Dominican Pilgrimage to Lourdes (Part 1)

This year some 20 Dominican friars of the English Province and over 120 parishioners, friends and benefactors went on Pilgrimage to Lourdes. We were joined by Bishop Malcolm McMahon OP of Nottingham, who is celebrating the Silver Jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood, and the Pilgrimage was led by the Prior Provincial, Fr Allan White OP.

Lourdes was originally a small unremarkable market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. In 1858, Our Lady appeared eighteen times to a fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous. Since the first apparition on 11 February, crowds have come to Lourdes and to the Grotto of Massabielle to fulfill the requests of Our Lady and in search of healing. We came to do the same.

During the 8th apparition of Our Lady to Bernadette, on Wednesday 24 February, Our Lady said: "Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners." The Sacrament of Reconciliation is an important part of a Lourdes pilgrimage, and we also walked the Stations of the Cross together in the pouring rain, as an act of penance.

During the 9^th apparition, on Thursday 25 February, Our Lady said to Bernadette, "… go drink at the spring and wash there… ". Some pilgrims chose to wash in the baths in Lourdes, others to drink and wash from the taps near the Grotto. Both the baths and the taps are fed by the spring which Our Lady indicated to St Bernadette.

During the 13^th apparition, on 2 March, Our Lady said, "Go and tell the priests that people should come here in procession…". It is from this request that the two processions of Lourdes were born. We led the Marian Procession on one evening, during which eight friars carried the statue of Our Lady as we prayed the Rosary. On another afternoon, we walked in the Eucharistic Procession.

To be continued...

Credo 26: He ascended into heaven ...

'No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the son of man' (John 3: 13. RSV). The son of man must be understood here to mean Jesus the Christ. Rufinus, an early Christian writer, commenting on the Apostles' Creed, says, that when Jesus ascended to heaven He did not go to a place where God the Word had not previously been. For, He, Jesus, the Word Incarnate, had existed from all time with the Father, who is in heaven. What was new, is that, the Word made flesh is now seated in heaven, as had never happened before. It was the culmination of prophecy. King David uttered these words centuries earlier: ' The LORD says to my lord: " Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool" ' (Ps 110:1). This ascension was a glorious ascension. The first man Adam, under the counsel of the evil one, dragged human beings captive down to hell; but, this Jesus, when he ascended to heaven restored human beings to heaven. All the heavenly host were astonished. The angels looked with awe as the Great I AM clothed in flesh made his way on high. How much more should we, who are the ones to have been redeemed, jump for joy!

Credo 25: ... in accordance with the Scriptures.

In the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes: 'If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain' (1 Cor 5:14). Strong words indeed. And St. Paul's writings are full of references to the resurrection. We should not be surprised, because his conversion on the road to Damascus was an encounter with the risen Christ, the reality of which forms the entire basis for his preaching missions around the Mediterranean.

Our faith is as nothing if the resurrection did not happen. Why so? Because we would have to admit that, without the resurrection, evil has triumphed - Christ has died and death is the end of the story. This would be against all Christ's works and teachings, and would mean that the promises of the Old Testament have not been fulfilled. It is only because of the resurrection that we can say that we see the truth of Christ's promises.

In the resurrection we see the most powerful manifestation of Christ's divinity. The resurrection shows us that he who claimed to be God, to be the 'I am', is who he claimed to be. In St. John's Gospel we read how Jesus said to his disciples 'when you have lifted up the Son of Man, you will know that I am he' (Jn 8:28). All that Jesus is and was predicted to be in the Old Testament is shown to be true at the resurrection.

And this has a profound impact for us. Right through the whole of the Scriptures, we find a witness to a God who keeps his promises. First we see that God makes the promise to Abraham, our father in faith, that he will be the father of many nations. Despite the fact that both Abraham and Sarah were very old, Abraham trusted in the promise given to him, and became the father of Isaac, the first in the line of the people of Israel. The Letter to the Hebrews praises Abraham's faith because "he considered that God was able to raise people even from the dead; hence he did receive Isaac back, and this was a symbol' (Heb 11:19) - a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus is what is meant.

