In our Gospel today, we hear Jesus ask people to testify as to who he is. Some see him as the return of one of the prophets. This gets to the heart of what propelled the work of St Dominic the saint we celebrate today: the different opinions about Jesus’ identity that opposed the official teachings of the Church. Born in Spain in the 12th century, Dominic became a priest in the region of Castile and Leon. While traveling through France with his Bishop, Dominic found the prevalence of various heresies, including the Albigensian heresy that saw all matter as evil and that denied Christ’s divinity and the sacraments of the Church. Dominic saw the need for the Church to combat this heresy. He became a part of a preaching crusade to preach against this heresy, but the preachers were not successful because of their opulent lifestyle. Dominic wanted his order to be comprised of itinerant preachers who lived very humbly. He and his fellow preachers ultimately founded a community, which became the beginnings of the order of preachers, the Dominicans. They founded their first house in 1215. The Dominicans remain an influential religious order to this day. We unite our prayers with the prayers of St Dominic on his feast day.
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