The nuns of the Order of Preachers came into being when our holy father Saint Dominic gathered women converts to the Catholic faith in the monastery of Blessed Mary of Prouille in 1206. These women, free for God alone, he associated with his “holy preaching” by their prayer and penance. Our holy Father drew up a rule to be followed and constantly showed a father’s love and care for these nuns and for others established later in the same way of life. In fact, “they had no other master to instruct them about the Order.” Finally, he entrusted them as part of the same Order to the fraternal concern of his sons.

As early as 1908, Rev. A.L. McMahon, O.P., then Provincial of the Western Dominican Province, desired to bring to the San Francisco area a monastery of Dominican nuns whose purpose would be to honor and promote devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. But it took until May 29, 1921 to clear away all the difficulties involved in establishing this shrine of love and adoration.

On that day, the Sunday within the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, five choir nuns and three lay sisters left our founding monastery at Hunt's Point (Bronx), New York and boarded a westbound train to begin the foundation. They arrived in Oakland, California on June 2nd and were provided accommodations with the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael until their new home in San Francisco was made ready. Their first home in the Bay Area was on Eddy Street, approximately six blocks east and six blocks south of Saint Dominic's Church in San Francisco. It wasn't long, however, before the nuns outgrew their temporary home due to incoming vocations and they had to look for suitable arrangements elsewhere.

After several roadblocks, they eventually secured property and began building a new Gothic-style monastery in Menlo Park, California; at the time, it was the last train stop out of the city and the only other development in the area was Saint Patrick's Seminary - most everything else in the area was ranch and farmland, or simply uncultivated. The nuns really felt that they'd come to the end of the world!

Today, Corpus Christi Monastery sits in the middle of one of the most important and influential areas in the world - halfway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, with Facebook and other tech giants in our "backyard". Despite the changes around us, our mission remains the same; with love and fidelity, we continue to seek the face of God before the Blessed Sacrament and offer our prayers and sacrifices for the apostolic work of the Order and the salvation of souls.