Lessons in Holiness from Dominican Saints Agnes according to Saint Catherine

Today we commemorate one of our cloistered Dominican nuns – Saint Agnes of Montepulciano. She is one of those saints who can seem unreal because of all the miracles and mystical experiences that are often relayed when discussing or summarizing her life. Yet these things do not make a person a saint. Our dear Saint Catherine of Siena wrote in a letter to Saint Agnes’ monastic community that Saint Agnes’ chief virtue was humility. How is this?

Saint Agnes was favored from her birth with extraordinary graces. At the age of nine, after begging her parents persistently, was allowed to enter religious life with a most poor and austere community commonly known as the Sisters of the Sack, because of the rough and poor habits they wore. She applied herself diligently to growing in prayer and virtue and was recognized for her humility, obedience and prudence – so much so that before she had turned 14, a superior put her in charge of managing all the community’s temporal goods. Imagine having to manage the monastery property and secure the needs of a community of sisters at the age of 14! Yet she did it with charity and prudence, and all without lessening her prayer and penitential practices.

A neighboring town had heard of the sanctity of the community and asked the Sisters of the Sack to send one of the nuns to begin a new foundation in their town. The community decided to send Sister Margaret, who had been Sister Agnes’ novice mistress. Sister Margaret insisted that to take on such a task, she would need Sister Agnes to help her. Reluctantly the community agreed and sent the two sisters to begin a new foundation in Proceno. By the age of 15, Saint Agnes was made the superior of the community by the local bishop.

Yet God was not through using her administrative and management skills. Before she turned 40, He led her to become a Dominican nun and found a new monastery in her hometown, Montepulciano, on the site of a former brothel. This was a particular trial that included the hired builders taking shortcuts in the construction so that part of the monastery collapsed and the nuns had to raise more funds to have a proper building erected.

Not many of us are called to such a high level of service to others. Yet, Saint Catherine of Siena was encouraging all the nuns of Montepulciano to follow the example of their mother foundress, by following her humility and her other virtues. During her life, Saint Agnes recognized that her talents and skills were gifts from God and meant to be used for His glory and in loving service to others and she applied herself well to the service of her sisters, yet that was not her primary concern. Rather, as Saint Catherine highlights in her letter, Saint Agnes possessed “uncreated charity that continually burns and consumes the heart”; she had a “taste and hunger for souls” and “always applied herself to keeping vigil in prayer”. Saint Catherine points out that there is no other way to acquire humility except with charity and to arrive at perfect virtue as Saint Agnes did, we must practice “free and voluntary self-denial”, which makes us renounce ourselves and the goods of this world.

Saint Agnes’ treasure was not what her earthly father or this world could offer; she sought and possessed the treasure of her Divine Spouse, Jesus Christ. She accepted all He willed to share with her: His cross, disgrace, pain, mockery and reproaches, as well as voluntary poverty, a hunger for our Heavenly Father’s honor, and our salvation. Saint Catherine goes on to instruct the nuns, “possess this treasure with the force of your reason, moved by the fire of charity,” and you will arrive at true virtue.

Saint Agnes of Montepulciano, pray for us!

Claimed by Mary: Under the Patronage of Mary in Her Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe

This week in the United States, we celebrate two great Marian feasts: the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, our country’s patronal feast day, and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who has been repeatedly declared the empress of – not just Latin America – all America. How did it come to be that America would fall so clearly under the patronage of our Lady? And what do these two aspects of our Lady mean for us today?

America is under the patronage of our Lady because, from the first, she has claimed us as her own.

This is something several bishops and popes have observed. How is this? The conception of our Lady had long been honored and celebrated in Christian Europe when Christopher Columbus made his voyage across the Atlantic to land on the shores of what would come to be called America. In fact, some historians say the full name of his lead ship was Santa Maria de la Concepcion and the second island to which he came, he named Santa Maria de la Concepcion (the first island he dubbed San Salvador). Then, with more Spanish explorers came missionaries, who brought their love and devotion of the Blessed Virgin to the native people.

Yet the missionaries had great difficulties in preaching the Gospel to the native people of America. Their religion had a deep hold on them and included dark practices, including human sacrifice. Additionally, some of the explorers were ruthless in their quest for fame and riches and at times resorted to harsh treatment, violence, and cruelty against the native people. Don Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan friar who was named the first bishop of Mexico, worked valiantly to defend the native peoples and preach the Gospel to them, but the situation escalated to the point he knew a miracle would be necessary to both protect the native people and to have their minds and hearts be open to the Gospel and coming to Christ. He redoubled his commitment to prayer and fasting, asking our Lady for her intercession.

