It took a papal order to get the brethren of the Order of Preachers to pursue the canonization of their founder, Dominic.  Pope Gregory IX had been a personal friend of Dominic, as a mentor seeing him through the bizantine intricacies of Vatican curial politics in the founding of the Order.  In 1233, twelve years after Dominic’s death, the brethren had made no move whatever to get him canonized so it took a push from the pope to get the process going.

This may seem a curiosity.  This inattention, however, was because the friars were about something that was, to them (and to Dominic) more important: the preaching of the word of God.  Dominic is often referred to as “the coy saint” because we know so little about him.  This is exactly the way he wanted it.  He had no desire to develop a cult of personality around himself, this in spite of the fact that those who knew him testified that he had an extremely engaging and dynamic personality.  His first and only desire was to be an instrument of God and the Church.

Throughout his life he was obedient.  This does not mean that he was docile and submissive.  It means that he listened attentively to the needs that were presented to him and responded.  This obedient response meant that he was willing to sublimate his own desires for the sake of a greater good to whose primacy he humbly bowed.  This meant everything from selling his bible manuscript to help feed the poor in a famine (which was the equivalent in the twelfth century to a doctoral student today selling his computer with his dissertation on it without making a copy) to pulling an all-nighter with an innkeeper who needed to discuss spirituality and theology.  It meant giving up a dream to be a missionary when the pope asked him to return to his home.  It meant following the lead of his mentor and friend in starting a preaching mission in poverty in southwestern France.  It meant starting a community of preachers in Toulouse at the request of the bishop there.  And it meant having those few friars dispersed throughout Europe in response to the cry for intelligent scripturally based preaching grounded in theologically informed truth.

In all this Dominic left few fingerprints.  Everything that resulted is a consequence of his (and his successors’) response in obedience to a specific need for which he, and they, were uniquely equipped.  Right down to his canonization.  There is nothing warm and cuddly about Dominic.  There have been few examples of popular devotion to him outside of small circles.  The upside is that we do not have to be embarrassed by St. Dominic cookie jars, bird baths, and other such tchotchkis.  The down side is that Fr. Rich is having a devil of a time trying to find a statue of Dominic for our garden.

Give it up, Rich.  It’s the last thing out father would have wanted.  Let’s just concentrate on our preaching as best we can.  Dedicating ourselves to intelligent scripturally based preaching grounded in theologically informed truth is the best tribute any of us can make to the man.