With Jesus's preaching, we see how God's promises of a homeland and a people are extended beyond territory and beyond a single race, looking towards a kingdom in Heaven. We see in the resurrection how God fulfils his promises, how He fulfils what was written in the Scriptures. This then becomes the basis of our hope that we will one day join the saints in heaven in our true home, which is an eternity with God.

Credo 24 - On the third day He rose again ...

‘If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without substance, and so is your faith’ (I Corinthians 15:14). With these words Saint Paul reminds us that the reality of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead stands at the centre of all we believe and confess as Christians. Yet how firm are the foundations on which we base our faith in the resurrection? According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the New Testament bears witness to the mystery of the resurrection as ‘a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified'.

It is interesting to recall the reaction of the apostles when they first heard the news of the resurrection. Shocked and demoralised by the violence and suffering of the crucifixion, they considered the idea that Jesus had risen from the dead to be an impossibility. As Saint Luke tells us, when the women ‘returned from the tomb and told all this to the Eleven and to all the others […] this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them’ (Luke 24:9,11).

Yet this initial dismissive reaction was to change radically when the risen Christ appeared to the disciples and - by allowing himself to be touched and by eating with them - demonstrated the continuity between his risen, albeit glorified, body and the body that had been tortured on the cross. The Gospels build up a series of ‘signs’ which testify to the historicity of the resurrection. We read of the empty tomb, the appearances of Jesus first to Mary Magdalene and the holy women, and then to Peter and the twelve disciples. Saint Paul tells the people of Corinth that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred of the brethren, most of whom were still alive when Paul was writing his letters.

Thus the faith of the first disciples in the resurrection comes about through their direct experience of and encounter with the risen Christ. The resurrection is not a product of the credulity of Christ’s followers or some sort of invention in order to continue the ‘cause of Jesus’. It is the source of our own future resurrection from the dead. As Saint Paul says, Christ has risen from the dead ‘as the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep’ (1 Corinthians 15:20). This is described in the beautiful ancient homily that is read on Holy Saturday when Christ descends among the dead to call them to new life: ‘Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person’.

The prophet's word of truth

Br Romero Radix OP is currently doing a summer placement in a London hospital under the direction of Fr Peter Harries OP. This is the reflection Br Romero has written for this week's edition of St Dominic's Newsletter, the weekly newsletter of St Dominic's Priory, London

The king’s leading men wanted to put Jeremiah to death on account of the word of God he had spoken. The king was Zedekiah. The people of Jerusalem were under serious threat of being taken captive to Babylon. Jeremiah had told the king God’s words were these: ‘you shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.’ Furthermore, if any one should remain in the city he would die by the sword or famine or pestilence, but those that go forth to the Chaldeans – that is the Babylonians - shall live.

The king’s leading men did not like this. They said that Jeremiah’s words were disheartening the remaining soldiers in the city. This is the heart of the matter. What God had in mind and what they had in mind were two different things. What they wanted was in conflict with what God had planned. They did not like God’s plan. They were not willing to accept it. They were not willing to change.

Now, of what relevance is this text to us, today? Well, with the advent of Christ the ministry of the prophet was not abolished. Paul tells us that ‘some He made prophets, some evangelists, some teachers, and some apostles – for the building up of the saints’. So, if we as the body of Christ are to be built up, we have a duty and a responsibility to find out the prophets’ words for our time and to receive them with open hands. To do this, first we must ask ourselves who are the prophets of our time? What are the issues with which they concern themselves? And, what has been our response to their words? These questions are worth serious consideration on our part. It frequently resurfaces in my consciousness that we belong to a community that spans the entire globe. This being the case, we have a great responsibility to remain constantly aware of the issues that are affecting our brothers and sisters around the world – to keep praying for them sincerely and fervently.

