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My dear brothers and sisters in Saint Dominic:

write to you in fear and trembling. First of all, in order to pluck up some courage, I want to tell you something in confidence. Lately, I read and meditated on the different messages that the last four Masters of the Order wrote to the Order. I refer to these four, only to cite those Providence has put at the service of the Dominican Family from the days of the Second Vatican Council to 2001. I could only exclaim: How much wealth! How profound is the word they have preached with so much generosity and dedication. With this in mind – and this is what I wanted to tell you fraternally – how difficult it is to write a letter to the Order! It seems that everything has been already said. What can I tell you, brothers and sisters in Saint Dominic, that is new? At the same time I have to admit sadly that in many communities, and I refer more specifically to those of the friars, maybe only the Acts of the last General Chapters are known, these texts being truly programs for us to live the Dominican way of life in our own times. And lastly, I have the feeling, like so many others even outside the Order, that we are facing a certain ‘inflation’ of documents, texts, messages, letters, about the most different subjects (which are impossible to read profitably before another new text arrives).

DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES IN THESE LAST SIX YEARS

1. Some time ago a friar, a provincial, was talking to me informally about the situation in his province. Thinking aloud he lamented, not without a certain sadness: ‘in my province I cannot make any assignation.’ These words impressed me very much. I cannot stop thinking about them and their consequences.

It is no news that in these last years I have lived two very different experiences. My work as Procurator General, a ‘sedentary’ job like no other, however, put me in touch with many delicate situations for the Dominican and religious life of many brothers and sisters. Now, in fulfilling this present ministry, much more ‘nomadic,’ visiting communities in different countries, I discover the ‘polychromatic symphony’ of the Order in the Church and in the world from another point of view. However, both points of view brought me to the same intuition. They made me discover that something is really ‘blocking,’ threatening the roots of our vocation and mission in the Church and in the world: a certain immobility. This inertia provokes a sort of paralysis, a ‘settling down,’ which ends up mortally wounding the most generous energies of our being and living as daughters and sons of Saint Dominic.

2. One of the characteristics that Dominic of Caleruega incarnated in imitating the apostles, and which was inherited by all of us who are his disciples, is that of evangelical itinerancy. With the grace of God, he broke the boundaries of a ‘geographical’ scheme in the organization and life of the Church, fundamentally based on the diocesan organization on the one hand and – speaking of religious life – on the structure of monastic life and that of the canons regular on the other. There is no doubt that the history of the missionary Church does not begin with the Order of Preachers. Many missionary monks, for example, evangelized so many regions of Europe, but Dominic wanted to found, in medio Ecclesiæ, an Order that was called and was made up of Preachers.

‘IT HAPPENED AT THAT TIME…’ TO SET OUT IS TO CHANGE ONE’S LIFE!

3. When we were young we enjoyed hearing or reading real or imagined stories. Many of these began with the usual ‘Once upon a time.’ Acknowledging the difference, when the Gospel is announced, following Jesus on his Way, we normally start the reading saying: ‘At that time…’

Blessed Jordan, with the freshness of the disciple, as if wanting us to fall in love again with our origins, writes in his Libellus:

At that time, it happened that Alphonse, King of Castile, was making plans for a marriage between his son Ferdinand and a princess of the Marches. He approached the Bishop of Osma and asked that he consent to arrange the matter. The bishop agreed to the king’s request and (…) took with him the man of God, Dominic, the sub prior of his church and setting out on his journey, they reached Toulouse.

4. In his History of Saint Dominic, Marie-Humbert Vicaire, by means of different historical arguments, writes that this invitation of Alphonse VIII to the Bishop of Osma was made around mid-May 1203. The renowned French biographer, following Jordan, concludes: The bishop immediately set out on his journey, taking with him Dominic. It was mid-October 1203. This was 800 years ago.

This is not the place nor the appropriate time to enter into details, nor dwell on a complete historical and chronological analysis. We know, however, that this journey changed forever the life of these two friends. In fact, as soon as they crossed the Pyrenees, these two men of God could see for themselves a fact that, up to that time, they only knew by hearsay: the challenge of the dualism of Manichean origin, profoundly rooted in that region through different groups and sects. As an eloquent example of the impact this new reality made on both travelers, Jordan tells us of the famous episode of the innkeeper:

At the inn where they found shelter in Toulouse, Dominic spent the entire night fervently exhorting and zealously arguing with the heretical innkeeper, who, no longer able to resist the wisdom and the spirit that spoke, returned by God's grace to the true faith.

