To Live in God’s House
“I rejoiced when I heard them say: Let us go to God’s house!”
Reflection by a sister of the monastery
The first line of Psalm 122 beautifully reveals the sentiments of a monastic heart. This psalm is prayed regularly during the Divine Office, but these words are also sung at two important moments in the life of every sister received into the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace: first, at the start of her religious life when the community welcomes her into the cloister as a postulant; and second, at the end of her religious life when her coffin is received by the community for the celebration of the Dominican funeral liturgies.
The connection between these two moments at the beginning and end of a nun’s life is significant. In both cases, there is an action of going to God’s house. In both cases, the sister is lovingly received by the community with the words of Psalm 122 and then taken to the chapel where she once dwelt, or soon will dwell, in the very heart of the monastery with Our Eucharistic Lord.
Indeed, the chapel is the heart of the monastery. Multiple times as day, sisters put aside their tasks to return to chapel. We come for the celebration of the Mass, recitation of the Divine Office, private prayer, and Adoration. We come because God Himself dwells within the walls of our monastery.
What an amazing mystery this is! In the chapel, the one and same Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven dwells in the Blessed Sacrament. Time spent in His presence, even brief moments, disposes the tabernacle of the human soul—where the Trinity dwells by grace—for further growth in divine charity.
Christ is the great exemplar of charity and the Eucharist is his sacrament of charity. By being present to Our Eucharistic Lord as a community, we learn the prompt and joyful practice of the two great commandments: To love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves. By time spent in chapel, the same ineffable love that held Christ to the wood of the cradle and to the wood of the Cross begins to permeate the joys and trials of our whole life together.
In the end, it is because Our Lord himself has chosen to dwell in the monastery chapel that, from the moment of her entrance into the enclosure until her entrance into eternal life, the Dominican nun lives the words of Psalm 122 – she rejoices to live in God’s house!
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