As founder of the Dominican order, the Spaniard St. Dominic ranks with the Italian St. Francis of Assisi among the charismatic reformers of the 13th century.
Dominic (surname de Guzman) was a native of Calaroga, Spain. His folks were noted for their dedication to the Church. Dominic studied for the priesthood and was named one of the official “chapter of canons” of the cathedral of Osma. From the start, his was a life of constant study, prayer, and priestly labor.
In 1204, Canon de Guzman went on an assignment that would broaden his horizons. Alfonso IX of Castile sent Bishop Diego of Osma to Denmark to arrange for a wedding between Alfonso’s son and a Danish princess. Diego took Dominic with him. Passage through southern France brought the pair into their first contact with the great number of Albigensian heretics who lived there. These were Catholics who had lately become infected with Manicheism. Manicheism was an ancient Mideast religion that saw the world as a battleground between two opposing principles, good and evil. They associated this evil with all material things, and the good with spiritual things alone. Thus they denied the incarnation and death of Christ, because they said God would never assume a detestable human body. On the same basis, they rejected the Christian sacraments. Salvation, they said, could be acquired only by fasting from food and drink and abstaining from marriage, so as not to further populate the world with fleshly human beings. Indeed, suicide was commendable as a sign of disdain of the flesh.
How could Catholics have been taken in by this morbid error? Dominic saw two main reasons: 1. They had never been properly educated in the Catholic faith. 2. The heretical leaders, with their detachment and poverty, seemed more “Christian” in their lives than the self-indulgent Catholic clergy. Therefore Dominic gathered a team of preachers and spent ten years preaching true doctrine in France, and carefully setting the best possible Christian good example. Like “hounds of God,” they pursued their campaign, winning many back to the truth.
His success having proved his diagnosis, Dominic now founded a religious order called the “Order of Preachers,” but popularly known as the Dominicans. Its chief mission was to educate by preaching (and for this his friars had to be constantly studying their theology). Just as important was his stress on the poverty and humility of his Dominicans. He had practically experienced what St. Jerome once wrote, “Your deeds are more credible than your words.” (It was in connection with founding this order that Dominic met and was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi.)
Because of his insistence on scholarship, the Order of Preachers spread rapidly to European learned centers, like the Universities of Paris and Bologna. They soon produced such savants as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great. By 1221 the Dominicans were represented in Palestine, Poland, France, Spain, Hungary, Scandinavia, and England. Eventually they would spread to the New World. Dominic also founded a women’s Dominican branch and a third order that welcomed laity. They established many charitable institutes and influenced popular piety, especially by promoting the recitation of the rosary. Today, the friars alone have 6800 members.
Dominic was clearly a genius as well as a saint, an organizer as well as a mystic. Thrice offered a bishopric, he thrice declined. He felt that his educational task was his true calling. Although barely 50 when he died, his movement still runs strong. One of his secrets of success was an inborn sense of personal concern for others. “Nothing”, wrote his biographer, “disturbed the even temper of his soul except his quick sympathy for every sort of suffering, and as a man’s face shows whether his heart is happy or not, it was easy to see from his friendly and joyous countenance that he was at peace inwardly. With his unfailing gentleness and readiness to help, no one could ever despise his radiant nature, which won all who met him and made him attract people from the first.”
When his friend Pope Gregory IX prepared to canonize him in 1234, he declared that he was as sure of the holiness of Dominic as he was of that of Ss. Peter and Paul! --Father Robert F. McNamara
Scripture (I Cor. 2:1-10a)
(Year C). The saints have done their utmost to love God with a love identical to his. God’s love is a love that is essentially active and effective, a love that acts and creates. The saints were not content with a simple emotional satisfaction, with a wonderful admiration, or with a superficial enthusiasm. They understood the saying of Jesus: It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord,” who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. The saints were consumed with a thirst for justice and the kingdom of God…. God had stooped down toward us, in the excess of his love, abasing himself even to our level; he had descended quite lower than we, even to the point of taking upon himself the gravest humiliations. The saints understood that they, in their turn, should humble themselves before God, because God had reversed his role. They wanted to descend from the throne of their own self-love and to seek the last place and that obligation of service God had chosen for himself on earth….
Who can tell us what the object of love was for Saint Dominic in those nights of penance and prayer passed in tears at the foot of the altar? It was God, preferred above all, loved more than all, with undivided heart, yet with no exclusions—for this love embraced, elevated, and intensified all legitimate affections. In the fire of charity, these affections became an ardent and consuming thirst for the salvation of souls. Finally, as God offered himself for us on the cross, so the saints offered themselves to God, even to the point of martyrdom, so that his will might be accomplished, that his kingdom might be established in souls, and that he might be glorified. And when, as in the case of Saint Dominic, they were unable to obtain martyrdom though ardently desiring it, they still experienced a daily death, though no less heroic, of labors, pains, and continual tribulations. As God gave himself to them as food, in the same way, they responded to his love and let themselves be consumed body and soul by him, making themselves “food” of God.
….all the saints tell us the same thing through their lives, namely, that the ardent charity that burned in their hearts consumed them little by little, for this is the law of love. Love, which is as strong as death, makes us die to ourselves that we may be born to another life. Such is the response of the saints to God’s love. (Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, o.p.)
Musical Selection
Collect
whose servant Dominic grew in the knowledge of your truth
and formed an order of preachers to proclaim the faith of Christ:
by our grace give to all your people a love for your word
and a longing to share the gospel,
so that the whole world may come to know you and your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen. (New English Missal)