SW News: At a time when prelates in various parts of the globe are expressing concern over waning faith and a decline in the number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, there are certain communities that stand out as powerful contradictions by having a springtime in young vocations. One such religious order of nuns is the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist based in Ann Arbor in the US state of Michigan.

Founded in 1997, the congregation counts some 155 nuns as of 2021 and their average age is 32.  What makes them special is the impressive number of girls from all over the world who knock on their doors to try out if they are called to the religious life. The congregation gets as many as 30 postulants a year on an average and more than half of them end up taking the veil. This August, they received eight new postulants. Their mother house is already bursting at the seams with more than one hundred sisters and a new priory has been built in Texas to accommodate 115 sisters as the vocation explosion continues.

While rooted in the traditional Dominican way of life that includes the full habit, common life, cloister, lectio divina and silence, the nuns also strive for New Evangelization by reaching out to the young through education, vocation discernment and retreats. The twin apostolates are teaching and preaching which are firmly anchored to prayer and contemplation. They have 24 teaching missions in the United States and the nuns also serve as librarians at the Pontifical North American College in Rome and in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in Houston, Texas.

The nuns credit the vocation boom to the three retreats they organize every year that attracts many girls from different countries. A good number of them end up joining the order while others try some other congregations and some of them choose the married life. The 24-hour retreats have fun sessions, adoration and spiritual guidance, which help the young participants aged 16 to 32 discern their calling.  The retreats help the participants experience the genuine Christian joy in the world and the love of God and the Church radiated by the nuns.

It was founded by Mother Assumpta Long, former superior of the Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia in Nashville and three other nuns – Sr Joseph Bogdanowicz, Sr Mary Samuel Handwerker and Sr John Rasmussen-on February 9, 1997, with the blessing of Cardinal John O’Connor in the Archdiocese of New York. They were inspired by the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope St John Paul II Vita Consecrata urging a renewal of religious life to aid the New Evangelization.