We are lay people who are Dominicans and members of the Dominican Order. Our inspiration is St Dominic. His mission was to preach Jesus Christ and bring the Gospel message to all but especially those who felt lost, confused or had gone astray. We form one family with the friars and the sisters. We share in the apostolic mission of the Order and actively share in the life of the Church. We are a mixed bag of saints and sinners, worldwide we are over 150,000. We meet regularly to pray and study together and share each other’s joys, problems, and hope. We reflect on the Word of God seeking inspiration for our own lives and the lives of others.

If the Dominican project is preaching how does a lay person participate in this mission? Fr Timothy Radcliffe explains: "Being a preacher means that every one of us is sent by God to those whom we meet. A wife is sent to her husband, a husband to his wife. Each is a word of God to each other." The members of the Dominican Chapter in Norfolk prison, Massachusetts are "sent to be a word of hope in a place of suffering… Preaching in a pulpit has always been a small part of our preaching… one could argue that Dominic wished to carry the preaching of the Gospel out of the confines of the Church into the street.

He wished to carry the Word of God to where people are, living and studying, arguing and relaxing."We preach in different ways, but each Lay Dominican receives the grace of preaching and exercises that grace in the way they live. Addressing the Dominican Family in Manila, fr Timothy quotes St Paul: "You are a letter from Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, written not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of the human heart." St Catherine of Siena was a preacher not just in what she said and wrote, but in giving others strength. When the Pope lost courage she helped to stiffen his resolve. "To affirm others with a word or a smile is to preach. To be present to those who mourn is to preach. In some situations the most effective word may be silence! What you are, is a preaching.”