Foundation        Father Moore

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The Story of the Foundation

From the booklet printed for
the Solemn Dedication of the new building
June 7, 1958

Printing Tip

    A cloistered Monastery is in a very special way directly produced by God. Humanly speaking, the completion of this permanent Monastery of Our Lady of Grace in so short a time would have been quite impossible. But "God can do all things, and nothing is hard or impossible to Him."

    In the formation of the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace, God’s role, and that of Our Lady in cooperation with Him, has been so visible that priests, nuns and laity alike have been clearly conscious of the direction of His Providence. God saw the virtue in thousands of hearts, the potential readiness for tremendous acts of charity for which He could reward souls eternally. To provide opportunity for so many and such great acts of charity, God inspired Miss Bridget Rice to donate the Samuel Chittendon homestead and land to the Dominican Fathers and through them to the Dominican Nuns.

    That gift was decisive. In Summit, New Jersey, by 1946 the Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, a beautiful new monastery of perpetual adoration and the perpetual rosary, was filled to capacity, and more candidates were applying. Its income was adequate and its spirit was fervent. Under all these favorable circumstances, the gift of the Chittendon estate of one hundred and ninety-seven acres in North Guilford, Connecticut, seemed to manifest God’s will that another monastery be opened. The Most Reverend Henry J. O’Brien, D.D., then Bishop of Hartford, welcomed the opportunity of establishing a monastery of perpetual adoration in his diocese, and the Most Reverend Thomas J. Walsh, S.T.D., Archbishop of Newark, graciously granted to the Summit monastery all the necessary permissions for a foundation. The Episcopal Decree of Erection was given on January 21, 1947, by Bishop O’Brien.

    So it came about that a happy little busload of Dominican Nuns arrived in North Guilford on that muddy but sunny January 21, 1947. They had been interviewed and approved individually by Auxiliary Bishop Boland of Newark who found them ready and eager to leave the comfort of a well-established monastery for the uncertainties and hardships of pioneering. They found deep security in the paternal blessing of Bishop O’Brien, whose warm friendship was to be their support in all the serious trials along the way. They had gathered up and salvaged the furniture left over when the nuns in Summit had moved from their early temporary set-up into their real permanent monastery. They had brought a lot of cases of canned food, not knowing what might result from winter weather on the corner of Hoop Pole and Race Hill Roads, where no buses pass and stores are all far away. They prayed for strength for whatever might come; and they prayed for all the people who would soon be associated with them. They understood very well that while God had entrusted them with vocations which made them the nucleus of this great venture in His honor, they were still only a seed which must be nourished and tilled by the prayers, material assistance, and sacrificial charity of thousands if it were ever to come to full blossom.

    Having just left a spacious, well-built monastery, the little founding group was startled by the smallness of the Chittendon homestead. They were more startled when they found that the caretaker and his family had not yet moved out and were calmly preparing their dinner in the kitchen. The sympathetic bus-driver relaxed in his bus and waited—in case any of them would decide to return with him. He could not see the supporting grace God was pouring into those happy consecrated hearts.

    Those were still the days of the strict Eucharistic fast, and the nuns had traveled fasting. Their chaplain had traveled with them, and they began the foundation with Mass and Holy Communion, at about one o’clock in the afternoon. Immediately afterward, fortified by eggs scrambled in a borrowed frying pan, they set about making the farmhouse into the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace. The parlor of the house had previously been prepared to serve as a temporary chapel. Now they hastily moved the caretaker’s family to the cottage prepared for them across the street. Then they assigned the first floor of the farmhouse to living and working quarters, and allotted the second floor for a dormitory for the professed nuns and the nicely finished attic to the novitiate. They did not miss a line of their Divine Office that first day nor on any of the days that followed, although the order of exercises, fitted between the exigencies of revising the farmhouse, was not what it would normally have been.

