by Br. Bradley Thomas Elliott, OP
Presently, I have completed the first semester of my first year as a student Brother at St. Albert’s priory, last year being my novitiate year. It is hard for me to believe that a year and a half has past since I entered the order. This has only recently come to the forefront of my consciousness due to the home visit that I and the other student friars just enjoyed. Every year, after the Christmas day liturgies are through and the academic term is fully at rest, the brothers are afforded two weeks to leave the nest of the studentate and visit family and maintain established relationships with friends. But this being my first year in vows, it had been over a year since I had seen my family, and the visit provided for me an opportunity for reflection that I have not had since entering the order.
I have titled this entry, “Proud to be a Dominican”, since this was precisely the blessing of the visit. I had forgotten, in the day-to-day humdrum of academics, how blessed I am to be here at St. Albert's Priory and how proud I am to be in the Dominican Order. But first, what could this sense of “pride” mean? Isn’t that somewhat oxymoronic? Isn’t the religious life supposed to be a school of humility? Isn’t saying “proud to be a Dominican” like saying “proud humility” or “humble pride”? No, I do not think it is. Once again the sword of good Thomistic training must be pulled from its sheath and the correct distinctions must be made.
A man can be proud because he is enamored with himself, focused exclusively on his own goodness and blush at the thought of his own great deeds. This pride is largely self-focused. Certainly, in the past, I have felt this way about many of my accomplishments; I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed that they had not. But this is not the good pride that I am talking about here and it is precisely because I have succumbed to this self-focused pride in the past that I now clearly see the distinction. Indeed, the two experiences, one of the self-focused pride and the other of the good pride, are wholly opposed to each other.
When a man claims to be proud of his family, proud of his alma mater, proud of his country or proud of his church, he is speaking of a pride that is not self-focused but focused on another. Indeed he feels a sense of greatness, but it is not a sense of his own greatness; it is a sense of being a part of something greater than himself; it is the greatness of the other that swells his heart. This is a pride that draws a man out of himself and towards something great. Since he is focused on an ideal, a goal, or a vision that is beyond him, he is called by this pride to do greater things, more virtuous things, and more courageous things, things that he otherwise would never be inspired to do of it was not for this pride. This is precisely the pride that I feel about being in the Dominican Order. I am part of an order that is older than I, larger than I; its mission, to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, existed long before I was born and will continue long after I die. I am both proud and humbled to be a part of something so great.
This is what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the virtue of Magnanimity and it is indeed a long forgotten virtue in our time. I was reminded, after reflecting on this experience, of the words of Joseph Pieper describing this virtue:
“Magnanimity, a much-forgotten virtue, is the aspiration of the spirit to great things, extensio ad magna. A person is magnanimous if he has the courage to seek what is great and becomes worthy of it. This virtue has its roots in a firm confidence in the highest possibilities of that human nature that God did "marvelously ennoble and has still more marvelously renewed" (Roman Missal). Thus magnanimity incorporates into itself the aspiration of natural hope and stamps it according to the truth of man's own nature. Magnanimity, as both Thomas and Aristotle tell us, is "the jewel of all the virtues", since it always-- and particularly in ethical matters-- decides in favor of what is, at any given moment, the greater possibility of the human potentiality for being.” Josef Pieper, On Hope (Ignatius Press, 1986 [1977]), p. 28.
To come back to an earlier question, is saying, “I am proud to be a religious” a contradiction like saying “proud humility” or “humble pride”? No, it is not a contradiction at all. There IS indeed a type of pride that a man can feel and grow in humility at the same time, this is precisely the “humble pride” that I felt during my home visit when I was overwhelmed by gratitude in the face of the sheer awesomeness of God’s call, that He would call me, individual man that I am, to be part of something as great as the “holy preaching” of the Dominican order.
I pray that my brothers and I can live up to such a great call. Since we are each a part of something so much greater than ourselves, we need each other; we cannot live up to this call on our own. All Dominican Saints… pray for us.