Fra Bartolomeo O.P.

Born in 1483 in Tuscany the young Bartolomeo di Pagholo displayed a keen eye and skill as an artist. He impressed the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano, who recommended him to the painter Cosimo Rosselli. Rosselli accepted Bartolomeo as an apprentice in his Florence workshop. During his time in Florence Bartolomeo was attracted to the teachings of the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced much of the art of the time as corrupt, indulgent and vain, and stated that the main purpose of art was to educate the illiterate in the faith. Bartolomeo painted the most famous portrait of Savonarola before the latter's downfall in 1498. In 1500 Bartolomeo renounced his craft and entered the Dominican priory of San Marco in Florence, which less that fifty years before had been the home of Bl. Guido di Pietro, more commonly known as Fra Angelico.

He would not lift a brush again until 1504, when under obedience to the Prior, he headed the convent's workshop and began to work on a piece for the Bianco family chapel showing the vision of St Bernard. In 1507 the young Raphael befriended him and taught him perspective. Between 1508 and 1513 he travelled from Florence to Venice, Lucca and Rome to work on numerous commissions, including some fine altar pieces at St. Martin's Cathedral in Lucca.

He returned to Florence and created what is considered his masterpiece, St Mark the Evangelist at Palazzo Pitti. He also did some frescoes at the Dominican house of Pian di Mugnone. He died in 1517 in Florence.

Celebrating Priesthood - fr Ismael Gonzalez OP

As part of our Godzdogz celebration of the Year for Priests, we asked some of the Dominican priests living and working in our Province what inspired them in the exercise of their priesthood. Below is a response from fr Ismael Gonzalez OP, a friar of the Province of Spain, who is currently studying in Oxford. fr Ismael was ordained in Eastertide 2009 in Salamanca.

"A few months before my ordination to the priesthood, I discovered one of the most beautiful texts that inspired me concerning how I should live my life as a priest: “Deje que la gente le coma”; be consumed by the people, let the people be fed through you. These words belong to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and their deep meaning is really important to my vocation.

Let us consider the mystery: I am not Christ, yet I say over the bread, "This is my body". It is the priest who says "my body", he says "my blood". But it is the Lord who gives us his Body and his Blood. So, people recognize Christ in the priest, for through his ministry, it is the Body and Blood of Christ that the people adore, it is the sacrifice of Christ that is offered, it is Jesus Christ whom I and the people receive.

At the consecration, it is not only Christ who shares his life with the people, the priest also must share his own life with humanity, not only when he celebrates Mass but in all times and in all ways. So, I give my whole life, like bread that people take in their hands, and they can, so to speak, break and give and share that with everybody. Consequently, I have to be willing to share myself: to share all my life, my time, my work, my hands, my eyes, my smile … even my nothingness. What I mean is, it is not necessary for the priest to know everything. Humility is important. Sometimes when I find it difficult to help somebody or to find the right words for them, I must remember that my own limitations can also help people, because the priest too is a human being searching for God."

Another Use for Baseball Grounds

As the Baseball World Series is played out between the Yankees and the Phillies and the season come to an end, Pat McNamara, the Church historian and archivist, has just concluded his "Baseball Picture of the Week" series on his excellent blog. His final picture shows a Holy Name Rally from the 1940s taking place at Ebbets Field, the old Brooklyn Dodgers stadium, in New York.

From its earliest days the Order of Preachers has had a devotion to the Holy Name. In 1274 Pope Gregory X asked the Order to preach devotion to it. It was ordained that in every Dominican church an altar of the Holy Name should be erected, and that societies or confraternities under the title and invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus should be established. St. Peter Martyr, John of Vercelli, a successor of St. Dominic, Blessed Ambrose of Siena and Blessed Henry Suso were all great propagators of this devotion.

In the twentieth century this zeal continued as can be seen in this picture. The rally pictured was an annual event often attracting over 100,000 people. The event was organised by the Province of St. Joseph and it is very apt that one of the friars should lead Bishop Thomas E. Molloy into the field to begin the rally.