It was then that our Lady appeared to a simple native man, Juan Diego, who had converted to Christianity. Beginning on December 9, 1531, she appeared to Juan Diego and asked that he go to the bishop and convey the message that she desired a Church to be built on the hill where they were standing, that the people might seek her aid and she might be of aid and comfort to the people. When Juan Diego relayed our Lady’s message to the bishop, he was cautious and skeptical. So our Lady sent Juan Diego back to the bishop with a sign – a bouquet of Castilian roses arranged by her own hands in Juan Diego’s tilma, or cloak. She gave Juan Diego instructions to not open his tilma until he was with the bishop. Now the sign of the roses was already miraculous, for it was not the season for roses and Castilian roses are not native to Mexico. But something even more remarkable was to happen – when Juan Diego opened his tilma and let the roses fall, an image of Our Lady was to be seen on the tilma, an image not made by human hands and extraordinary in every detail.

The chapel was built as our Lady had requested and, suddenly, the people gave up human sacrifice, idolatry and vices and flocked to the Christian faith in astounding numbers. This was before national boundaries were established, and our Lady made it clear that she was the mother of all in this “new land”, a claim recognized by bishops and popes throughout history since.

Fast forward about 300 years – it is May 13, 1846 and the bishops of the United States are gathered in the city of Baltimore for a council. On that day, they issued a decree announcing that they “unanimously approve and consent that [they] have chosen the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America…” Subsequently, they submitted a request to the Holy See that their decision be approved by the pope, which was done by decree on July 2, 1847. Since that time, Mary’s patronage of the United States in her Immaculate Conception has been reaffirmed.

As we celebrate these two great Marian feasts, we should, especially during these times, meditate on these titles of our Lady and what we can learn through them. Both the Immaculate Conception and our Lady of Guadalupe hold for us many graces and virtues, especially faith, hope and charity particularly when facing suffering, darkness, and evil.

In her Immaculate Conception, Mary, who was to be the Mother of the only-begotten Son, is “ever resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin that she would triumph utterly over the ancient serpent” (Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8, 1854). This was a singular gift of God, in consideration of the salvation Jesus would obtain for us by his life, suffering, death and resurrection. By God’s grace, Mary has completely triumphed over Satan and the powers of evil.

On the 50th anniversary of Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius X promulgated a beautiful encyclical, On the Immaculate Conception. In it he highlights the darkness of the times and the brightness of the hope presented in the Immaculate Conception, and he highlights the great benefits of devotion to our Lady in her Immaculate Conception, particularly in combatting attitudes and ideas that remain prevalent and dangerous today.

First, there is a great temptation and trap to deny or minimize sin and to not admit we have fallen from grace, we cannot lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, that we truly need a Savior. Devotion to the Immaculate Conception demands we acknowledge the reality of sin and our need for a savior, and it gives us hope, because in Mary and the Immaculate Conception we see God’s superabundant grace, mercy and love for us, as well as a model of what it is to live without sin. As Saint Ambrose pointed out, “Such was Mary that her life is an example for all. Have then before your eyes, as an image, the virginity and life of Mary from whom as from a mirror shines forth the brightness of chastity and the form of virtue.”

Devotion to the Immaculate Conception also leads us to greater docility and submission to Christ and His Church. While Mary does not have productive power of grace – that belong to God alone – she has been deemed by God as the conduit of grace, by virtue of her being the mother of the Source of grace. “Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Spirit and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary.” (On the Immaculate Conception, 6). And as Christ is our head, Saint Bernardine of Siena observes, “she is the neck of Our Head, by which He communicates to His mystical body all spiritual gifts.”

In his encyclical, Pope Pius X goes on to quote a passage from Revelation, “a great sign appeared – a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head,” which brings us back to Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the miraculous image, we see a pregnant woman, clothed with the sun, standing on the moon with a cloak of stars. When Juan Diego had tried to evade meeting our Lady because he was worried about his uncle and was fetching a priest to give him last rites, Mary appeared to him on his detour and reassured him with these words: “Am I not your Mother?” Yes, “is not Mary the Mother of Christ? Then she is our Mother also.” (On the Immaculate Conception, 10). As we continue to meditate on the Immaculate Conception of Mary and on her appearances to us as our Lady of Guadalupe, we vividly see tender concern for all human life and the ultimate triumph of God’s grace and mercy in the face of seemingly overwhelming suffering and evil. Our hearts and minds are warmed and we can experience true freedom, peace, and reconciliation with all creation, and all people, in Christ, through Mary.