So, there is the office of the prophet, but people we live with and work with can also be prophetic. God’s word can be brought to us by many different messengers as a wife to a husband or a child to a parent. What is our response when they tell us something that we do not want to hear, or something that we are not pleased with? Do we sometimes dismiss them outright?

Jeremiah teaches us that God's words are not always what we would want to hear, or what will please us. This being the case, whenever somebody tells us something we do not like, we must always be open to the possibility that it might be the truth. If we never leave a space for this possibility we are operating from pride. This may result in serious division in a home or a work place, and derail us from walking according to God’s will for us.

It is true that Jesus in the gospel from Luke today says that he did not come to bring peace on earth, but, rather division. He says, ‘for from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother …’

These sayings are striking, but to say that they are inevitable in every family would be to limit the power of love. Granted, divisions might arise, but as Paul says, in every way and as much as is possible try to live at peace with everyone. If indeed we are trying our utmost, then we will always be open to whatever, however displeasing, someone has to say. In this way, we keep ourselves open always to God.

Interestingly, sometimes what we think is displeasing and negative and disheartening is not. Jeremiah was bringing the king’s leading men good news, for he was giving them a word by which their lives would be preserved. But, they could not receive his words because all they had in mind were their ideas. With Jeremiah to learn from we can avoid this mistake.

God bless you
Romero Radix o.p

Credo 23: He suffered death and was buried

During Holy Week we hardly give ourselves time to allow the reality of Jesus’ death to sink in. We move quickly from Good Friday to the Easter Vigil and there is no liturgical action for Holy Saturday itself. The time between his burial at sundown on Friday and the dawning of resurrection faith early on Sunday morning gets no particular attention.

But Jesus really did die. His life came to an end, he breathed his last and his body was placed in a tomb. Revelation 1:19 puts it this way: I was dead but now I am to live for ever and ever and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.

Jesus was dead. We believe so strongly that Jesus was not an ordinary human being that his death can be made to seem like no big deal. An early Christian heresy asserted that Jesus did not really die but this is to deny the full human reality of his experience.

Jesus died and dwelt in the kingdom of the dead. Early creeds speak of this as the ‘descent into hell’. This was not an invention by people who felt Jesus must have been up to something while his body was in the tomb. Belief in the descent into hell is based on New Testament texts which teach that his salvation is of cosmic significance, that ‘in the spirit he went to preach to the spirits in prison’ (1 Peter 3:19). In the Eastern Church there are no icons of the resurrection which do not include this moment of Christ breaking open the doors of hell in order to lead the dead forth into freedom and life.

As an article of the creed the descent into hell is a mystery of faith and a moment in the paschal mystery. As such it teaches us something about God and something about human salvation. It illustrates the lengths to which God is prepared to go to achieve the redemption of the human race. It teaches us that God was prepared to let his Son go into a far and foreign country, to the place of sin and death, to the place which is furthest from God, in order to save whatever could be saved within creation.

Saint Paul says that God made the sinless one into sin so that in him we might become the goodness of God. Jesus Christ, innocent and sinless, entered fully into a human experience marked by all the consequences of sin. He suffered and died. He came to know what alienation from God means ('my God, my God, why have you forsaken me'). Jesus went to the borders of existence, to a place which is almost, but not quite, the place of non-being. It is as if—and we are straining language here—God allows himself to be stretched and pulled apart in order to reach the last and least traces of what can be saved.

Love is the reason for this journey. In his first encyclical letter, on the mystery of love, Benedict XVI speaks about God 'turning against himself in giving himself'. He refers to Hosea 11:8-9 in which God argues with himself about justice and mercy ('but I am God and not man'). The Pope refers also to the mystery of the cross on which 'life's champion is slain' (Deus caritas est, paragraphs 10 and 12). How can it be that the living God enters the kingdom of death? Love is the answer to this question.

