CSVF Blog

Perhaps you remember Br. Jerome Zeiler, OP.  He was assigned here to St. Vincent’s this past summer.  

On October 31, Br. Jerome offered the reflection at the Dominican House of Studies’ annual All Saints Vigil.  It was excellent.  Br. Jerome focused on the story of the love each of the saints has for Christ, a love story for which we were made to be not simply bystanders, but participants.

Watch Br. Jerome below, or click here for the full text of his reflection.

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On Saturday, November 8, four of the province’s student brothers professed their solemn vows, making permanent their consecration to God in the Order of Preachers.  The four brothers were: Br. James Brent, OP; Br. Hyacinth Cordell, OP; Br. John Chrysostom Kozlowski, OP; and Br. Ignatius Schweitzer, OP.  All four will be ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in the near future.  Please continue to keep them and their studies in your prayers.

Click below to view the Profession Mass, which took place at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.

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A Spanish daily recently published the conversion story of Communist Serbia’s chief abortionist, Stojan Adasevic.  Since its appearance last week, the report has caught the attention of pro-lifers, and the Dominicans.  Why?  It seems that St. Thomas Aquinas played a prominent role—literally—in Dr. Adasevic’s conversion. The Catholic News Agency covers the incredible story.

Madrid, Nov 12, 2008 (CNA) - Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported.  “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence.  The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint.  He didn’t recognize the name.”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.

“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him. 

“Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

Now I have to go back and read what Aquinas taught about the apparitions of saints . . .

Click here for the entire story.

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I am the gate, says the Lord;
whoever enters by me will be saved and will find pleasure, alleluia.

A day after celebrating all Dominican saints, the Order prays and offers sacrifice for all Dominican souls.

Continuous commemoration of the dead constitutes a integral feature of Dominican piety.  In our priories, death anniversaries of the brethren are recalled daily, and the De profundis psalm is recited for those being remembered.  In this spiritual work of mercy, imploring the graces of the Paschal Mystery for the deceased sons and daughters of St. Dominic, Dominicans are constantly reminded of their own mortality and eventual participation in this same mystery.  In this way, daily prayer for the dead prompts the Dominican to greater care for his own salvation as well as that of his brothers.

Join us in prayer to day as we commend the souls of all the deceased of the Order to the love and mercy of the Father.

De Profundis
Psalm 129

Out of the depths I cray to you O Lord;
Lord hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If you, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?

But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word:

My soul waits for the Lord;
More than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.

For with the Lord is kindness
and with Him is plenteous redemption:

And He will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
and let perpetual light shine upon the.

V. From the Gates of Hell
R. Deliver their souls, O Lord.

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And also with you.

Let us pray:
O God, creator and redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of your servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins, that they may obtain by our loving prayers the forgiveness which they have always desired. Who live and reign forever. Amen.

V. May they rest in peace.
R. Amen.

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Holy Mother and Immaculate Virgin, you are the glorious Queen of the world; may all who celebrate your feast know the help of your prayers.

We owe the origins of today’s Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to the two saints depicted above.

St. Dominic, seen receiving the Rosary from Mary, images the generations of Dominican friars who have preached devotion to Our Lady and her Rosary.  Early on in its history, the Order of Preachers was charged with promoting this particular form of prayer, teaching the faithful to contemplate the face of Christ through the attentive eyes of his mother.  In response to this mandate, Dominicans established Confraternities of the Holy Rosary all over the world. As an outward sign of its devotion and mission to Mary, the Rosary eventually became a part of the Dominican habit.  It is worn on the left side of the body, where soldiers once carried their swords.

Pope St. Pius V brought this Dominican mission to the apostolic palace.  In 1571, St. Pius implored all of Europe to pray the Rosary for its delivery from invading Turkish armies.  At the Battle of Lepanto, the Christian navy miraculously defeated a larger Islamic fleet.  In thanksgiving, Pius established the Feast of Our Lady of Victory.  It later became the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and Pope Clement XI extended its celebration to the entire Church in 1716.

In 1757, Fr. Augustine Ricchini composed the following hymn to be sung on today’s feast.  It praises Our Lady by summarizing the mysteries of the Rosary.  The following translation of the Te gestientem gaudiis was prepared by Abbot Oswald Hunter-Blair of Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland.  It can be sung to any long meter tune.

The gladness of thy motherhood,
     The anguish of they suffering,
The glory now that crowns thy brow,
     O virgin mother, we would sing.

