Recently in Dominican saints & blesseds Category

Saint Catherine cut her hair and put aside her elegant clothing as an act of modesty, to shun the worldly attention of potential suitors and devote her life to Christ.

Saint Catherine of Siena writes:

I want your security to be in Christ gentle Jesus. He has clothed us in the sturdiest garment there is, a garment of love....The very first garment we ever had was love, for it was only by love that we were created in God's image and likeness.

(Letter 185-86)

            The process of becoming a saint, if you are not a John Paul II or a Mother Terese can take some time. When I heard the news of the completion of US side of Rose Hawthorne's cause for canonization was made, the other day from a Dominican priest friend, a "praise God" rang out! The last significant ecclesial judgement made on the sanctity of Rose Hawthorne was in 2003 when she was declared to be a Servant of God.

Leave it to a Capuchin friar to pick up the obvious: we need a patron saint for reverts. To my knowledge, there are no heavenly patrons except for Blessed Anthony Neyrot, who gave up the faith, and came back home. Perhaps now Blessed Anthony's currency will increase. Special thanks to my friend and fellow Elm City-ite, Friar Charles, who wrote the following post on his blog, A Minor Friar, earlier today:

Today is the feast of Blessed Anthony Neyrot, OP. I think he could make a fine heavenly patron for 'reverts' to the faith.

Here's his entry in the Martyrology today:

At Tunis on the coast of northern Africa, blessed Anthony Neyrot, priest of the Order of Preachers and martyr, who, taken by pirates to Africa, apostatized, but, helped by divine grace, publicly took up again the religious habit on Holy Thursday, which atoned for his crime by covering it with stones.

Some other things I read on the internet said that during his apostasy he had become a fairly devout Muslim and had even made a socially advantageous marriage. Holy Week 1460, however, found him inspired to repent of his apostasy. Having made his confession he was re-invested in the Dominican habit and then, on Holy Thursday, was stoned to death for his re-version to the faith.

Here is the Mass prayer for Blessed Anthony I posted in 2010.

Blessed Anthony, pray for us!

Today is Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati's 112th birthday. As a friend who brought this Litany to my attention said, "it's a great piece of reflection for students and for those of us looking to be life-long learners." Let's pray to Blessed Piergiorgio for the grace of being a better friend, Christian, apostle and person of the Beatitudes.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ, have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.

God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary,

pray for us. (repeat after each line)

All the angels and saints,

Blessed Pier Giorgio,

Loving son and brother,

Support of family life,

O God, who adorned the Priest Saint Raymond with the virtue of outstanding mercy and compassion for sinners and for captives, grant us, through his intercession, that, released from slavery to sin, we may carry out in freedom of spirit what is pleasing to you.

The wags will say that Saint Raymond is the only certified canon lawyer who is in heaven and that we ought to pray that Saint Raymond to guide other canonists to holiness.

From a letter by Saint Raymond Penyafort

The preacher of God's truth has told us that all who want to live righteously in Christ will suffer persecution. If he spoke the truth and did not lie, the only exception to this general statement is, I think, the person who either neglects, or does not know how, to live temperately, justly and righteously in this world.

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