Jesus’ being among the dead teaches us that the salvation he won is of cosmic significance. His salvation reaches ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah 49:6) and his victory is acknowledged ‘by all beings in the heavens, on earth and under the earth’ (Philippians 2:10). The ends of the earth are not only every place and time but every aspect and corner of the human world, every relationship and group, every project and plan, every thought and desire, every darkness and desolation, every experience of emptiness and despair, every joy and delight, every confusion and distress, every disappointment with God or even rejection of Him, every experience of God-forsakeness—all of this is included in ‘the ends of the earth’. Nothing of it is now foreign to Jesus and so none of it falls outside the care of God. He even died ... and dwelt among the dead.

An early Christian story says that Jesus entered the place of the dead with his cross, the weapon of his victory, the great sign of love that will draw all people to him. Having released those who were inside he decided to leave his cross standing in the centre of hell, a sign that even those who pass that way do not find themselves in a place which is unknown to him.

Healing for Mary's Dowry

During the John Paul II Pilgrimage to Walsingham, Br Lawrence Lew OP gave the following talk which we reproduce here for the Feast of the Assumption:

"Chaucer in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales says that after the April rains, people long to go on pilgrimages and so, he fell in with 29 others who were journeying to Canterbury. That was in the 14th-century when the tradition of calling England ‘The Dowry of Mary’ was already well established.

We 21st century pilgrims follow in the tradition of Chaucer and his folk in ways both alike and different. Unlike them, we are clearly not walking after the rains have ceased, and the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury no longer exists. But we are a similar band of twenty-odd pilgrims, journeying to the heart of Mary’s Dowry, to her shrine at Walsingham. Soon, we shall pray in the Slipper Chapel which was built just half a century before Chaucer wrote his Tales. Some of us even look similar to those pilgrims because of the medieval habits we wear, although it is hoped that the religious and clergy in our band are less quarrelsome, and maybe just slightly less bawdy! But despite these differences, we can be certain that the essence of our pilgrimages, though separated by seven centuries, is the same.

The medieval pilgrims travelled to Canterbury to look for a miracle, and particularly for healing. Chaucer says, “Of England to Canterbury they wend, the holy blissful martyr for to seek, who helped them when they were sick”. And we? Why do we walk in this manner to Walsingham? Are we sick? What do we seek from the holy blissful Virgin Mother of God?

We may not be physically unwell, at least not yet, but we are certainly all wounded and in need of God’s healing, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have sustained the wounds of original sin, and the wounds that a sin-filled world inflicts on us. Thus, pilgrimages are undertaken as an act of penance. The sacrifice and hardship of a pilgrimage is a vital reminder of Christ’s call that we should deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow him. So, this pilgrimage is a living enactment of the sequela Christi, the following of Christ, even if on this walk, we are not carrying a physical Cross. And in this act of following Christ, we find life, healing and salvation, for if we have died with Christ, we shall rise with him and reign with him.

In 1400, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, said: “…we English being the servants of her special inheritance, and her own Dowry, as we are commonly called, ought to surpass others in the fervour of our praise and devotion.” That is the goal for England and I think we here certainly share some of that praise, devotion and fervour. There is a Dominican motto, emblazoned on the logo of Blackfriars Hall in Oxford: laudare, benedicere, praedicare; to praise, to bless, to preach. Let it be our motto and a reminder of our goal as Mary’s Dowry: let us praise God, let us bless His holy name with devotion, and let us preach his Gospel of salvation with fervour.

We are also walking this pilgrimage for another reason, with the intention of evangelising England. Our society is clearly sick. All around us, symptoms of its illness can be seen, and yet our fellow countrymen do not recognise and acknowledge their need for the Divine Physician. Christ has come to call sinners to repentance, that we might have life to the full. What sick person does not go to a doctor? The one who doesn’t know he is sick, and so the disease silently kills the person. England needs a doctor, our society needs Christ and it cries out for Him minute by minute. Indeed, England’s need, and our need, is for salvation, for that word, ‘salvation’, is derived from the Latin salus, meaning health. Let every step we take be a prayer for our nation that she may come to realize her need for the healing that only Jesus, the Saviour of all people, brings.