Advent is the perfect time to rekindle and renew our devotion to our Lady. As we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, let us seek Mary to journey with her and learn from her. It was she who shared intimately in the life and work of her Son, Jesus. If we want to know Jesus, who better to guide and instruct us than Mary? After all, it was

“with her alone of all others Jesus was for thirty years united, as a son is usually united with a mother, in the closest ties of intimacy and domestic life. Who better than His mother could have an open knowledge of the admirable mysteries of the birth and childhood of Christ, and above all the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the beginning and the foundation of faith?” (On the Immaculate Conception, 7).

Mary kept all these mysteries and pondered them in her heart. Let us ponder them too, especially in praying the Joyful Mysteries of our Lady’s Rosary.

Mary is also ever present to us with her maternal care, if we only will turn to her as her children. But we must turn with our whole heart and will. If our honor and devotion to our Lady does not keep us from committing sin, if it does not move our will to amend our lives, to turn from evil and vices and to learn to do good, to cultivate a life of goodness, truth and beauty and to shine forth the mercy of Christ to others, then we are deceiving ourselves and our devotion is false. Mary is there when we fall, when we lose our way in the darkness, when we “run out of wine” and don’t know where else to turn – we only need to ask with softened hearts and open minds. And if we cannot, then may we ask for the grace to do so. May the “Yes” of Mary’s fiat to God be the first and ever ready word on our own lips and may we learn from her the true meaning of life and love, freedom and victory.

Mary, Immaculate Virgin and our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Our Lady's Message: Prayer and Penance

Since the Fall of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, pain and suffering have been part of every person’s earthly life. Yet there are certain moments in human history that seem darker than the rest, as if all of humanity were racing toward the edge of a cliff. While history will tell whether we are experiencing one of those times now, there is no question that the pain and suffering of our day is, in many ways, unprecedented. During the month of October, it is good to once again remember what we have been told repeatedly by our Lady when she has appeared in our troubled past – as followers of Christ, we are called to undertake penance and prayer.

The specific prayer recommended time and again by Our Lady is the Holy Rosary. We have written before about praying the Rosary, this most beautiful prayer of our Lady that guides us to meditate on the Gospel and leads us to her Son and our Savior Jesus. It is a prayer that changes hearts and lives as it calls down God’s grace and transforms us as it keeps us under the protective mantle of our Blessed Mother. During October, the month devoted to the Holy Rosary, we invite you to join us in renewing a commitment to this prayer.

But what about penance, the other side of this coin? If all is mercy and we are forgiven, why does God require penance?

Most of us approach penance from the wrong direction. We hear “penance” and we immediately equate it with a disagreeable hardship, something we endure for a time, like giving up chocolate Lent, or something we are told to do by the priest in confession. So, we add “penance” to a to-do list and… Check! Done! Now we can move on to something more pleasurable. But that’s not exactly what God meant when He said “take up your cross”, and it’s not how the Church and saints understand penance. As Dom Hubert van Zeller points out in his book, “Approach to Penance”, these may be acts of penance, and are indeed often a good place to start, but true penance goes much deeper than that.

True penance demands a complete surrender of self to the will of God. Penance that is worth anything is not simply a turning from something, but it is a turning to Someone.

Often our acts of penance are inspired by feelings of remorse. We recognize we did something wrong or are overly attached to something (or someone) and we are remorseful. Yet, true penance does not stop at remorse – it must go forward to trust. It is this confusion of remorse and penance that leads to seeing penance as only external acts to be performed instead of a habitual disposition of the soul – a virtue – to be cultivated. Penance as a virtue begins in humility - in acknowledging that God is all and compared to God we are nothing - AND it goes further to have complete confidence and trust in God’s loving mercy.

Why does this matter? Because everyone is called to penance, but not everyone is called to perform the heroic acts of penance we often read about in the lives of the saints. Dom Hubert van Zeller warns us that if we approach penance as only acts to be performed, then we risk falling into one of two errors.

First, we may avoid true penance all together. We say to God, “I’ll give this, but not that”, which means we haven’t really given our whole selves to Him. We can also fall into pride by going down our list of sacrifices and congratulating ourselves at how much we’ve given God. In both cases, the emphasis is on the “I”. It is much better to say, “God, here I am. Take whatever, whenever, however You want.” And then trust that He will give you the grace and strength you will need when He takes you at your word.

