Reflections on St Dominic (6) - The Dominican Family

Through the window of our refectory I saw how our youngest Sister has planted a variety of flowers in the shape of 800, and it is exactly what we are as we celebrate our 800 Anniversary as Dominicans. Each Sister and Brother whom God has called to our family has shaped our Order day by day by their lives.

Dominic  placed so much trust and confidence in his companions. He was profoundly a man of God, convinced that the hand of God lay upon everything and everyone. His own vocation as a preacher he discovered from being attentive to the needs of others. He was so open to listen to God speaking to him through the lives of others.

Dominic knew that those who came to join him were called by the Lord and that the Lord was speaking to them. If others were called to join Dominic in his dream then some system had to be devised which respected both the freedom of God to speak as He wishes and the freedom of each to express their understanding of what God was saying to each personally. 

Dominic’s vision, his inspiration is communicated to his brethren in such a way that it becomes the creation of all. He inspired others by sharing his vision and allowing it to take root and mature in them in such a manner that it seems to come as much from them as from him.

In his family everyone becomes a builder, everyone must share in the task of construction, and is encouraged to offer his/her own personal contribution.

Dominic never put himself in the centre, he emptied himself, and that emptiness   invites Christ to be a centre of his own life and the life of his community. 

When Dominic had only sixteen brothers, he sent them to Paris, Spain and Rome. In human eyes it seemed that he was tearing down what he had laboriously built, destroying the Order he had just founded. But he had the supernatural prudence that comes from the Holy Spirit ‘Seed rots when it is hoarded, bears fruit when it is sown.’  Dominicans were for the Church. Our lives are shaped by the Church’s needs.

The following quotation from Becoming Human by Jean Vainer is relevant here: 

A place of mediation is that place where we are and can search for truth together, where we find healing for our hearts that are incapable of relating to others in a healthy way, where we can learn not to be locked up in our own needs and desires, but welcome others as they are, accept that they are important and have value. The place of mediation helps us to discover that we are part of something much bigger, that together we can do something beautiful.

Our awareness that we are loved and accepted by our God, that truth is what allows us to be preachers of God’s Mercy and Compassion. And we first learn it in our communities and then share it with the whole world.

When fr.Bruno our Master last week was in Krakow on the WYD, he was asked the question: What do Dominicans have to preach today for the Youth? He answered that we first need to listen to them and after, to preach and to share with them our experience of life. To think together, how to build a better world today - not individual world but a world where we can BE together.  Church – He  said - is our common home 

Reflections on St Dominic (5) - "The Light of Learning"

As we continue our Novena to St Dominic. I thought it would be nice to reflect on St. Dominic with St. Catherine, as revealed to here by God the Father in “The Dialogue.”

 

 And look at the ship of your father Dominic, my beloved son. He governed it with a perfect rule, asking [his followers] to be attentive only to my honor and the salvation of souls with the light of learning. He wished to build his foundation on this light, while not for all that giving up true and voluntary poverty …

But for his more proper object he took the light of learning in order to stamp out the errors that were rising up at that time. He took up the task of the Word, my only-begotten Son. Clearly he appeared as an apostle in the world, with such truth and light did he sow my word, dispelling the darkness and giving light. He was a light that I offered the world through Mary and sent into the mystic body of holy Church as an uprooter of heresies. Why did I say “through Mary”? Because Mary gave him the habit – a task my goodness entrusted to her.

Where would he have his children eat by the light of learning? At the table of the cross. On that cross is set the table of holy desire where one eats souls for love of me. He wanted his children to do nothing else but stand at this table by the light of learning to seek only the glory and praise of my name and the salvation of souls. And so that they might attend to nothing else, he relieved them of worry about temporal things and wanted them to be poor. Was he lacking in faith or did he fear they would not be provided for? Certainly not, for he was clothed in faith and trusted firmly in my providence. …

So Dominic set his ship in order by rigging it with three strong ropes: obedience, continence, and true poverty. He made it thoroughly royal by not tying it to the guilt of deadly sin. Enlightened by me, the true light, he was providing for those who were less perfect. For, though all who observe the rule are perfect, still even in [this way of] life one is more perfect than another, and both the perfect and the not-so-perfect fare well on this ship. Dominic allied himself with my Truth by showing that he did not want the sinner to die but rather to be converted and live. He made his ship very spacious, gladsome, and fragrant, a most delightful garden.

Reflections on St Dominic (4) - A Humble Man

Continuing our reflections in honour of our Holy Father St. Dominic, I will read an excerpt from the book: Saint Dominic – The Grace of the Word, By Guy Beduelle OP.

