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Irish Research Council Supporting Irish Dominican HistoryFebruary 14, 2023 - 5:14 pm
New YouTube Series LaunchedDecember 20, 2022 - 10:15 am
Br Ruaidhri Grieve OP Ordained to the DiaconateDecember 4, 2022 - 12:02 pm
Three Dominican Novices Make Simple ProfessionSeptember 20, 2022 - 9:19 am
Three Men Enter the Dominican NovitiateSeptember 19, 2022 - 8:19 pm
St. Catherine of Siena, O.P.
/in Dominican Saints, Rosary Letter/by John Walsh OP‘O Mary peaceful sea ! Mary giver of peace! Mary fertile soil You Mary are the new sprung plant from whom we have the fragrant blossom, the word, God’s only begotten son, for in you, fertile soil was this word sown! Mary my tenderest love, in you is written the word, from whom we have the teaching of life. You are the tablet that sets this teaching before us.’
From her childhood St. Catherine had a tremendous love for our Blessed Lady. She daily attended compline in the Dominican church to hear the friars sing the Salve Regina every night as their last prayer and spent hours on Saturdays keeping the Virgin company at her Altar while listening to the Little Office of the Virgin recited by the Dominican Tertiaries.
We know that St. Dominic would spend whole nights at the altar of the Blessed Virgin, praying and invoking the queen of heaven for his friars and their preaching, as Mary brought the word in to the world, becoming a channel of grace. Every Dominican has to see himself as an image of Mary, every Dominican is to bring the word into the world, to give Christ our flesh, but especially our voices to preach him near and far to the ends of the earth. Before preaching Dominic always invoked the Blessed Mother, for she is the wind which carries the word to implant in our hearts, the preacher of grace must invoke she who brought grace into this world.
Naturally Catherine from her early childhood was saturated with the love the friars had for the Blessed Virgin, and this saturation of love for the Virgin would become a hall mark of her whole life, both in her writings and work.
Nearly every letter Catherine wrote or dictated begins, ‘In the name of sweet Jesus and his most sweet Mother.’ If Jesus was everything for Catherine, Mary took fittingly second place, for many times she refers to her Lord as Jesus son of sweet Mary, always joining the son to his most holy mother.
Catherine tells us in her dialogue that the Lord Jesus was the seed taking root in the field of Mary, and then she says, ‘Rejoice, O happy and sweet Mary, you have given us the flower of sweet Jesus. In another place Catherine tells her sisters how gracious God is to us, to have given us the sweetest fruit, which is Mary’s Immaculate Heart, a heart that loves us so much and how we show our love for her.
Catherine continually tells her Dominican sisters and brothers that like our father Dominic, we too must stay close to mother Mary for the strengthening of our faith and for consolation when things may go wrong, we should like the apostles at Pentecost always stay close to Mary, for she will teach us all things about her son. In another place she tells the prior of Siena, ‘In great tribulations dearest father, make your community of friars stay close to Mary who loves us without measure.’
To a prostitute Catherine would say, ‘Run to Mary for she is the mother of mercy and compassion, stay in her company and all will be well.’
The Lord Jesus called Catherine to live the first few years of her Dominican life in her own room, at home in her parent’s house. From here she would always council her family that she was spending this time in her little hermitage in the company of sweet Mary and her crucified son. Mary was teaching Catherine in these few years everything about her son’s life.
We can imagine Catherine pondering the life of the Lord through the eyes of Mary, seeing his life in the company of she who knew him best. It was like in many ways the Dominican rosary.
At the end of these enclosed years it was in a vision Catherine saw the Blessed Mother calling her over to her son. She held out Catherine’s hand and placed it in the hands of her son. The Lord Jesus we are told placed a ring on her wedding finger, while Mary held her arm, Mary gave Catherine to her son in marriage, Mary always leads to her son and never to herself.
These years in the hermitage of her little cell where to prepare Catherine to enter the world and set fire to it with her love of Jesus and his Church.
Mary was the signpost to the world for Catherine, now Catherine had to give Christ her hands and feet to enter the world, like Mary had formed Christ’s little hands and feet in her womb.
In this Jubilee Year of the Dominican Order, may St. Catherine lead us to an intimate life of prayer with Mary, in whom the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. From this intimacy, may the fire of God’s love renew the Order of Preachers under the mantle of the Virgin Mary.
In the words of Catherine who loved Mary so much, ‘O Mary, Mary! Temple of the Trinity, O Mary Bearer of the fire, Mary minister of mercy, Mary seed bed of the sacred fruit, draw us ever closer to your Son.’
Lay Dominican of the Irish Province.
