Letter from the Director
Dear Friends,
I was recently asked the question, “why is St.
Thomas Aquinas depicted with a sunburst
over his heart? Wouldn’t the brow be more
fitting, since it points towards the brilliance of
his mind?” New York City; and Charlottesville, Virginia
bearing aloft the precious Body of Christ.
We are eager to share this Truth that has
transformed our hearts with a world hungry
for true spiritual sustenance.
The sunburst on the breast of St. Thomas
is most certainly a symbol of his teachings,
which—themselves illumined by divine truth—
bear forth light for the whole world. In fact,
“Lumen Mundi” is one of his ancient titles. This is also why, as you’ll read in this issue,
the friars are having success preaching the
unity of faith and reason on secular campuses.
Young people today live in a world haunted
by the ghosts of empty and failed ideologies.
The Dominican Friars bring a Truth that is not
merely mental, but embodied in the human
heart and transmitted in the warmth of
Christian charity.
The sunburst is also a sign of St. Thomas’
purity of heart. EWTN will soon air a
BlackFriars Media documentary about our
Angelic Warfare Confraternity, a spiritual
community devoted to imitating St. Thomas’
legendary purity. (Include your email address
in the attached envelope to receive a link to
the video once it has aired).
The best reason for the location of the
sunburst, however, is found in St. Thomas’
writings on the Eucharist. Normally bread
is transformed into the one who eats it, but
the opposite happens when we receive Holy
Communion: we are incorporated into this
Living Bread. We don’t consume the Eucharist
as much as It consumes us and transforms our
hearts into the heart of Christ! Aquinas did not
simply hold this teaching in his mind but lived
it out with his whole heart.
Thanks to your generosity, we Dominican
Friars receive years of training in the thought
of our elder brother St. Thomas Aquinas. As
with him, this training penetrates not only
our minds but our hearts as well. This is why—
each year on the feast of Corpus Christi—friars
take to the streets of New Haven, Connecticut;
BlackFriars - Volume V, Issue II
I also invite you to read the uplifting story of a
family’s devotion to their patron saint told by a
Providence College senior who is the product
of a lifelong Dominican education.
Finally, I prepared a special essay on the
Dominican tradition of praying for our
deceased friends and benefactors; because as
Our Lord taught, “I am the living bread that
came down from heaven; whoever eats this
bread will live forever; and the bread that I
will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
(John 6:51)
Father Gabriel Gillen, O.P.
Executive Director
Dominican Friars Foundation
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