8 August - Saint Dominic

Readings: Isaiah 52:7-10; 2 Timothy 4:1-8; Matthew 5:13-19 OR 28:16-20 OR Luke 10:1-9

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Dominic. He died in Bologna on 6 August 1221. The early sources that speak about his death record a testament which he left to his followers, virtues which he called them to live so as to fulfil their mission in the Church. These virtues are poverty, humility and charity. We find the same three virtues picked out by Saint Clare of Assisi in writing to one of her sisters in Prague. The cross of Jesus, she says, is a mirror in which we see poverty, humility and charity expressed in the way Jesus gave his life, virtues in which Christians - especially those called to the mendicant way of life established by St Francis and St Dominic - ought to see their own lives, or at least their own aspirations, reflected.

It would be odd for anyone to claim to be virtuous - judgement belongs to the Lord. But we can renew our aspiration to live up to these ideals.

Charity, of course, is always supreme for anyone trying to live according to the gospel, no matter what their particular vocation or state in life.

Poverty is particularly associated with Francis of Assisi who personified it as 'Lady Poverty', a virtue that would set men and women free for the work of the kingdom. Why poverty? Because it means aspiring to give and to support life in others rather than wanting to possess and to own things for ourselves. So in that way it is linked with charity, since to love another is to want them to be, to flourish and to live. We see it in the life of Dominic also who, as a student, sold all he had, even his precious books, in order to help people in a time of famine. Later he would give up all the comforts of his 'career' in order to give himself fully to the healing and enlightening task of preaching.

 The one-time renowned moral theologian Bernard Haring proposed that the four classical virtues of the ancient world - prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance - had been supplemented in the Christian world with the virtue of humility. It is an extreme of poverty and an extreme of charity, not the sanctimonious 'umbleness of Uriah Heep, but the self-emptying of the Son of God who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but humbled himself even to dying on the cross. It is so central to the way in which Jesus loved his Father and the people that it must also be an essential aspect of any genuine love.

It is easy to recall Dominic's 'last words' and the virtues which he encouraged his followers to foster in themselves. Much more difficult is the task of actually living those virtues, having the courage to be poor, the wisdom to be humble and the ability to love.

As Dominicans celebrate this centenary we find encouragement in other words attributed to Dominic as he died, in which he promised to be of more help to his sons and daughters from his place with Christ in heaven than he had ever been to them while he was alive. We hold on to those words also and renew our hope in that promise of his as we seek to imitate the holiness of his life and, like him, live in poverty, humility and charity.