"Where I found rich common life, I missed the opportunity to study, teach, and learn. Where I found intellectual stimulation, I lacked a concrete community in which to practice the truths I was studying. Where I could engage in works of mercy, I felt the inadequacy of trying to do them on my own. In Dominican life, most of the pieces that had made up my life in a diffuse way have now been brought together into an integrated whole."
BR. BASIL STEWART, OP
TAKE A MOMENT TO
MEET BR. BASIL!
What's your favorite prayer?
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name; through Christ our Lord.
What's your favorite book of the Bible and why?
Besides the Psalms (the obvious answer), I might say the Epistle to the Hebrews. It depicts in a marvelous way the dignity and majesty of the person of Christ, and does so by showing how he brings to fulfillment the major themes and threads of the Old Testament. It serves as a great review of the whole history of salvation.
What's the most interesting or pointless fact you know?
I can still recite the Preamble to the US Constitution which I had to memorize in (I think) 8th grade.
What did you want to be growing up and why?
I was a big tennis player as a kid, and so had the usual dreams of winning Wimbledon one day.
TIPS FROM BR. BASIL:
What's something you wish you knew earlier about discernment?
It would have been helpful for me to realize from the beginning that there was not likely to be, at least for someone of my (melancholic, often excessively deliberative) temperament, any particular moment where the “right decision” would be made perfectly clear. God is usually not going to give a sudden, dramatic, lightning flash of insight to reveal the way forward for a person. He has already given us most of what we need to know for discernment of a religious vocation: that keeping the commandments of Christ and his Church is the way to salvation, and that the consecrated life is an eminently reliable path for fulfilling those commandments. Beyond that, if you encounter a religious community or charism to which you find yourself attracted, then don’t wring your hands for too long about whether to pursue it. Give it a try, and God will either open or close the right doors as you go.
What's something you wish you knew earlier about Dominican life?
Granting the incomparable wisdom of God’s providence, I would have been happy for that providence to reveal to me earlier than it did what a beautiful synthesis of things is found in the Dominican life. Until I entered, I lived my life in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. I was drawn to communal life rooted in the Church’s liturgy, and for intermittent periods of time over the years I had various communities with whom I could pray the Divine Office. I wanted to live simply in a spirit of poverty and to encounter personally the poor and ignored, so I hung around Catholic Worker houses and L’Arche communities. I had a strong desire to study the Christian Tradition and to share with others the fruits of that study, and so I sought out schools where I could learn and teach. I wanted my prayers and my studies ultimately to serve the building up of the body of Christ, and so I undertook various kinds of ministries in local ecclesial contexts. Each of these things was wonderful, but it was difficult to find a way to keep them all together in a healthy and generative balance. Where I found rich common life, I missed the opportunity to study, teach, and learn. Where I found intellectual stimulation, I lacked a concrete community in which to practice the truths I was studying. Where I could engage in works of mercy, I felt the inadequacy of trying to do them on my own. In Dominican life, most of the pieces that had made up my life in a diffuse way have now been brought together into an integrated whole. I am deeply immersed in the prayers of the Church and the traditions of her learning with a stable group of men zealous for Christ, and from the rich spiritual and intellectual resevoir created by this common religious life we are, all of us together, propelled out to serve the Church and the world as teachers and preachers, as evangelizers and catechists, as men of mercy and truth.