DOMINICAN ORDER

Sep 09 2024

Meet the Authors: Book Signing at the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage

During the lunch break on September 28th, make sure to visit the bookstore for an exclusive book signing event as part of the second annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage. This is your chance to meet several Dominican friars and have their books signed personally. Don’t miss out—books will also be available for purchase, so you can add these Dominican written works to your shelf.

Meet the Authors

Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Father James Dominic Brent, O.P., is a Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph. Born and raised in Michigan, he completed his doctorate in Philosophy from St. Louis University and licentiate in Theology from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC where he now teaches. He frequently lectures for the Thomistic Institute and Aquinas 101. Fr. Brent’s new podcast Contemplata is born from years of traveling the world lecturing, preaching retreats, and meeting increasingly more people who hunger to know God more deeply in contemplative prayer. He is the author of The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity (Pauline Books, 2023). Fr. Brent was the homilist at last year’s Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage.

Fr. Patrick Briscoe, O.P.
Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, O.P., was ordained to the priesthood in 2016. He is currently the editor of Our Sunday Visitor. A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fr. Patrick joined the Order of Preachers after graduating from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, where he studied philosophy and French. In previous assignments, Fr. Patrick has served as a parish priest and college chaplain. He is the author, with his Dominican brother Fr. Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk, O.P., of St. Dominic’s Way of Life: A Path to Knowing and Loving God (Our Sunday Visitor, 2021), and the OSV seasonal devotional My Daily Visitor. Fr. Patrick co-hosts the Godsplaining podcast.

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.
From Pennsylvania, Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH. He previously served as the Assistant Director of Campus Outreach for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC, and associate pastor of St. Louis Bertrand Catholic Church in Louisville, KY where he also taught at Bellarmine University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of dogmatic theology at the Dominican House of Studies and an Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He is a contributor on the Pints with Aquinas show, a co-host of Godsplaining and the Catholic Classics podcast. Fr. Gregory is the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly (Our Sunday Visitor, 2022) and co-author with Matt Fradd of Marian Consecration With Aquinas: A Nine Day Path for Growing Closer to the Mother of God (TAN Books, 2020). Fr. Gregory was the principal preacher at last year’s Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in Rome. He is the author of various books and articles including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2011), The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Exodus (Brazos Press, 2016), The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Catholic University Press, 2017), and The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Catholic University Press, 2022). He is co-editor of the journal Nova et Vetera, a Distinguished Scholar of the McDonald Agape Foundation, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Dec 15 2022

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange on the Rosary

From The Mother of the Savior and Our Interior Life

The French Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou- Lagrange, O.P., was a leading 20th Century Thomist who directed the doctoral dissertation of the future Pope St. John Paul II. His thought and piety remain influential throughout the Dominican Order and the Church.

The Rosary is a Credo: not an abstract one, but one concretized in the life of Jesus Who came down to us from the Father and Who ascended to bring us back with Himself to the Father. It is the whole of Christian dogma in all its splendor and elevation, brought to us that we may fill our minds with it, that we may relish it and nourish our souls with it.

This makes the Rosary a true school of contemplation. Early theologians have compared the movement of the soul in contemplation to the spiral in which certain birds—the swallow, for example—move when they wish to attain to a great height. The joyful mysteries lead to the Passion, and the Passion to the door of heaven. The Rosary well understood is, therefore, a very elevated form of prayer which makes the whole of dogma accessible to all.

It takes us from the midst of our too human interests and joys and makes us think of those which center on the coming of the Savior. It takes us from our meaningless fears, from the sufferings we bear so badly, and reminds us of how much Jesus has suffered for love of us and teaches us to follow Him by bearing the cross which divine providence has sent us to purify us. It takes us finally from our earthly hopes and ambitions and makes us think of the true object of Christian hope—eternal life and the graces necessary to arrive there.

The Rosary is more than a prayer of petition. It is a prayer of adoration inspired by the thought of the Incarnate God, a prayer of reparation in memory of the Passion of Our Savior, a prayer of thanksgiving that the glorious mysteries continue to reproduce themselves in the uninterrupted entry of the elect into glory.

Dec 15 2022

God Never Lets Us Go

By Father Pius Pietrzyk, O.P.

On May 23rd, 2008, I was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ. I like to think that my Nana—my Irish grandmother—is having a great laugh right now. She always hoped that I would become a priest. I thought about it a great deal when I was in high school. I even decided I would become a priest, in that half-hearted way teenagers make any long-term decision. But like so many young people, the lure of ambition and the prestige of the world pulled me away from the Church. A career in the law became my goal, and God took a back seat, and I was content to keep Him there.

But, try as we might, God never lets us go. “Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? … If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast” (Psalm 139). I think the same can be said of grandmothers.

It was a great sadness to me when my Nana died. It was April 30th, weeks before my college graduation—and I was to be the first of her grandchildren to graduate from college. But she left me something very valuable; she left me her Rosary. It was not valuable in the way the world measures value, but only so in the way a grandson values the keepsake of a dearly missed grandparent.

It was valuable in another way, too. That Rosary was priceless in that it was like a cord passed from God through my Nana’s hands to me. Years later, after I did graduate from law school, as I began to embark on a promising career in a prestigious Chicago law firm, I discovered that Rosary again. But this time, I began to pray it.

As I did, God gave a firm tug on that cord, and slowly brought me back to Him. It was in that time of prayer that I discovered that as happy as I was being a lawyer, the Lord wanted for me an even greater happiness. And so, at the dawn of my career, I left all the things the world told me were valuable, to serve God in his Church.

While all of this is ultimately attributable to God’s grace, I think my Nana’s prayers were a part of it, too. Some time after I became a Dominican—and after I took the name ‘Pius,’ after the Dominican saint Pope Saint Pius V—I learned a surprising fact. The Church celebrates the feast day of my new patron Saint Pius on April 30th, which is the exact same day my Nana left this world. I like to think that coincidence was my Nana’s way of saying “I told you so.” So, if you were at my ordination, and you heard the echo of faint laughter, it was probably just my Nana, happy that I finally realized she was right all along.