Dominicans preach in churches and on the street, in universities and in mass media to the faithful as well as dissidents; we break open Scripture to different audiences and pursue works of justice and peace; we give retreats to nuns, visit the sick, console, listen, confess, forgive, and ultimately desire to go as far as need be to preach the Word of God to those who do not yet know it or need to hear it.

The Dominicans were founded as part of the mendicant movement: not monks tied to a monastery but called to go out into the world carrying the Gospel while retaining the roots of monastic prayer. In Dominican spirituality, common prayer and apostolic activity are mutually nourishing. Like the apostles who were sent out to preach but were also exhorted by Jesus to pray constantly, our preaching is a prayer, an encounter with God in the people with whom and to whom we preach, and our time spent in silence before God orients us more surely to our apostolic mission.

Within the Dominican family, the friars are united into a single, international religious order within the Catholic Church. Neither monks in a monastery nor diocesan priests living in parishes, Dominican friars are "apostolic religious" committed to the ministry of preaching wherever the need is greatest, with a marked preference for the frontiers of the Church. The friars pursue this ministry communally, bound together by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

The Order provides a home for friars to pursue evangelization full-time, prepared in silence and study and supported by prayer. This spiritual and missionary adventure has been going on for nearly eight hundred years and continues to be a vibrant part of the life of the Church; helping it to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth, and perhaps one day, to the ends of the universe.


Four fundamentals of Dominican life:

 

- Dominican Cooperator Brothers