When attending Mass in Brisbane a few months ago I had my first experience of déjà vu.

Every time I left the church, a local parishioner would grab my arm, fix me with an enquiring look and ask with great earnestness: “What order are you from?”

After a few days of repeating the words “Dominicans” or “Order of Preachers” I added – with a smile – one further phrase: “I have been asked the same thing every day since I arrived; we really need to do something to promote the order.”

One parishioner suggested I make up business cards with my name and the contact details of the order.

He suggested that I put our bank details on the back of the card and – when handing it over – that I should fix my interlocutor with a winning smile and the phrase, “No personal cheques”.

As winsome a suggestion as that was, I thought I might be better off using this column as an opportunity to recall just a few of the Dominican saints whose feasts occur in November.

It seems an appropriate moment to embark upon this quest, given that we began the month with the feast of All Saints, and November is a time when the Church pays particular attention to those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.

Also, there are few better ways to understand the inherent nature and charism of the Order of Preachers than through its many canonised saints.

However, before beginning my panegyric to my brothers in religion, it occurs to me that there is a doctrinal point that might be worth exploring.

Why, after all, do we venerate the saints?

Why does the Church designate certain days throughout the year as memoriae, feasts and solemnities dedicated to particular saints?

Is Jesus Christ Himself not enough?

The answer to those questions – questions which have all been asked of me at one time or another – is really quite simple.

The answer is this – the brilliant lustre that the saints show through their lives is nothing other than the splendid glory of Christ Himself.

The saints are a proof of the infinite power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst: that power which is forever capable of calling forth eternal luminous souls from the pervasive dust and sin of our world.

We who venerate the saints are adoring Christ, as it is from His power that they emanate and it is to His true divinity that they bear witness.

It is for this reason that, over the course of the year, the Church has surrounded the great feasts of our Lord Himself with feasts of the various saints like a garland.

The saints that comprise the flowers and leaves of this garland testify to the fruitful power of Our Lord who is Himself the fruitful vine. (John 15:1)

They bear witness to the action of the Son of God throughout the course of the history of the Church within this world.

The saints testify to His actions and His passion, His resurrection and the gift of His Spirit.

In the lives of the saints the effects of the Life of Christ and its undeniable fruits are brought nearer to our hearts and our minds.

And so we celebrate men like St Albert the Great (1200-1280: November 15), one of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church.

He is named the “Universal Doctor” in view of the breadth and depth of his writing which covers everything from logic, theology, botany, geography, astronomy and astrology to mineralogy, alchemy, zoology, physiology, phrenology, justice, law, friendship and love.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante places St Albert in the Heaven of the Sun.

He earns a mention in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and even has a font named after him (Albertus).

The manner in which St Albert understood his analytical work as an inherent part of life as a professed religious and priest is a trait that continues among the friars with whom I live.

This commitment to study and the contemplation of revealed truth has ever been a part of Dominican life and is aptly summed up in the relevant section of our Constitutions: “God is the light and source of our study, the God who spoke in former times and in different ways, and who now speaks in Christ”.
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