The ‘marriage mission,’ we know, would have them make another journey, which turned out to be a failure. A failure? Yes, but full of new life. This is what Jordan of Saxony says:

God had planned to reap other benefits from this journey, since, as events proved, it paved the way for a more excellent marriage, a union between God and the souls for the benefit of the whole Church; the nuptials of eternal salvation for the souls recalled from the errors of their sins (2 Cor 11,2).

5. A diplomatic mission in the King’s name – a sudden change of plans in Diego’s and Dominic’s life – is the occasion that ends up offering a different color to their different histories illumined by the renewing light of grace. A Bishop and the sub prior of a Cathedral Chapter, called to grow and give fruit in the limited garden of Osma, are faced with a totally different ecclesial and historical panorama. Yes they knew the consequences of the heresies beyond the Pyrenees, but only ‘by hearsay.’ Something similar to what happened to the good Job, who at the end of his difficult life experience, in an open dialogue with God, exclaims: My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.

In fact, God was calling Diego and Dominic to start in a foreign land a new evangelization that later would acquire universal horizons. The journey away from that which was known opened their hearts’ vision. Both of them were never the same again. Both diplomatic journeys (in 1203 and 1205 respectively) had ‘vocational’ consequences for both, and it was not because they had discovered a diplomatic vocation!

Diego of Osma (in 1206?) would ask Pope Innocent III to kindly accept his resignation as bishop, because it was his project, very dear to him, to dedicate himself with all his energies to the conversion of the Cumans, a pagan people to the east of Hungary. We know that the Pope did not accept this resignation. The Bishop will later take the habit of the Cistercians. He counsels the papal legates on the preaching of the faith against the Albigensians. He commits himself seriously to this itinerant mission for two years and he decides to return to his seat in Osma. A few days later he falls sick and dies around the end of 1207.

We know Dominic’s life in more detail. As from these journeys to the Marches and unto his death, his life will be that of an itinerant apostle. From this eighth centenary of Dominic’s ‘first missionary voyage’ onwards, why don’t we start celebrating in joy other ‘eighth centenaries’ of extraordinary beauty and importance for the whole Dominican Family, among them the foundation of Prouilhe, which is always considered to be the first community of the Order.

ITINERANCY IN THE HEART AND MIND OF EVERY DOMINICAN!

6. Bro. Paul of Venice, one of the witnesses in the process of canonization of Saint Dominic, says that ‘master Dominic’ told him and others that were with him: Walk, let us think of our Savior. He also testifies that wherever he was, Dominic always spoke of God or with God, and confesses that he never saw him angry, agitated or upset, not because of fatigue from the journey, nor for any other reason. But he was always joyful in tribulation and patient in adversity.

7. So then? Another letter to the Order about itinerancy? What you have in your hands, what you will read and – I hope – meditate in your hearts, personally or in common, is the fruit of a reflection made during the General Council. When I started to think and reflect on the theme of itinerancy in the Dominican life, we prepared a whole meeting of the General Council. I also invited Bro. Manuel Merten, Promoter General for the nuns. Every brother had enough time to prepare a short exposition about the different aspects of itinerancy in our sequela Dominici: itinerancy and spiritual life; itinerancy and the formative and intellectual journey; itinerancy and each one of the religious vows; itinerancy and life in common; itinerancy and contemplative life; itinerancy and Dominican government; itinerancy and mission; etc. During a three-day meeting outside Rome, each one of the friars presented his theme, and all of us dialogued on these and other aspects of our Dominican itinerancy.

I must confess that the quality of these reflections was such that, at the end, I felt I wasn’t able to write a letter on this subject that could embrace all this wealth. So ample is the rainbow of themes to be treated. On the other hand, we couldn’t just edit the fifteen ‘texts’ prepared. We did not want to publish an ‘encyclopaedia’ or ‘dictionary’ on the subject, far from it!

