Saint Dominic the Good Provider- August 4th, 5th, and 8th.

Saint Dominic the Good Provider - August 4th, 5th, and 8th. 

Matthew Bellisario O.P.2020

Devotion to Saint Dominic for the Dominican Tertiary is one of our greatest benefits! We have a powerful intercessor who provides for both our spiritual and material necessities. I can personally vouch for his help in many cases. Even before I was a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic he came to my help due to a great priest friend of mine who introduced us. One of his miracles is Father Dominic getting me a great job on his very feast day after a month before I asked for his intercession for a new job. Another was moving to an area for my job that has a great Third Order Dominican chapter to which I had no access to where I lived previously. 

Today August 4th, is one of the days we celebrate Saint Dominic's feast day. There are actually three different days that his feast day has been celebrated. The original feast of St Dominic was assigned by Pope Gregory to August 5th and was kept on that date at least three centuries. It was then moved to August 4th since in 1558 Pope Paul IV changed August 5th to the titular feast of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the feast of Our Lady of the Snows. It remains this day in the traditional liturgical calendar. Finally, after Vatican II, the liturgical calendar was changed and his feast day ended up on August 8th. You can read a more detailed article on this liturgical progression here. It is quite an interesting story. 

This being the case, this offers me an opportunity to dedicate almost an entire week to honoring Saint Dominic's feast day. In Dom Guéranger's 'The Liturgical Year', there is a wonderful eulogium taken from Dante that I will quote here. There is also a wonderful text on our great Saint which I will post after. This will offer you some food for meditation over the next few days in celebrating our great founder and father! 

In that clime

Where springs the pleasant west wind to unfold, The fresh leaves, with which Europe sees herself

New-garmented; nor from those billows far, Beyond whose chiding, after weary course,

The sun doth sometimes hide him; safe abides 

The happy Calaroga under guard Of the great shield, wherein the lion lies

Subjected and supreme. And there was born The loving minion of the Christian faith,

The hallowed wrestler, gentle to his own, And to his enemies terrible. So replete

His soul with lively virtue, that when first Created, even in the mother's womb,

It prophesied. When, at the sacred font, The spousals were complete 'twixt faith and him,

Where pledge of mutual safety was exchanged, The dame, who was his surety, in her sleep

Beheld the wondrous fruit, that was from him And from his heirs to issue. And that such

He might be construed, as indeed he was, She was inspired to name him of his owner,

Whose he was wholly; and so called him Dominic.

O happy father! Felix rightly named.

O favoured mother! rightly named Joanna;

If that do mean as men interpret it.

Then, with sage doctrine and goodwill to help,

Forth on his great apostleship he fared,

Like torrent bursting from a lofty vein;

And dashing 'gainst the stocks of heresy,

Smote fiercest, where resistance was most stout.

Thence many rivulets have since been turned,

Over the garden Catholic to lead

Their living waters, and have fed its plants.[2]

O Wisdom of the Father, thou wast the one love of both; Francis’ poverty, the true treasure of the soul, and Dominic’s faith, the incomparable light of our exile, are but two aspects of Thee from below, expressing to us, in our time of trial and shadow, Thy adorable beauty. Speaking with no less profoundness and with greater authority, the immortal pontiff Gregory IX says: ‘ The Fountain of Wisdom, the Word of the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose nature is goodness, whose work is mercy, does not abandon in the course of ages the vine He has brought out of Egypt; He comes to the aid of wavering souls by new signs, He adapts His wonders to the weakness of the incredulous. When therefore the day was declining towards evening, and while charity was becoming frozen by the abundance of wickedness, the light of justice was beginning to wane, the Father of the family gathered together workmen fitted for the labours of the eleventh hour; to clear His vineyard of the thorns that had overgrown it, and to drive away the multitude of mischievous little foxes that were doing their best to destroy it, He raised up the companies of Friars Preachers and Minors with the chiefs armed for battle.’[4] In this expedition of the Lord of hosts, Dominic was 'His glorious charger, full of fire in his faith, fearlessly neighing by preaching the divine word.’[5] In October we shall see the great share in the combat taken by his brother-at-arms, who appeared as a living standard of Christ crucified, in the midst of a society where the triple concupiscence was in league with every error, striving to overthrow Christianity itself.

