Countless numbers of high school students are finishing their prep careers, graduating, and undoubtedly vowing never to return to the halls that defined their formative years. However, for newly ordained Dominican Priest Fr. Nicholas Monco, O.P., a return to his alma mater not only means more than having a stable job in a poor economy, but also a much deeper, spiritual calling back to his roots.

Fr. Monco, O.P. is a 2002 Fenwick High School graduate and this fall he will return as a priest and a teacher for students not much younger than himself.

“I look almost as I did in high school. A lot of those kids will probably look older than I do,” Fr. Monco, O.P. said. “There’s a way in which that will help. But, other than connecting to movies and pop culture, there’s a way that kids connect to people who are in love with something. They know the difference between a teacher who is going through the motions and someone who loves what they do. I’ll be one of the teachers who loves what they do.”
Though Fr. Monco, O.P. was encouraged to consider the priesthood, it took time for him to answer the call.

“Fenwick was a crucial part of the way I engaged my faith. I’m not sure I would have gotten that in another school,” Fr. Monco, O.P. said. “Initially, I dismissed people who suggested the priesthood. But it came down to asking myself, what did I actually love to do. Where did I keep getting drawn back to? It kept coming back to the spiritual life, theology and talking to people about God.”

“Fenwick was the place where I began to think about my vocation in earnest,” he added. “I was very impressed by [the Dominican Friars on staff] love for Jesus, for their priesthood, and their dedication to the school. It made me think they found something worth loving.”

Fr. Monco, O.P. isn’t nearly the first Fenwick grad to return to the school as a teacher. Currently, Fenwick boasts 30 former graduates, making up roughly 25 percent of its staff.

Fenwick President Fr. Richard Peddicord, O.P. has only been at the school for one year, but he also taught Fr. Monco, O.P. at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO, another Dominican ministry of the Central Province.

“It’s pretty unusual to have a newly ordained priest join a Catholic high school faculty in 2013 knowing what we do about the priest shortages,” said Fr. Peddicord, O.P. “Father Monco makes it very clear that we’re doing something right. It tells a great story about the vocations we’re getting as a province and the commitment the Central Province has to Fenwick as a breeding ground.”

Fr. Charles E. Bouchard, O.P.

The origins of this talk are in an invitation I received some time back from the coordinator of adult faith formation at St. Francis Xavier College Church in St. Louis. When she asked me to give a talk as part of their series, I asked what she thought a good topic might be. She said, “I think people are worried about how to handle fear in their lives.” My first thought was “I haven’t got anything prepared on fear!” But I agreed to do it. When the day came, we had three or four times more people than usual. Clearly, we had struck a responsive chord.

The bombing at the Boston Marathon reminded us all that we live in a dangerous world. But it is not just the catastrophic events we have to fear. There are ordinary ones, too: medical problems, emotional crisis, unemployment, loss of a friend or of a spouse, marital difficulties. All of these things make us anxious and afraid. What are we, as Christians, to do with fear?

We can fear many things, but in the end fear arises from the “apprehension of a future evil,” or of the prospect of losing something we value. St. Thomas Aquinas points out that there is a positive side to fear. “Fear is born of love,” he says, “since we fear the loss of what we love.” (ST 2-2. Q. 19, a 3). “Fear can alert us to our loves in a powerful way,” he continues, and it can also conduce us to work well because it gives us greater solicitude and seriousness (ST 1-2, q. 44, a 4). Fear itself is not bad, as long as we fear what we ought to fear, and as we ought to. The problem arises when we fear things that have no power to harm us, or when we love the wrong things too much.

We are more familiar with the downside of fear. It is a serious limitation of our freedom, our vision and our ability to choose well. How often have we failed to choose the right thing because we were afraid? How often has our courage failed us and allowed us to do the lesser good?

This is true on both a personal and a social level. In a column in the New York Times, Frank Furedi says that “fear has transformed safety into one of the main virtues of society.” This is not a good thing, especially if it makes us too anxious and prevents us from acting for the good. “The disposition to perceive one’s existence as being at risk has a discernible effect on the conduct of life…it leads to a worldview which equates the good life with self-limitation and risk-aversion.” Furedi says that fear serves the interests of those in power, because it favors order and the status quo and militates against change. Ultimately it can destroy political life, because “fear becomes the story we share in the absence of any shared account of goods and goals. The only thing we have in common is what we want to avoid. Nothing draws us into the future.”
This should be a great concern to Catholics, for whom the common good, a rich set of social and political circumstances that maximize participation, allow us to achieve happiness and foreshadow the Reign of God, is central to our social teaching.

