Jubilee 2021: Preacher of Grace
Having seen in St. Dominic the work of the Holy Spirit in the outpouring of God’s Wisdom, Who is Jesus Christ, we come to the final epitaph etched into the O Lumen before its final prayer: St. Dominic, Preacher of Grace. The layers of this title have been extensively explored, investigating both the content of St. Dominic’s preaching as well as the charismatic nature of its delivery. His cheerful ability to draw all men to himself was a profound gift and the gentility of his way with the lost is everywhere praised in the histories of the Order.
As we continue to bring the saint into focus, however, there is another aspect of this preaching of Grace to which we would like to pay particular attention, an aspect which continues to draw the eye up from the man and towards He Who Is at work in him. Like the ‘Waters of Wisdom’, Grace is not that which comes from within a man, but that which is given to him gratuitously, out of the immensity of the Love of God.
In fact, that is precisely bound up in its meaning! Grace, coming from the Latin gratia or gratus, represents God’s freely-given favor, which is where we also get the term ‘gratis’, another Latin borrowing.
This favor is lavished on God’s children, enabling us to break free from sin and bringing us by God’s power into an intimate relationship with Him.
But how is it that we receive this Grace?
Certainly, St. Thomas Aquinas has pondered this question aloud in great detail. We receive Grace in a myriad of ways, and God is able, of course, to dispense it in any manner He sees fit – directly into the soul of man, or through a mediator – but it is clear that the entirety of salvation history in the Scriptures points to one primary agent of Grace, and that is Jesus Christ.[1] Grace, finding its first cause in God the Father, is realized on earth in God the Son, through His Sacred Humanity. Becoming incarnate, Christ made our salvation a material reality in time and Grace flowed, and continues to flow abundantly, to us through Him.
This gift was not just one for first century Palestine; with Jesus, Eternity entered fundamentally into time, and in his Body, continues to do so.
And where do we find this Body?
Certainly, Christ’s Sacred Humanity is seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, but St. Paul makes it plain, in his letter to the Colossians, that Christ’s Mystical Body is very much present to us when he states that Jesus is the “head of the body, the church…”[2] It is in His Church that we have access to the Body of Christ, and it is in the Church that we have primary access to His Grace.
St. Paul, however, goes further than this in his first letter to the Corinthians, he says: “[t]he cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” [3] It is specifically in her Sacraments that the Church dispenses Grace, and despite the multitude of possibilities for receiving it directly from the Lord, He desires that we come to Him in His Eucharist.
No one was more zealous for the Sacraments of the Church than was St. Dominic, from his time as a canon at Osma – dedicated to the solemn celebration of the Divine Liturgy – to his death, he fastidiously cherished the Church as a dear son and urged everyone he met to lose himself in her service. As the pinnacle source of Grace on earth, he knew that the Church was where souls would receive the nourishment needed to reach their final end and he strove in every way to place these souls deep in her arms. He was known to encourage his brothers in the middle of the Divine Office to sing with a little more gusto! (I know that I can occasionally use the same encouragement at Lauds at 5:50am…)
More prominently, it was reported by Bl. Jordan of Saxony, who would succeed St. Dominic as Master of the Order, that the brothers never saw Dominic celebrate the Mass without tears. Never. This witness of his total sensitivity to the mystery of the Lord’s Presence burned in the hearts of his Dominican family and the Eucharist found its place as the center of his preaching. In this way, above all, was he ‘Preacher of Grace’; he never tired proclaiming it and never tired of drawing souls to the Eucharistic Table where the Body of Christ could be found as God’s central means for dispensing the gift of our Redemption.
St. Dominic’s love of Christ in His Church distinguished his every action, he reached primarily for those who were apart from her in heresy and he exhorted all those who wanted to grow close to the Lord to find Him in the heart of His Church, in the sacraments and in service. His love for the Church’s liturgy exposed the passion in his soul for the praise of God, especially that praise that is uttered in Eternity, where the saints are forever joined in the perfect love of the Father. His desire to be among them was always apparent, but never far behind it was his great yearning that as many souls as possible would follow him there.
Join us in a fortnight when we’ll share our final reflection on St. Dominic’s earnest desire to ‘Unite us with the Blessed’.
Blessed St. Dominic, Preacher of Grace, pray for us!
[1] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q.112, Art. 2.
[2] Col 1:18 (RSVCE)
[3] 1 Cor. 10:16-17
