“Be merciful O Lord for we have sinned.” We hear this in the psalm today, but this message is so foreign to most of the messages we get in our modern secular world. Many of us in the modern world don’t want to admit to God or to ourselves or to our brothers and sisters that we have sinned. Most often, we want to blame someone else or some other circumstances for our own actions. Many in our society want to sue someone and try to gain financially for their own faults and their own sins. We also have structural sins: sins that we commit as a community or as a society. Again, we usually don’t want to take responsibility for the sins we commit collectively as a society.
In the midst of our sins and our shortcomings, the members of the community of saints throughout history stand out as shining examples of faith to us. In the first part of the 13th century, St Dominic and St Francis of Assisi founded religious communities that have had a huge influence on the Church in their day and throughout history. With his love of the poor, of animals and of all God’s creation, the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi speaks to problems and issues relevant to the modern world. As St Dominic established the Dominicans, the Office of Preachers, his preaching of God’s holy word and the work of his congregation shaped the Church and her proclamation of God’s kingdom. I found it very interesting that St Dominic was born near the Benedictine monastery of Santo Domingo de los Silos in the province of Burgos in Spain, a popular destination for pilgrims traveling the Way of St James. He was named Dominic after that monastery. The rosary, one of our most beloved Catholic prayer traditions, gained great popularity from the preaching that Dominic and the Dominicans did to promote it. Among Dominic’s great quotes, this one made an impression on me: “"Arm yourself with prayer rather than a sword; wear humility rather than fine clothes.” As we unite our prayers with the prayers and intercessions of St Dominic today on his feast day, let us give thanks for the work of the Dominican Sisters who established and continue to have a strong influence on St Dominic Hospital in the city of Jackson.
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