When members of the Lay Dominicans are initially received into the Order, they
have the opportunity to choose a saint’s name (or two) as a patron to whom they
can pray and ask for help. Names can be male or female or in various languages,
and everyone seems to have a different reason for choosing a particular name. We
will share these reasons from our Joy of the Just members over the next few
months.

Petra Paula: Simon Peter the Apostle was hot tempered, often spoke before
thinking, and impulsive—jumping into the water to meet Jesus as He was walking
toward the boat during the storm, but then losing his faith when he realized the
strength of the wind and calling on Jesus to save him. When he says that Jesus is
the Christ, Jesus renames him the “Rock” upon which He would build His church.
Later, Peter denied Jesus those three times before the cock crowed and he wept
bitterly, because though full of faults, he truly loved the Lord.
I always thought Paul was an arrogant misogynist, but a little voice inside my head
kept saying “Petra Paula” while I was considering a name, and so many of our
friars liked him and had taken his name, that I did as well. Though the Pharisee
Saul had persecuted Christians, after a stunning vision, Paul, now chosen by the
Lord, preached the Gospel to the Gentiles. Most of us wouldn’t even be Catholic
let alone a Dominican, without him. In reading more of his writings from that
perspective, it is clear how much he was loved by the many communities he started
during his journeys around the Mediterranean. Both of these sinful men were
changed by the Lord in more than their names, and both were ultimately martyred
in Rome in the mid 60’s.

Pio Benedict: I chose Padre Pio (1887-1968) for prayers answered after a sign was
given to me confirming my prayers were heard during a difficult time of my life. 
He has helped me more since then and I have had the experience of smelling the
flowers.
St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) is considered one of the patron saints of exorcists
(a topic that I have been interested in and studied for years). The initial drawings
for the St. Benedict medal came from an anonymous monk in 1415.  The CSPB
stands for Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti and the other two translate to "May the
Holy Cross be my Light; let not the dragon be my guide." The other side means
"Begone Satan, do not suggest to me your vanities.  What you offer me is evil;
drink your own poison."  I wear rings of both of these great saints at all times to
remind me of their gifts and holiness. 

Paul: I chose Paul as my religious name because I wanted to pay homage to St.
Paul of the Cross (1694-1775). He was the Saint I chose for my confirmation back
in 1989. I had been looking in a book trying to decide on a saint for confirmation
and the book said his feast day was on my birthday. Turns out the book was
wrong, but I’m still happy with my choice. These days, when people see Brother
Paul, they automatically think of St. Paul the author of a third of the New
Testament, and I have more and more leaned towards him as my religious
namesake, but I can keep them both.

Raymond de Pennafort (1175-1275): Raymond was the third Master of the Order.
He was much older when he joined than most though he lived the other half of his
life as a Dominican. He had been a noted professor of canon law and his joining
brought many other notables behind him. In his humility, he worked quietly along
with the other novices, some of whom had been his students. He put the
Dominican Constitutions into permanent form and was elected Master after the
death of Jordan of Saxony. Due to illness, he resigned from that position after only
two years but worked quietly in the Order for the next thirty years. I also chose
him because my father’s name was Raymond.

Mary Magdalene: Mary Magdalene was a woman transformed through her
interaction with Jesus: healed and loved.  She followed more closely than even
some of Jesus' most ardent apostles.  She was there at the Crucifixion. 
Her love was greater than her fear. Jesus showed Himself to her first after his
resurrection and sent her to tell the others so she is the Apostle to the Apostles.

                                                                                                    ​By: Br. Dismas Bartolo Baume

With the exceptions of the Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection of Our Lord, the Wedding at Cana is the
first Gospel story I distinctly recall learning about as a child. I remember the mild look of shock on my
mother’s face when I came home from kindergarten and told her that it is important to serve good wine before people are drunk so they can appreciate it and to serve cheap wine when they are too drunk to care. Perhaps not exactly the lesson Sr. Helen intended to teach me that day – but practical,
nonetheless.

John the Evangelist presents the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana as the first sign of
Our Lord’s Divinity. Childhood misunderstandings aside, I have always been fascinated with this miracle because John packs so much into these eleven verses. We see the Mother of Our Lord interceding in her compassion (Jn 2:3). We see Our Lord imply this miracle is an unmerited grace (Jn 2:4). We see His Mother direct us to Our Lord (Jn 2:5). We also see allusions to the Crucifixion (His hour), the Eucharist (the wine of the new covenant), Final Judgment (the wedding feast of the Lamb), and an illustration of the importance of preaching all in just eleven verses.