Hail, blessed mother, full of joy
     In thy consent, thy visit too;
Joy in the birth of Christ on earth,
     Joy in him lost and found anew.

Hail, sorrowing in his agony–
     The blows, the thorns that pierced his brow;
The heavy wood, the shameful Rood–
     True queen and chief of martyrs thou!

Hail in the triumph of thy Son,
     The quick’ning flames of Pentecost;
Shining a queen in light serene,
     When all the world is tempest-tossed.

O come, you nations, roses bring
     Culled from these myst’ries all divine,
And for the mother of your King
     with loving hearts your chaplets twine.

We lay our homage at thy feet,
     Lord Jesus, thou the virgin’s Son,
With Father and with Paraclete
     Reigning while endless ages run.

Below you’ll find video of the homily I gave this past weekend at Mother of God Monastery in West Springfield, MA.  The Dominican nuns invited me to preach their annual Rosary Sunday celebration.  Recalling several points made by Pope John Paul II in his 2002 Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, I spoke of the Rosary as our means of imitating Mary’s perfect prayer.

O God, whose only-begotten Son, by his life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech you, that in meditating on these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.  Amen.

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Many Dominican parishes and monasteries still observe the first Sunday of October as “Rosary Sunday,” a feast of the old calendar not carried over into the new.  By maintaining this feast the sons and daughters of St. Dominic continue their centuries-long tradition of promoting devotion to Christ through the daily recitation of the Rosary.  

Six years ago, Pope John Paul II reminded the Church of the privileged place the Rosary enjoys in Western spirituality.  He wrote in Rosarium Virginis Mariae that the Rosary’s uniqueness is rooted in Mary’s singular relationship with Christ. Modeled on the perfect contemplative gaze she maintained on the mysteries of her Son, the Rosary perpetuates Mary’s prayer and enables our participation in it, thus making the Rosary, when prayed well, one of the quickest and surest ways to union with God.  

From paragraph 10 of Rosarium Virginis Mariae:

The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son, as she “wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger” (Lk2:7).

Thereafter Mary’s gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder, would never leave him. At times it would be a questioning look, as in the episode of the finding in the Temple: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Lk 2:48); it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the point of perceiving his hidden feelings and anticipating his decisions, as at Cana (cf. Jn 2:5). At other times it would be a look of sorrow, especially beneath the Cross, where her vision would still be that of a mother giving birth, for Mary not only shared the passion and death of her Son, she also received the new son given to her in the beloved disciple (cf. Jn 19:26-27). On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection, and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).

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A parishioner alerted me to this video of Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, OP, a professor of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, giving a lecture on the life of St. Paul.  About an hour in length, the lecture unfolds the biography of St. Paul, highlighting the key dates and events of the Apostle’s extraordinary life.    

Fr. Murphy-O’Connor is a Pauline expert, as the titles of his many books reveal: Paul: His Story; Paul: A Critical Life; Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives; and Paul the Letter Writer: His World, His Options, His Skills.

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Yesterday, the folks at Creative Minority Report posted a “new” video of the Nashville Dominicans.  It’s from a February episode of PBS’ Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.  

Like the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, MI, the “Nashvilles” have been getting a lot of good press lately.  Enjoy the video.

Two years ago, the same program highlighted the increasingly famous “Vigil of All Saints” held each October 31 at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.  Click here for the report and video.

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Britian’s Catholic Herald recently published a great piece on the resurgence of Dominican life in the English Province.  

From St Thomas Aquinas to Fra Angelico, St Dominic de Guzman to Meister Eckhart, the Dominicans have been a dominant force on the intellectual life of the Church. Marked by a rigorous academic tradition matched with a duty to save souls, to be both apostolic and contemplative, the Order of the Friars Preachers has been around for almost 800 years. But in the period spanning between 1963 and 1984, it looked as though the Dominicans might be among the first casualties of the collapse in religious life that followed the Second Vatican Council. Like many other religious orders, the Dominicans revised their constitutions and began to re-examine their charism. In that period, over 3,000 brethren left the Order, world-wide, and by 1975, over 700 priests were laicized, according to Fr Benedict Ashley, an American Dominican. They were in the midst of a serious identity crisis.

