A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When Jesus and his disciples met in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men who will put him to death, and he will be raised up on the third day. At these words, his disciples were overwhelmed with grief, So they understood what he was saying, at least part of it. Now when they entered Capernaum, that's up in the northwest corner of the lake, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said to him, does your master not pay the temple tax? Of course, he does, Peter replied.
Then Jesus, on entering the house, asked, without giving him time to speak, What is your opinion, Simon? Do the kings of the world take tax or toll from their sons or from foreigners? When Peter replied from foreigners, Jesus answered, then their sons are exempt. But for fear of disedifying them, go to the lake, throw in a line, and take out the first fish that you catch. Open its mouth, and you will discover there a coin worth twice the amount of the temple tax.
Take it and give it to them for you and for me and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. I just want to call your attention very simply to that to this account this morning. How this is a very good illustration of how faithful Christ was to the details of the law.
Sufficient for that because I wanna talk about Saint Dominic. There's something dates generally aren't too important. But with with regard to Saint Dominic, to me they're very impressive. Because what he did, what he accomplished, for the most part was done in five or six years. He died in 12/21, was born in '11 about November, or later than that.
But his the actual work of organizing, developing, expanding, consolidating the order of preachers, that was done in five or six years. Just think of that. Now, Saint Dominic, of course, because in the same century, there you you think of him in terms of Saint Francis of Assisi, but you couldn't have two people more diametrically opposed. The one thought I want to leave with you about Saint Dominic is a thought that I have been stressing probably ad nauseam. But it's terribly important to see the providence of God working in the world.
Because if you see it and are convinced of it around you, it helps you to interpret your own life in the light of God's love and his problems. When at the immediate view, in the immediate present, all things may be shot to hell. It helps us to take a God's view of my life, and that's some statement. You see the trouble with us, so often we don't do that. We don't see anything except little old me.
And we only see me in the definition of today or tomorrow or next week. We don't see ourselves in the totality of our lives. How can we? We don't have we haven't lived them yet. But God sees them in the totality.
He doesn't have to wait for me to die to know how it's all going to work out. He is omniscient. Now, any saint that you come up I'm I'm I do I don't know any exception to this. They didn't know where God's providence was leading them. In every instance, all they did was to do what seemed to be proper thing at the moment.
And one thing led to another, even when what was leading them was tragedy. You think of a woman like Julia Connolly and her husband Pierce who probably was a lunatic. Or you think of Saint Elizabeth's seat. Just to give you two little examples, where tragedies struck them and almost defeated them, almost. But it was those very those very tragedies that gave stimulus, dynamism, originality, creativity to their lives.
And not only to their lives, but to their work. Because the people I mentioned all have left behind them more than a wake of a ship. They have left something that is that is enduring, and as Horace would say, even beyond the eternity almost of bronze. Now, Saint Dominic, as a he became from Old Castile, Spain, and he was an educated man, and he joined the canons of his of his local cathedral. And they had that is the canons associated with the cathedral.
They had gotten an idea of asceticism, these canons. And Dominic became one of them, was ordained a priest. I mentioned that because you see, this is forgotten, that behind of behind most of the things that happened there are antecedents. Before the book you have the preface. Now, he was leading practically a contemplative life in the in the physical material security of the cathedral and being a member of the cathedral chapter.
When his his bishop asked him to go with him up to Northern France to make at that time, you see, that he's in old Castile, but around Toulouse, Languedoc, you had the Albigensians. Now, I've got to pause there a minute if that word, because I can't assume that that word means much to all of you. The Albigensians comes from the city called Albi, A L B I, not far from Toulouse. And it it was a general word to to describe any heretic living in Albi. But there's something special here.
You had a group of heretics. Notice I'm saying heretics. They were rejecting the teaching of the Catholic church, and they were introducing what was called a neo manichaeism. Now manichae goes back to the times of Saint Augustine of Hippo, March 04/30. And the basic error, the horrendous error of manichaeism, was its insistence on two principles, matter and spirit, and matter is intrinsically evil.
Our bodies are evil. All matter is evil. We must rise above matter and become spiritualized. I don't know what would become smoke or something, I guess. Anyway, and of course, all the all the things having to do with the senses including sexuality, those things were intrinsically evil.
Evil. Intrinsically evil. So the thing was to eliminate them. It was a heresy. Anyway, and it was spreading all around the Southern Languedoc.
So in the course of going north, Dominic and his bishop find themselves in Languedoc. They find this heresy very popular. It became extremely strong. There was a crusade priest against it by Simon de Montfort. And of course, there was a tremendous massacre, which I don't think anybody can be proud of.
But the thing is this, Dominic saw one knee, and that was to bring the truth and the teaching of the church to the people. That wasn't being done. So he met three Sistercian monks. See how coincidental things are? And with them, they they went on a preaching with the permission of the bishop.
That's important. With the permission of the bishop and his financial support. They didn't have any finances. So the bishop of Toulouse, notice the word mendicate means beggar, so the Bishop of Toulouse took some of the money intended for the poor to support these preachers. That was a new idea.
That was a new idea. That's how Dominic got in the preaching business. That's how it worked. That was about, that was about 12/10. Notice, 12/10, he he dies he dies in 12/20 Now, he's the University of Paris is just getting going.
The University Bologna was was was a pretty strong canon law. He so Dominic had this vision that what was needed was preachers. People to carry the word of God to the people. And believe me, that's what we need today. To carry not my opinion, not the opinion of internationally known theologians, but the teaching of God through his living church.
That's what's got to be carried to the people. And how are they going to get it unless they get it from the preachers? Or through catechetics. And remember my well chosen remarks yesterday about glory of ours. When he came to to try to save the his parish of ours, he did three things, rebuild the church, visit the people, and catechetics.
Teach catechetics. Not theology, but catechetics to to transmit truth. And that was Dominic's overwhelming initiative. Initiative. So he sent his young people up to to Paris for theology.
He sent them to Bologna for canon law. And remember, in five or six years, they had spread all over Southern Europe, in down into Italy, and were going into England. In five years or six years at the outside. How coincidental things are. But you see, a Christian doesn't look upon anything as coincidental.
Nothing in life happens by chance. Christ said not a hair of your head falls without your heavenly father's permission. He said, look at the grass of the field. Look at the lilies. Look at the birds of the air.
Aren't you of more importance than any of them? But you see, it's hard to realize it it in in our lives, especially when we're at the bottom of the waves in the trough, and all we can see are the cliffs of the waves around us, and they can be mighty big at times. So high that and this and the wind blowing across the crest of the waves even blot out even a little bit of the sun that may be up there, and we are in darkness. We don't know where to turn. We feel lost.
We feel that God has abandoned us, but so did Christ on the cross. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Christ said that from the cross. So So who am I to be astonished when I feel like saying it? Say it because that's how you feel.
That's how Christ felt on the cross. It's no secret at all. So Saint Dominic is an entirely different figure from Saint Francis of Assisi, totally, totally. And what that man did is incredible. If you think he did it alone, it's impossible.
It was certainly the work of the Lord. How much he saw of this at the time, who knows? All he did was to do what he seemed seemed needed doing. That's all. So one step leads to another, to another, to another.
And when I say don't count your don't count your poker chips to your home in bed. You can't give a summary of your life until it's over. All you can do is to try to walk through life in the company of Jesus Christ with him at your side. Rather, let me restate that with you at his side because he'll be there. In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit.
Amen.