8/8/2017 - Tuesday of the 18th week of Ordinary Time - St Dominic - Psalm 51:3-7, 12-13

    “Be merciful O Lord for we have sinned.”  This is the message the psalmist has for us today, but this message is so foreign to most of the messages we get in our secular world today.  Often, we don’t want to admit to God or to ourselves or to our brothers and sisters that we have sinned.  More often, we want to blame someone else or something else for our own actions.  We might even want to even sue someone and try to gain financially for our 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.

      In the midst of our sins and our shortcomings, so many of the community of saints 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 both in their day and in our modern day as well.  With his love of the poor, of animals and all of God’s creation, Francis’ spirituality speaks to problems and issues that are so relevant to the modern world.  And as 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 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.  The rosary, one of our most beloved Catholic prayer traditions, gained great popularity from the preaching that Dominic 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.