Finding everywhere this union of sensuality with heresy, which was henceforth to be the principal strength of false preachers, Dominic, like Francis, prescribed to his sons the most absolute renunciation of this world's goods, and he too became a beggar for Christ's sake. The time was past when the people, rejoicing in all the consequences of the Incarnation, made over to the Man-God the most extensive territorial domain that ever was, and at the same time placed his Vicar at the head of kings. The unworthy descendants of these highminded Christians, after having vainly attempted to humiliate the Bride by subjecting the priesthood to the empire, reproached the Church with possessing those goods of which she was but the depository in the name of our Lord; the time had come for the Dove of the Canticle to begin, by abandoning the earth, her return journey towards heaven.

But if the two leaders of the campaign which arrested for a time the progress of the enemy were but one in their love of holy poverty, this last was the special choice of the Assisian Patriarch. Dominic's more direct means for obtaining the glory of God and the salvation of souls was science; this was his excellent portion, more fertile than that of Caleb's daughter. Less than fifty years after Dominic had bequeathed this inheritance to his descendants, the wisely combined irrigation, by the upper and the nether waters of faith and reason, had brought to full growth the tree of theological science, with its powerful roots and branches loftier than the clouds, whereon the birds of all tribes under heaven loved to perch without fear and gaze upon the sun.

‘The father of the Preachers,’ said the Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, ‘established his principle on the light, by making it his aim and his armour; he took upon him the office of the Word My Son, sowing My word, dispelling darkness, enlightening the earth; Mary, by whom I gave him to the world, made him the extirpator of heresies.’[6] In the same way, as we have already seen, spoke the Florentine poet half a century earlier. The order, called to become the chief support of the sovereign pontiff in uprooting pernicious doctrines, ought, if possible, to justify that name even more than its patriarch: the first of the tribunals of Holy Church, the Holy Roman Universal Inquisition, the Holy Office, truly invested with the office of the Word with His two-edged sword, to convert or to chastise, could find no instrument more trusty or more sure.

Little thought the virgin of Siena, or the illustrious author of the ‘Divina Commedia,’ that the chief title of the Dominican family to the grateful love of the people would be discussed in a certain apologetic school, and there discarded as insulting, or dissembled as unpleasant. The present age glories in a liberalism which has given proofs of its power by multiplying ruins, and which rests on no better philosophical basis than a strange confusion between licence and liberty; only such intellectual grovelling could have failed to understand that, in a society which has faith for the basis of its institutions as well as the principle of salvation for all, no crime could equal that of shaking the foundation on which thus rest both social interest and the most precious possession of individuals. Neither the idea of justice, nor still less that of liberty, could consist in leaving to the mercy of evil or evil men the weak who are unable to protect themselves: this truth was the axiom and the glory of chivalry: the brothers of Peter the Martyr devoted their lives to protect the safety of the children of God against the surprises of the strong armed one, and the business that walketh about in the dark:[7] it was the honour of the 'saintly flock led by Dominic along a way where they thrive well who do not go astray.'[8]

Who could be truer knights than those athletes of the faith,[9] taking their sacred vow in the form of allegiance,[10] and choosing for their Lady her who, terrible as an army, alone crushes heresies throughout the whole world? To the buckler of truth and the sword of the word, she who keeps in Sion the armour of valiant men, added for her devoted liegemen the Rosary, the special mark of her own militia; she, as being their true commander-in-chief, assigned them the habit of her choice, and in the person of Blessed Reginald, anointed them with her own hands for the battle. She herself, too, watched over the recruiting of the holy band, attracting to it from among the élite youth of the universities souls the purest, the most generously devoted, and of the noblest intellect. At Paris, the capital of theology, and Bologna, of law and jurisprudence, masters and scholars, disciples of every branch of science, were pursued and overtaken by the sweet Queen amid incidents more heavenly than earthly. How graceful were those beginnings, wherein Dominic's virginal serenity seemed to surround all his children! It was indeed in this the Order of light that the Gospel word was seen verified: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.[11] Eyes enlightened from above beheld the foundations of the Friars Preachers under the figure of fields of lilies; and Mary, by whom the Splendour of eternal Light came down to us, became their heavenly mistress and led them from every science to Wisdom, the friend of pure hearts. She came, accompanied by Cecilia and Catherine, to bless their rest at night, and covered them all with her royal mantle beside the throne of our Lord. After this we are not astonished at the freshness and purity, which continued even after St. Dominic, under the generalship of Jordan of Saxony, Raymund of Pennafort, John the Teuton, and Humbert de Romans, in those 'Lives of the Brethren,' and 'Lives of the Sisters,' so happily handed down to us. It is instructive to note that in the Dominican family, apostolic in its very essence, the Sisters were founded ten years before the Brethren, which shows how, in the Church of God, action can never be fruitful unless preceded and accompanied by contemplation, which obtains for it every blessing and grace.

