New St. Dominic Priory

It may not look like much now, what with the boarded up windows, but 3407 Lafayette Ave in St. Louis--former Loretto Academy--is the future home of the new St. Dominic Priory. As some may know, for as long as I have been alive, the Dominican student friars have been living, praying, and studying on the fifth and sixth floors, and in the basement chapel, of Jesuit Hall--3601 Lindell Blvd. To be sure, living in an old hotel with Jesuits has its advantages--there are plenty of elevators, a cafeteria with hot food at every meal hour, good maintenance services, large rooms, and a central location--but there are disadvantages too. The Dominican presence in St. Louis has hardly been noticed. We have been in the city for nearly 30years and many people do not know we are here--even with The Aquinas Institute of Theology.

The friars in St. Louis are hoping that with a new house the community will gain more visibility in the archdiocese that we serve. Besides this, we hope to have a chance to re-envision the way we have been living in community. After all, religious houses are not built like hotels for a reason. A contemplative wants land to walk around on, trees and plants to look at, silence in the halls and in his room, and a chapel that is at the heart of everything. In short--you need a space that promotes community life, prayer and contemplation, and study. This new house offers the student brothers and senior friars of the Central and Southern Provinces the chance to have these kinds of spaces.

There are thirty-three friars living at St. Dominic Priory, with an additional four friars living at a smaller priory elsewhere in the city. The majority of them (twenty-three) are students studying at Aquinas Institute of Theology (usually called AI). Two of those students, myself included, are cooperator brothers, the rest are cleric brothers studying for the priesthood. Among the senior friars you have a mixture of ministries. Several are professors at AI or Kenrick Seminary, one is a canon lawyer for the archdiocese, two are itinerant preachers for Food for the Poor, and most of them help out with parish ministry around the city and beyond.

If you would like to help our community in its efforts to move from this huge hotel to a proper priory, then please keep the Central and Southern Provinces in your prayers. And please consider making a donation to the renovation campaign. Your contribution is not just a contribution to the restoration of a building, it's an investment in religious life, the formation and education of future priests and brothers of the Church, and the Dominican mission of preaching for the salvation of souls.

Donations may be sent to:
Dominicans of St. Albert the Great Province
2005 South Ashland Avenue
Chicago, Illinois, 60608-2905
with the memo: Renovation Campaign/New St. Dominic Priory
email at: provinceoffice@domcentral.org
Call: 312-243-0011
Fax: 312-829-8471

I give you thanks for your prayers and any donation you may be able to give. I can't underscore enough what a dream-come-true it is for the Dominican friars of St. Louis to finally be getting a home of our own so that we can better serve the people of St. Louis while living the religious life as it is understood by the Order of Preachers.
Br. Paul, OP
PS: The orginal building will be converted into the personal rooms of the friars and a few offices. The chapel will be restored for prayer and mass, while the chapel undercroft will become the house library space and guest rooms. An additional wing will have to be added on for the community's kitchen, dinning room, meeting room, and common room.

Christ the King preaching

Thanks for Nothing, Emily Bronte!

Today I travel to Columbia, Missouri where tomorrow I will take the GRE Literature in English subject test. As part of my last ditch efforts to prepare for this impossible exam, I was reading through the ever-helpful Norton Anthology of Poetry and came across this rather morose poem by Emily Bronte:

"Hope"

Hope was but a timid friend--
She sat without my grated den
Watching how my fate would tend
Even as selfish-hearted men.

She was cruel in her fear.
Through the bars, one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there
And she turned her face away!

Like a false guard false watch keeping
Still in strife she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping,
If I listened, she would cease.

False she was, and unrelenting.
When my last joys strewed the ground
Even Sorrow saw repenting
Those sad relics scattered round;

Hope--whose whisper would have given
Balm to all that frenzied pain--
Stretched her wings and soared to heaven;
Went--and ne'er returned again!
E.B.

Fortunately, the poetry of Walt Whitman was not far off, and the "Song of Myself" cheered my "drooping spirit".

Wish me luck/pray for me (and the other test-takers)!
Br. Paul, OP

Feeding Two Birds with One Hand: Praying with Emily Dickinson

I suspect Emily Dickinson, one of the great poets of the United States, would appreciate my translation of that barbaric saying, "killing two birds with one stone". I was visiting with Sister Emily, as I take the liberty of calling her, this evening during vespers and Eucharistic Adoration. Well, in truth, I was reading back and forth through this fantastic anthology of Christian poetry entitled A Sacrifice of Praise. I began with John Donne (whose sonnets I love now), moved to Milton, then Spenser and Thomas Moore--using their poems as meditation inspiration and studying for the GRE at the same time, hence, feeding two birds with one hand.

After a brief pause and some silent prayer, something told me to look up Dickinson. What I then read was true food for the soul, so I thought I would share the poem I liked best with you all.