It is clear that fear is a risk to us both personally and as a culture. But I believe our tradition gives us two powerful antidotes: Contemplation and Community.

Contemplation

“Contemplation” is a scary word for some. It seems like it is the realm of experts, nuns and monks and mystics who have the will and the time to be contemplative. But it is a basic human discipline. If we acknowledge that human beings – religious or not – have a spiritual side, then they are called to contemplate.

Before TV, radio, cell phones, movies, rapid travel and all the rest, maybe we had more time to reflect. Some historians have explored the “history of the night,” and have found that for much of human history people had two periods of sleep. One right after sunset, and another one, a “second sleep” after an hour or two of wakefulness in the middle of the night. This “in between time” was a perfect opportunity for reflection, prayer, or contemplation. Today that time is lost to us. Have we found an alternative?

There are other words that also describe “contemplation.” Focus, for example. The contemplative life is not staring into an abyss, or lurching toward nothingness. For Dominicans it is a deep and loving look at the real. This is why study and prayer are so closely related in our tradition – indeed, they are almost interchangeable, because if we look deeply into reality, even when we study science or philosophy or art, we are bound to ask “What does this tell me of God?” This is why the frequent antagonism between science and faith is so dismaying. In the end, we are all looking for the same thing.

We might also call contemplation “mindfulness.” Psychologist Ben Williams says mindfulness is an important therapeutic tool. It has a “deep religious context as a spiritual tradition. It can be brought to any situation, and can be thought of as a manner of approaching life. It involves cultivating a present-minded focus, awareness, and acceptance of experience. It is a kind of waking up from the automatic and unconscious manner in which we typically go about our lives.” Dr. Williams said he has found the practice of “mindfulness” to be helpful to many of his patients.

Or we could simply refer to contemplation as “paying attention.” I remember someone once saying that with God’s grace erupting in life all around us, the least we can do is be there. Do we really pay attention to what is happening to us, to the world around us? Do we pay attention to our emotions, our hopes, our fears?

Community and Connection

Community is a second antidote to fear. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the media noted how “people came together” in a time of crisis. It is a sad commentary that human “coming together” has to be newsworthy. We are inherently social, and we should come together, seeking a common life. In fact, there is no other way we can live our lives as humans. We can only do so together, yet economic prosperity, travel and (especially in the U.S.) lots of physical space, allow us to entertain the illusion that we can “go it alone,” independent of one another.

Sociologist Brene Brown says “connections are why we’re here. They give meaning and purpose to our lives.” This is another way of saying that our relations with other people re the only things that matter. Being really connected also requires vulnerability, and vulnerability requires the skills of “letting ourselves be seen, deeply seen, and to love with all our hearts.”

This should not be an unusual, exceptional thing. It is the very fiber of our lives.

For St. Thomas, this idea of connection is found in friendship. There are many kinds of friendship– casual, marital, family, business – but each of them requires a certain level of commitment and vulnerability. Friendship is so important, Aquinas says, that it is really a “school for virtue.” As theologian Paul Waddell says Friends practice their love on us, and thus bring us into being in a way we could never have accomplished ourselves. A good friend is someone who draws the best out of us, someone who creates us in the most promising way. In this sense, friendship is a moral reality and perhaps the constitutive moral activity of our lives, because through it we receive from another the good the good we most devotedly love.

Aquinas finds the model for this dynamic friendship in the Trinity. “The perfect goodness of divine happiness and glory postulate friendship within God. It appears that God’s charity would not love to the utmost were he only one person, nor even if he were only two, for with perfect friendship the lover wills that what he loves should also be equally loved by another.” (Disp. de Potentia, IX, 9).

We might also describe this “connectedness” as solidarity, which we often hear of in terms of “solidarity with the poor.” It’s true that we should seek solidarity with the poor, but we need to seek solidarity with everyone. Solidarity is simply a way of saying that we believe the relations – the connections – among us are real, and that we act as though they are real. Solidarity means that we acknowledge that we have more in common with others than not, even when we are separated from them geographically, economically or socially. We share a human condition that leads us to seek connection.

What could be a stronger antidote to fear, and to the prospect of loss that gives rise to it?

Community and Mysticism

Let me conclude with a story from Thomas Merton. In his book “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” he describes an experience he had at the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky in 1956 (a historical marker still stands at the spot). This is what he wrote:

“In Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another, even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation… I have the immense joy of being a man, a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around, shining like the sun.”

