Br. Dominick Jean, OP

My story in the Faith begins with my family. We were not Catholic originally. My family were Baptists living in Southern Indiana, not the most Catholic area. But my parents decided they wanted the best possible education for my brother and I and so they sent us to the local Catholic school, St. Vincent de Paul. Cue God's laughter. Soon my brother and I were coming home with questions, and this led my parents to wonder if they had got their kids involved in some weird cult. They started to investigate, and through various books and research, including Scott Hahn's Rome Sweet Home, my mom and dad came to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. And not only my parents and my brother and I came to believe, but my dad's parents also entered the Church with us. Seems like a pretty wonderful start to the faith journey, right?

But I was still very much half asleep to the reality of what it meant to be Catholic and what God might be asking of me. I was involved in youth ministry, an altar server, I got to experience holy men and women and religious sisters and Benedictine monks, but I didn’t have that personal, intimate love which Jesus was trying to call me into. I knew I liked being Catholic, I liked the weird relics and devotions and traditions, but it was all just show. I thought if I just kept going through the actions and the motions, that would be enough. Basically, I was lukewarm and sleepwalking through my faith.

I began to wake up to the reality when I attended a high school retreat at St. Meinrad Archabbey called One Bread One Cup. There in the abbey church I had my first meaningful Confession in years to an old retired, and now dead, Benedictine Monk named Fr. Rupert. He spoke to me of the Father’s love and in his eyes, I could see the devastating and piercing gentleness which can only come from the Father. I was so afraid to be vulnerable with the Father, I did not dare look into the Father’s eyes in prayer until this moment and so it was not until this Confession I truly encountered the Lord. I gazed at Love and He gazed at me.

I wept for the first time in years in the abbey church after that as the litany of saints rolled over me. Reflecting, it was perhaps there, having received this gift of merciful love, that the seed of a vocation was planted in me. But I was not ready then.

Later at Indiana University, where I did my undergraduate degrees and where I encountered the Dominican Friars for the first time, I encountered Him in the preaching and common fraternal life of these men. I had encountered Jesus, I was starting to wake up from my sleepwalking act, but I was continually convicted over 4 years by the preaching and by the life of the friars. They showed me what it meant to be awake and attentive to God and how the Holy Spirit was moving them. These were contemplative and apostolic men and I saw in them that they did not put their value or their stock in what they did but in who they were. They were the Beloved Sons of God, brothers in a mission which flowed directly from their identity and contemplative life. I knew I could never have done the priesthood on my own, I needed brothers and brothers who could remind me of who I am when I forgot or got lost in the weeds of the world.

At the end of 4 years at IU, I was pretty sure I wanted to join the friars. I applied right before graduation and was accepted, and I began the novitiate the summer after graduation. But far from the end of the story, this was only the beginning. Jesus still needed to disabuse me of some notions and false ideas. I think that I thought I was holy, that I was “doing pretty well.” After all, I was joining religious life. Here I was about to embark on this novitiate year, and it was going to be a period of tranquility and peace and then move on to studies and, God willing, priesthood.

Once again, cue God’s laughter.

There is a reason that when Dominican friars take vows, we answer the question of “What do you seek?” with “God’s Mercy and yours.”

This mercy was a very good thing, because guess what? I was so bad at religious life.

I was always trying to hurry, to move faster, and to do more than was asked or needed in a given moment. I had never chanted the psalms before, I had never lived with an inter-generational group of men, I had never worked with the poor and the homeless, the list goes on. The struggles kept coming! And here I was accepting God’s will for my life, why all this struggle?

And it was in my helplessness that the Lord again looked at me with gentleness and love and said what He says to me again and again: Look at Me. Don’t look at the waves, look at Me.

I’m still learning that lesson more than 3 years after the novitiate. Next year, God-willing, I will take solemn/final vows. I will promise my entire life to God and the Dominican Order. I've grown a lot, I've learned to chant, how to learn in community (always a work in progress), how to work with people of various backgrounds in ministry, etc. And yet in all of this prayer, this study of philosophy and theology, and ministry experience it all comes back to this single point:

Jesus saying “Look at Me. I AM. Don’t look at the waves, look at Me.”

I’m still working on it, but God doesn’t ask us to do it alone. He has given His grace at each step of the journey. This year alone He has reassured me of that. Even when all my apostolic endeavors are insanely busy, God steadies me. He doesn’t promise wild success or that I will be the most eloquent Dominican preacher or teacher, but He does promise that He will be there. All I have to do is look at Him.