A Dominican Vocation

I first began thinking about my vocation when I was sixteen. I grew up in a Catholic family with my mum and dad and two sisters and I was the youngest in my family. I was an altar boy from the age of seven til 18 when I left home to go to university. Having the example and support of my family has been crucial for me at every stage in my life.

When I was fifteen my sister bought me the new, as it was then, Catechism of the Catholic Church and after going through it I decided that I agreed with everything that it said. Having reached this awareness it was clear to me how my life must be. Since I now knew for myself that the Catholic faith was the truth, I had no choice but to live by it. By the time I left Sixth Form College I had already discerned that I might be made for community life, it was something that seemed very attractive to me. However, I took for granted that whatever I did with my life I must first go to University and get a degree so as to complete my education. I decided to study theology, not because I was thinking of my vocation but simply because I found it interesting. By this point my sister had moved to London and I very much enjoyed visiting her there and so I decided that I would like to study there.

After my first term in London I went to the Verbum Dei community on the Isle of Wight for a 5-day silent retreat over the New Year period. This was a life-changing experience for me. In the silence I found the time to really pray and grew to know and love God so much more. Time spent in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament was a key part of the retreat and this was and still is the most helpful form of prayer for me. Through this time of adoration and the talks given by the sisters I came to truly know and love Christ present in the Eucharist for the first time in my life. I returned there again for a Holy Week retreat the following Easter and it was then that I felt loud and clear the call to the priesthood. I felt called to be a religious priest but I didn’t know which Order I should join.

In my second year at University we got a new chaplain who was a Dominican. I had been elected president of the Catholic Society and so I ended up spending a lot of time with the chaplain. It was the first time that I had come across a young priest I could easily relate to, he was only 29 when I first met him and we became friends. I went to visit the priory in London to talk to him about the Society and fell in love with the place the moment I walked in the door. The priory in London has a long stone cloister leading down to the church that feels more like a small cathedral than a large parish church and I immediately felt a sense of belonging. I loved to join with the friars singing the Divine Office, morning and evening prayer, and felt more attracted to the Order the more I found out about it. I felt moved to give my life for others, to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for the salvation of souls and to live a life trying to love my brothers in community.

After my degree I was recommended to spend a year out as I was only 22 when I graduated. I decided to spend a year volunteering in the Philippines with Dominican Volunteers International. I lived in a Dominican priory with three friars in a very poor area, slums really, on the edge of Manila and taught religious education in the Church primary school and catechism in the secular state school. While I was there I applied to join the Order and was accepted. I moved to Cambridge in September 2006 to begin my novitiate. I made simple profession for three years in September 2007, after which I came to Oxford to begin my studies for the priesthood. I feel truly blessed to have been given the chance to live out my calling. Please pray for me as I continue on the road to the priesthood.

Brother Daniel Jeffries is a first year student.

Lenten Vocations Day for Men and Women

“God Writes Straight with Crooked Lines”

Almost a decade ago, I was undertaking a pre-seminary year in a parish in west Yorkshire, as a part of my training for the diocesan priesthood. One Sunday in the sacristy before Mass, a teenage server who occasionally served at the Dominican parish in Leicester told my parish priest that he wanted to be a Dominican. I had never heard of them, and when my parish priest told the lad that he had to be very clever to become a Dominican, I wondered who these Dominicans thought they were. After all, I said to my parish priest later (and not wanting to lose out to these unknown Dominicans), even a diocesan priest has to be rather clever!

So began God’s way of writing straight with crooked lines in my life.

My next encounter with the Dominicans came in the form of a statue of St Dominic which I saw in the window of the CTS bookshop in Newcastle. I thought it was a statue of a Benedictine monk contemplating the Scriptures, and as I had (my brethren will say, have) a rather romantic view of religious life, I bought the statue as a reminder of what I then felt was the religious calling I had given up in order to serve the Catholic people of the north. I remember taking that statue to the counter, and when the saleswoman told me that a statue of St Dominic was a rather rare thing, I wondered again, who is this Dominic. I bought the statue anyway because, I told myself, it looks like a monk reading and that was what I intended it to be!

