Holy Father Dominic (2026) - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

St Dominic spent his life salting the earth and lighting the world; so, we celebrate him today, in the hope that we may follow him here on earth and so into heaven.

To follow the way of Dominic, we need to look at his life.  Our Dominic was born at the high point of the Reconquista, that series of military campaigns by a coalition of Christian rulers to retake the Iberian Peninsula.  And so, even from the cradle, Dominic had impressed upon him a key principle: heroic efforts should be made so that people will be what God made them to be, in a word, Christian.  Dominic never wielded a weapon, but he did carry the Scriptures in his hands and in his mind.

With that prevailing mentality, that God's world is to be full of Christians, the young Dominic grew to become one of the great reformers of western Christianity.  The story goes that the Diocese of Osma in Spain was notoriously corrupt.  Its Bishop Bernard had been deposed in 1178 for the crime of simony – the thing with simony is that it needs both a buyer and a seller.  And so, that ambitious prelate pursued the poor and malleable clergy in Osma for his own ends.  But Dominic saw things differently.  He knew that Osma could be great.  It has a local saint, its first bishop, Peter of Bourgos.  His burial shroud is still venerated in the cathedral.  So, Osma should be a great and holy diocese.  And it's in that knowledge that our Dominic accepted recruitment for the cathedral canonry when but a university student.

While a canon, Dominic was sent on a diplomatic mission to Denmark.  On his way back, he met Cathars who believed in two gods: a good god who made the spiritual realm, and an evil god who made the material one.  Disastrous consequences for marriage and family life flow from that false belief.  And so Dominic, full of evangelical zeal, stayed up all night to persuade and to correct, to inform and to draw in that one Cathar.  From then on, Dominic committed himself to bringing back such people to the mind of the Church. F or Dominic and for us, it's not enough that people be religious, that they have a philosophy of life; it is necessary that they be Christian, as God intended, all by persuasion and encouragement in accord with our interlocutor’s dignity.

And as a friar and Master of his Order, our Dominic also effected the renewal of old churches and monasteries.  He deposited our nuns and friars in venerable but useful places, so that the preaching would have its observant base.

If we can discern Dominic's spirit, it is that of salt and light.  Those images correspond to strong assessments of the status quo: without salt, the earth is flavourless and rotten; without light, the world is obscured and lost.  But the Lord of the Sermon convinces us that we can be great, that goodness can be revealed and restored.  Like the paintings of the Caravaggisti, where it is light which reveals the scene, the light of the Gospel shining from us altogether will show others who and what they are before God.

And so, with Dominic’s own heroic efforts in mind, we approached our neighbours, live with them, bear with them, and love them, all so that they would see themselves as God sees them: of infinite worth, of his image, of his kingdom, of his grace, of his life.

We shall let the Lord of the Sermon now convince us of the kingdom's hope.  There is a status quo which is unsatisfactory: people are not yet what the God of Christ Jesus made them to be.  He wants everyone to know and love him in his Son, and so to change their lives, and so be saved for the eternal life.  And if what God wants for them and what our neighbours want for themselves differs, we shall make the same heroic efforts as St Dominic, that the truth may be known and loved.

On this great feast, we shall be convinced that the status quo is not forever.  There is a brand of hope which the kingdom brings forth.  And we shall allow that hope to spur us onward.

May St Dominic, preacher of grace, unite us by his prayers in the Truth of Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever.  Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.