[Sermon delivered at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona (https://stmarysphoenix.org) for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, August 8, 2021]
✠In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
If you ever scroll through Facebook looking at religious posts, blogs, or groups, you will encounter many ideas from supposedly Christian sources. There (or elsewhere) you might encounter ideas such as:
· The resurrection of the dead is a metaphor.
· The universe requires balance between light and dark, life and death, good and evil (you cannot have one without the other).
· When we die, we live on as spirits for all eternity.
· Jesus was a holy man, but just a man, if he ever existed at all.
· Matter is either evil or it just does not, well, “matter;” the spirit is where it all matters.
It should come as no surprise that these are not new ideas, and that they get trotted out every few decades or so. Similar ideas were circulating in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. There was, for example, a group called the Cathars, or Albigensians (I will stick with Cathars as it is easier to pronounce), who held a suite of beliefs that held a dualistic world view where on one side spirit equaled light which equaled life which equaled good, and on the opposite matter equaled darkness which equaled death which equaled evil. They practiced ascetical stunts judged crazy even by the strict monastic standards of the time. These ideas were not new to the thirteenth century, though, as they were thawed, reheated, and repackaged Gnostic doctrines of the second and third centuries. Then, like now, they won a great deal of traction because people were getting highly sick and tired of the self-indulgent and hypocritical lifestyle of the established clergy. The practitioners were concentrated in Southern France and Northern Italy, particularly thick around the city of Toulouse.
Around that time (we will say around 1170), a devout couple in Calaruega, Castile (Spain had not united yet) were expecting a child. The mother, Blessed Juana de Aza, had a dream about her child. She dreamed that she did not give birth to a boy but a dog, a black and white dog, which carried a torch in his mouth and with that torch set the world on fire. Puzzled, she did not think much about it, but many years later a man named Jordan of Saxony, who personally knew this child as a full-grown man, took down this story for us. This child we know as St. Dominic de Guzman.
What I want to impress upon you about the de Guzmans were they, like much of Castile, were devout disciples of the Catholic faith. They lived and breathed service to their fellow humans. Blessed Juana never turned away a beggar from their door, and when he went to seminary in Palencia, St. Dominic even sold his textbooks (which then, like now, were horribly expensive) to feed the starving. They lived and breathed the Gospel. It also appeared that selling his textbooks did not set St. Dominic back academically either. He was a bright young priest and soon rose to great responsibility at his posting among the canons of the Cathedral in nearby Osma.
So what does this have to do with a bunch of New Agey heretics in thirteenth century Provence, you ask?
Well, it goes like this. In late 1203 Bishop Diego of Osma dragged young St. Dominic out of his comfort zone for a diplomatic trip to Denmark. Then, as now, you cannot get to Denmark from Spain overland without heading through some part of France, and it was in Toulouse where Bishop Diego and St. Dominic ran into those Cathars I had mentioned earlier. St. Dominic’s zeal for the faith and his preparation in seminary stood him in good stead, and he and Bishop Diego found themselves teaching the faith to anyone who would listen (side note, St. Dominic’s first conversion was in a tavern, the pub-owner to be precise). His work was so successful he and his bishop in cooperation with the local diocesan set up a fellowship in Toulouse dedicated to the study of the Scriptures and skillful preaching of the same, coupled with a simple lifestyle truer to the Gospels than the indulgent excesses of local clergy and saner than the ascetic excesses of the Cathars. This association was so successful that on December 22, 1216, Pope Honorius III published the Papal Bull Religiosam Vitam, establishing this Order of Preachers as a recognized order within the Universal Church. By Dominic’s death in 1221, this order had spread throughout Western Europe, establishing new communities as far as England and Poland. His associates, the Dominicani, or as some said, the Domini Canes or “Hounds of the Lord,” became the black and white dogs that set Europe ablaze with a revival of the Holy Preaching of the Gospel.
Since St. Dominic’s death, the Order of Preachers has suffered its ups and downs, suppressed at times, for example in 1539 in the English Church, re-energized at others. Currently it is a worldwide organization with over 6,000 friars, nuns, sisters, tertiaries, and lay and ordained fraternities among our Catholic brethren and over one hundred friars and sisters, oblates, and associates within the Anglican communion, all under the common mission of the salvation of souls through the Holy Preaching.[1]
Throughout its history, the Order of Preachers values study, prayer, community, and preaching. The core value, Veritas, drives all of what we call the four pillars. Central to this truth is the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ:
I. God became Incarnate, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth,”[2] that is, He who created matter took on matter as a human to be one of us. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”[3]
II. God the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, suffered, died, and rose again that we might be reconciled to God, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his,”[4] meaning a material resurrection from the dead.
III. Until His coming again, it is our joy and duty to love and care for each other, particularly the poor, loving one’s neighbour as oneself, as He loves us.[5]
This message is important, it is our Holy Tradition, handed down to us from Our Lord to the Apostles. In our Gospel today, Jesus asserts, “My teaching is not my own but his who sent me.”[6] Our Lord Jesus is telling us that what He is telling us is direct from the Father. In His teaching, Our Lord tells us the Father is offering us salvation, reconciliation, and deliverance from corruption and death. To that end, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,”[7] as the Apostle Paul tells us in today’s Epistle, but then he makes a good point. How can that happen if someone does not tell them? Let me tell you, this is the mission of St. Dominic and his associates, us “Hounds of the Lord.” The good news of the Lord is out there for the salvation of souls, the good news is out there for the reconciliation of Humans with God the Father Almighty, the good news is out there for the relief of the poor, the sick, and the needy, the good news is out there that Death is not the final word, Death is NOT the flip-side to Life, and it is NOT OUR FRIEND. I tell you; the mission of the Order of Preachers is as pertinent today as it was 800 years ago.
The motto of the Order of Preachers is laudare, benedicere, praedicare: to praise, to bless, and to preach. It is our duty as disciples of Jesus Christ to do these very things using the common charisms of our Order. We study…hard…so we can collectively and individually deepen our walk with God so we can proclaim Him. We pray, both the offices and beyond the offices, to deepen our walk with God so we can proclaim Him. We engage in community to further strengthen and encourage each other so we can proclaim Him. We take what we have learned, what we have taught each other, what we have strengthened in each other, to become those feet which bring the good news of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Our Lady, protectress of our Order, said in Cana, “Do whatever He tells you,”[8] we take seriously His command to make disciples of all nations,[9] teaching them all that He taught us.[10]
St. Dominic’s legacy is this, to contemplate the mysteries of God and to spread forth the fruits of this contemplation over the whole world. The Hounds of the Lord to this day strive to do this and to enable our whole Christian family (that’s you, my sisters and brothers) to join in the work according to the gifts and charisms given to each of us to spread the Kingdom of God and the news of His reconciliation.
Holy Father Dominic,
Pray for us.
Blessed Jordan of Saxony,
Pray for us.
Holy Catherine of Siena,
Pray for us.
Holy Thomas Aquinas,
Pray for us.
All holy Dominicans who have gone before us,
Pray for us.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
St. Dominic Adoring the Crucifixion, by the hand of Fra Angelico, Fresco, 15th Century AD
[1] Some estimates have about 20,000 spread across all vowed Catholic religious and fraternities, roughly 1 out of every 67,500 Roman Catholics and 100 across all Anglican vowed and associated members, roughly 1 out of every 840,000 Anglicans.
[2] Jn. 1.14
[3] Gen 1.31
[4] Rom 6.5
[5] Mt. 7.12, Lk. 6.31
[6] Jn. 7.16
[7] Rom. 10.13
[8] Jn. 2.5
[9] Mt. 28.19
[10] Mt. 28.20