Today we celebrated the feast of St. Dominic who founded the Order of Preachers best known as the Dominicans. He founded the order in in the early 1200's and it was approved in 1216. The order's charism is that of preaching and to this day often make parish missions. St. Dominic, along with Bishop Diego de Acevedo, encountered and preached against the heresy of Albigensian. This heresy held that all things material were evil and denied the incarnation.
In addition to being a contemporary of St. Francis, St. Dominic introduced the Rosary as a form of prayer after he received a vision from Our Blessed Mother. She gave him instructions how to pray it. This account was affirmed by Pope Leo XIII and later Pope Pius XI
St. Dominic is often portrayed in art with a dog at his feet. Some say this is attributed to a dream his mother had. She dreamt of giving birth to a hound that held a lit torch in its mouth. Some believe that the hound in the dream reprsented Dominic spreading the light of Christ to the world.
In today's weekly audience, Pope Benedict XVI described St. Dominic as possessing "the harmonious integration of contemplation of the divine mysteries and apostolic activity.”
Lessons:
1. Like St. Dominic we should be men of prayer.
2. In St. Dominic we can see a model for combining lives of prayer (contemplation) with lives of action (apostolic mission). In other words - both and.
No comments:
Post a Comment