LAY DOMINICANS THROUGH THE AGES

1. LAY DOMINICANS THROUGH THE AGES

2. THE SACRED PREACHING From the beginning of the Order, lay men and women gathered around St Dominic to help him with his Project: the Sacra Praedicatio (Sacred Preaching and Evangelisation).

3. Beginnings Some couples donated farms and even worked them themselves freely in order to support the cloistered nuns and sisters and the itinerant friars. They were the home makers of the Prouilhe Community and the Dominican Family of Prouilhe. From this little group the family was eventually to spread worldwide.

4. BLESSED JANE OF AZA(1140 – 1202) Neither the date of her birth nor that of her death is known with certainty. St Dominic’s mother made little impression on history but the print of her personality will be seen for all time in the Order founded by her Son. Legends grew up around her memory - the best known being the story that, while pregnant with her son, she dreamt of a hound racing over the world with a burning torch in his mouth – a symbol of her child’s future destiny.

5. St Zedislava Berka (1210 – 1252) Zedislava lived in Eastern Europe at the time of the fierce Mongol invasions. All her life was spent amid war. As a child she learned from her mother to use herbal remedies which she used to help the poor. Her father and her husband were soldiers based in strongholds on the frontiers guarding against the pagan invasions. As a mother of four children, while still very young, she hated having to dress up and preside at the long banquets with which her husband entertained his friends. She was the first Slavic lay Dominican introduced to the Order by St. Hyacinth. She devoted herself to the poor, taught catechism to adults and visited prisoners in the dungeons often obtaining pardon for them. Once, when Mongols attacked, she opened her castle to crowds of refugees. When her dream of building a church for the people was realised, she carried heavy beams and materials secretly at night. Her death at the age of 42 came after the church was completed

6. Blessed Albert of Bergamo (1214 – 1279) • Albert was a hardworking farmer who learned to see God in all of nature, a man of prayer and self denial. He married quite young. At first his wife made no objection to his charitable deeds. But soon she began to scold him. “You give too much time to prayer and the poor”, so that his home became almost unbearable. Albert replied that God would return all gifts made to the poor. Finally when she saw how God miraculously restored the meal her husband had given away over her protest, she stopped her scolding and joined him in piety and charity. She died soon after this. Albert gave away his land and set out to be a pilgrim to Rome and Jerusalem, earning his food by doing casual work on the farms he passed. He went his way singing hymns and psalms and speaking to the people he met. Aged 42, he joined the lay Dominicans and thereafter worked hard in the garden of the Fathers in Cremona.growing medical herbs for the sick.

7. St Margaret of Castello(1287 – 1320) • Margaret was born blind. At the age of 5 she was abandoned by her parents in a church where they hoped to obtain a miracle. A kind peasant woman took pity on the child and adopted her into her own large family. Margaret cared for the children, stopping their quarrels, helping with their catechism and told them stories. Soon neighbours were “borrowing” her to soothe a sick child or bring peace to their homes. When a local convent asked her to join their community, she agreed but she was returned to her adoptive home because the sisters felt she was a reproach to their lifestyle. She lived as a Lay Dominican henceforth; a mystic gifted with the charity of peacemaker to troubled people. When she died at 33, her tomb in the Dominican convent became a place of pilgrimage. Her body is incorrupt still.

8. Two great Dominicans • The family of St Dominic has given the Catholic Church two great Doctors (Teachers of the Faith) : one a man , St Thomas of Aquin, a Dominican friar and the other a woman , St Catherine ofSiena a lay Dominican. We know so much about the two of them that, at least a whole assembly could be dedicated to either.

9. St Catherine of Siena(1347 – 1380) Here we are interested in our fellow lay person and her place in the doctrine and spirituality of the Order. Suffice it to say that despite three impediments • that she was a women • That she died young • That she had no formal education in theology she became a Doctor of theChurch What is this saying to us today?

10. Blessed Osana of Mantua(1449 – 1505) Blessed Osana as a child asked her father if she could learn to read. Her father said there was no use at all in a woman learning to read or write – she was to spend her life bringing up a family. However, Osana did learn to read later. At 14 years when her father was trying to arrange a marriage for her, she went secretly to the Dominican church and received the habit which she wore at home from then on. Her father accepted her explanation that she had fulfilled a promise and he gave in when he saw that she had a plan of her own. She was orphaned when still quite young and she became mistress of her father’s house which she turned into a centre for her works of mercy, spiritual and corporal. When she was 28 she received the stigmata, (the wounds of Jesus in his passion) in her body.

