The Dominicans

I came back to the Catholic Church last year after spending most of my adult life as an atheist. On returning, I found that the Church has many treasures that I never knew about growing up, the most noteworthy for me being the Liturgy of the Hours, Traditional Latin Mass, and a small but vibrant Eastern Catholic tradition including the Divine Liturgy and Saturday evening Vespers. The Dominicans are another group I didn't know about growing up, and I would like to talk about them today. I do want to talk about the Liturgy of the Hours, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Eastern Catholics, but I will cover them in future posts.

I found the Dominicans when I was learning the Liturgy of the Hours, which is the official Catholic prayer book. The daily prayers include Psalms, which can be recited or chanted, so I wanted to learn about Gregorian Chant. I looked for a video about it. The guy in the video mentioned that he was a lay Dominican. I was intrigued by that, and did a google search. It turned out there was a group of Lay Dominicans that met monthly a few miles down the street from me. I put in an inquiry through there website, and the formation director responded and invited me to a retreat they were having. I'm currently in the process of inquiring with them. If everything goes well in the next year, I will be joining the order as a layperson.

So who are the Dominicans and what do they do? The Dominicans are a religious order. All of the religious orders have a heavy focus on prayer and religious community life, but the Dominicans also specialize in study and sharing what we've learned with others. Famous Dominicans include St. Thomas Aquinas and Fra Angelico.