The second error we can fall into is to have the desire to deny ourselves, but to be disillusioned because we can’t do as much as the saints, or even perhaps other individuals we know – we aren’t strong enough, or our vocations don’t allow us to perform such heroic acts of penance. Yet penance as a virtue means that the merit of the act is based on the intention of the will. It is the denial of self that is the substance of true penance.

Remember what Jesus said about the poor woman who gave two coins in the collection - she gave more than all the others who came before her because she gave from her poverty; she gave all she had to give. That is all Jesus asks of us - to willingly give all, whether that means two coins or 20 coins doesn’t matter to Him, as long as it is everything.

If we have the desire to give ourselves to God through penance - whether to atone for our own sins or in reparation for the sins of others - it is because God has first instilled in us that desire. This should give us greater faith and hope in Him, because along with the desire, He will give us the grace - Jesus Himself will help us - to complete the gift. Yet we must keep in mind that penance is the way of the cross. It is the way of love, to be sure, but it is also that way of faith and it is a work. In picking up the cross - in developing the virtue of penance - our sole motive should be to please God. We must also realize that we will be called to bear the cross in a shape we didn’t bargain for and that the really effective part is not what we do by way of self-denial but what God does in us by way of reproducing Jesus’ Passion in our everyday lives.

This is why humility and trust is so important - because when Jesus gives us a small part of His cross, or a thorn from His crown, or a share in the wounds He received under the lash, or the humiliation of being despised and ridiculed by others, He is asking us to join Him in His supreme gift of love. We cannot love Jesus completely if we do not also love what He loves, and He loved the cross. Not because he loves pain and suffering itself, but because He loves the Father’s will and He loves us and it is the cross that bridges the way between Him and us.

So how do we put all this into practice? How do we know what specific acts of penance God may be asking us to undertake to cultivate the virtue of penance in our souls?

Only grace will reveal what specifically we are to do, how we are to do it, and when or for how long. God speaks to us in many ways; here are some tips for discerning God’s voice:

• Read the Scriptures and the Catechism to learn more about what God and the Church teaches us about prayer and penance.

• Find out what the Pope and our bishops are asking us to do (i.e., are they asking the faithful to engage in specific prayers or acts of penance, such as fast days?).

• Seek counsel from a wise confessor or spiritual director. This is especially important before taking on more rigorous acts of penance. Remember, God prefers obedience to sacrifice.

• Consider your current disposition (i.e., temperament, health, etc.), vocation, and circumstances. God will not call us to take on crosses that are truly beyond our strength or in conflict with fulfilling our vocations (though, admittedly at first, it may feel like it!).

• Spend time in prayer and ask God for direction, then listen to what He speaks in your heart. And if you feel a nudge that doesn’t go away, take that seriously. Again, because we are approaching penance as a virtue and total gift of self, our prayer to God is not, “God what more can I give you today?” because, if we have truly given Him everything, we cannot give Him “more”. Rather, our prayer becomes, “God, I’ve given you all of me and with the help of your grace, I renew that gift of self. What would you have me do today?”

Finally, because penance is a virtue to be cultivated, it will take time and practice to grow strong in it. So, when we stumble, remember Jesus also fell under the weight of the cross - offer your weakness to Him with confidence, ask for the help of our Blessed Mother, rise and press forward once more. For the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Strong Sisters: Bl. Diana and Cecilia

If you want inspiration for living feminine genius as a holy woman of strength, fortitude with gentleness, today’s Dominican saints give plenty to ponder. Blessed Diana and Cecilia were two of the first nuns of the Order of Preachers in Italy, and both of them faced difficult challenges in pursuing their vocation to give themselves completely to God as His bride.

Bl. Cecilia was a nun in Rome when she and her community first met Saint Dominic. Our Holy Father Dominic had been asked by the pope to reform the women religious of Rome, as most of them had grown lax in their observances. Dominic’s proposal to the nuns was to essentially come together and refound themselves under his direction as nuns of the Order of Preachers. His words and the workings of the Holy Spirit persuaded them. But before they could complete the arrangements, their families protested. They had gotten used to the lax practices, to being able to enter and leave the monastery enclosure and visit their female relatives in the monastery. The nuns began to waiver. Dominic came again and strengthened them in their resolve and they didn’t look back. When the way was made for a monastery of nuns to be founded in Bologna, made possible in large part because of Bl. Diana, Bl. Cecilia was asked to go to Bologna and teach the new nuns there the ways of the Dominican life.

