CELEBRATING OUR HOLY FATHER SAINT DOMINIC!

A Blessed & Joyous Feast of our Holy Father St. Dominic to all our Brothers and Sisters throughout the world and to all our dear friends and readers as we thank God for giving us and the Church this "evangelical man" who we call "Light of the Church", "Preacher of Truth", "Rose of Patience" and "Ivory of Chastity".

May we trust in his promise to be more faithful to us after death than during life and truly be other "Dominic's," faithful to our vocation of preaching for the salvation of souls, whether that be in the pulpit, in the classroom, on the street, or in the silent and hidden sanctuary of the cloister.

As we nuns celebrate the 800th year of our founding, we thank God for the wonderful gift of our vocation and the gift of such a father! Bl. Jordan says that the first nuns had "no other master and father" and 800 years later we continue to feel his fatherly love for his first-born daughters!

Below is the text of the little we have of the writings of St. Dominic. Besides this letter we know that he wrote some parts of the Primitive Constitutions. A framed copy of this letter, a gift of our monastery in Newark, NJ, hangs outside of our Choir.

Friar Dominic, Master of the Preachers, to the Beloved Prioress and the Entire Community of Nuns at Madrid: Health and Daily Progress.

Greatly do we rejoice and thank God because of your holy life and because He has freed you from the corruption of this world. Daughters, fight the ancient adversary insistently with fasting, for only he will be crowned who has striven according to the rules. If until the present you have not had a place in which to live your religious life, now you can no longer be excused, because by the grace of God you have buildings suitable enough for living the religious life. From now on I want silence to be kept in the forbidden places, the refectory, the dormitory, and the oratory, and your law to be observed in all other matters. Let none go out through the gate and no one enter except the bishop or some prelate for the sake of preaching or making a visitation. Be not sparing of discipline and vigils. Be obedient to your prioress. Avoid talking idly to one another. Let not your time be wasted in conversation.

Since we cannot help you in temporalities, we do not want to give any friar the authority to receive postulants, but only the prioress with the council of her community. Moreover, we command our dear brother, i.e., Friar Mannes, who has worked so hard and has joined you to this blessed state, that he arrange and dispose everything as shall seem good to him, so you might live a most religious and most holy life. Furthermore, we give him power to visit and correct and to remove the prioress (if it be necessary) with the consent of the majority of the nuns; and we give him permission that he may grant dispensations in some matters, if it seems fit to him.

Farewell in Christ.