Fr. Gregory Pine

Because up until that point, you had various movements of religious life.

So for those who don't know anything about this, you've got priests and those priests might be attached to a place, we call those diocesan priests, or they might be attached to a certain community.

We refer to those often enough as religious priests.

And religious priests tend to sort on the basis of interest, okay?

So the first movement of religious priests is the monks and their interest is,

cultivating recollection, seeking to be in the presence of God, praying throughout the course of the day as a way by which to sanctify time and working so as to support their temporal needs and maybe serving in the countryside if there are occasions.

But then the next movement is canons who live kind of like monks, but they have more pastoral responsibilities, but they tend to be rooted to...

a canonry, right?

So to like a cathedral chapter or something like that.

So the next movement is the friars.

The next big movement would be the friars.

And the risky thing about the friars is that they're way more mobile.

And whereas the monasteries tended to be in the countryside, they bring the monastery to city center.

So there's this sense that, okay, so for a Dominican friar, what's the ideal?

It's to contemplate,

and to furnish others with he whom you have contemplated.

So the idea is that you live a kind of monastic life and that you're transfigured by that, that you're transformed by that.

But then like Moses who goes up to the mountain top and has his face transfigured in brilliant light and then comes down and testifies or witnesses to the people, so the Dominican friar is meant to preach, he's meant to teach.

but it's risky because there's like a lot of sin and vice at the city center.

Okay, so part of the reason for which a monk would retreat to the countryside is to ensure a kind of cloistered environment where he could have, you know, some measure of confidence that he could live his life