    Being cloistered nuns voluntarily consecrated to God by their vows, the founding group had in mind but one purpose. They had come to offer to God in Connecticut, where before their arrival there had been no cloister, the twenty-hour hour a day adoration, reparation, petition and thanksgiving prescribed by the Rule of Saint Augustine and the Dominican Constitutions, as they had been given by Saint Dominic to his first cloistered nuns in Prouille, France, in the year 1206. Their time-tested monastic practices and customs have proved their value as efficient means to the goal which is union with God—so they promptly began what they have continued to do until now, to adapt whatever resources they had to conformity with Dominican monastic requirements. The big farmhouse bedrooms were immediately divided into monastic cells by means of unbleached cotton walls. Later when the nuns could manage cellutex walls, the cotton was transformed into wearing apparel. There was hardly room in the house for everything including the nuns, and much of the first two weeks was spent in moving paper cartons from one room to another and from the attic to the cellar and back, while the food got sorted out from the parts of the little printing press, the choir books, and the nuns’ clothing. They fenced in a minute bit of yard outside the kitchen door, and assured the bishop they were ready to be cloistered.

    Poverty was a serious matter, of course. Eking out their inadequate supply of dishes by serving the milk in the bottles it came in was just something to joke about. But not having room enough to get everybody into their ‘choir’, as they call their cloistered chapel, with no room at all for the ceremonial rubrics required for their choral prayer, was a real difficulty. But the seed was already taking root. The presence of the nuns and the power of their unceasing prayer were becoming known. People began to see the possibilities of the new activity on the obscure crossroads in North Guilford, and to come with food, equipment, and helpful advice. To share fully the fruits of their prayers and labors, the nuns had already established prayer societies by which individuals, living and dead, could participate personally in all the Community’s efforts. In the Providence of God, the first offering for enrollments, a check for fifteen dollars, came all the way from Chicago, and the nuns were happy that their apostolic prayer was already reaching out to souls so far away as well as to their immediate neighbors. There were days when so many things went wrong that Mother Prioress and the other nuns wondered if God really did want the foundation. On one such day the plumbing had clogged, as it often did. There was no money to pay the bills, and the nuns had run out of something essential—probably oil for the furnace. After Vespers the nuns added a verse to their hymn to Saint Joseph and sang the ‘Salve Regina’ with all the pleading they could put into it. Right after supper a pleasant stranger asked to talk with Mother Prioress. He questioned her in detail about the financial management of the Community, and then, satisfied that the nuns understood the value of money, he pushed a much folded bit of paper through the grill. It was a three-figure check. God and the saints in heaven heard a great deal about Mr. Frank Sullivan from the nuns that night and through the years which have followed. Obviously, something had to be done about the choir and a chapel. Someone kindly offered the nuns an army chapel. After a day’s hopeful elation, they realized they could not afford to move it to North Guilford. Nor could they afford lumber to build a chapel. But Mother Prioress’ undaunted resourcefulness made her turn to the only remaining possibility, the two Chittendon barns. Still, the nuns themselves could not move and renovate the barns; and the bit of fence around the kitchen yard had taught them the prohibitive price of carpenters. This time the angels guided Mrs. Louis Fusco, already a friend of the nuns before they left Summit, to the nuns’ tiny parlor with its double grills separating them from their visitors. She asked questions and Mother Prioress explained that the nuns could not do anything about making the barns into chapels. Mrs. Fusco’s comment was a beaming, "But my husband is a contractor. I’ll go home and get him." So Mr. Fusco came and listened and thought and said he would build the chapels and that the nuns could pay him at whatever future date they could.

There were still difficulties. When the Fusco-Amatruda Company men looked over the barns destined to become chapels, they were unconcerned about the cows and hay still occupying one of them, but the rotted sills under it would obviously collapse if they were disturbed. Those barns were one hundred and seventy-six years old. Mr. Fusco and Mr. Amatruda hesitated, while the nuns prayed day and night to Saint Joseph, and the local farmers bet on whether or not it could be done. It was the movers who produced the solution. They held the barns in the air for several days, until on the Feast of Saint Joseph, the Fusco-Amatruda Company completed the new foundations under them. Then they hurried the chaplain’s cottage down the street and attached it to the chapel-barn. By the time the passages connecting all the buildings were being constructed (and used as additional rooms by the nuns whose number was already increasing), the contractors had acquired a share of Mother Prioress’ resourceful determination, and were doing much more than modernizing two ancient barns. A strike made the purchase of window-frames impossible—and since they could not afford window-frames anyway, the nuns got in touch with a demolition company. The resulting window-frames were all shapes and sizes, but the contractors cheerfully measured them and built the openings accordingly. Mr. Fusco personally helped Mother Prioress search the piles of second-hand lumber to find the cedar for crosses for the top of the monastery, and when she suggested that the mahogany from a beautiful old bureau was just what was needed for the throne of exposition for the Blessed Sacrament, everybody agreed.

