St. Dominic

ON a hot August night in 1221 a saint whom the Church has designated as a “holy athlete of Christ” finished his course and gave up his soul to the God whom he had served, consistently and at great speed, for fifty-one years. Around him were grouped his sons, men of half a dozen nations, who ten years before had hardly heard of Dominic Guzman and now were quite willing to die for him. Like any father of any family, he spoke to them of their inheritance; not wealth, for he had not even a room in which to die nor a habit in which to be buried. But he left an immortal legacy, a blazing enthusiasm for God which the Christian world had not seen since the day of Pentecost. His testament was as simple and as potent as the Sermon on the Mount, and dealt with the same basic verities:

“Have charity one for another;
Guard humility;
Make your treasure out of voluntary poverty.”

For a little over seven hundred years, the sons and daughters of this man of God have tried to put into words something of the world-shaking force that was Dominic. No one has ever quite succeeded. Getting St. Dominic into print is like printing Fra Angelico in black and white.

In view of this, it does not seem sanguine to judge that the time is ripe for a brief Life of St. Dominic in English. May it do its part in attracting to the Order fresh recruit. from the strata of humanity that Dominic most loved— the young and the courageous who will not shrink from the challenge implicit in St. Dominic’s words to Stephen of Spain as he clothed him with the habit of the Friars Preachers: “I give you arms, with which throughout your life you may fight against the devil.”