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Saint Dominic is the patron saint of the small town of Vittoriosa in Malta. Since 1876 the town has celebrated with great enthusiasm and passion the feast of Saint Dominic. The Statue of Saint Dominic is carried through the town and then placed back in the piazza.
Today is the day on which the universal Church celebrates the feast of Our Holy Father, St. Dominic. St. Dominic was born around the year 1171. He died on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1221. Until the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, his feast day was celebrated on August 4th. The Order now celebrates with the whole Church on this day, August 8th.
In honor of the feast, we have uploaded a PDF file with a few short excerpts from some of the Popes of the 20th century on the Dominican Order.
In addition, below are the verse lines in honor of St. Dominic from Dante’s Paradiso. In this great epic poem, these lines are spoken by St. Bonaventure in honor of the virtues of St. Dominic.
From The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine
Cantica III: Paradise (Il Paradiso)
(Canto XII, Lines 37 – 105)
Translated into English by Dorothy L. Sayers
Following its banner with uncertain stride,
Christ’s army, once rearmed at such dear cost,
Was straggling on, thin-ranked and terrified,So that the eternal Emperor was disposed -
Not by their merit, but by His sole grace -
To reinforce His gravely threatened host,And for His Bride’s relief was pleased to raise
Two champions, fit (as has been shown to us)
By word and deed to rally those poor strays.Within that province where sweet Zephyrus
Swells till the springtide foliage is unfurled,
Wherewith all Europe is made beauteous,Nor distant from that coastline where the hurled
Waves beat on which, his longest course pursued,
The sun at times hides him from all the world,Long time hath happy Calahorra stood,
Protected by the mighty shield which shows
The lion by turns subduing and subdued;And in that town was born the amorous
Sweet leman of the Faith, the wrestler-saint,
Kind to his friends and ruthless to his foes;A soul created so pre-eminent
In living might, that a prophetic power
From her womb’s burden through his mother went.And when the sacred font in nuptial hour
Had wed the Faith to him and him to her,
With their salvation for their mutual dower,The lady who stood sponsor for him there
Dreamed of the wondrous fruit that afterward
He and his heirs should foster by their care;And there, that name and nature might accord,
Seeing Whose he was, the Spirit going forth
Named him by the possessive of the Lord.Dominic was his name, whose work and worth
I publish, as the husbandman whom Christ
Called to His garden to help till the earth.
On August 8, 2007, the Solemnity of our Holy Father St. Dominic, St. Vincent Ferrer Church unveiled its new website. St. Vincent’s has been operated by the Dominican Friars since it was established as a parish in 1867. It is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Lexington Avenue between 65th & 66th Streets. The current church was designed by Mr. Bertram Goodhue, one of the premier ecclesiastical architects of the early 20th century. The church building was completed in 1918, and the furnishings and accoutrements were added in the years following. The website contains a great deal of information about the the life of St. Vincent Ferrer, the history of the church, and a glimpse into its spectacular architecture.
St. Vincent Ferrer Church is located at 869 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10065. They can be reached by phone at (212) 744-2080. The website is http://www.csvf.org
From the Dominican House of Studies Website:
The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Anti-Christ, or the Wisdom of God?
A Theological Symposium
Date: April 4—6, 2008
Place: The John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington , D.C.
Is there any ‘natural’ knowledge of God available to the human person, apart from Christian revelation, or is all knowledge of God given to human beings uniquely in Christ? Is Christianity irrevocably wed to the classical metaphysical tradition, or can God’s nature and character be rethought in distinctly modern ways, based upon a renewed reading of Scripture? What relationship or likeness, if any, exists between created nature and the grace of God? Does Christian theology presuppose a natural philosophical ‘capacity’ for knowledge of God in the human person?
All of these fundamental theological questions are situated at the heart of the famous 20th century debate between Erich Przywara S.J. and Karl Barth, and were treated in Przywara’s famous work Analogia Entis. These topics were also revisited by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his ecumenical landmark, The Theology of Karl Barth. On the occasion of a forthcoming English translation of Analogia Entis by John Betz and David Bentley Hart, this symposium will invite contemporary theologians indebted to Aquinas, Przywara, Barth and Balthasar to discuss these issues. Is the theological concept of the ‘analogy of being’ in fact an ‘invention of the anti-Christ’ as Karl Barth suggested, or is it a truth about creation revelatory of the wisdom of God?
Featured Speakers:
John Betz
Martin Bieler
Peter Casarella
Michael Hanby
David Bentley Hart
Reinhard Hütter
Bruce McCormack
Bruce Marshall
Richard Schenk O.P.
John Webster
Thomas Joseph White O.P.
Sponsored by:
The Dominican House of Studies
The John Paul II Cultural Center
Eerdmans Press
(Flyer Illustration by fr. Antoninus Niemiec, O.P., after Giusto, Creation of the World; © 2007.)
This past weekend, July 26-29, our friars participated in the 3rd annual Ignite Your Torch Youth Conference held in Louisville, KY. Our Dominican brothers John Martin Ruiz Mayorga, OP, James Brent, OP, and John Chrysostom Kozlowski, OP. In addition, several Dominican priests also assisted at the conference. You can click here for a video put together by the conference organizers. Click on the picture below to see a slideshow of pictures from the conference:
(Thanks to Mr. Albert Cesare, who took the photos)
Our Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia are being blessed with many vocations.
This video was originally shared on blip.tv by op with a Creative Commons Attribution license.
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In July, the Order of Preachers began its General Chapter. The Chapter has the highest authority in the Order. There are three types of General Chapters: elective, a chapter of diffinitors, and a chapter of priors provincial. According to the Constitutions of the Order of Friars Preachers, a General Chapter is held every three years, rotating through the various types of chapters. Thus, the Order held its General Elective Chapter in Providence, RI in 2001. At that General Chapter, the current Master of the Order, Very Rev. Carlos Aspiroz Costa, OP, was elected as the 85th successor to St. Dominic. The General Chapter of Diffinitors was held in Krakow, Poland in 2004. This current chapter is a Chapter of Priors Provinicial and is being held in Bogotá, Columbia. The next chapter–in 2010–will be another Elective Chapter, in which a Master of the Order will be elected. The location of that General Chapter will be determined by the current General Chapter in Bogotá.
Under our laws, in order for a piece of legislation to become a constitution, it must be approved by three successive general chapters. Thus, three different sets of representatives of the Order must approve the legislation. This is to help ensure that any legislation that is approved has the widest possible support. This Chapter of Provincials will thus pass on changes to our law offered by the General Elective Chapter and the Chapter of Diffinitors.
The picture shown above is of the participants of the current General Chapter of Priors Provincial. In addition to the Provincials, other guests are also invited to the Chapter. Thus, you can see a number of Dominican Sisters as guests of the Chapter. The Master of the Order is in the center, wearing the full Dominican habit (i.e., with the black cappa).
News coverage on the Dominican Sisters. Mother Mary of the Eucharist
This video was originally shared on blip.tv by op with a Creative Commons Attribution license.