But today, in the English Province, the Order of the Friars Preachers, is witnessing a slow and steady resurgence. Over half the friars are under 40, while most of the older ones are over 60. The English Province has 75 friars at present and a small but constant trickle of energetic novices. Young and enthusiastic or older and experienced, they are all Dominicans. Whatever their differences as men, they see themselves as called to follow St Dominic’s mission to preach and save souls. A running catchphrase in their conversations is “that is typically Dominican” and a strong formation marks that identity. Fr Richard Finn, the Regent of Studies at Blackfriars, Oxford, says: “We are blessed with vocations and their educational backgrounds and interests are important to us. We don’t take them to turn them into a standard Dominican product, but there is a strong Dominican formation and that is a strong intellectual formation. 

“But of course, because truth is one there will be a common core of understanding and an appreciation of the economy of salvation in the Catholic Church.”

Fr Timothy Gardner, a friar based at London’s St Dominic’s Priory, believes that the growth of the last two decades is the result of the order rediscovering its charism. It has returned to the intentions of its founder to be defenders of orthodoxy, through study, prayer and preaching.

One paragraph in particular caught my eye.  It contains sage advice for all of us who want to grow in our devotion to the Word of God.

“As Dominicans we have a passion for truth, but that has got to involve learning that things are often more complicated than we think. And as a kind of fundamental Dominican asceticism which is detachment from that which isn’t wholly true, actually surrendering some of our prejudices, our half-truths - the shorthand we often live by - we have to be prepared to give that up and focus on the truth of what God has revealed and thinking hard about it really.”

Click here for the entire article.  Also visit Godzdogz, the website of the English Dominican student brothers.

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In 1215, St. Dominic traveled to Rome with his bishop, Foulques of Toulouse. Foulques was attending the Fourth Lateran Council.  Not an invited participant at the Council, Dominic had his own reasons for making the trip.

Earlier that year, Foulques had established Dominic and his first companions as a new congregation of preachers dedicated to serving the needs of Toulouse.  This was a welcome step forward, but only a first step for Dominic.  His plans were larger.  Dominic knew that soon his preachers would be in demand everywhere. Truth, after all, is a universal need.  He therefore accompanied Foulques to Rome to transform his local congregation into a universal order.  For this, he needed the recognition of the Pope.

At first, Dominic’s plans were frustrated.  He arrived in Rome to learn that, among the many decisions made at Lateran IV, the Council Fathers agreed that no new religious orders were to be created or recognized.  At the time, the bishops judged that groups were multiplying faster than the Church could assure their authenticity.  They concluded, therefore, that any new association seeking approval from the Church would have to adopt one of the ancient monastic rules already in use.  Among these were the Rules of Augustine, Basil, and Benedict.

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Most people now attending Dominican parishes might have little idea that before the 1960’s Dominicans worldwide celebrated both Mass and the Divine Office according to their own ancient traditions.  These included Mass texts, liturgical hymns, and chant melodies, many dating back to the 13th century, that were unique to the Order of Preachers.  During the liturgical reforms of the late ’60’s, the Order was given the choice of maintaining its liturgical tradition or adopting wholesale the reformed Roman Rite.  The circumstances of the time, which included greater mobility and sustained interaction with diocesan parishes and institutions, prompted superiors to switch the entire Order to celebrating the common Roman Rite.

Certain elements of the Order’s ancient traditions, however, have endured. Others continue to be studied and appreciated for the substantial contributions they can make to contemporary Dominican celebrations of the Roman Rite.  

Fr. Augustine Thompson, OP, a priest of the Holy Name Province, maintains a blog entitled Dominican Liturgy, in which he explores various elements of the Order’s liturgical traditions.  Be sure to check it out.  There one can find explanations of classic Dominican prayers and practices.  Also available are electronic copies of old liturgical books.  Of particular interest are the pictures Fr. Thompson posts of Masses being celebrated today in the Dominican Rite.   

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On August 8, the Feast of St. Dominic, the Province’s eleven postulants began their yearlong novitiate.  

During a sacred ceremony held at St. Gertrude’s Priory in Cincinnati, the postulants presented themselves to the prior, who asked them, “What do you seek?”  They responded, “God’s mercy and yours.”  Thereupon, the prior received each postulant into the novitiate by vesting him in the habit of St. Dominic.

Click here for pictures and biographies of the new novices.  Please keep them, by name, in your daily prayers.

Br. Thomas More Garrett

Br. John Devaney

Br. Maximilian Yergeau

Br. Boniface Endorf

Br. Joseph Fussner

Br. Benedict Joseph Freeman

Br. Sebastian White

Br. Gabriel Torretta

Br. Frederick Erdman

Br. Paul Marich

Br. Innocent Smith

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Below you find a video compiled from images and interviews taken at last month’s Ignite Your Torch Youth Conference in Louisville, KY.  Organized by a community of Lay Dominicans in New Hope, KY, the conference brought together priests and religious from all over the country to lead over 250 young people in four days of prayer and study.

