Kevin Vost - Hounds of the Lord

Other books by Kevin Vost
from Sophia Institute Press:

Memorize the Faith!

Unearthing Your Ten Talents

Fit for Eternal Life!

The One-Minute Aquinas

The Seven Deadly Sins

KEVIN VOST, PSY.D.

G REAT D OMINICAN S AINTS E VERY C ATHOLIC S HOULD K NOW

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS

Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2015 by Kevin Vost

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved

Cover and interior design by Perceptions Design Studio.

On the cover: Arbre Gnalogique, image courtesty of Yves Eigenmann, Biens culturels de Fribourg.

Except where otherwise noted, biblical references in this book are from the Second Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965, 1966, and 2006 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, for use in the United States of America, copyright 1994 and 1997, United States Catholic Conference Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Sophia Institute Press is a registered trademark of Sophia Institute.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vost, Kevin.

Hounds of the Lord : great Dominican saints every Catholic should know / Kevin Vost, Psy.D.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-62282-289-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 978-1-622822-904 1. Dominicans Biography. 2. Christian saints Biography. I. Title.

BX3555.V67 2015

271.2022 dc23

[B]

2015032981

To all the religious and lay sons and daughters
of the family of Saint Dominic in our world today,
for the joyful way you embrace the mission of the
Order of Friars Preachers praising, blessing, and
preaching for the benefit of us all, unto the ends
of the earth, as we journey toward heaven

Contents

, by Sister Matthew Marie, O.P.

Preface:

Introduction:

PART 1

D OMINICAN D OERS AND THE A POSTOLIC S TYLE

PART 2

D OMINICAN T HINKERS AND THE
C ONTEMPLATIVE S TYLE

PART 3

D OMINICAN L OVERS AND THE C HARITABLE S TYLE

Conclusion:

About the Author:

Foreword

Jubilees and anniversaries are a great time to reminisce about family, family stories, and individual family members. As the Dominican Order celebrates the eight hundredth anniversary of the approval of the order, we are indebted to Dr. Kevin Vost for providing us with a fresh look at an album of some of these great individuals within the Dominican family.

Reading St. Albert the Great: Champion of Faith of Reason , I wondered what the authors connection was with the Dominican Order. He wrote like a Dominican and had unusual insights into the Dominicans, yet there was no O.P. after his name, but rather a Psy.D. To quote the Scriptures, Where then did this man get all this? (Matt. 13:56).

I had the opportunity to ask that question when Dr. Vost visited Aquinas College. His familial understanding of the Dominicans (and all things Dominican) was handed on to him during the course of his education in the Dominican tradition at both the elementary and high school levels. Having been educated in the riches of the Dominican family, Kevin deftly demonstrates the richness of our Dominican tradition with a stunning variety of saints and blesseds. Hounds of the Lord makes clear the lighthearted Dominican adage: When youve met one Dominican, youve met one Dominican!

When one thinks of Dominicans, one usually thinks of their great intellects. Kevin Vost, however, provides us with a rich mosaic of the Dominicans that illustrates how these great intellectuals were not simply thinkers. They were (and are!) men and women of love and action as well. Within these pages, there are great preachers, teachers, artists, mystics, nurses, doctors, and even a college student beatified in 1990 by Saint John Paul II.

What do they all have in common? Saint Dominic is the obvious answer, but all the Dominicans in this book, like their founder, brought the message of the gospel, the message of Gods mercy, to the people of their time and the people of our time by way of example. Kevin Vost shows us the impact that the lives of these saints and blesseds throughout the history of the order have had on him. Thank you, Kevin, for sharing our family with the world in a fresh way as we celebrate this eight hundredth anniversary.

May the Hounds of the Lord increase and multiply, and may that torch continue to enlighten and enflame the world with knowledge of Gods loving mercy, just as it has with Kevin Vost!

Sister Matthew Marie, O.P.
Professor of Education
Aquinas College, Nashville

PREFACE

Barking Out the Word of God for Eight Hundred Years and Counting

Six hundred, six again, and yet sixteen,
These were the years since Gods own human birth,
When, under Dominic, there first was seen
The Order that should preach to all the earth. The roving dogs are the Order of Preachers who do not wait at their homes for the poor but go out to them and lick the ulcers of their sins, having in their mouths the bark of preaching.

Saint Albert the Great on Luke 16:1921

In October of 2013 a coworker at my disability determination office told me that she, who is not a physician, faced the daunting task of teaching our latest policies on the adjudication of heart disease cases to a room full of licensed cardiologists. It was especially easy to show her compassion, since I was faced with a similar task in the weeks ahead: one of giving a talk on All Saints Day about none other, of all saints, but Dominic de Guzman to a room full of habit-wearing, card-carrying Dominicans!

I explained to the faculty of Aquinas College of Nashville on that November 1 that, although I had written books influenced by Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican of the first rank, and a biography of his great Dominican teacher, Saint Albert the Great, I was surely no expert on the life of Saint Dominic. In fact, I knew I had to do a great deal of what psychologists might euphemize as undistributed learning, but which every student knows firsthand is really cramming that frantic, feverish, bleary-eyed, coffee-driven, last-minute study before one takes a big test. And yet, as I told the professors in the audience, it soon occurred to me that I was not going to speak to them as an expert on Saint Dominic at all, but merely as a layperson who had been personally impacted for the good by the work of Saint Dominic and his holy Order of Preachers. In that sense, I had been preparing for that lecture for almost fifty years, since I started kindergarten at Saint Agnes School under the tutelage of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois and that made the task far less daunting.

A couple of Sundays before the talk, as I sat chatting in the backyard with my wife and our next-door neighbor, our neighbor said that earlier she had watched a televangelist whose whole focus was on Jesus Christ as a traveling preacher . She said it inspired her, and it was a message she was not used to hearing. I had to smile as I told her I was heading south in a couple of weeks to talk to a group of people whose whole lives are centered on just that notion the imitation of Christ as a traveling preacher and in fact, these Dominicans are officially known as the Order of Preachers.

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