The Road to Veritas: Why I Became a Lay Dominican
The most common email I get comes from those who want to know my story about why (and how) I joined the Dominican Order as a layman. I tried to do it justice in this video that I created, but I’m realizing now that there is so much more to unravel.
So, here’s the whole story:
Distracted from Truth
When God takes control of your life, the pathway is never certain, or clear, When I was a teenager, I started seeking answers to life’s ultimate questions. I was a cradle Catholic and Catholic school educated, but even then, I questioned my belief system often. I discovered some half truths but I found so many more lies that I liked better. I found that my religious formation, though often correct in everything that dealt with inward morality, didn’t serve as a catalyst toward the outward action I felt was missing from organized religion. Church seemed to me an emotional circle that we would gather around to share our feelings and desires, which was great, but it never satisfied me theologically. After 8th grade, I did not study to the degree I should have. I didn’t know how to maneuver the complexities of the Catholic faith- I only know how to equate God with my feelings.
Exploration of Worldly Truths
So, I followed my emotions to a very dark place. I lavished in personal pleasures, none more dangerous to my soul than the vanity of my collegiate and semi-professional basketball career. I escaped into the world and, in doing so, sacrificed my God. Instead of pursuing the everlasting glow of the halo, I fell through the cracks of a cold, orange, iron rim that led quickly to a hard floor. I eventually lost my ability to play the game I loved so much when God granted me the grace of two separate knee injuries. I say that these were “graces” now, but in the moment, they were obstacles that led me away from God and toward myself.
Discerning the Priesthood
It wasn’t long before I realized that my own sinful actions were the cause of all of my pain. The simple lessons taught in my boyhood from my Catholic schooling and at home resonated within my soul once I was mature enough to understand them. And so, as a man of impulse, I gave everything up. I fasted on bread and water, I studied for several hours a day, and I winsomely discerned the priesthood as my only option to make God proud. I had already spoke with our Director of Vocations in my diocese and was one semester away from heading off to seminary when God did something truly remarkable…
Marriage and Missionary Life
I met the woman who would later become my wife in the entryway of Saint Joseph the Worker parish, one of the few primarily latino Catholic Church of my diocese. I had missed attending Mass after 3 consecutive months due to the daylight savings time change. When I arrived the following week, a beautiful Mexican princess pulled me aside and said, “Where were you last week?” Shocked that someone was actually talking to me, I answered with my broken Spanish. We became friends. I discerned out of the priesthood. We got engaged within 5 months and were married just after of a year after the day we first met.
After our first year of marriage, we became missionaries to her native Mexico. While the lifestyle was difficult, it was perfect for my impulsive longing for holiness. There, we cared for poor young boys in an orphanage where we were expected to be their providers and guides in their dark worlds. For 24 hours a day, we were on, active in prayer and deed and we enjoyed it. We grew very close to one another as a couple serving in Christ’s missionary field. So close that we multiplied…
Finding My Community
Upon returning home from our service as missionaries, we laid down roots in Grand Rapids, Michigan where God blessed us with 4 children and steady work in the educational field. Teaching had always been my passion, and God found it a necessary component for my own salvation and those of the students who I would serve as teacher. My love for teaching was so overflowing that I took whatever excess of time I had and wrote my first book on the topic. The book was called 99 Ways to Teach Like the Master, and before I began writing it, I had grown to accept another passion that was growing within me- online evangelization.
I started my first blog in 2009 shortly after we returned from our missionary year. I found many other people through my connections on social media who shared a similar passion for writing on theological and philosophical topics. A few viral blog posts later and boom, I had a tribe- a group of followers who enjoyed what I was writing and were willing to support my passion by sharing my posts, endorsing my books, and even producing content that would guide people toward what I was doing as a writer.
This was the first taste of the fruits of my evangelistic labors. I found that my words were affecting people positively. It was then I began to learn about, reengage with, and eventually fall back in love with the Catholic Church and her teachings.
But, there was one problem, I had no idea what I was doing.
I was graced with a large audience and opportunities to preach God’s word to many people, but I was still very immature in my faith. I needed something to help me understand the deeper, more complex aspects of my faith. I needed direction, orthodox instruction, and a community of like-minded people.
That’s when I started to research the Third Orders in my community. I spent months debating between the Third Order Franciscans, the Third Order Carmelites, and the Lay Dominicans. I knew I was impulsive by nature, so attending even one meeting could have been the only justification I needed to make a poor decision. So, I didn’t attend meetings with any of these groups because I wanted to be as sure as possible of what they believed and what they practiced. I delved deeper into my study.
In March of 2013, I took my first step in a journey that would change my life forever. I walked into my first Lay Dominican meeting. I expected it to be another pow-wow where everyone shared their feelings and sang songs together. After two hours of listening to the members pray the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary, then participate in very high-level intellectual formation, I was stunned. I had NEVER been a part of something so objectively awesome with God as its center. I was hooked.
I took a month or two off to discern whether or not this was for me. After speaking about it with my wife, I laid down the steps that I would need to take in an organized plan and executed them while I discerned. I published those steps in an article I wrote for Ignitum Today titled How to Join a Third Order, which, to this day, is one of the most visited articles in the site’s history.
Apparently I’m not the only one who’s been called to discern a Third Order Vocation!
The Mary Factor
The final step that led me toward my acceptance into the Lay Dominican Order was a simple grace that came through my formation as a novice. Throughout the discovery period, I toggled between whether or not I could accept such a vocation given the immense pressure of my duties as a full time teacher and a full time husband and father. God continued to grace us with children on one hand, and on the other hand, I was given opportunity after opportunity to grow spiritually through my online evangelization efforts. I was in the middle of my second Master’s degree and we had four children under 5 years old at one point. I couldn’t figure out how living out a Third Order vocation could possibly fit into that equation.
So, I backed away. I stopped everything. My Dominican formation, my writing, my online evangelization, my Masters. Everything was put on hold except the needs of my family.
It was then that I began praying the Rosary every day. I joined the Confraternity of the Rosary and offered my entire life to Our Lady through my total consecration to Jesus through Mary.
It was then that things started to become clear.
After years of no study and no writing, I came to understand the obscurity of Christ’s early life before his public ministry. Like him, I remained spiritually alone with Mary and she taught me the importance of keeping my priorities in check. I learned to love my family above all else by sacrificing everything else. Together, my wife, my family, Our Lady and I trudged through the valleys of darkness that overshadowed us and we escaped into the grace of a springtime of love.
Little by little, the need to continue discovering the depths of God made itself present within my soul. This time, instead of accepting every opportunity that crossed my path, I became intentional about what projects I accepted and how much time I would dedicate to doing them.
The most important project in my mind was completing my Dominican formation, because I knew that if I could finish strong that I would be able to count on the graces that came with it to grow deeper in my knowledge of truth. The same spirit that ran through the veins of Aquinas, Albert the Great, Martin De Porres and St. Catherine of Siena (among countless others) would leave an indelible mark on my own soul, one that would guide me toward my potential for personal excellence and, more importantly, the salvation of many souls, including my own.
Wearing blue to represent Our Lady who covered me with her graces, I made my final promises in March of 2016 and become a tried and true Dominican.
I am a layman and a religious now. I belong totally to my wife and in my primary vocation as husband and as a member of a third order, I’ve responded to a “vocation within a vocation.” As a member of the Order of Preachers, I am dedicated to truth and even more dedicated to preaching that truth to the ends of the earth.
I couldn’t be more honored than to order my life according to the Rule that I promised to live by, I am a Lay Dominican, which affects every aspect of my life for the better. It is what I have been called to do and, God-willing, “I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of his people” (Psalm 116:14).
