by Brother Dominicus




Zena Hitz, A Philosopher Looks at, The Religious Life,
Cambridge, University Press, 2023.


​Zena Hitz has written two sympathetic little books. One is an ode to
thinking for thinking for thinking's sake, called Lost in Thought, The Hidden Pleasures
of an Intellectual Life. A pleasant somewhat meandering, questioning book.
Recently she published  A Philosopher Looks at The Religious Life, a lovely
and slightly more focused book.

Hitz is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Hers is a story of a
convert to Catholicism. After graduating from St. John’s, she found her way
to the university of Cambridge and a Ph.D. program in classical studies at
Princeton. She was on her way to building a comfortable academic career
when she came to a fork in the road and decided to take the one less
traveled by. Partly because of a gnawing doubt that a successful career in
academe was all there is to life, she explored whether a religious vocation
was her destiny. She decided to find out in the Madonna House in Canada.
Ultimately, she decided that her calling was to return to the academic life of
study, writing, and teaching, so after a couple of years up north, she
returned to St. John’s as a professor.

As is inherent to the nature of her philosophical approach, she does
not get lost in too many historical details but addresses more general
themes. The fundamental question she touches on is why we turn to God
and seek to lead a religious life - in the broad sense of the word - at all. She
invites us to start thinking about this through a question: Is there anything
worse than death? Well, possibly yes. Imagine that we are the last human
generation on earth. We can no longer procreate. We are truly the last
people on earth. After the last person has died, our human future is
annihilated and vanishes. All the "projects in which we have concretely
placed our future" have turned to dust. 

What is worse, us dying or having nothing to do as humans anymore
other than wait for our death? No more raising of children, no more growing
food, no more teaching of the faith, no more building houses, no more
writing books, no more teaching your son how to throw a ball? The
poignancy of this thought experiment flows from the universality of it. On an
individual level, after all, each one of us will be faced with the severe
objective reality that we will have to abandon all our earthly attachments.
We die. The reality of our life is, as Hitz remarks through the words of sister
Martha, "What you don't give up, life takes from you."

Of course, human activities and accomplishments are one thing.
Human love is another. The severe objectivity of our lives also requires that
we have to accept that "love requires the projected acceptance of
debilitating grief" the sorrow of physical and mental suffering, loss and
absence. Now out of the recognition of the transience of things and people,
the question arises whether all this drains ordinary life of its value. Vanity of
vanities, everything is vanity.

It is entirely possible to argue that the transience of things, the
inevitability of death, does not drain ordinary life of its meaning. Hitz quotes
the philosopher Thomas Nagel who has famously argued that if something
matters, it is of no import how long it lasts. Life only appears meaningless
because we humans endlessly debate its meaning. She formulates an
intriguing response to this proposition:

Life is pointless and absurd not because we can always seek a
further justification, but only when we deeply care about things
we cannot have. The absurdity that matters is when our
passions for the unattainable drive us to approach life with the
wrong tools, like emptying a lake with a sieve. Whether this is
true can only be settled by looking at what human beings care
deeply about, asking if they can have it, and, if not, how the
desire for it might be managed.

What do people want? Most people, at least those who have
experienced real love of any kind, want that love to last. They do not want a
skill like playing the violin to vanish. They do not want their family name to
die out. They do not want to be away or permanently separated from their
beloved. So is death the worst thing? On the one hand, experiences,
accomplishments, and relationships would lose their poignancy if we did
not die. On the other hand, it is true that the possibility of evaporation of all
this "would not be poignant at all if we did not long for them to last, even
unto the end of time".  So in a certain sense, our confrontation with the
severity of the final objectivity of reality causes sadness. However, we also
recognize in ourselves a desire for joy. A joy that lasts. Because of this,
one of the core questions Christians face is whether there is anything that
can satisfy this human desire for joy outside time. What are the right tools
to satisfy that desire?

The answer, if it can be found, seems to me cannot be merely
discovered through theoretical speculation. Christianity, in all its complexity,
ultimately comes down to the striking thesis that fundamental reality is
irreducible love in a welcoming relationship, most fundamentally, in
abandonment to the will of Him Who calls us into relation with Him and his
creation. Love and joy seem connected. We Christians have struggled to
shape this relationship from the apostles' days and the early church
onwards. One distinct way is in the form of religious communities, their
specific disciplines and wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Hitz has
many insightful things to say about what the experience and reflection on
religious life can teach all of us who try to shape our lives in the mold of
Christ. All of this makes her book very much worth the time to read it.

