A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon, of course, that's going west. It happened that a Canaanite woman living in that locality presented herself crying out to Jesus, Lord, son of David, have pity on me. My daughter is terribly troubled by a demon. Jesus gave her no word of response.
Then his disciples came up and began to entreat him. Get rid of the woman. She keeps shouting after us. Jesus replied, my mission is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The woman came forward then and did Jesus' homage with this plea, help me, Lord.
But Jesus answered, it is not right to take the food of sons and daughters and throw it to the dogs. Please, Lord, the woman insisted, even the dogs eat the leavings that fall from their master's tables. In reply, Jesus said to her, woman, you have great faith. Your wish will come to pass. At that very moment, her daughter got better.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This is pretty pretty cruel language from our lord this morning, and it's very inviting.
But we have today the feast of Saint Dominic, the founder of the order of preachers, OP, died in 1221, just a few years before Saint Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas's birth. Now, once again here we have in the twentieth century in Garrett Park, Maryland, the Holy Roman Catholic Church celebrating officially memorializing a great man. Now, when I say memorializing, this is very different from let us say memorializing Woodrow Wilson, or any other hero who's had his day on the stage of life and passed on. We're talking about we're talking about Saint Dominic in the present tense. He was not he was not a saint.
He is a saint. He is still with the mystical body of Christ. He is still in with an end and for the church for which he had the utmost, the profoundest conviction, persuasion, love, and gave his life and sacrifice for it. Not on a cross, not in martyrdom, but in work, hard missionary work. He came out of Spain.
He vibrated between Spain and France and Italy. Again, we are faced with tremendous phenomenon. It's absolutely startling. The way he wound up wasn't the way he started at all. Once again, we have this phenomenon of a man, of devout man.
He joined the canons regular in Spain, which was a reformed order. This was at the begin at the turn of the century, going from the twelfth into the thirteenth century. And then up in France you had raging. Once more, because this is always with us, some in some form or other. The Albigensian heresy, which goes back to the and the Waldensians.
Now I can't go into that, but the one of the main things was that, first of all, they considered themselves better than anybody else. Yesterday, I spoke of Gnosticism, that was intellectual. You have the you have the Abbegansians. These are people who have an exalted idea of their special calling to be supremely better than anybody else. And going way and beyond, the truth of Jesus Notice I said truth of Jesus Christ, and you don't get truth with your mother's milk.
You don't get it by osmosis. Truth is hard to come by often. Today, of course, we've disregarded the whole concept of truth. Workability, pragmatism, that's the stuff today. As James said, don't ask whether a thing is true, ask what is its cash value.
That's at the at the beginning of the twentieth century out of Harvard, and that's what we're doing today. But the one thing that the church of Jesus Christ stands for down the centuries is truth. To align itself with the truth of Jesus Christ. And every single heresy has been an exaggeration of that truth. Exaggeration of that truth, every single heresy.
People go wild on one aspect, and the Albigensians, the Waldensians, they all have this idea in common of a life which is inhuman, inhuman, which rejects man's humanity, which sets up artificial exaggerated impossible ideals, and then makes compromises along the way. And many of them were very antisocial and very anarchical. That is, what for what they stood meant a revolution and anarchy in the state. In the state, they were threats to the state and always were. So here's a man in Spain who hears about this accidentally because he he went and met three Cistercians.
Just a coincidence, he met three Cistercian monks. Then he learns about this trouble up in mostly in Southern France. So he thinks he's got to do something about it. So he undertakes to join them and go and and and undertakes a preaching mission. That's how it started.
Doing what seems to be needed on my threshold. There's a job to be done. I put my shoulder to the wheel to push and help to to attack it, to do something about it. And that's the way he started. And one thing led to another, until he found himself surrounded by a group of young men.
But from the time he met those Cistercian monks, he saw that his mission was to preach the word of God. Preach it. And the poor man had a concept of truth, believe it or not. He wanted to teach the truth of the church of Jesus Christ, not what he felt, not what the community felt. I hope most of you read the last issue of our Sunday visitor, Cardinal Ratzinger's article in there on this liberation theology, it's the best thing I've read.
Just read that and you'll see how different the attitude of a man like Dominic was to what we or Gutierrez, or to this so called liberation theology. You'll see the total difference. And they are wild worlds apart. Anyway, Dominic saw a job to be done to bring the truth of Jesus Christ through his church to these heretics. Because that's what it was, it's a heresy.
But it's mixed up with national not nationalism, but all with patriotism or any words you want because nationalism hadn't come on hadn't come on the scene yet. That comes later. That's how it all started. Then he sell he saw very clearly that if his that if he and if his followers were going to preach the word of God, they had to get the word of God. And you don't get it by sitting down in a pew and ruminating.
Or you don't go out and ask the people, what do you think? Let us all get together and have our collective ignorance produce more ignorance as we're doing today. People don't know anything, all get together and discuss something, and out of that what comes? A giraffe. Anyway, so what did he do?
Now remember, this is the turn of the going from the twelfth into the thirteenth century. Here you have the beginnings, we don't know how they actually began of the university. But we had two so called universities. That was Paris for theology, and Bologna for canon law. Now, so what did what did Dominic do?
He saw that if his men were to preach the word of God, they had to get the word of God. They had to go where they might have a chance of getting it. So he sent some of them up to Paris to study theology there, or to Bologna to study canon law. Then they went forth when they had something to give, then they went forth to give the word of God to the people who needed it. Remember, preaching wasn't a great deal in those days.
In many instances, only the bishop preached. So here you have the turn and remember, this is probably a much greater period in the history of Western culture than the than the so called Renaissance of the fifteenth century. As Chesterton said, the Renaissance was the rebirth of something old. Pagan ideals out of Greece coming into Italy. Whereas the twelfth century and the thirteenth century Renaissance, that was the birth of something new.
New in architecture, theology, philosophy, literature, you name it. Science, Albertus Magnus, who was a Dominican. So here we have again an illustration, and the church is saying, look, here's here's another one of my saints. Look look at his life. Look how he solved the problem of Lord, what do you want me to do?
That's a big question. And sometimes the answer isn't very clear. When in Dominic's life was the answer clear? Probably, when he got the formal approval of Rome for his order, which was not an easy thing. Remember, this is the beginning of a mendicant, the Franciscans and the Dominicans.
The whole concept of a mendicant order, that is a begging group. That is men who were living on odds and giving their total tithe to the work of the Lord, spreading the word of God through the channels of his church. Just to give you one little insight, in four years, in four years, 19 or 20 friaries were founded. All over Western all over France, Spain, Italy, France, and maybe one in England. In four years, nearly 20.
And that was just for the men, and they were just the the friars. There were also convents for women founded, all in four years. Now, I you see, history is a funny business because obviously, when a man like Dominic came on the scene, then in the sixteenth century when Ignatius of Loyola comes on the scene, the time was right for what they did. But they are the ones who had to do it. That certainly the time would say the same way up in up in Germany with Martin Luther in the in the sixteenth century.
The time was ripe for somebody like Luther to come along on the scene. No question about it. No question. But the point is, he did. Loyola did.
Francis did. Dominic did. You name any of these saints who have left their character on the church, and they were men of their times. And they grasped the opportunity as it was on before them, right staring them in the face. They didn't try to find themselves.
They weren't out asked after self fulfillment. All they wanted was the fulfillment of the church of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of his word in the among the faithful. And for that, they gave their lives. In the name of the father, the son, holy spirit. Amen.