Dominican Sisters’ of St Cecilia Retreat, Motherhouse Nashville Tn., July 12, 2026
The 17th-century German polymath, Gottfried Leibniz, has been compared in sheer intellectual range with his compatriot, the Dominican St Albert the Great. Leibniz wrote works in philosophy and theology, ethics and politics, law and history, philology and music, economics and statistics, library science and more. Among his achievements was the development of calculus, a feat also achieved (independently) by his intellectual nemesis Isaac Newton. Had Leibniz written more elegantly, his legacy might have been on a par with Newton, Albertus Magnus, or even Plato![i]
It is to Leibniz that the invention of binary arithmetic is generally attributed.[ii] His system involving only two values — 0 and 1 — seemed “so easy” that Leibniz thought “we shall never again have to guess or apply trial and error, as we do in ordinary division, nor have to learn anything by rote.”[iii] He could never have imagined how his binary system would ground our computing revolution. Nor I suspect would he be pleased with today’s description of the unsubtle minds as ‘binary thinkers.’
On the face of it, today’s parable of The Sower (Mt 13:1-23) involves just such binary thinking. Some people receive the Word; others reject it. Some are seriously committed to hearing, growing and living out the Faith; others, for various reasons, harden their hearts or lack conviction. Some are fruitful, some fruitless. Put simply: some are for God and some against.
Fair enough. “He who is not with me is against me,” as Jesus said in the previous chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 12:30; but cf. Mk 9:40). Some things in life really are binary choices: true or false, right or wrong, saved or damned. There are good reasons for Dominicans to wear black and white—the colors of truth. Of course, working out which is which is not always easy. And some things admit of many qualifications, circumstances, shades of grey. Why do some people embrace Christian faith, life, vocation, wholeheartedly and successfully, while others of similar temperament, upbringing or advantages, do not? Are we divided between the spiritual First Class passengers and those who miss the plane altogether, some predestined from the beginning to be elect (as the Calvinists thought) and others slated for damnation?[iv]
Well, not according to our more nuanced parable. Rather than a stingy God who only gives faith to a few favorites — the ‘remnant’ — it paints a God so determined to save us, He is absolutely profligate with His graces. He casts the seed of faith here, there, and everywhere. He wastes so much seed Big Ag would judge His farming methods unsustainable (Mt 13:3-4; 18:10-14; Lk 15:1-7; Jn 10:11-18). Yet that’s part of the allure of the God of Christianity: He is for everyone and for everyone.
Today Isaiah makes a similar point (Isa 55:10-11): “just as rain and snow fall from the heavens and water the whole earth, so the Word goes forth from God’s mouth.” Rather than stamping some saved and others damned from the start, God offers the rain of life and the snow of love to all, giving us many opportunities to discover, commit, serve, be fulfilled. Knowing our weaknesses, He offers further graces to heal and elevate us, renovating us as saints. We do not merit any of this: it is pure gift. But we can open ourselves to it when offered and do with it what it enables. Nothing could prime us better for this than the wonder and gratitude, silence and attention that religious life cultivates. In the words of our Dominican brother Meister Eckhart OP, receptiveness requires “souls restful, peaceful, and pure.”[v]
If Jesus’ Sower casts his seed on path, rocks, thorns, and soil, it is not because he is stupid, or careless. “The Word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, but carries out my will,” God declares. The whole earth is watered, and in some places at least that means plants flourish, grain is yielded, hunger satisfied, and enough left over to plant again. It is not random or reckless: it is God’s mysterious will, in God’s good time. And if God’s love is both generous and wise, so must ours be also. If God considers no ground unworthy of His efforts, we too should think no-one beyond hope, no child of God doomed to ignorance and sin! Sharing God’s aspiration for all, we join in His great seeding project. And the fruit will be two-fold: bread for the eating and grain for the sowing — the grain of evangelisation and the bread of worship, word and sacrament, fuel for preacher-teachers.
Of course, our efforts do not always yield the fruit we’d like, when we’d like it. The divine Sower’s farming practices are, to say the least, unorthodox. But they license us to be just as profligate in sharing His Word with all!
Today we have before us living proof of what the divine Sower can do with the soil of human hearts, however unexpected it might be at first that they were chosen and however surprising the results. Each of our six silver sisters has allowed the Word to take root in her through the Order this quarter-century past. Each has been watered by divine grace and pruned by religious life. Each has doubtless weathered some scorching sun and choking thorns. Each has grown steadily and borne fruit thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. In their time the congregation has doubled in size, many holy women have given their lives to God and His people, many praises and intercessions have been offered, many apostolates served, many children have been well taught and brought closer to Christ, and the lived homilies of their conventual lives have been preached to the world. And not just as far afield as Nashville, Elgin and Rome, but even at the very heart of the Church — in Sydney!
The fidelity of each of our sisters is not the product of a single impulsive YES uttered 25 years ago. That yes only came from soil well prepared by family and friends, parish and schools, the Church of their time and for two thousand years before. That soil has been tilled also by many small acts of liturgy and prayer, community and study, asceticism and service—all quietly tending the interior garden and making it receptive to even greater graces. Our sisters have attended, also, to the perennial task of what St Catherine of Siena called weeding out the vices in the garden of the soul and cultivating virtues there instead. They have persevered in their silver vows, renewing them as a morning offering, living the evangelical counsels and Dominican charism through the day, and serving the mission of the Church till evening falls.
In these dear sisters our parable takes flesh. We give thanks to God who planted the seed in their souls; to their sisters who’ve watered it these decades past; and to our beloved Marie Karol, Perpetua, Marie Hannah, Miriam, Cecilia Joseph and Anna Christi OP themselves, for their fidelity and witness. And we ask Almighty God to apply the calculus of His infinite grace, bringing to completion the good work He began in them.
[i] ‘Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/
[ii] Oscar Gonzales, ‘Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: How his binary systems shaped the digital age,’ Inverse, July 1, 2018 ; Damien Walter, ‘The ancient book of wisdom at the heart of every computer,’ The Guardian, March 21, 2014.
[iii] Gottfried Leibniz,‘Explication de l’Arithmétique Binaire’; ‘History of the binary number system,’ https://www.convertbinary. com/blog/binary-number-system-history/
[iv] As Jean Calvin proposed in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1845). Vol. 2, book 3, 21.7.
[v] Meister Eckhart, Sermon 1, in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed. Maurice O’C. Walshe, rev. Bernard McGinn (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 29–37
Introduction to Mass of the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) + Silver Jubilee of Vows of Srs Marie Karol, Perpetua, Marie Hannah, Miriam, Cecilia Joseph and Anna Christi OP
Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia Retreat, Motherhouse Nashville Tn., July 12, 2026
Welcome to our celebration of the silver jubilees of profession as Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia of Sisters Marie Karol, Perpetua, Marie Hannah, Miriam, Cecilia Joseph, and Anna Christi OP.
I salute their sisters in religion, Prioress General Mother Anna Grace OP, Vicaress Sr Anne Catherine, the councilors, superiors and sisters, the formators, novices and postulants, and our hosts here at Motherhouse, who celebrate with you your quarter-century each of vowed life. I look forward to joining the sisters in the coming days of retreat.
I acknowledge the concelebrating clergy and welcome the parents, siblings, relatives and friends of our jubilarians who are immensely proud of you, share in your joy, and have been both supporters and beneficiaries of the 150 years of religious profession you have shared so far. They have come from far and wide, and I particularly notice a sizable fan base all the way from Australia!
For the times we have failed to live faithfully the vocations God has given us, we first repent of our sins…
