Friars of Mary

Sixth Day: Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Mother of God

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest in which she puts her young by your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God!   (Psalms 84:2-4)

The Eucharist and the Mother of God were objects of Dominic’s special devotion. Before the tabernacle he spent his nights, finding there rest after his labors; and arriving weary and foot sore from a journey, he always visited the Blessed Sacrament before refreshing his body. However much fatigued, he always celebrated Mass, and if possible sang it. During the celebration of Mass tears were often seen flowing down his face, moving all to devotion.

Of God’s Mother he was always an ardent and reverent lover. His life, his work, his Order were placed under her protection, and he invoked her in every difficulty and danger. He began the custom of saying the Hail Mary before preaching. The Blessed Mother filled him with heavenly favors, watched over him with motherly care, and gave him the habit of his Order. A tradition cherished in his Order, and supported by the testimonies of many popes, ascribes to him the first teaching of devotion to the recitation of the Rosary. His disciples were called “Friars of Mary,” and have carried her Rosary and scapular to the uttermost parts of the earth.

I myself am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me shall ever thirst. (John 6:35)

I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come to me, all you that desire me, and be filled with my goodness. (Sirach 24: 18; John 14:6)

Pray for us, blessed father, St. Dominic, That we may be made worthy of the prom­ises of Christ.

Let us pray, O most blessed father, St. Dominic, who loved our Lord Jesus Christ in the most perfect manner and served Mary, His Virgin Mother, with most fervent devotion, pray for us, your children, that we may ever grow in love of the Sacrament of the Altar, and that, next to God, we may at all times trust in the protection of the Queen of Heaven, so that at the hour of death we may be received by her into heaven, and ever abide under the mantle of her love. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Spirit of Prayer

Fifth Day: The Spirit of Prayer

True devotion was in his mouth, and no dishonesty was found upon his lips; he walked with me in integrity and in uprightness, and turned many away from evil. (Malachi 2:6)

As an unbridled tongue destroys a spirit of prayer, Dominic loved silence and retirement, that he might dwell with God. His intimate friend, William of Montserrat, said that “Dominic always kept the silence prescribed by the custom and rule of the Order, abstained from idle words, and always spoke either of God or to God.”

Dominic considered custody of the senses important and fed his soul constantly with spiritual reading. His books were the Bible and Cassian’s Conferences of the Fathers of the Desert. The Holy Scriptures he always carried, and ordered his spiritual children diligently and unceasingly to read them. At dinner one religious used to read aloud, that the souls of all might be fed on the Word of God.

If any man offends not in words, the same is a perfect man. (James 3:2)

Pray for us, blessed father, St. Dominic, That we may be made worthy of the prom­ises of Christ.

Let us pray, O most Holy Father St. Dominic, who always showed yourself loving to all and never despised, wounded or offended anyone, obtain for me from our Savior, the grace to be severe only to myself and my evil passions and always gentle and loving toward my neighbor, ever like him, pardoning all who injure or offend me. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen

They Think We're Crazy

More and more I can see how being Catholic is counter cultural.  Now I feel it. 

I am at the bank trying to open an account for my Lay Dominican chapter.  The banker asks:

When was your chapter founded?

Now how am I supposed to know that?  I don’t know when my chapter was founded, nor my region’s founding, nor my province’s.  I do know when the Order of Preachers was founded.  The date of the Dominican Laity is arguable.  So I gave the banker the date I know.
1216, I say affirmatively.

The banker’s eyes open wide.  “What?”

I explain that Dominicans have been around for 800 years.

OK.  He fills that line in and asks.  Who was your founder?

Saint Dominic.

How do you spell that first name?

This is where I realize that this person has no clue what I’m talking about.  But I explain that the first name is Dominic and the last name is Guzman.

The next question I’m asked is, “What is your purpose?”

Save souls.

What? 

I would have repeated my answer but I instinctively intuited that “save souls” would never be comprehended.  So I said, “fight heresy.”  The banker’s lips got thinner and the eyes beadier. I tried “evangelization” for an answer.  For a response, I received a cold, hard stare.  My final try was “preaching.”

This is where I heard a loud, long, sigh.

Is there someone else in your organization who can help you answer these questions?