Notre Dame de Prouille, at the foot of the Pyrenees, was not only by this right of primogeniture the beginning of the whole order; it was here also that the first companions of St. Dominic made with him their choice of a rule, and divided the world amongst them, going from here to found the convents of St. Romanus at Toulouse, St. James at Paris, St. Nicholas at Bologna, St. Sixtus and St. Sabina in the Eternal City. About the same period the establishment of the Militia of Jesus Christ placed under the direction of the Friars Preachers secular persons, who undertook to defend, by all the means in their power, the goods and liberty of the Church against the aggressions of heresy; when the sectaries had laid down their arms, leaving the world in peace for a time, the association did not disappear: it continued to fight with spiritual arms, and changed its name into that of the Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic.

Let us read in the Church's book the abridged life of the holy patriarch:

Dominicus, Calarogæ in Hispania ex nobili Guzmanorum familianatus, Palentiæ liberalibus disciplinis et theologiæ operam dedit: quo in studio cum plurimum profecisset, prius Oxomensis ecclesiæ canonicus regularis, deinde ordinis Fratrum Prædicatorum auctor fuit. Hujus mater gravida sibi visa est in quiete continere in alvo catulum ore præferentem facem, qua editus in lucem, orbem terrarum incenderet Quo somnio significabatur, fore ut splendore sanctitatis ac doctrinæ, gentes ad christianam pietatem inflammarentur. Veritatem exitus comprobavit: id enim et præstitit per se, et per sui ordinis socios deinceps est consecutus.

Hujus autem ingenium ac virtus maxime enituit in evertendis hæreticis, qui perni ciosis erroribus Tolosates pervertere conabantur. Quo in negotio septem consumpsit annos. Postea Romam venit ad Lateranense concilium cum episcopo Tolosano, ut ordo, quem instituerat, ab Innocentio tertio confirmaretur. Quæ res dum in deliberatione versatur, Dominicus hortatu pontificis ad suos revertitur, ut sibi regulam deligeret. Romani rediens, ab Honorio tertio, qui proximus Innocentio successerat, confirmationem ordinis Prædicatorum impetrat Romæ autem duo instituit monasteria, alterum virorum, mulierum alterum. Tres etiam mortuos ad vitam revocavit, multaque alia edidit miracula, quibus Ordo Prædicatorum mirifice propagari cœpit.

Verum cum ejus opera ubique terrarum monasteria jam ædifìcarentur, innumerabilesque homines religiosam ac piam vitam instituerent, Bononiæ anno Christi ducentesimo vigesimo primo supra millesimum, in febrem incidit: ex qua cum se moriturum intelligeret, convocatis fratribus et alumnis suæ disciplinæ, eos ad innocentiam et integritatem cohortatus est. Postremo caritatem, humilitatem, paupertatem, tamquam certum patrimonium eis testamento reliquit: fratribusque orantibus, in illis verbis, Subvenite sancti Dei, occurrite Angeli, obdormivit in Domino, octavo idus Augusti: quem postea Gregorius nonus pontifex retulit in sanctorum numerum.

Dominic was born at Calaruega, in Spain, of the noble family of the Guzmans, and went through his liberal and theological studies at Palencia. He made great progress in learning, and became a Canon Regular of the church of Osma, and afterwards instituted the order of Friars Preachers. While his mother was with child, she dreamt she was carrying in her womb a little dog holding a torch in his mouth, with which, as soon as he was born, he would set fire to the world. This dream signified that he would enkindle Christian piety among the nations by the splendour of his sanctity and teaching. Events proved its truth: for he fulfilled the prophecy both in person and later on by the brethren of his order.

