Homily for the Solemn Profession of Perpetual Vows

Sister Marie Frassati Phoi Phoi Nguyen, OP, and Sister Mary Vincent Ferrer Thuy-Lan Pham, OP

Dominican Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province

July 2, 2022
Saint Catherine Convent
Houston, TX

Song of Songs 8:6-7
Psalm 63
Philippians 2:1-4
Matthew 11:25-30

We have just listened to the words of Jesus proclaimed in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

The “yoke” is both a practical term and a Scriptural term rich in covenantal symbolism. The term would have been familiar to Jesus’ audience in both of those ways. Jesus would have been familiar with it because of its use in Scripture articulating the closeness of the Lord to the Chosen People of Israel with whom the Lord had joined Himself through the Covenants of the Old Testament, especially that of Moses. Yet, Jesus also would have been remarkably familiar with the image of a “yoke” because of His work with Saint Joseph in the Carpenter’s shop. Jesus would most clearly have seen how Joseph worked to shape the yoke to fit perfectly the animal and the farmer who needed the yoke to plow. But, most of all, Jesus would have seen the intimacy of the yoke in the perfectly chaste and perfectly loving bond of the marriage of Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Jesus uses the image of the yoke most broadly to describe how He has set the work of discipleship and salvation so closely between the baptized person as a member of the Church and Him so that it is the Lord Jesus who does most of the work through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. In this way, Jesus shows us the mission of every member of the Church to which each of us have been commissioned through our Baptism and Confirmation and the Communion with Him and with the saints and with each other that He offers us through the Holy Spirit. It is as Saint Paul writes to the Philippians, “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also everyone for those of others.”

Yet, Jesus also uses this image of the yoke even more particularly than that of the Baptismal vocation. In union with Christ, the Church rightly applies it to the spousal vocation of a Dominican nun through His call to our sisters who are to be professed today and all the sisters here present. “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.”

This beautiful and most generous vocation that the Lord offers our sisters as women is a most intimate vocation that is spousal in character. Through your solemn vows you are particularly yoked to Jesus especially for His mission of preaching the Gospel as Dominicans through selfless and unconditional love — the Gospel of the Truth. As Saint Dominic teaches us it is by the truth that we are saved. Thus, the character of your vocation is more closely affected and nurtured by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, even more than by the infused moral and theological virtues that are also the patrimony of the baptized.

In his Summa Theologiae (I-II, Q. 68), Saint Thomas Aquinas offers an insight into the gifts of the Holy Spirit that is most beautiful and profound. “The virtues are given simply that we may do good works, but the gifts, in order to conform us to Christ, chiefly with regard to His Passion, for it was then that these gifts shone with greatest splendor.” The gifts perfect human beings for acts that are even greater than acts of virtue. The gifts of the Holy Spirit dispose you to be amenable to the direct promptings of God. “Wherefore in those matters where the prompting of reason is not sufficient, and there is need for the prompting of the Holy Spirit, there is in consequence need for a gift.” You could not reason your way to your vocation. It is as Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.” The wise and the learned cannot obtain it; it is an act of sheer grace, and you are truly blessed to be so chosen by Jesus.

Your vocation to religious life is not simply a matter of you doing right and good things as the prompting of virtue and enlightened reason. Your vocation is an intimate gift of Jesus, your Crucified Spouse, offered in Love and unique and particular to each of you and the very yoke of your identity as conformed to Jesus. It is said, that after many years of married life a husband and wife begin to resemble each other and that it becomes difficult to think of one without thinking also of the other. This should be even more true for your spiritual resemblance to Jesus the longer you live your vocation in fidelity to Him. “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.”

The state of our world that has rejected God, as well as the gift of His Son, has closed itself to grace and too frequently attempts to buy and to sell love as a commodity. Jesus Christ has given you the gift of intimate belonging as His spouses in love and truth to Him as Dominican nuns. This yoked belonging to Christ is attractive to our young people who have been deprived of belonging even by their fathers and mothers and have settled for purchasing the act of simply “fitting in.”

Belonging is rooted in homecoming. Belonging speaks of vocation. It speaks of love. Belonging speaks of Baptism; it speaks of marriage, of family, and of community. Today, belonging speaks especially of the vocation of religious life as a Dominican nun by which you are yoked to Jesus, and you cooperate with Him in the mission of preaching His Gospel in the core of your very being.

“Fitting in,” unlike belonging, involves compromising just enough so as not to be expelled or ostracized from a group of individuals with shared interests. When you settle for fitting in, your motives and ends are directed to your selfish fears and concerns, not in the interests of others to whom you justly belong. When a sister settles for simply “fitting in,” obedience soon becomes cheapened to compliance, community becomes merely circumstantial, and the Incarnate Word soon is mistreated as an afterthought. Let us pray that the Lord may protect you from the mediocre and contemporary state of merely “fitting in” and bring to fulfillment the desire you have for truly belonging to Him and Him to you. “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.”