In this Year of Faith, the friars of the Province of Ireland have begun a series of videos reflecting on the articles of the creed. They have now posted their first video, which focuses on the very first word: Credo–I believe. In the video, Fr. Joseph Dineen O.P., helps to provide this introduction to the very notion of belief and the idea of a Creed. The video can be seen on the Dominicans Interactive website, and also below.
You can see a preview of the entire 13-part series here:
Click below to listen to reflections on the second Sunday of Easter.
In videos and photographs transmitted worldwide, a son of Providence College faculty member Dr. Paul Gondreau is pictured being embraced by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square in Rome following Easter Sunday Mass.
Dominic Gondreau, who is 8 years old and has cerebral palsy, is seen being held and kissed by Pope Francis while smiling and struggling to put his arm around the pontiff in giving his own greeting. The pope was greeting hundreds of thousands of visitors from his pope mobile.
Dr. Gondreau describes this beautiful act of kindness [Click here for his video interview]:
“Small acts with great love,” Mother Teresa was fond of saying. Pope Francis bestowed an extraordinary Easter blessing upon my family when he performed such an act in embracing my son, Dominic, who has cerebral palsy. The embrace occurred when the Pope spied my son while touring the Square, packed with a quarter million pilgrims, in the “pope mobile” after Mass. This tender moment, an encounter of a modern Francis with a modern Dominic (as most know, tradition holds that St. Francis and St. Dominic enjoyed an historic encounter), moved not only my family (we were all moved to tears), not only those in the immediate vicinity (many of whom were also brought to tears by it), not only by thousands who were watching on the big screens in the Square, but by the entire world.
… our culture often looks upon the disabled: as weak, needy individuals who depend so much upon others, and who contribute little, if anything, to those around them.
Pope Francis’ embrace of my son yesterday turns this logic completely on its head and, in its own small yet powerful way, shows once again how the wisdom of the Cross confounds human wisdom. Why is the whole world so moved by images of this embrace? A woman in the Square, moved to tears by the embrace, perhaps answered it best when she to my wife afterward, “You know, your son is here to show people how to love.” To show people how to love. This remark hit my wife as a gentle heaven-sent confirmation of what she has long suspected: that Dominic’s special vocation in the world is to move people to love, to show people how to love. We human beings are made to love, and we depend upon examples to show us how to do this.
But how can a disabled person show us how to love in a way that only a disabled person can? Because the Cross of Christ is sweet and is of a higher order. Christ’s resurrection from the Cross proclaims that the love he offers us, the love that we, in our turn, are to show others, is the REAL reason he endured the Cross in the first place. Our stony hearts are transformed into this Christ-like love, and thereby empowered to change hatred into love, only through the Cross. And no one shares in the Cross more intimately than the disabled. And so the disabled become our models and our inspiration. …
The lesson my disabled son gives stands as a powerful testament to the dignity and infinite value of every human person, especially of those the world deems the weakest and most “useless.” Through their sharing in the “folly” of the Cross, the disabled are, in truth, the most powerful and the most productive among us.
Leaving All Things Behind from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.
This vocations video shows 21 novices being vested with the habit of our Holy Father, Saint Dominic. In addition, you can see the 8 outgoing novices make their first simple profession of vows and several other Friars being interviewed. We are having a vocations boom which is causing a different sort of vocations crisis, we have too many! Of course we can never have too many but we are in a financial crisis trying to training all these men.
“What makes this Friday, good?” The question caught me off guard when it was first posed to me by a Jewish taxi driver here in New York City. For today’s special Good Friday broadcast, Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., joins me in meditating on the Stations of the Cross with added reflections from the Dominican saint, St. Catherine de Ricci, O.P.
“From twelve o’clock until three o’clock there was an unearthly darkness that fell over the land, for nature, in sympathy with its Creator, refused to shed its light upon the crime of deicide. Humankind, having condemned the Light of the World, now lost the cosmic symbol of the Light, the sun. At Bethlehem, where he was born at midnight, the heavens were suddenly filled with light; at Calvary, when he entered into the ignominy of His crucifixion at midday, the heavens were bereaved of light.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Life of Christ)
Good Friday is here and in the following video clip is a rough cut (uncorrected sound, color, and editing) of Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., as he reflects on Fulton Sheen’s “Seven Last Words.” If you have not already done so then please support us in producing our upcoming film about the importance of preaching the Gospel in contemporary America, and of preaching it well. Click here to find out how you can help. There is a sliding scale for donations starting at $5.00 so even a modest gift is greatly appreciated. Your support also works miracles in motivating the Kindly Light film crew by affirming how crucial this project really is. Thank-you in advance for your generosity!
Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., on the Seven Last Words at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral from Kindly Light on Vimeo.
And one more video…
On Saturday March 2nd, the Diocese of Arlington, VA, hosted its annual Men’s Conference. Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and Director of the Thomistic Institute, was one of the presenters. Below is his talk on the “Heart of Redemption” as well as his Q&A session with Dr. Peter Kreeft.
Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., was interviewed for our upcoming film, “Fulton Sheen: The Art of Preaching.” Below is a link to a two and a half minute clip from his interview
Recently, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and Director of the Thomistic Institute, gave two lectures at the Lumen Christi Institute:
How can philosophers speak about God in a reasonable fashion? Does speech about God exceed the capacities of human reason? In responding to these questions, Thomas Aquinas develops a path between the extremes of apophaticism (rejecting the applicability of human language to God) and rationalistic optimism. This lecture will argue for the validity of Thomist doctrine of divine naming and its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic theism and to Heidegger’s critique of “onto-theology” (the theology of being).
“The Careful Rationality of Monotheism: Thomas Aquinas on Analogical Knowledge of God” from The Lumen Christi Institute on Vimeo.
The Second Vatican Council insisted that the Virgin Mary is to be understood in light of the Church, and the Church is to be understood in light of the Virgin Mary. Why should the Church seek to recover today a greater emphasis on Marian devotion? How is the Virgin Mary a model of the faith and spiritual life of Christians? Thomas Aquinas provides the basis for a contemporary interpretation of the Council’s Marian teachings.
“The Virgin Mary as Model of the Church: From Thomas Aquinas to Vatican II” from The Lumen Christi Institute on Vimeo.
