St. Martin de Porres

How could anyone not like St. Martin de Porres?  What's there not to like?  He's the St. Francis Assisi of the Dominican Family.  He loves animals, cures, helps people, and exemplifies the virtue of humility.

There's a few stories that add to Martin's fame.  One of my favorites is the story about the rats.  It seems that the priory was overrun with rats.  The prior told Martin to set out poison to get rid of them.  Martin, of course, obeyed.  But he went outside and talked to the rats.  He told them about the poison and told them to stop annoying the prior and he would feed them every day, in the barn.  Both ends of the bargain were kept up.

To you Saint Martin de Porres we prayerfully lift up our hearts filled with serene confidence and devotion. Mindful of your unbounded and helpful charity to all levels of society and also of your meekness and humility of heart, we offer our petitions to you. Pour out upon our families the precious gifts of your solicitous and generous intercession; show to the people of every race and every color the paths of unity and of justice; implore from our Father in heaven the coming of his kingdom, so that through mutual benevolence in God men may increase the fruits of grace and merit the rewards of eternal life. Amen.


h/t for the prayer from Father Philip Powell, O.P.

An Up-and-Coming Vocation

Brother Andre Bessette was canonized, today.  Saints are holy men and women who have been recognized as saints by the saintliness of their lives.  (Which is why Father Marie Jean-Joseph Lataste, O.P. should be beatified--but that's a different thread.)  Many priests, nuns, religious sisters, and laity, have been so blessed.  But not as many religious brothers.  This is one reason why Br. Andre's canonization is such an occasion to celebrate.

The Order of Preachers also has Cooperator Brothers.  This is a vocation to be encouraged.  The Brothers are called, like all Dominicans, to preach.  But not all friars feel called to be priests.  Some friars feel called to serve in other ministries.  These friars do not want to study theology, nor feel called to be priests, yet they are called. Brother Paul Byrd, O.P attempts to define a Cooperatator Brother:  ... cooperator brothers are not "exceptions" to the rule of religious life--their vocation is what religious life is all about: consecrated living, the praise and worship of God, and the ministry to the Church. They are fully religious, and equal in every way as religious to religious who are also called to be priests. In this way, they are not auxiliary, cooperators, coadjutors, etc., they are religious brothers. 


The Dominican Family includes many fraternities.  Each one adds its own dimension.  The cooperator brothers do everything the ordained friars do, except sacramental ministry.  This includes medicine, teaching, chaplaincy, parish pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, retreat work, administration, arts, you name it...  It's not lack of intellectual ability that makes a friar decide to be a cooperator brother.  It's lack of vocational calling.  It might be humility, or maybe it's that a man feels called to be a religious but doesn't want to study theology.  Many are called, few are chosen.


The Central Province of St. Albert the Great, has a good program.  Brother Paul explains on his blog:
Cooperator brothers are men whose love for God and desire to serve the Church has led them to seek to live as vowed religious. They are freed by the vow of poverty to give what they have to others; freed by the vow of obedience to do what the Church, through the Order, asks of them; and freed by the vow of chastity to love all those they encounter. With the support of their community of fellow Dominicans, they go about their prayer, study, and ministry with joyful hearts. And though they are not priests, their lives are rooted in the sacramental life of the Church.


If you are a young man, you can go see for yourself, what's it all about.  Their site is www.domcentral.org/vocations     All others can pray and support them.  

Blessed Father Dominic,
preacher of God’s grace,
you promised to assist us
even after your death.

Intercede for us before God
to help us encourage
more men and women
to follow our way of life,
the way of a preacher.

Bless us in our common life, study,
prayer, and ministry,
that our lives together
may be a joyful witness
creating a desire in others
to join the Sacred Preaching

Amen

I'll Love You Forever -- Vows

Read Paul's declaration of love in his vows.