    While all the building was going on, the month of May came. Neither the nuns nor the people could wait for the chapels to be finished. Already the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace was a sacred sanctuary from which Our Lady was dispensing precious favors and graces. The first May Pilgrimage to Our Lady was held triumphantly in the pouring rain, with about six hundred people crowded into what were still barns at that time.

    On August 16, 1947, Bishop O’Brien came again. He dedicated the barn-chapels and although the nuns had previously resumed the round-the-clock adoration and recitation of the rosary practiced in their cradle monastery, it was on that day that Bishop O’Brien announced it as the official adoration of the Diocese of Hartford which was then synonymous with the State of Connecticut. Public Holy Hours on Sunday afternoons gave opportunity for friends of Our Lady of Grace and of the nuns to pray in union with them. Groups began to use the monastery for days of recollection. More and more people enrolled themselves to share fully in the prayers of the nuns.

    The novitiate, now located in the former hay-loft, was soon filled to capacity. Girls from Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York mostly, but also some from Ohio, Illinois and even further west came to join the original group. The Monastery of Our Lady of Grace is completely autonomous at the same time that its strict observance of the Dominican Constitutions makes it a bonafide member of the great Dominican Order. The monastery has its own government according to the Dominican pattern and is financially entirely separate from any other institution. The novitiate is simply a canonically separate part of the one building, and the novices attend choir exercises and have their meals with the professed nuns. Anyone becoming a member of the Community enters and remains there for life, and even after death, because the cemetery is within the enclosure. Crossing the threshold, however, does not make a girl a life-member of the Community. For the whole six months of the postulancy by which she begins, and the entire following year of her canonical novitiate, the candidate for vows is free to return home any day she chooses. If at the end of that time she still wishes to stay and the Community still wants her, the Church cautiously permits temporary vows for three years only—with still another chance to leave, with a blessing, at the fulfillment of the vows. Only after a minimum of four and a half years of proving her desire and ability to live the monastic life may a young woman take the solemn vows which bind her forever. The majority of the nuns in the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace are there only at the cost of serious sacrifice, whether it came in the form of family opposition, surrender of career and social status, or even in personal difficulty in adjusting to the austerity of the monastic life. They stay because their joy in constantly increasing union with God more than repays the price they pay in suffering.

    That brings up the matter of solemn vows. When the founding group left Summit, New Jersey, for North Guilford, Connecticut, these nuns had simple perpetual vows and were therefore under episcopal jurisdiction. Although by origin the vows of cloistered Dominican Nuns were solemn, historically solemn vows were not permitted in this country until very recently. Meanwhile, the Dominican Nuns were observing their vows as if they were solemn. With all their make-shift arrangements they managed, by using even the corridors, to have proper places for all parts and customs of their monastic observance. In one way, their problem was their thriving vitality—they outgrew additions as fast as they added them. In 1950 a whole new wing was put up in back of the barn-choir and only a year later they had to lift up the roof and put a third story under it.

    From the beginning the nuns had the promise of Bishop O’Brien that when they were ready, solemn vows could be considered. So when the original grills were put in place, they met the requirements for papal enclosure. Knowing that debt would be an obstacle to solemn vows, the nuns worked extra hard between prayers. The discarded printing press they had brought along from Summit was functioning two months after their arrival in North Guilford, and their print-shop, gradually enlarged as time went on, has continued to turn out more and more prayer leaflets, some of which are handled by the department of the monastery known as "The Infant of Prague Press." The nuns also produced enrollment certificates for their prayer societies, house blessings, and similar items by photography. They did hand-lettering, painting and religious art work, made vestments, Rosaries, and altar equipment, and did any other feasible work that could be fitted in between their formal prayer (besides making all their own clothes to keep the costs down.)

    In the year 1950, through the intercession and assistance of Our Lady of Grace, the additions were paid for, the Community was free from debt, the novitiate was filled, the monastic observance was faithful and fervent, and the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace was unquestionably a well-established institution. So the Community applied for solemn vows and again Bishop O’Brien’s paternal interest was their unfailing support. The Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, was assured that the requirements for solemn vows were being met, and he granted to the scarcely four-year old Community the privileges and obligations of solemn vows which made their dedication as total as the Church permits. With the vows came papal enclosure and major cloister which gives them the highest status granted to women in the Catholic Church.