His genius and virtue shone forth especially in confounding the heretics who were attempting to infect the people of Toulouse with their baneful errors. He was occupied for seven years in this undertaking. Then he went to Rome for the Council of Lateran, with the Bishop of Toulouse, to obtain from Innocent III the confirmation of the order he had instituted. But while the matter was under consideration that Pope advised Dominic to return to his disciples, and choose a rule. On his return to Rome, he obtained the confirmation of the Order of Preachers from Honorius III, the immediate successor of Innocent. In Rome itself he founded two monasteries, one for men and the other for women. He raised three dead to life, and worked many other miracles, in consequence of which the Order of Preachers began to spread in a wonderful manner.

Monasteries were built by his means in every part of the world, and through his teaching numbers of men embraced a holy and religious manner of life. At length, in the year of Christ 1221, he fell into a fever at Bologna. When he saw he was about to die, calling together his brethren and children, he exhorted them to innocence and purity of life, and left them as their true inheritance the virtues of charity, humility, and poverty. While the brethren were praying round him, at the words, 'Come to his aid, ye saints of God, run to meet him, O ye angels,' he fell asleep in the Lord, on the eighth of the Ides of August. Pope Gregory IX placed him among the saints.

How many sons and daughters surround thee on the sacred cycle! This very month, Rose of Lima and Hyacinth keep thee company, and thy coming has long since been heralded in the liturgy by Raymund of Pennafort, Thomas Aquinas, Vincent Ferrer, Peter the Martyr, Catherine of Siena, Pius V, and Antoninus. And now at length appears in the firmament the new star whose brightness dispels ignorance, confounds heresy, increases the faith of believers. O Dominic, thy blessed mother, who preceded thee to heaven, now penetrates in all its fulness the happy meaning of that mysterious vision which once excited her fears. And that other Dominic, the glory of ancient Silos, at whose tomb she received the promise of thy blessed birth, rejoices at the tenfold splendour given by thee for all eternity to the beautiful name he bequeathed thee. But what a special welcome dost thou receive from the Mother of all grace, who heretofore, embracing the feet of her angered Son, stood surety that thou wouldst bring back the world to its Saviour! A few years passed away; and error, put to confusion, felt that a deadly struggle was engaged between itself and thy family; the Lateran Church saw its walls, which were threatening to fall, strengthened for a time; and the two princes of the apostles, who had bidden thee go and preach, rejoice that the word has gone forth once more into the whole world.

Stricken with barrenness, the nations, which the Apocalypse likens to great waters, seemed to have become once for all corrupt; the prostitute of Babylon was setting up her throne before the time; when, in imitation of Eliseus, putting the salt of Wisdom into the new vessel of the order founded by thee, thou didst cast this divine salt into the unhealthy waters, neutralize the poison of the beast so soon risen up again, and, in spite of the snares which will never cease, didst render the earth habitable once more. How clearly thy example shows us that they alone are powerful before God and over the people, who give themselves up to Him without seeking anything else, and only give to others out of their own fulness. Despising, as thine historians tell us, every opportunity and every science where eternal Wisdom was not to be seen, thy youth was charmed with her alone; and she, who prevents those that seek her, inundated thee from thy earliest years with the light and the anticipated sweetness of heaven. It is from her that overflowed upon thee that radiant serenity, which so struck thy contemporaries, and which no occurrence could ever alter. In heavenly peace thou didst drink long draughts from the everflowing fountain springing up into eternal life; but while thine inmost soul was thus slaking the thirst of its love, the divine source produced a marvellous fecundity; and its streams becoming thine, thy fountains were conveyed abroad in the streets, thou didst divide thy waters. Thou hadst welcomed Wisdom, and she exalted thee; not content to adorn thy brow with the rays of the mysterious star, she gave thee also the glory of patriarchs, and multiplied thy years and thy works in those of thy sons. In them thou hast not ceased to be one of the strongest stays of the Church. Science has made thy name wonderful among the nations, and because of it their youth is honoured by the ancients; may it ever be for them, as it was for their elders, both the fruit of Wisdom and the way that leads to her; may it be fostered by prayer; for thy holy order so well keeps up the beautiful traditions of prayer as to approach the nearest, in that respect, to the ancient monastic orders. To praise, to bless, and to preach will be to the end its loved motto; for its apostolate must be, according to the word of the Psalm, the overflowing of the abundance of sweetness tasted in communication with God. Thus strengthened in Sion, thus blessed in its glorious rôle of propagator and guardian of the truth, thy noble family will ever deserve to hear, from the mouth of our Lady herself, that encouragement above all praise: ' Fortiter, fortiter, viri fortes!—Courage, courage, ye men of courage!'