What exactly is a dowry? Basically, it is a present given to a new husband by the bride upon marriage. It took the form of land, goods or money. Why is a dowry given? Because a wedding is near. But whose wedding is near? Every Sunday at Vespers we sing: “Alleluia. The marriage of the Lamb has come. And His bride has made herself ready.” So the wedding that is near, is that of the Lamb, Christ himself. It is the banquet of all the blessed in heaven. The bride is the Church, and the image of the Church is none other than Our Lady. The idea of the Dowry of Mary is profoundly connected to the gift of England – as a people – to Christ at his wedding banquet. Are we ready for that wedding? Yes, and no.

The fact is that we, who are baptised and saved by Jesus, are already invited to this marriage feast and share in its delights. As Pope Benedict said: “For us, the Eucharistic banquet [the Mass] is a real foretaste of the final banquet foretold by the prophets and described in the New Testament as ‘the marriage-feast of the Lamb’, to be celebrated in the joy of the communion of saints.” But in another sense, we are still not there yet. We are the Church Militant, fighting the good fight – as St Paul puts it – and running the race. We are on the way, pilgrims in via, learning to perfect how we praise, bless and preach. As such, a pilgrimage like this reminds us of the journey that we are all on together, moving towards heaven, our true homeland. The Dominican Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, once said that Christians suffer from “eschatological amnesia”. What he meant is that often we live and work as if this life is all that mattered, forgetting that we are actually pilgrims travelling through this life on the way home to God. To be a pilgrim is to have a destination in mind, to be continually moving towards it, and our goal is God Himself and the life of beatitude with and in Him.

This should not be taken to mean that we ignore the plight of our fellow travellers. No. We journey together, we help those who lag behind and we support one another, for we are called to love God and to love our neighbour. Indeed, St Augustine said that “If you see charity, you see the Trinity”. In a sense then, Christian charity in action is a foretaste of the beatific vision. Thus, Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical that “Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful… For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.” The Holy Father goes on to say that “practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them… I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.” Here we have an explanation of how we can best become Mary’s Dowry: through love, the kind of love in which we are ourselves the gift, given to others, for the love of Christ.

In a recent letter to Chinese Catholics, the Pope explained how a nation is brought to know and love Christ. I think his words can also apply to us in England and remind us how we can most effectively praise, bless and preach. Pope Benedict said: “Today, as in the past, to proclaim the Gospel means to preach and bear witness to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the new Man, conqueror of sin and death. He enables human beings to enter into a new dimension, where mercy and love shown even to enemies can bear witness to the victory of the Cross over all weakness and human wretchedness. In your country too, the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen will be possible to the extent that, with fidelity to the Gospel, in communion with the Successor of the Apostle Peter and with the universal Church, you are able to put into practice the signs of love and unity.” Put into practice love and unity. May this pilgrimage, in which we journey as one and have communion with one another and with the Lord be such a practice, an expression of Christian love. May this pilgrimage truly be a holy preaching, as we praise and bless the Lord together. May our love and unity be a reflection of the life of the Church in our land.

One way we might show our love and unity is through joy, and in song. It is said that our holy father, St Dominic, as he walked the length and breadth of Europe would break out into song. This joy, this confidence in God’s salvation is truly attractive. A few years ago, I’d returned from the Philippines. Sitting on the train from Manchester airport, I noticed how glum and miserable everyone looked, and I noticed this because it was in stark contrast with the joy and cheer I found in the Philippines, Asia’s most Christian country. I hope that we Christians in England are signs of joy in our communities, in our country. May it be a deep joy rooted in our hope of eternal life with God and the saints.