As I progressed in my theological training, I developed a fascination for Aquinas, whom I had heard about but had little opportunity to study in the seminary. As he seemed like ‘forbidden fruit’, I endeavoured to read parts of the Summa theologiae, although I was slightly daunted by the Scholastic language and style. Nevertheless I had no lasting impression that this saintly doctor of the Church was a Dominican.

After three years in the seminary, I left in search of something more fulfilling. One night, sitting in a presbytery in north Yorkshire, and having prayed for weeks for direction from God, I started typing the names of various religious orders into the computer. Racking my memory for every order I could think of, I recalled that day in the sacristy, and typed ‘Dominicans’. As I did so, I thought I probably wasn’t clever enough, but as I started reading the vocations page of the English Dominican site, I actually felt this inner warmth and excitement as I recognised the family to which God had been calling me all these years. And He had left these unexpected little signs along the way, from the first sighting I had of St Catherine’s head-relic while on holiday with my family in Siena to the statue of St Dominic in my room in front of which I used to light candles.

That Easter, I went on retreat to a Benedictine abbey to discern if I was called to share their life, but, while I was there I started reading every Dominican-authored book I could find in the library. It was a period of intense discovery and prayer as I began to wonder if I might actually be called to become a Dominican. Many of Timothy Radcliffe’s letters as Master inspired me and towards the end of my time in the abbey, I felt that God was certainly asking me to try my vocation as a Dominican. As if in confirmation, that evening when I came down to Vespers, in processed a white-habited Dominican along with the Benedictines.

I initiated a series of visits to various Dominican houses and discovered the joy, prayerfulness and intellectual stimulation of our life, and after a year ‘on mission’ as a lay Dominican Volunteer in the Philippines, I entered the novitiate in Cambridge. God still writes with crooked lines, but He also continues to deepen my love for the vocation He has given me among this band of preaching brothers and I thank Him daily for the “grace of a Dominican vocation”.

Br Lawrence Lew is a second-year student.

A Dominican Vocation

Whilst I have always been a Catholic, for most of my life I had great difficulty in seeing myself as the sort of person who could become a priest. I decided my true calling was to be a mathematician, so I duly went off to Cambridge to study mathematics.

It was whilst finishing my PhD in Cambridge that I spent 9 months living in the Dominican lay community. The lay community consisted of about six lay students living alongside six Dominican friars and sharing in their prayer life. I really enjoyed life there, and the thought did occur to me that maybe I could become a Dominican. But I hesitated. There were so many other things I wanted to do. Religious life would be fine if only I could pick and choose the bits I liked and reject the bits I didn’t. So instead I got a job as a software engineer in Somerset. Maybe there I could settle down, buy a house and have a family.

Two years into my job, I was listening to the radio and a journalist was saying that there was a crisis in religious vocations. I wondered whether there really was a crisis. Maybe there was only if people like myself didn’t respond to God’s call. Maybe God was calling me but I just wasn’t listening. So over the next few days I listened. It was only then I really started to understand how much God loved me and how much I loved God. I didn’t need to get married to be a complete person. My faith in Jesus Christ made me a complete person. For the first time in my life, becoming a priest was something I really wanted to do.

At this stage I didn’t know what sort of priest I should become, so I got in touch with Worth Abbey which runs a religious discernment programme. Over the next year, I went to Worth Abbey once a month. This really helped me discover how I could best serve God, and I soon started to look at the Dominicans. It wasn’t just that I enjoyed living with Dominicans, but I really believed in their mission statement – preaching for the salvation of souls. Being a fairly shy person, the thought of being in the Order of Preachers was fairly daunting, but I felt I didn’t have to rely on my own strength – God would give me the strength to do His will.

So here I am, in the Order of Preachers, confident that God will give me the grace to live out my Dominican vocation.

