Saturday, June 27, 2026 - Link to recording of Jubilee Liturgy
Isaiah 12:3-6
Philippians 1:3-6, 9
John 15:9-17

Happy Jubilee! Feliz Jubileo! Maligayang Pagdiriwang ng inyong Jubileo!

It is a great to joy for all of us gathered here to celebrate each one of you, in great gratitude for your 25, 40, 60, 70, 75, and 80 years of religious life in loving service to God’s people and our larger Earth community. Most of you entered as Adrian Dominicans and some through the doorways of the Edmonds Dominicans, Our Lady of Remedies, and the Felicians, bringing the richness of those textures into our communal life.

Today’s readings speak of abiding love, of joy, of good work bearing fruit. They speak of the heart of the call so vibrantly alive in each of you.

Jesus makes this call clear to his disciples in John’s gospel. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” As followers of the Way of Jesus, this is our call – and that call to love has borne fruit in incredibly rich and diverse ways among you.

Jubilarians, a significant way your love for others has borne fruit is through education. So many among you have been magnificent educators, from grade school to high school, from colleges and universities to seminaries. You have served as elementary and high school teachers, principals and deans of students; as college and university administrators, academic deans, librarians, campus services coordinators, and as professors, teaching theology, music, history, homiletics, science and mathematics, among other subjects.

You have mentored and supported young people in your role as campus ministers, guidance counselors, guidance directors, and as house managers and rectors. You have molded students into athletes through physical education and offered gifted students needed guidance.

You have given of yourselves in support of our hospital ministries whether by providing hands-on healing through respiratory therapy or by supervising health services and serving as directors of volunteers and of hospitality.

You have brought your love in extraordinarily generous service to our church as pastoral administrators, pastoral ministers, and pastoral associates; in lay ministry formation; as directors and coordinators of religious education; as liturgists; as catechists; as parish life directors and facilitators; and in diocesan administration.

Our call to love one another has engaged some of you in adult outreach and education, ministering to adults with disabilities, volunteering with hospice patients and adult literacy, developing sabbatical programs centered in healing arts and spirituality.

You have shared your abundant leadership gifts in service as a superintendent of schools, as executive directors and development directors of various national and regional nonprofit organizations, as directors of retreat centers, centers for women, literacy centers, Earth and eco-spirituality centers. You have lent your skills to nonprofits through website development and computer consulting.

The call to love one another often call us to work for justice. Among you are Jubilarians who have served as justice and peace coordinators and promoters, in social justice action on ecology, as an assistant public defender and criminal justice specialist, as the United Nations Dominican NGO representative, as a critical ally in solidarity with a community experiencing systemic racism in a horrific water crisis.

You have walked with people in need as rural missionaries, as social workers, as clinical and psychiatric social workers, as spiritual companions, as allies providing meals and other basic needs to people on the margins.

A number of you have generously shared your love of community by accepting the call of your Sisters to serve in elected leadership as General Councilors, Administrators, Treasurers, Chapter and Mission Prioresses, and Co-Provincials.

Some of you have said “yes” to accompanying women called to this life, sharing its values and meaning as Directors of Formation and Directors of Candidates, Novices and Temporary Professed.

Over your many years of itinerant Dominican life, the call to mission and ministry has taken you, collectively, to nearly every state in the union – from Alabama to Washington – and to Puerto Rico, as well as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Taiwan, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.

In your ministries you have walked with richly diverse communities from rural white Appalachia to urban Black cities and Latino barrios. You have accompanied indigenous Aetas in the northern mountains of the Philippines and Native Americans in the United States. You have especially supported women – unwed pregnant women, victims of domestic violence, and women at risk of trafficking.

As we take in this collective picture of the amazing gift of your lives in mission as Dominican Sisters of Adrian, let us also look at it in the light of today’s Gospel. In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to his followers as “friends,” as ones he has chosen, calling on them to love one another as he has loved them, and to abide his love.

The authors of the wonderful Wisdom Commentary, write that this passage “describes the ultimate revelation of Jesus’s mission, which is to draw believers into the communion of life and love that he shares with God.” ¹

Jubilarians, you have lived your lives in fidelity to that mission – entering into the communion of life and love that is God’s gift to all people. Through your loving ministry, you have invited countless children, women, men and people of faith and no faith into the communion of life and love to which you so beautifully have given witness.

As we women religious – of all ages – now face another season in life when we are being called to much letting go, with all its pains and challenges, I believe we also are being called to enter into a deeper communion of that life and love that is at the heart of our mission.

I found words that capture this beautifully in the latest issue of LCWR’s Occasional Papers. I’ll close with them. Former LCWR President Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM, writes:

I want to believe that every surrender of cherished buildings, familiar governance structures, customary patterns of being, living, and serving, even our congregations themselves, is making space for a larger love to inhabit us.²

Jubilarians, may the love you have so generously shared these 25, 40, 60, 70, 75, and 80 years be the ground of a communion that opens us all to a larger love – a love that inhabits us, for the common good of all God’s people and our beloved Earth home.

 

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¹Wisdom Commentary: John 11-21, (Barbara E. Reid, OP, ed.), “John 15:1-17,” describing the thought of theologian Klaus Scholtissek, p. 418.

²The Occasional Papers, The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, “A Love Letter to What is Emerging” by Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM, Summer 2026.