In 1982, at a Mass in Wembley Stadium, Pope John Paul II said: “Brothers and sisters! …We must be a people of prayer and deep spirituality. Our society needs to recover a sense of God’s loving presence, and a renewed sense of respect for his will." In his words we find inspiration for how, by the grace of God, we may evangelise England, and for what we seek from Our Lady at her Shrine:

"Let us learn this from Mary our Mother. In England, the Dowry of Mary, the faithful, for centuries, have made pilgrimage to her shrine at Walsingham. The statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, present here, lifts our minds to meditate on our Mother. She obeyed the will of God fearlessly and gave birth to the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Faithful at the foot of the Cross, she then waited in prayer for the Holy Spirit to descend on the infant Church. It is Mary who will teach us how to be silent, how to listen for the voice of God in the midst of a busy and noisy world. It is Mary who will help us to find time for prayer. Through the Rosary, that great Gospel prayer, she will help us to know Christ. We need to live as she did, in the presence of God, raising our minds and hearts to him in our daily activities and worries ...

Certainly, our fidelity to the Gospel will put us at odds with the spirit of the present age. Yes, we are in the world, indeed as disciples of Christ we are sent into the world, but we do not belong to the world. The conflict between certain values of the world and the values of the Gospel is an inescapable part of the Church’s life, just as it is an inescapable part of the life of each one of us. And it is here that we must draw on the patience which Saint Paul spoke about in his letter to the Romans: 'we groan inwardly as we await our salvation, in hope and with patience.'"

I think this pilgrimage is just one of many signs of England’s own pilgrim journey home to God. There are so many signs of hope in the Church in England, little acts of praise, devotion and fervour … let us thank God for these works of His grace, and walk this pilgrimage as an act of thanksgiving.

At the end of this pilgrimage, our feet may well need healing, but we know that by God’s grace, our hearts and souls will have been healed a little more; healed by the love and unity in Christ that we have found. At the very least, we should be more united and loving than Chaucer’s pilgrims! Only then can our witness be genuine. Let us pray that God’s Holy Spirit will use this love and unity, which he has stirred up among us, to heal England, so that we may once more be called ‘Dowry of Mary’, a people given to Jesus and ready for his eternal wedding banquet."

Credo 22 ...for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate...

This article of the creed is unique. It is the only statement in our profession of faith that locates the event of our salvation at a time and place, in other words in history. All four gospels affirm that the Roman governor of the province of Judea who authorised the crucifixion of Jesus was called Pilate. This is also mentioned in Acts (3.13; 4.27; 13.28) and Paul’s first letter to Timothy (6.13).

Luke further establishes the historical context of our salvation: ‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness…’ (3.1-2) Luke is concerned to situate historically ‘the things which have been accomplished among us’ (1.1). Why does this make any difference?

God entered human history, encountered humans, was killed by humans: he became a real human being. And this means time and place. It means relationship with real human lives. It means that lived human history has been transformed from within by an historical but universally salvific event. This is why we say for our sake… It was for me, now and in my future, that this past event took place. And not only for the future: ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad’ (Jn 8.56).

In order to have relevance; in order to be effectively real, the Incarnation takes up a moment of our history. A moment, nevertheless, that transforms it all.

Credo 21: … He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

This is a pivotal moment in the creed. The first article sweeps ‘heaven and earth’. This article comes to rest on a particular moment in history. It is easy to be misled by the creed’s language here. The Incarnation or the ‘humanisation’ (as it was sometimes called) of the Word of God is not a matter of someone living in heaven ‘moving’ to live somewhere else i.e. the earth. The Word of God does not come down from the sky to the human level. God is timeless and bodiless, he does not ‘come down’ from anywhere. We talk about ‘coming down’ and ‘becoming’ as kinds of metaphors. Nonetheless, we truly believe the whole life of Jesus is God’s gift to us. In the life of Jesus, God’s everlasting Word truly did something and does something. What seemed far away (another metaphor) became close. That which is eternal and unchanging, meets human beings in the form of a feeble human being. This man is someone who is born, suffers and genuinely dies - just as we all will. He really shares human (Jewish) history. He has a human soul and will and mind, just like ours.