This human longing to love God, to possess God, if you will, as one's beloved, is found in many expressions throughout Holy Scripture. One could think of the author of the Book of Wisdom when he writes, "I loved her [Lady Wisdom: a feminine image of God] and sought her from my youth; I desired to take her for my bride, and became enamored of her beauty." (Wisdom 8:2); or think of the many images from the Psalms, such as: "O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). or "What else have I in heaven but you [God]? Apart from you I want nothing on earth. My body and my heart faint for joy; God is my possession for ever" (Psalm 73:25-26). Yeshua ben Sira put it bluntly, "With all your might love your Maker..." (Sirach 7:30a)

Perhaps no other book captures the human longing and love for God as poetically as the Song of Songs where the Shulamite woman writes of her beloved:

"My beloved is all radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside the springs of water,
bathed in milk,
fitly set.
His cheeks are like beds of spices,
yielding fragrance.
His lips are lilies,
distilling liquid myrrh.
His arms are rounded gold,
set with jewels.
His body is ivory work,
encrusted with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set upon bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His speech is most sweet,
and he is altogether lovable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem." (5:10-16)

Here her love for the man, captured in her very detailed account of the beauty of his body, is a metaphor for the human spirit's appreciation for God's perfection and loveliness. Once a glimpse of God's loveliness is had, a passionate desire is enkindled in the human soul which cannot be satisfied by anything less than the sweetness of God's company. This is no tame or platonic love--but an intense, consuming love. It is this type of love which motivates a man or woman to follow in the way of Yeshua the Messiah and live a life completely oriented on God. Historically in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, this following of the Messiah's example has taken many forms, including the secluded way of life of the desert fathers and mothers, the cloistered way of life of monks and nuns, the active way of life of religious brothers, religious sisters, priests, and missionaries of all sorts.

Let me remind you, Paul is not talking about marriage.  Continue....


In truly Catholic form, one's profession of vows (for example, vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) plays out concretely in the context of the Church community, and most especially, in the context of one's religious community of brothers or sisters. Vows are not abstract, theoretical "nice ideas", therefore, they are part of a greater blueprint of the life of Grace--the wood and nails, if you will, of the bridge that guides a person from his or her former life of sin to the Kingdom of God. 

Another way I have said this is found in my description of the Dominican Cooperator Brother vocation: "Cooperator brothers are men whose love for God and desire to serve the Church has led them to seek to live as vowed religious. They are freed by the vow of poverty to give what they have to others; freed by the vow of obedience to do what the Church, through the Order, asks of them; and freed by the vow of chastity to love all those they encounter. With the support of their community of fellow Dominicans, they go about their prayer, study, and ministry with joyful hearts. And though they are not priests, their lives are rooted in the sacramental life of the Church."

The vows ultimately are aimed at liberation, not restriction--thus, in a way, one's profession of vows is the reversal of the Fall from Grace, since such an action is a freely-chosen submission to the Will of God out of love. As the Messiah put it: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25; Luke 9:23-24). This "freedom/happiness-through-self-denial/self-giving" is Christian wisdom, often rejected by the modern world which believes freedom only comes from the power to determine everything for one's self. 

What is the result of this kind of self-giving? In a word: Holiness--that is, a sharing in the very life and holiness of the Holy One [Hakodosh]through the mystical communion made possible through the Messiah and the work of the Ruah Hakodesh (Holy Spirit). St. Paul explains this when he writes, "For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:19-20). 

St. Augustine is another example of a person made free by the love of and for God. Famously he wrote:

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace." 

We can only understand the conversions of St. Paul and St. Augustine and their subsequent religious fervor in light of the great Revelation that Christianity proclaims about the nature of God--his own extraordinary self-sacrificing/self-giving love. 

Blessed Julian of Norwich, whom (if she were a Doctor of the Church) one might call the Doctor of Divine Mercy, understood this self-sacrificing aspect of God through Christ not to be of one moment in time [the Crucifixion], but an on-going reality of God's loving desire for us. She wrote:

"For his [the Messiah's] love is so great that everything seems a trifle to him in comparison. For although the dear humanity of Christ could only suffer once, his goodness makes him always ready to do so again; he would do it every day if it were possible; and if he said that for love of me he would make new heavens and a new earth, it would be but little in comparison, for he could do this every day if he so wished, without any hardship; but to offer to die for love of me so often that the number of times passes human comprehension, that is the most glorious present that our Lord God could make to man's soul, it seems to me." (Revelation of Divine Love, chapter 22). 

It is, therefore, because God has already pledged his love to us [through the saving Cross of Yeshua the Messiah], that we who profess vows to him do so with happy and joyful hearts, hoping to, in our very little and human way, reciprocate that awesome love shown to us.

--This, I believe, is the meaning of the profession of religious vows, of consecrated life, and of Christian living.


Isn't Brother Paul Byrd, O.P. a beautiful writer?  Isn't his vocation beautiful?  Make sure he's on your prayer list.  I pray that he's generously blessed.