During a second stage, we tried to meditate on some of the central themes around which other themes are linked, which we had already studied together. I asked four brothers to present in an elaborated synthesis what we had shared in common. I now present the result of our work. Bro. Roger Houngbedji (Vicariate of West Africa, Province of France, Socius for Africa) writes about ‘Itinerancy in the Bible.’ Bro. Manuel Merten (Province of Teutonia, Promoter for the Nuns) offers us his reflection on ‘Itinerancy and Contemplative Life.’ Bro. Wojciech Giertych (Province of Poland, Socius for Intellectual Life) writes about ‘Itinerancy in the formative and intellectual journey.’ Finally, Bro. Chrys McVey (Vice-Province of Pakistan, Socius for Apostolic Life and Promoter of the Dominican Family) talks to us about ‘Itinerancy and mission.’

The word iter – itineris (from the Greek hodós) means: ‘way, journey, walk, a day’s journey.’ Let us set out and walk together along this Dominican interior landscape!

I - ITINERANCY IN THE BIBLE

8. Itinerancy appears as a dominant topic in the Bible. Indeed, the people of the Bible are defined mainly as a people in pilgrimage. The word ‘Hebrew,’ by which it is known, comes from ibri (derived from eber which means ‘the other side’ of a limit) and evokes the idea of emigration. The Hebrew people is thus basically a people in migration, a nomad people. It is in this perspective that the great believers of the Old Testament (particularly the Patriarchs) regard themselves as ‘foreigners’ (xenoi), from the fact that they could not obtain (but saw only from afar) the object of the promises made to them by Yahweh (cf. Gn 23,4; Ex 2,22; 1 Ch 29,15; Ps 39,13; Lv 25,23). The whole history of the People of Israel will then be understood as a long march towards the fulfillment of the God’s promises in his Son Jesus.

The Christian community (the new People of God) will itself be also called ‘the Way’ (cf. Ac 9,2; 18,25; 19,9.23, 22,4; 24,14.22). This underlines well the idea of walking, or of itinerancy. In this perspective, the author of the letter to the Hebrews will present the Christian community as a community of pilgrims on earth (He 11,13), walking towards the future city, which is solidly built (He 13,14). The Christians then live on earth as if ‘uprooted’ but as if ‘deeply rooted’ in the heavenly city: the ultimate goal of their walking. In his epistle St. Peter (1 P 1,17) shows that as Christians belong only to God, they should consider their passage on earth as transitory, without any attachment to this world below. The technical term used by the New Testament in order to express this passing situation of the Christians in this world is Parepidêmos, which designates the un-established foreigner, the traveler, as opposed to the permanently resident foreigner.

Thus, it appears that in the biblical mentality, the whole life of the believer, his relationship to God is polarized by the idea of walking, of the way, of itinerancy. The question is to know in what this itinerancy consists, or what characterizes it? An overall picture enables us to identify three great characteristic features of biblical itinerancy.

ITINERANCY AS EXODUS

Spatial Displacement

9. God’s way (hodos) is defined here as a departure, an exit, an exodus. The believer is called to leave for a determined place, to break away with his attachment to a physical or geographic world and to set out and go somewhere else. Itinerancy is taken here in its geographic and physical meaning. It is in this sense that one can understand the itinerancy of Abraham who had to leave his land in order to venture into a foreign country. (Gn 12, 1-9). God’s Word addressed to the patriarch leads him to a total rupture with his country and all human attachments in order to launch himself on a way in which faith is the only determining factor. The patriarch’s faith consists precisely in an unconditional response that leads him to engage himself on a road only God knows where it leads to. The same thing happens to the prophet Elijah who will take the road to Horeb where God, through a light breeze, will reveal himself to him (1 K 19, 4-8). Thus, itinerancy here requires one to leap into the unknown, which is where faith lies.

Besides, the elected people as a whole is also marked by the experience of the Exodus from Egypt, an experience that will determine all its life. Guided by God and by Moses, the people is called to engage itself on a long and difficult road in which through a thousand ordeals it will come to know its God and to make its entry into the promised land. Because of its many sins, the people will be exiled again in Babylon where it will undergo the painful experience of its ‘pilgrim’ condition, regarding itself as a group of refugees or exiles in a foreign territory (cf. Ps 137). On its liberation, it will be called again to launch itself into a new exodus, a sign of the liberation which ‘the Servant of Yahweh’ will accomplish, and whose mission consists in making it abandon the most profound slavery caused by sin (Is 42, 1-9; 53, 5-12).

