Tag: Christmas

Christmas at the Monastery

This year’s Christmas celebrations included old friends, community celebrations, and some very special presents for the nuns.

The refectory creche, decorated with a Dominican shield

As usual, we decorated our monastery so we would be in the Christmas spirit wherever we go.

The community room

Sr. Miriam and Sr. Maria Rosario with the creche in the infirmary

As is our tradition, on Christmas Eve our chaplain came in to the enclosure to bless the creches in the refectory and community room.

Sr. Mary Rose and Fr. Thomas blessing the creche in the community room

On Christmas morning, the Knights of Columbus came and grilled steaks for our Christmas dinner.

Afterwards, we visited with them in the parlor. This is a lovely Christmas tradition that we’ve enjoyed for over 40 years.

This Christmas brought another special guest: Fr. Brian Pierce, O.P. He got his Dominican vocation from the Lufkin nuns while he was a college student in Nacogdoches, and then served as promoter of the Dominican nuns for years.

Fr. Brian Pierce hugs his spiritual mother, Sr. Maria Guadalupe

We were honored to have him and Fr. Carmen Mele, O.P., celebrate Mass with us during their visit.

This Christmas, the nuns also received some special gifts.

Mike and Linda Beaver, great benefactors of the community for years, gave us a new car. We’re very grateful to them and to all of our benefactors who gave us gifts this year.

But it was our chaplain who gave us the most unusual gift: a hoverboard!

Sr. Mary Rose, our courageous prioress, was the first to ride it. She made sure to wear pads and a helmet!

On Epiphany, we had our usual community day of fun and games.

Sr. Mary Pauline and Sr. Maria Cabrini organized the games in the morning. Our two “wise men” made sure the morning was fun for all of us.

We separated into three teams to play Christmas-related games. First, we picked up cups, hoping to reveal a star.

Next, we put paper plates on our heads and tried to draw, blindly, a star with a smiley face. Sr. Maria Guadalupe was the judge and declared all of the pictures lovely.

What would Christmas be without candy canes? The next game was to use a candy cane at the end of a pole to try to fish other candy canes out of bowls.

Sr. Mary Margaret and Sr. Mary Therese race to be the first to fish out all of the candy canes. It was tricky!

Ornaments are also a big part of Christmas, so the next game was to stack cups while keeping an ornament balanced on the top.

Sr. Mary Giuse concentrates to keep the ornament in place.

Another fun game was guessing Christmas carol names. The teams picked cards with pictures on them that illustrated a Christmas carol.

This game was a lot of fun, but we had to think really hard. We not only had to figure out the pictures, but also remember a lot of song titles!

This Christmas season was full of fun, feasting, and community time, both with each other and with friends of the monastery. We love how the holidays bring us all together, and we’re so grateful to everyone who contributed to making this Christmas special.

Christmas at the Monastery

Christmas at the monastery was fun, festive, and very busy. Our celebrations lasted for days and we had many special events and visitors.

We always enjoy decorating our monastery to get ourselves in the festive mood, and keep the decorations up as long as possible.

Our sacristan, Sr. Carmen Gloria, is particularly creative with the decorations in the chapel. The creche gets special attention to call everyone over to adore the baby Jesus.

Every year, the magi start at one corner of the chapel, but eventually make their way over to the Holy Family in time for Epiphany.

Christmas wreaths make the chapel particularly festive.

Right before Christmas, we had a visit from jolly old St. Nicholas and one of his elves (the Healys, good friends of the monastery), who brought along some friends

Dr. Price and Dr. Fidone with Bella

They brought along their new puppy Bella, a beautiful chocolate Newfoundland dog, who was given special permission to come over to the nuns’ side of the parlor and quickly made friends with everyone.

Bella takes a nap.

On Christmas Eve, we had our usual midnight mass, then sang Christmas carols on our way to the refectory for our traditional midnight breakfast.

The refectory looked so beautiful with all of the foliage and Christmas lights. The novitiate did a wonderful job decorating!

Sr. Mary Pauline, Sr. Mary Christine, and Sr. Marie Augustine with the beautiful refectory Christmas creche.

On Christmas day, we spent all afternoon opening presents from our generous benefactors. There were group gifts to the whole community, and we also each got many gift bags full of treats for ourselves.

On New Year’s morning, we had our usual Big Chapter, in which we each get a card with a saint patron and a special cause to pray for during the upcoming year.

Then we give each other the kiss of peace to welcome in another year at the monastery.

In the evening, we go around the monastery Christmas caroling, which gives us a chance to see all of the Christmas decorations in the various departments throughout the monastery.