Br. Robert Verrill is a first year student

To Praise, to Bless, to Preach!

This Sunday, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, we would like to share with you a video exploring the gift of a Dominican vocation produced by our brothers in St Joseph's Province, U.S.A.



Their other videos, available here, are also well worth a look.

We ask you please to pray with and for our Order:

Blessed Jordan, worthy successor of St Dominic,
in the early days of the Order,
your example and zeal prompted many men and women
to follow Christ in the white habit of our Holy Father.
As patron of Dominican vocations,
continue to stimulate talented and devoted men and women to consecrate their lives to God. Through your intercession,
lead to the Order of Preachers generous and sacrificing persons, willing to give themselves fervently to the apostolate of truth.
Help them to prepare themselves to be worthy of the grace of a Dominican vocation.
Inspire their hearts to become learned of God,
that with firm determination they might aspire to be
champions of the faith and true lights of the world. Amen.

Dominican Vocation film clip (1964)

Our Dominican brothers in Washington, D.C. have recently put up this video on the Dominican vocation. It is taken from a 1964 film entitled And the world looks at us. Some aspects of the Dominican liturgy and some customs of conventual life have changed since then but our life is still essentially the same: dedicated to preaching for the salvation of souls, a preaching nourished and supported by prayer, contemplation, study and fraternity.



For a contemporary account of the call to Dominican life read Br Bruno's story.

Is God calling you too?

A Dominican Vocation

‘Can I have your neckties…?’ This was my reaction when my father told me that he was to train for the Permanent Diaconate. 1997: I was 19, finishing a degree in Music at Durham; looking forward to Postgraduate work at the Royal Northern College of Music and no thought of becoming a priest or religious. No thought of a vocation of my own.

No thought…? Aye, there’s the rub. There is the tremor of God’s plan that shakes you to the core. There is the manifestation of free cooperation with grace: God’s will, becoming my will. You see, at the time my father spoke to me there was already the unsettled sensation, the unfulfilled desire in the course of my life, something thrown into sharp focus against the oppressive freedom of undergraduate opinion.

This is what discernment is – the realisation of something that has always been there, but only grasped, manifested, revealed when it becomes your choice. In 1997 I was struggling in my lifelong faith, not with its truth but with its defence. I couldn’t explain why: why I believed; why it was true. Knowledge without understanding is just information. And this uncertainty of direction was not solved by career advancement. Despite my benefit from its education, the conservatoire didn’t have an answer to the nagging thought: what do I want to do?

A vocation is grounded in this simple question. Vocation is a choice, a desire that can only be known in retrospect by stepping into it – the grace of God in our will. But this all unfolds only following the decisive first step and everyone’s story is different.

The coincidence of my restlessness and my father’s vocation proved the catalyst. In 2000, while at the RNCM, I read but one page of a book, The Catholic Faith by Richard Conrad OP, a Dominican friar. Its clarity, its reasonableness, its understanding exposed a tradition of thinking about truth and fell into a groove for me. ‘Who are these Dominicans?’ I thought. ‘This is what needs to be done, this study, this cultivation of understanding, this preaching. More people should do this work’. And I turned back to music. But it was too late… The seed of desire had begun to grow and the sense of duty, responsibility and calling gradually unveiled. The Catholic Church needs Preachers and if you can’t get a job done…

So what is the next step? Meeting the brethren: and yet, despite this, I joined the Order(!) But really, the choice of approaching a Conventual Religious Order involves relationship, something I had to experience as part of my discernment. I went to meet the vocations director; attended community, vocation events; lived with the brothers. As one Dominican always advises aspirants – you need to want to do two things in the Order: preach the Gospel; love the brethren. Both need to be learnt.

This is why the route of formation in the Order is so important. The unveiling process – that is, the gradual realisation once the decision is made that it has always been part of you – this process continues in the early years of Dominican life: the novitiate, the years of Simple Profession. Timothy Radcliffe’s experience I have found to be true: you join for some reasons, you stay for others. Both are necessary.

