In this year of Our Lord 2021, we expect abundant graces as we celebrate three special “years”: the Year of St. Joseph in the universal Church, the Year of the Eucharist and the Parish here in our Archdiocese of Mobile, and the 800th Jubilee Year of the Death of our Holy Father St. Dominic in the Order of Preachers.
The Year of St. Joseph
To our delight, Pope Francis proclaimed the Year of St. Joseph from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021. We have shared a lovely poem one of our Sisters wrote in his honor, and a “contemplative novena” that can help us grow in friendship with God through meditating on St. Joseph.
Both our Dominican Order and our Perpetual Rosary tradition have strong devotions to St. Joseph. Each Sister thanks him for his care and asks his continued protection for at the end of her Hour of Guard. After dinner graces we sing his antiphon, “Ecce fidelis” with its verse, and have several other devotions to St. Joseph daily. As he guarded and protected Our Lady and the Divine Child faithfully and well, may he continue to guard and provide for us and for the universal Church during this time of great need.
The Year of the Eucharist and the Parish
As we said in our recent Christmas Newsletter, “It was with great joy that we learned that our Archdiocese of Mobile is celebrating The Year of the Eucharist and the Parish [from the feast of Christ the King 2020 to that same feast in 2021]. As Dominican nuns we build up the community of the Church first in our own monastic community, as we offer ourselves to God each day in union with Jesus in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, receive Him in Holy Communion, and adore Him in Eucharistic Adoration.” Perhaps our Eucharistic Rosary post, explaining how to join a Eucharistic offering and spiritual communion with the recitation of the Rosary, will be helpful too in fostering devotion.
It is a grace for us to be connected to our local parishes, especially through the priests who take turns offering Holy Mass daily at our monastery, and through our friends and benefactors who share their resources and prayer requests with us. Truly it is mutually enriching for us to be a part of the life of the local Church, and to be a witness too through our life of prayer and Eucharistic Adoration to the reality of God’s presence in our midst. We pray that this Year of the Eucharist and the Parish in our Archdiocese of Mobile, and its twin Year of the Parish and the Eucharist in our neighboring Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama, may bear much fruit for the salvation of souls.
The 800th Jubilee of the Death of St. Dominic
Today, the traditional feast of the Epiphany, marks the beginning of this special and last of our “three celebratory years” and of our three Dominican 800th Jubilees. First, in 2006, we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the contemplative Dominican nuns by our Holy Father St. Dominic, showing that the contemplative life is both the first fruit and the foundation of the Holy Preaching of our Order. Then after a novena of years, in 2016, we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the official approval of the Order of Preachers by Pope Honorius III.
Our current Jubilee, finally, which celebrates the 800th Anniversary of the death of our Holy Father St. Dominic, is a more intimate reflection on St. Dominic himself. The Master of the Order has invited us to reflect on St. Dominic “not as a saint alone on a pedestal, but a saint enjoying table fellowship with his brothers.” Our Holy Father St. Dominic is present to us in a very vivid way in the communion we experience in the Order, and in the reality of our vocation to spend ourselves for souls in the cloistered contemplative life at the heart of the Holy Preaching.
There is a beautiful passage in Fr. Joret, O.P.’s Dominican Life, where he speaks of the grace of paternity by which St. Dominic obtains for each of us the grace of our vocation. We look forward to reflecting and sharing more about our Holy Father St. Dominic and our Dominican vocation during this coming year.