At the heart of our identity - Novena to St Dominic Day 4
At the heart of our identity
From ‘Libellus’ written by Bl. Jordan of Saxony we know that St. Dominic‘In every reasonable purpose which his mind conceived, in accordance with God’s will,he maintained such constancy that he hardly ever consented to change any plan which he had formulated with due deliberation’
But on January 21, 1217 Dominic asked Pope Honorius III to make a small but significant change in the bull, namely, to change the original word " praedicantes" (those who preach) to " praedicatores" (preachers) .
"This is at the heart of our identity. We are not a multinational corporation with a mission statement like McDonald's: To be the favourite place and way for our customers to eat and drink. Being a preacher is not a job description. It is a way of being human." ‘(Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe OP)
Our mission is who we are (preachers), not primarily what we do (preaching). In the Summa (S. Th. III,
q., 34, a.2 ad 1um) St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:
’Being is by nature prior to action’
These days our Brothers from all over the world are gathered in General Chapter in Poland, and Fr. Timothy explains: We are here to become more ourselves. He quotes T. Merton : ‘We cannot find the meaning of our lives alone. We discover it with others .’ We are here, then, not to give each other answers, but to ask ourselves questions , so that our lives may be a question for the world. The world is full of people who offer easy answers.
We offer questions.
What words of hope will we find for this world tempted by despair? We will find that word only together, by paying deep attention to one another. Simone Weil called attention the rarest and purest form of generosity; it is selfless, seeing others in relation to themselves, not to me . Prayer, she said, is absolute, unalloyed attention to God and to those created in His image and likeness.
So we ask St. Dominic to help us, that this General Chapter truly be a breath of the Holy Spirit in the lungs of our Order.
St .Dominic pray for us!
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