The Third Order is divided into three great branches: First, those living in convents and known as Conventual Tertiaries; second those who belong to congregations, and meet at stated times; they are known as Chapter Tertiaries; and third, those who privately observe the rule; they are known as Private Tertiaries. With the conventual nuns we are now concerned; we merely wish briefly to state the principal duties of the Private and Chapter Tertiaries.

The Chapter Tertiary enjoys greater privileges and more means of grace than the Private. He may be punished for his faults by his superior, with penances proportioned to his want of discipline. His/Her prayers made in common, the exhortations he/she receives, the good works in which he is employed, and the examples of fervor and edification which he/she meets with, are a continual spur to the practice of good, and to progress in virtue. Still the Private Tertiary, though isolated in his life of penance, accepts and fulfills his duties in union with an innumerable multitude of brethren and sisters of every state and condition, who have the same exercises, the same prayers, and the same austerities. All belong really and canonically to a Religious Order, founded more than eight hundred years ago by a great saint. It takes a distinguished rank in the Church by the heroism of its examples, the luster of its teaching, the multitude of its members, the number of its blessed, and the devotedness and virtues of its children, who have never ceased to water the Church of God with their sweat and blood. The number of its martyrs, doctors, confessors, virgins, bishops, patriarchs, cardinals, and Popes, is known to God alone.

Every member of the Third Order not only shares in the merits of the brotherhood he has joined, but has also a brother’s part in all the sacrifices, labors, austerities and prayers of the entire Order throughout the world. And by communication of merits and privileges our Tertiaries also share in all the good works of the Franciscan, Augustinian, and Carmelite Orders, so that the indulgences and merits they can gain are truly wonderful. The communion of saints is the gift of God to all Christians; but the communion of the members of religious Orders is far more strict and intimate, and is a source of extraordinary consolation. The bonds of citizenship are closer than those of nationality. “Doing the truth in charity,” says Saint Paul, ” we may in all things grow up in Him Who is the head, even Christ: from Whom the whole body being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity.” (Ephes:4:15-16)

Saints produce saints; and great religious institutions become, from age to age, the great nurseries of holiness. The Third Order has itself trained up some of the brightest saints that glitter in the firmament of the Church: it is a paradise of spiritual pleasures. Father Faber, in his work on the Blessed Sacrament, says (p. 558); that the Third order of Saint Dominic is “a mystical garden of delights to the heavenly Spouse”; and again, “it is not one of the least blessings for which English Catholics have to thank the infinite compassion of their Lord during the last few years, that we posses now the Third Order of Saint Dominic in England. Those who are conversant with, indeed and, who find the strength and consolation of their lives in the acts of the saints, well know that there is not a nook of the mystical paradise of our heavenly Spouse where the flowers grow thicker or swell more fragrantly than in this Order of multitudinous, childlike saints. Nowhere in the Church does the incarnate Word show His ‘delight at being with the children of men’ in more touching simplicity, with more unearthly sweetness, or more spouse like familiarity, than in this, the youngest family of Saint Dominic.”

The saints are God’s highly favored children and He delights in manifesting in them the riches of His bounty. He knows that in giving them His grace they will not rob Him of His glory, but attribute all the good they perform to Himself. In bestowing His favors on the saints, besides His own honor and glory-for which He does all things-besides the honor and exaltation of His beloved children, He has other objects in view. The saints are for our admiration, and more: they are our models and teachers. God, in creating the heavens and the earth, desired to make known His power and divinity, and thereby command our fear and adoration.” The heavens show forth the glory of God,” for we cannot be impressed with the power and majesty of God when we gaze on the wild ocean, the towering mountain, or the unbounded expanse of the heavens. But in wonders of His grace in the saints, He wishes to impress us with the condescension of His goodness, with the riches of His mercy, and with the tenderness of His love. Who can read the lives of God’s servants without being filled with astonishment at the wondrous familiarity with which He converses with them Truly, “His delights are to be with the children of men.”

The saints are not only for our admiration, they are for our example: they are our models, our teachers, in the way of perfection. True, Our Lord is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Yet in His wonderful life of prayer and sufferings, we are disposed to consider the example He has giver too sublime for mere flesh and blood, though He bids us to take up our cross and follow Him. In the saints He condescends to remove our error , and show us what we can do through the aid of His grace . In their lives we see what men and women of our own flesh and blood, having the same temptations, the same world, the same enemies, were able to accomplish. And thus, though weakness itself, we see what we can do if truly determined to walk in their footsteps. The Apostle boldly says, “I can do all things in Him Who strengthened me.” Nor is this all; many of the saints, like their divine Master, gave us lessons as well as examples. They not only taught us by the glorious science of eternity, they laid down rules for our guidance; and that not in a general manner, but they entered in to the most minute details of the spiritual warfare. They traveled the narrow path step by step; they knew its difficulties and dangers-they met the wily enemy of man on the battlefield. They knew him under all his disguises; they understood his every stratagem, every snare, every allurement: and, guided by God’s Spirit, they taught us how to meet him and how to conquer.

One of the first among the great masters of the spiritual life is our illustrious father, St. Dominic. Like the outstretched arms of our Divine Lord on Calvary, St. Dominic would embrace the whole world in his burning charity. Not satisfied with establishing an order for the sublime apostleship of the priesthood, in which he united the silent contemplation of the Cenobite with the ardent zeal of the missionary; not satisfied with legislating for the chaste spouses of Christ in the strict enclosures of the convent; like Saint Vincent de Paul in his labors for the suffering poor, Saint Dominic would found a religious Order for every child of the Church. Even as our divine Lord called all to be perfect, Saint Dominic would teach sublime perfection to all-young or old, married or single.

Here we find the object of the Third Order of Saint Dominic: to attain the perfection of the saints, and share in their happiness, is the end to which you are called as members of this Order.

In the following pages you will find a rule of life at once simple and comprehensive: sublime with the wisdom of God- like the Rosary, yet, like that same beautiful devotion of the illustrious founder of the Third Order, adapted to the Knowledge and practice of the poor, the weak and the simple. And if the tree is to be known by its fruits, them, O God, how wonderfully hast Thou blest this Third Order of Thy servant, St. Dominic! What sublime fruits of holiness has it not produced! What lives of heroic sanctity, both in the Old and in the New World: countless thousands of virgins, confessors and martyrs, men and women, married and single, have here led lives of Christ-like splendor.