Dominic’s name does not appear in the first Constitutions, but they are stamped with his spirit and his plan. He allowed himself to be directed by events with that charismatic grace of saints, who shape their work in harmony with Providence. Instances of this abound: there was his acceptance or choice of the Rule of St. Augustine, the dispersion of the brethren in 1217, and the almost precipitate assignment of friars to Poland. In these decisions Dominic evidenced his judgment in matters arising from encounters and circumstances. Humbling himself before momentary events, he yet used them to full advantage.

There is something more: we know his sanctity only through other people. It was the anonymous, insistent and popular devotion at his tomb in Bologna that brought him recognition in spite of the discretion and reticence of the Friars. They had done nothing to preserve the memory of their Founder. What Jordan condemns a negligence may perhaps be explained by the brethren’s profound respect for what Dominic wished. When his glory could no longer remain “buried”, however, the indirect but concurring testimony of the depositions at the process of canonization brought out the splendour of Dominic’s undeviating and remarkable humility.

Dominic experienced that tension, common to many founders, between charismatic authority and the desire for self-effacement. It is as if some mysterious law is at work effecting a complete withdrawal, either free or imposed. With Dominic, obscurity was his own deliberate achievement.

He lived among his brethren as if he were not present. He had no bed, no cell of his own. He scarcely ate, yet followed the common life and the Rule in all points. Anyone could approach him. A joyous person, yet with compassion for others’ misfortunes, his apostolic availability, fraternal, friendly and spontaneous as it was, eloquently proved his Christian dispossession.

Reflections on St Dominic (3) - A Man in love with Truth

As we continue our novena to St Dominic, I have taken a few short snippets from a reflection by Fr Peter Lobo OP (India) on Dominican Spirituality. As we celebrate the 800^th Anniversary of the founding of the Order we can all renew our devotion to and love for Dominc by reflecting on a few of his traits and gifts of grace.

 Dominican Spirituality spells out the Dominican Pathway to God, even though it is not carried forward in writings, but rather in on-going lived traditions that embody the vision, spirit, charism and life-project of St Dominic and the early brethren. It is a spirituality of peculiar wholeness and balance, of great depth and liberality, which can be lived out through a pluriformity of life-styles and is capable of being a valid spiritual path for many different kinds of people.

    (i)            Dominic was a Restless Man: he never felt that he had done enough. He never fell into a rut and settled down. He always moved forward learning as he went along, critically examining and evaluating his world and its needs, on the one hand, and the apostolic services he offered it, on the other, … Dominic always wanted to be at the frontiers of the Church’s mission; he faced these frontier-situations with courage, confidence, creativity and compassion for people.

  (ii)            Dominic was an Evangelical Man: he felt the inner call from Christ to leave everything for the sake of the Gospel and engage all his energies in preaching the Good News to the waiting multitude as the apostles and disciples did: in poverty and relying on God’s unfailing providence. …

 (iv)            Dominic was a Man Passionately in Love with Truth: he listened, discerned and accepted truth whether taught in the Gospels, Church teaching, the good practices of heretics and outer counter movements, and the situations he encountered, because truth is one and all partial truths that are discovered complement each other and come eventually from the author of all truth, Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Spirit of Truth, who leads us into all the truth, God who is truth itself. For Dominic, truth was a person, God himself and accepting the truth was committing oneself to God….

(Dominican Ashram Magazine, June 1995)

We all know the centrality of the Word of God (St Matthew’s Gospel and the Letters of St Paul) in Dominic’s life. Above all Dominic was a Man of Prayer. As we heard last night, “Dominic prayed, prayed without ceasing, both night and day;” and we are all familiar with his “Nine Ways of Prayer” – his entire mission and life’s work was founded on prayer.

Reflections on St Dominic - a man of prayer

We sing the following antiphon at Lauds on the feast of St Dominic: “Dominic prayed, prayed without ceasing, prayed both night and day.”  Dominic as we know is the founder of a preaching Order but the most striking characteristics, highlighted in the process of canonisation and in Blessed Jordan’s account of the beginnings of the Order, the Libellus, describe Dominic, first and foremost, as a man of prayer – prayer was the source from which his preaching flowed.  Dominic preached by his way of life long before he founded his Order and even while devoting himself to preaching the Gospel throughout Europe he continued his practice of unceasing prayer.  It comes as no great surprise then that ten years before he gathered together his friars preachers he had already gathered, in the monastery of Blessed Mary of Prouilhe, a group of women converts whom he associated with his ‘holy preaching’ by their prayer and penance.  Throughout the eight hundred years of the Order’s existence down to the present day Dominican contemplative nuns have been associated with the preaching of their brothers and sisters who ‘preach the name of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the world.’

