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Being strong and weak

We belong and are at home when we find that we are stronger than we ever believed, and weaker than we dared to admit. And these are not contrary qualities, for they are signs that we are beginning to be conformed to the strong and vulnerable Christ.

We are formed in the first place as Christians. In our tradition this means not so much the progressive submission to commandments, to tame our unruly natures, as the growth in virtue. Becoming virtuous makes us strong, single hearted, free and able to stand on our own two feet. As Jean Luis-Bruguès OP has written, virtue is an apprenticeship in humanity. “It is in the passage from virtuality to virtuosity” ( for the French text "ce passage de la virtualité à la virtuosité " )

Becoming a brother means that we receive our strength from each other. We are not soloists. It is a strength that makes us free, but with each other not from each other. In the first place we become strong because we have confidence in each other. At the origin of our tradition is Dominic's endless confidence in the brethren. He trusted the brethren because he trusted in God. As John of Spain wrote, "He had such confidence in God's goodness that he sent even ignorant men to preaching saying, 'Do not be afraid, the Lord will be with you and will put power in your mouths.'"

So the first task of your formator is to build up that trust and confidence. But it is also the responsibility that you have for each other, for it is usually those in formation who form each other most. You have the power to undermine a brother, sap his confidence, make fun of him. And you have the power to build each other up, to give each other strength, to form each other as preachers of God's strong word.

It is said in our Constitutions that "the primary responsibility for his own formation lies with the candidate himself" (LCO 156). We should not be treated as children, incapable of making decisions for ourselves. We grow into brethren, equal members of the community, by being treated as mature adults. In Dominic's day, there was no sign of the traditional monastic circator, whose job was to go around snooping, seeing whether everyone was doing what they ought. But this is a responsibility that we do not exercise alone. If we are brothers, then we will help each other into the freedom to think, to speak, to believe, to take risks, to transcend fear. We will also dare to challenge each other.

As we grow as brethren, then we will be strong enough to face our weakness and fragility. This is in the first place what a friend of mine has called "the wisdom of creatures" . This is the knowledge that we are created, that our existence is a gift, that we are mortal and live between birth and death. We wake up to the fact that we are not gods. We stand on our own two feet, but our feet are a gift.

We will also discover that we have not joined the communion of saints, but a group of men and women who are weak, irresolute, and who must constantly pick themselves up after failure. I have written elsewhere about how this can be a moment of crisis in a brother's formation . The heroes whom a novice had loved and admired turn out to have feet of clay. But this has always been so. That is one reason why we have as Patroness of the Order Mary Magdalene, who according to tradition was a weak and sinful woman, but who was called to be the first preacher of the gospel.

More than five hundred years ago Savonarola wrote a letter to a novice who had clearly been scandalised by the sins of the brethren. Savonarola warns him about people who join the Order hoping to enter paradise right away. They never last. "They wish to live among the saints, excluding all wicked and imperfect people. And when they do not find this, they abandon their vocation and take to the road…..But if you wish to flee from all the wicked, then you must leave this world." This confrontation with fragility is often a wonderful moment in the maturing of a vocation. This is when we discover that we are able to give and to receive the mercy which we asked for when we joined the Order. If we can do this, then we are on the road to becoming a brother and a preacher.

One of the fears that may inhibit us from trusting in this mercy is the worry that if the brethren were to see what we are really like, then they might not vote for us for profession. We may be tempted to conceal who we are until we are safely and securely inside, professed and ordained and invulnerable. To accept this would be to settle for a formation in deceit. Formation would become a training in concealment, and this would be a travesty for an Order whose motto is "Veritas". We must believe in our brethren enough to let them see who we are and what we think. Without such transparency there is no fraternity. This does not mean that we must stand up in the refectory and proclaim our sins, but we cannot create a mask behind which we hide. We dare to embrace such vulnerability because Christ has done so before us. It prepares us to preach a trustworthy and honest word.

Fidelity and love of the brethren

Finally, there is a quality to brotherhood which is elusive and hard to describe, which I shall call fidelity, according to Peguy "the most beautiful of words". At the heart of our preaching is God's fidelity. God has given his word to us, and it is a Word made flesh. It is a word in which we can trust, and which makes of the history of humanity a story which goes somewhere rather than just a succession of random events. It is the strong and solid word of the one who said "I am who I am". That is a fidelity which we must seek to embody in our lives. The married couple is a sacrament of God's fidelity, who has joined himself irrevocably to us in Christ. It belongs also to our preaching of the gospel that we are faithful to each other.

