Double priestly ordination for Irish Dominican friars

Fr Luuk Jansen OP and Fr Colm Mannion OP

The Irish Dominican friars joyfully celebrated the priestly ordination of two of our brothers yesterday in Saint Saviour's Dominican church in Dublin. Fr Luuk Jansen and Fr Colm Mannion were ordained by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in a moving ceremony with a packed congregation. The new priests were joined by a large number of Dominican brothers from Ireland and abroad, their families and friends.

Fr Luuk is originally from the Netherlands and discovered the faith through a colleague while working in the west of Ireland. A number of years after being baptised, he entered the Irish Dominican novitiate in Limerick and continued his formation and studies in Dublin which culminated in his ordination as a priest yesterday.

Fr Colm, from Birr in County Offaly, worked with an an international airline and for the Legion of Mary before entering the novitiate with Fr Luuk and Br Matthew Martinez who will be ordained next month in his native Trinidad.

We wish our newly ordained priests every blessing in their ministries and pray that their commitment will encourage others to consider the Dominican way of life.

Archbishop Martin lays hands on the ordinands.

Ordination of three Dominican deacons

The newly ordained deacons, Brs Matthew Martinez OP, Luuk Jansen OP and Colm Mannion OP with Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin.

The Irish Dominican friars rejoiced today as three of their brothers were ordained to the diaconate in Saint Saviour's Dominican church, Dominick Street in Dublin. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.

Our brothers were joined by many friars of the province, families and friends, representatives of the Dominican family in Ireland and local parishioners from the Dominick Street area to witness the joyful liturgy of ordination.

The three brothers, Matthew Martinez OP from Trinidad, Colm Mannion OP from County Offaly and Luuk Jansen who is originally from the Netherlands joined the Order together in 2007. The ordination ceremony to the diaconate today is another step on the road to priesthood.

Please join with us in praying for our brothers in their new ministry of service and for all our brothers who are on the path to priesthood in the Order.

Below are some images from the ordination ceremony. Please click them to enlarge. Media are welcome to use them as long as they credit Irish Dominican Vocations blog.



Upcoming Diaconate Ordinations

The friars of the Irish Dominican province will celebrate the ordination to the diaconate of three of our brothers on Saturday next, February 16th in Saint Saviour's Dominican church, Dominick Street, Dublin.

The archbishop of Dublin, Most Reverend Diarmuid Martin DD, will ordain the brothers during the celebration of the Eucharist at 11.30 a.m.

You are welcome to join the liturgical celebrations. Please also keep our brothers who will be ordained in your prayers as they continue on their journey towards priesthood.

Redemptoristine nuns celebrate solemn profession

 Sr Lucy Conway OSsR with Fr Gerard Dunne OP after the profession ceremony today

Sr Lucy Conway OSsR of the Redemptoristine community in Drumcondra in Dublin made final (or solemn) profession today during the celebration of the Eucharist at Saint Alphonsus Monsatery. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin was the principal celebrant of the Mass.

Archbishop Martin preached in his homily on Jesus Christ and friendship but went on to challenge all present and particularly those consecrated religious present with these words: "I believe that the real challenge about religious life and about ministry in the Church is not the falling numbers of vocations but the mediocrity with which so many of us end up being satisfied with. I say this of myself, I say it about bishops and priests and religious. We all need to restore our commitment to and confidence in our calling and the ability to recognise and set aside that which is marginal and much more that which we have built around ourselves just for our comfort and false security. Ours must be a commitment each day and night, of prayer and fasting, a leaving aside all that does not take us beyond ourselves towards Christ."

This was a timely and challenging homily. It would have been an apt choice of words to present to vocation directors and personnel in Ireland. For instance, there has been a significant shift in vocations ministry in the past decade or more from mere recruitment to authentic discernment. The consequence of this shift has really not been fully grasped at all by vocation ministers - in fact most still have to come to terms with it. It is clearly no longer the case that a vocations director can sit in his or her office processing paperwork or hold endless meetings about meetings with their congregations. They just have to rise above that 'mediocrity' and spend quality time with young people and discerners. That demands vast amounts of time to be spent with each potential vocation. Some orders and dioceses still feel that they can not afford to release a person for full-time vocations work. That is a mediocre response to a vital situation. The significant shift from recruitment to discernment suggests that they cannot afford not to.

