On
Sunday August 8th will be the feast day of St. Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans. This is not only the annual feast day, but,
having died in 1221, the 800th anniversary of his death.
St.
Dominic is not as well-known as his contemporary, St. Francis of Assisi, but
both near simultaneously founded mendicant orders which almost defined
Catholicism in the late Middle Ages. St.
Dominic had the vision to realize that a religious order was needed to preach
the Gospel to overturn the heresies that had built up in his time. As I think about all times build up
heresies. We have had heresies from the
first century on, and just look around today and notice how many heresies
exist. In order to preach, St. Dominic
realized that his friars needed to study, and so learning and communicating
became a foundational element to the charism of Dominicans. Ultimately all learning gained must be shared
as a fruit of the prayerful process. It
is meant for the salvation of souls.
By
the way, St. Dominic, ever so humble, never wanted his order to be named after
him, and so it is not. It is and has
always been officially the Order of Preachers.
It was after his death that his name was unofficially linked to the
order.
What
was Dominic like? A couple of years ago
I reviewed here The Life of Saint Dominic
by Augusta Theodosia Drane. I have lots of little excerpts to provide a portrait. If I were to provide some adjectives I would
say: humility, kindness, gentleness. He
connected with people that made others feel dignified. He was just loved as a man and leader. The Middle Ages are not known as a time where
women were allowed to self-determination, but one of the first acts Dominic
ever did was create a place and sanctuary for the women who converted from the
Albigensian heresy and allowed them self-government in their own monastery. I wrote about the establishment of one of
these convents in highlighting the icon called “The Madonna Advocata.”
Sr.
Marie Trainar, O.P. writes at the Order of Preachers website that while learning
was important to evangelization, what must go along with it is personal
holiness. To preach the holy, one had to
live holy.
What is striking about
Dominic is that he was perfectly attuned to “the urgent need of his time” (PG
2). Now, as Pope Francis points out, this need was twofold. There was the need
for a new evangelization, to which St. Dominic responded with poor, itinerant
preaching; but there was, “equally important, […] a summons to holiness in the
living communion of the Church” (PG 2). And Dominic understood at once that
without a lived holiness, his own and that of his communities, preaching would
sooner or later be doomed to failure, that without this resolute return to the
way of life of the first Christian community, the word of the Gospel would be
lost in the hubbub of the din of the times.
Last
year I also reviewed In the Image of
Saint Dominic: Nine Portraits of Dominican Life by Guy Bedouelle, O.P.
where the author, a Dominican himself, provides portraits of nine famous
Dominicans and how their personas somehow reflect and exude St. Dominic, their
founder. You can read about it here and in Part 2 here.
Now
I’m going to provide another little insight in the great man. This is a passage from The Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Dominican Saints by Ambroise
Gardeil, O. P. The premise of the book
is that Gardeil takes one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and demonstrating how they are manifest in particular Dominican saint. For St. Dominic Gardeil attributes the gift
of knowledge, but he goes back to an episode in Dominic’s life that reveals innate
knowledge beyond his youth.
His vocation is
foreshadowed in that distant episode of his student life when a famine was
raging in Polencia. Dominic sold his
books, his treasure, saying, “How can one study upon dead skins while there are
men dying of hunger?” When one day a
more fearful error which poison’s men’s souls, was revealed to a heart thus
disposed from on high, the whole of the knowledge which he had acquired during
twenty years of silent study adapted itself to save them. Behold him on that night in Toulouse when the
divine call was revealed to him in that discussion with the host he sought to
convert. The same spirit which had wrung
from his compassionate heart that cry of pity for the starving now animated him
“to give knowledge of salvation to his people.”
All the while he was conversing, he sought earnestly for some arguments
which could affect his host. He made
himself aware of his moral and intellectual condition: he wished to discover
the common idea, the truth admitted by both parties, a ray of God still
preserved by the misled spirit, upon which he could draw to rekindle the
light. At this moment, unquestionably he
would sell, as “dead skins,” all the knowledge he had acquired by the labor and
meditations of twenty years to find the right word, the decisive phrase, which
would deliver and satisfy this soul. (p.
72-3)
So
think of it. There are a couple of parts
to that passage that require some explanation.
Here is Dominic a student at a university and while a famine is causing local
starvation, Dominic sells his books to raise money for others to eat. Just think how in the 13th century
books were preciously difficult to come by and the sacrifice one must make to
sell them. If Dominic were anything like
me, giving up ones books is like tearing part of my insides out. And yet he did it.
The
other part of that passage refers to the host of an Inn Dominic was staying in his
travels who believed in the Abignesian heresy. The legend goes that Dominic
stayed up all night with the man speaking theology, and by the morning had
converted the man out of his heresy. It
was this incident that gave Dominic the idea of a preaching order, which of
course would ultimately become his order.
So
as you can see I have written much about St. Dominic and the Dominican Order
over the years. I may have alluded to
this in passing, but I’m going to reveal it now officially. I have been studying and undergoing the
process of being a Lay Dominican. I have completed postulancy and novitiate years, and am ready to take my
temporary promise, also called the first promise. Covid has slowed
things down but God willing I will take that promise in the fall. Three years from temporary promise one
becomes fully professed with a final promise.
May I also be shaped into the image of St. Dominic. Pray for me that I complete it.
Finally
I leave you with this picture of a statue of St. Dominic. You don’t see too many statues of St.
Dominic.
I
took this while at a funeral Mass for a close friend of 43 years—we knew each
other since our teens!—at a church in Brooklyn named after St. Dominic. And
get this, my friend’s middle name I found out was Dominic. I had never known that in all the years. There are no coincidences in life! So say a prayer also for the repose of my
friend Joseph Dominic.
Pray
for us St. Dominic and happy anniversary of the 800th year entering
heaven.
Edit: Great article from Catholic World Report
commemorating the feast day, “In praise of St. Dominic and the Dominicans” by Peter
M.J. Stravinskas. Well worth reading.
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