Quodlibet 39: Religious Life, Youth Ministry, and Evangelisation
What elements of life do brothers miss after they’ve taken their vows?
Hobbies and interests remain a very important part of our lives, as do friendships outside of the community, so it’s certainly not the case that the start of religious life means pressing a complete reset on everything you ever knew. That being the case, the vows we make and the life we have chosen necessarily entails saying no to certain good things for the sake of ordering all of one’s life to God alone.
Remaining in touch with those around us is an important concern for every preacher – you can’t engage with someone you know nothing about. That of course underscores the importance of family and friendships, including those outside the community.
Our life is not one defined by strict enclosure, unlike some monastic orders, and what was so radical about St Dominic’s mission was having religious who lived and prayed together in community but whose work was outside the walls of their priory, they were to go out into the world and preach. This means that for every Dominican there is always at its most basic level a healthy tension between the contemplative life of prayer and the apostolic life of preaching: we are called to live both and have to find a way of fruitfully combining them. So staying in touch should never become a difficulty, and always comes in the context of our mission as expressed by those words of St Thomas: to contemplate and pass on the fruits of contemplation.
In terms of tradition, tradition with a small “t” is only alienating or problematic when it is sought as an end in itself, and not ordered towards the only true and final end, God. To take liturgical music as an example, as soon as a particular type of music is sought for its own sake it can become problematic, but when it is chosen as a means of leading us in prayer to deeper union with God then there shouldn’t be a problem.
As a province we have a number of different apostolates for young people, principally centred around our work in various parishes, schools, and university chaplaincies. The Dominican Youth Movement organises Lent and Advent study weekends, pilgrimages abroad, and the annual study week each summer, each providing time for spiritual growth, community, and theological formation. These are run by a mixture of Dominican priests, sisters, and student brothers. We also try to evangelise online in various ways, including on this blog. Part of the aim behind many of these apostolates, as well as others such as the weekly Aquinas Group in Oxford, is to equip those that come to us with a strong intellectual formation so that they can evangelise their peers and confidently face contemporary issues.
It was customary in medieval universities twice a year to subject expert theologians to questions of the students’ choosing. The responses to these sometimes fiendish points of controversy were recorded in collections of so-called Quodlibetales – from the Latin, “ask what you like”. Following in that tradition, and reprising an old series of this blog, the student brothers invite you to put them to the test with your own questions. This you can do here.
