Last Friday we celebrated the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena together for
this 800th Jubilee year with a crowd of Dominican family. The CDN community—along with
much-appreciated-support—planned and prepared the logistics while Aquinas Institute
graciously hosted the event. Aquinas
faculty and staff, the student Brothers, the Dominican Nuns from Springfield, a
handful of Dominican aspirants and many Dominican enthusiasts gathered together
for prayer, dinner and preaching.
The celebration began with Vespers, which Joye presided from
our Dominican Praise prayer book.
Megan’s preaching was phenomenal, as usual, as she reflected on
Catherine’s words and the wild abandon, unrestrained passion and lovesick
longing that God shares with us. One of
the Brothers referred to Vespers as a healthy dose of “Woman Church” in honor
of our Saint Catherine; and the CDN was honored to offer it to the gracious and
receptive attendees.
We packed in 65 folks for dinner in the Commons area at
Aquinas—which is quite a feat in itself!
After enjoying dinner and good company, there was a special
guest-speaker to liven-us-up during dessert.
We were blessed to have our own Annie Willits with us—possibly the only
speaker that could maintain the attention of a post-dinner crowd enjoying
plentiful and various desserts! Her talk
about how “Dominic Becomes Us” was poignant and challenging. Her reflections on the Dominican charism—more
perfectly referred to as the preaching charism—took us into the deep and
challenging territory. How can we live
out our mission in a way that confronts the dualism of today’s culture? How do
we, as preachers, situate ourselves “at the center of all contradictions” and
make this center our pulpit? Does our
preaching adequately espouse the mystery of God by embracing paradox as a gift
of life? Her talk—speckled with humorous
anecdotes and profound poetry—was powerful and engaging. True to form, the clincher was in her closing
“Hope, my darlings, is simmering on the
world’s backburner. Our responsibility is
to fan the flame.”