Sr. Mary Pauline and Sr. Mary Christine with their beautifully decorated novitiate Christmas tree

Christmas caroling in the outside lobby

We love going outside and seeing all the beautiful Christmas lights our workmen have put up for Christmas.

We made sure to go over and sing to our patron, the Infant Jesus!

On Epiphany, we have our big Christmas feast day, where we play games and recreate together all day.

This year, the novitiate was in charge of the evening’s activities, and divided us up into three teams and had us play star-related games.

In the end, everyone was a winner and we all got gift bags, including some special “star bread” baked by the novitiate.

Christmas is a special time for us, when we reflect on the closing year and look forward to the next. It’s a time not just for our community to come together, but also for us to visit with our special friends and benefactors who are so generous and make our lives here possible. Thanks be to the Infant Jesus!

Christ is in our midst

In the Eastern Orthodox church, the phrase, “Christ is in our midst” is used as part of the dismissal in Ordinary Time. As we finally post our Christmas season blog, we rejoice that although Ordinary Time has begun, we still live in the radiant light of Christ’s birth–Emmanuel, “God-with-us”.

Our Christmas season this year seemed extraordinarily busy. Maybe it was because of the short Advent season! But in fact a lot has happened. We have had many guests, many community celebrations, and a visit from one of our sisters in Trinidad. We’ll post more about her soon.

On St. Nicholas Day (we celebrated on December 7) St. Nicholas himself came bearing gifts for all the good nuns. Here we have the four sisters who met St. Nicholas for the first time, proudly wearing their hand crocheted scarves.

The aunt of one of our sisters sent an Advent calendar! Although it was not religious in any way, we enjoyed seeing each door open, marking the days from December 1 to December 24.

One of our traditions is to have creches set up in the various departments where sisters work. Although we try to preserve the memory of Christ always, and we have crucifixes up everywhere, the creche scenes are a reminder of Christ’s humble birth in Bethlehem, and encouragement for us to be more simple, humble, and childlike.

The Guild department, where we send letters and make enrollments

The library

The community room. Sister’s theme this year was light and darkness.

The infirmary

The kitchen.

The refectory. Thanks to our hardworking novitiate–they clean the refectory, and so they get to decorate it, too!

They also decorated the walls and tables. The novitiate had an angel theme this year, with angels on the walls and angels on the tables. All handmade!

Even the copy machine room had a little creche!

The statue of Our Lady in the hallway

We hope to bring you some pictures of the chapel soon too–it looked amazing!

On December 28, Holy Innocents Day, we celebrated the novitiate (and our two newer sisters, Sr. Carmen Gloria and Sr. Maria). We played fun games and our four newest sisters each got prizes. We are so happy they are with us!

We played “Pin the Star on Dominic’s Forehead”

We also played a fun cup and ball game. Our postulant Michelle was the clear winner of this game!

Sr. Maria, Sr. Mary Pauline, and Michelle with their prizes

Then came Epiphany on January 6! The novitiate hosted the professed in the novitiate building. In the morning, we played a lot of fun games. In the afternoon, we had a tea party and Christmas karaoke.

Popping balloons for prizes in the novitiate courtyard.

One of our games! We had to wear this basket and try to put bows into it with a spatula–harder than it sounds!

Enjoying afternoon tea and cookies.

“Glooooooooooooooria!”

In the evening, the novitiate sisters put on a delightful play for us–“The Fourth Wise Man”. They all did a great job with their parts and the scenery and stage props were very imaginative.

And, we had guests and free days and all kinds of other things! Thank you to all our benefactors who helped to make our Christmas season so beautiful, especially our faithful Knights of Columbus who always cook Christmas dinner for us. May all of you be blessed most abundantly in this New Year 2024!

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!

Good Christian Friends, Rejoice!

We’ve been doing a lot of rejoicing around here! And why not? It’s still the Christmas season, and we are still celebrating the wonder of Christ\’s birth. Now, it’s time we shared some of our lovely inside Christmas decorations with you! This is our chapel–the picture was taken from our side of the choir, facing the altar. We are so grateful to the people who donated the tree, the wreaths, and the many poinsettias.

Another beautiful donation: this Christmas arrangement to honor our crucifix

And now, without further ado, the creche scenes!