    The ceremony took place on February 10, 1951. Mother Prioress made her profession directly to Bishop O’Brien, and eleven perpetually professed nuns then made their solemn profession in her hands. Two months later, on April 24, 1951, the first novices to take solemn vows made profession. Through solemn profession the nuns are obligated to the recitation of the Divine Office, the prayers of the Breviary, just as the priests, and the omission of any sizable part constitutes mortal sin. When they pray together in choir, in their corporate unity, God the Father hears the voice of His Son in His Mystical Body, for this is the official prayer of the Church. For four happy years the Community grew in numbers, in depth, and in fervor. Sometimes there were problems and difficulties. Occasionally the well ran dry and the furnace had a habit of flooding. Sometimes the antiphons of Vespers or Lauds or the proper of the Mass were hard to learn. Sometimes when the whole Community caught cold together it was hard to get up for midnight Office and for the hours of adoration all through the night. But they all continued, as their Constitutions demand, to "strive after perfection". Ceremonies of reception of the habit and of temporary and solemn profession were joyously celebrated as the novices progressed in the religious life. The regular Sunday afternoon Holy Hour became well-known to many friends. The pilgrimages grew in size, attractiveness, and prayerfulness. The Dominican priests generously taught the nuns theology and chant. The enclosed yard and garden was extended, and a new, bigger printing press purchased. The nuns painted, shined and polished their much-loved "farm-house and barns monastery". It was beautifully ready for Christmas the night it burned, December 23, 1955. There was a rightness about everything that particular evening. The nice clean paint and the shining waxed floors were what was right. Compline had been sung contentedly and the nuns had been blessed for the night. They had sung to Our Lady in the dormitories, telling her good-night on their way to bed. The few who tarried did so with particular permission, preparing for the solemn announcement of Christmas in the morning. The permission brought all their activity under their vow of obedience.

    Then the fire happened, sudden, swift, and fierce. The smoke from the various inexpensive composition materials used in the building was both blinding and suffocating, even in the few minutes before the lights went out. Perfect obedience alone saved the novices’ lives as they filed out silently over floors already hot beneath their feet. Most of the professed nuns reached the yard easily, but a few lost precious time in dismay over the smoke in the main stairway. Strong sisters hurried to help two invalids. Sister Mary Dolores brought out a Sister with a serious heart condition. Then realizing that Sister Mary Regina was still inside, she hurried back a second time to help Sister Mary Constance find her. All three died together. The next day, in the ashes of the cloistered choir, a bit of paper was found unburned. On it were two lines from a hymn for priests:

"Whose lives burn out
before thy consecrated shrine …

… Have human hearts
and human frailty."

More Fire Pictures

    Looking back during the days that followed, the nuns realized that God had softened the sacrifice by His tender choice of one of their own favorite patterns. Over and over, they had prayed novenas for nine days in preparation for a feast day, and then on the tenth day, the feast itself, had received Communion to complete the novena. The fire occurred when they were completing nine years of prayer in the little monastery. The Blessed Sacrament was consumed with their three Sisters in the flaming holocaust. The thirty-nine surviving nuns were given Holy Communion at midnight upon their arrival at Albertus Magnus College.

    As they rode away from their still burning home that night, the nuns had less material goods than the foundresses had had nine years before. Most of them had their night-clothes only; no one had more than their day clothes and a blanket. But they thought of the poverty of the Holy Family in Bethlehem and the meager provisions on the flight to Egypt, and one prayer burned in every heart: "0 God, keep us together." The solicitude of the Dominican priests and the Dominican Sisters of Albertus Magnus College that night and during the week which followed was charity so comprehensive and so tender that the nuns found themselves comforting their sympathizers. The funeral took place in the morning. By special permission the three unopened coffins were brought to the chapel at Albertus Magnus College for the Mass. Archbishop O’Brien and Bishop Hackett were there together with quite a number of Dominican and a few secular priests. Archbishop O’Brien gave the final blessing, and the Sisters were buried in the Dominican priests’ plot in Saint Lawrence cemetery until such time as the cemetery within the monastery enclosure is blessed and their bodies can be brought "home." After dinner, Archbishop O’Brien talked things over with the homeless community. His fatherly tenderness in their hour of need was so reassuring that they knew very well everything would turn out fine in God’s good time and in His own way.