What does that mean? In the first place, it is fidelity to the commitment we have made to the Order. God has given us his Word made flesh, even though it led to a senseless death. We have given God our word, even when our promise may appear to ask of us more than we may think possible. I remember, when I was Provincial, talking with an old brother who came to tell me that he was dying of cancer. He was a loveable and good man, who had lived through difficult and uncertain moments in his Dominican life. He told me, “It looks as if I am going to fulfil my ambition of dying in the Order”. It may look a small ambition, but it is an essential one. He had given his word and his life. He rejoiced that, despite everything, he had not taken back this gift.

Secondly it means that our common mission has priority over my private agenda. I have my talents, my preferences and dreams, but I have given myself to our shared preaching of the good news. This common mission may require of me that I accept some unwanted burden for a while, like being a Bursar, a Novice or Student Master, or Master of the Order, for the common good. A bus may look much like a common room. It is filled with people who sit together, talking or reading, sharing a common space. But when the bus route departs from the direction of my own journey, then I will leave that bus and continue on my own way. Do I regard the Order as much like a bus, on which I stay only as long as it carries me in the direction I wish to go?

Fidelity also implies that I will stand up for my brethren, for their reputation is mine. In the Primitive Constitutions, and until recently, one of the tasks of the novice master was to teach the novices to "suspect the good" . One must always give the best possible interpretation of what the brethren did or said. If a brother comes back regularly late at night then rather than imagine the terrible sins he may have committed, one must assume that, for example, he had been out visiting the sick. Savonarola writes to that judgmental novice: "If you see something that does not please you, think that it was done with a good intention. Many are, in themselves, better than you imagine". This is more than the optimism of the unworldly. It belongs to that love which sees the world with God's eyes, as good. St Catherine of Siena once wrote to Raymond of Capua, reassuring him that he must trust in her love for him, and when we love someone we give the best interpretation to what they do, trusting that they always seek our good: "Beyond the general love, there is a particular love which expresses itself in faith. And it expresses itself in such a way that it can neither believe or imagine that the other could want anything except our good."

If my brother is condemned as bad or unorthodox, then fidelity means that I will do everything I can to stand by him, and give the best possible interpretation to his views or actions. It was because of this mutual fidelity that the foreword of the Constitutions of 1228 ruled, as to be observed "inviolably and unchangeably in perpetuity", that one never can appeal outside the Order against the decisions that the Order made. It should be virtually unimaginable, therefore, that a brother might publicly accuse or disassociate himself from one of his brethren.

This fidelity implies that I will not only stand up for my brother but to him. If he is my brother, then I must care what he thinks, and dare to disagree with him. I cannot leave it just for the superiors, as if it were not my responsibility. But I must do so to his face and not behind his back. We may fear to do this, expecting hostility and rejection. But, in my experience, if one makes it clear that one is speaking out of a love of the truth and of one’s brother, then this has always led to a deepened friendship and understanding.

So these are some of the elements of being formed as a brother: talking and listening to each other; learning to be strong and weak; growing in mutual fidelity. All this belongs to what is most fundamental, which is learning to love the brethren. We Dominicans, with our robust approach to each other, may hesitate to use such language. It may sound sugary and sentimental. Yet it is the ultimate basis of our fraternity. This is what we are required to do by the one who calls us: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 16:12). This is the fundamental commandment of our faith. Obedience to it forms us as Christians and as brethren. St Dominic said that he had learnt " more in the book of Charity than in the books of men" . It means that ultimately we see each other as a gift from God. My brother or sister may irritate me; I may be totally opposed to their opinions, but I come to delight in them, and see their goodness.

There is a fundamental relationship between love and vocation. It has brought many of you to us. Jesus looked at the rich young man and loved him, and called him to follow him, just as he looked at Mary Magdalene and called her by her name. Stephen of Spain tells us that he went to confession to Dominic, and "he looked at me as if he loved me." Later that evening Dominic summoned him and clothed him in the habit. Love is, as Eckhart said, the angler's hook that catches the fish and will not let it go. I must confess that I decided to join the Order before I ever met a Dominican, drawn by the ideal that I had read about. Perhaps that also can be a blessing!

