On Wednesday of the third week of Advent, Fr. André-Joseph LaCasse, O.P., gave the following talk to the novices of the Province.  Fr. LaCasse is the pastor of St. Gertrude Church in Cincinnati, OH.  The priory attached to St. Gertrude parish is also the home of the novitiate community. 

Address to the Dominican Novices of the Province of St. Joseph:

To our novices, you are now well into your novitiate year. By now you should have a pretty good picture of our life. The excitement of entering has probably passed for most of you, and now comes the difficult questions of if you should stay and if you are being called to live the vowed Dominican life. The next few months will be critical for all of you.

You are privileged here because you live with friars who have lived this life for quite some time. In our community we have two jubiliarians, one who is close to being a jubiliarian, and the rest of us who have lived this life for over twenty years. Our lives as religious is a steady progress towards perfection, but a perfection that experiences many imperfections along the way. Our lives are not extraordinary. None of us has won prestige. None of us is in the limelight. We live ordinary lives of consecration, hoping that we can do our best to advance the cause of Jesus Christ and His Church.

The Dominican life is a life of prayer, study, and the apostolate. Most days are ordinary days where you are called to be simple servants of the Church. Do you desire to be a servant? Are you willing to die to your own desires in order to do the desire of God manifested through the will of our superiors? In a real sense you will not be able to answer this question until something is asked of you that takes real sacrifice and humility. But still the question needs to be asked now: Am I willing to die to myself and become a servant of the Church? The question needs to be answered now because from the very beginning of your discernment you must be brutally honest with yourself.

Why have you been called to our life? Certainly not because somehow you will receive consolation from the brethren. Trust me that will not happen. What you will receive from the brethren are men who place expectations on one another to strive for perfection. I live this life because I know that left to myself I could not be the Catholic man that God has called me to be without my Dominican life. I depend on my brothers to expect me at prayer, and I miss brothers who for whatever reason cannot be at prayer. I depend on my brothers to join me at the conventual Mass, and I miss the brothers who cannot attend. I depend on my brothers to see my faults and take me to task, and although I'm not fond of being corrected, I would never want to live with brothers who ignore my weaknesses.

I depend on the fellowship and companionship of my brothers, but I desire intimacy with Christ and Our Lady alone. Only too often in my life I have seen brothers who disregard the fundamentals of our life, and each and every time they have left our fraternity.
For we who are Dominicans, the unexamined life is unacceptable. Dominicans are a critical group of men living together. If you are not good at taking criticism you are certainly not meant to be a Dominican. You won't survive if you can't take criticism. Nothing, absolutely nothing, does not receive review in our lives; hopefully from yourselves and assuredly from your brothers.

St. Paul tells us today, Stop passing judgment before the time of the Lord's return. Although in the end it will ultimately be God who judges our soul, the time of the Lord's return could be any time, and proper judgment is critical for our lives. As St. Paul reminds us today, God will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and manifest the intentions of the hearts. So what is your intention and is it pure? Have you come to our life because you are inspired by our life, and does that desire to make a difference continue to burn in your hearts?

The Prophet Isaiah this morning in the Office of Readings told us, The noble man plans noble things, and by noble things he stands. So are you striving for noble things? Why exactly are you here and does staying here still make sense for you? I certainly hope it does.

In the end we depend completely on God's grace. St. Irenaeus told us this morning, "By his own powers man cannot see God, yet God will be seen by men because He wills it." God wills that we be in communion with Him. This is the greatest gift of a religious vocation: to see God.

St. Irenaeus continues: "As those who see light are in the light sharing its brilliance, so those who see God are in God sharing His glory, and that glory gives them life. To see God is to share in His life."

To be a Dominican is to share in God's glory, anything else is a compromise of our life as Dominicans.

Please be assured of the prayers of your senior brothers as you continue discerning your calling to our way of life.