(Sr Lucy Conway OSsR is a native of Co. Offaly and joined the Redemptoristines in 2007. She previously worked in education. She is the second sister to be solemnly professed in the community in the past 12 months. The community has three other sisters in initial formation.)

Ordination of seven deacons a sign of hope for Irish Catholic church

In a time of great uncertainty around vocations in Ireland, the ordination to the diaconate of seven men on Sunday last in the National Seminary in Maynooth is a sign of hope. The seven (six of whom are pictured above) were ordained by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin. They come from six dioceses around Ireland (Ferns, Meath, Tuam, Armagh, Kilmore and Dublin) and one from the Irish Redemptorist Province. A further six men were ordained deacons in the Irish College in Rome at Easter time.

Having these thirteen men prepare for priesthood in the next number of months will certainly give optimism and hope to others who might feel called to religious life and priesthood. This number, however, masks an underlying worrying trend in vocation numbers in Ireland. In a number of weeks we will become aware of the numbers who will begin seminary training and formation for the dioceses of Ireland and for religious congregations. It now looks likely that the numbers will be down again - for a second year in a row. While it is impossible to draw conclusions from statistics over such a short period, it should really focus the mind once again of those charged with promoting vocations in Ireland to immediately look seriously at their vocations strategies. Clearly, there is much work to be done because the strategies employed are not working very well and in some cases not at all.

It seems clear to me that there is a case to be made for all the interested parties concered with promoting vocations in Ireland (religious and diocesan) to come together and discuss planning for the future. It does not require a further 'Year of Vocation', but a planned, strategic and professional response to trends now becoming clearer.

See the full text of Archbishop Martin's homily at the diaconate ordinations here. A good analysis of the homily and the ceremony by journalist Sarah McDonald appears on the cinews website here.

Homily of Archbishop Martin at Dominican diaconate ordinations (January 2nd, 2011)

 Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

 Last month (January 2nd, 2011), three of our brothers - Denis Murphy, Maurice Colgan and Brian Doyle were ordained deacons by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin. The text of the homily given by the archbishop that day has recently been made available through the Dublin diocesan website www.dublindiocese.ie . The full text of the homily is given below in italics:

We are at the beginning of a New Year and despite the many reasons for being anxious there is something about a New Year which always makes it a moment of hope.   That hope springs also from the Christmas season.  It is the hope that comes from the message of the incarnation of the Son of God, a mystery which radically changed the meaning of hope for humankind through the mysterious union between God and our human nature.

The Christmas message changes our whole value system. The God of power and might came among us not under the signs of power, but in the sign of the poverty, precariousness, powerlessness and simplicity of a child.  That message turns our understanding of God upside-down; it turns upside-down our understanding of what is important in human life.

Today is a moment of hope also as we come to invoke the Holy Spirit on these three men called to the office of deacon, on their journey towards the ministry of ordained priests.  This solemn liturgy is a sign of hope and renewal for our Church.  It is a sign of hope and renewal for the Irish Dominican Province; it is a sign of hope and renewal for each of you yourselves - Denis, Maurice and Brian - as you journey on your own path of commitment to live out the Gospel and to spread that message of Jesus, God made man.

One of the most significant moments in the Rite of the Ordination of Deacons is when the bishop consigns to each of you the book of the Gospels and reminds you of the special mission you take on today with regard to that Gospel:

Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you now are;Believe what you readTeach what you believeAnd practice what you teach.

The Gospel of this Sunday, still in the Christmas season, is a reflection not on the circumstances of Jesus birth, but on who the child is that is born and what is the deep significance of his mystery for us.

Who is the child that is born?   The child that is born is the Word of God.  The Christian God, the God who is Trinity, is not a God closed in self-glory.  God is Word. God speaks. God communicates, not just in words, but through saving actions.  God is the one who brings salvation.  God is our hope.