11. Blessed Adrian Fortescue(1476 –1539) Sir Adrian Fortescue, Knight of St John, Justice of the peace for the county of Oxford in England. He was a relative of Anne Boleyn for whose sake, King Henry broke with the Catholic Church to found the Anglican schism. About the time of Anne’s accession as queen of England, Adrian became a lay Dominican and began to set his affairs in order for his inevitable arrest which came in 1534. He was confined in the Marshalsea Prison. No charge was made and no reason given for his eventual release, on which he used the time left to him to provide for his five children. During that time Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed. Finally he was again arrested and sentence of death was passed on him for “treason and sedition”. Honoured as a martyr by the people of his own Country, the anniversary of his death was kept as a special feast by the Knights of Malta who obtained his beatification over 300 years later.

12. St Rose of Lima(1587 - 1617 Rose de Flores (one of the three Dominican saints of Lima) neither married nor entered a convent, but spent all of her short life in her family home, living a single life in a tiny hermitage at the foot of the family garden. She spent her days growing flowers for the church and for the market and doing beautiful embroidery which she sold to help support the family.

13. St Rose of Lima (contd) She spent her nights in mystic prayer, contemplation and penances which she successfully hid. She became a lay Dominican much to the sorrow of her mother, who loved and admired her but couldn’t understand her beautiful daughter. But the poor and the sick and those in distress came to Rose for help and comfort and eventually the townspeople called her their saint. When she died at the age of 30 the whole town turned out for her funeral.

14. The Dominican Martyrs in the Far East (1597 – 1637) In Japan were martyred at Nagasaki 3 Japanese converts : Blessed Magadalen of Nagasaki, and Marina of Omura, who sheltered missionaries, and Blessed Leon Atsutomo, a Samurai or professional soldier, married with 2 small children. He was executed at the crossroads in front of his family. He is a protomartyr of the Philippines.

15. Dominican Martyrs (contd) A Chinese convert and lay Dominican, Blessed Joachim Ko, after exile in Macau, returned to his country to work as a catechist among his people who hid missionaries successfully for some time. Joachim was an admiral in the Mandarin’s fleet. In a great persecution of Christians he and his grandson were beheaded in 1649. St Laurence of Ruiz was a Filipino of Chinese and Tagalog ancestry. When a Spaniard was murdered in Manila he was a suspect and not expecting to receive a fair trial by the colonists, he left his country with the Dominican fathers who were leaving on a mission to Japan. In his parish he had been sacristan and registrar. Married with three children, he had no desire for martyrdom. But after some hesitation (“I didn’t come to Japan to be a martyr”), he died a heroic death for his faith.

16. Sir John Burke (died 1610) During the fierce persecution in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st of England, when to attend Mass was a crime and priests were arrested and executed “for treason” , an Irish lay Dominican, Sir Thomas Burke , organised an underground for priests on the run. On the death of the queen there was an interlude as it was not yet clear what the policy of the new king, James 1st was although his mother, Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic. However, the new King continued the persecution. Soon Sir John was arrested and imprisoned in Dublin. Released without a charge, he not only went on with his underground activities but when in 1608 the Pope instituted the Feast of the Holy Rosary he arranged for a Solemn High Mass to celebrate the feast with due solemnity. Three Dominican Fathers came from Limerick and a number of the brave local Catholics crept silently into the great hall of the castle before dawn on Rosary Sunday.

17. Sir John Burke contd The viceroy, Lord Mountjoy had been informed and he attacked during Mass. Sir John and his friends defended the gate until Mass was over. Then he led the 3 priests out by the back way. One priest was captured but Sir John rode out and rescued him bringing him back to the castle. Offered a safe conduct if he surrendered, he first got his third priest away through a back passage, then in full armour, sword in hand, carrying the sacred vessels in a sack, he rushed out the front gate and fought his way through to the woods where he disappeared into his underground. Two lay women Dominicans who sheltered him were burnt to death for refusing to reveal his whereabouts. Sadly, when a large reward was offered for his capture, he was betrayed and condemned to death by hanging.

18. Catherine Jarrige(1754 –1836) Called the “Angel of the underground” , Catherine, a lay Dominican of 22 worked as a lacemaker, using all her spare time working among the poor and the sick. She was 35 when the French Revolution broke out and she found her vocation setting up an underground for hunted priests. All through the “Reign of Terror” her headquarters was an abandoned hideout for robbers deep in the heart of a forest. Here she hid priests on the run, forged papers when necessary, losing none except a young priest who, despite her warnings, hid in a barn and was captured. Catherine marched beside him to the guillotine. Arrested several times, she used her peasant shrewdness to talk herself free. Many stories are told of her escapades to get her clients past their enemies.

19. Pauline Jaricot (1799 – 1851) She was the foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and also of the Living Rosary. Daughter of a wealthy Family, while still young, she began her social work with factory girls in Lyon, France where she taught not only the Truths of the Faith but also skills like making silk flowers to support themselves decently. Out of this Association grew the support for the foreign Missions to which each girl contributed a ‘sou’ (two cents a week) and also became a promoter as the idea spread.

