On Monday, February 6th, Fr. Austin Litke, O.P. will give a Theology on Tap lecture in Alexandria, VA entitled “Ancient Heresies and Their Modern Forms.”  In his talk Fr. Austin will examine various errors prominent in society today alongside ancient counterparts. The goal of the lecture is to show how certain issues, while new in the minds of many people today, have already been discussed and handled in some form by the Church.

Fr. Austin’s talk will begin at 7:30 pm and will be held at Pat Troy’s Ireland’s Own in Old Town Alexandria:

Pat Troy’s Ireland’s Own
111 North Pitt Street – at intersection with King Street
Alexandria, VA  22302

Fr. Austin was recently ordained to the priesthood in May 2011. He is currently working on his last year of studies at the Dominic House of Studies in Washington D.C.

Fr. Gabriel Gillen, O.P. hosts another edition of Word to Life with Fr. Bruno M. Shah, O.P. for the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time.

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Much can be said about St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274, feast – Jan. 28). The way the Order’s liturgy describes him is one of the most helpful.  In the old Dominican Breviary, there is an antiphon that sums up the whole Dominican liturgy’s presentation of Thomas:

The Blessed Thomas, Doctor of the Church, light of the world, glory of Italy, virgin shining with the bloom of chastity, rejoices in a twofold crown of glory.

Over and over the liturgy speaks of his two crowns – virgin and doctor.

St. Thomas’s story of virginity took a dramatic turn soon after he entered the Dominicans.  His family was unhappy with his choice of the Dominicans, so they captured him and had him locked up in the family jail.  In trying to get him to leave the Order, his brothers brought a loose woman to entice him to break his vow of chastity.  He chased her out of the room with a log from the fire, marked the door with the Sign of the Cross, and then thanked God for preserving his chastity.  It is said that after this, two angels came and girded him with a cord that helped to preserve his chastity throughout the rest of his life.

St. Thomas’s learning and wisdom is famous.  He gave the Church the Summa Theologica, the Summa Contra Gentiles, a number of Scriptural commentaries, commentaries on the works of Aristotle, and a host of other texts.  Some of his writings, especially his teachings on the Eucharist, have made it into the magisterial teachings of the Church, and they continued to be promoted by the Papacy, especially since the time of Pope Leo XIII.

Virginity and wisdom – such are two pillars by which we can come to understand the life of St. Thomas.  As he pointed out, purity can aid the intellectual life (see Summa Theologica I-II, 33, 3, ad 2).  It would seem that thanks to Thomas’s perseverance in chastity and the Lord’s protection through the angelic cord, Thomas’s writings were able to be all the more profound.

May we too be given the grace to live lives of purity and chastity so that like St. Thomas, we might come to know the Lord more intimately and desire nothing but Him.

O God, you make your Church glorious through the wonderful teaching of the blessed Thomas, your confessor and doctor, and render it fruitful by his holy deeds; grant us, we beseech you, both to understand what he taught and to imitate what he did.  Through Christ our Lord.

Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage, through all patience and teaching. (2 Timothy 4.2)

Today we follow an apostolic feast with an episcopal memorial. On the heels of celebrating St. Paul’s conversion, we celebrate two of his intimés, Sts. Timothy and Titus. In the New Testament, we find their names at the head of letters St. Paul addressed specifically to them. Letters to individual pastors of churches—distinct from letters to Christian communities as such—1, 2 Timothy and Titus are dubbed “Pastoral Epistles.”

“Epistle” is, more or less, another word for “letter.” In using “epistle,” we evoke the notion and mission of an “apostle.” But for a couple of vowels, the words are the same; they have , in fact, the same root. An epistle is a message sent-to someone; and an apostle is an individual sent-from Christ. Hence, although letter-writing is a basic and widespread feature of ancient communication, the Apostolic Epistle is a unique literary genre of faith.

Each week, a Dominican member of the Provincial Preaching Advisory board prepares this Preacher’s Sketchbook in anticipation of the upcoming Sunday Mass.  The idea of the Preacher’s Sketchbook is to take quotations from the authority of the Church–the Pope, the Fathers of the Church, documents of the Councils, the saints–that can help spark ideas for the Sunday homily.   Just as an artist’s sketchbook preserves ideas for later elaboration, so we hope the Preacher’s Sketchbook will provide some ideas for homiletical elaboration.