There is nothing sentimental about this love. Sometimes we have to work at it, and struggle to overcome prejudice and difference. It is the labour of becoming one of the brethren. I remember that once there was a brother with whom it was hard for me to live. Anything that either did or said appeared to irritate the other. One evening we agreed to go out to the pub together, a very English solution. We talked for hours, learned about each other's childhood, and struggles. I could, for the first time, see through his eyes and see myself as I must appear to him. I began to understand. That was the beginning of friendship and fraternity.

"I have seen the Lord"

Mary Magdalene goes to her brothers and says “I have seen the Lord”. She is the first preacher of the resurrection. She is a preacher because she is capable of hearing the Lord when he calls, and of sharing the good news of Christ’s victory over death.

So becoming a preacher is more than learning a certain amount of information, so that you have something to say, and a few preaching techniques, so that you know how to say it. It is being formed as someone who can hear the Lord, and speak a word that offers life. Isaiah says, “The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me.”(49.1f). All of Isaiah’s life, from the very beginning, shaped him as someone who is ready to speak a prophetic word.

The Order should offer you more than a training in theology. It is a life that forms you as a preacher. Our common life, prayer, pastoral experiences, struggles and failures, will make us capable of attention and proclamation in ways that we cannot anticipate.

One of my predecessors as Provincial was a brother called Anthony Ross. He was famous as a preacher, a historian, a prison reformer, and even a wrestler! One day, shortly after he was elected Provincial, he suffered a stroke and was reduced almost to silence. He had to resign as Provincial and learn to speak again. The few words he could manage had more power than anything he had said before. People came to confession to him, to hear his simple healing words. His sermons of half a dozen words could change people's lives. It was as if that suffering and that silence formed a preacher who could give us life-giving words as never before. I went to see him before I left for the General Chapter of Mexico, from which, to my great surprise, I did not come back to my Province. His last word to me was "Courage". The greatest gift we can give to a brother is such a word.

A Compassionate word

Mary Magdalene announces to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”. This is not just the statement of a fact, but the sharing of a discovery. She has shared their loss, their puzzlement, their grief, and so now she can share with them her encounter with the Risen Lord. She can share the good news with them because it is good news for her.

The Word that we preach is a word who shared our humanity, and is “not a high priest unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4.15). Preaching will demand of us that we became incarnate in different worlds, whether that of the contemporary youth culture or a Micronesian island, the world of drug addicts or business managers. We have to enter a world, learn its language, see through its inhabitants’ eyes, get under their skin, understand their weaknesses and their hopes. We must, in some sense, become them. Then we can speak a word that is good news to them and to us. This does not mean that we must agree with them. Often we may need to challenge them. But we must feel the pulse of their humanity before we can do so.

It is the tradition of the Church to sing the praises of God at dawn. We go on being watchmen waiting for the dawn, so that we can share our hope with others who see no sign of the sun rising. It is because I have somehow glimpsed their darkness, and maybe known it as my own, that I can share a word about the “loving kindness of the heart of our God, who visits us like the dawn from on high”.

Often we can do this because of who we are and what we have lived. Mary Magdalene searched for the body of the Lord with a tenderness which she had learned in a life that was marked, according to the tradition, by its own failures and sins. It was this life that prepared her to be the person who searched for the man she loved and recognised him when he called her by name. One of the most precious gifts you bring to the Order is your life, with its failures, its difficulties, its dark moments. I can even look back at some sin and see it as a felix culpa, because it has prepared me as someone who can speak a word of compassion and hope for others who are living the same defeat. I can share with them the rising of the sun.

In other areas we need a formation in compassion, an education of the heart and the mind that breaks down everything within us that is stony hearted, priggish, arrogant and judgmental. One of the most useful things that I ever did in my rather unusual noviciate, was to visit regularly the sexual offenders in the local prison. They are perhaps the most despised people in our society. The revelation was that really we were no different from each other. We can listen to the gospel together. So our formation should wear down our defences against those who are different, and unattractive, those whom our society despises: the beggars, the prostitutes, the criminals, the sort of people with whom the Word of God spent his time. We learn to receive the gifts that they can give us, if our hands are open.

The ideal preacher is the one who is all things to all human beings, perfectly human. No Dominican that I know is that, and we will be faced with our limitations. For years I went one night a week to a refuge for the homeless in Oxford, to prepare the soup and to talk with them. Yet I must confess that I dreaded it. I hated the smell, and was bored by the drunken conversation; I knew that my soup was not a success and I longed to be home reading books. Yet I do not regret those hours. Maybe the wall between me and my brothers and sisters on the street was somewhat eroded.

