Novena to St Dominic 2024 - Day 9
Published by Dominican Nuns Ireland in Reflections (Dominican) · 8 August 2024
Tags: st, dominic, novena, to, st, dominic, feast, day, patron
Tags: st, dominic, novena, to, st, dominic, feast, day, patron
Novena to St Dominic - Day Nine
Novena Prayer
O wonderful hope,
which you gave to those who wept for you at the hour of your death,
promising that after your decease you would be helpful to your brethren;
fulfill, Father, what you have said and help us by your prayers.
which you gave to those who wept for you at the hour of your death,
promising that after your decease you would be helpful to your brethren;
fulfill, Father, what you have said and help us by your prayers.
V/: You shone on the bodies of the sick by so many miracles;
bring us the help of Christ to heal our sick souls.
bring us the help of Christ to heal our sick souls.
R/: Fulfill, Father, what you have said and help us by your prayers.
V/: Blessed Father Dominic, pray for us.
R/: That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Reflection
Full Moon Reflections
8th of August
Trained by fasting, prayer and vigils,
Carrying the word he goes,
Given for the world’s salvation
Like his Lord whose love he shows
These four short lines of the hymn which we’ll sing at Vespers provide us with a sketch of Dominic’s life and work. The foundation of Dominic’s spiritual and apostolic life was his disciplined life which he led from his earliest youth. In the Libellius and in the process of his canonisation we find many testimonies to his fasting from food and drink; his love of poverty and his detachment from earthly pleasures; his dedication to study of the Word of God and his long vigils which he spent in prayer. Bl Jordan tells us that “he haunted the church by day and by night, devoting himself ceaselessly to prayer……his eagerness to imbibe the streams of holy Scripture was so intense and so unremitting that he spent whole nights almost without sleep, so untiring was his desire to study; and the truth which his ears received he stored away in the deepest recesses of his mind and guarded in his retentive memory.”
Dominic made his home in the Word – in the “Word breathing Love;” the Word which enlightens the mind and causes it to burst forth in love (cf Summa Q43, art. 5). Dominic goes forth carrying this Word of love to a darkened world – the word which had transformed his heart to the heart of his Beloved Saviour. He too desired to spend himself for the world’s salvation.
We are all very familiar with the image of Dominic with a star on his forehead which has its source in a vision his mother had of him when he was a child. When reading the Libellius this past week I noticed that Father Simon Tugwell, O.P. translates the passage as “his mother saw him in a vision, with the moon on his forehead, signifying that one day he would be given to the world as a light for the nations, to give light to those who sit in darkness an in the shadow of death.” While the image of a star makes a more beautiful picture, the image of the moon on his head seems more clumsy but on reflection it is more significant. The moon gets all its light from the sun and a full moon brightens the darkened sky when the earth does not get in the way! Similarly, Dominic through his disciplined, prayerful life reflected the bright light of the One who called Himself the “Light of the world”. It was not his own light which shone but a ‘full moon reflection’ of the true Light. He was indeed “like his Lord whose love he showed.” “Everyone was enfolded in the wide embrace of Dominic’s charity” - no one was excluded and “since he loved everyone, everyone loved him.”
We too are called to be like Dominic ‘full moon reflections’ of our Saviour’s love. As we celebrate his feast may he obtain for us the grace of fidelity to our vocation of spending ourselves for the glory of God and the salvation of our wounded and troubled world.
(Artwork: St Dominic, Detail from 'The Mocking of Christ' by Fra Angelico, Convent of San Marco, Florence, Italy)
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