During my years as a seminarian and a priest, I’ve participated in many youth conferences and retreats.  By far, this one was the best I’ve seen.

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Years ago, August 4 was the feast of St. Dominic.  Now, it is the feast of St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests.

This nineteenth-century French pastor remains a model of pastoral charity for all priests charged with the care of souls.  John Vianney spent himself, to the point of ill health, in preaching to his flock and administering to them the sacraments of Christ.  What drove him to such love and sacrifice was his profound understanding and admiration of the priesthood of Christ.  In all humility, John Vianney grasped the unique place held by the priest in God’s salvific plan.  In other words, he knew what the priest is for:

When men want to destroy religion they begin by attacking the priest, because where the priest is no more, there is no more sacrifice, and where there is no more sacrifice, there is no more religion.

Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest, and beasts will be worshipped there.

Below the break you’ll find reprinted an account of the meeting between St. John Vianney and Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, the diocesan priest turned Dominican who reestablished the Order of Preachers in France after the Revolution. As you can see, God wondrously brought these two holy ones together in mutual respect and esteem.

Father of mercy, you made Saint John Vianney outstanding in his priestly zeal and concern for your people.  By his example and prayers, enable us to win our brothers and sisters to the love of Christ and come with them to eternal glory.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.  Amen.

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The Province of St. Joseph recently launched a new version of its website. Bookmark it and check it often for news, announcements, and media presentations from friars assigned all over the eastern US.  Of particular interest to us, the new design contains images of all of our parishes, including several of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer posted throughout the site.

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Below is a brief meditation written by Br. James Brent, OP, a student brother who recently spent a few days here at St. Vincent Ferrer.  Like many who visit the parish, Br. James discovered several mysteries hidden in the church’s side chapels.  

It had been a couple of years since I last visited the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer. I had forgotten the many riches that are to be found within those walls. While slowly strolling around the side chapels I was confronted again with the large crucifix in the Holy Name Chapel. The old fashioned prayer at the foot of that cross implores the Crucified One to impress upon our hearts lively sentiments of faith, hope, and love. A few feet away I found again the statue of the Sacred Heart. The old fashioned prayer at the base of the Sacred Heart asks that divine charity would radiate throughout one’s whole being – even through all of one’s senses and all one’s faculties. Sometimes, I am struck by the depth and power of those old fashioned prayers.

For what if there was one more person in this world whose whole being really was irradiated by divine charity? How different would life be if one lived with lively sentiments of faith, hope, and charity?

There are mysteries in the side chapels of St. Vincent Ferrer. My urban pilgrimage from one chapel to the next opened my eyes to see something that the city outside tends to conceal. But it is best to go and see for oneself what that is.

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One of the Province’s new postulants, Jack Devaney, who entered the Order through St. Vincent’s, was interviewed recently on Sirius Radio’s The Catholic Channel.  Jack discusses with Fr. Dave Dwyer his gradual movement to the Order, including all of the sights and sounds (and silences) he enjoyed along the way.  Jack’s vocation story gives all of us a glimpse into the wonderful workings of divine providence.

Click below to listen to Jack’s interview, and remember to keep him and the other ten postulants in your prayers.  They will begin their yearlong novitiate next month.

 

 Jack Devaney on The Catholic Channel: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (71)

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Eleven candidates for the Province of St. Joseph will arrive today at Providence College to begin their postulancy, a three-week initiation into the essential features of Dominican religious life. At the end of the month, they will travel together to Cincinnati, where at St. Gertrude’s Priory they will spend one year in the novitiate preparing for simple vows. The novitiate year will officially begin on August 8, the Feast of St. Dominic, when the prior of the community will clothe the postulants in the habit, give them a copy of the Order’s constitutions, and bestow upon them a new religious name.

One of the new postulants, Jack Devaney, met the Order and began discerning his Dominican vocation here at St. Vincent’s.

Please pray fervently for these eleven men, asking God to preserve and prosper them in religious life.

William “Bill” M. Garrett

John “Jack” J. Devaney

Thomas “Tom” J. Yergeau

Robert “Bob” Endorf

Joseph “Joe” Fussner

Erik Freeman

Adam R. White

Zane P. Toretta

Frederick “Fred” D. Erdman

Paul Marich

Philip C. Smith

For pictures and short biographies of our new postulants, please visit our Vocations Blog.

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