Remembering ... fr Sylvester Basil Baxter OP (1907-1979)

In the month of November particularly we pray for the dead. Godzdogz commends to your prayers the deceased Friars and Nuns of the English Province as well as the Dominican Sisters, priest tertiaries, and Dominican Laity who have lived and worked in England, Wales and Scotland. We will recall the life stories of a number of the friars, representatives of the 'great cloud of witnesses' that has gone before us.

fr. Sylvester Basil Baxter was born in Bradford in 1907. He was clothed in the habit of the Order at the age of 19 and made profession in the September of 1927. He completed his studies in Oxford and was ordained to the priesthood in 1932. In 1933 he was sent to be curate at Woodchester.

He excelled in this role and the prior Hyacinth Koos OP declared him the best curate he had ever had. In 1934 he was sent to the mission in Grenada but was struck down with a severe bout of malaria. He spent four years in the West Indies but never really recovered from the initial attack on his health. He returned to England and his health improved.

On his return he was sent to Leicester and worked in the Royal Infirmary. In 1943 he moved to Pendleton, where he served as subprior. He was then assigned to London as bursar. In 1956 he returned to Leicester and his beloved ministry to the Infirmary. He was a devoted chaplain but suffered a stroke which greatly reduced his mobility. His condition deteriorated and he had to spend his last years in a nursing home. He died on the 10 September 1979, aged 71 with 51 years of profession and 47 of priesthood.

fr. Sylvester was a shy and private man. He was not a renowned formal preacher but preached the Gospel by his dedicated priestly service. He was considered a reliable and loving pastor by both his flock and his brothers.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God,

rest in Peace.

Amen.

Called to be Saints - 1/2 November

Human beings choose because there is something good and desirable already there, we encounter it and we decide we want it. God’s choice however creates things. Because God chooses, something good and desirable comes into being.

We can therefore say that creation itself is God’s original choosing. God is completely free in his decision to create the world. Nothing obliges God to make a world. He simply says ‘let there be light’ and light is. He simply chooses to create human beings, and so it is. Our being, and the being of all the world, originates in a love beyond anything we can imagine or experience. God’s love calls something out of nothing and this is God’s absolutely free choice.

‘God saw all he had made and found it very good’ (Genesis 1.31). This applies to everything God had made: the moon and the stars, oak trees and tulips, cows and sharks. But among the creatures God has made, the human being has a special place. There is plenty of evidence that the human being has powers and abilities way beyond anything other animals have. On top of that, all the great religious traditions regard the human being as a spiritual being. We have capacities for knowledge, for love, for language, for social life, for creative and artistic work, for religion – all this is special to humanity.

For Jews, Christians and Muslims these capacities and powers are evidence that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1.26). Humans are created to represent God in creation. They are to use their intelligence and freedom as God’s stewards or delegates in the management of the world.

For Christians there is a further dimension. We believe that the image of God in us has been damaged and distorted by sin. But we believe that Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, who bears the very stamp of God’s nature (Hebrews 1.3), heals us and restores that image of God in us. We believe that he is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that in Christ we are called to a level of living that God always wanted us to have. We are adopted as God’s children, chosen to share in the love that is God’s own nature. This is the fullness of life that Jesus says he has come to bring (John 10.10).

‘Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ’, the letter to the Ephesians says (Ephesians 1.4). And the beginning of the gospel of Saint John teaches us that ‘through him all things came to be … they all had life in him … a life that enlightens all human beings coming into the world’ (John 1.3-4).

What we believe about ourselves and the dignity of all other human beings can seem incredible, especially when we see our own selfishness and the evil things human beings do to each other. But in spite of so many weaknesses and failures, we believe that we are created in God’s image and have been chosen to share God’s life. ‘To all who did accept him’ – who accepted the call – ‘he gave power to become children of God … and from his fullness we have all received’ (John 1.12,16).

The letter to the Ephesians seems to realize that we will need help to accept this extraordinary teaching, that God chose us in Christ before the world was made and predestined us for eternal life. Paul there prays that 'our minds may be enlightened so that we see what hope God’s call holds for us, what rich glories God has promised the saints will inherit’ (Ephesians 1.18). The ‘saints’ are you and I (believe it or not), individual and ordinary human beings, whose lives fade like passing shadows but who have been chosen and called to share God’s eternal life of love.

Celebrating Priesthood - Dom John Lane Fox OSB

One of the things Godzdogz is doing to mark the Year for Priests is a series on priests who have inspired various Dominican friars in our Province. As it is the Year for Priests, we've decided to ask not just the Dominican student-brothers but also our brothers who are priests about those priests - both real and fictional, as found in art, literature and cinema - who have inspired and influenced them and their priestly vocation.

