ORDER OF PREACHERS
The Dominican Family
Trinidad & Tobago

WHAT ARE APOSTOLIC SISTERS?

 Speaking to religious from all Congregations and Religious Institutes on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord on 2 February 2007, Pope Benedict XVI beautifully described the call of a Religious Sister. Each sister, he said, gives a response without reserve to the initiative of God who has consecrated her to him with a special act of love. Her one expectation is the Kingdom of God: that God reign in her will, in her heart, in the world. In her burns a unique thirst for love which can be quenched by the Eternal One alone.

The Holy Father continued, “By choosing obedience, poverty and chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven, [Religious Sisters] demonstrate that any attachment or love for people and things is incapable of definitively satisfying the heart; that earthly existence is a longer or shorter period of waiting for the ‘face–to–face’ encounter with the divine Bridegroom, an expectation to be lived with an ever vigilant heart, to be ready to recognize and welcome him when he comes.

“Consecrated life, therefore, is by its nature a total and definitive, unconditional and passionate response to God (cf. Vita Consecrata, n. 17). And so, when one renounces everything to follow Christ, when one gives to him all that one holds most dear, braving every sacrifice as did the divine Teacher, the consecrated person who follows in Christ's footsteps necessarily also becomes ‘a sign of contradiction’, because her way of thinking and living is often in opposition to the logic of the world, as it is almost always presented in the media.”

Dominican Sisters

There are one hundred and sixty–four Congregations of Dominican Sisters in one hundred countries in the world. They number about thirty–two thousand Sisters. Each of these Congregations is independent from the others but they coordinate in an organization called Dominican Sisters International. They have many forms of apostolate such as teaching, nursing, pastoral services, justice and peace promotion but all are united in the Dominican charism of “Holy Preaching” which consists of prayer, study, community and preaching in the manner most suited to their particular form of apostolate.

One may ask why there are so many Dominican Congregations. The answer rests with history. Religious women lived in cloistered communities until recently. This was the norm,. St. Catherine of Siena was not a religious but a member of a lay fraternity. She did  not live in a community but each member gathered with the others to live community life and apostolic mission during the day. In her time there were no Religious Congregations as we know them today. In later centuries some of the lay fraternities gathered together to live in the same house but they were not religious; they remained as lay women.

It was in the nineteenth century that religious congregations sprang up in many places. The life style of St. Catherine moved many women to found a religious institute that could follow closely her life style. Her zeal had been such that it was difficult to pin–point her apostolic work. She had many: tending to the sick and the dying, teaching, writing, encouraging the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon in France where the Popes resided for seventy years and so forth. If there was a need of the Church or of the faithful, she was involved. What she brought to each of her endeavours was the charism of St. Dominic.

It may be simply explained that the stress is not on what the Sisters do, but on how they do it. They have a particular way of going about the work of the Church. They are not working outside the Church but are firmly rooted in the Church. They are not doing something different from what others are doing also. But they are doing it in the Dominican way. Their purpose is the salvation of souls and the glory of God.