To read the story of Bl. Diana is to meet a dynamic, passionate woman. From a noble background, she loved fashion and parties, and was considered beautiful and charming. Her parents had high hopes for a good marriage for her. Then, one day, a couple Dominican friars came into Bologna where they lived and began preaching. Diana was captivated…and experienced a turning point in her life. She began to engage in long periods of prayer and undertook acts of greater penance and sacrifice. When the friars needed a place to build a priory, Diana convinced her father to give them the land they needed. But when she decided to build a monastery for Dominican nuns and enter herself, her family forbid it.

Not to be outdone, she came up with a plan to have her way. She visited an Augustinian monastery and, to the surprise of her party visiting with her, she suddenly slipped inside and donned the habit! Stunned, they immediately reported her actions to her family. Her brothers were sent to fetch her, forcibly if necessary. And in the struggle, Diana suffered a broken rib that left her convalescing, imprisoned in her family home. Her family forbid that she have contact with the friars, but Dominic, and after his death his successor, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, slipped to her notes and words of encouragement. Eventually, due to the influence of Bl. Jordan and the workings of the Holy Spirit, Divine Providence cleared the way for Diana’s vocation - her family relented and she happily joined the ranks of Dominican nuns at the new monastery in Bologna.

We are indebted to these women in many ways: it is because of Bl. Cecilia that we know the appearance of Our Holy Father Dominic; her description of his physical appearance is the only one we have. And we are grateful for Bl. Diana and her community; they have preserved letters from Bl. Jordan to Diana which reveal much about the second Master of our Order and some of the happenings at the time, as well as provide a beautiful description of spiritual friendship. And they each model for us feminine genius lived with ingenuity, fortitude and grace under fire.

Blessed Diana and Blessed Cecilia, pray for us!

War, Peace, and the Rosary

Every morning when a Dominican dons the habit, he or she is reminded of the fact that he or she is in the middle of a war. The habit hasn’t changed much since it was given to Saint Dominic and the first friars and nuns of the Order of Preachers – white tunic and scapular with a belt, black cappa (and veil for the sisters). But conspicuously attached to the belt where a medieval knight would have slung a sword is a rosary.

But we should not think that because we have replaced a sword with a rosary that we are exempt from engaging in war and battles. The real war is all around us and the battleground is our hearts and souls, as well as the hearts and souls of all those we hold dear. It is the war between good and evil and the stakes are eternal. We experience this war not only in broadscale violence, oppression and injustices, but even on a seemingly much smaller, yet more insidious scale. Every time we choose sin, every time our heart becomes a bit harder or more insensitive to the things of God, as well as every time we choose the good, helping our neighbor, extending a kind or encouraging word to someone in pain, these are blows for one side and against the other. We can perpetuate the evil in the world, or we can be a beacon for good.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes our situation this way: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Today it is so easy to take what we see and hear and think “us versus them”, whether it’s in politics or the Church. And, we can also fall into the trap of assuming “our side has the truth!” Yet if we want true peace, truth and goodness to prevail in the world, it must first prevail in our hearts. We must be transformed by the renewal of our minds and our hearts must be made like Jesus.

Besides the Eucharist and the sacraments, we have no more powerful weapon to wield than Our Lady’s Rosary. Dominicans have long been champions of the rosary: it is an incarnational prayer that incorporates the body, the heart and the mind as the beads slip through fingers and the vocal prayers pass through the lips. It is a Marian prayer as it tames the heart to be docile and receptive to God’s word. It is a Christocentric prayer as the mind is illumined and transformed by Truth contained in the mysteries. It has the power to change lives and bring souls to eternal bliss in God. It can be prayed anywhere at almost any time. In times of grief, we can offer the sorrowful mysteries and join our pain with those of Jesus and Mary. The joyful mysteries show us what should really make us happy, what we should desire and strive for. And the glorious mysteries give us hope and courage to persevere to the end. We have no choice about whether we will be involved in this war. There is no neutral zone.

The Rosary is a powerful weapon in our daily spiritual battle. If we want peace in our world, in our country, in our communities, in our families, in our hearts, we must take up the weapons God has provided for us, stand firm and fight. And the battle begins and ends within each one of us.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Celebrating Hope: Dominic and the Assumption of Mary

Hope. It’s a word we hear a lot - it even became a campaign slogan - but do we really know what it is? It sounds good and on some level, we instinctively want it, but how can we get it? We can learn a lot about hope by looking to our Blessed Mother and our Holy Father Dominic.

