European novice meeting in Caleruega, 2025
Resting at the heart of Jesus listening to his heartbeat like the Beloved Disciple at the Last Supper and looking at the world with open eyes – this was the image that Master of the Order Br Gerard Timoner, OP, gave to the novices at the end of his sermon at the European Novices’ Work Week in Caleruega from 29 May to 2 June 2025. He began his sermon with the image of St Ignatius of Loyola experiencing conversion on his sickbed while reading the lives of St Dominic and St Francis – and the first idea for his order. Encountering the life of St Dominic therefore meant conversion.
This encounter with the life and spirituality of St Dominic was at the centre of the novices’ work week in various ways. Almost 50 European novices and their novice masters visited the birthplace of St Dominic. The birthplace itself is not only home to the church of the Dominican nuns, but also to a fountain. Believers had taken earth from this place until – according to tradition – a spring sprang up here. All novice masters and novices drank copiously from this spring, as this was said to encourage vocations to the order.
The Dominican novices also got to know the other places associated with the life of St Dominic before the founding of the order and his years of travelling. The monastery of Silos, with its extremely impressive Romanesque cloister, was the spiritual centre of the area and it is said that St Dominic’s mother, Blessed Joanna of Aza, had a dream that a dog with a burning torch would spring from her womb – an image of the itinerant preacher that can already be found in St Augustine and which has adorned depictions of the order’s founder ever since.
The young Dominicans learnt the foundations of his contemplative life, which were essentially laid during his time as a canon, in the cathedral of Osma. The chapter house where St Dominic made his profession as an Augustinian, as well as the tombs of his former bishops, are still preserved. The bishop of his last years in Osma, St. Diego of Osma, who essentially developed the idea for the order, rests at the side of the altar of St. Dominic, in the centre of which is the cross of the ‘Santo Cristo del Milagro’, before which, according to tradition, Dominic always prayed.
Overall, this contemplative dimension of the order was at the centre of the meeting. The famous Dominican theologian Yves Congar has spoken of the “monastic” dimension of our Dominican life as a key dimension. The friars learnt about this not only in the stones of the monastery of Osma, but especially in the lectures of Fr Paul Murray, OP. The famous professor of Dominican spirituality deepened not only its contemplative dimension, but also its essential expression in the moment of mercy. Dominican mysticism “is a mysticism of service not a mysticism of psychological enthusiasm. God is, of course, for both Catherine and Dominic, always the primary focus of attention, but the neighbour, and the neighbour’s need, are always to the forefront of their minds. The authentic Dominican preacher, therefore, does not reject the world, much less call down curses on wicked, sinful people. Instead, conscious of his or her own weakness, and humbly identifying, therefore, with the world’s need, the preacher calls down a blessing.” Even weakness – including the dryness of prayer, which Fr Paul explained in a separate lecture – has its place here. It is located in the incarnational dimension of Dominican spirituality: “Christ, in virtue of the Incarnation, knew intimately, “through experience,” Thomas remarks, what it like to be weak and tempted. ‘He himself was beset with weakness,’ Thomas explains, quoting Hebrews, adding: ‘The reason for this is that he may have compassion on the weaknesses of others. This is the reason why the Lord permitted Peter to fall. But following on from Blaise Pascal’s quote: “Nobody is as happy as a real Christian”, Fr Paul also emphasised the joyful dimension that characterises Dominican spirituality. St Dominic thus became an image of this true Christian when it was said of him ‘that he preached the Word not only by word and by example, but also by joy.’ It is also in the line of this joy that the Dominicans take pleasure in particularity and individuality. Fr Paul quoted ‘a witty comment’: ‘Jesuit formation, it was said, builds character whereas Dominican formation creates characters!’ So the novices’ meeting was not short of laughter and joy, even during the study sessions.
The novices themselves presented their provinces, so that an impressive panorama of the various fields in which the Dominicans preach in Europe unfolded. This was complemented by not only in-depth, but also often very witty and humorous presentations by famous, especially contemporary personalities from the provinces. The novices also got to know rather unknown personalities outside the provinces, such as St Gabriel Harty, OP (1921-2019), who preached the rosary, so that in over a hundred of factories men reciting the rosary at 12 o’clock, the Dominican Tertiar blessed Sr. Osanna of Cattaro (1493-1565), who give her life 50 years reclused in cell, not only praying, but also counseling people and mediatoring for peace, or the polish cooperator brother fr. Gwala Torbinski, the ‘silent preacher’ as sacristan and librarian.
All this was supplemented by impulses from Dr Claire Rousseau, who presented the iconography of St Dominic with often very unusual depictions: a baroque one, such as the one with a monkey and a little devil who want to distract him from his studies, or a late medieval Dutch depiction of the saint, where Christ and Mary are tilling and watering the vine. A lively discussion developed following the lecture by Fr Bernardo Sastre Zamora, OP on the School of Salamanca, for example on the question of whether our time also has nominalist tendencies that are worth confronting, as the friars of the School of Salamanca attempted to do at the time. This lecture foreshadowed the time of study that was soon to come for the novices – and showed the novices’ anticipation and interest in this time.
All in all, it was an extremely rich and joyful meeting, which, in the richness that is visible in the European novitiates, gives hope for the Dominicans in Europe.