The six stone jars of water, however, particularly fascinate me. Our Lord – the Incarnate Word of God,
through whom all things came to be (Jn 1:3) – asks the servers to fill these jars with water. All of creation came into existence ex nihilo through Him, but He asks them to fill the jars. He has the power to fill the jars as much as He has the power to change water to wine. Yet He asks the servers to work. When Our Lord tells them to fill the jars, the servers “filled them to the brim” (Jn 2:7). They complete the work fully. Their work isn’t half-hearted or mediocre. They are not lukewarm in their obedience.

These servers are rewarded in their obedience – they become witnesses of the miracle (Jn 2:9). They
know they drew water from the jars but hear the headwaiter celebrate the quality of the wine. To most
of the wedding guests, the miracle remains hidden. They drink the wine assuming their host provided it. While the miracle reveals Our Lord’s divine power, it is the work of John in preaching it through his
Gospel that reveals divine truth because “His disciples began to believe” (Jn 2:11). The miracle becomes a sign once preached.

With His first miracle, Our Lord teaches us that Grace is unmerited and freely given but we are still
expected to do work. His Grace provides for us, but we must prepare ourselves to receive it. For it to be fruitful and refreshing in our lives, we must cooperate with Grace. We must avoid lukewarm, mediocre, or half-hearted cooperation. Perhaps a way to cooperate fully with Grace is to contemplate His Gospel and pass on the fruits of that contemplation.

                                                                               by Br. John Gregory Ignatius
​







​With Lent approaching, we are reminded of its traditional pillars of prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving. While we generally should intensify our prayer and almsgiving this season, there
is nothing strictly forcing us to do this. We are, however, compelled to fast on Ash Wednesday
and Good Friday, and to abstain from meat on Fridays. Since we will be fasting, it will be good
to consider how to fast well, that is, how we might fast in spirit as well as in body. To this end,
I will be using Saint Ephrem’s Hymns on the Fast as a guide for us.

Ephrem draws a distinction between different ways of fasting, writing that “[the
scriptures] set apart a fast from a fast.” 1 This does not mean that there are necessarily
external differences in fasting, but that it is the spirit in which one fasts that makes this
distinction. Fasting helps to empty a person, but we who fast need to make sure to be filled
with God, else our fasting will be harmful. How might our fasts be filled with harm? “[O]ur
prayer and fasting [the devil] soils with his envy that our offering be shameful.” 2 Temptation
comes to suggest evils to us in order that we might become more wicked through our lack,
“for someone he sees abstaining from food, he sates him with anger.” 3 Ephrem seems to
consider this as not fasting, giving us an image of “fasters who instead of food consumed a
man’s flesh.” 4
​
So how do we actually fast in spirit? I think there are two things to consider. The first is
already suggested by Ephrem when he mentioned that the evil one seeks to undermine our
prayer and fasting. We should make sure to join prayer with our fast that we might rely on
God’s grace. Second, Ephrem says explicitly that God “gave us living speech to ruminate.” 5

1 Ephrem, Songs for the Fast and Pascha, trans. Joshua Falconer, Blake Hartung, and J. Edward Walters
(The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 56. On the Holy Fast 1.7.
2 Ibid, 57. 1.9.
3 Ibid, 58. 1.10.
4 Ibid, 68. 3.5.

Ephrem would suggest that we empty ourselves of food and fill our minds and hearts with the
Scriptures, thereby having holy thoughts to consecrate our actions.

​                                                                                                by Sr. Mary Magdalene


I recently read a post by a Catholic writer who referred to a media event he had watched as having had a “Jesus veneer.”  His meaning did not escape me, but the phrase stuck with me and demanded a closer, and perhaps deeper, interpretation.

First off, when I think of “veneer,” I immediately go to an image of wood furniture.  A veneer is a very thin layer of more expensive or precious wood overlaid onto a less expensive, poorer quality wood substrate such as plywood or even particle board.  It was designed so that a piece of furniture could look nice without costing too much.

With regard to the human person, I think it is sometimes easier to put on a surface layer of piety and love of the Lord rather than to give any real attention to what resides in our thoughts, words, actions, the recesses of our hearts or even more so, the cost of being a follower.  

Jesus doesn’t just simply ask us to wear him on the surface, but rather to be transformed into his likeness from the inside!
​
                                 Luke 11:39 So the Lord said to him, "Now then, you 
                                Pharisees clean the outside of your cup and plate,
                                but inside you are full of violence and evil.

                               Eze 36:26 A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I 
                               will put within you; and I will remove from your body the 
                               heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.


This Lent might be a good time to look below the surface of our own spiritual lives. (Not the spiritual lives of others, but of our own!)  What lies under the surface?  Is Jesus simply a veneer we show the world in order to portray something more beautiful than our lives and our personal affections?  Do we speak of Jesus without speaking like Jesus?

And what about the cost?  While it takes a certain boldness to speak of Jesus, it takes real courage to allow the Lord of Love access to the deepest places within the human heart and soul; to be transformed into His likeness.