Sketchbook

Bl. Pope John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis

Jesus thus established a close relationship between the ministry entrusted to the apostles and his own mission: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Mt 10,40); “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Lc 10,16). Indeed, in the light of the paschal event of the death and resurrection, the fourth Gospel affirms this with great force and clarity: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20,21 cf. Jn 13,20 Jn 17,18). Just as Jesus has a mission which comes to him directly from God and makes present the very authority of God (cf. Mt 7,29 Mt 21,23 Mc 1,27 Mc 11,28 Lc 20,2 Lc 24,19), so too the apostles have a mission which comes to them from Jesus. And just as “the Son can do nothing of his own accord” (Jn 5,19) such that his teaching is not his own but the teaching of the One who sent him (cf. Jn 7,16), so Jesus says to the apostles: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15,5). Their mission is not theirs but is the same mission of Jesus. All this is possible not as a result of human abilities, but only with the “gift” of Christ and his Spirit, with the “sacrament”: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn 20,22-23). And so the apostles, not by any special merit of their own, but only through a gratuitous participation in the grace of Christ, prolong throughout history to the end of time the same mission of Jesus on behalf of humanity.

The sign and presupposition of the authenticity and fruitfulness of this mission is the apostles’ unity with Jesus and, in him, with one another and with the Father – as the priestly prayer of our Lord, which sums up his mission, bears witness (cf. Jn 17,20-23).

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On Monday, January 23, friars from the Dominican House of Studies joined thousands of pro-life advocates on the annual March for Life in Washington, DC. Marching together under the banner “Dominican Friars for Life,” the friars were joined by parishioners from the Dominican parishes of St. Patrick (Columbus, OH), St. Gertrude (Cincinnati, OH) and St. Dominic (Youngstown, OH), students from Providence College, and sisters from the congregations of St. Cecilia and Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. Together with the special Masses and Holy Hours celebrated over the course of the weekend, the March was a beautiful opportunity to witness to the sanctity of life and to join in prayer for an end to abortion.

Fr. Bill Garrott, O.P. is prior of St. Louis Bertrand in Louisville, KY. He is also a mission preacher and a former director of vocations. Here is the text from his Sunday homily.

The cathode ray tube TV is now obsolete. The flat screen TV is in. Razor sharp images. Extra wide screens. The new TVs have a draw back though. If the screen isn’t adjusted properly, everyone looks shorter and 10 pounds heavier. Last week while visiting my sister, I offered to adjust the screen to make the people look normal. “Don’t touch it!” she said “because I’ll never figure out how to change it back when you leave!” So we watched people on TV who appeared to be crushed by the gravitational pull of the planet Jupiter. How many times have you heard this blurb just before a movie plays: “This movie has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen.” The problem is that movie theater screens are still much wider than the your new TV. And when you do watch a TV movie in its original version, you see a dark border above and below the picture on your TV. That’s when you say, “Why did we spend a fortune on a 50 inch screen if 1/3 of it isn’t utilized? So to avoid making you feel that irritation, they format movies to fit your entire screen. But something is sacrificed in the process. Namely, what the film director wanted you to see in the first place. When the movie is formatted to fit your screen, another editor zooms in on what he thinks is the most important aspect of the scene. Peripheral characters and details are simply chopped off. And you wouldn’t know unless you saw the original movie.

Fr. Gabriel Gillen, O.P. hosts another edition of Word to Life with Fr. Bruno M. Shah, O.P. and FOCUS Missionary at NYU, Chris Schilmoeller.

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The Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception will be hosting an honorary lecture by Prof. F. Russell Hittinger.  Prof. Hittinger will speak on the topic: Can You Be the Imago Dei on Your Own? Modern Thomism on the Social Character of Human Existence. The lecture will on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 7:00pm at the Dominican House of Studies.  The event is free and open to the public.

Prof. Hittinger is the William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and a Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa.  He describes his academic work as “the intersection of philosophy, law, and theology.”  He is currently at work on a book on the evolution of Catholic social theory and doctrine during the 19th and 20th centuries.

For more information, please see the website of the Thomistic Institute.