Fr. Jacob, what initially attracted you to the Order of Preachers, and what ultimately led you to stay?
I remember when I wrote the obligatory “autobiography” for my application to the Order that I used the image of Francis Thompson’s “hound of heaven” yapping at my feet. I had been a diocesan seminarian during the Second Vatican Council, though I didn’t continue seminary studies after college. Instead, I threw myself into the world where “the action was.” In the eclectic menageries of New Age spiritualities and the turbulence of the late sixties and seventies, I continued a search for meaning and truth, in the highways, byways, and back alleys of Chicago, Boston, and New York City.
When the “reversion” to Christ as the only Way, Truth, and Life hit me, my first reaction was to join a newfound monastic community in Providence, Rhode Island. With all the fervor of a new community, we strove to live an intense, enclosed, monastic life. None of us were priests, however, and we had the privilege of having Dominican Fathers from Providence College come to our “monastery” for daily Mass. Three of us began summer school and evening classes at Providence College towards the Master’s Degree in Theology, in lieu of the priesthood. I think the seed of my Dominican vocation was planted there by the Dominican Fathers at PC, but I didn’t know it at that point. Our small community eventually ended, and three of us entered at the sponsoring Cistercian Abbey in the Province of Quebec. We were apple growers (and pickers), but after four years of Dominican teaching, I came to see that the “orchard” I was longing for was prayer and study, preaching and teaching Christ, instead of “picking apples.” I came to see that that “dog” yapping at my feet all these years had a torch in its mouth and belonged to St. Dominic.
I always loved the Order for its blend of monastic and active lives for the sake of preaching for the salvation of souls. It’s the “contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere” thing: sharing with others the fruit of one’s contemplation. I think that’s what led me to the Dominicans and keeps me here.
Eventually, you served as a chaplain at a number of the monasteries of cloistered nuns in our Order. What were some of the greatest blessings and challenges for you in that position?
In my early priesthood I served as a hospital chaplain, itinerant preacher, and pastor in one of our parishes. From there I was sent temporarily as chaplain to cloistered nuns. My own love for and dabbling in monastic life made it an easy fit, as well as a great blessing, to share in the nuns’ life of prayer, silence, and especially their liturgy. A challenge for any chaplain serving the same “congregation” daily is keeping one’s homilies fresh, interesting, inspiring, and meaningful for the group. The advantage is that one can also develop a liturgical or seasonal journey with the nuns through the Scriptures of the day or season. To preach to a congregation of cloistered nuns—who love the Lord, love His Word, love His Church, and who pray that Word throughout the day, every day—is a challenge (and a blessing!).
One particular “blessing” for me (and I hope for the nuns!) was the creation of Sr. Mary Baruch. She was a fictitious nun who had lived in this very monastery I was chaplain for and who often wrote her reflections in a journal, which I would quote from. A visiting sister, who was present at one of these homilies, not knowing Sr. Mary Baruch was made-up, was so moved by what she had written in her journal that after Mass she went out to the monastery cemetery to pray at Sr. Mary Baruch’s grave. Not finding it, she eventually went back in and asked: “Where is Sr. Mary Baruch’s grave?” The nuns got a great laugh over her little misadventure. Sr. Mary Baruch still makes occasional appearances in my homilies!
Our nuns held a very special place in Saint Dominic’s initial vision, praying for the success of the friars’ preaching, as well as providing a viable way for women to devote their lives to God. How do you see their offerings and sacrifices supporting and supplementing the work of the Order today?
I would hope every friar comes to know the nuns and visits them, not just to offer conferences, retreats, or classes, but to be spiritually renewed by their prayer and silence, as well as their joy and living reminder to us all of the “one thing necessary.” They are still as vitally needed today as in St. Dominic’s vision, perhaps even more, as St. Dominic could never have envisioned the life and culture of the 21st century. As many young men seem to be coming to the Order to embrace a radical kind of life, in the face of the vacuous secularism and culture of death that surrounds us, so the enclosed life, if authentically lived, can be a real and radical kind of life for young women who have come to love the Lord and His Mystical Body, the Church. To quote our Carmelite cousin, “I found my vocation is to be love at the heart of my Mother, the Church” (St. Therese). Only love can make any sense of the cloistered life, and in truth, only love makes sense of our life as Friar Preachers—we need the nuns to remind us of that.
More recently, you spent some time as a chaplain to our Dominican Sisters at Hawthorne. How do the needs of a community of active sisters differ from a community of contemplative nuns?
