JM + JD
Our Holy Father St. Dominic, 2009

It was a very rare thing indeed, in the 13th century, to have one's own books, but from what we know of St. Dominic from what Blessed Jordan of Saxony (his first successor as Master of the Order of Preachers) tells us, St. Dominic had his own copies of the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Letters of St. Paul. Blessed Jordan tells us that our Holy Father St. Dominic carried these texts with him wherever he went, and that he knew them word for word, backwards and forwards.

I can imagine St. Dominic, in some borrowed room (perhaps in Toulouse, France) poring over the Letters of St. Paul by the light of an oil lamp, and perhaps coming upon this passage from the Second Letter to Timothy, which we are given for our second reading on his feast: In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and kingly power, I charge you to preach the word, to stay with this task whether convenient or inconvenient - correcting, reproving, appealing - constantly teaching and never losing patience. How his heart must have raced as he realized in the depths of his being that these words were especially for him, that this was the task that God had set aside for him, that this was to be his life's work!

You see, St. Dominic knew all-too-well that the time had already come that St. Paul spoke about in the following verses, the time when people would not tolerate sound doctrine, when they would stop listening to the truth and go wandering after fables. That's why he was in southern France in the early years of the 13th century, why he had not returned to his comfortable cathedral chapter in Osma, Spain, where he was from. The people were wandering off in droves, being led astray by the fables of the Albigensians, the Catharists. And St. Dominic knew, with a stomach-churning certainty, as he pondered these words of St. Paul to a young St. Timothy, that this task of preaching was his, that he was the instrument God had chosen to preach the Truth to the hearts of His people, to rescue the straying lambs and bring them safely back into the one fold. Faced with the enormity of the task, our holy father must have been a little frightened, indeed!

But I can't imagine that, as the first rays of dawn shone through the window in St. Dominic's borrowed room, that he had devised a step-by-step game plan, that he had mapped out a detailed campaign strategy of how he was going to win back the hearts and minds of the people to our Catholic faith. No, that was not St. Dominic's style. No, I imagine that he spent the night, rather, in contemplation of his Beloved Master, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is "the Way, the Truth and the Life." There was no need for a battle plan. As the morning broke, I imagine that St. Dominic's fear had passed as he realized that his task was that of teaching the people to fall in love with the Beloved, to lead them to know Him Who is the Truth that would set them free. And his task of preaching would succeed only to the degree that he himself lived the Truth, that he himself entered into the Paschal Mystery - the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus - to the degree that he himself contemplated the Mysteries of our salvation.

And so, as he set about his task of preaching, he began to win hearts and minds over to the Truth, hearts and minds that were attracted by his authenticity, his spirit of poverty, by the joy that radiated from his eyes and face as he spoke lovingly, eloquently of the God who had captured his heart. And we know that, when several of the women converts expressed their desire to consecrate themselves to God, he established a house for them at Prouille, and gave them, as their rule of life, the elements of his own sanctification: the common life, the choral Office, the solemn celebration of the Liturgy, the contemplation of the Word of God, the silence, the monastic observances, all those elements of his own life as a canon of the cathedral in Osma that had prepared him for the task of preaching, that had deepened in him the desire to lead others to the Love that he himself had come to know.

As the community of Prouille took root, that first community of Dominican nuns - as those recent converts began to enter more deeply into the contemplation of the Truth who is Jesus, lo and behold! the preaching mission began to flourish. And other priests joined St. Dominic in his mission; men converts also asked to join him on the road, and soon enough, St. Dominic had gathered a band of brothers, an order of friars, Friars Preachers.

Eight centuries later, as sons and daughters of St. Dominic in the 21st century, our basic task remains the same. Each member of the family of St. Dominic, in the way that is proper to his or her state in life, is called first of all to the contemplation of the saving Mysteries of our Faith, to the contemplation of the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to call down from heaven the graces necessary to win the hearts of men and women to a love of the Truth, to a love of Him who is the Truth. We don't need more strategic plans, more pastoral planning processes, more blueprints for success. We need, the world needs, the Church needs, our Lord needs hearts set aflame, hearts immersed in the Word of God, hearts united with the Heart of Christ, for the salvation of souls, first our own and then those of the whole world.