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Dear Father Angelo,

My name is Gianluca and I am an 18 year old boy.

About three years ago I had a spiritual crisis, in the sense that I could not find a religion to profess.

It was as if I had been between Catholicism, in which I was baptized, and Islam. I felt attracted to both Jesus and the principles of Islam.

So one day I started praying to Our Lord Jesus and Mary Most Holy, to whom I had asked to be closed, to answer me if Catholicism was the true religion of God. After a few weeks I saw a phrase in a church newspaper that said “I will always be with you” and I felt Jesus actually spoke to me.

Since then, and it’s been almost two years, I have felt an attraction to Jesus and the Dominican order.

I discovered the order when I saw in a church an image of San Domenico that fascinated me.

I had also seen other religious orders such as the Franciscans or the Benedictines but in the end I am more fascinated by the Dominican order.

So I inquired and I immediately felt an attraction to the order even if until that moment I did not know what Jesus was calling me to, if to a religious or secular vocation.

Since then I think He’s been calling me to serve Him in the Dominican order.

I really like the principles of the order and the figure of Saint Dominic.

On the other hand, I am also afraid of losing my friendships, the contacts with the family and the material things that I have.

I hope that you will be able to help me with my vocation, to understand if I can enter the Dominican order and where to do the pre-novitiate.

Thank you and God bless you 

Gianluca

The Priest’s answer

Dear Gianluca,

1. I now come to the second part of the answer.

It concerns your call to follow the Lord in the Dominican Order.

You tell me that you discovered the Dominican Order when, entering a Church, you saw the image of Saint Dominic.

You are not the first to have been attracted to our Order by contemplating an image of Saint Dominic.

The one who became the founder of the Biblical school in Jerusalem and whose beatification process is underway, Father Marie Joseph Lagrange, in his spiritual diary says that he heard the call to the priesthood on the day of his first communion when he was 11 years old.

But it was still a generic call.

Instead, the specific call to become a Dominican was heard at the age of 15, on the day of the Annunciation (March the 25th) when he and his classmates went to visit the Louvre in Paris.

While contemplating the wonderful painting of the coronation of the Virgin by Blessed Angelico, stolen by Napoleon and brought to France, he was struck by the radiant figure of Saint Dominic. 

At that moment, he felt strongly and precisely the call of the Lord to become a Dominican and he even made a vow.

2. For you, apart from the vote, something similar happened. 

You too, after the answer that the Lord gave you: “I will always be with you”, have become open to the priesthood, but you did not yet know in what form: whether as a regular priest, that is diocesan, or as belonging to a religious order.

The Lord was waiting for you in front of a picture, to talk to you and to make you feel that your vocation was that of Saint Dominic.

You tell me that you wanted to learn about Saint Dominic and his work and immediately – in a way I could say prodigious – you heard in a precise way that your path was to be a priest not in a generic, but in a well determined way: in the Order of Saint Dominic.

3. In the light of the spiritual crisis of which you have spoken to me and which has led you to follow Jesus Christ, I think that you have felt as your precise mission the very mission of Our Lord who came to teach the truth and to bring men to salvation.

While other religious institutions, inspired by the Holy Spirit within the Church and certainly worthy, have as their particular mission some works of charity or school education for young people, The Order of Saint Dominic has the same objective for which Our Lord was incarnate: the preaching of the gospel truth in view of the eternal salvation of souls.

4. As Saint Paul, converted on the road to Damascus, immediately made his own the mission of Our Lord so much that he would later say: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel” (1 Cor 1:17), so in some way it also happened for you.

I think that, in the secret of your vocation, there is the desire to help all those who have entered into spiritual crises similar to the one that struck you and led you to meet Jesus Christ.

Jesus, unlike all the others who lived before us, is not a deceased person, He is not a man of the past.

He is the Living One who is close to us, who precedes us, who follows us, who lives personally within us through grace, who speaks to us, supports, vivifies and sanctifies us.

