Dominican Friars
Province of St. Albert the Great, USA

A Word of Hope

30 August • Bonds of Love Beyond Marriage

A Word of Hope

Recorded at the National Diocesan Vocation Directors Conference in Huntington, New York, Fr. Samuel draws from St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians and Genesis. His homily explores why "it's not good for the man to be alone" applies beyond marriage to all human relationships, including celibate religious life. Learn how God reveals His love through our love for one another and why even vocations directors need fraternal support. A thoughtful reflection on community, loneliness in ministry, and the universal human need for connection.

## Chapter Breakdown

### Chapter 1: "Conference Context" (0:00 - 0:37)
- Saturday, 21st week in ordinary time
- National Diocesan Vocation Directors Conference
- Dominican participation in diocesan gathering
- Huntington, New York setting

### Chapter 2: "The Loneliness of Ministry" (0:37 - 1:01)
- Vocations direction as solitary work
- One director per province/diocese reality
- Finding fraternal support at conference
- Prayer, learning, and mutual support

### Chapter 3: "St. Paul on Fraternal Charity" (1:01 - 1:26)
- 1 Thessalonians reading introduction
- "Taught by God to love one another"
- Fraternal charity as heart of humanity
- No need for written instruction

### Chapter 4: "Genesis: Not Good to Be Alone" (1:26 - 2:07)
- First "not good" in creation account
- Beyond marriage interpretation
- Application to celibate vocations
- Universal human need for connection

### Chapter 5: "Faith as Community" (2:07 - 2:53)
- Not "me and God" faith
- Deep connection and union with others
- Learning from and needing others
- Receiving and giving love
- God's love revealed through human love

## Tags
#FraternalCharity #DominicanOrder #VocationsMinistry #ReligiousCommunity #CelibateLife #MinistrySupport #1Thessalonians #Genesis #NotGoodAlone #VocationsDirector #DominicanBrotherhood #ReligiousConference #CatholicVocations #MinisterialLoneliness #ChristianCommunity

A Word of Hope with dove

Every day the Chicago Dominicans offer "A Word of Hope" video to bolster our faith through these trying times. We welcome any feedback you have at hope@opcentral.org . You can see them all below, or you can see other preaching by a particular person by clicking on his name, and you can have them emailed to you each morning by signing up for our email service:

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    29 August • Challenging One Another to Holiness

    Fr. Louis Morrone, OP, Provincial of the Dominican Province of St. Albert the Great, shares insights from the recent General Chapter in Krakow, Poland. Drawing from St. Paul's teaching that "God's will for you is your holiness," this homily explores what it means to live lives of integrity and how we're all called to preach to one another through our daily witness. Learn about the Dominican Order's renewed focus on four key groups in their preaching mission and how every Christian is called to share in this work of evangelization.
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    28 August • An Honest Look at Yourself

    On the Feast of St. Augustine (August 28), Father Luke Barder draws powerful parallels between the divisions Augustine faced in the early Church and contemporary religious and cultural debates. This timely homily explores how Augustine's journey of self-discovery and humility offers wisdom for navigating today's polarized world. Learn how Augustine learned to navigate through church divisions through honest self-reflection and how his example calls us to see with God's eyes in all humility rather than our with our own righteousness.
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    27 August • St. Monica: The Saint of Hope for Struggling Parents

    Father Luke Barder reflects on St. Monica's feast day (August 27) and her powerful example of hopeful persistence in prayer. As we continue through Jesus's challenging words to the Pharisees, St. Monica shows us how to see our loved ones—and ourselves—through God's eyes of mercy and hope rather than despair. This homily offers comfort to parents struggling with wayward children and anyone facing long seasons of unanswered prayer. Learn how Monica's 25 years of faithful intercession for Augustine models the heart of Jesus for the lost.
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    26 August • Evangelization is Sharing Your Friendship With God

    St. Paul told the Thessalonians he came to share not just the gospel, but his very self. This powerful homily reveals how the gospel is fundamentally about friendship - friendship with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and friendship with fellow believers. Learn why authentic evangelization requires vulnerability and personal sharing, not just facts about God.
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    24 August • The Narrow Gate is a Broad Minded Inclusivity

    Again from Abruzzo, Italy, Fr. Jimmy looks at Jesus' injunction to enter through the narrow gate in light of the first reading from Isaiah—that God came to gather people from every nation—concluding that the narrow gate is to have a broad minded view of inclusivity. We are not to have a narrow view of who is saved in our church, nor allow a narrow nationalism in our country—a challenging perspective!
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    23 August • Practice What You Preach with Integrity

    Today's reflection is from the Abruzzo Mountains in Italy, where Fr. Jimmy is visiting his ancestral homeland. Jesus tells his followers that they should do everything the religious leaders say, but they should not follow their example because they do not practice what they preach. Fr. Jimmy ties this to Pope Francis' warnings against clericalism, and also applies it to leadership outside the Church, noting that political leaders should also see themselves as servants, and not as entitled to special treatment. In the same way, each of us needs to practice what we preach.
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    22 August • What do You Love?

