Early sunrises, late sunsets, ruby tomatoes sweetened by Tennessee soil and the sun’s rays— this is but a taste of summer at the Motherhouse in Nashville. Summer affords an opportunity for well-earned rest, even though it is also “the season of the revolving door" as sisters return from their missions and head out to summer school, vacation Bible schools, or visits to their families. 

Despite the comings and goings, summer is above all a time of rootedness, when we celebrate the fidelity of our sisters in their 25th, 50th , and 60^th  years of profession. We also rejoice as the younger sisters make their first and final professions, offering the fiat of their lives to Jesus. At the beginning of the Mass of Religious Profession, every sister’s heart warms when she hears the familiar strains of “Veni, Sponsa Christi” ("Come, O Spouse of Christ"), for it also recalls to her the ardent joy of her own public profession of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Canon law reminds us of the profound meaning of religious consecration: 

“As a consecration of the whole person, religious life manifests in the Church a wonderful marriage brought about by God, a sign of the future age. Thus the religious brings to perfection a total self-giving as a sacrifice offered to God, through which his or her whole existence becomes a continuous worship of God in charity.” (Canon 607)

It is love that binds the sisters of the community together— love firstly for God, love for each other, love for the common life, love for St. Dominic and St. Cecilia, love for the Nashville roots of our congregation. “Remember the love you had at first,” one of our past Prioress Generals once exhorted the community. Greatly strengthened by the abundant graces of the jubilees and professions of summertime, our hearts are ripe to burst forth anew with zeal and charity, to be all for Jesus wherever we go.