Always Pray and Pray Always

Fourth Day: St. Dominic’s Prayer

Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and inspired songs. Sing praise to the Lord with all your hearts. Give thanks to God the Father always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-20)

Prayer was the breath of St. Dominic’s life, the light on his path, the staff on his pilgrimage. He prayed always. In childhood, his delight was to serve Mass, to visit the Blessed Sacrament, and to chant Office. As a student, he learned wisdom more from prayer than from books. He won more souls by prayer than by preaching or miracles. In traveling, St. Dominic prayed as he went, sometimes singing the Veni Creator Spiritus, or the Ave Maris Stella, or sometimes he recited psalms. He often reminded his companions to think of God. Many times St. Dominic spent the night in prayer before the altar. His methods of prayer were various: sometimes he lay prostrate, then stood erect, then knelt down. For hours he would stand before a crucifix, genuflecting and making fervent ejaculations. Often he stretched out his arms like a cross, pleading earnestly to God. On occasion, he was seen in rapture by the vehemence of his prayer. “In all labors and trials, in hunger, thirst, fatigue, his heart turned always to God.”

Pray for us, blessed father, St. Dominic, That we may be made worthy of the prom­ises of Christ.

Let us pray, O God, who enlightened your Church by the virtues and preaching of St. Dominic, your confessor, and our father, mercifully grant that by his prayers we may be delivered from present dangers and ever increase in spiritual blessings. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Sovereignty of God

Lectio:  Daniel 7: 9-10, 13-14

As I watched:
                Thrones were set up and the Ancient One took his throne.
                His clothing was bright as snow, and the hair on his head as white as wool;
                His throne was flames of fire, with wheels of burning fire.
                A surging stream of fire flowed out from where he sat;
                Thousands upon thousands were ministering to him, and myriads upon myriads attended                     him.
                The court was convened and the books were opened.

As the visions during the night continued, I saw:
                One like a Son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven;
                when he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him,
                the one like a Son of man received dominion, glory, and kingship;
                all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away,
                his kingship shall not be destroyed.

Studium:

Although Daniel’s vision is dramatically apocalyptic, it was intended to comfort the persecuted Jews, who were exiled in Babylon.  It was written in the style of Semitic poetry.  Look at the parallelism: all the fire repeated and especially the rephrasing of the same image:

Thousands upon thousands were ministering to him,
 and myriads upon myriads attended him.

Daniel tells the exiled that their persecutors will be judged in the heavenly court. Take comfort that whoever is ruler over them, they only have One King, the Ancient One.

Meditatio:

Thinking of all that is and was and will be, as God’s dominion, I am in awe.  No matter who is president, we only have One King.  And He is powerful as flames of fire, with heavenly beings attending Him.  Some day, I will meet Him and be judged by Him and the court of heaven.  May Jesus be my advocate.

Oratio:

Lord have mercy on such as me.  You are God and I am not. 

Contemplatio:

Deus dedit deus abstulit, sit nomen Domini benedictum 

Weep and Weeping

Third Day: Compunction of Heart

Those who fear the Lord seek to please him, those who love him are filled with his law. Those who fear the Lord prepare their hearts and humble themselves before him. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord and not into the hands of men, for equal to his majesty is the mercy that he shows. (Sirach 2: 16-18)

ROSA PATIENTIAE             ROSE OF PATIENCE

Though so pure that Holy Church calls him “Ivory of Chastity,” and Christian art puts a lily into his hands, Dominic was always weeping over sin. His soul being full of contrition, acts of sorrow were constantly upon his lips. On seeing towns or villages, he used to weep over the sins committed there against God. But this sorrow was not merely hidden in the soul; it bore fruit in works of penance. Three times every night he scourged himself: once for his own sins, once for those of others, and once for the suffering souls. He was a rule of abstinence, even on journeys never eating meat or food cooked with meat. His fasts were strict and continual; even when traveling over Europe on foot, he fasted from September until Easter, though preaching daily. He never had a room of his own, but slept anywhere: on the ground, a bench, or the altar step. Being a zealous lover of the rule, he punished faults, but with such fatherly love that penance was accepted and even desired from his hands.

“If you have no sins of your own to weep for,” St. Dominic would say, “still weep, after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and grieve for the sinners of the world that they may repent.”

Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)

Pray for us, blessed father, St. Dominic, That we may be made worthy of the prom­ises of Christ.

Let us pray, O zealous preacher of penance, Holy Father St. Dominic, whose ardent desire for the salvation of souls made you ever ready to endure the greatest labors and fatigues and even to give your life in order to win them to God, pray for us, that treading in the steps of Jesus Crucified, the Redeemer and Physician of souls, we may disregard all suffering and generously sacrifice ourselves for the needs of others. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Communications

last night I went to a talk by Bishop Robert Reed.

 Here Bishop Reed is talking to a friend he only knew virtually.  He is congratulating her on her 90th birthday.