15 TOTALLY AWESOME THINGS ABOUT THE NUNS OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS

1. Preaching the Gospel

‘Wait. Aren’t you cloistered?’ Yes! And therein lies our preaching. Our entire life, our being is our preaching. By giving up everything but God we joyfully proclaim to the world that only God is enough to fill the human heart! And oh how He fills it!

 2. Our Lady’s Order & the Rosary

Mary is the special patroness and Protectress of our Order. While other Orders may honor our Lady in a more spectacular way, ours is more quiet and more reflects Mary’s role in the life of Jesus. Since the Order was founded specifically for preaching the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus, Mary is most especially our patron because she wants nothing more than that Jesus be given to each person. Although our Lady gave the brown scapular around 1250 to St. Simon Stock, we received our white scapular from her hands when she appeared to Blessed Reginald in 1220...over 30 years earlier!

 3.      Living in Community

Community life is one of the most effective helps in becoming holy. When you live with the same women 24/7/365 you find that you are unable to compartmentalize your life…instead you become fundamentally integrated and are stretched to grow in ways you never could have grown without your sisters. Like jagged rocks jostled together in a sack, community life polishes our rough edges and makes us fit for the celestial community!

4.      The Contemplative Life

What could be better than spending your entire life completely for and with Love Himself?

5.      …and its apostolic dimension!

(Photo from here.)

…bringing others to share in God’s friendship through your prayer!  Unique to Dominican Nuns is our identity as contemplative nuns in an apostolic Order. While all contemplative prayer has an apostolic dimension, this is particularly true for Nuns of the Order of Preachers!

6.      Experiencing the Liturgy

We don’t attend Liturgy, we live it. As nuns we have the privilege of praising God seven times a day in the Divine Office.

7.      Sacred Study

"A Dominican should love to study and study to love.” ~Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Order.

8.      Dominican Joy

“Let God tend to the hopeless-looking things. You are a Dominican, a foreigner to worry and quite a close friend of gaiety... like the rest of us, you putter at your job with a normal amount of energy, for a reasonable length of time, and go to bed with the humiliating yet exhilarating knowledge that you are only a child of God and not God Himself.” ~Fr. Walter Farrell, OP.

9. Soul and Body ("Hylomorphic Fun")

As our brothers so aptly wrote, "We are not souls trapped in bodily prisons. In Genesis 1, God saw that his creation of the human person was very good." Ultimate Frisbee anyone?

10. Nice Digs

We get to live with God! Our Lord is the center of our lives, literally. Our monastery is built around His Eucharistic throne. Our beautiful chapel is open to the public seven days a week! Join us for mass at 7:15am (7:30 on Sundays) or for one of our Offices (see schedule here). The chapel is open 6am-7pm daily, come on over!

11. Fantastic Family

As nuns of the Order of Preachers we are blessed with a very large extended family. Not only do we have our many Dominican brothers and sisters, we also have our Franciscan cousins (St. Francis is called "Our Holy Father Francis" in the Dominican Litany!) and our Grandfather, St. Augustine (we follow the Rule of St. Augustine).

12. The Venia

Have you ever seen a cooler prostration than our Dominican venia? The venia is unique to our Order.

13. Being Part of an 800 Year Tradition

We can be assured that a life which has lasted for 800 years and churned out so many Saints and Blesseds can lead us to Heaven. Also, our 13th century wardrobe has never gone out of style!

14. And yet, not Being Afraid of the Future

Skype is a great way to 'attend' meetings of the nuns without having to leave enclosure! It also lets us share resources like classes for the young sisters and lectures.

Technology can be a fantastic tool for evangelization. We used YouTube to spread a video on the Rosary...and our blog to share our life with you!

15. We have 'totally awesome' brothers who come up with articles like this one: 14 Totally Awesome Things About the Order of Preachers!