[00:00] First we see in this Gospel passage, the Lord is giving a call to several young men here. "Come follow me." In a sense, He's calling them to, well, He's calling them to do what He is doing, to preach the Gospel, bring the Gospel.

[00:30] In fact, one of them, He says, "Go proclaim the kingdom of God." It's a call which means you give up everything to follow Him, to do exactly what He calls to do. Now, every one of us has such a call, one way or another. We call that a vocation, which comes literally from the Latin word, literally means to call. And God does call, and the first and foremost call that every single one of us has is the

[01:06] call to holiness, to unite ourselves with God. There are those of us who God calls also in a particular way to preach this way, the Gospel, to the people, or as He puts it here, "Proclaim the kingdom of God." St. Dominic was one of those. He was born in Spain, actually, around about 1170, became a canon regular, which means

[01:39] following the rule of St. Augustine, and worked in France. And He sought very hard to preach against the Albigensian heresy that was going on at that time, and He had very little success. And so it was that Our Lady, in tradition, Our Lady gave him the rosary as the weapon to use with the way of meditating on the mysteries of the life of Our Lord and Our Lady while

[02:14] praying the Hail Marys. The beads were actually already in use by monks who couldn't pray their office, and they would use the bead to count the psalms, to count the Hail Marys they were praying instead of the psalms. But now Our Lady gave this particular way, and he used it, and now he had great success. That is the rosary as we have come to know it today, and that is the weapon that Our Lady gives us in order to bring, or even bring peace in our world against all evil.

[02:51] That's the weapon that Our Lady gives us. And so St. Dominic, once he began in this route, in this way, called together his companions and formed a new mendicant order called the Order of Preachers, or the Dominicans. He was a contemporary of Our Father, Fr. St. Francis, and they knew each other.

[03:24] And in fact, they were called to Rome by a brillet, and as he interviewed them, he interviewed them, he even asked them if they would allow to have any of their members of their order as bishops, and they said no, both of them. They were to remain humble, little. They invited each other, Fr. St. Francis and Dominic, with humility, and finally, as they went out, St. Dominic conceded to St. Francis, actually, and then he asked for his cord.

[04:03] And St. Dominic thus became the first cord bearer on the Franciscan order, even though he was around his own orders, of course, that's the Dominican order, so now you see the connection. And so as he formed the Order of Preachers, they would study carefully and prepare themselves and then go out and preach the Word, preach the Gospel. And St. Dominic ended up dying, actually, in Bologna in Italy in 1221, yes, 1221.

[04:42] So we have first the Dominican order, the order he founded, and then we also have the Rosary from St. Dominic, going out and preaching exactly this, the Gospel, that is the way we must all follow, whether it be in the religious life, in the priesthood, or the married life, or the single life, one way or another, it's a vocation, all of it.

[05:13] One way or another, each state of life is actually a vocation. We all have the call to holiness, every one of us. We have different ways of helping each other to achieve that call. For St. Dominic, it was the Order of Preachers, for St. Francis, it was the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans, right? One way or another, we all have that call. We all have a call to help each other, and with the grace of God, we can, and achieve

[05:45] that call to holiness, to union with God. Praised be Jesus and Mary, Amen. ♪♪♪