Buy Some Soap – Help Some Nuns – UPDATE

In another entry I asked you to consider buying soap from the Contemplative Domincan Sisters of Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery in New Jersey. 

Buy Some Soap – Help Some Nuns

Since I posted that entreaty my e-mail is awash with positive comments about the soap the sisters sell.  Some folks are in a lather to express their happiness with the quality.  In fact, a few of the e-mails positively bubble with pleasure.  

I also received a note from the Monastery’s soap mistress, Sr. Mary Catherine, OP, which she said I could share with my emphases:

Dear Fr. Z,
Pax Christi!

Yesterday I received an email from a friend who informed me that you had posted a wonderful blog entry about us and our soaps! I also read WDTPRS but not every day, so I hadn’t seen this and of course, I was delighted and chuckled when I read your write up! Glad you got the joke about Savonarola. [Yah… that was a good one!] It’s also a play on words because Savon is soap in French. The scent is really called “crackling fire” but one of our sisters thought she heard “crackling FRIAR” so we had to call it Savonarola! 

Thank you so much for your kindness in getting the word out!

We have about 2-3 months left of our renovations and we can’t wait til we have our kitchen and refectory back! For now, we cook in the small “bakery” in the basement and eat upstairs in the community room. It has it’s challenges! We joke that if we don’t grow in virtue by the time this is over with we can’t blame the community.

Please continue to pray for us, for our new postulant Sr. Janlyn and for many more to follow her! [Do I hear an "Amen!"?] We would love to make a foundation in either Australia where there has never been a Dominican Monastery or in England where the last one closed in 1990. [?!… really?  the last?] In the Order it is considered “incomplete” in a location if there isn’t a monastery of nuns. What would be ideal is if women from either country came and did their novitiate with us and then returned to their country with a few Summit professed nuns to start a new foundation. This is how we started our foundation the Philippines in 1977.

Father, during this Year for Priests know you are in our prayer in a special way. Thank you for the gift of your priesthood!

Oremus pro invicem!

In Jesus through Mary,
Sr. Mary Catharine, OP
Novice mistress and chief dishwasher of the soap department!

The link to their online SHOP is HERE.

My original entry, with the interesting comments is HERE.