Blessed Advent

A happy and blessed beginning of Advent to you all! This season marks a very special anniversary for our community as we begin the 25th Jubilee Year of our foundation. On November 27, 1999, our founding sisters first gathered together in Rosemary Heights, Surrey to sing the Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent together. We give thanks for God’s providence and goodness as He led us from Surrey to Langley, and eventually to the snow-capped peaks of the Upper Squamish Valley.

As we prepare to celebrate with joy Christ’s coming among us at Christmas, we give thanks for all our friends near and far who have supported our foundation. In our new winter newsletter, we reflect on the gift of these past decades, and share the news of the past few months. Right now, you can read the digital edition below in either English or French; we will mail the paper editions to subscribers once the postal strike is concluded.

On a similar note, we are currently unable to fulfill online orders or receive donation cheques in the mail until the postal service resumes. However, our soap and other handmade items are available in our monastery’s physical gift shop. Secure donations can still be made online through our website. We are deeply grateful for all your support, and pray for our benefactors every day.

Finally, it is our great joy to announce the election of our new prioress, Sr. Marie-Bénédicte Gutierrez! In Dominican tradition, we hold prioral elections every three years. Our Constitutions describe the prioress’s role as being “the faithful servant of the monastery,” responsible particularly for cultivating unity and charity, encouraging the contemplative life of the nuns, fostering regular observance, and caring for the sick. Please pray for Sr. Marie-Bénédicte as she begins these years of service in our community.

Sr. Marie Thomas Lawrie
First Profession of Sr. Marie Angelica
 
 

The feast of Dominican All Saints (November 7) was particularly joyful for our community this year as we witnessed the first profession of Sr. Marie Angelica of the Incarnation! The Eucharist was celebrated by fr. Pierre Leblond O.P., fr. Maxime Allard O.P. and Fr. Andrew L’Hereux. It was a beautiful and very moving ceremony, with the surprise of a violin offertory played by one of our other young sisters. We give thanks to God for Sr. Marie Angelica’s vocation, and wish her every joy in the Lord as she continues to follow Jesus in consecrated life for the next three years.

 
 
Sr. Marie Thomas Lawrie
Happy Feast of St. Dominic

Dear Friends,

Happy Feast of St. Dominic! As we celebrate our founder today, it’s also an opportunity to give thanks and reflect on the question: who, really, was St. Dominic de Guzman?

We know the bare details of his life: that he was born to noble parents around the year 1170 in Caleruega, Spain; that he studied for the priesthood and then became a canon at the cathedral in Osma; and that he accompanied his bishop Diego de Acebo on a diplomatic mission that passed through the south of France around 1203. After encountering the Cathar movement, Bishop Diego and Dominic stayed in the region around Fanjeaux and Toulouse, adopted a poor and ascetic way of life, and began preaching the fullness of the Gospel, including the reality of the Incarnation of Christ and the goodness of the material universe. After Bishop Diego died, Dominic stayed in the region, founding first a monastery formed of women who were Cathari converts, and then a small band of preaching friars to help in the way of life and mission they called the “holy preaching.”

Sign outside the Pierre Seilhan house in Toulouse: “Remnants of the Gallo-Roman wall of Toulouse. Saint Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers, lived here in 1215 with his first companions”

Interestingly, though, we have very few writings actually by the founder of our Order. What has come down to us instead are a way of life, and short stories and fragments of witness about St. Dominic himself. From an account left by the elderly nun Bl. Cecilia Cesarini, we know that St. Dominic was "...thin and of middle height. His face was handsome and somewhat fair. He had reddish hair and beard and beautiful eyes ...His hands were long and fine and his voice pleasingly resonant." Other stories are collected mainly in the Libellus of Jordan of Saxony (written in the 1230s), the Lives of the Brethren (collected and edited by Gerard de Fachet in the 1260s), and the documents of St. Dominic’s canonization process. What emerges from these vignettes is a picture of our brother as a man who was compassionate, adventurous and at times amusing: St. Dominic walking and singing so joyfully along the path to Fanjeaux that would-be assassins didn’t have the heart to complete their attempt; St. Dominic running from choir to choir in church to encourage tired brothers to more volume and devotion; St. Dominic as a young student studying in Palencia and selling his books to feed victims of a local famine, saying that “I will not study on dead skins when living skins are dying of hunger.”

The Cross of Sicaire near Fanjeaux, marking the spot where the would-be assassins waited for St. Dominic

Although these stories are short, it is possible from them to research and imagine more fully what St. Dominic might have been like, and to “put flesh” on the legend. For the feast, we are happy to share with you a prose poem written by one of our sisters while reflecting on St. Dominic’s as a student in Palencia during a famine. We hope you enjoy it, and wish you a blessed feast.

God bless
your sisters of Queen of Peace Monastery

Table of the Knees, Palencia, Spain, 1190

She came running with bread, and I scolded her,
my little girl, her lower lip pressed tight to top
as she cradled a loaf in each arm, unnibbled, uncrushed,
untouched and saved for the nine of us.

After two years of clouds riding past overhead like messenger horses,
we were famished.
No rain, no grain, no cattle, no skins for José to cure for the monks to fold into books,
which meant for me less to fold into daily bread, until that, too, stopped,
along with the fieldwork and the last of the wine.
We came here to my sister, who is tired of us,
and has her own to feed.

And I look at where my little girl’s dimples used to be,
and I scold her, because until now, we had always kept our honour,
as my mother taught me, and hers before, and the priests too,
because when there’s nothing left there’s at least this.

But—“I understand,” I tell her, crouching to her level, her lower lip still
pressed tight to top. “We’ll take it back, I’ll go with you. They’ll understand.”
Father, I pray in my heart, please let what I’m saying be true. Please let them understand.

I take a loaf, and take her hand, and she leads me down the street to where a merchant is loading his cart with boxes of books. A table, bare except for a single loaf of bread, pressed tight to the stone wall; and a cart backing in, carrying more. There are no clerks, there are no guards, just the rush of the crowd as they come, and take, and go home to their own, who I hope scold less than I do.

Then I trip on a student, perched in a doorstep, parchment pale and tired, yet calm. “Sorry,” he says, “Been a long day, trying to stay out of the way. Did you get enough? Is your family here?” I nod, my lower lip pressed tight to top, as I see my sister coming towards me, walking not running, her arms full of bread, and no one yelling.

“Whoever did this is a saint!” she cries out, coming in beside me.

The student, standing, laughs. “He’s going to flunk his exams is what,” he says. “But what’s a book when human hands fold empty?” And from behind his back—where in all Palencia he found this, I don’t know—he pulls a twist of honeycomb, and crouches to my daughter’s level. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey in the mouth,” he chants, voice low, and folds it into her hands.

We ate on our doorsteps that night in the neighbourhood, passing bread from knee to knee, and a bottle of wine saved for someday better, which is now; and my daughter solemn from table to table, anointing each slice with honey from the comb, and singing, voice clear and flown and free.

Sr. Marie Thomas Lawrie