    For a week, the nuns rested in the loving hospitality of the Dominican Sisters of Albertus Magnus College, hospitality so complete and so thoughtful that the shock of their fire experience was completely minimized. Before they had gotten back from the funeral, two truckloads of nuns’ clothing and essential supplies had arrived for them, one from their cradle monastery in Summit, N.J., and the other from its cradle monastery in Union City, N.J. The trucks were followed by money and supplies from all the Dominican cloisters in the country. Help came from priests and Religious and laity—and New Haven took the stranded nuns to its heart.

    The rent-free loan of the Walter House, a county home building in West Haven, to the Community as a temporary shelter was a public act for which America can well be grateful. In a world where in tremendous areas God is being denied and religion persecuted, Mayor Richard Lee of New Haven and Commissioner of Welfare Francis Looney, gave public recognition to spiritual values when they persuaded the County Commissioners to make available to the nuns the unused county home building sufficiently large to enable the Community to carry on their religious life and to continue most of their income-producing activity until the new permanent Monastery of Our Lady of Grace could be constructed.

    To the gymnasium of the Walter House came literally hundreds of friends. They brought everything — food and dishes, furniture, work equipment, bedding, cleaning supplies. Carpenters divided the gymnasium into five rooms with temporary walls, and electricians added enough lights in the choir so that the nuns could read their breviaries. At the end of January, the nuns celebrated their ninth anniversary with a banquet-dinner brought to them by Saint Anne’s Society of Saint Louis Church in New Haven.

    It was relatively easy to put up grills and turn the Walter House into a cloister. It was more difficult to put up walls to turn dormitories into "cells" without damaging the real walls. The nuns used moveable screens and found ways to string up some cotton walls again, but each time a Sister was called during the night to go to adoration, two or three more sisters inevitably woke up. Nevertheless, after the first month of adjustment after the fire, the nuns were living their monastic life, praying on schedule and once more hard at work earning all the money they could. Every possible penny was saved and added to the $169,000 dollars with which the Archdiocese of Hartford responded to Archbishop O ‘Brien’s obviously heart-felt appeal. The fund, started with a $10,000 gift from Archbishop O ‘Brien, was the second largest total ever given in an Archdiocesan collection.

    When May came, a lot of people wanted the Annual May Pilgrimage, and of course, the somewhat home-sick nuns did too. They could not leave their enclosure to attend, so the Southern New England Telephone Company put up some special wires by which they could both listen to and take part in their pilgrimage in North Guilford while remaining in West Haven. There was no room to hold public services of any sort in the Walter House.

    Much work went into replacing fire losses. Even now, over two years later, the Dominican Nuns are still gratefully wearing clothing given them by other Communities, although they have made enough habits so that the group can all look alike on Feast Days. One fire-loss may not be replaced for years: all the expensive choir books from which the nuns chant the Divine Office were burned. The source of supply in Europe was bombed during the second world war and because of the current revision in the Church’s liturgy, it may be quite some time before a new supply is attempted. The Dominican Nuns are singing the Office as before, though. They have been painstakingly mimeographing the music.

    As the nuns’ first year in West Haven drew to a close, startled friends who happened to drive by the monastery grounds began to phone them to ask if they knew that the new monastery had not yet been started. The nuns assured them that they did know. They had also learned the high cost of building, and they needed much more money than they had. For a time, it looked as though a monastic monastery would not be possible, but they dreaded putting what money they did have into a building which would eventually have to be discarded. There were long discussions and many variations of the plans were considered. Finally, when the nuns were able to obtain a very large loan, and with the understanding that only three-quarters of the building would be put up to start with, the original four-wing, one-story building was agreed upon. Polak and Sullivan, Architects, drew up the plans, translating into working blue-prints the idea of a monastery the nuns themselves had outlined even before the fire, when a new monastery was just a distant dream.

