Vocation Discernment
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Vocation Office
Western Dominican Province
5890 Birch Court
Oakland, CA 94618-1626
(510)-596-1821
Our Vocations require a great deal of support, from the first moment they begin their novitiate until the last moments of their retirement. Please do conside visiting our donation page and helping form and sustain the priests and brothers who will serve you in the future, serve you now and have served you in the past.
Saints and Blesseds
The Order of Friars Preachers,
The Dominican Order,
has a beautiful history of learning, service and holiness manifested in its saints and blesseds of every age since its foundation by St. Dominic de Guzman. Do enjoy the periodic postings of such stories as are available from various sources, especially our own archives.
Religious Retirement
Our elderly and infirm friars receive the best care we have available to us, as in any family. We rely heavily on the donations of others for our own existence and thus when one of our own becomes incapable of further ministry due to age or infirmity, those same donations help us support the sometimes necessary special care required by such members of our communities.
We prefer to care for our elderly and infirm in our own houses so that the life of a religious community can be a part of a friars life as long as possible. This is also the most economical in many ways. We strive to use donations wisely. But sometimes a care facility is essential. As we, as a Province, do not benefit from the national collection for retired religious, we ask that you assist us in caring for these friars who have prayed, taught, served and ministered for so many years amomg the people of the Western United States and beyond.
Please, in your kindness, consider assisting us in this work of brotherly love.
Many thanks in advance.
Catholicism
It's just the right thing
Fr. Michael Stephen Fones, OP
I am a native of Washington, Illinois, a small town at the crossroads of two relatively insignificant county roads – not even an exit off an interstate highway. Yet what a blessing to grow up there! My childhood and adolescent memories are filled with images of sandlot football, baseball and basketball games, king-of-the-mountain marathons, piano and bassoon lessons, and dreaming of living somewhere – anywhere – else. My closest childhood friends have grown up to be medical researchers, engineers and computer scientists, and now as I look back from middle age I can now appreciate the exceptional nature of those experiences and people.
My older brother and sister are both teachers, and I followed them to Illinois State University, where I majored in music performance (bassoon) for two years before I decided to play it safe and get a degree that offered more job opportunities. I changed majors to Geophysics and transferred to Michigan Technological University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I learned after arriving on campus that the average snowfall topped 250 inches. I graduated from Tech in 1983 and continued my education at Stanford University. While there I began discerning a vocation to religious life and priesthood, and after my first year, took a leave of absence to investigate the Dominicans, and ended up staying! The friars eventually sent me back to Stanford to finish my M.S. in Geophysics in 1988.
I was ordained in 1992 and have served in campus ministry at Arizona State University, and the Universities of Utah, Oregon and Arizona. Currently I am the co-Director of the Catherine of Siena Institute, a program of the Western Province dedicated to the transformation of parishes into centers of formation for lay apostles. I am privileged to work with Sherry Weddell, who co-founded the Institute with Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P. I invite you to visit our website at www.siena.org and our blog, Intentional Disciples.
After three shoulder surgeries in nine months over the end of 2006 and beginning of 2007, I am finally recovered and back in the gym almost every day. I am also once again able to play racquetball. I travel almost constantly in my work with the Institute, and I find daily exercise really helps me keep my head clear and my stamina up.
Dominican life challenges me with its ideal of a life balanced between prayer, study, ministry and community. The opportunities for growth and personal development that the Order has given me are gifts I can’t fully appreciate yet, much as I was unable to appreciate my childhood while living it. And while there are challenges in this life, the blessing of meeting incredibly gifted and generous lay people and living with friars who inspire me with their dedication to the Gospel completely overshadow them. I am grateful to God for the wonderful people He keeps placing in my life – people who inspire me with their goodness and their love for the Lord Jesus.
God is good!
Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, Review, April 2003
Signing the Prior Provincial Letter of Election of Fr. Robert Corral, January 2003