Generally speaking, hope is a desire for a good that is difficult to obtain, with the expectation of eventually obtaining it.

As a supernatural virtue, like faith and charity, it is infused in us as a gift of God and by it we long for God and to spend eternity with Him. Hope motivates us to do acts of virtue, to seek God, to love and serve Him with the expectation that He will do what He has promised and grant us eternal happiness with Him.  By supernatural faith, we “see” our ultimate target - God - and it is by hope and charity that we fly and soar to the heights.

We can also think of hope with this analogy: picture a toddler who wants to be picked up. They stand in front of their parent, looking up, reaching as high as they can, standing on tip-toe even. No matter how hard they try, they cannot get themselves in their parent’s arms, but they have the expectation that their parent will look down with kindness and lift them the rest of the way. Hope is that desire and expectation, and yet more. Because without God’s gift of hope, we would never look and reach up in the first place.

Our Blessed Mother’s assumption is a lesson in hope.

By this teaching of the Church - that at the time Mary’s life ended on earth, God granted her the privilege of not having to wait until the end of time for the resurrection of her body, but instead her body and soul were assumed into heaven - the glorious triumph of her Son Jesus over sin and death shines all the more brightly. Mary was granted singular graces not because she earned or deserved them, but solely due to God’s lavish gifts of mercy. She was uniquely chosen to walk in unity with the life and her Son, Jesus. And just as His body did not see the corruption of death, so too was Mary’s body preserved from this.

Mary’s assumption teaches us that our hope does not lie in the things of this world - our bodies and souls are destined to a loftier end: heaven.

Materialism, so prevalent in Western culture today, “threatens to extinguish the light of virtue and ruin the lives of men by exciting discord.”

-Pope Pius XII
Munificentissimus Deus

Many monastics and saints have commented that our world would be much more peaceful if the words “mine” and “yours” ceased to exist.  So many of today’s arguments, battles, and wars are over material goods that cannot add one moment to our life on earth, nor increase our true happiness.  Some of the richest people in the world are also the most miserable.  And that is one reason why our Holy Father Dominic urged his sons and daughters to “make your treasure from voluntary poverty.”  Actual poverty frees a person from worldly cares because they have nothing to lug around or protect from damage or thieves.  “Voluntary” poverty implies more than actual poverty – it requires a detachment of the heart from material goods, a true poverty of spirit.  A person can be poor in fact and yet still chained by the desire to possess what they do not have. By choosing to be poor, a person not only renounces actual possession of goods, but also the desire to possess those goods. It is this detachment of the heart that makes it light enough to fly up to God.

Mary’s assumption reaffirms the dignity and beauty of the whole human person - body and soul.

While our ultimate destiny is not this world, we must also remember that God’s creation is good, including our bodies, because that is how God created. Yet, because of sin, “we groan…awaiting the redemption of our bodies.” Because we still labor under the effects of sin, we must discipline our bodies and emotions to put them in right relationship with our intellect and ultimately God.  But we should not abuse our bodies – the human person is both body and soul.  Our holy Father Dominic began his preaching mission in earnest when he encountered a heresy that denied the goodness of the created world, including the human body.  Dominic preached tirelessly against this heresy and spent himself to help provide for the corporal needs of the poor, even to the point of selling all he had, including his books, to help feed starving people during a famine.  Dominic also left us the heritage of his “Nine Ways of Prayer”, descriptions of how he prayed using body postures, gestures and his voice to praise God and intercede for others.

Mary’s assumption should stir our hearts to a stronger piety toward our heavenly Mother, and move us with the desire of sharing in the unity of Jesus Christ's Mystical Body. 

That is, it should make us more receptive to God’s gift of hope. Because hope is a supernatural virtue, it is a gift. Yet, there are things we can do to make ourselves more receptive to it and to the extent we have it, we should exercise it. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul gives us a good place to start:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access [by faith] to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.

- Romans 5:1-5

From this we see that the road of hope passes through affliction. Our Blessed Mother showed us how to walk in this path as she walked it with her Son, for she endured affliction all the way to the foot of the cross on Calvary. And the saints also light this way for us. When things are darkest, that’s when we should look up all the more and wait for the dawn with desire and expectation - God will keep His promises! As the psalmist sings,

Those who sow in tears
will reap with cries of joy.

Those who go forth weeping,
carrying sacks of seed,
Will return with cries of joy,
carrying their bundled sheaves.

-Psalm 126:5-6

May we increase our love for her who shows her motherly heart to all the members of this august body.  And may our Mother Mary and holy Father Dominic intercede for us!

