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Dear Father Angelo,

I am a regular reader of your website and I am writing to you today for the first time to tell you something that I could have shared with you a long time ago.

I want to give you my thanks for the help you offer to those who seek the Way and to those who want to find it.

My conversion was a long journey and I’ve always found an important help in your answers. Dominican friends have become over the years one of the points of reference in my spiritual life.

I’ll remember you in my prayers.

Glory to the Father

Dear friend,

1. Thank you for what you write in your message.

Just today, 21 January 2017, the jubilee for the 800th anniversary of the approval of the Dominican Order has come to an end.

Please ensure that you’ll also thank the Lord for this beautiful gift He has given to the Church and humanity and ask Him to bless us in the same way He blessed us 800 years ago with a special outpouring of holiness and with plenty of men with a genuine apostolic heart.

2. During these days of January 1217, it would have taken place according to Fr. Vicaire, a known historian of Saint Dominic, the deposition of Constantine of Orvieto at the canonization process of our Holy Father.

Here is the deposition: “While the man of God, Dominic, was in Rome and offered his prayers before God in St. Peter’s Basilica for the preservation and growth of the Order that God’s right hand was propagating through his labors, God’s hand rested on him.

Dominic saw Peter and Paul surrounded by glory.

The first, Pietro, gave him the staff; Paul, the book.

And both of them added: Go and preach, because God has chosen you for this ministry.

In that instant it seemed to Dominic that he saw his children scattered around the world, going in pairs to preach the word of God to the people”.

3. Father H. Vicaire comments: “The staff is the official insignia of the messenger of God; the book represents the doctrine”(History of St. Dominic, p. 421).

4. And then: “Dominic understood that he had to extend his Order throughout the world and receive his mission directly from Rome.

At the same time it was clear to him, more than it was in Toulouse, that he should have distinguished preaching from defending the faith.

Finally, he understood that the order given by the Council to all the bishops to join the preachers was intended to open access to all the dioceses to his friars and that the will of the popes to put into practice a canon they themselves had elaborated would have, when needed, facilitated such purpose.

Everything had contributed to this awareness on the part of the Founder: only one last supernatural light was missing and Dominic obtained it from God in prayer in Rome “(Ib.).

5. May the Lord at the end of this Jubilee place his hand on us again and may communicate to many by internal divine inspiration what the holy Apostles Peter and Paul said to St. Dominic Go and preach, because God has chosen you for this ministry.

I also give Glory to the Father for what He is operating within you.

I thank you for the prayers you have assured me.

I gladly assure you mine as well and I bless you.

Father Angelo