In professing our vows, we do two things:

  • We commit ourselves to working for God and His plan of creating his Kingdom.
  • We also commit ourselves to doing this as a member of the Dominican Order, living the way of life of the Order and carrying out the particular tasks that the Order gives us to fulfill God’s plan. Saint Dominic chose a specific task for the Order to carry out, namely the task of Preaching the Word of God. We commit ourselves to assist the Order in its task.

 When a Dominican makes his profession, he holds in his hands the current edition of the book of Dominican Constitutions. This  book has been updated many times during the last 800 years, and will certainly be updated many more times in the future. So we do not have to commit ourselves to something that is no longer relevant.  The Dominican Order has a kind of democratically elected parliament (called a GENERAL CHAPTER), which can modify the constitutions, and periodically it does so to make them relevant to life and apostolate today.

What is contained in the constitutions? The first few pages comprise a BASIC CONSTITUTION and this is followed by a number of chapters developing this Basic Constitution further.