This vocation talk by Father Dominic Leg of the Timistic Institute was given at the Dominican

House of Studies in Washington, D.C. to a group of young men thinking about entering the Dominican

order.

Well, it's a great pleasure for me to be here and to have a chance to speak with you all.

And, you know, I myself was one sitting pretty much right

where you're sitting, not the same physical chair. Back then, this was the library, actually.

But it was a great experience for me to be working in Washington, D.C. and then to discover the House of Studies

and to get to know the friars here and to come and share a little bit of their life.

I remember very distinctly one experience that I had while I was here.

I mean, I had been thinking about the priesthood for a while and thinking about, you know, the possibility of the

religious life. I'd met the Dominicans while I was in law school. And so I knew a little bit

about them. I knew a few friars anyway. But I didn't really know what the life was like. And then when I

came here on the vocation weekend, it really was a great grace to feel like, one thing was just noticing

the way the brothers interacted in the refectory and in the recreation, and they just enjoyed

each other's presence. It was a religious life that was very serious, you know, in the

chapel, the theology,

the preaching of the gospel, taking seriously what it means to be a consecrated religious.

And at the same time, it was human.

You know, it was like real people living a real human life.

And I visited some other places that struck, they didn't strike me that way.

They struck me as, you know, perhaps very heroically austere and impressive because of that.

But I couldn't quite see myself being able to live there in a human way.

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