As a clerical order, the Order of Preachers is particularly attuned to the mystery of paternity.  All the members being sons of the one Heavenly Father, after whom all fatherhood is named (Eph 3:15), and seeking to imitate his fecundity, each friar strives to become life-giving and fruitful in ways appropriate to the revealed spiritual order and the pattern established by our Holy Father Dominic, first of all by contemplating the Christian mysteries and then by sharing their truth through preaching.  Each Dominican sets out to mature in this special form of consecrated paternity by placing himself also under the spiritual fatherhood of two additional saints, whom he likewise calls "Holy Father"---St. Francis of Assisi and St. Augustine of Hippo.  Their graces, too, shape the holiness of the sons of St. Dominic.

The love St. Francis shared with St. Dominic for poverty and for preaching has easily earned him the filial esteem of the Friars Preachers, but the connection between St. Augustine and St. Dominic appears more remote.  Eight hundred years separated their lives, but it was a text---a rule---that eventually brought them together.  As a young cathedral canon in Osma, St. Dominic lived under the Rule of St. Augutine.  Later when founding his own order, St. Dominic again recognized the monastic wisdom of the doctor gratiae as a sure guide to shape and fructify the graced desires of his heart.  In 1216, Dominic chose the Rule of St. Augustine to be the foundational governing document of the Order of Preachers.  At that moment, St. Augustine became a spiritual father to the Dominican Order.  As a testimony to the rule's endurance, friars today often quote affectionately its first line: "Before all things, most dear brothers, we must love God and after Him our neighbor; for these are the principal commands which have been given to us."

In his book St. Dominic: The Grace of the Word, Fr. Guy Bedouelle, O.P., explains that St. Dominic's choice of the Rule of St. Augustine was not an accident of history.  To the contrary, Dominic recognized that the wisdom and structure of the rule, which Dominic knew personally, would serve well the goals he set for the Order.  Fr. Bedouelle explains:

"Dominic assumed and counted on the virtue of his brethren, or, more precisely, on their synthesis of virtues in the Christian sense: prudence, disinterestedness, concern for the common good.  In this vein, whatever the sources of juridical techniques, or whatever the interest in integrating them into a common law that matures with the emergence of a nation, we again see that Dominic finds his basic inspiriation in the great Book of evangilical wisdom.  While studying the early history of the Church, Dominic perceived in the Acts of the Apostles how decisive the sometimes laborious search for unanimity could be.  The disciples of the Risen Lord had but one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32).  Not only did they manage to settle their common affairs with one heart, transcending any conflict (Acts 6), but also, at the Council of Jerusalem, they met that challenge that enabled Christianity to be something more than a small Jewish sect (Acts 15).  The Rule of St. Augustine, chosen by Dominic, emphasized unanimity from the outset . . . This explains why Augustine's Rule became the instrument of a pursuit to have an agreement of wills.  It was less a desire for harmony within a group of men than a desire to join spiritual forces for the sake of apostolic efficacy, the goal being to preach the Kingdom of God."  (p. 37-38)

Elsewhere in his book, Fr. Bedouelle describes how St. Dominic's choice of the Rule of St. Augustine earned for him an esteemed place in the history of Christian spirituality:

"St. Dominic rejected nothing of the spiritual tradition of the one and holy Church, in any case, nothing that was compatible with his ideal of an order devoted to preaching.  He had no desire to be original, but situated himself within the experience of the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, in line with the ideal of unanimity of St. Augustine's Rule, in the austerieties of Grandmont and of the monastic life he had known and loved among his Cistercian friends.  It was his genius to synthesize these diverse elements and thus form an original work which was remarkably balanced in its construction, inevitably precarious in its implementation, always needing to be directed anew toward its goal . . . Stephen of Salanhac, who has gathered various recollections about the Order's beginnings, left by the first brethren and by Aimery of Grandselve (a Cistercian who was a friend of St. Dominic), puts this in a well-balanced sentence in which he situates the foundation within the double lineage of St. Benedict and St. Augustine: 'He was a canon by profession, a monk by reason of the austerity of his religious life, and an apostle in his task of preaching' . . . Dominic's synthesis is rightly called 'a mendicant order'.  It is very significant that this was the judment of Humbert of Romans, Dominic's fourth successor, when he defended the Rule of St. Augustine against some Dominicans who saw no reason to use the term 'canonical'.  Around the year 1250 he wrote a commentary showing that 'the laws of the Doctor of Hippo were marvelously suited to an order of preachers of the Word of God.'  While retaining the original spiritual and theological foundation, he in fact confirms the definitive transition from an order of canons to that of a distinct religious family.  Thirty years after St. Dominic's death, Humbert shared the same intuition of an ever new and fruitful reinterpretation of tradition---nova et vetera: 'the householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old' (Mt 13:52)."  (p. 241-42)

On this feast of Holy Father Augustine, pray that may he intercede for his sons in the Order of Preachers, for their perseverance in seeking unanimity and charity in the common life and in the apostolate.

St. Augustine, pray for us!

Click here to read the Rule of St. Augustine.