The young couple sitting near me on the train were very affectionate, kissing and cuddling each other, and I found it rather irritating. Finally the girl, who was very pretty, fell asleep and something made me smile at the young man, who immediately said: “I saw you were using a prayer book. Are you studying religion?” When I explained that I am a Lay Dominican and that prayer is part of my life, he relaxed visibly and told me about the difficulties he and his fiancée are having: she is Polish, he is Albanian and many people are suspicious of them because they are foreigners. As it happens, I am a foreigner too in the country where I live, so we told each other a little about our experiences, and he explained that his family are still in Albania, but the girl’s family are already here and they hope to be able to unite both families in time. They have both found jobs in the city and are working hard to make enough money for decent accommodation for both sets of parents as well as for themselves.

Ann (Great-Britain, Province of England)

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On a long train journey, I was seated at a table with three other people: an elderly man, a young mother and her nine-year-old son. I am middle-aged, so we covered four different generations. The little boy was intent on his homework, with some help from his mum; I was reading a book by Thomas Merton (with a picture of him in his monk’s habit on the cover) and using a bookmark with a photograph of a little dog.

We talked (of course) about dogs; the man showed us a photograph of his own dog and then a whole series of pictures of his little grandson, whom we all admired. Then he asked about my cross, telling us that he helped in his own parish in various ways, and that he had been to Lourdes and to the church of Padre Pio. When I explained about being a Lay Dominican, the mother showed great interest and asked about how we live: in communities? in our families? The small boy, Michael, seemed fascinated too and all three listened intently.

I was touched by the old man’s love for his dog, so I offered him my bookmark as a gift; he was delighted, and gave me a prayer card with the Madonna of Lourdes to thank me. Then I thought it would be nice to give something to Michael, so I said: “It’s your name day soon and I’ll remember you on that day, and I’d like to give you something” – I wasn’t sure how he would react, but I offered him a prayer card with an image of St Dominic. To my delight he was thrilled: “Look, Mum”, he said excitedly, “I’ve never had a picture of St Dominic and his hair is the same colour as mine!”

All three of my new friends got off at the next station and we parted with great cordiality, promising to pray for each other.

Katharine (Scotland, Province of England)

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Brussels in May: a bright sun was blazing down on the Southern, Red, Moroccan neighbourhood of Saint Gilles. I was looking forward to summer as I sat outside a café in the Avenue Dejaer. On my green sweater, a black-and-white Dominican cross caught the sunlight like a new coin. I was wearing my cross proudly as a sign that I had joined the Lay Dominicans just twelve days earlier, making my promise to the Order of Preachers, surrounded by my family, in the chapel of the cloistered nuns of Herne-lez-Enghien.

But should the cross be worn like a flag? Wouldn’t it upset people who didn’t share my choice? Wouldn’t it be better to preach the Good News by example, anonymously? I wasn’t sure, and I prayed that the Holy Spirit would show me what was best. I was really waiting for a sign which would be the answer to my prayer. I knew from experience that true prayer, which comes from the depths of your being and not from your lips, always finds an answer. And now, that day, an answer was given to me.

A Moroccan drew near and was looking insistently at my cross. He was fortyish, dressed in European style. Suddenly he tuned in one direction, surely towards the East, towards the tomb of the Prophet. He joined his hands, lifted up his eyes and spoke a few words in Arabic, which of course I didn’t understand. He bowed down, as Muslims do at the hour of prayer. After a moment he came up to me, seized the Dominican cross around my neck and kissed it. Then tears fell, which he dried furtively on the sleeve of his denim jacket.

• Why are you crying?
• Because I have never kissed a cross before. But I know that we both have the same God, Allah, for there is only one God! 
•  That’s true, but you say so because your heart is pure and there is no hatred in you.

I asked the stranger to sit down and he shook my hand with typically Eastern fervour. What he said then testifies to his close knowledge of the Koran, and he told me he was an Imam. He said:

• You have passed through the first three levels of perfection. Now you must pass through the last two. The fourth is the cancelling of all the vanities in you. Do not seek honours or power, nor ever use human beings to satisfy personal ambitions. 
• And what is the fifth level? 
• It is asking forgiveness of Allah. 

His answer froze me. For twelve days earlier, when I made my first commitment as a lay Dominican, when the president of the Fraternity said: « What do you ask? », I had answered, in accordance with the ritual used by our Dominican friars and nuns too: « The mercy of God and yours! » – the equivalent of my interlocutor’s « forgiveness of Allah ».

The answer was clear. I have worn my little Dominican cross on my breast ever since. It has never been blessed by a friar – we’re not mad about blessing material objects in our Order – but it has been kissed by a Muslim. One day, no doubt, we shall pray together. 

 Translated from French (original text   by Ludovic, Belgium, Vicariate of Belgium-south)

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I am living in a German metropolis in close neighbourhood to an old people’s home.  Since my retirement as a museum teacher, I have had the opportunity to bring the elderly persons living there a little bit more colour into the often monotonous grey of their everyday life.  Simple objects from nature, such as a bunch of flowers, an oddly shaped and coloured stone or a loaf of bread are an opportunity to refer to a verse of a psalm or another passage of the Bible by thanking God for the richness and variety of his creation. I encourage the elderly to make use of the painting materials I have brought and to transfer their sensations onto paper.