5. If this is your secret desire, I am not at all surprised by your attraction to the Order of Saint Dominic.

God himself in a private revelation, speaking of Saint Dominic and the Dominican Order with Saint Catherine of Siena, said that Saint Dominic “took as his own the office of the Word, my only son” (Dialogue of Divine Providence, n.158).

Indeed, Saint Catherine of Siena attests to having seen that “as the Eternal Father generated from his mouth the Word to Him coetern, so he also saw the Most Blessed Patriarch Dominic coming out of the breast of the same Father, surrounded by light and splendor and heard a voice utter from the same mouth that said: I, sweet daughter, I have begotten these two sons one by begetting him according to nature, the other by loving and gently adopting him” (Blessed Raymond of Capua, Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, n. 204).

6. Because Catherine was amazed at such a great comparison and such a high comparison of Saint Dominic, the Eternal Father Himself explained to her the words He had said: “As this Son, naturally begotten of me from eternity, having assumed human nature, was obedient unto death; so my adopted son Dominic, everything he did from childhood until the end of his life was regulated according to the obedience of my commandments. 

Not once has he transgressed any of my precepts, because he kept the virginity of body and soul untied and kept the grace of baptism, in which he was spiritually reborn.

As this natural Son, the eternal Word of my mouth, preached to the world those things which were commanded by me and bore witness to the Truth, as he said to Pilate, so my adopted son Dominic preached the truth and my words to the world: among heretics and among Catholics and not only for himself but also for others; not only while he lived, but also for his successors, through whom he continued to preach and preach again” (Ib., n. 205)

7. This word of the Eternal Father is truly beautiful, and it assures us that Saint Dominic will continue to preach and preach again.

I like to think he’ll continue to preach to you, as he did by calling you to the Order.

He will continue to preach to you by making you persevere holily in the Order in which you have been called.

And he will continue to preach through you because he will always accompany you both in the preparation of your preaching and in the preaching itself, as wellas in the saving effects of your same preaching.

8. Finally, I would like to recall once again what the Eternal Father promised Saint Catherine of Siena: “To this end, by my extraordinary gift, it is given to him and his brothers to understand the truth of my words and never to stray from the truth” (Ib.).

I don’t know if God could make a more beautiful promise to Saint Dominic and his children.

I’m so glad that you want this promise to happen.

It is a deposit of your eternal salvation and of the eternal salvation of the people that the Lord will make you meet.

9. Finally, you mention a fear of yours: losing the friendships, the contacts with the family and the material things I possess.

I can assure you that you will not lose your friendships. Indeed, in Christ, you will find new and infinitely more beautiful ones.

Nor will you lose touch with family because family will always be yours. While the other brothers or sisters might get married and leave home and so no longer say that that parental home is theirs, you will continue to say so until the end. You will go back to that house that you will always feel yours, like no other. Your parents will feel it and you will feel it too.

The problem of the material goods that you possess remains. If they are useful for your study and ministry, you will continue to use them, since they are indispensable for your formation and for the exercise of your ministry.

If they are futile, their renunciation is nothing compared to what the Lord will communicate to you day by day: “They feast on the rich food of your house; from your delightful stream you give them drink.” (Ps 36:9).

10. On a more practical side: you are now 18 years old and in the next school year you will finish secondary education with the baccalaureate.

Well, in our religious province, which is that of Northern Italy, before entering the pre-novitiate you become an aspirant.

The aspirants periodically meet together with some Dominican delegates who are appointed to guide the young people who wish to enter the Order.

Therefore, for the next school year you could plan for your life this period of aspiring.

You will be told where and when these meetings take place: the first, in general, are always done in Bologna.

After this year as a postulant, you can enter the pre-novitiate. We can talk about this later.

Meanwhile, I entrust you to the prayers of all our visitors, who will certainly be pleased with what you have written and will be happy to accompany you with their affection, their prayers and the offering of their lives to God for the success of your vocation.

I am happy to accompany you in the same way.

I wish you well and bless you.

Padre Angelo