So the world is a fearful pace, but these two things – contemplation and community, both at the heart of the Dominican vocation – are important antidotes to it.
Let us deepen our ability to reflect, to focus, to “pay attention,” so that we can find God’s plan which transcends all fear. And let us deepen our connections with others, starting with those we love most deeply, and build an ever-widening circle that will lock out fear and bring us to God’s Kingdom.

Photography by Chris Kirzeder

The Rev. Benedict M. Ashley, a philosopher, theologian and Dominican friar for 71 years, passed away recently. The life of this distinguished friar of the Province of St. Albert the Great was chronicled in many places upon his death.

Click here to read the The Chicago Tribune Account…

The funeral Mass for Benedict Ashley will be Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 12:00Noon at St. Vincent Ferrer Parish.  Burial will be on Monday, March 4th.

Born:  May 3, 1915

Professed:   August 5, 1942   Ordained:   June 4, 1948

Born To Eternal Life:   February 23, 2013

Commenting on this remarkable friar soon after his death, Fr. Bouchard said, “We can do nothing but celebrate his fidelity, his scholarship and his love of the Church.  He was at his computer – complaining that he needed a new inkjet cartridge – until just a few days ago.”

Memorial gifts may be made to the Ashley-O’Rourke Faculty Chair Fund in Health Care Mission at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, a ministry of the Province of St. Albert the Great. Named for Fr. Ashley and longtime Aquinas professor Fr. Kevin O’Rourke, O.P., the singular focus of this Initiative is to develop and deliver theological and spiritual formation programs and experiences for leaders in Catholic health care. Send memorial gifts to:

The Ashley-O’Rourke Faculty Chair Fund

Dominican Friars, Province of St. Albert the Great

2005 S. Ashland

Chicago, Illinois   60608

A few years ago, the University of Chicago, where Fr. Ashley began his studies in 1933, published a fascinating, brief biography of his life. Only a month ago, Fr. Ashley published his autobiography. Both can be found through the links below.

http://thecore.uchicago.edu/Summer2011/features/cloth-bound.shtml

http://newpriorypress.com/barefoot-journeying/

Dr. Manfred Entrich OP, Prof Dr. Gregory Heille OP, Irmgard Franke-Rademacher and Monsignor Georg Austen

On Ash Wednesday, Fr. Gregory Heille, O.P. (Dean of the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and president of the Academy of Homiletics in the U.S.), Dr. Manfred Entrich O.P. (Director of the Institute for Pastoral Homiletics in Germany) and Irmgard Franke-Rademacher (Assistant to the IPH) visited the headquarters of Bonifatiuswerk in Paderhorn, Germany. There they met with Bonifatiuswerk Director Monsignor Georg Austen to learn about the ministry of Bonifatiuswerk in the diaspora regions of Germany, Northern Europe, and the Baltic States—with special interest in implications for the New Evangelization. Aquinas Institute of Theology and the Institute for Pastoral Homiletics are Dominican partners firm in their interest in promoting preaching and the New Evangelization in both the United States and Germany.

More information in English about Bonifatiuswerk, click here.

It seems each year that Christmas carols and the scent of ashes from Ash Wednesday blend quickly. My sense is there is a purpose to this seeming coincidence. Let me explain.

With the memories of Christmas and the birth of our Lord fresh in our minds, Holy Mother Church reminds us hastily of the reason for this gift of Divine intervention. Christ came not just to be among us and live as we live, but to show us the way to the Father. Near the end of the Gospel of John, as Jesus talked with His disciples at the last supper, we read, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

We now come to Lent. Ash Wednesday. Fasting and Prayer. Gospels filled with the harsh reality of Jesus’ life leading us to reflect on the harsh realities of our own lives. We pray for forty days as Jesus did in the desert. We sing songs not of joy but filled with sorrow. We pray the Stations of the Cross, enacting the cruel manner in which our God made Man would suffer.

As we come to the end of Lent in a few short weeks, narratives in all of the Gospels tell us of the violent end to Jesus’ life on earth. Scorned, spat upon, whipped, nailed to a cross with his side punctured by a spear, the God who is Love takes it upon himself to be subjected to the worst of humanity.

Yet, we know the rest of the story. Three days later, our dear Lord rises from the dead on Easter morning, bringing hope to all humankind. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” rings true to all who believe.

St. Jude Thaddeus, our patron who is Apostle, Martyr, and Saint, knew first-hand of the trials of Jesus, His violent death, and the hope of His resurrection. We pray through St. Jude that we might also share in this personal insight into the life of Jesus and the hope such knowledge brings.

