Hounds of the Lord, by Kevin Vost. Sophia Institute, 2015.
This book is marked as “saints every Catholic should know.” It is dedicated especially to all the religious and lay sons and daughters of the family of Saint Dominic in our world today for the joyful way you embrace the mission of the Order of Friars
Preachers – praising, blessing, and preaching for the benefit of us all, unto the ends of the earth, as we journey toward heaven.
In the Foreward, Vost calls attention to the barking dog often pictured at the feet of a statue of St. Dominic, and it refers to a dream his mother, Jane of Aza,
had before Dominic was born. He was to be the one ‘barking out the Word of God for eight hundred years and counting.” The nine holy ones addressed in this book are called “Dominican thinkers, doers, and lovers.” Since the Dominican Order in 2016 marks 800 years since its foundation, it is appropriate that this book be published this year. Vost honors all Dominicans in the Preface: “Barking Out the Word of God for Eight Hundred Years and
Counting.”
The author remarks that there are so many Dominicans and in this book “so few Pages,” that he has to include in each chapter of very important Saints, a few extras he knows about. For example Chapter one is called “Saint Dominic de Guzman Lets Loose the Hounds of the Lord” and
Vost concludes the chapter with Blessed Jordan of Saxony. Chapter two is about “Blessed Humbert of Romans Puts the Order in Order” and Vost concludes with Saint Hyacinth of Poland. This book contains short histories of saints and blessed, and concludes with a chronology of some saintly Dominicans, and a calendar of some Dominicans. This book gives a fresh perspective on the lives of many holy men and women who continue to inspire many others to set the world afire by living their own lives with
virtue and zeal. The interesting incidents which are shown here make one feel as if he/she was meeting these saints and blesseds for the first time. There are interesting and pious stories, prophetic dreams and visions, apparitions, appearances of the devil, miraculous healings, bilocation, stigmata, incorruption after death, and much more. An excellent book for your reading list in 2016.
- Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman OP for this review.
