Last week Dominicana passed a significant milestone: 1,000,000 views! Thank you to our readers for being the aliis to whom we are privileged to pass on our contemplata. Below are some highlights from our first three years. We hope you enjoy them, and we hope you keep coming back – and while you’re at it, invite your friends!
Upon this Volcano
“Our perspective here on earth is intrinsically shortsighted and shallow. God’s perspective is perfect and timeless. He will not abandon his people nor allow the ship of his Church to sink because of human weakness. On the contrary, the Church exists for the very reason of shipping us sinners to safe harbor.”
How to Talk About Homosexuality
“In the end, Desire of the Everlasting Hills is not really a film about homosexuality–the word itself only appears once, as far as I remember. It is a film about desire. About discovering that the opposite of love is not hatred, but loneliness. About discovering that the way out of lust is not indulgence or frigidity, but chastity.”
The Genius of Ritual
“Ritual is not only a remedy for despair or destruction. We cannot survive daily life without it, and we fill our days with all sorts of practical rituals: brushing our teeth, showering, eating meals, checking our e-mail, paying our bills, calling our parents, and so on.”
Marilynne Robinson, St. Thomas, and the Wonder of Existence
“That anything other than God should exist is a miracle of sorts. And yet the wonder of St. Thomas and of Robinson’s character does not end in this life – it points to the next. But rather than detracting from the significance of the present world, the prospect of the world to come imbues this world with a far deeper significance.”
You Don’t Have to Like Your Priest
“We don’t have to like every priest we meet. Nevertheless, despite the challenges we may face with the priests we encounter throughout our lives, we should remember the difficulty of the task with which they have been entrusted, as well as that they are made of the same stuff as all human beings.”
Beauty That Makes You Want to Believe
“At its heart, the Mass should be a foretaste of heaven, but on this side of paradise, the human element will always be present. Ideally, this should remind us of the Incarnation, as yet another example of how God accomplishes the most sublime and wondrous things through the instrument of fallen mankind.”
Friday Fish and the Poor
“Catholic rules and regulations are less about prohibition and more about direction: the negative injunctions are always in the context of a positive vision of life aimed at virtue and happiness. Because Jesus became poor for us in this life, we too are called to identify with the poor to remind ourselves of our dependence on him.”
Whether St. Thomas is Boring
“A man is only called boring who tries one’s patience excessively and to no great purpose. However, the works of Thomas are ordered towards producing knowledge and wisdom in the reader concerning the greatest realities, namely God and the things of God. As the Philosopher observes in the De Animalibus XI, the least knowledge of the highest realities produces the greatest joy.”
Let me share with you his pain
From one of our very first posts: “This powerful prayer offers us a precious glimpse into the spiritual power of empathy and compassion. However, as moving as this prayer is, it is important to note that the liturgy is not engaging in cheap emotional antics in order to manipulate us into a fleeting sense of our own guilt and a gelatinous purpose of amendment.”
Jesuitica and the Dominican Post
A recap of our mischievous endeavors on April Fool’s Day, 2014
✠
Image: Vincent Van Gogh, Mulberry Tree in Autumn
