The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Chapter will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

It has been a long-standing tradition since the early Church that the Virgin Mary was Crowned Queen of Heaven.  As Christ is the King, so Mary is the Queen Mother. The Blessed Virgin has been pictured wearing a crown for centuries.  A painting following the victory at the Battle of Lepanto shows Mary with a resplendent Crown and a sword leading the victorious Holy League against the Ottoman Turks in 1571.  Before the battle, Pope Pius V had ordered that all the Churches of Rome be opened and that all of Rome recite the Rosary continuously. The battle was won and the Turkish ambition temporarily thwarted.  Pope Pius V instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory which is known today, Our Lady of the Rosary. Mary was described as a Queen by Pope Sixtus IV, Benedict XIV and St. Alphonsus Liguori stated that since she was the mother of the King of Kings, Mary had the right to be honored with the title of Queen.

As Queen, Mary taught our Father Dominic the Rosary as a weapon against evil and heresy.   In depictions of that event, St. Dominic is always kneeling as he receives the Rosary, honoring her, as a Queen and teacher.  We too receive the blessings from our Blessed Mother when we pray the Rosary which we have learned from our Father Dominic. It  is a gift we can all add to our daily prayer life and as we meditate on the Mysteries we are able to relive the life, sacrifice and triumph of Jesus.  The Crowning of Mary is not the end of the story of Jesus. Rather it is the culmination of Redemption, where creation is not only restored to the glory it possessed before the fall but raised to new heights.

The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Chapter will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

At the end of Mary’s pilgrimage on earth, she was taken body and soul into heaven or, as Eastern Christians would say, she fell asleep in the Lord. Consider the rejoicing throng of angels and saints that greeted her upon her entry into the heavenly Jerusalem. On the feast of the Assumption we hear in the Liturgy of King David bringing the Ark to Jerusalem and all of Israel assembled. “Play musical instruments… and make a loud sound rejoicing.” Mary, the true Arc of the Covenant, was brought to her final resting place, never more to be separated from her Beloved Son.

How fitting it is that on the feast of her Assumption, the end of Mary’s pilgrimage on earth, Our Holy Father Dominic dispersed the brethren to preach in Italy, Spain, and France, thus associating the mission of the Order with her glorious arrival in Heaven. One famous vision of heaven saw numerous saints adoring Christ but no Dominicans among them until Mary lifted her mantle and revealed the Order of Preachers, close to her and under her protection. Bl Sadoc O.P and his companions were martyred in Poland while singing the Salve Regina, and the Dominican custom of continuing to sing that song as the last prayer before the great silence of night pays homage to her as our special advocate, both in this life and in our journey to the next.

The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Group will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul speaks of different kinds of spiritual gifts given to those baptized into Christ, distributed by the Holy Spirit.  The same Spirit directs each spiritual gift toward the “common good” of salvation of souls. It is the animating character of the Holy Spirit that facilitates the preaching of the Gospel around the world by means of these special gifts, and it is for this reason that the action of the Holy Spirit lies at the very core of the mission of the Order of Preachers.

A keen awareness of the necessity of the Holy Spirit is evident from the very beginning of the Order.  As recorded in the Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic, his brothers and sisters would sometimes find Our Holy Father Dominic standing with his hands “outstretched above his head and joined together” like an arrow “which has been shot from a taut bow straight upwards into the sky”.  Dominic’s observers believed that while doing this, Dominic was begging God for the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the good of the Order.

In fact, in the Legend of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, we find that Dominic’s immediate successor also often implored the assistance of the Holy Spirit.  In one particular case, Jordan did so in order to prevent another brother from leaving the Order. On the holy feast of Pentecost, Jordan knelt and led the brothers in recitation of the ancient hymn to the Holy Spirit, the Veni Creator.  Jordan’s prayer came to pass even before the hymn was ended, and not only did the brother not leave the Order, he was also given special gifts by the Holy Spirit to eventually become “a skilled teacher and able preacher”.

Without the Holy Spirit to give life to the Order of Preachers, the Order would have no means of achieving its goal of preaching for the salvation of souls.  Each member of the Order is given different spiritual gifts to bring about that goal, and those gifts take shape in many different ways. Every Dominican ought to entrust himself or herself entirely to the Spirit in order to become the most effective instrument of God possible.  Therefore, let us never fail to imitate Dominic and Jordan in begging the Holy Spirit to pour out these gifts in abundance over the Order.

The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Group will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

“Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father … I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you…if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you…When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you to all Truth” (John 20:17; John 16: 4,7,13).

As Mary Magdalene wished to cling to Jesus after His Death and Resurrection, so we often cling to the familiar to feel secure. But this clinging keeps us from venturing out to discover the unknown.

Recently, I had the chance to try indoor rock climbing.  I thought my greatest challenge would be climbing to the top. However, my elation at reaching the summit faded quickly as I contemplated my descent. There was a system in place that allowed climbers to rappel down the wall easily, but it required me to lean away from the wall and drop, without feeling any support first. It took many minutes of positive self-talk and reassurances from friends who had already finished the climb before I finally trusted.  I leaned back and fell; sure enough, the resistance was there as I easily hopped down the wall. As many times as I was reassured and reassured others, we each had to make our own decision to trust.

When Jesus was with His apostles and friends, they clung to Him; they could see Him, touch Him, and embrace Him. After many assurances that He would be with them always, He ascended into Heaven and they were seemingly left without Him. But He sent the Spirit and fed their faith with His own Body, the Holy Eucharist. Now they understood faith. They trusted and could spread the Truth of the Gospel.

Our spiritual father St. Dominic is a great example of trusting God completely. He began the Order of Preachers at a time when preachers were only bishops, and there were already many orders fulfilling the needs of the Church. He trusted in the unlikely calling to found a group of highly educated, missionary beggars, i.e. itinerant preachers.

We face the challenge in unfamiliar situations to remember our life lessons and apply them as we begin to see God’s will in everything and learn to trust that He is always with us. Let us pray for the grace to make every decision guided by our holy faith, venturing everyday towards Eternity.

The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Group will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

In his letter to the Corinthians, St Paul reminds us that if Christ had not been raised from the dead, then our Faith is vain, worthless, without foundation. It is nevertheless common to hear prominent, well credentialed people speaking of the ‘truth’ of the Resurrection rather than its ‘historicity.’ They may not deny that the Resurrection is historical but instead emphasize the faith of the early Christians, or the archetypal significance of the event, or other things that say less than what St Paul insists upon. That way of speaking manipulates distinctions that the Church has made since at least St Augustine to differentiate parts of Sacred Scripture that are true in only an allegorical or poetic way from those that recall historical facts.

The Resurrection as a fact of history underlines the objective goodness of creation. Those who defend the ‘truth’ of the Resurrection while denying that it actually happened deny the inherent goodness of creation and make it conditional on human will. It is good because of what people believe, rather than being good because God proclaimed it so and sent his only Son to redeem it.

Our Holy Father Dominic insisted on the goodness of the created, material world to the Albigensian men and women who denied vehemently that it was. Dominicans follow his example when they defend the Resurrection as a fact of history and not a pious myth. In this, members of the Order of Preachers have the special protection and intercession of the first person to see the empty tomb, the first to tell the apostles it was empty, the first to see the Lord in his risen flesh. St Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles, exemplified contemplative love bursting forth into action that first Easter Sunday. For that she has been venerated as a patroness of the Order almost since its founding. May her intercession and that of St Dominic gain for each of us the grace to proclaim to the world Jesus Christ risen from the dead.