                                                     Brother Stella Maris


Surfing is one of the many forms of holy leisure that draws us into a deeper love of God. It inculcates a sense of wonder when you see the seemingly endless sea before you and the myriad of mysterious creatures that call it home. From the flocks of pelicans that glide just across the surface of the waves to the dolphins who surprise you with their acrobatic playfulness- all this occurring as the shades of color reflecting from the water’s surface gradually change from blues and greens to peach, violet, and amber with the rising and setting of the sun. The breath of God that hovered over the watery chaos at the beginning of creation and formed the cosmos is ultimately the source of the solar energy that causes wind, which causes the waves. The most remarkable moment is when one realizes that God is inviting you to not only observe the beauty before you, but to enter it- as if He is saying “Go my child, play in the mystery of my creation.” Surfing a wave is an opportunity to humbly enter harmony with the creative Word, and if you try to control it, you will quickly learn the taste of sand. ​

                                                    by Brother Thomas Aquinas

​“I am the vine, and my Father is the vine
grower. He takes away every branch in me
that does not bear fruit, and every one that
does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.”
— Jn 15:1-2

                                                                                                  ​
Thus begins one of the most well-known passages of the Gospels. Full of imagery and
metaphor, there are numerous places from which to draw great wisdom and insight.
One detail that perhaps receives less than its share of attention is the choice to describe
the Father’s activity as pruning the branches. There are many parables that incorporate
plants in some fashion, such as the barren fig tree, which is tended and fertilized so that
it may produce fruit in the future. What, then, are we to learn from the image of being
pruned?

In the horticultural sense, to prune a tree or other plant is to cut away parts that are
diseased, decaying, or dead. This naturally involves careful application of sharp tools
and leaves the plant with an open wound that needs time to heal. A good gardener also
knows that it is preferable to make small cuts to young plants, rather than waiting until
the situation gets out of hand. If a tree left to its own devices grows into a malformed
mess of poorly placed branches, it may reach a state in which the only means of
preserving it is to remove a substantial portion of the plant.

In the spiritual sense, the Father prunes each of us by removing those parts of our lives
or aspects of our behavior in which we are diseased. Small habits, if left untended, can
develop into serious character flaws. Analogously, though venial sin does not destroy
sanctifying grace in the soul, it “disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin” (CCC
1863) and bring spiritual death upon ourselves. Yet, even if we manage to avoid the
graver matters, it would be foolish to remain complacent in venially sinful behavior. All
sin, regardless of severity, works against the flourishing God desires for each of us.
We are called not to mediocrity but rather to perfection. Indeed, the Father prunes us
not to achieve mere survival but to cultivate growth that allows us to bear fruit. This is a
painful process, as we must learn to let go of what holds us back from our full spiritual
potential.

In some cases, we may need to renounce true goods in favor of something else to
which God is calling us as individuals. To stretch the analogy a bit: wine and figs are
both valuable, but a fig tree is not meant to produce grapes. Unlike the vine or fig tree,
which are passive to the gardener’s diligent care, we can choose either to cooperate
with or to resist God’s work in our lives. Ultimately, each of us must accept the Father’s
pruning if we desire to flourish as the “plants” He has made us to be.

The Heart
By Br. Stella Maris

The heart is a sign of life and love. When we see a heartbeat on
a sonogram, we are joyful. It is the heart that pumps lifeblood through
our bodies. The heart is also a sign of love. We often replace the word love
with a heart in our messages when we express our love. We feel a certain
warmness of heart when we think about those we love, whether it’s our
family, friends, spouse, or God and His goodness. This month of June we
glory in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. His Sacred Heart is also a sign of life
and love, divine life and divine love. Divine life because through pouring out
His blood in His Passion we are freely given grace, which is a share in the
divine life. A sign of divine love, a love ceaselessly pursuing us, His
beloved, to free us from our slavery to disordered desires, selfishness, and
death. When we receive the Eucharist, the same body, blood, soul, and
divinity that animates the Sacred Heart of Jesus, our hearts
are transformed. Let us then go forth into the world and seek out
those whose hearts are hardened by vice or suffering, with only a flicker of
life left in their heart and invite them to be transformed by the overflowing
measure of grace poured out for them by the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

By a “Dominican in Spirit”
​








I was meditating on the stations of the cross this weekend and
on the 5th station I thought how everyone wants to have the tree
of life, from Eden, to nourish them but when we find out that the 
tree of life is actually the cross we run from it. 
 
Simon wanted anything else but to be dragged into the passion
story by carrying Christ's cross. He had children, he didn't live
there, he had just come into the city, he wasn't at the condemnation,
didn't know who was in need of his help, didn't want to be beaten 
or die (who would care for his children - legit concerns) and was 
not part of the story until that moment. He just happened to be 
there and was presented with the tree of life which he did not 
recognize & ordered to help a man whom he did not recognize & 
tried to reject the task.
 
He likely spent the rest of his life thanking God for dragging him
into that service, probably kicking and screaming (like the rest of us).
Luke tells us in Acts that his children were given great honor/respect
in the early church for their father's actions.
 
We are so stupid, evil and self-willed. It is a wonder that such a Love
exists that would willingly suffer and die for us ungrateful, unwilling,
selfish, conniving bastards (it is somewhat easy to see how many can
doubt such a love exists)....And yet such Love does exist and His
Name, JESUS CHRIST, is above all other names. A name at which, some
day, every knee of every creature will bend in homage, in heaven, on 
earth and under the Earth.
 
Glory be to God that He chose us to receive His gifts of copious grace.
May He never stop striving to make us worthy of this great gift, despite
our (on my part at least) unwilling stubbornness.
 
I do not deserve His love, my wife, my family, my abilities, my wealth
(more than some less than others), my experiences, my health, my
senses, my faith or for that matter your friendship, yet, miraculously 
I have them; despite all of my past betrayals. God grant that I keep this 
in mind every day for the rest of my life.

​