791st Anniversary of the Order of Preachers



From the Dominican Province of St. Joseph Vocations blog:

On this day, December 22, in the year 1216, His Holiness Pope Honorius III gave official approval to the creation of the Order of Preachers to St. Dominic. It is somehow fitting in this season in which we look forward to the birth of Our Savior, we celebrate as well the birth of our Order. The anniversary is still celebrated in the Order, but impeded liturgically because of the primacy of these days before Christmas.

From the Moniales, OP blog:

For 10 years, St. Dominic preached against the heretics in southern France—sometimes with a few companions but often alone. Slowly, a radically new order began taking shape. Why radical? Because unlike other orders this new Order of Preachers would combine the apostolic life of the Apostles with mendicant itinerancy while at the same time having the monastic elements of silence, prayer, sung Divine Office, study and community life. It took 2 Popes and 4 Bulls for St. Dominic to get full approval of the Order of Preachers.

Even the name was radical. We might not think so today but in St. Dominic's time it was, for the office of Preaching belongs properly to the Bishop and his priests share in this office. What St. Dominic wanted was that his men (who would be ordained to the priesthood) receive the office of Preaching by reason of belonging to the Order. Both Innocent the IV and Honorious III trusted St. Dominic and knew him to be a man on fire for God and a man in whom the Holy Spirit acted powerfully. So, on December 22, 1216 the Order of Preachers was born.

St. Dominic, pray for us!

Ukraine is game to you?!

I believe this scene from Seinfeld is one of the best scenes in Television.



Throughout the episode, Kramer and Newman are engaged in an epic battle against each other in a mad game of Risk, the game of world domination. They take the game so seriously, they don't trust leaving the board with one when the other is not around. The game so distracts Kramer, that he doesn't notice his car being impounded, and when he Jerry alerts him, Kramer insists that he and Newman continue the game on the subway on their way to retrieve the car. On the subway, they are put into a real-life encounter with a foreign national -- a situation which, unlike the game, they simply brush off and end up getting a rude awakening to real world international relations... And it's funny... :)

Tony Blair now a Catholic

I don't typically post about things like this, but the affairs of England, my long lost homeland, and of all Englishmen in general, hopelessly fascinate me. According to CNN.

"It can be confirmed that Tony Blair has been received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor," the head of the church in England and Wales, the church said in a statement.

"I'm very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church," the statement quoted Murphy-O'Connor as saying.

"For a long time he's been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he's been following a program of formation for his reception into full communion. Our prayers are with him, his family and his wife at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together," Murphy-O'Connor said.

Please pray for Blair and for converts in general. Zadok has some other questions, but it sounds like he has come a long way and that he has made the careful decision to go "further up and further in", as it were. And this is the next step on an incredible journey with God.

Now, if only the Queen and the entire Royal Family would come home...

For me life is Christ

If you have met Christ, live Christ, live with Christ! Proclaim it in the first person, as genuine testimony: "For me life is Christ." That is true liberation: to proclaim Jesus free of ties, present in men and women, transformed, made new creatures. Why instead at times does our testimony seem to be in vain? Because we present Jesus without the full seductive power of his person, without revealing the treasures of the sublime ideal inherent in following him; and because we are not always successful in demonstrating conviction, translated into living terms, regarding the extaordinary value of the gift of ourselves to the ecclesial cause we serve.

Brothers and sisters: it is important that men see in us dispensers of the mysteries of God, credible witnesses of his presence in the world. We frequently remember that God, when he calls us, asks for not only one part of our person but all our person and all our vital energies, so that we may announce to men the joy and peace of a new life in Christ, and guide them to a meeting with him. So let it be our first concern to seek the Lord, and, once we have met him, to observe where and how he lives, by being with him all day. Being with him, in a special way, in the Eucharist, where Christ gives himself to us; and in prayer, through which we give ourselves to him. The Eucharist must be performed and extended into our daily actions as a "sacrifice of praise." In prayer, in the trusting contact with God our Father, we can discern better where our strengths and weaknesses are, because the Spirit comes to our aid. The same Spirit speaks to us and slowly immerses us in the divine mysteries, in God's design of love for humanity, which he realizes through our willingness to serve him.

Pope John Paul II, January 26, 1979

I hope that you are challenged by these words. Let us use this Advent wisely...

When Two Worlds Collide

Trite Christmas carols like this are permitted in this context.



For your Advent meditations...