    The ground-breaking ceremony took place on February 10, 1957, the sixth anniversary of the Community’s solemn vows. At first it was planned to have the nuns "home" for Christmas of 1957, with three of the four wings of the building completed. But then the Fusco-Amatruda Company decided they could do better than that. Contractors and sub-contractors cooperated to hurry the building while keeping down the cost. The nuns are still learning with amazement of the substitutions of better materials and installations than the plans specified, quietly made by sub-contractors who were building their very meager profits back into the monastery without even mentioning it. Their magnanimous cooperation and the unending generosity of the Fusco-Amatruda Company made possible the erection of the fourth wing too, so that the major structure of the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace is complete, and only interior finishing, especially of the sanctuary and the nuns’ choir, remains to be done.

On Easter Monday, April 7, 1958, the Dominican Nuns quietly left the Walter House and returned to North Guilford. As they had planned, the reception committee at their new home was Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and their chaplain, Reverend Reginald Craven, 0.P., who together had preceded them by an hour or two. The Blessed Sacrament was installed on the temporary altar in the parlor where Mass would be celebrated for the nuns until the completion of enough of the chapel would make it usable. In the county home building, the Blessed Sacrament not only made Himself quite at home, but through His own providential arrangements kept Himself only a few feet from the nuns kneeling before Him in adoration. His physical nearness under the temporary arrangements in the new monastery seemed just one more evidence of the tenderness between Him and His Mother's nuns.

    The nuns marvel at the total self-donation of their chaplain too. When rescue of the Blessed Sacrament was obviously impossible during the fire, he stood as close to the burning building as the firemen would let him go, giving absolutions to the dying Sisters. He rejected offers of a car-ride to New Haven in order to travel with the Community on the crowded bus. He, like the nuns, had lost his every material possession in the fire, but he made no mention of the fact, and as stray dollars came his way, he promptly turned them over to the Sisters for personal needs they did not like to speak about. The Brothers of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, who staff Notre Dame High School, most generously provided a room for Father Chaplain in their little house directly in back of the Walter House, for the whole two years the nuns lived in West Haven. Father Chaplain was not only infinitely humble and cheerful about eating his meals in the few square feet of space allotted to the sacristy, but also placed himself totally at the service of the nuns, running errands at any hour on the shortest notice, solving problems, shoveling snow, and encouraging and stimulating the nuns’ religious observance by spiritual conferences. His first conferences in the new monastery, on spiritualizing the activity of moving, and on the recognition and acceptance of the graces of beginnings have given a luster of grace to the preparations for the dedication of the monastery.

    The new Monastery of Our Lady of Grace is a rectangular building of four wings around a cloister court known as "the cloister garth." The exterior is of sand-colored brick. The interior walls of the main floor are of Waylite blocks, unpainted for the most part. The walls of the basement workrooms are of cinder-block. The floors are asphalt tile in pretty colors, except for the basement corridors which are merely "sealed" cement. The ceilings are plastered with an attractive mottled finish; when the sun shines in they reflect in softer shades the color of the floor. The nuns have been busy painting the door-frames and such walls as are to have paint. By retaining the painting and finishing sub-contract themselves (they also sanded and waxed all the doors), they saved some thousands of dollars.

    The monastery is constructed to accommodate up to sixty nuns; the Dominican liturgy is demanding, and a twenty-four hour a day schedule of adoration and the perpetual rosary call for numerous personnel. Because the nuns live out their entire lives there, besides canonically required separate living quarters for the professed nuns, the novices, the Lay Sisters, and the Extern Sisters, there is also an adequate infirmary. There is the chapel, the nuns’ choir, and the Chapter Hall for formal prayer. There are all the workrooms: the print-shop, the photography room, the shoe-making room, the mimeograph room, the bakery, etc. There is the cloister walk extending around the inner side of all four wings: it is both a built-in route for liturgical processions and a passageway to avoid traffic through rooms where contemplative silence might be disturbed. The monastery is as fire-proof as a building can be. It follows the traditional European monastic pattern, but is completely modern in its practicality. It provides fully for the complete detailed observance of the Dominican Constitutions.

    Construction of the new Monastery of Our Lady of Grace was begun on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 1957. The Dedication of the monastery on the Feast of Our Lady of Grace in the Lourdes Year, has made it a glorious gift to the infinitely tender Mother of God and of men.