Throughout history, God’s people were unfaithful.  But they experienced a God who was always faithful to them.  It is God’s fidelity that opens for us a path of hope, no matter what our situation may be.   It is God’s saving power which reaches out to us still today in our weakness.  That saving power reaches out to us in the wilderness and exile of our lives, when we are anxious and disoriented, when we feel lost and abandoned or misunderstood.   

God has spoken in various ways throughout history.  He spoke firstly in creation and continues to speak today through creation.  He spoke through the law and the prophets in the history of salvation.  In the mystery of the incarnation he communicates in a totally new way:  Jesus becomes one of us, a human bring. 

God communicates with us in a totally new way.  Pope Benedict has recently published an important document - Verbum Domini - on the “Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church”, fruit of the Synod of Bishops held two years ago.  The revelation of the Word at the incarnation, he recalls, is no longer primarily a revelation in discourse, concepts or rules.  The Pope writes: “Here we are set before the very person of Jesus himself; Jesus himself is the definitive Word which God speaks to humanity”.

The same theme was stressed, in a slightly different way, in the single text most quoted by Bishops at that Synod.  It was another text of Pope Benedict himself, from his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.  “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with…a person [Jesus Christ] which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction”

We are particularly conscious today of the need for renewal of the Church in Ireland.  Denis, Maurice and Brian, you as deacons and as future priests – as ministers of the Word of, in and for your own generation – are called to a special leadership role in that process of renewal.  In particular you are called to share your own relationship with the Lord with young people who despite many years of religious education have not been adequately led beyond the ”discourse, concepts and rules”, of which the Pope spoke, into true knowledge of Jesus the person.

When we speak of renewal in the Church, we speak not just of a necessary need to repent the criminal and sinful events which have emerged in these years concerning the abuse of children by priests and religious and the response of Church authorities.  Neither is renewal just a question of renewing structures.  It is not just about improving the image of the Church.

Renewal of the Church will only come through a radical reawakening of what the Church is really about.  The Church is the place where the unprecedented and humanly inconceivable newness of the Word becoming flesh is proclaimed and celebrated as reality.  Pope Benedict, in his document I mentioned, sees that the Word of God must become ever more central in the life of the Church, something which is especially needed in the Irish Church.  

What he is speaking about is not about adding a new chapter to our catechesis, but of letting the Word of God inspire every dimension of Church life.  The Word of God is the soul of all theology and the driving force of pastoral activity.  The reform that is called for is truly radical and we are only at the very beginning. What is needed is not superficial change on the surface. Each of us has to begin to place the word of God at the centre of our own spirituality and of our Christian life. We have to know the scriptures, to love the scriptures, to understand the scriptures, to prayerfully read the scriptures.  All of us have to learn to take up the scriptures every day.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Dominican spirituality is the focus on truth – Veritas – and on the ability to contemplate and transmit that truth to others.   It is a spirituality which the Church needs today as never before.   We pray that Denis, Maurice and Brian, as they receive the Book of the Gospels in this solemn Rite, will truly commit themselves to that Dominican calling and will go on to enrich the whole Church with that charism.

Renewal of the Church means radically placing the Word of God at the centre of our personal life and of the liturgical life of the Church.  It means radical reflection of the nature of the preaching of the Word of God.   Preaching is not about moralising.  The message of Jesus is much more than a moral message.  We have to overcome, on the one hand, a sense of moralising which reduces the Christian message to a mere moral rule book or even a list of sins.  We have to overcome on the other hand also the temptation to forget about moral norms and reduce the Christian message to just about vaguely being good to others.

The Church is formed by the Word of God and the Word of God is entrusted to the Church.  Being a Christian is not about an individual ethos or way of life.  We are called to a Covenant in which we enter into dialogue with God.  We celebrate that covenant through reflecting on the word and through praying the Word. The liturgy is not just a social event; it is not a concert or a show or a celebration of ourselves which makes us feel good.   Liturgical reform is not about gimmicks, not about what one writer called “a Disney-ization” of the liturgy.   Liturgy is the place where the Word of God is proclaimed and becomes way of life for us.   Liturgy is the work of God, who speaks with us, who becomes our nourishment.   In the liturgy we do not create our own God.  God changes us, through his Word.

