Dear Family, Friends and Benefactors,                                       June 27, 2024

          Life is a circle.  As Redemptoristines, we have lived in mid-Hudson River area since 1957 when the Sisters arrived from Ontario. We were blessed to have lived in Esopus for over 50 years, close to our brother Redemptorists at Mount St. Alphonsus.  Twelve years ago, we were equally blessed to come share life with the Carmelites in Beacon. 

Like our Foundress, Bl. Maria Celeste Crostarosa, we have moved many times. Did you know that Bl. Celeste spent the first five years of her religious life as a Carmelite? After that monastery closed, she was instrumental in founding the Redemptoristine Nuns in Scala, Italy. Yet a few years later, due to liberty of conscience, she could not stay in that monastery any longer and moved a few more times before finally settling in Foggia, Italy.   

Presently, we find ourselves preparing to move again due to significant changes affecting us, and the Carmelite Sisters, in our ability to maintain the day-to-day functioning of our life.  Nevertheless, our life of prayer, praise and intercession endures.

We began exploring options in the New Year and quickly found the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, New York. Their openness and welcome were most heart-warming. The Dominican Community was delighted to extend to our four Sisters a place to continue our life of prayer with the ability to age in place.  In April, we definitively decided to join them. 

The Dominican Sisters of Sparkill live their mission as joyful women of prayer and compassion who proclaim the Reign of God through ministry for justice and reverence for all creation. 

We are so pleased to be able to live with another religious community. We are saddened to be separating from our Carmelite Sisters in Beacon and their beautiful, peaceful surroundings.  We Red Nuns thank the Brown Nuns profusely for opening their door to us: it has been enriching and beneficial to both our communities as we shared our contemplative lives.  We feel the Lord certainly had a hand in guiding our search to a new home.  We pray that our sharing living space with the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill will be another source of enrichment for both communities.

Amazingly, we discovered that each of us had a Dominican connection sometime in our lives. In Redemptoristine history, even Bl. Celeste Crostarosa had a connection.  She was influential in reforming a Dominican convent that ran an orphanage.  God-coincidences are everywhere: we learned that the Sparkill Dominicans’ foundress, Mother Alice Mary Thorpe, began her religious life with setting up orphanages.  Life is a circle.

Blessed Celeste speaks about the circle of life, “Immerse all that happens to you in life within the Circle of Pure Love.”  Our life is a never-ending circle set in motion by the Redeemer’s Pure Love drawing us ever deeper and closer to our loving God under the protective care of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

In gratitude and love for your friendship and prayers, may Our Mother of Perpetual Help tenderly hold all you close to her heart, and may the Redeemer’s Pure Love and mercy encircle you and answer all your prayers.

Your Redemptoristine Sisters

Come August, this will be our new address:
Redemptoristine Nuns or Sister’s Name
175  Route 340
Sparkill, NY 10976-1047