Often when we think of the canonised Saints we look to the finished work of art and we might be inclined not to pay enough attention to the process, their gradual transformation by grace throughout their whole lives that eventually culminated in their total self giving to God and to others. So in preparation for her Feast this year I focused on various salient moments, milestones in Catherine’s journey, as related by her biographer Raymond of Capua that remind us that Catherine struggled at times to do God’s will and when it came to the end died of a broken heart, ...

Happy Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary!
Here follows a reflection on the second joyful mystery - the Mystery of the Visitation of Our Lady to St Elizabeth.

Towards the end of his life, when the disciples of St Anthony, the father of monasticism, asked for a word of advice he replied with three words – always breathe Christ. Breathing and respiration is a double movement – in and out. St Dominic was certainly always breathing Christ. His life, in its nights and its days, was an incessant rhythm of praying and preaching. And even Dominic’s prayer had this rhythmic quality.

Mother of Mercy

One of the oldest prayers to the Virgin Mary is the ancient antiphon titled in Latin Sub Tuum Praesidium. By soom accounts this prayer dates to the third century. The beautiful words, first written in Greek, present the Blessed Mother as one who intercedes for us.

The theme of my reflection is: Reverence

I was very struck by the talks given by Fr. Paul Murray, O.P., to the Dominican Novices in Caleruega, Spain this year ( 2025), and I would like to quote a portion of one of his talks, in which he highlights St. Dominic’s reverence in praying, shown in the Nine Ways of Prayer, in teaching the brethren to be reverent to one another and in the reverence and veneration he shows to the Scriptures themselves.

THE MIRACLES OF ST. DOMINIC
Narrated by SISTER CECILIA

Of the Bread and Wine Miraculously Multiplied and Distributed to the Brethren Through His Prayers

On this fifth day of our novena to St Dominic, we began our Mass with the prayer:
Draw near to your servants, O Lord,
and answer their prayers with unceasing kindness,
that, for those who glory in you as their Creator and guide,
you may restore what you have created
and keep safe what you have restored.

What is impressive about St Dominic? His simplicity, I think.

From ‘Libellus’ written by Bl. Jordan of Saxony we know that St. Dominic
‘In every reasonable purpose which his mind conceived, in accordance with God’s will,he maintained such constancy that he hardly ever consented to change any plan which he had formulated with due deliberation’

St Dominic's Fourth Way of Prayer

After this, St Dominic, standing before the altar or in the chapter Room, would fix his gaze on the crucifix, looking intently at Christ on the Cross and kneeling down over and over again. Sometimes he would spend the whole time from the end of Compline until midnight