ST. DOMINIC, PRIEST OF JESUS CHRIST AND FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS...........

From the late twelvth and early thirteenth centuries, Christianity experience the growth and development of religious orders with unique charisms and spiritualities, that fortified the holiness and ministries of the Church down through the centuries right into the 21st Century and 3rd Millennium of Catholic-Christianity.  St. Dominic was a young priest of that period, whose personal holiness and spirituality was in the teaching and praying of the devotion of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Dominic founded a religious order known as the Dominicans, officially named the Order of Preachers, abbreviated,  O.P. .  The Order of Preachers are dedicated by virtue of their religious vows, to preaching the Gospel.  They do this not only by serving in parishes and mission churches, but by preaching  Retreats Missions, and Evangelizing Presentations to Catholic-Christians throughout the World.  As a teen, as I began to seriously contemplate a vocation to the priesthood, I knew in my heart that if I became a priest, I would likely be a Sacramento diocesan priest, seeing it as the greatest need.  But responsibly I spent a period of time considering what kind of priestly vocation God and the Church might be calling me to, and I looked at some of our religious orders, and the Dominicans, being the Order of Preachers, was chief among them.  Having been a highly oral and verbal person from boyhood through adulthood, the possibility of making Preaching the center of the priestly ministry I would carry out strongly appealed to me.  Being true to my diocesan roots, I instead was ordained for the Diocese of Sacramento, as only the 40th  native born, local grown, diocesan priest, in our then 100 year history as a Diocese.  In January 2010, I was introduced to a local Sacramento group of Lay Dominicans, who attend Sunday Mass and meet monthly at Sacred Heart Church, in East Sacramento.  One of their members, who was serving as President of the group, Andy Opsahl, was completing his interview process with the Dominican order and entered their House of Formation, in Oakland, to study for the priesthood, in the Order of Preachers.  So today, as we commemorate the, "Faithful Witness", of St. Dominic, as a priest, promoter of the Rosary, Founder of the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers, and example of fidelity to Gospel Values, for all Disciples of Jesus The Christ, may we who have heard and answered God's Call continue to inspire and instill a deeper spirituality into the Church and the World...........St. Dominic, Priest of Jesus, Pray For Us,   Fr.  Troy