In the New Testament Jesus is presented as a great itinerant. In fact, the Gospels present him as a great traveler, always on the road (cf. Lc 9,57; 13,33; Mc 6,6b), going from Samaria into Galilee, or on his way to Jerusalem (Lk 9,51). He presents himself as the Son of Man who has no place where to lay his head (Lk 9, 58). He will also send his disciples on the road (Lk 10, 1-9; Mt 10, 5-15) and will show the disciple’s condition as a commitment to follow him (Lk 9, 59-62; Mk 2, 13-14; Jn 1, 43). The whole mission of the apostles after the death of Jesus will be carried out in the perspective of a great itinerancy (cf. Ac 16, 1-10; 2 Co 11, 23-28).

Itinerancy in the Bible is first and foremost geographic/spatial, in the sense of passing from one place to another – the word passage also means Easter, Exodus (Jesus fulfilled his Easter by passing from this world to his Father: Jn 13,1). This spatial displacement is always in view of a mission.

Spatial displacement in view of a mission

10. In the biblical perspective, displacements made within the framework of a command or in obedience are frequently in view of a mission: a message to be delivered, an action to be undertaken. It is the case with Moses, for example, whose encounter with Yahweh (Ex 3, 1-6) will be the beginning of his mission: whereas at first Moses, afraid of the police, had to flee Egypt (2, 15), on God’s request (2,15) he returns there to free the people. During this mission he frequently receives requests from Yahweh to meet Pharaoh and lead the people to the desert, in order to receive the Law and give it to the people. The whole book of Exodus presents itself as an itinerancy lived in obedience to God.

The same thing happens to the prophets. The prophet is indeed taken by God from the situation he is in to fulfil a mission. Frequently this mission leads him to confront the king or religious authorities, to risk his own life. The obedience required supposes not only a displacement but also a risk to be taken. The mission is not without danger, as Elijah, the model of a prophet, experienced. He must flee his country to assure the future success of his mission (1 K 17, 3.9). He must return to face Ahab in order to give him the message dictated by God (1 K 18,1; 21,18-19), and also to abandon the place of the encounter with God in order to continue his mission (1 K 19,15-16). We have a sort of summary of this scheme when the prophet asks a simple believer to be his intermediary: the command orders a displacement in view of a message to be delivered, but there is a risk and so reason enough to be afraid (1 K 18, 7-16).

In the New Testament, the command that requires a displacement is always associated with the preaching of the Kingdom, of Jesus’ time (cf. Lk 9,2) or to the mission after the resurrection (Mt 28, 19-20). The conditions are specified: it is a question of travelling without cumbersome luggage and without private means. We note that there can be failures to the call by refusing itinerancy (Mt 19, 16-22; Lk 18, 18-23; Mc 10, 17-22).

ITINERANCY AS A CONVERSION

11. Geographical/spatial itinerancy is linked to spiritual itinerancy, which appears as the place for a conversion, understood as metanoia (a radical change of spirit, of mentality). Indeed, in the Bible, geographical itinerancy is always accompanied by spiritual itinerancy: to go from one place to another has as its aim a detachment of self in order to belong to nobody else but God. The biblical term used to manifest this link between the two types of itinerancy is derek (way), derived from darak (to walk), which refers to the spiritual journey to be undertaken in order to correspond to the will of God and his plan. In Israel’s mentality, because of his sins and his refusal to carry out God’s designs, man must conform his mode of existence, and his doings and actions to God’s will (Mic 6,8; Is 30, 21; Os 14,10; Ps 119,1). It is the condition for him to reach true life (Pr 2,19; 5,6; 6,23; Dt 30,15; Jr 21,8). Conversion consists in the whole spiritual process (the spiritual itinerancy) that has to be undertaken in order to correspond to the will of God. It is in this perspective that one can understand all the changes that occur in the life of the prophet who receives a specific mission from God. God’s call takes hold of him and profoundly affects his social status and his way of living, at the same time as it is demanded of him to fulfil a mission that involves a displacement, an itinerancy (cf. Ho 1,2; Jon 1,2; 3,2). The displacement here is not only spatial but also symbolic insofar as it affects at the same time both the prophet’s life and that of the people, in his relationship with the Law.

