In the Image of Saint Dominic: Nine Portraits of Dominican Life by Guy Bedouelle, O.P., Part 2

On Friday I gave a short review of In the Image of Saint Dominic: Nine Portraits of Dominican Life by Guy Bedouelle, O.P.  As I mentioned the book creates a spiritual portrait of nine members of the Order of Preachers that represent some charism of the Dominicans, all of which reflect some aspect in the character of the order’s holy founder, St. Dominic de Guzman.  What I’ve done here is identified a short quote for each of the nine portraits that best highlights that Dominicans qualities and a quote on St. Dominic himself, which makes ten quotes in all.  Here are the ten quotes.

1. Blessed Jordan of Saxony: “Jordan recalls unceasingly that the center of Dominican life is Jesus Christ, who restores all things in himself, in whom God has restored all things: the abbreviated Word—Verbum abbreviatum—a well-known patristic and medieval theme, but one which takes on a special resonance when used by a Friar Preacher and a “Sister Preacheress.”

2. Saint Peter of Verona: "We should not forget that Peter of Verona, called Peter Martyr, the first saint of the Order, after its founder, to be canonized, was an Inquisitor. Born of Catharist parents, he entered the Dominican Order in 1221, a few months before the death of St. Dominic, who himself received him in Bologna."

3. St. Thomas Aquinas: "The 'dumb Ox' as his brethren nicknamed him, was notably taciturn and silent, 'eager at study and given to prayer' (in studio assiduous et in oratione devotus).  All were struck by the humility of this extraordinary mind. [Biographer William of] Tocco had this to say: 'He was aware that all his knowledge was God's gift; this is why no movement of vainglory could ever darken his soul, knowing as he did that each day he received the light of divine truth.”

4. St. Catherine of Siena: "After receiving at the age of eighteen the black and white habit of the Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic, "the white symbolizing innocence and the black humility," this mantellata was led to marriage "in faith" with Christ.  In a vision known to mysticism within the Church and elsewhere in the Order, Christ exchanged his heart with his servant Catherine."

5. Fra Angelico (Blessed John of Fiesole): "His painting never ceases to speak of the Incarnation, manifesting a renewed order in the world that is expressed by light. Finally, it accords an exceptional place to the Virgin Mary, seen as the model of the creature living in perfect friendship with God in the midst of the joys and sufferings that mark salvation history."

6. Bartolomé de las Casas: “Las Casas was simply expressing in his forceful way the two convictions underlying the Christian mission.  The evangelist must speak with the voice of friendship and persuasion, and the one who hears the word must accept it freely.  For at bottom, this is what it is all about: the fight for justice for the Indians is also a fight for their freedom.  This freedom belongs by right to every man created in the image of God and ransomed by him.”

7. St. Catherine de Ricci: "What comes down to us from St. Catherine herself is a voluminous correspondence, consisting mainly in spiritual direction.  In it we find much energy, common sense, realism, and especially an appeal to joyousness. There is nothing lugubrious about her, no wild or extravagant play of imagination, and in her letters she makes absolutely no allusion to her supernatural privileges and mystical trials.  At most she occasionally mentions her great weariness."

8. St. Martin de Porres: “Thus in little Martin’s blood there flowed two historic destinies, two cultures, that of victorious Catholic Spain and that of the blacks deported to America for manual labor in this immense land to be exploited after the destruction of the Incas.  His very skin bore the mark of the unprivileged of this time, but his swarthy face would come to radiate the light of charity.”

9. Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire: “To the very end, Lacordaire defended the consequences of his “liberal Catholicism,” such as the separation of church and state, or his preference for a papacy relieved of the temporal duties that fell to the Church in Italy.  He died on November 21, 1861.  On all fronts Lacordaire had championed liberty, with one object deliberately pursued: the reconciliation of the Church and the modern world as it issued from the French Revolution of 1789.  He judged this world, and rightly, to be the world of the future.”

10. St. Dominic: "As the Letter to the Romans puts it, 'If the root is holy, so are the branches.' St. Dominic is the 'Patriarch' of whom Gregory IX spoke in the bull of canonization, who would 'beget', according to the expression of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 'a great number of sons devoting themselves with wonderful zeal to an evangelical ministry.'  In this text of July 3, 1234, the Pope drew a parallel between Dominic and the prophets, predecessors of the Founder of the Preachers.  After eight centuries of Dominican life, with its glories and trials, we can see how the paternal figure of St. Dominic contains in germ different types of holiness that have been actualized in the course of history."

I hope you enjoyed this and got to understand the spirituality of the Order of Preachers, an order I am very close to.