20. Pauline Jaricot contd When success came for her project and it was taken out of her hands, she was happy that God’s work went on apace. Then a campaign of calumny was organised against her. She was accused of enriching herself at the expense of the poor. Dangerously ill for three years, she had to abandon her work. After this time, given entirely to prayer, came the second and the lasting dream of her life - The Society of the Living Rosary. Still an object of criticism, she died in abject poverty having given everything to the poor. She had many saints among her friends, among them were, Marcellan Champagnat, the founder of the Marists, Frederic Ozanam, Founder of the Society of St Vincent dePaul and St John Vianney, the Cure d’Ars.

21. Agnes McLaren (1837 – 1913) A Scotswomen from Edinburgh, Agnes was raised a Presbyterian. After a long struggle, she was accepted at a medical school in France and qualified as a doctor at the age of 41. A convert when she was 61, she met Father Lataste and the Dominican Sisters of Bethany and would have wished to join them but felt that she was too old. Instead, she was received as a lay Dominican and continued with her social work. Hearing of the need of a trained corps of women doctors to help the missions in India, she decided to build and staff a mission hospital. Then she had to struggle for permission from Rome and finally to find young women who would join her in her project. When she was 76, a young Austrian girl, Anna Dengel, wrote to her. Although Agnes never met Anna the ground had been prepared - Anna became a doctor and started the Medical Mission Sisters, well known today.

22. Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati(1901 - 1925) Piergiorgio was a young man of 24 when he died of polio in 1925. Handsome, fun-loving, with many friends, he looked forward to a happy marriage and a family. It was said of him that ‘he lived an ordinary life extraordinarily well’. He excelled in sports, especially mountaineering. In 1922, he joined the lay Dominicans having been a daily communicant for years while a university student. He quietly founded a Catholic discussion group of friends which exerted a strong influence for good among the students. He belonged to the St. Vincent dePaul Society and spent all his pocket money on the poor. But suddenly he fell ill with polio (for which there was no cure then) and died. The young men of the neighbourhood chose him as their patron.

23. Blessed Bartolo Longo(died 1926) He was a Lawyer in Naples, apostle of the rosary, catechist and founder of the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompei which is still a centre of pilgrimage today, of shelter for children of prisoners and street children and orphans, as well as a Congregation of Dominican Sisters.

24. Praxedes Fernandez(1886 – 1936) During the Spanish civil war of the 1930’s when her parish priest had to go on the run, his place was taken by a young woman , Praxedes Fernandez, who visited the sick and the dying, baptised the children and kept her parish alive even presiding at public prayers. As a young girl, wife and mother of four boys and later a widow. she was an example of a full Christian life.

25. Praxedes Fernandez contd When her electrician husband was killed in a train accident, she worked as a domestic servant to support her children, doing her own housework at night while she prayed and fasted, giving most of her food to the poor. Two of her sons died tragically, however, one like his father in a train accident, the other shot in the war. When her village was under siege by the Red Army, she developed acute appendicitis and the soldiers refused to allow a doctor to leave the lines to attend to her. When she died, and in spite of protests of the local people, her body was thrown into a truck of dead soldiers and buried in a common grave. There was no funeral, no gravestone but the people prayed to her and never forgot her. Her cause for canonisation has been introduced in Rome.

26. George La Pira ( 1904 – 1977) As a professor of Roman Law, this Dominican layman was instrumental in writing the first fundamental articles of the democratic Italian constitution which followed the collapse of the dictatorship of Mussolini at the end of world war 2. At the following election he joined the government in the ministry of work under Prime Minister Fanfani (1951-65)

27. George La Pira (1904 –1977) He was several times elected mayor of the city of Florence, where he defended with great energy the weakest of the city, the homeless, and the workers’ rights. As mayor, he fostered “congresses” for peace, supporting reconciliation between Jews, Christians and Muslims. From 1958, he helped negotiate peace between France and Algeria. He even visited Russia and started a bridge of prayer for unity between East and West. Then he went to Vietnam, met Ho Chi Minh and, with him, negotiated the first draft of agreements of peace. “I have only one ally”, he told the Councillors of Florence,”fraternal justice as the Gospels present it, that is to say: work for the unemployed; a house for the homeless; assistance for those who need it; spiritual and political freedom for all; the artistic and spiritual vocation of Florence in the universal frame of the Christian and human civilisation

28. George La Pira (contd) “I do not make use of the usual mechanics of our parliamentary and party methods. In Florence there is a place for all people of good will whose main objectives in their activities are the points indicated above”. His progam:” A city where everybody has a place to pray, a place to work, a place to think and a place to recover one’s health”. And this “dreamer” put his dream into practice showing that he was both realistic and concrete. A man of deep prayer, he once telegraphed the Prime Minister: “ Change the law because I cannot change the Gospel”.