At the Dominican Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus, we put it this way: Where there is Prayer, there is Hope. We gather throughout the year to pray, and to bring hope – hope in the risen Jesus that He may remain a part of our lives and that of those we love. No matter the difficulties. No matter the trials. No matter the violence we encounter. God is with us, and we are reminded so through our steady devotion to St. Jude Thaddeus and the intercession he promises.

We have chosen “Where is God in All the Violence?” as the theme for the Novena to St. Jude to be held at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in River Forest, IL. We will gather for nine days, March 13 – 21, 2013 at 12:00 Noon and 6:30 p.m. While together in the midst of Lent, we will use the violence of our own time as a backdrop to reflect on the violence – and the resurrection – that marked the last days of Jesus’ earthly life.

As we gather, and you join us wherever you may be, please bring with you thoughts of violence you may have encountered in your life, in the lives of those you love, and in the world around us. Tragic shootings make the news and deserve our attention, but other more common events tear us apart as well. Daily rage, marriages torn apart, devastating health news, natural disasters, financial ruin, even “downsizing” at work and the resultant unemployment – these all hit violently at our humanity and our faith.

That is where the Resurrection steps in, just in time, and we want to talk about all of that!

So join us for a very special Novena to St. Jude Thaddeus on Wednesday, March 13, through Thursday March 21! For the first time, we will present 9 separate celebrants, Dominican friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great, who will share with you the fruits of their contemplation on our compelling theme, “Where is God in All the Violence?” A different friar will lead us each day in praying the Rosary, reciting the Novena Prayers, and in celebration of the Eucharist. The final day of the Novena will feature, as usual, a Healing Mass with veneration of the arm relic of St. Jude and Blessings with the Holy Oil of St. Jude. To conclude the Novena, the Very Rev. Charles E. Bouchard, O.P., our Prior Provincial, will celebrate for us that day, concelebrating the Eucharist with the friars who have preached the Novena before him.

You won’t want to miss any of these days and this very special and timely Novena to St. Jude Thaddeus. Please join us, won’t you?

Sincerely yours in St. Jude,

Rev. Paul Whittington, O.P.

Director, Dominican Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus

P.S. As always, I ask you to also consider a generous contribution to support the work of the Dominican Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus and the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great. Please visit either shrineofsaintjude.com or www.domcentral.org to make your secure gift.

The wonderful hope and prayers of the Dominican Shrine rely on your prayers and financial support. We are indeed grateful for your help and ask you to be as generous as your resources allow.

The historic arm relic of St. Jude Thaddeus, said to be the largest relic of an apostle kept outside of Rome, travelled to New Mexico in February.  Fr. Paul Whittington, O.P., Spiritual Director of the Dominican Shrine of St. Jude, accompanied the Relic. The Dominican friars of the University of New Mexico invited Catholics and all faith-filled women and men in Albuquerque and its neighboring communities to a Liturgy of the Word Service in the presence of the Relic of St. Jude Thaddeus at the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center, at the University of New Mexico on February 20 and February 21.  There was also a healing service with veneration of the relic of St. Jude on February 22.  The St. Thomas Newman Center is a ministry of the Dominican Friars, Province of St. Albert the Great.

The relic then travelled to St. Jude Thaddeus Church in Albuquerque, where Fr. John C. Daniel and the faithful of his parish welcomed Fr. Paul.  Fr. Paul concelebrated six masses at the parish over the weekend of February 23rd and 24^th with the arm relic present and available to all in attendance.  A healing service with veneration of the relic followed on Sunday, February 24, and over 500 people attended.

After returning to Chicago, Fr. Paul Whittington, O.P., remarked, “I am especially grateful to all who participated in this remarkable visit of the arm relic to the Southwest. The crowds were nearly overwhelming at times, certainly suggesting to me that this ritual of prayer and hope brings meaning to more people than many might believe.

I have now had the opportunity to bring this historic relic to Denver, Bloomington and West Lafayette in Indiana, as well as New Mexico, and, most recently, to our Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Pius V Parish, and St. Dominic Priory -all in St. Louis. When added to our regular schedule of Novenas in Chicago, our patron Saint, Apostle, and Martyr has touched several thousand over the past 9 months. I am so pleased to be a part of this remarkable and humbling display of faith.”

Pictured below (right), some Dominican Novices made the trek to the top of the Mother Cabrini Shrine.  The shrine walk is a 373 step hike leading up to the top of the Mount of the Sacred Heart.  The stairway is symbolic of the pathway Christ took on His sorrowful way to His crucifixion and death, through the stations of the Cross.