Mary, Our Patroness

Since Jesus told the beloved apostle, “Behold your mother,” at the cross, Christians have gone to Mary, as she is our mother in the order of grace. But Dominicans have a special devotion to Our Lady as she is our Patroness. Blessed Humbert of Romans declared that “the Blessed Virgin was of great help in the beginning of the Order…and it is to be hoped that she will bring it to a good end.” (Opera II< 70-71). From the very beginning of the Order, stories abound of how Mary helped bring our Order into existence and of her continual care and protection of its members. Here is one such story as told by one of the first nuns of the Order, Blessed Cecilia.

How the Blessed Virgin Appeared to [Saint Dominic] in Prayer and Revealed her Protection Over the Order

One night, after prolonging his prayers until midnight, he left the church and came to the dormitory, where he completed what he had come to do and, taking his place at one end of the dormitory, continued to pray. As he stood praying, he glanced at the other end of the dormitory and saw three beautiful women enter, but noticed that the one in the middle was a venerable lady far more beautiful and dignified than the other two. One of them was carrying a beautiful, shining vessel and the other an aspersorium which she handed to the lady in the center, who went from bed to bed sprinkling the brethren with holy water and blessing them.

The lady said to Blessed Dominic: “I am the one you call upon in the evening. When you say, ‘Turn therefore most gracious advocate thine eyes of mercy toward us,’ I prostrate myself before my Son and ask him to preserve this Order.” After this she continued to sprinkle and bless all the others and then disappeared.

When she was gone Blessed Dominic returned to pray in the place he stood before. Suddenly, he was rapt in spirit before God and saw Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin sitting at His right. It seemed to Blessed Dominic that Our Lady was wearing a cape of bright blue, the color of sapphire. As Blessed Dominic looked around, he could see religious of all the orders but his own around the throne of God, so that he began to weep bitterly and stood far away, not daring to approach the Lord and His mother.

Then Our Lady motioned for him to come near. But he would not dare, until Our Lord Himself also called him. Then Blessed Dominic cast himself before them weeping bitterly. But Our Lord told him to rise, and when he did, Our Lord asked him, “Why are you weeping so?” “I am weeping because I see all the other orders here but no sign of my own.” And the Lord said to him, “Do you want to see your Order?” And he answered, “Yes, Lord.”

Then Our Lord, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Blessed Virgin, said to Blessed Dominic, “I have entrusted your Order to my Mother.” Then he asked him again, “Do you still wish to see your Order?” And against he answered, “Yes, Lord.” Then the Blessed Virgin opened the cape which covered her and spread it out before Blessed Dominic, to whom it seemed vast enough to cover the entire heaven and, under it, he saw a large multitude of the brethren. Then, prostrating himself, Blessed Dominic gave thanks to God and to Blessed Mary His Mother.

Detail from an altar card illuminated by the Dominican nuns of our monastery.

Go to Joseph!

This is the advice given by many saints, and Dominicans are no exception. The Dominicans began invoking Saint Joseph in the Litany of the Saints before he was added to the Litany according to the Roman. The sixty-third Master of the Order, Father Jandel, often recommended to the friars devotion to Saint Joseph.

Saint Joseph assists the young Dominican novice to imitate the simplicity and docility of the Infant Jesus. For those who are devoted to the Holy Rosary, he obtains knowledge and love of the mysteries of Mary. Those engaged in work, labor with more courage under the eye and by the example of Saint Joseph. Those engaged in study can better sanctify in his sweet company the hours spent; the apostle, called to go into the world, carries there the same blessings which the Holy Family, with Saint Joseph for guide, carried into Egypt. The dying sanctify under this holy patronage their last hours, and obtain a more peaceful end and after death received more abundant prayers.

It was in order to obtain these more fervent suffrages that the holy brother Joseph de Rueda every night when the bell rang for the prayers for the dead, went and sprinkled the graves with holy water, and then the cells of the prior and the brethren, in the hope that all would recite more devoutly the prayers for the dead. And in our community, one of our devotions to Saint Joseph is to pray his memorare each evening after Supper.

Saint Joseph, pray for us!

Based on an excerpt from Saints and Saintly Dominicans, edited by Rev. Thomas a Kempis Reilly, O.P. (John Murphy Company, 1915).

In Silence and Waiting Is Our Salvation

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

In the midst of Lent, we celebrate the beautiful Solemnity of the Annunciation, the pivotal event which turned our world upside down, at least from our perspective. From God’s perspective, this was His plan all along, but if we stop and consider His plan - that the Divine would take on the flesh of a lowly creature, so as to secure their eternal salvation - it should leave us awestruck.

