Dominican Life
In the heart of the Holy Preaching
“The nuns of the Order of Preachers came into being when our holy Father Dominic gathered women converts to the Catholic faith in the monastery of Blessed Mary of Prouihle. These women, free for God alone, he associated with his “holy preaching” by their prayer and penance. Our holy Father drew up a rule to be followed and constantly showed a father’s love and care for these nuns and for others established later in the same way of life. In fact, “they had no other master to instruct them about the Order.” Finally, he entrusted them as part of the same Order to the fraternal concern of his sons.”
This is how the Fundamental Constitutions describes the life of a Dominican contemplative nun. What makes a nun Dominican then? The answer is the whole context of Holy Preaching in which her hidden vocation takes shape as a message whose content is Jesus Christ: “The nuns are to seek, ponder, and call upon him in solitude so that the word proceeding from the mouth of God may not return to him empty” (Fundamental Constitution of the Nuns). As Jesus, our loving Savior offered himself completely for our salvation, a Dominican considers herself truly his members primarily when we are spending ourselves in love totally for the salvation of souls.
Our holy father, St. Dominic’s heart was so filled with love for the Lord that he participated in the deepest plans of His heart. To St. Dominic it meant offering himself as Christ did, giving himself with such intensity that this gift won souls.
Such is the spiritual maternity of a Dominican contemplative nun. Her life incarnates the cry of St. Dominic,
“My God, my mercy! What will become of sinners!”
Corpus Christi Monastery
Founded: 1889
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Mother Mary of Jesus (Julia Crooks of New York City), entered the Dominican monastery in Oullins, France, with the stipulation that, if the opportunity presented itself, she would bring Dominican contemplative to the United States. Bishop Corrigan of Newark, New Jersey invited her to come and Mother Mary of Jesus founded the Monastery of St. Dominic in Newark, NJ, in 1880. Nine years later, she and five other Sisters came to the Bronx, at the invitation of the same Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan who had been archbishop of New York. He requested the presence of a contemplative community of nuns with the special purpose of praying for the seminarians and priests of the Archdiocese of New York.
In 1921, at the invitation of Archbishop Edward J. Hanna of San Francisco, 7 nuns went westward to bring Dominican cloistered life and perpetual adoration to the West Coast by beginning a new monastery in Menlo Park, California.
“What is needed, above all, are souls of prayer.”
Mother Mary of Jesus, OP
Foundress