After twelve years of being chaplain to the cloistered nuns, I became chaplain to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. While it was a very different setting, the Sisters are also women of deep prayer, who live a really authentic religious life, and whose apostolate is quite unique: caring, totally free of charge, for those dying with cancer. The life at Rosary Hill, their Motherhouse in Hawthorne, New York, is intense, but ever so peaceful. One would think it would be depressing and gloomy to be with the dying; on the contrary, the Home was full of joy, lots of laughter, and, yes, at times, lots of tears, but surrounded by the peace, love, and fervor of the Sisters and a dedicated lay staff. Advent in Rosary Hill’s chapel and convent is kept till the day before Christmas, but the Home where the residents live was bursting with Christmas from early December. Every room has its own unique tree, crèche, and decorations. And this is true for all the religious and secular holidays. Being chaplain was a blessing and also a challenge to keep the “Dominican balance” between prayer and apostolate, community and patients, living and dying. Like the cloistered nuns, the Hawthorne Sisters’ life was the liturgy lived out in a real Paschal Way for themselves and all who came through their doors.
As you mentioned, you were able to spend a lot of time with terminally ill cancer patients while you were serving the Sisters at Hawthorne. How has that experience affected your life as a Dominican friar?
A very interesting question, the answer to which I am still sorting out in my thoughts and prayers. For anyone living among the dying day after day, it will have an effect on one. You ask how it has affected my life as a Dominican. As you know, whenever Dominicans pray the Divine Office in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, we pray first St. Thomas Aquinas’ Magnificat antiphon he composed for Corpus Christi: O Sacred Banquet…the soul is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given to us. As Dominicans we preach much about the life of grace. We teach that grace builds on nature; that the sacraments are all efficacious signs which give grace; that to live the intimate Divine life of the Blessed Trinity is sanctifying grace, and truly heaven on earth, heaven present within our souls. To be present when people pass from this world to eternal life is truly a privileged moment.
I would often think of St. Thomas’ antiphon, especially if the dying person had been a faithful Catholic. The pledge of future glory is a breath, a heartbeat, away. And for many, of all faiths or no faith, one sees miracles of grace touch people’s souls when it all comes down to this moment. I’ve also realized that all our study, our prayer, our striving to live a life of virtue with others in community, that it all comes down to this moment. Dominicans intuitively know how blessed and precious every human life is. And being with people who were dying or close to death, I realized, in a way no homily or study ever taught, that every life is unique and precious. Every human being has a story, a whole history. Many surround themselves with old photos of when they were young or newly married, or school pictures of their children and grandchildren. Death has a way of putting life into a different focus, and as Dominicans we can put the focus on the ultimate Happiness for Whom, and through Whom, and in Whom we are created. Dominicans preach in many ways: sometimes we use words, and sometimes we hold a hand and smile and assure one who is dying that God loves them. The Sisters preach that loud and clear.
Jan Davidszoon de Heem — Eucharist in Fruit Wreath
Finally, in his letter to religious on the Year of Consecrated Life, Pope Francis has urged us to “embrace the future with [a] hope…[that is] not based on statistics or accomplishments, but on the one in whom we have put our trust” (3). What hope do you have for yourself, our province, and our Order, as religious who are called to witness to the Gospel in a world that seems to become ever harder to relate to?
This question could fill up a whole edition of Dominicana! The men coming to the Order today are children of Vatican II, as well as children of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. We who were children of Pius XII have a treasure of good to pass on, along with the lived experience of the Faith, which will soon be forgotten. And the Order, like the Faith, is entrusted into the minds and hearts and hands of the next generation who will do what the Church has done since the very beginning: preach Christ and Him Crucified, Risen, and sending His Spirit into our hearts. I see it in the eyes and voices of our young Brothers. I hear it in their newly spoken homilies and am awestruck at what the Lord is doing. I have great hope for the future of the Order and for the preaching of the Gospel which is coming and will continue to come from the Province of St. Joseph.
Young Dominican friars are indeed facing a world I didn’t know when I was their age. The technological revolution will give a whole new spin to our “preaching,” but I have great hope that the Dominicans are up to the task and will use it all for the salvation of souls. The young Brothers love the traditions of the Order, the chant, and especially the solid realism of St. Thomas’ theology. Perhaps the future is scarier, certainly more precarious, secular, and pagan than we can even imagine, but our hope is in the Lord. Isn’t it something that for nearly eight hundred years Dominicans have entrusted their lives each night to the care of the Mother of God, Our Life, Our Sweetness, and Our Hope? The older we get, the more we realize just how much we are poor banished children of Eve; and after this our exile, it will be the Mother of the Lord, whose scapular we wear, who will show unto us the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus. That was the early friars’ prayer and hope and, please God, is mine and ours today.
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Dominicana Journal, Summer 2015, Vol LVIII, No. 1, CLICK HERE.