There is another aspect to a vocation: they have to want you too! I was called to preach by the Church and the Order who responded to my aspiration. Inasmuch as God calls you, by making it your wish, He calls you within His Church, and the Church confirms your vocation. Both aspects fulfil the desire.

So, I completed my work as a composer at the RNCM and applied to join the English Province of the Order of Preachers. I began the novitiate in 2002. And the Dominicans encourage your gifts: I still write music and we sing the Office every day. I am Cantor for the Priory of Oxford. So from the time as a novice, to today, Solemnly Professed and progressing towards ordination this year, I have passed nearly five years as an obedient friar, doing what I want to do. I didn’t need those neckties after all.

This article, by Bruno Clifton OP, is published in this week's Catholic Herald

Worthy Successor of St Dominic

"The Rule of the Friars Preachers. And this is their Rule: to live virtuously, to learn, to teach."

These words of Jordan of Saxony reveal a friar whose experience of the Dominican life, as much as his studiousness, informs his conduct in regular observance. Born in Burgberg, Westphalia at the end of the twelfth century, he received the habit from Bl Reginald of Orleans (whose feast we celebrated yesterday) on 12 February 1220, becoming Provincial of Lombardy only one year later and then first successor to St Dominic as Master of the Order not long after. We can only imagine the weight of such a task as the new order lost its founder. And yet, there is only a hint of this apprehension in Jordan’s own writings:

"I had only been in the Order one year and had not struck root as deeply as I ought to have done. I was to be placed over others as their superior, before I had learned to govern my own imperfection."

(Libellus on the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers)

Jordan oversaw the refinement of the Constitutions and began many traditions that are still observed in the Order today: for instance, encyclical letters from the Master to the brethren and the singing of the Salve Regina after Compline. There are many stories and words from and about Blessed Jordan, who guided his brothers and sisters in the footsteps of Dominic for fifteen years and drew over a thousand novices in the Order. He is, for this reason, the patron of Dominican Vocations and after Compline on Wednesdays at Blackfriars we pray to him for "talented and devoted men and women to consecrate their lives to God".

It has been said that "Jordan who, more than any one man after St Dominic himself, created the spirit of the Order, gave to it a joy and an informality in its daily life which are amongst its greatest treasures, for they enshrine and express a whole theology of religious life." This spirit of joy and laughter is shown in just one story from his in the 'Lives of the Brethren', the Vitae Fratrum:

"When on his way home to his convent with a fresh batch of novices, as they were all saying Compline together, one of them fell to laughing, and the rest catching on joined in right heartily. Upon this one of the blessed Master’s companions made a sign for them to be quiet, which only set them off laughing more than ever. When the blessing had been given at the end of Compline, the Master turning to this friar rebuked him sharply: ‘Brother, who made you their master? What right have you to take them to task?' Then addressing the novices very gently, he said, ‘Laugh to your heart’s content, my dearest children, and don’t stop on that man’s account. You have my full leave, and it is only right that you should laugh after breaking from the devil’s thraldom, and bursting the shackles in which he held you fast these many years past. Laugh on, then, and be as merry as you please, my dearest sons.’ They were all very much relieved on hearing him say so…"

Jordan and two of his confreres were killed in a shipwreck on 13 February 1237 returning from the new priory in Acre in the Holy Land. This would have seemed a tragedy for the Order were we not assured of his continued love and intercession from heaven. We thank God for the gift of so worthy a successor to St Dominic. Br Lawrence at Oxford has written this prayer to Jordan:

May Blessed Jordan of Saxony pray for the Order of Preachers today and always, and grant an increase of vocations to the Dominican Family. May he stir up the hearts of young men and women, as once he did on this earth, with a fervour for Truth, to give themselves in its service in the Order of Preachers. May he clothe us, his brothers and sisters, with his zeal and passion for Christ the Word, and may he give us cause joyfully to laugh in his company for ever. Amen.

Blessed Jordan, pray for us.