Jubilee 2025 Liturgy
Preaching by Sister Elise D. García, OP

Saturday, June 21, 2025
Wisdom 7: 7-12
1 Cor 12: 4-14
John 19: 25-27

Happy Jubilee!

In celebration of your 25, 60, 70, 75, and 80 years of magnificent service to the people of God as Dominican Sisters of Adrian – and some of you also as Dominican Sisters of Edmonds and of Our Lady of Remedies – it is so fitting that our readings today are centered in the Spirit. For surely all of you have sensed the working of the Spirit in your lives through all these amazing years of faith and fidelity?

How else would you have responded to the call were it not for the presence of the Spirit? And not just the call that first drew you into this astonishing path of religious life – but to each of the calls that have summoned you over the years.

Calls that took you to places near and far, to ministries you thought were beyond your reach, to a multitude of challenges and opportunities you never imagined for yourself, to the calls that are now summoning all of us toward an uncertain future and, in God’s time, to the ultimate call of entering the paschal mystery.

In John, our Gospel reading today, we are taken right to the cross where the crucified Jesus gives his final command. Who is there with him? The women. His mother Mary, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. This is one of the few passages in scripture where there is a reversal of naming! Usually, the names of the men are given – but not of the women.

In this, his last command, Jesus effects a change in relationships. It is a change not only between his mother and the disciple but also between himself and the disciple – now becoming siblings, children of Mary and also of God. Jesus is drawing this disciple – and by extension the other disciples and all believers – into his own relationship with God. As the Wisdom Commentary observes, “Those who believe are now reborn of God.” (See Wisdom Commentary: John 11-21)

In responding to the call to enter this religious life – and by your profession of vows – you too effected a powerful change in relationships. Not only with those in your crowd – and with all of us in our global Dominican sisterhood – but also with all the people of God to whom you have dedicated your one “wild and precious life” in loving service through the Way of Jesus.

You have dedicated your life to prayer – and, as Wisdom tells us, prudence was given you. You may never have had to give up “scepter and throne,” but you did give up all the trappings of success in contemporary life – and “the spirit of Wisdom came upon you.”

We know from Corinthians that each of you was given a manifestation of the Spirit for some benefit – for a different form of service – and how beautifully you have manifested your gifts of the Spirit through your religious life.

All of you magnificent educators, from grade school to high school, to colleges, universities and seminaries – you have served as musicians, theologians, artists, literacy and ESL tutors, principals, university professors, deans, administrators, counselors, religious and special ed teachers, campus ministers and Spanish language translators.

You have enriched and gifted our Church through service in parishes and dioceses as liturgists, pastoral ministers, directors of adult faith formation and lay formators, as well as spiritual directors, church personnel administrators, treasurers, diocesan counselors, and directors of religious education. You have helped to inculturate liturgies to feed the hearts and spirits of Native American, African American and Latino parishioners, among others. You have participated in Healing Soul Pain programs with First Nations people who are carrying generations of wounds at the hands of our Church.

You have followed in the healing ministry of Jesus in other ways, too, giving comfort and care as a physician, nurse and nurse midwife, as psychologists, art therapists, massage and Reiki therapists, hospital chaplains and administrators, as well as through hospice care and AIDS research and treatment. Your gifts of offering comfort and care have been shared also as social workers and marriage counselors.

You have generously served our community in Congregational leadership as Prioress, Provincials, Chapter Prioresses, Secretary of the Congregation, DLC Administrator and Formation Director.

You have advanced Catholic social teachings and our passion for justice through national and local advocacy work on a host of issues, from racial justice and gender equality to climate change and the death penalty. You have engaged in peer motivation with at-risk youth, community development, rural ministry, and in ministry with Hispanics, First Nations People, formerly incarcerated women and men, African-American communities, women and children in need of food and hospitality, and people who are homeless.

You have endeavored to live in right relationship with people and planet. And that has also taken you into the world of community investments for the common good, helping our Congregation break new ground in economic justice some 50 years ago. Some of you have lent your gifts as good financial stewards in our own finance office, as school treasurers, and as bookkeepers.

Sisters, you have made extraordinary use of the gifts of the Spirit, following the call to minister in two dozen states across the nation, from Florida to Washington, Kentucky to Michigan, Massachusetts to Arizona, South Carolina to Montana – and beyond.

You have followed the call to minister in various places in the Philippines, and in South and East Africa, Kenya, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Italy, the Virgin Islands, and in northern and western Canada.

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit. By your extraordinarily generous and faithful lives, you have given witness to the depth of love and the amazing diversity and goodness at the heart of the Spirit that animates us all.

Dearest Jubilarians, your Adrian Dominican Sisters are proud to honor and celebrate you this day. Wisdom’s radiance shines upon you.