Formation // 
Novitiate
Novitiate
Novitiate
Our Province currently sends the novices to the Province of the Holy Rosary for their first year of formation at St Albert’s Priory Hong Kong.Leaving Australia for a new place was a little bit intimidating at first, but as soon as we arrived at the novitiate house, all the Fathers and Brothers in the convent warmly welcomed us, and one feels right at home there.
One of the most difficult times of the novitiate was the first month. Leaving Sydney in mid-winter we arrived in the middle of Hong Kong’s summer. The change of weather took a few weeks to become accustomed to.
The novitiate is a year-long formation retreat to continue discerning one’s vocation to the Dominican Order. The novitiate is a time of more intense prayer, study, community life by the Constitutions of the Order. The novitiate is conducted by the Master of Novices, Fr Bonifacio Solis, O.P., and is oriented towards the first profession of the vows.
The Hong Kong Novitiate is an amazing experience. Other brothers in the novitiate are from all those where the Province of the Holy Rosary is present. We attend novitiate classes, learning about History of the order, Dominican spirituality, Constitutions and Rules of the Order, Vatican II documents, the sacred liturgy, music classes with exams every week on what we learn during the week.
One also is taught and guided in how to pray the Divine Office with the community. Every week we also have Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. To be able to be in the presence of Our Lord in Adoration, after a week long of intense study and lessons is a great way to end the week.
During the year we also have many priests from all over visit the convent and give the novices talks. One of the highlights during the novitiate was the visit to the house by the newly-elected Master of the Order Fr. Bruno Cadoré, who spent a few days at the convent giving a talk to the novices and also answering some questions by the brothers.
It’s not all study all day during the novitiate. Every afternoon at 5:00pm we are encouraged to do some exercise as a community. Normally the brothers will get together for a game of football, which is simply an experience in itself! We played on a concrete football field, which does take a bit to get used to!
Novices are given one Sunday a month to have a day trip into the city. Visiting all the sights in Hong Kong, and being able to relax and do some sight seeing and occasional shopping. There are also times where the novices are asked by the Prior to attend some events at the Dominican Fathers’ school, which is great to be able to talk to the students, and answer any questions they may have about religious life and Catholicism. Two of the highlights we attended were the talent contest of the students. Many of them put together an act and performed for the community . The other event was Religious Week at the school. We attended a lunch with students and saw some debates about the historical Jesus.
The experience of Hong Kong is a memorable one, being part of another province of the Order for a year. Not only did we all learn so much about the order and our own personal discernment vocation, but also we learn so much about ourselves and make so many close friends among the brothers, and most important of all our spiritual life increases and we come much closer to our Lord. Enter the novitiate!
A Day in the Novitiate
The Novitiate is more intense and more disciplined that the Postulancy and builds the foundation for future religious life. There is much greater structure in the novitiate, as well as an emphasis on learning the Constitutions of the Order and what the religious life entails.
The novices of the Province of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary currently undertake a joint novitiate with the novices of the Province of Our Lady of the Rosary in Hong Kong.
This is the basic weekday schedule.
6:40 Mass
7:20 Breakfast
8:00 Classroom for study
9:00 Class
10:00 Class
11:00 Class
12:00 Lunch
1:00 -1:30 Community Time
1:30-2:40 REST
2:45 Office of Readings
3:30-5:00 Class room for study.
5:00 Exercise
6:30 Common Rosary followed by Evening Prayer.
7:00 Dinner
7:30-8:00 Community Time.
8:00 Study
9:00 Meditation
9:30 Night Prayer
10:00 Great Silence
* Adoration with Benediction is held once a week for thirty minutes
** There is a retreat day once a month consisting of one or two talks
You will be taught
Reading is greatly encouraged, at least one book a month,
Scripture reading will be compulsory.
There are also assignments, on the Dominican saints and blesseds, which is a great way to learn more about our heritage and those who have gone before us.
The year is strict. For example, the internet can only be used on Sundays and only for one hour. Ordinarily novices are only allowed out of the priory for exercise along a local walking track.
There is a great more deal emphasis placed on prayer, contemplation, reading and discernment, with retreat days run every month. Weekly adoration and lectio divina every Saturday night (which is a meditation on the Sunday readings, and a sharing of the fruits of our contemplation with each other).
We are allowed out of the convent, once a month, normally for 3-4 hours in the afternoon, however we are allowed to walk during recreation time outside, but not the the City.
The Clothing in the habit and Profession are two family orientated occasions. It is after all the time when mothers cry and siblings contemplate life to come without their brother. Even to the man himself, offering his life wholly to God and the Church, the upcoming rigours of Novitiate may well seem to be a time of giving up and leaving behind. The heart, used to the uniqueness of family love and devotion, may well tremble too.
Yet at the Clothing we do not give away our family, nor are we loosened at Profession from the Lord's commandment to honour our father and mother. The private character of the Clothing ceremony allows for a certain intimacy in which the two elements, one's natural family and the Dominican community, take pride of place over the world which is given up, and its need which the novice is not called to answer as yet.
"The .. rigours of the Novitiate may well seem to be a time of giving up and leaving behind .. Instead the whole person .. is invited to grow.."
Instead, the whole person, nurtured by the family, is invited to grow in two ways: by lovingly embracing the community and indeed the whole Order, and most importantly by learning to rely on the power of prayer and God's gracious ability to touch and transform that which we cannot directly affect. Prostrated before his superiors and before God, the novice pledges filial obedience to the men charged with his formation, conscious always of the need for God's mercy and the mercy of his superiors, for which he then humbly asks. Thus the habit becomes the sign and a constant reminder of many things; for in being an element of the regular observance of the Order, faithfully maintained for 800 years, the brothers are joined to the Order; to the past and thus the glory of the Order's saints and martyrs; to the present and thus to service of the preachers and teachers; and to the future and thus the hope they and their brothers bring to the Church and the world.
The quiet and often hidden life of the Novitiate reaches its culmination and goal in the public gesture, made on the basis of a year-long rigour of prayer and discenrment, in which the brother binds himself to the Order and into obedience to his superiors, in much the same way as knights took oaths of loyalty before God in the hands of their master. Thus one is bound not only to formation and growth into maturity as before, but also to active service in the marvellous work of saving souls. Yet still, as Jesus honored His mother and father, so too the brother must find time to cherish and love the very family that gave him life.
Br Vincent Magat, O.P.
Br Vincent Magat, O.P. is a student for the Province of the Assumption. He successfully completed his Novitiate in 2002, and professed obedience, poverty and chastity until death on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 13 January 2008.
He is now a priest and was ordained 12th Dec 2009