After 60 years of service in northern Oakland County, religious community reflects on blessings

OXFORD — Hearts were full as the Eucharist was celebrated for one final time at the Dominican Motherhouse in Oxford.

The Dominican Sisters of Peace, who operate and live at the motherhouse, learned in September that their order was selling the 80-acre complex on Drahner Road, including an adjacent retreat house, the motherhouse and other buildings as the number of sisters living and working at the complex dwindled in recent years.

On Feb. 16, friends, well-wishers, clergy, religious and associates gathered at the motherhouse chapel to say farewell and offer gratitude for the six decades of service the “Oxford Dominicans” offered to the community.

“There are those times when we have to let go of, get rid of, part with for the sake of the Kingdom,” said Fr. Ronald Kurzawa, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, who celebrated the Mass. “And those times can be painful, and definitely not easy. Sometimes it may even fell like we are cutting off a part of our very being.”

But, Fr. Kurzawa said, commenting on the readings of the day, “the kingdom of God comes first and must come first. God is not a God of endings. God is a God of beginnings.”

For decades, the Dominicans have offered retreats in the semi-rural Oxford community. In addition to spacious grounds for walking, reading or contemplation, the property included a retreat house with more than 60 rooms, which was utilized throughout the years by various Catholic and non-Catholic groups.

Our Lady of Sorrows Cemetery in Oxford, where many Dominican sisters are buried, will be preserved.

The Dominicans' presence started when Fr. Joseph Zalibera, then-pastor of SS. Cyril and Methodius Parish in Detroit, invited “a handful of Dominican Sisters, mostly with roots in Slovakia, to join him in Detroit,” Fr. Kurzawa said.

“Together they would welcome newly arriving immigrants as well as those whose roots were in Slovakia but who had first joined the ranks, mostly of coalminers, in Pennsylvania,” Fr. Kurzawa said. “The sisters could provide staffing and education  for their children, providing them with the needed skills and tools to adjust to life in this land and more importantly, providing these children with the foundation of faith.”

Eventually, the community's growth led to the opening of a motherhouse in Waterford and another in Oxford, where educational programs, retreat opportunities and “even a small college” flourished, Fr. Kurzawa said.

Faced with a declining number of sisters in recent decades, the Dominican Sisters of St. Rose of Lima — as they were then known — merged with six other Dominican communities mostly in the Midwest to form the Dominican Sisters of Peace in 2009.

While the merger ultimately wasn't enough to save the Oxford motherhouse, Fr. Kurzawa said its legacy will continue in the lives of the sisters, associates and retreatants whose lives were touched. 

Speaking to several associate members of the order — those who, though not professing formal religious vows, promise to live by the Dominican charisms — Fr. Kurzawa implored them to cling to one another as a spiritual “home.”

“You will no longer have some buildings to retreat to, to claim as comfortable as 'home.' You will not have a place. But you will have a people,” Fr. Kurzawa said. “You will have one another — to pray for and with, to strengthen and support, to encourage. You have been trained well. Now it is for you to continue, to keep alive the message and the mission of Dominic wherever you are.”

To the sisters, Fr. Kurzawa said, “you continue.” 

“In whatever places you find yourselves, in whatever circumstances you find yourselves, you continue,” he said. “And you seek to bring a message to this fractured, tear-filled world of ours: Peace is possible. You show by word and deed the beauty of the way of peace.”