This same idea is taken up again in the New Testament through the word hodos which refers to the way (Ac 18,26) that the disciples must undertake in order to reach life (Mt 7,13-14). The conditions put down by Jesus for one to enter the Kingdom (Mc 1,15) and those which are required of the disciples who want to engage themselves as his followers (Mc 8, 34-35) are written down in this perspective. To follow Christ here leads the disciple to renounce himself radically and to renounce all his egotistic tendencies in order to make his life dependent on him alone. The following of Christ (the geographic itinerancy) is also conditioned by the radical renunciation, as a place of conversion (spiritual itinerancy). The spiritual itinerancy presents itself here as the place for an identification with Christ.

ITINERANCY AS AN IDENTIFICATION WITH CHRIST

Christ as the way

12. The great innovation of the New Testament is the identification of the way with the Christ: Christ presents himself as the living way which leads to heaven and gives access to the Father (Jn 14,6). This identification of Christ with the way shows that the road to be undertaken (be it physical or spiritual) is not a body of laws or attitudes but the Person of Christ, the only way to which the disciple must identify himself in order to have access to God the Father. The whole journey of the Christian (his itinerancy) will thus consist in identifying oneself to Christ by one’s life of faith. To believe in Christ then consists in setting forth and in uniting oneself with him (to engage oneself existentially in relation to him), in such a way that one can receive his gifts and wealth, a condition to reach God.

The identification with Christ (the way that leads to the Father) presents itself here as that which gives the Christian the consistence, the stability which enables him to continue along the road in spite of the difficulties and the ordeals of the journey. To say it in another way, to identify oneself with Christ – the place for a life of faith and of getting rooted in his Person, is what gives the disciple the drive for a true itinerancy. So, there is no true itinerancy without the search for a certain fixity or stability in Christ.

Obedience and itinerancy in the Order

13. The question of identifying oneself with Christ – the place for a conformity to his will and for obedience – has a very strong link with the itinerancy in the Order. Indeed, because of obedience, itinerancy, in the Dominican tradition, is at the origin itself of the Order, or rather of its spectacular development outside the region of Toulouse. St Dominic disperses the brothers two by two (Libellus 47), probably while thinking of an identical action taken by Jesus who sends his disciples two by two. It is an obedience that excludes discussion (cf. Deposition of Bro. Jean of Spain, Bologna deposition, 26) and which is maintained in spite of the opposition offered by the friars and the civil and religious authorities friends of St Dominic. Its fruit will be the magnificent development of the Order. There also the dispersion was made in view of a mission, that of preaching and propagating the apostolic way of life according to the model imagined and wanted by Saint Dominic. The depositions at the process of canonization of Master Dominic show that the friars traveled frequently from one place to another according to what was needed. An example of this mobility is the assignation of Bl Reginald to Paris at the time when he was doing wonders in Bologna (Libellus 61-62).

Religious obedience is not an aim in itself. It is at the service of the mission of the Order, as defined by the General and Provincial Chapters, and it ensures the freedom the Order needs for its actions (Bologna 33). It is a means through which the friars, as a constituted body, can answer the needs of the common good to be reached together because it was discerned together. Obedience thus is not the expression of the superior’s whim or that of the Chapter, but the personalized expression of the effort demanded from all in view of the mission and the good of the Order in particular circumstances. As by their nature these circumstances change, it is important that the friars also accept change in order to better serve the mission. The intellectual mobility, that of apostolic offices and places, is then the result of the mission evaluated and wanted in common. Both immobility and the excess of mobility are evasions in relation to the mission. Obedience is a means by which to regulate mobility in view of mission, to provoke itinerancy in order to answer to the needs imposed by the circumstances or wanted by a Chapter. Obviously, in order to go back to what the Bible teaches us, the type of itinerancy desired and accepted in the framework of religious obedience presupposes that one has faith, on the one hand in the ability of the institution to discern the common good, and on the other hand in God, because it is his Gospel which lies at the beginning of our presence in the Order and the mission entrusted by the Church whom we serve in the best possible way. In this sense, religious obedience and the itinerancy that may result from it, are for us intimately linked to our religious life, for this has as its aim the preaching of the Gospel. It is not in vain that the only vow we pronounce publicly is that of obedience.

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