“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” – Mark 16:15
It is stated in the Prologue of the Dominican Order’s Constitution that:
“Our Order was founded from the beginning, especially for the preaching and salvation of souls.”
This is our task. This is who Dominicans are. We proclaim the Truth wherever we are for the primary reason of salvation of souls. For me, it is like trying to cut through the fog of today’s relativism with small snippets of God’s truth. This presentation of truth may be at times the only ‘fog-clearing’ that a person will hear. My reason? Mother Assumpta in her talk on evangelizing in the secular world put it best; a zeal for souls. I want to have God and I want to bring God to others. In this there is great joy!
St. Thomas Aquinas, OP very much had this zeal for souls and in his uniquely Dominican way, he gave us great bodies of work that had and still have great influence and reach in the Church and the disciplines of Theology and Philosophy. He was canonized in 1323, just 50 short years after his death. Things said about Thomas:
“The greatest poet of the Latin tongue of the whole Middle Ages.”
“Apostle of intelligence, doctor of truth, restorer of the intellectual order.”
“He had little or no interest in worldly matters.”
In his work the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas basically utilizes a framework that explains creation coming forth from God and the return of all things to God in Christ. He explains the human person as body and soul that is directed toward one goal, which is happiness. He outlines that our happiness is:
(1) Proportionate to our human nature; this can be attained through virtuous habit as Aristotle taught.
(2) A happiness that is beyond our human nature, this happiness is only attained by God’s grace and is a participation in God’s divine life. This life is shared with us through Christ the Son.
This idea of body (virtuous habit) and soul (divine grace) working toward happiness only makes sense because the human person is both body and spirit.
Favorite among words said about St. Thomas come from Richard Woods, OP, Professor of Theology at Dominican University and author. He writes:
“With the exception of St. Augustine, no single individual has had the prominent influence on Christian theology as the quiet Italian friar once dubbed ‘the Dumb Ox’ by his fellow students and known to the world as Thomas Aquinas. Thomas’ scholarly work was inseparable from and indeed rooted in his personal spirituality, itself grounded in his Dominican identity. In the end, for Thomas God is not so much an object to be thought or even thought about, much less discussed endlessly, as a Presence to be sought. The art of such seeking is contemplative action, and its end is mystical union, both in this life and hereafter.”
I think this is true of every Dominican, Lay and Religious alike. Our work, whether scholarly or not, is inseparable from and rooted in our personal spirituality – our Dominican identity, that identity, which our Order was founded upon, namely for preaching and the salvation of souls. I also think we are charged with not just talking about God, but seeking His Presence, every day, everywhere. For if we seek, we will find and only then can we bring this Presence to others and…
‘Go out into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature’.