'An age that is twisted out of its true pattern'

There is a striking translation of Philippians 2:15, from the first reading in today's Mass, in the Knox version: You live in an age that is twisted out of its true pattern, and among such people you shine out, beacons to the world, upholding the message of life. The RSV reads: . . . children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world . . .

Today I came across a video produced by the Dominican Friars in the Philippines, Lumen Ecclesiae, which shows St Dominic as a 'Light of the Church' in an age that, in its own way, was 'twisted out of its true pattern'.

When I was a kid my late father used to take me sometimes to High Mass in St Saviour's, Dominick St, the Dominican church in the heart of Dublin. I remember very clearly the first stirrings of interest in the priesthood because of the white habit of the friars, even though subsequently I never felt any call to be a Dominican. The Irish Dominican Vocations blog shows that God is still using that same habit to draw young men to the priesthood and to the Dominicans.