Compassion will reshape our lives in ways that we never planned. When St. Dominic was a student at Palencia he let himself be touched by compassion for the hungry and sold his books. He only stayed in the south of France and founded the Order because he was moved by the plight of the people caught in a destructive heresy. The whole of his life was moulded by response to situations he never anticipated. This merciful man was at the mercy of others, vulnerable to their needs. Learning compassion will wrestle from our hands the tight control of our lives.

A word of life

“I have seen the Lord”. This is more than the reporting of an event. Mary Magdalene shares with her brethren the triumph of life over death, of light over darkness. It is a word that brings the dawn that she witnessed “very early in the morning”.

Catherine of Siena tells Raymond of Capua that we must be “doers rather than undoers and spoilers” We are formed as preachers through the ordinary conversations that we have with others, the words that we exchange in the common room and the corridors. We discover how to share a word of life in our preaching, by being formed as brethren who offer each other words that give hope, encourage, build up and heal. If we are people who habitually offer words to other people which hurt, undermine, sap and destroy, then however intelligent and knowledgeable we may be, we can never be preachers. There is a Polish saying, “Wystygl mistyk; wynik cynik”, which means : “The mystic has cooled down; the result is a cynic.” We may be the “dogs of the Lord” but we can never be cynics .

The word of the preacher is fertile. It fructifies. When Mary Magdalene meet Jesus she mistook him for the gardener. Only it is not a mistake, because Jesus is the new Adam in the garden of life, where death is defeated and the dead tree of the cross bears fruit. So the natural allies of the preacher are the creative people in our society. Who are the people struggling to make sense of contemporary experience? Who are the thinkers, the philosophers, the poets and the artists, who can teach us a creative word for today. They too should help to form us as preachers

A word that we have received

How are we to find this fresh, compassionate creative word? I confessed at the beginning of this letter that when I joined the Order I feared that I would never be able to preach. This is a fear that often is still there. It is embarrassing for a Dominican to confess that when I am asked to preach my first reaction still is often: “But I have nothing to say.” But what is to be said will be given, even if sometimes at the last moment. To receive the word that is given, we have to learn the art of silence. In study and in prayer, we learn to be still, attentive, so that what we may receive from the Lord what he gives us to share: “What I received from the Lord, is what I also delivered to you.”(1 Cor. 11:23)

Being still is for many the hardest part of formation. Pascal wrote that “I have discovered that the unhappiness of human beings comes from just one thing: not knowing how to remain quietly in a room.” Ultimately the preacher must love “the pleasures of solitude” because that is when we receive gifts. We have to nail ourselves to our chairs, not so that we may master knowledge, but so that we may be ready and alert when it comes unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. Finally we may come to love this silence as the deepest centre of our Dominican lives. It is the time of gifts, whether in prayer or study.

It demands discipline. "Truly, you are a God who lies hidden"(Is 45: 15).To detect God's coming, we need ears that are acute, like those of a hunter. Eckhart asks: "Where is this God, whom all creatures seek, and from whom they have their being and their life? Just like a man who hides himself, and who coughs and so gives himself away, so is God. No one is capable of discovering God, if he did not give himself away." But God is there, discreetly coughing, giving tiny hints to those who are able to hear, if we are silent. Often, later in your Dominican life, you will be overwhelmed by demands on your time. Now is the time to establish a habit of regular silence in the presence of God, to which you must cling all your life. It can make the difference between mere survival and flourishing as a Dominican.

Often people come to the Order with a newfound enthusiasm to share the good news of Jesus Christ. You may wish to take immediately to the streets, to storm the pulpit, to share your discovery of the gospel with the world. It can be frustrating to join the Order of Preachers and then find that for years you are tied to hours of boring study, reading dry books written by dead men. We yearn perhaps to be on the road preaching the gospel, or sent on the missions. We may be like those young men of whom Dostoyevsky wrote in Brothers Karamazov, "who do not understand that the sacrifice of one's life is in most cases perhaps the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their life, full of youthful fervour, to hard and difficult study, if only to increase tenfold their powers of serving truth so as to be able to carry out the great work they have set their hearts on carrying out – that such a sacrifice is almost beyond the strength of many of them."