The following reflection, which begins this series, is from fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, who was the 84th successor of St Dominic as Master of the Order, and who is currently a member of the Oxford community.

"The priest who baptised me, heard my first confession and gave me my first communion was my great uncle, Dom John Lane Fox. He was a monk of Fort Augustus, which had been founded by his father and his uncle to evangelise the Highlands of Scotland, and most of the first monks were his relations!

He was a tall gaunt figure, and had lost an eye and most the fingers of his right hand during First World War, when he was a chaplain. What struck me as a child, was his irrepressible sense of fun. One could see that religious life and the priesthood did not dehumanise one. I sensed that his vitality came from his faith. He had a relaxed attitude to rules, and considered that duck should be eaten on Friday. He enjoyed his claret, and used to return to the monastery with lots of bottles given by my father clunking his suitcase.

He was an important source of my own vocation. Recently I discovered that in the Great War he had been utterly loved by the soldiers because of his courage. Every night he would cross over into No man's land, between the opposing trenches, and look for the wounded, to anoint them and to carry them home and to bury the dead. No one believed that he could last a week. He went over the trenches with the men to give them the last rites if necessary. He was forbidden by the Generals to do this, but his love for those in his care overrode an obedience to rules. The soldiers gave him a chalice engraved with all the battles in which he participated, which he gave to me. He died at the age of 95, a man still filled with joy."

Saints This Month - 28 October, SS Simon and Jude

It’s hard to know what to make of Simon and Jude, the two Apostles whose feast we celebrate today. Of all the Apostles, these two are probably the least well known. Today’s Gospel - as well as the other Gospel accounts describing the calling of the twelve - seem concerned to identify Simon and Jude, not so much in terms of who they are, but in terms of who they are not. It’s not normal to refer to people in this way, and I can’t help but wonder how the brethren would react if I were to start referring to them as ‘not Robert De Niro’, ‘not Richard the Lionheart’ or ‘not Benjamin Britten’. But that seems to be just the kind of thing that is going on in the Gospel accounts of the naming of the twelve. Luke calls Simon the Zealot, which is probably a reference to his past life as a member of the Jewish sect. But his title might as well be ‘Simon the ordinary one’, because it’s pretty clear that the title “zealot” is only there to distinguish him from Simon Peter, whom we might call ‘Simon, the important one’. In a similar way, we have Judas, or Jude, who is described as the son of James, presumably to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot, or perhaps ‘Judas the notorious one’.

These distinctions are almost all that the four Gospels have to say about our two apostles. Simon has no special part to play. He’s important enough to be named, but that’s it. Jude is rather like an extra in a play – in John’s Gospel he has a walk on part and a single line at the last supper, and no more. Ordinary, everyday people, it seems. But, there is a lot to be said for being ordinary, for being the anonymous one, the silent one. Still waters, it is said, run deep. And this is certainly the case for Saints Simon and Jude. Tradition holds that both men worked hard at preaching the Gospel. It’s claimed that Simon preached in Egypt, and then later followed Jude on a mission to the people of Mesopotamia and Persia, where they were both martyred. That ordinariness was built on by the grace of God, and they showed themselves to be extraordinary in their love for Christ, and in their willingness to die for him. They were small yet vital stones in the foundation of the Apostles that Paul describes in the letter to the Ephesians. They were linked to Christ the cornerstone and inseparable from him.

Simon and Jude stand as an important example to us too – an example of that gentle, quiet, yet profound faith which can preach so eloquently of the power of God. It isn’t necessary to be a big fish to follow Christ. What is important is that we follow his way for us, and allow him to work on us so that his way becomes our way. In fact, if we make too much of a fuss, we might end up being well known for all the wrong reasons – and then there is a danger of being known as, say, ‘Andrew the arrogant’, or ‘Ian the impossible’. And no one wants that. We shouldn’t be afraid to be ordinary, simple, quiet, outwardly unspectacular servants of the Lord. Because only God knows what the fruits of such a life will be.

This is the homily preached by fr Robert Gay OP at the Conventual Mass in Blackfriars on the feast of SS Simon and Jude