Easter 1916 we prayed the Rosary
/in Rosary Letter/by John Harris OP“After 11 pm we began the Rosary. Jack knelt at the end of the table facing the door. When we had said the ten decades, Fr. Michael asked jack if that were enough. ‘Oh no, no, no, go on’, he said, and we finished it and then the litany. During the Rosary, the soldier left the candle on the shelf and it fell, leaving us in darkness. When the rosary was finished, it was about 11.40, and we could but stay beyond twelve”. This is a short exert from the recollections of an Irish Dominican Fr. S. Heuston on his visit to his brother, Sean Heuston (after whom Heuston Station is Dublin is called) on the night before he was shot in Kilmainham Jail for his part in the Easter Rising.
In his recollections of that night Fr. Albert OFM Cap tells how at 1.30 on the morning of 8 May 1916, a military car called at the Capuchin Friary on Church Street in Dublin to collect two of the friars to go to Kilmainham to minister to the prisoners due for execution that Monday morning. He tells how he arrived in Heuston’s cell at around 2.30 am and he found the young man “Kneeling beside a small table with his rosary beads in his hands… during the last quarter of an hour we knelt in the cell in complete darkness, as the little piece of candle had burned out; but no word of complaint passed his lips. His one thought was to prepare with all the fervour and earnestness of his soul to meet Our Divine Saviour and His sweet Virgin Mother… we said together short acts of faith, hope, contrition and love; we prayed together to St. Patrick, St. Brigid, St. Colmcille and all the saints of Ireland; we said many times, that very beautiful ejaculatory prayer: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you may heart and my soul’.
In all the recent commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising very little has been said about the faith of those who took part in it and how they turned to prayer, particularly the Rosary, during the Rising itself and when preparing for death. Over these months as I have read various personal accounts of the Rising I have seen one particular phrase show up time and time again, “we prayed the rosary”. They prayed it before they went out on that Easter Monday morning, they prayed it as they sat on the roof of the GPO awaiting their fate, the prayed it when after the surrender in Moore St, they were corralled into the forecourt of the Rotunda Hospital and as we have read from the accounts of Sean Heuston’s last hours, they prayed it in their cells as they prepared for death.
We in this generation may not appreciate how the rosary was such a part of the religious experience and prayer of earlier generations. The rosary was the constant companion of our grandparents in their journey through life. In the presence of Mary they meditated on the life death and resurrection of Her Beloved Son and it gave meaning and courage to their struggles.
Today as a nation we may be embarrassed to speak about the faith of the leaders and participants of the Easter Rising, but in their day their faith was not something on the periphery of their lived experiences, it was a central aspect of how they saw themselves and their struggles of life. For them, their faith was not something clean and safe to be practiced on a weekend if nothing else got in the way, but as “they prayed the rosary” in the midst of life’s pains and decisions, their faith gave them hope to face the future and finally death itself.
There are many conflicting appraisals of the events of Easter 1916, but let us not forget that those who fought and died for our nations’ independence prayed the rosary and found hope and life in their Christian faith. Maybe the example of those who fought and died during Easter 1916 might ask us to reflect on the role, if any, our Christian faith, plays in our daily lives. I wonder does our faith give us hope and courage or have we let this wonderful gift slip through our hands as we have left our rosary beads slip from between our fingers.
Fr. John M. Harris, O.P.
St. Saviours Priory, Dublin.
The Marian Foundation of the Order of Preachers.
/in Dominican, Rosary Apostolate/by John Walsh OP“The brothers ought to cherish the Orders traditional devotion to the Virgin Mother of God, Queen of Apostles. She is the example of meditation on the words of Christ and of acceptance of one’s mission.” (Constitutions of the Order of Preachers)
In our formulae of profession, Dominicans unlike other religious communities promise obedience to Mary. We promise in filial devotion to obey Mary, Mother of God, the Protectress and Mother of our Order.
In the early days of our Order, Blessed Humbert of the Romans tells us of a vision received by a French Cistercian Monk, who stated he saw the most august Queen of heaven upon her knees with her hands clasped tearfully, begging her Son to have pity on his Mother’s request. The Blessed Mother thanked her Son for choosing her as his mother and queen of heaven, yet her heart was full of pain because countless souls were lost. The Blessed Mother spoke in such words, “after all yours sufferings for them my Son, they do not know you and what was offered for their salvation, namely your precious blood.” She begged of her Divine Son, asking that the gift of redemption should not be lost to them.