29. George La Pira (contd) He died in 1977, a poor man who owned nothing but what was strictly necessary.His cause for Canonisation was initiated in Florence in 1986. In 2004, the Dominican laity of Italy held a Congress on the theme “George la Pira Dominican prophet of the Universal society” and later that year the Dominican University, the Angelicum, in Rome, hosted another congress on aspects of his spirituality.

30. Assunta Viscardi (died 1947) On the 9th March this year (2009) the cause of canonisation was opened in Rome for a young teacher, Assunta Viscardi, a lay woman who devoted her life to the service of the Word of God, gathering the street children of her home town Bologna and getting them accepted in variousCatholic schools of the city. Helped by a group of the Dominican family, priests and lay people, she formed an “army of protectors” for the children. She kept in touch with her charges with what she called a “living home” for them. Then she started with what she called: “a little door of Providence”. for the poor who were in need of food and clothes. Finally, she founded a college “an educational home” for those who needed to heal from the roots of the evil that affect them, to find refuge and a space for love. Others, especially lay Dominicans have continued the work of “service at the table of doctrine with the light of science”. (St Catherine)

31. Anna Maria Rizzante (contemporary) Anna Maria studied in Italy with the Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena. After spending 10 years in Rome, studying, praying and working (as a sister?) she received what she calls “a call within a call” and left for Brazil as a lay missionary doing pastoral work with poor farmers and visiting prisoners from the year 2000. Then she married Sandro with whom she continued her work for the poor with the Pastoral Land Commission of the Bishops’ Conference in different South American countries “to overcome injustice and abuse of power”. This work was dangerous and for many of their friends it involved imprisonment and even death. In the basic Christian communities ‘they shared the Bible and evaluated it through their reality”. For Sandro and Anna Maria this has meant persecution as she says “it is difficult to accept because it touches the lives of our children especially when they are very young”. For her this “saying yes to God as a family has been the hardest for my availability. Since I was young my desire was to share my life with the poor. They are the ones that have evangelised me”.

32. Blanca Guerrero (contemporary) As a lay Dominican, Blanca has worked in a marginal urban district from which she writes “the dream of a renewed welcoming, inclusive community (not excluding anyone) but humbly serving Christ”, was born in her. This would be a church in which relationships between members are more circular than vertical, in which women have a really important role to play and not just being mentioned in documents. Blanca has just (May 2009) spent three years working on the Preaching Commission of the Order, at Santa Sabina Convent in Rome with fellow Dominicans from all over the world. She writes:” As a lay woman, mother and grandmother, this has given me a different vision of the Dominican Order, and I have felt welcomed in the commission.

33. Blanca Guerrero (contd) My perspective and my experience as a woman of the Church and as a Dominican comes from living as a married couple, from faith that is built on prayer, in order to face from this place of affection, tenderness and respect, all the hardships that a family meets, along with the new paradigms to which we have to respond with openness but from some non-negotiable values. My contributions have come from my family reality, from the life I share with my fellow Dominicans from whom I receive strength in prayer, the desire to deepen in subjects that trouble us in our society, the wisdom of the leaders who accompany us and above all the affection and trust that are also essential nourishment in my work”.

34. Blanca Guerrero (contd) Of the three years that she spent at the hub of the Order in Rome she writes:” To live the Veritas (a word very dear to our family) was a rich experience, because each one expressed his/her part of the truth with total simplicity”. She tells of “The total joy of sharing in the life of the community of Santa Sabina ,the excitement of joining in the singing of morning and evening prayer, visiting the places frequented by Saints Dominic and Catherine and the friars of earlier times and she concludes “ My gratitude and love go out to that lovely family”.

35. OUR DOMINICAN fAMILY We thank you Lord, for the gift of our Lay Dominicans. May they continue to work in the the Dominican family in living out the dream of Dominic to spread the Good News of the Gospel, through their lives and service of the poor. LAUDARE. To PRAISE BENEDICERE. To BLESS PRAEDICARE T0 PREACH

36. Questions for Discussion Did you notice any common traits among these people (give examples) Praise, sacrifice, patience Devotion to the poor, the sick, prisoners Shrewdness, wit to disarm enemies of the faith Deep understanding of faith, desire to spread knowledge , catechesis Facing courageously difficulties in marriage and civil life Courage in time of persecution Devotion to the Rosary and the Mass Variety of backgrounds and nationalities Using the mind in the service of truth Extraordinary diversity of work, characters, vocations