But have no fear!  The One who transformed the Wood of the Cross into a precious piece of love-soaked salvation can certainly reach beyond our surface veneer and transform what is of poor quality into something of great value.

​Sr. Catherine Marie Michael


I recently watched the the film, Triumph of the Heart, about St. Maximilian Kolbe’s experience
in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Because a prisoner escaped, other prisoners are chosen
to go into solitary confinement without food, and Fr. Kolbe takes the place of a man who has a
family. Through his faith in God he is given, throughout the action of the film, the grace to rest in
the peace of Christ and persevere in love.

In the camp, the Nazi guards determine the conditions of their lives and threaten to control how
they react and how they view themselves, as if it was an experiment. Fr. Kolbe encourages his
cellmates to pass the time singing songs that remind them of their heritage and identity, which
further gives those who hear them, courage in knowing that they are not alone in the struggle to
not be defined by their captors who perceive them as no better than beasts. It becomes
understood that other prisoners who were confined in the cell before them had gone insane, and
when their bodies were removed they had bite marks which showed that they bit one another
out of starvation. It would seem that the powerful have supreme authority over those whom they
deem less valuable. Power gives them the authority to determine the circumstances of what is
true, without the need to seek Truth, the overarching meaning of life, as long as they are able to
rule. In their comfort they have the luxury of indifference (cf. C.S.Lewis). Like Pilate during
Christ’s Passion, asking “What is truth?” as the God-Man stands before him, there is a clash
between what is asserted to be true by worldly men and the Creator who is the Source and
Author of the Truth about all that exists, the authoritative Word (John 18:38).

Fr. Kolbe knows the reality of heaven because he cannot deny an encounter he had with Mary,
the Mother of God, and he adheres to that reality through prayer, asking for Mary’s intercession
to give him the words needed to convert his cell-mates’ hearts. The prisoners with their own
stories and personalities eventually accept Fr. Kolbe’s offer of hearing their confessions. One of
the prisoners confesses that he told a woman who ended up to be a spy, the names of leaders
subversive to the Third Reich, and that he included Fr. Kolbe’s name on the list. In this moment
of budding tension it seems that Fr. Kolbe could become angry with the man, but he realizes
that it was God’s will that he serve Him by being there, that he was meant to be there for them,
so he is able to personally forgive and to act in persona Christi, absolving their sins.

By His authority to forgive sins, Christ exercises the might of Divine Authority and extends to us
His generous love and mercy. Although the fallen world’s insanity closes in on them, Fr. Kolbe
ministers to his cellmates so that they might rely on the peace that only Christ can give and be
resolute in their shared struggle out of exile, a crucible marked by cruelty and suffering. Fr.
Kolbe prompts them to finish the race well, to accept and know Christ as Savior, to trust that He
has ultimate authority and to follow Him, the Shepherd of Souls. Given the gift of life entrusted
to them, they are offered time to seek and love God and to further choose to live in this fallen
world in obedience to God’s laws, so that their final actions with the help of God’s grace,
preserve the dignity and original beauty of their souls (cf. CCC 1701). They seem to be
enlightened with a flash of understanding, that God created each person to belong in His love
and for a divine purpose that exceeds fallen man’s limitations, not for insanity, despair, and
death, and that each of their lives matters to God (cf. Mark 12:17; May, Ch 6). They struggle to
not to be defined by despair, so that in heaven they may share the joy of the victory of life over
death that Christ accomplished so that all might be saved.

Fr. Kolbe clings to the Truth of the Catholic faith. Truth however, is not abstract. Truth is a
Person and by abiding in Truth we can find peace and sanity no matter what suffering and
insanity exists in the shadow of death (cf. Luke 1:68-79; Wiley, p. 45). We find rest in the Prince
of Peace who, in humility took on our human nature to elevate us through participation in His
divine nature, giving us His very self (2Peter 1:4). By His grace we are healed with renewed
minds in Christ (Rom 12: 2). We enter into the life of grace which is participation in God’s very
life and are given refuge in His will which is the way of peace, no longer slaves to sin and death,
but sons and daughters of God, free to inherit eternal life.


Triumph of the Heart, The Passion of St. Maximilian Kolbe was written and directed by Anthony
D’Ambrosio. Thank you to The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore for
hosting the screening of the film in September 2025. https://www.triumphoftheheart.com/

References:
Lewis, C.S., The Screwtape Letters, ISBN 0006280609.
May, William, An Introduction to Moral Theology, 2nd edition, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Div, 2003,
Ch. 6.
Sheed, Frank, Theology and Sanity, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1993.
Wiley, P. et al, The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis, Ignatius Press, San
Francisco, 2008, Ch 3, pp. 45-46, Doctrine is personal.
CCC = Catechism of the Catholic Church, ISBN 0-385-50819-0.