It is right that from the beginning we find ways of sharing the good news with others, but the patient apprenticeship of silence is inescapable if we are to communicate more than just our own enthusiasm. Dominic's memory was a "kind of barn for God, filled to overflowing with crops of every kind" . We need the years of study to fill the barn. It is true that Matthew 10:19 tells us that we must not think beforehand what we are to say, but Humbert of Romans informs those in formation that this text only applied to apostles!

A shared word

A year ago I was walking through the tiny back streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, when I came across a little square, dominated by a statute of St Vincent Ferrer. Standing on his pedestal, he looked the model preacher, the solitary speaker lifted up above the crowd. We may be wish to be preachers like that, individual stars, the focus of attention and admiration.

The word of the preacher is not his. It is a word that we have received not only in the silence of prayer and study but from each other. And so a community of preachers should be one in which we share our deepest convictions, as Mary Magdalene shared her faith in the Risen Lord with her brethren. In the General Council we gather every Wednesday to read the gospel together. Our sermons are the fruit of our common reflection. Modern conceptions of authorship may make us possessive of our own ideas, and we may think that any brother who uses them is committing robbery. But it is the rich who believe firmly in private property. We share what we have received and as mendicant friars we should not be ashamed to beg an idea off anyone.

Our formation should also prepare us to preach together, in a common mission. Jesus sent out the disciples two by two. It is tempting to claim an apostolate as my own and to guard it jealously from the other brethren. This is my responsibility, my care, my glory. If I do that, then it may be that all that I preach is myself. Humbert of Romans tells us to beware of people "who realise that preaching is a particularly splendid kind of job and set their hearts on it because they want to be important." If we give in to this temptation we may come to think that we are the good news for which everyone is hungering. The most enjoyable teaching that I have ever done was when I taught doctrine at Oxford with two other brethren. We prepared the course together, and went to each other's lectures. We tried to teach the students by introducing them into our discussions. The idea was that by entering our conversation they could discover a voice of their own, rather than be passive recipients of instruction.

Each brother speaks for the whole community. The most famous example of this was in the early days of the conquest of the Americas. When Antonio Montesino preached against the injustices done to the Indians, the city authorities went to the Prior to denounce him. But the Prior replied that when Antonio preached it was the whole community who spoke..

All this goes against the grain of an individualism which is characteristic both of modernity and often of Dominicans. Indeed individualism is often claimed with some pride as a typically Dominican characteristic. It is true that we have a tradition which cherishes the freedom and the unique gifts of each brother. Thanks be to God. Planning common projects in the Order can be a nightmare. But we are preaching brothers and our greatest brethren, though often pictured alone, usually worked in the common mission: Fra Angelico was not a solitary artist but trained brethren in his skills; St Catherine was surrounded by brothers and sisters; Bartolomeo de Las Casas worked with his brethren in Salamanca for the rights of the Indians. Congar and Chenu flourished as members of a community of theologians. Even St Thomas needed a team of brothers to write down his words.

So our formation should liberate us from the debilitating effects of contemporary individualism, and form us as preaching brothers. We will be much more truly individual and strong if we dare to do that. In some parts of the world, which have been more affected by this individualism, this may be the great challenge for your generation: to invent and launch new ways of preaching the gospel together. This you can do. There are many young in formation, one in six of the brethren and over a thousand novices this year for the nuns and sisters. Together you can do more than we can begin to imagine now.

Conclusion

In 1217, shortly after the foundation of the Order, St Dominic scattered the brethren, because “stored grain rots”. He sent them on their way without money, like the apostles. But one brother, John of Navarra, refused to leave for Paris unless he had money in his pocket. They argued, and finally Dominic gave in and gave him something. This incident scandalised some of the other brethren but perhaps it is a good image of our formation. I am not suggesting that your formators should give in to your every request but that our formation should be both exigent and compassionate, idealistic and realistic. Dominic invites John to be confident, not with an arrogant self-confidence, but confident in the Lord who will provide for him on the journey, and in his brother who sends him. When he sees that he has not got that far as yet, then he has mercy on him.

I pray that your formation may help you to grow in Dominic’s confidence and joy. The Order needs courageous and joyful young men and women who will help us to found the Order in new places, refound it in others, and develop new ways of preaching of the gospel. Sometimes, like brother John, your confidence may falter. You may doubt your strength to set out on the journey, or even whether it is worth while to do so. May such dark and uncertain times become part of your growth as Christians, preachers, brothers and sisters. When you feel lost and unsure, may you hear a voice, unexpectedly close, saying, “Whom do you seek?”