Dominicans open new intellectual headquarters

The Holy Preaching

Father Walter Wagner, O.P. is Master of Novices at the Dominican community at St. Gertrude's Church in Cincinnati, OH, where new entrants to the Order spend their one-year novitiate. In this essay he reflects on the bountiful vocations that bless the Province of St. Joseph.

Men come to the Dominicans today because they have first become Disciples of Christ, in whom they have recognized God's response to their deepest longings. In His Gospel and His Church, Christ offers them moral clarity and spiritual identity. In short, He makes sense of their lives.

This sets the stage for the Holy Spirit to present Dominican life to men as a way to live out this encounter with Christ over the course of a lifetime. For most of the men who come to us at this time, the call to be a Dominican arrives in the form of a desire to live in community. Gathered together in our houses, men share their prayer, their table, their intellectual endeavor, and their leisure time with like-minded companions. In a world of isolated people, the call to such a life is an extraordinary gift of God.

Dominican common life pairs this belonging with challenge. It counters individualism with a shared schedule, the uniform clothing of the habit, and the omnipresence of superiors and peers who tell a man the truth he might evade elsewhere. In its consolation and its challenge, community simply makes us more Christian, indeed, more human.

From this new life emerges the second aspect of the Dominican call, for brothers want to share with others their own relationship with the Lord. For Dominicans, this takes the form of zeal for preaching. Each of us inherits a longing from St. Dominic to bring souls to Christ.

The two aspects of Dominican life hang together on this point: the Friar can proclaim the Gospel credibly in the pulpit because he is striving to live it at home. Our preaching should bear the stamp of the prayer, study, decision-making, and leisure time we share.

We are joyful these days because God is sending us young men, whom He has equipped to lead this unique life. Our younger members bring with them the natural temperament and talent, the educational background, and above all the zeal to live the "Holy Preaching," as we sometimes call the whole of Dominican life. Each time we clothe one of them with the Dominican habit, we recognize the work of God, who initiates every vocation.

If we are uplifted by receiving such men, we Friars must also do justice to what God has started by giving them a good formation. In this regard, the new Academic Center and Theological Library at the Dominican House of Studies plays an essential role. It represents the commitment of the Province of St. Joseph to forming men in the setting of community. There, our younger members will receive their philosophy and theology from their own brothers. Dominicans teaching Dominicans is an essential principle, because what is taught comes from what is lived.

In these rooms on Michigan Avenue in Washington, our students will come to realize that our efforts to live the Gospel together in community have given rise to a whole way of thinking about God, the Church, the sacraments, and the moral life. This coherent vision of the Christian life has made Dominicans personally happy for centuries, and it will furnish the wealth our young preachers have to share with the Catholic people and beyond. St. Thomas Aquinas articulated this vision with unique clarity. He was a great theologian, but he was also our brother. His life had the same shape as ours, and it formed him, as it forms us, into lovers and preachers of Christ.

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Press Information

The media are invited to interview leading Dominicans of the Province of St. Joseph as follows: Saturday, April 18 from 1:00pm-2:00 pm and Sunday, April 19 at 1:00-2:00 pm

Please meet interviewees on the 1st Floor of the Theological Library at the Dominican House of Studies (directions below), or by appointment.

For more information, or to schedule phone interview(s), please contact THOMAS PETERS or JEFF GRABOSKY.

Phone: 202-495-3877 or 202-495-3828
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Address: The Dominican House of Studies, 487 Michigan Ave, NE, Washington DC 20017