I
could use your help!
I am trying to think of saints and blesseds who fit the following 3 characteristics:
Please send me names and brief descriptions of which category they fit and why (see Leave a Reply below). Thanks!
To celebrate the 5th anniversary of my blog, Catechist’s Journey, we’re hosting a little contest. Each day this week, I’m posting a video in which I ask a trivia question and, in order to correctly answer, you’ll need to go back and look at one of my posts. The first person to post a comment with the correct answer will win a prize! Here are the prizes: Monday: Three Children’s books by Amy Welborn: Book of […]
Over the last few years I have become more and more attentive to the saints. I am not sure if this heightened awareness came from being a catechist, but it surely has changed the way I catechize. As a second-grade catechist, I introduce the children to saints of the month, we have an All Saints Day celebration, and the children complete a saint’s report. Each month I pick two saints whose feast days fall during […]
When an orchestra prepares to perform together, they spend a few minutes before the performance ensuring that they are all in tune with one another. Without this effort, the audience would no doubt hear the disharmony and cringe at the discordant sound. In our human relationships, we are called to live in harmony with one another. In the area of race relations, however, we continue to experience far too much disharmony. On November 3, we […]
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St. Dominic was an often-overlooked revolutionary. He and St. Francis broke open the monastic mold with itinerant, mendicant communities who went out to the people and lived on whatever they were given. Dominic is eclipsed by the personable figure of Francis but it was he who turned upside down the whole approach to evangelizing the people.
Dominic realized how ineffective the preaching of the day was. He saw that the bishop in elegant attire and sustained by an equally elegant retinue was irrelevant to poor people struggling to survive and attracted to the more appealing Catharists and their teaching.
Dominic set aside all that was his by virtue of being a canon of the cathedral and set out in bare feet, one robe, and a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew. As others joined him, he became concerned that those who were to preach the Word be well-formed in the Word. He was the first to send his young companions to the secular universities in the large urban centers of the day so that they would be well-educated. Their studies were offset by lives of personal and communal prayer centered in the liturgy of the Church.
As the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) was formed, the friars changed the ways religious communities were governed. Instead of an abbot usually appointed for life by a bishop, the Dominicans elected their leaders from the membership and for a limited term; at the end of that term, the leader went back to being a regular member of the community. This was–and is–true for both the men’s and women’s communities that comprised the Order.
Dominic was unique for his time in joining the contemplative life with one of study, community and an active apostolate. Most of what we know comes from those who knew him and wrote about him, rather than from writings of his own. He was a very quiet revolutionary!
Thanks Judith! This is great background on St. Dominic!
Innovative Gospel presenters:
Bishop Sheen (though I don’t know a whole lot about him myself).
Movement starters:
Dorothy Day;
Ignatius of Loyola (He was a layman when he began, and had to go back to school as an adult to become “qualified” and be ordained.)
Thanks Deborah! Good suggestions!