What was Mary doing in the moments just before the Archangel Gabriel appeared? Artists have usually depicted her doing ordinary things in serene silence - sewing, praying, reading (or in the East, drawing water). Ordinary, mundane things of life. But then, the announcement: she, full of grace, was chosen to be the mother of God. And then silence as heaven waited for her response. God awaited her agreement to this divine plan “because,” says Saint Thomas, “she represented the whole human race to whom God, in honor, left the merit of concurring freely in the work of salvation.”

Scarcely did Mary say her “Fiat”, when heaven descended to earth and men became capable of attaining Heaven - a moment unique in the world’s history. It is therefore not without good reason that on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, when mention is made of the Incarnation, we kneel, to give thanks to the great mercy of God, Who alone can work such miracles.

God forms an alliance with us through Mary. Yet we must understand, that which is done for us cannot save us without our own consent. God waits for us, for our humble concurrence to His plan for our lives. Through Mary’s intercession, may her humble “Yes!” become our own, and may her Son grow and be made manifest in our own hearts and lives.

Prayer: “O my God, You are Beauty, I am deformity. You are Light, I am darkness. You are Wisdom, I am folly. You are Life, I am death.” - Saint Catherine of Siena

Something to consider: It is tradition in the Church to stop three times each day and pray the Angelus, in the morning, at midday, and in the evening (usually about 6 a.m., Noon, and 6 p.m.). If you haven’t made this part of your daily devotional/prayer life, consider starting today (just schedule a daily reminder for the times you want to pray). For those of us who already practice this custom, we can ask ourselves, with what fidelity, devotion, and external reverence do I recite the Angelus?

Meditation quotes in part “March 25: The Annunciation” from Saints and Saintly Dominicans edited by Rev. Thomas a Kempis Reilly, O.P. (John Murphy Company, 1915).

Saint Joseph: A Special Kind of Crazy

Picture it: a man in love with the most wonderful woman he’d ever met. He considers himself especially blessed because he’s only a poor, simple carpenter, and she’s to be his wife! She went away abruptly a few months ago to visit her cousin, but you expect her return any day. Then she arrives. With news. She’s pregnant. And you know you’re not the father. You’re heartbroken. And you hold the fate of her and her baby in your hands, because in your religion and culture, fornication is a sin punishable by death. Stoning. You’re mind reels. This just does not fit with the woman standing before you. This is too much. So, you decide to break it off with her quietly. At least that way she will not be stoned to death and you can both go your separate ways.

Then God speaks to you in a dream. Take her as your wife. Raise the son she carries. You wake with peace and resolve and immediately obey what God has asked of you. To the rest of the world, it sounds crazy. But faith is a special kind of crazy.

“Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.” This is the first verse of Hebrews, chapter 11. After going through many examples from the Old Testament of men and women of faith and their actions, the passage closes with this:

“All of these died in faith. They did not obtain what they had been promised but saw and saluted it from afar. By acknowledging themselves to be strangers and foreigners on the earth, they showed that they were seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking back to the place from which they had come, they would have had the opportunity of returning there. But they were searching for a better, a heavenly home. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Joseph, too, was a man of great faith. When God spoke, he did not look back. He did not lament the life he had envisioned and expected with his bride, a life that would now never be. He humbly and immediately obeyed God through the grace of faith. And because of his trust in God and his obedience to His promptings, he was now the husband of the Mother of God, the foster father to the divine Son, guardian of the Holy Family.

“There is a general rule concerning all special graces granted to any human being. Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand.” So begins a sermon of St. Bernadine of Siena. Faith, as with all graces from God, is a gift. But how often do we spurn this and the many other graces God offers to us? God seeks us, calls us, arms outstretched with overflowing graces, asking us to take up the vocation, the task, He’s set out just for us…yet we hesitate and ask for sign after sign, thinking we surely didn’t hear God clearly. We leave Him hanging there with His treasures. Are we crazy?

God’s ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts. To follow Christ means we are embracing the cross, a stumbling block and foolishness to the rest of the world. So the question is, are we trying to think with the world or think with Christ? Are we willing to embrace our own cross, letting God determine the size and the weight of it, and trust that He will abundantly provide the graces we need to carry it until the end? Where are we making our home and storing our treasure?

St. Joseph, humble man of faith and guardian of the Holy Family and Church, pray for us.