Our main creche in the chapel. Sister Sacristan did a marvelous job!
If you were able to visit us in person, you saw this one in the outside lobby
The community room
The Chapter Hall
The infirmary kitchen
The infirmary
The Print Shop (where Monastery Bells and our greeting cards are created, among other things)
The Guild, where letters are answered and enrollments are made
The Prioress’ office

The carol mentioned in our title is traditionally attributed to the 14th century Dominican mystic, Blessed Henry Suso. One of the lines in the modern version found in today’s hymnals says, “Christ was born to save!” We never forget that Christmas is a part of the Paschal mystery, and there is certainly an element of sorrow even in our joy (think of the Holy Innocents, for example). But on the whole it is a time when all of us can remember, or consider for the first time, the hope a newborn baby brings with it into this world. Let us rejoice this season as we remember that each one of us was born for a reason!

Christmas at the Monastery

 Here as we approach a brand new (hopefully happier) New Year, we\’d like to bring you some highlights of our Christmas festivities here at the Monastery.

On the evening of December 23, Santa Claus paid us a visit!

Santa brought each sister a copy of Matthew Kelly\’s book I Heard God Laugh and a few editions of a game called “Yeti in the Spaghetti”. We haven’t played it yet so we’ll let you know how that goes!

We’ve heard God laughing ourselves…

Next, on Christmas Eve afternoon, we had our annual visit from the Alexander family.

The Alexanders outside the front of the Monastery. They wore masks in the parlor!

We are always happy to see the Alexanders and hear all about what they\’ve been up to over the past year or so. We had a delightful visit with them.

After Vespers, our chaplain, Fr. John Lydon OP came inside to bless the creches in the community room and refectory.

Community room
Refectory

We had two glorious Masses, one at night and one in the morning, followed by our traditional dinner prepared by the Knights of Columbus. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to visit with the Knights and their families in the parlor after Mass as we have done for many years, due to COVID–the parlor gets really packed and we wanted to avoid a super-spreader event. Still, a few Knights were able to come and actually do the cooking. God bless them!

Our faithful Knights of Columbus, plus a future Knight, maybe

In the afternoon, in between prayers, we met together in the community room to see the gifts people gave us this year. Usually we get gifts “for the community”–a single gift everyone can use or benefit from. Sometimes we get gifts like popcorn or candy or cookies–always welcome! This year we received a new digital camera (the authors of this blog, the website, and Monastery Bells are particularly grateful for this!), some DVDs from the Teaching Company, and lots of books, in addition to the aforementioned food. We also got a new Chinese Checkers game, which gained a lot of applause from our dedicated players.

Many happy hours of serious fun to come

Much to our surprise, we also received a number of “individual” gifts as well! Several very kind and generous benefactors put together various gifts, making enough so that each sister could receive her own. Best of all, these were gifts we could use: toiletries, bed socks, plastic containers, art supplies, word and Sudoku puzzles, and (of course) more food!

As you can see, we enjoyed the gifts, and we\’re tremendously grateful to all those who gave them! No matter how old you are, it\’s still fun to have something to open on Christmas. Thank you, all our benefactors, for giving us such joy and putting smiles on our weary faces this Christmas of 2020!

We are still planning to post some pictures of our various creche scenes around the Monastery, so keep in touch! Remember, Christmas isn’t officially over until the Baptism of the Lord, despite what the world may tell you–especially by stocking Valentines already (or so we’ve heard)…

We wish all of you a most blessed New Year!

We Need A Little Christmas

 This song is so appropriate this year! It made its debut in Jerry Herman’s Broadway musical Mame in 1966, when Mame sang it to cheer up her nephew and servants after losing everything in the 1929 stock market crash. We’ve heard stories that many people are buying real Christmas trees and putting up extra lights and decorations as a way of cheering themselves up during this crazy year. And although we don\’t usually decorate until about right now, our workmen felt we needed a little Christmas and put up some lights both inside and outside the monastery this year!

Front of monastery
Infirmary yard with Infant Jesus
Our Lady of Fatima
The hedge by the carport
Our bell tower

We also have some decorating going on right now, as you can see…

My, what big poinsettias you have!
Our Lady with Jesus and their decorator, Sr. Mary Giuse

We\’re still decorating, and we plan to bring you more pictures when we\’re finished! These may come after the actual date of Christmas (that is, December 25) but remember, the Christmas season lasts until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is on January 10th this year. So during this year when we “need a little Christmas” in a particular way, remember you can celebrate for much longer than the secular world would have you believe! (In the old days, the Christmas season lasted until February 2, but even we think that’s a little long.)

Christmas is always a special time for us here at the Monastery, since it is also “our” feast day. We are, after all, the Monastery of the Infant Jesus. We hope you will have a happy and blessed Christmas, and know that we are praying for all of you!