    So with the laying of the cornerstone and the solemn blessing and dedication of the new monastery, the strictly cloistered Dominican Nuns return to the quiet obscurity and timeless silence of perpetual prayer and intercessory sacrifice. More vividly aware of the liturgical mood of the Church than of the swirling world, yet intensely alive to the needs of the world which has pressed so close to them these past two years, they live in prayer. The Church, with her keen realization of what constitutes fitting worship of God, has organized a vast choir in which the song of praise never ceases. Seven times a day, the Dominican Nuns chant their part. In between, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed and the perpetual Rosary adore God and plead for grace for men. And all the acts of daily living, from the long fasts and perpetual abstinence to the happy Feast days, from sacred devotions to the homely tasks of housework, are drawn by the vow of obedience into the dominion of the virtue of religion, to continue the prayer. Over it all, containing it all, is the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace, a timeless monument of charity translated into stone for permanence.

    When the ashes of the first Monastery of Our Lady of Grace had cooled, the nuns found, where the sacristy had been, one scorched page from the big Missal. In very large print were the three words God did not permit to burn: "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus." Now the words are carved in stone over the doorway of the chapel of the permanent Monastery of Our Lady of Grace, in fervent prayer that God’s comment on it may always be:

"Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus!"

Foundation        Father Moore

More Recent History    African Mission

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A More Recent
Historical Summary

    Dominic de Guzman, born at Caleruega, Spain, around 1170, laid the foundation for a world-wide Order of Preachers, and died in 1221. Now the Church celebrates his feast on the 8th of August. The small community of contemplative women which originated under Saint Dominic's guidance was gathered together in response to his preaching of the Gospel. This beginning was very early in the 13th century at Prouille, France. There are now over 3000 Dominican nuns seeking God in the monastic contemplative life in more than 200 monasteries around the world. In the late 19th century, some Dominican nuns came from Europe to make the first foundation in our country. At the moment, there are 17 Dominican monasteries in the U.S.

    The Monastery of Our Lady of Grace was founded by 14 sisters from the Dominican Monastery in Summit, New Jersey. They came to North Guilford in 1947 and put together the first monastery from the farm house and barns on their property. The entire structure burned to the ground in 1955 in a fire which took the lives of three of the sisters. Our community lived together in West Haven in an unused county home (provided by the state) until 1958 when the new monastery was completed and we could return to North Guilford. As we grew in numbers, we were able to send 12 of our sisters to Nairobi, Kenya, to establish a new community of Dominican nuns in Africa.

    At present the community numbers over 40 sisters and we continue in the way given us by Saint Dominic for following Christ and living according to the Gospel. Our Rule reminds us that the first reason we are gathered together in community is to live in harmony, having one mind and heart in God. This unity transcends the limits of the monastery and attains its fullness in communion with the whole Church of Christ. Prayer is the center and heart of our life and its rhythm pervades both the day and the night. The Liturgy of the Eucharist and the Hours, the reflective reading of Scripture, the prayer of adoration and solitary prayer: all continually lead us to seek the face of the Lord and to make unceasing intercession for the salvation of all people. Our monastic enclosure with its atmosphere of silence and simplicity, our community life and the holding of all things in common, the observance of the gospel counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, our study and work are among the other essential elements in our life. All of these find their unity in a single goal: that the Word of God dwell more abundantly in the monastery.

    The works done in the monastery are many and varied. Printing, making liturgical vestments, candles, pottery and other items for our Gift Shoppe, vegetable gardening and art work are some of the ways that we seek to support ourselves. Our chapel is open daily and we welcome those who wish to join us in prayer. The few guest rooms in our retreat quarters make it possible for us to share our monastic environment of prayer, silence and solitude with those who desire to come for a few days or a week. Within the church and within the Dominican Order "there is indeed a diversity of gifts, but one and the same Spirit, one charity, one mercy. The friars, sisters and laity of the Dominican Order are to preach the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ throughout the world; the nuns are to seek, ponder and call upon him in solitude so that the Word proceeding from the mouth of God may not return to him empty, but may accomplish those things for which it was sent." (From the Fundamental Constitutions of the Nuns)

Foundation        Father Moore

More Recent History    African Mission

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either from the Control Panel
or from Internet Explorer.
Choose the Advanced tab, and
temporarily uncheck Print Background
to save color ink.
Secondly, to save paper,
reduce the size of the font
from the View menu.