“Imitation of Blessed Dominic as he imitated Christ” is the ideal set before us Dominican Nuns in our Constitutions and we are urged to perpetuate his “fervour and spirit of prayer” by harmoniously ordering our whole life to preserving the continual remembrance  of God while striving to have the same mind as Christ Jesus.  Dominic’s unceasing prayer led him to have the same mind as Christ – fruit of the gift of the Holy Spirit - Blessed Jordan says that Master Dominic always communed with God and the angels even while living in this mortal flesh.  This unceasing communing with God flowed from his study of sacred truth especially the Holy Scriptures – he always carried with him the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistles of St Paul and knew them by heart.  Blessed Jordan tells us that Dominic was “adept at keeping God’s Word” for he “warmly accepted the Lord’s commands” and “welcomed the voice of his Lover with loyalty and pleasure” – Jordan uses the lovely image of comparing Dominic’s memory to a “kind of barn for storing God’s Word” but he did not just hold on to it for himself - no it bore fruit in his way of life – “his external behaviour and actions broadcast publicly the treasure that lay hidden in his holy breast.”

Dominic “haunted the church by day and by night, devoting himself ceaselessly to prayer – weeping and interceding on behalf of sinners, the afflicted and oppressed whose distress he bore in the inmost shrine of his compassion.”  His special prayer was for the gift of true charity which would enable him to “spend himself utterly in winning souls” in imitation of the Lord Jesus who offered himself entirely for our salvation.  Frequently on his travels he would suggest to his brothers that they would think about the Saviour and Fra Angelico, one of the early friars, frequently depicted Dominic at the foot of the Cross – the book of the art of love - meditating on the sufferings of the Saviour.   Just as Dominic’s apostolic zeal sprang from his contemplation of the Cross so too we the nuns of the Order invited take our place with Mary and Dominic at the foot of the Cross, embrace the Cross in our daily lives and unceasingly beg for God’s mercy for ourselves and the whole world.

In his recent Apostolic Constitution to Contemplative women, Pope Francis tells us that our prayer and contemplation is chiefly “nourished by the ‘scandalous beauty’ of the Cross” and says that the Church counts on the life of prayer and self-sacrifice in bringing the Good news to the men and women of our time. 

As we celebrate this Jubilee Year of the Order and that of Diving Mercy, may our holy Father St Dominic intercede for us that we may remain faithful to our life of prayer and self-sacrifice in the heart of the Order and of the Church in the midst of our modern world.

Preparing for the Feast of St Dominic during this Jubilee Year

It is our custom to have a novena of prayer each year in preparation for the feast of our father Dominic - in recent years this consists of a short reflection on some aspect of St Dominic's life followed by the following beatiful antiphon to St Dominic before Vespers each evening:

O Wonderful hope which you gave to those who wept for you at the hour of your death, promising that after your decease you would be  helpful to your brethren. 

Fulfil Father what you have said and help us by your prayer.

You shone on the bodies of so many sick by so many miracles, bring us the help of Christ to heal our sick souls.

Fulfil Father what you have said and help us by your prayer.

We are  happy to share with our readers some of our reflections

A reflection on the ‘ O Lumen’ (an antiphon which we sing to St Dominic daily at Night Prayer after the Salve Regina)

O light of the Church,

 Doctor of truth,

 Rose of patience,

Ivory of chastity,

Water of wisdom freely given

 Preacher of grace lead us to the blessed.

2016--------Wake up the world !

1216--------Dominic did just that !

 Dare we dream to be as he was?:

A flaming torch setting the world ablaze

   With God the Father’s love, mercy and compassion.

A lover of truth, who speaks the truth, acts truthfully

And walks with The Truth, Christ.

A fragrant incense rising up from the sacrifice

    Of a self giving love

A strong, pure presence  reaching out to humanity

With the joy of an undivided heart

A gentle counselor speaking a life-giving word 

that can pierce the ignorance of hearts and minds 

with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit

 An ardent preacher of the beauty and efficacy

of God’s friendship with humanity 

and leading it into the presence of the Blessed Three in One .

Yes ,we dare to dream!      

Holy Father Dominic relying on your intercession 

may our dream come true.

Attending an Online Summer School

Once again, as good Dominicans we are preparing through communal study to celebrate our Founder's feast next week (8th August). We are in the middle of a two week Online Summer School run by the Priory Institute. 

The course is called "Communion - The Church's Self-Understanding"  and it is excellent. We strongly recommend it to anyone reading this. It is given by Fr John Harris OP and deals with "the central teaching of the Second Vatican Council." It is a series of 10 lectures over two weeks and because it is online we can watch the lecture at any time of the day, and if we have to skip a day we can just watch it the next day. 

For more information, or to register, visit the Priory Institute's Summer School page - here.