The sisters start their day with a 5:30 a.m. holy hour.
Courtesy | Instagram
When four religious sisters set out to found a Dominican congregation in 1996, they lived in a renovated barn with a former horse stall for a chapel.
Now based only 90 minutes away from Hillsdale in Ann Arbor, Michigan, their congregation is known as the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. It’s one of the fastest-growing religious communities in the United States, with more than 140 sisters.
“It was all of God. Evidently he wanted it because it was like he took over,” said foundress and former head of the congregation Mother Mary Assumpta Long. “I don’t know what we were thinking. We couldn’t even have begun to do what we were able to do.”
Hillsdale College students have attended Vespers at the sisters’ chapel, and the sisters have visited campus several times. The sisters will be on campus April 13 and will offer spiritual direction, eat dinner with students in the dining hall, and host a women’s night.
Originally members of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, Tennessee, Mother Assumpta, Sister Mary Samuel Handwerker, Sister Joseph Andrew Bogdanowicz, and Sister John Dominic Rasmussen wanted to start a congregation of Dominicans that answered Pope St. John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization.
While serving in different parts of the country, each of the four sisters realized God was calling her to found a new congregation. After discovering the other sisters were also praying about this, they left their community together.
“We’ve often said, ‘How did God pick the four of us?’” Sister Joseph Andrew said. “Each one was called in a different manner. And if you look at the four of us, we have such different personalities and different gifts, and all of them were needed. Without any one of us, we would have had a huge hole in the system.”
The sisters met at the convent of the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word in Birmingham, Alabama, before driving to a renovated barn in Purchase, New York, which a family had offered to them as living quarters while they prepared to start a community. An out-of-the-way route through Ann Arbor and a providential stop led the sisters to Tom Monaghan, then the multimillionaire owner of Domino’s Pizza.
“We stopped to get gas and Sister John Dominic got a newspaper,” Mother Assumpta said. “There was an article in there about Tom Monaghan and she said, ‘Could we just go by and speak to him?’ I said, ‘Sure, he’s probably not there, but we can go.’”
Monaghan left a board meeting to speak with the sisters and hear about their mission before they continued on to New York. Days later, the phone rang as they were going into the chapel for Vespers.
“It was Tom Monaghan,” Mother Assumpta said. “He said, ‘I want to go to heaven, and I want to take as many people with me as I can. And I want to build these schools for children. I’ll build these schools and just give them to you.’ Really, I remember thinking, ‘Is this of God or is it a temptation?’”
The sisters’ plans to build a community in New York changed when Monaghan flew them to Ann Arbor on his private plane to look at property. Mother Assumpta told Monaghan she wanted somewhere with fields for the young sisters’ recreation, so he purchased a 20-acre plot and told the sisters to “set the budget” for the motherhouse he soon began building.
One convent wasn’t enough. Thirty years later, the sisters are partway through building the Our Lady of Guadalupe Priory in Georgetown, Texas, which will house 115 more sisters.
With an average age of 38, the young community follows the Dominican apostolate of preaching and teaching the truth. The sisters founded and run two branches of Spiritus Sanctus Academy — grade schools in the Ann Arbor area — and groups of sisters teach at 30 schools across the United States from preschool through college and seminary.
The sisters don’t just teach in the classroom — they’ve also gone viral. Since the “Dominican Sisters Open Mic” podcast began in January, its clips have received millions of views on TikTok. Host Sister Miriam Holzman’s interviews with fellow Dominicans cover anything from the joys of 5 a.m. holy hours to a sister giving up speeding for Lent, and one sister’s talent in Ultimate Frisbee.
It’s not the first time the sisters have been in the spotlight. After hearing about the sisters’ growing community, Oprah Winfrey sent her crew to film the sisters’ final profession of vows, which they call their “wedding day,” and hosted them on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010.
The “Dominican Sisters Open Mic” podcast is one of the sisters’ many forms of digital outreach on Openlight Media, where they produce online courses and video series such as “Manners Monday” and “Cultivating the Virtues” that seek to develop the whole person and foster relationship with Christ.
Mother Amata Veritas has been the prioress general, the head of the Sisters of Mary, for five years, and said a digital presence allows the sisters to fulfill their mission of evangelization.
“There were Dominicans that would preach on the street corners in England in the 1900s, but now kind of the common square and one of the ways to preach is to get on social media,” Mother Amata Veritas said. “We have the formation, we’re all trained in teaching –– that’s part of our formation. We most of the time teach in a classroom, but in some ways, social media allows you to have a worldwide classroom and to seek audiences that might not necessarily seek us in a Catholic school.”
Although the sisters embrace the opportunity to spread their joy through a reel of them teasing each other about playing Ultimate Frisbee, their goal is to draw people to Christ.
“The Dominican charism is to preach the truth,” Mother Amata Veritas said. “Part of that is, ‘Where are people to preach? What needs to be preached?’ People need to know who Jesus is, and they need to know the truth. They need to know that he loves them. They need to know that the Father created them. There’s so many teachings of the faith that lead people to God and a life of acknowledging that God created them out of love and wants them to return to him in love.”
They pray, teach, podcast, and play frisbee all while wearing the traditional Dominican black and white habit.
“We value the habit because this is a sign to the world and a reminder to myself, ‘I belong to Christ totally,’” Sister Joseph Andrew said. “When somebody sees me they think of God — they don’t know who I am.”
Although they may all dress the same, each sister has been handpicked by God to fulfill a particular role.
“When people look at religious and they think we’re all the same, they don’t have the beginnings of understanding,” Sister Joseph Andrew said. “God creates variety, and he likes variety, and his spouses are very varied.”
Women who enter as postulants come from very different walks of life.
“We have such beautiful variety,” Sister Joseph Andrew said. “Some right out of high school, some homeschooled, others out of college, others out of the business world. One CEO of two car dealerships in the Bronx. You never know who’s going to come through the door.”
After coming to a retreat at the recommendation of Sister Joseph Andrew, current vocations director Sister Mercedes left her dream job in Manhattan and joined the sisters in 2011, making her final profession in 2019.
“When I got here, I saw the sisters with retreatants and how they loved them,” Sister Mercedes said. “And I saw the sisters with each other and how they loved them, and I was like, ‘I can do that.’ Then I saw how they prayed with the Lord in divine office and before the Eucharist and I was like, ‘Gosh, I’m actually made for that type of love — to give myself entirely to Christ and then just get to receive him and receive others with that love.’”
Ann Arbor residents of 11 years, Melissa and Nathan Manni moved their family to Michigan from Whidbey Island, Washington, because they wanted their children to study with the Sisters of Mary, whom Melissa Manni discerned joining post-college. All seven of their children have attended Spiritus Sanctus Academy, and the Mannis are frequent attendants at Sunday Vespers in the motherhouse, which is a convenient 6-minute drive from their home.
“In the summers we’re able to ride bikes to evening prayer, and it’s such a beautiful thing to share in their being part of the heart of the Church,” Nathan Manni said.
According to Manni, the sisters are a force for evangelization — not just in their preaching and teaching, but in the beauty of their lives.
“Yes, there’s truth, but the world is full of relativists,” Manni said. “There’s goodness, but people argue about what’s good or not. But beauty’s hard to argue with. Authentic beauty and the joy of the sisters witnesses by itself back to God, and I think it’s a beautiful thing.”
Although the sisters give to the world, their religious vocation ultimately allows them to grow in relationship with Christ.
“This is where I can give my gifts,” Sister Joseph Andrew said. “This is where I’m built up. This is who I am, and every day, every minute, it’s making me more who God wants me to be. When he calls me home, I will be who I am because of my fidelity to my vocation.”
