Novena to St Dominic - Day 3

With his left hand,Dominic gently touches the pages of Scripture. In reality, we cannot touch an object without being touched by it ourselves. A person touches God because God touches us first. One can feel the movement of the sacred text as the living Word of God. Yes for St Dominic Jesus is the living and incarnate Word. ‘Ignorance of the Scripture is ignorance of Christ’. These  words of St Jerome direct our gaze to Jesus Christ, who stands at the heart of Sacred Scripture.

And what may we learn from St. Dominic today?

This above all to love the Word of God. It is important that every Christian live in contact and in personal dialogue with the living Word. On the one hand, it must be a truly personal encounter because God speaks with each  one of us  through Sacred Scripture and it has a message for each one of us. If you allow yourself to be possessed by the Word you will hear even His silences. We most not read it as a word of the past, but as the Word of God that is also addressed to us. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us ‘although it is a personal Word, it is also a Word that builds  community, builds the Church. We must therefore make an effort  to read it in communion with the living Church.’

‘Human options come and go’ says St Jerome. What is very modern today will be very antiquated tomorrow. On the other hand, the Word of God is the Word of eternal life, it bears within it eternity and is valid for ever. By carrying the Word of God within us, we therefore carry within us eternal life’.

The Gospel is the mouth of Christ, ever ready to offer to us the kiss of eternity.

The Gospel is the power of God because it shows us the way and gives us the strength to follow it as St Dominic followed Christ.

.Dominic believed in the power of God’s word and this is evidenced by the fact that he sent his first friars out to preach, some of whom were only novices,’ – “simply in the strength of the Gospel itself"

”Had Dominic lost his mind?' "I know what I am doing," Dominic replied. I am convinced that Dominic was deeply aware that poverty was his greatest gift—because it prepared him to listen to the Word of God with a contemplative heart—and that he did not want to spare his young brothers this experience. He knew very well what he was doing: he cast them into the abyss of God’s freely given faithfulness.

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1.9)