I was queuing at the supermarket checkout one day with my nephew John and his friend Tommy, both aged 7, when Tommy pointed to my Dominican badge and asked “What’s that?” I quickly tried to find an answer suitable for a 7-year-old: “That’s to tell people that I try to tell the truth at all times.” “Oh!” said Tommy, “there’s a boy in our class who tells lots of lies.” “That’s not very nice,” I said. “When you tell a lot of lies and are found out, people stop believing you even when you tell the truth. Do you tell lies?” Both boys looked very uncomfortable, so I added, “No need to answer that question! Just remember, you nearly always get caught out when you tell a lie.” At that I heard a giggle behind me and realized several people in the queue had been listening to the conversation.

Anna (Ireland, Province of Ireland)

We’ve never had any children of our own, so we opened our home over the years to young people with family problems: we talked to them, listened to them and prayed with them, and over a period of many years we found many “sons and daughters” in this way. Now we are elderly and our “children” are all adults, many with families of their own. In addition, two of them are Dominican friars, one is a Dominican Sister and three more are Lay Dominicans.

Translated from Italian (original article by Elena, Italy, Province of St Dominic)

Over a number of years I was asked to preach in the church close to my workplace on Family Sunday (the Sunday after Christmas Day). Because I worked with these families as a nurse and they often shared their worries and troubles with me, I knew them quite well and I knew their needs. Some of them were in irregular relationships and were in fear of God’s wrath. They were good people for whom life wasn’t easy and I wanted to let them know through the following sermon that God loved them anyway:

“Way back in history, as far back as four thousand years ago, there was a man who had a wife and he also had a problem. He had been promised an inheritance for his children and his children’s children; an inheritance of a very large tract of fertile land. The problem was, he had no children and his wife was too old to have any now. The wife suggested that her slave girl could have a child for him. He agreed. He lay with Hagar, the slave of Sarah, and they had a son. Later, God sent a message to the man that his wife would have a son of her own the next year and so she did. We now had a family consisting of Abraham, his wife Sarah, the slave girl Hagar and their two children. Now, Sarah had a problem. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, was older than her son, Isaac, and according to the law of the land stood to inherit everything. Sarah nagged at her husband until he banished Hagar and her son from the family.

A generation or so later there was a man called Jacob. He married two sisters, Leah and Rachel, who were also his first cousins and he took on two concubines named Bilhah and Zilpah, the slaves of his wives. Between the four women they produced twelve sons and several daughters. So, you had a family consisting of Jacob, his two wives, his two mistresses and many children. These twelve sons became the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel. You will remember the youngest son, Joseph, he was famous for his coat of many colours.

Many, many generations later in the year 6 BC there was a fifteen-year-old girl named Mary whose marriage had been arranged to a carpenter called Joseph.  They were engaged. But she became pregnant and Joseph wasn’t the father. There was a fierce amount of panic around the situation. She said an angel of God appeared to her but Joseph knew nothing about this. She could be stoned to death if the authorities got to know about it. However, the angel also appeared to Joseph and explained things to him. Joseph accepted the story and not particularly wanting to see Mary stoned, decided to stand by her. Thus you had a family consisting of Mary and Joseph and their child Jesus who wasn’t fathered by Joseph. Joseph is thought to have been considerably older than Mary and to have come to the marriage with some children of his own.

Jesus grew up eventually and one day while he was resting by a well outside a village he got into conversation with a woman. During the conversation it was revealed that the woman had several children by six different partners. Jesus did not condemn her and she, realising who He really was, became one of His disciples and went back into the village to tell the people.

Now, I am not making any judgement about the different groupings of people who come together and call themselves family. Only God could look deep into Mary’s heart and know that it was His own Son who occupied the womb that lay beneath it. It was He who chose the fragile structure of the human family in all its creative forms to pass knowledge of himself down through the generations to the present day.

During the last two thousand years when the Church Jesus founded to teach, guide and encourage us in His Way, itself became disabled by its own power, wealth and pomposity, it was the family, guided by the Holy Spirit, who pulled us through. In times of oppression and persecution by foreign states or hostile regimes, it is the family that keeps the flame of Faith burning in secret. We have evidence of this in many parts of our world today through the stories coming from the underground Church.

The family is the most important unit in society, no matter how it is made up. The reality today, as in times past, is that there are families which are made up of groups of people other than the conventional mother, father and two children. Each family unit is precious to God and loved dearly by Him and this has been so since humankind was created.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the fathers of the Faith, it was to them God first made Himself known and through them and their families, generation after generation, that he gradually revealed Himself and His Will for humanity. God didn’t exclude them because their family structure was a little unusual or creative. In Jesus, God assumed the human form, and freely entered into a human family, to offer the ultimate Sacrifice, which saved us, and freed us from our bondage to sin. Faith is a gift from God to each individual who is open to receiving it.  It is within the family that the foundation is laid, a foundation of knowledge and example in the Christian way of life, on which the seed of Faith can be nurtured and grow.

The ideal family is the husband and wife who commit themselves through the Sacrament of Marriage to God and to each other for life and who raise children who will leave the nest when the time is right. We don’t live in an ideal world. Families are not perfect. Only God knows what is in our hearts. Our hope is in our children, therefore each one of us, married or not, aunt, uncle, neighbour or friend has a responsibility to support and nurture the family in every way we can”.

 Mary (Ireland, Province of Ireland)

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