Recently in Dominican saints & blesseds Category

In these days following the feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, I thought I would post this rather beautiful extract from one of the saint's Dialogues. It shows the depth of love that Catherine knew she had with her Savior, her lover.

"O eternal, infinite Good! O mad lover! And you have need of your creature? It seems so to me, for you act as if you could not live without her, in spite of the fact that you are Life itself, and everything has life from you and nothing can have life without you. Why then are you so mad? Because you have fallen in love with what you have made! You are pleased and delighted over her within yourself, as if you were drunk with desire for her salvation. She runs away from you and you go looking for her. She strays and you draw closer to her. You clothed yourself in our humanity, and nearer than that you could not have come."

Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, tr. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press 1980) 325.

Too many in the world know today's Dominican blessed for a nickname given to him more than his religious name. The Dominicans celebrate Blessed John of Fiesole, the post modern world would know him as Fra Angelico (1387-1455), people in his time also knew him as Guido. His talent and grace was indeed rare among people. Only in 1982 did the Church with Pope John Paul II recognize John's holiness.

A prior post gives a very brief history and the liturgical prayer for Blessed John's feast day here and a 2009 post is here.

Recently, a Dominican friar of the English Province spoke to Vatican Radio saying this of his friar:

"...is to give to others the fruit of our contemplation and painting...first to be communicated and then to be precisely the fruit of contemplation.... because vision is one of the elements of contemplation...traditionally for us heaven will mean the beatific vision..."

Blessed John, Fra Angelico as he's known, was the angelic friar: "... because of the purity, the holiness of his own life...the subject matter...the extraordinary beauty, purity reflected..."

Father Robert Ombres, OP

Raymond of Penyafort Fellow in Canon Law at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford

O God, through mortification of the body and preaching of the faith, you raised the blessed Louis, your confessor, to the glory of the saints; grant that what we profess by faith we may ever fulfill by works of piety.

The preaching one hears from a member of the Order of Preachers ought to lead each person to a deeper relationship with God. Saint Louis Bertrand said, "If because of your preaching men lay aside enmities, forgive injuries, avoid occasions of sin and scandals, and reform their conduct, you may say that the seed has fallen on good ground.  But to God alone give all the glory and acknowledge yourselves ever unprofitable servants."

~Saint Louis Bertrand to the young Dominican students

Let us pray through Saint Louis Bertrand's intercession for the Church in the Americas and the Islands.

The learned will shine like the brilliance of the firmament, and those who train many in the ways of justice will sparkle like the stars for all eternity.

O God, you made Saint Thomas known for his zeal for holiness and his dedication to sacred doctrine. Help us to grow in wisdom by his teaching and in holiness by imitating his faith.