    This Friday reflection celebrates the Queenship of Mary, which falls one week after the Assumption, exploring how Mary represents the completion of Christ's mystery fulfilled in humanity. Fr. Bob begins with a brief sung prayer to the "Holy Queen" before explaining how Mary, as the most perfect one who offered herself completely to God's invitation, becomes the sign of completeness - as Mother of God, she is Queen of Heaven since Christ is King. The reflection then connects to the Gospel's question about the greatest commandment, noting how Jesus chose Deuteronomy 6 ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul") over the more obvious first commandment from Exodus. The speaker emphasizes a profound insight: what we are truly devoted to, what we genuinely love and believe in, is what we obey - love becomes the non-negotiable of our lives.
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    21 August • Bargaining vs. Conversion

    Today we hear the troubling story of Jephthah's vow from the Book of Judges and Jesus's parable of the wedding banquet, exploring our tendency to make bargains with God rather than seeking true conversion. Speaking from St. Catherine of Siena House in Grand Rapids on the memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Father Keller examines how Jephthah's tragic sacrifice of his daughter reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what God desires - God never wants human sacrifice but seeks our heart's conversion. The Gospel's wedding banquet parable reinforces this theme, showing how people reject God's invitation by prioritizing worldly concerns, and how even those who attend the banquet can be spiritually unprepared (symbolized by the man without a wedding garment). Father Keller warns that even faithful churchgoers can fall into the trap of trusting in their own works or worldly things rather than centering their lives in God.
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    20 August • Beyond Comparison to Gratitude

    In today's Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the landowner who hired workers all throughout the day, but in the end, paid them all the same. This parable strikes us differently depending on if we identify with the ones who got more than they expected or less. Of course, the parable is about getting into heaven, something none of us has earned, so we should all see ourselves as given more than we deserve and simply feel gratitude, but sometimes we still get into a spirit of comparing ourselves with others, and that always eats away at our happiness. Which will you do today?
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    18 August • Gradually Overcoming Sin

    Father Charlie reflects on the Scripture readings for Monday, August 18th (20th week in ordinary time), examining the challenging theme of human nature's tendency toward repeated sin. Drawing from the Book of Judges, where the Israelites repeatedly fell into idolatry despite divine guidance through judges, and the Gospel story of the rich young man who approached Jesus seeking salvation, Father Charlie explores how we all struggle with habitual sins that seem impossible to overcome. While acknowledging the disappointing cycle of confession and repeated failure that many experience, he offers hope through the Gospel's message that true transformation comes not just from following commandments, but from a genuine conversion of heart that allows God's grace to gradually replace our patterns of sin with acts of charity, love, and trust in God.
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    17 August • What is Your Passion?

    Speaking from a beautiful garden in Madison, Wisconsin, Fr. Scott connects his friend's retirement passion for gardening with the spiritual call to passionate prophetic action. Using Jesus' words about lighting fires and Jeremiah's willingness to face persecution, he challenges viewers to identify what they're passionate enough about to risk everything for. Addressing current world crises like Gaza and Ukraine, he calls for moving beyond comfortable inaction to light the fires of change our broken world desperately needs.
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    16 August • Blessing the Children

    Brother Edward reflects on the Gospel story of Jesus blessing the children, connecting it to the reality of children suffering in war zones around the world today. He challenges viewers to hold together both the joy children bring to families and the responsibility to care for suffering children globally, emphasizing that neglecting the world's most vulnerable children would offend the Christ who welcomed and blessed all children. The message calls for both prayer and action to bring peace and protection to children in conflict areas.
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    15 August • Mary, the Perfect Disciple, Assumed into Heaven

    Brother Edward reflects on the Assumption of Mary, connecting today's Gospel about true blessedness with Mary's role as the perfect disciple. He explains how Mary's "yes" to God's plan made her the prototype of faithful discipleship, and how her Assumption into heaven - body and soul - serves as both a reward for her faithfulness and a promise of our own future resurrection if we truly hear and keep God's word in our lives.
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    14 August • An Absurd Amount of Love

    In today's Gospel, Jesus challenges his disciple to forgive one another not seven times, but 77 times. This absurd number mirrors God's absurd love for us in giving his son for our salvation, and in St. Maximillian Kolbe's absurd love that led him to offer himself for death in place of another. Father Yamil draws a powerful parallel between the Gospel's call to forgive abundantly and the saint's extraordinary act of love toward his executioners and fellow prisoners.
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    11 August • Care for the Immigrant, for We Are Immigrants

    In today's first reading, Moses tells us that what God wants from his people: to "befriend" the immigrant, because we were once ourselves all immigrants. What was true of the Jewish people, is true of most Americans—98% of us were once aliens. As we deal with our broken immigration system, we need to recognize that God requires us to befriend immigrants, to feed and clothe them. Do we live up to that minimum standard?
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    10 August • Faith and Hope Work Together

    Jesus told his disciples that they should be ready at any moment, like a good servant who awaits his master's return from a wedding. A good servant awaits his master because he knows and trusts him, just as the master knows and trusts his servant so that he can leave him in charge. Our faith in God has to be based on our real relationship with God, and when it is good, it gives us hope for the future. Faith and hope, based in reality, work together.
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    8 August • St. Dominic: Always Talking about God or With God

    Today we celebrate the Feast of our Holy Father Dominic, the joyful and sociable friar who was always talking about God or with God. One might think that a man of constant prayer might not be so sociable, but for Dominic, God was at his side in everything he did, and this brought joy into every encounter he has with others. You and I could also live our days in the presence of Christ, and so infuse everything we do with divine and holy joy. Try it today!
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    7 August • Trusting God's Greater Plan amidst Suffering

    In today's Gospel, Peter saying to Jesus, "God forbid that you should suffer" earns him a harsh rebuke, that he is thinking as human beings do, not as God does. It is difficult for us to see the people we love suffer and trust that God is at work in the midst of this suffering, and has already prepared a resurrection to redeem it. So today, try to put on the mind of God when accompanying people who suffer, trusting that God indeed has a plan to save this person.
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    6 August • Use those Sacred Moments as Fuel for your Journey

    On this Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, we hear how Peter, witnessing the event, wanted to make three tents on teh spot to fix it in memory. But we are not called stay in these sacred moments, but to use them as fuel for our spiritual journey, which will be difficult sometimes. So today, remember the moments when you have been on that mountain top with God, and let it empower you to go back down that mountain and share the Good News with a hungering world.
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