'Share your faith,' Dominican novice urges Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center parishioners

Friday, Jul. 04, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY —Two Dominican novices spoke at the Masses at Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center the weekend of June 28; their visit was one stop of the traditional summer tour that men in their first year of studies with the Western Dominican Province take of the places where their order ministers.

Brother John Gregory and Brother Chrysostom Mijinke will make their first profession of vows in August, and then will begin seven years of study in preparation for the priesthood, said Dominican Father Anthony Rosevear, the novice master, during his homily June 29.

This year’s class of novices is smaller than it has been in the past, “but you take what the Lord gives,” Fr. Rosevear said, adding that during the past year more than 50 people interested in a religious life have visited the order’s house of study in Oakland. For the coming year, eight novices have been accepted for the Western Province, and a total of 30 men will enter in the four Dominican provinces throughout the United States, “so your prayers for vocations are being answered, and we encourage those prayers to continue, especially for our own Western Province,” Fr. Rosevear said.

As part of the visits, the novices speak about their call to religious life. Brother Chrysostom told those gathered for the 7 p.m. Mass on June 29 that he began having spiritual conversations with God when he was in high school.

Raised Catholic in the small town of Langley, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Brother Chrysostom said, “You have to speak with God to get to know him.” 

Before entering the Dominican order, he attended college, moved to England, then returned to Canada to work in an oil town in Alberta. The money was good, he said; for work on the drilling rigs the starting wage was $350 a day, and the town was filled with young men.

There were “a lot of drugs, a lot of partying, a lot of sex,” he said. “During that time I actually went through a period of backsliding in my faith a little bit.” 

Although he continued to attend Sunday Mass fairly regularly, “I just stopped speaking to God,” he said. “My relationship with him fell by the wayside, and one of the biggest things I was overcome with was guilt. … I did bad things and I can’t take away the fact that I did them.”

Despite the fact that he was backsliding, other men asked him for spiritual direction, he said. “You don’t think of young people in a party town, having the time of their life, wanting for something so much deeper, but they all are.” 

After a few years he enrolled in Dominican University College in Ottowa, Canada.

“There I had to face this question of guilt head on,” he said, and realized that while it was true that he couldn’t take away the fact that he had done bad things, “God did do something with my sins. He himself came down from heaven to take my sins upon himself. He sacrificed himself for my sake so that with him I might die as well and rise to eternal life.” 

Brother Chrysostom’s response was to repent: to turn from sin and follow Christ. He also decided to enter the Dominican order and become a preacher. However, most Dominicans in Canada are French-speaking, he said, so he was encouraged to visit the Western Province. Doing so, he saw other young men studying to become priests, “and all of them seized by that same fire of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls,” he said.

He invited those at the Mass “to start praying, if you haven’t already, and if you are praying, then intensify your prayer, because that is where you meet God.”

He also urged them to share their faith. “This is not something to be ashamed of,” he said. “People are made for God, and you’re giving them the grace they need.”