Our Lord we are told pleaded with his Mother as to what more could he do, he had sent prophets and saints, martyrs, doctors and confessors. “What more Mother am I to do for them?” She wept even more and in tears replied, “my Son it is not for me to teach you who know all things, but I know that you can find some remedy for this terrible tragedy of ignorance.” For three days the Blessed Mother pleaded on her bended knees before her Son, and finally we are told he rose to his feet and said, “I know sweetest Mother, that sinners are being lost for want of preachers, having none to break for them the bread of the holy scriptures or teach the truth, or open the books now sealed to them, I will send new messengers, a new order of preachers to call and lead the people to everlasting joy.” The monk saw the image of St. Dominic and his friars being sent into the world clothed in the black and white habit, white for purity and black symbolising humility, each individually blessed by the Christ and his Mother.
The order thus comes from the heart and tears the Virgin Mother, who kneels before her Son pleading for mercy, thus the original title given to our Lady by the first friars was Our Lady of Mercy. The Dominican vocation comes from the heart of Mary, the call we have received to follow Christ Jesus comes from the heart of Mary, the unique call we have originates in the heart of the Mother of Mercy.
In 1217 at the early stages of the orders beginning, we see the Order at the service of the Bishop of Toulouse in France. Our Father Dominic chose the feast of the Assumption, the 15th of August as the day to divide his small community; commentators have said that this was chosen by Dominic as the real Pentecost day for the Order. At Pentecost, Mary was gathered with the apostles in the upper room consoling and strengthening them in their fear, thus Mary was present when the Apostles were sent forth to the four corners of the world. So too with Dominic and his friars, they could not always stay together, they must go forth and preach and so gathering his brothers together in the safe company of Mary on her feast day, St. Dominic sent them forth under the mantle and protection of the Queen of Apostles. She who supported the first apostles would support and protect his sons. We are told he gathered the brethren and announced to them, “hoarded grain goes bad” sending them forth to Spain, Italy and to the University of Paris. The apostolic fire that came from the Mother’s heart now sends them out again in love for mankind. It has always been the prayer of the Virgin which upholds the ministry of the Word, she who conceived in her womb the Word made flesh, prepares the way in each one of us for that same Word. The Dominican must continually turn to Mary when fear of the apostolate frightens us for it is her intercession which matures the fruit of our labour in the hearts of men and women. If the Word is to be born in the hearts of men and women today, the way is prepared by she who first welcomed the Word with her yes. Think too of the prophesy of Simon, a sword will pierce your own soul too, after gathering around her the sons of her son, Mary too must let them go, the heart if it to be shared must be broken.
After the great sending out of the first Dominican brethren, the frailty of the first friars emerged. Of the four friars sent to Spain, two returned discouraged by their lack of success, the brethren sent to bologna, were half starved because the local people did not support these strange new friars and the friars considered leaving the order completely, but the Mother was watching over.
In 1218 Blessed Jordan of Saxony tells us that Blessed Reginald of Orleans who was a great priest, a scholar and lecturer in canon law at Paris, fell ill and was dying. Reginald was one of St. Dominic’s favourite sons and our father Dominic gave himself over to prolonged prayer, but it seemed useless, Reginald was near death. One night as he lay on his deathbed the Virgin Mother of Mercy appeared to Reginald, she anointed him with healing oil and revealed to him the habit of the Order, asking that the surplice of the canons be replaced by a scapular of Blessed Mary and a symbol of the yoke of Christ. Reginald was healed immediately and with haste informed St. Dominic of the Virgin Mary’s desire to have the habit of the Order changed. The story reminds us of how the friars always turn to their Mother in time of need and how the habit of the order is hers and a reminder down through nearly 800 years of her protection and love.
Another vision St. Dominic received was one night after he returned from his vigil in the Priory church, he walked into the friar’s dormitory and saw this beautiful woman passing through the centre of the dormitory sprinkling the beds and sleeping friars with holy water. St. Dominic fell to his knees and asked who she was. She replied, “I am she whom you invoke each night at the Salve Regina, when you sing, turn then most gracious advocate, I prostrate myself before my Son for the preservation of the order.” St. Dominic then turned and saw our Lord seated in majesty with all the orders around him, but not one of his friars, The Lord smiled and said, “I have given your Order to my Mother,” and immediately the Lord turned to the Blessed Virgin who opened her mantle to reveal to Dominic his sons and daughters hidden beneath the folds.
Dominicans are Marian, we breathe with a love for Mary, the Mother of Apostles and the Mother of Mercy, we promised obedience to Mary in our vows, for as Blessed Humbert says’ it is by the hands of Mary the we hand over to God the radical ownership of our being and of our possessions. It is by her heart that we consecrate ourselves to divine worship and to the salvation of souls.
Fr. John Hyacinth Walsh, O.P.