to God’s will, and fortitude during her last years.
We hope to have some more about Sister here soon, and we will have more information in the Fall issue of our newsletter, “Monastery Bells”.
Our chaplain, Fr. Ian, was away recently, so Fr. Marty Iott, O.P. graciously came to celebrate Mass for us and hear our confessions.
Father Marty is currently stationed at Holy Rosary Priory in Houston, TX, just a couple of hours from Lufkin, so it’s easy for him to stop by occasionally. We had a fun recreation with Father on Friday night–his jovial ways and infectious laugh kept us all laughing, too!
We are grateful to all our Dominican brothers and sisters who are so good to stop by and see us when they are in the area (and sometimes make a detour just to see us!). There are members of the Dominican family all over Texas–in Houston as we mentioned, but also in Irving, Lubbock, El Paso, San Antonio, and many more, but we are the only monastery of cloistered Dominican nuns in Texas. It is our joy to intercede for the world from this small corner of a big state.
Recently, a crew from St. Philip Institute (Diocese of Tyler) came out to do a story on our two East Texas natives, Sr. Mary Veronica and Sr. Mary Rose, as part of a series on people in our diocese. We look forward to seeing the video, and hopefully we will post it on our website. (More on this to come!)
The crew from St. Philip InsituteSr. Mary Rose leads the waySr. Mary Veronica, our oldest sister–in her 90s and still going strong!