Our Gospel reading reminds us of how the Word of God changes us.     He is a Word of light; a light which can overcome the darkness that is in our hearts and in our world.  Christianity is not a religion of simplistic hope.  It recognises the presence of the darkness in our world.  I am still personally shocked at the darkness of the criminal violence which we encounter so regularly in our own city, which repeats itself in blind vendetta and only leads to the deeper darkness of grief and bereavement and despair.

It is striking also to remember how Saint John reminds us reminds us that that the darkness is not just among the unbelievers or the indifferent who do not know God.   When Jesus, the Word, came into his own domain the first not to accept him were his own people.  Denis, Maurice and Brian, you are called to be faithful in accepting the message of the Word.  The mission that you will receive today though the gift of the Holy Spirit must be kept fresh and alive and intact in your hearts and in the way you live, day after day.  You must day by day integrate your belief in what you read, the way you teach that belief, and how you practice what you teach.

Your mission will not be an easy one and it will not be immune to the perennial temptation to preach your own message rather than that of Jesus.  It is tempting to believe that our call is based on our own talents and abilities alone.  But do not be afraid: to those who remain faithful, who accept him, who are ministers and servants of his Word, Jesus does something that we cannot attain on our own.  In Jesus alone we encounter grace and truth, we become children of God. 

Denis, Maurice and Brian may the Lord bring to fulfilment the good work he begins in you today.

Diaconate Ordinations for Irish Dominican friars

Three of our student brothers in formation, frs Dennis Murphy OP, Maurice Colgan OP and Brian Doyle OP will be ordained deacons on January 2nd 2011 in Saint Saviour's Dominican church, Upper Dominick Street, Dublin 1 during the conventaul Mass at 11.30 a.m. The Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland Dr Diarmuid Martin will ordain our three brothers.

The ministry of the deacon in the Catholic Church is described as one of service in three areas: the Word, the Liturgy and Charity. The deacon's ministry of the Word includes proclaiming the Gospel during the Mass, preaching and teaching. His liturgical ministry includes various parts of the Mass proper to the deacon, including being an ordinary minister of Holy Communion and the proper minister of the chalice when Holy Communion is administered under both kinds. The ministry of charity involves service to the poor and marginalized and working with parishioners to help them become more involved in such ministry. As clerics, they are required to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. Deacons, like priests and bishops, are ordinary ministers of the sacrament of Baptism and can serve as the church's witness at the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, which the bride and groom administer to each other (though if the exchange of vows takes place in a wedding Mass, or Nuptial Mass, the Mass is celebrated by the priest and the deacon acts as another witness). Deacons may preside at funeral rites not involving a Mass (e.g., the final commendation at the gravesite or the reception of the body at a service in the funeral home), and may assist the priest at the Requiem Mass. They can preside over various services such as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and they may give certain blessings. They cannot hear confession and give absolution, anoint the sick, or celebrate Mass.

Please pray for our brothers as they prepare to take on this ministry as deacons and continue to pray for all our brothers in formation for the Irish Dominican friars.

The Media and Year of Vocation

It was good to see that the national newspapers in Ireland carried some coverage (albeit scarce) of the national launch of the Year of Vocation. All of the broadsheets: The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent quoted from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's homily at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral where he said that being a Christian 'is not a spectator sport.....You cannot simply be a passive Christian sitting on the sideline always or watching from the grandstand when the occasion arises.' There were quotes too regarding priesthood: 'We need priests, good priests. We need them not to fill gaps caused by the death of older priests. We need priests who can be beacons in our society.' And on vocation, he said: 'The world needs vocations not determined by a detailed job description, as in business, but in the ability to place one's life, with all its inadequacies truly at the service of Jesus.' These papers also included statistics about the large number of deaths of priests and religious as against the numbers of those joining seminary or religious life.

The Irish Catholic also produced a supplement for Vocations Sunday which had a particularly strong Dominican input - 3 of the 4 main articles in the supplement focused on various aspects of the Dominican vocation. This pleased this blogger very much!

As part of the launch of the Year of Vocation the organising committee for the year have put together a website http://www.yourvocation.ie/ It appeared on the evening before the launch and it seems that the website is very much in the embryonic stage. This is, unfortunately, an opportunity lost to really give a proper launch on the internet to this special year.