he
second fundamental feature of Dominic's Order and its
spirituality is community life, because Dominic learned
from hard experience that the Ministry of the Word cannot
succeed as a merely individual effort but requires the
team-work of many. Today some young people seek religious
life primarily because it offers community living. That
motive is healthy, but it was not Dominic's guiding motive.
For him the Ministry of the Word was the primary motive,
and the community was an essential resource for performing
that ministry effectively. Nevertheless, it is a mistake
to oppose these two motives. The Gospel we preach is the
Gospel of God's Kingdom, that is, of true community in
the Spirit of Christ. To preach that Kingdom we must live
it, so that preaching and living in Christian community
are inseparably joined. Thus Dominican community is not
a mere means to preaching, but rather it is the very source
of the authenticity of our preaching. This implies of
course that it is a truly Christian community whose unity
is founded not merely in good human relations but in those
relations transformed by faith, hope, and sacrificial
love. Christ Himself must be the center and His Spirit
the binding soul of community.
Such
a community, like every Christian community, is rooted
in our baptismal commitment to Christ and achieves its
fullest realization in our communion in the Eucharist.
If that communion is to be genuine it must express our
readiness to support each other in difficulties and to
rejoice with each other in achievements. It must truly
be a brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ who is ever
ready to listen, to forgive, to help, even at the cost
of His own life.
A
Gospel community can never be satisfied simply with the
fulfillment of its duties; it seeks to imitate the Lord
by the counsels of a poverty that frees us from caring
for things to love persons, by a chastity that purifies
our love for persons, and an obedience that submits our
own notions and inclinations to the welfare of the community
and its mission. St. Dominic, like his contemporary St.
Francis, put a special emphasis on poverty, because he
knew that no preacher can be believed when he speaks of
heaven, when it is only too obvious that he is concerned
about things of earth. Unlike St. Francis, however, for
Dominic poverty was not the key-note of his spirituality.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that religious poverty is
not to be measured by how little we possess, but by whether
we possess only what is proportionate to the end of the
Order (Summa Theologiae II-II q. 188, a.7 c), i.e. useful
for our preaching mission and the kind of life which supports
it.
Dominic
did not want to make obedience a burden, as is seen from
his explicit insistence that the Constitutions of his
order should not bind under sin. The obedience typical
of our Order is not "blind" or servile, but
a willingness to cooperate in a common task, to admit
that we need to temper our own opinions and impulses by
learning to live and work with others. Cooperation is
not contrary to creativity, but makes it possible for
the gifts of individuals to bear better fruit. Dominic
was noted for the chastity of his life, which made him
clear-headed and warmly sensitive to the feelings of others.
Since we preach "Christ and Him crucified" (I
Cor. 1:23), we must come to know Him intimately in contemplation,
and this openness and vulnerability are impossible to
those whose eyes are blinded and hearts hardened by lust,
like those of whom St. Paul said, "One sees in them
men without conscience, without loyalty, without affection,
without compassion" (Romans 1:31).
Life
in community is necessarily penitential in that it requires
self-sacrifice. St. Dominic insisted that his community
live a life of penance through "regular observance",
that is, by following a pattern of common life which required
rigorous discipline of unruly desires for pleasure and
comfort, and of a concentration on the mission of the
Order. As his own example shows us, however, there was
a deeper motive for his own penances which he also wished
to inspire in his disciples. Dominic hungered and thirsted
to be united with Christ in His offering of himself to
God for the conversion of sinners. He accepted and even
sought suffering that he might preach Christ's passion
and share in it in order that his preaching might achieve
its life-giving effect. In all the great saints of his
Order this irresistible desire to join Jesus on the Cross
for the sake of sinners is evident. Even if we cannot
rise to that height of generosity, still we must at least
accept the hardships of our form of life and the frustrations
of our ministry in the same spirit.
The
conditions of modern life and ministry require that regular
observances appropriate to the thirteenth century should
be modified. Dominic provided that this could be done
in a constitutional way as long as such modification was
in the service of the fundamental features of the Order
and its mission. Again and again there have been reform
movements in our Order seeking to regain the spirit of
its founder. Sometimes these movements were unduly influenced
by a romanticism that sought to restore the primitive
manner of life lived by the first Dominicans. Vatican
II has finally taught us that it is foolish to try to
turn history backward, at the same time we know that we
cannot be true to the charism of St. Dominic unless we
find in our times the equivalents to the disciplined and
penitential way of life which made him and his first disciples
so "Like the Lord" (Dominicus, Dominicani).
(Source
: Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.Dominican Spirituality)