"Then I am Ready to Go [poem # 279]

Tie the Strings of my Life, My Lord,
Then, I am ready to go!
Just a look at the Horses--
Rapid! That will do!

Put me in on the firmest side--
So I shall never fall--
For we must ride to the Judgment--
And it's partly, down Hill--

But never I mind the steepest--
And never I mind the Sea--
Held fast in Everlasting Race--
By my own Choice, and Thee--

Goodbye to the Life I used to live--
And the World I used to know--
And kiss the Hills, for me, just once--
Then--I am ready to go!"

I think the attitude and the subject speak to the Pentecostal in me. I grew up hearing things like "this old world ain't gonna stand much longer" and "you better be ready. Jesus is gonna come like a thief in the night." Far from being a scary or negative thing, the Second Coming and the End of the World were joyful events, as they signalled the fulfillment of Christian hope, and were the path to full understanding.

This poem testifies to the longing of the Christian heart, and so preaches to us, as we prepare for the coming of the Feast of Christ the King and Advent, to remember that really and truly Jesus is coming back, and we are called to be "ready to go!"
Br. Paul, OP

(I also enjoyed "I Should Have Been Too Glad" [poem # 313] and "That I Did Always Love" [poem # 549].)

Novena to Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli, OP

Today begins the novena for the beatification of Venerable Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, an Italian missionary priest who worked so hard to establish and maintain Catholic Christian communities in what is now known as the Midwest. Please join the Dominican family in praying for the beatification of this holy man, and please pray for all those seeking miracles through his intercession. (To learn more about Father Samuel, click HERE.)

The novena prayer is:
Lord Jesus,
you called your servant, Samuel,
even in early youth, to leave home
and all for a Dominican life of charity
in preaching your Holy Gospel.
You gave him abundant graces of Eucharistic love,
devotion to your holy Mother of Sorrows,
and a consuming zeal for souls.
Grant, we beseech you, that his fervent love
and labors for you may become more widely known,
to a fruitful increase of your Mystical Body,
to his exaltation
and to our own constant growth in devoted love of you
Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit
live and reign one God,
world without end.
Amen.

Report any favors through Fr. Samuel's intercession to:
Mazzuchelli Cause
585 County Road Z
Sinsinawa, Wisconsin 53824-9701
608-748-4411 ext 451
mzzuchelli@sinsinawa.org

Br. Paul, OP

We've come a long way

Beginning this last Saturday, I took on the role of Hebdomidarian. For those who don't know, the hebdomidarian [hebdom for short] is the leader of prayer during the liturgy of the hours. In the case of our community here in St. Louis, the hebdom is in charge of 1) the call to prayer, 2) the reading of scripture after the three psalms are chanted, 3) the leading of the prayers of petition, the Our Father, and the closing prayer, and 4) praying for God's blessing upon the community. In a real sense, the hebdom keeps the liturgy of the hours "moving", and his posture of prayer greatly flavors the tone of prayer for the whole group.

As we celebrate this feast of St. Martin de Porres, the extraordinarily holy cooperator brother, miracle worker, charity giver, mystic...I could not help but to be conscious of how surprised Brother Martin would be to see a cooperator brother playing the role of hebdom like I have been this week. In his day, if I understand correctly, the "lay brothers" had major exemptions from communal prayer. They prayed, for example, the rosary, and did work while the cleric brothers were in chapel.

Of course, like I have said in previous blog posts on the subject, I think that there is a place for such exemptions for cooperator brothers of today. For example, Brother Richard, who is training to be a nurse, just will not be able to be present at prayer and mass given the schedule of the hospital where he works...but when his schedule does allow, Richard is seated in choir with the rest of the friars.

This unity in communal prayer is a big step forward in the understanding of cooperator brothers as being fully and equally consecrated religious with the cleric brothers. This is because the praying of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours is one of the quintessential tasks of consecrated men and women in the Church--it's a way they contribute to the Church's mission to bring the world to salvation. When cooperator brothers pray in choir with the cleric brothers, it shows that they are not mere laborers attached to the community, but men called to this same role of intercessor. Further, when a cooperator brother leads his community in prayer, it rightly preaches the message that all friars are equal, and that friars ought to be relating to one another as fellow religious, not ordained or non-ordained, professor or nurse, etc.*

So, while there is still work to do for the renewal of this wonderful vocation within the Dominican family, I can see that we have come far already in the understanding that those called to be cooperator brothers share a common vocation with their cleric brothers in so far as both vocations are rooted in the consecrated life as vowed religious.
Br. Paul, OP
*The following quote from the General Chapter of Bologna is included in my response to a reader's comment below, but I thought I would include it here to show where this particular thought of mine came from. The General Chapter declared: "Because the Order, by reason of its mission, will always have a greater number of priests, the brother is a witness that we are first of all religious and that what binds us together is not our ordination, but our religious profession. Thus, the brother is at the very core of our fraternity and is a constant reminder that even the ordained members of the Order exercise their ministry as Dominican religious brothers" (136).