Dominican Life Quotes

“I think one of the freedoms that can come from healthy Chapter life and flow into a healthy prayer life is the freedom not to observe.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Dominican life, hence Dominican prayer, depends on a healthy life of the Chapter.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“One of his Prayers of the Faithful was always “for those who are misunderstood.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Whoever has offended another with insults or harmful words or even a serious accusation must remember to right the wrong he has done at the earliest opportunity. The injured must remember to forgive without further bickering.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Whoever has offended another with insults or harmful words or even a serious accusation must remember to right the wrong he has done at the earliest opportunity.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Do I situate myself in an environment that fosters recollection, that fosters calm, that allows me to see the value of things? Piles do not allow me to see the value of things. So what kind of space do I live in?”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Nobody has the right to expect a response to an email within an hour. It is not a valid expectation. People who do should be rebuked.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Is everybody on the watch to make sure that the novice mistress and the prioress, just to name two, have appropriate leisure? Are they getting proper rest?”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“So when we look at any sacrificial action, any surrender of wealth we must first acknowledge that it is in fact wealth.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“lot of folks in the Church today have litmus tests for religious they like and religious they do not like and approve of or do not approve of and one of them is the habit.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Do not allow your clothing to attract attention. Seek not to please by the clothes you wear but by the life you live.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“But behind that there is the truth about us and the truth is that most people come to religious life because they need to.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Another handicap on work is something we create, I speak from the experience of the friars, and this I think really is one of the saddest aspects of religious life—that we beat people up.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“They should consider themselves richer since they are now more robust in putting up with privations. It is better to need less than to have more.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Well, contemplation is always a gift, right? So you have to ask for it. It is a thing for which to beg, honestly, because it seems to me when we enter upon the contemplative gaze it is a sliver of revelation. We ask God to show us the beauty of the familiar, the complexity behind the obvious, and the struggle behind repeated failures, the patterns of behavior, because in the end the dysfunctions around us are not ever really conquered, they fade away and are replaced by new ones.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“The empathy we have is founded on the fact that God has put this person in my life. In other word, if this is true this allows me to be present to all kinds of people who I do not like.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Sooner or later you must confront this demon of comparison.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“He has the gift of a voice and I have the gift of the grateful ear, and God has brought us together. It is a sharing of wealth, is it not? But if you do not get that, what you do is you fall into resentment, envy, and comparison. The spirit of comparison is evil.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“It is attention, really, that is the big resource; it is being acknowledged. It is being told you did a great job.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Everybody heard the gospel in their own language: you have a place.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Consecrated life is an icon of the whole Christian life, and to live it fully and effectively and joyously one must understand that one is rich.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“Thus I do think that the challenge is to recognize that the purpose for which we are gathered is to encounter each other as an asceticism and thereby to recognize that the ‘other’ is present to disabuse me of illusion. Whether the ‘other’ is that sister in the house who drives me nuts just because she exists or whether the ‘other’ is the Chapter of the sisters taking the vote or the ‘other’ is the prioress acting in virtue of her office to make a decision, the other is there to disabuse me of illusion; even when the ‘other’ makes a mistake! The fact of the other’s mistake is still there to show me that I am not God, that I do not have the control over life to simply prevent all errors.”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life

“the whole question of how the Mass is celebrated, from which angle the Mass is celebrated, how much Latin is used in the Mass. All of these questions are important questions but without the proper end in view what happens to the liturgical life? It becomes an aesthetic or ideological battleground; Traditionalists versus Modernists. This is always a risk. The”
― Walter Wagner, Dominican Life