God’s self-manifestation in the flesh is not an event that is like any other. Jesus is not just a messenger. The gospel does not even say that Jesus is like the Father. Rather, in Jesus God appears. This is what God looks like in the human world. Jesus is God’s face; God does not have another human face that we find out about only later.

In Jesus, everything in heaven and on earth comes sharply into focus. This does not mean that Jesus’s flesh contains God’s Word in such a way that we must close all other books and block out any other words. It is rather that this Word, spoken in Israel 2000 years ago, helps us to perceive what there is that is true in all other words, in all other languages and cultures. By seeing these languages and cultures in the light which is Christ, we also learn more about that light.

God’s word in Christ cannot be summed up in a neat and tidy formula - God sent his Son to us and not a slogan. If we had to say, briefly what that life means, we might say that it changes the whole way in which the world looks. In the light of Christ, the world looks like a different place. It is not a place where violence and meaninglessness reign. It is a place where God’s peace and generosity and truth reign and cannot be vanquished, even though their power is constantly being attacked.

This birth is wholly God’s act. Yet it also comes to be through Israel’s faith as it is present in the daughter of Abraham, Mary. Mary’s faith is more important than her biological virginity. The consistent heart of the doctrine of the virgin birth (as expounded by Augustine and Aquinas, neither of whom doubted for a moment that Jesus had no human father), is that the birth of the Saviour is wholly due to God’s act, done through the instrumental agency of Mary’s faith. Augustine said in a sermon on the creed ‘by believing, she conceived him whom she bore for our belief’. Or as a modern commentator on this article puts it: ‘God’s Word fleshed in faith that welcomes it: that is the message of this clause in the Creed’.

The coyness of St Dominic

Today, the feast of our holy father, St Dominic, we give thanks to God for him and reflect with Fr Simon Tugwell OP on Dominic's vitality and gift to the Church:

"The Church, in the words of Psalm 44, has always been 'clothed in variety', not the least splendid aspect of which is the variety of her saints. Some become a kind of living image of holiness, attracting veneration during their life-time and becoming objects of cult as soon as they are dead. They leave behind them, in the imagination of succeeding ages, a vivid remembrance of what they were. The figure of St Francis, for instance, has haunted and inspired the Church ever since he died in 1226.

Other saints are, as it were, more coy, and hide behind the works which live after them and the ideals which they prompted others to follow. Their individual personalities make less impression on the Church's memory; like signposts, they point away from themselves. People may come to forget them as individuals, but they cannot escape for long from the ideals for which they stood.

St Dominic is one of the coy saints. When he died in 1221, the Order which he had established buried him, sadly and affectionately, and then got on with the job he had given them. Unlike the Franciscans, they made no attempt to turn their founder into an object of cult; nor did they immediately start writing up his life to publicise his personal holiness. The earliest life that we have of Dominic is not called 'A Life of St Dominic', but 'A Little Book about the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers'.

In his life-time, Dominic had wished to be treated simply as one of the brethren, and his dying wish was that he should be buried beneath the feet of his brethren. It is quite in accordance with his own temperament that he should live on in the Church, not as a striking individual, but in the work of preaching the gospel, for which his Order came into being...

In one sense, the life of Dominic in this world ended in August 1221, though his memory lives on in the hearts of his family of friars and nuns, sisters and laity. But in another sense, the world still hears his voice, even if it does not recognise it as his. As St Catherine of Siena says, 'The voice of Dominic's preaching is still heard today and will continue to be heard' in the preaching of his followers."

- from 'Saint Dominic & the Order of Preachers', (Dominican Publications, 2001).