The four pillars of our Dominican life: preaching, prayer, study, and community
The four pillars of Dominican life
Prayer Life
The community and personal prayer are two fundamental elements of our prayer life. The biographers and witnesses of his life realize that prayer permeate the whole of Dominic’s life. It is a constant prayer. It prays in the daytime while it goes for the ways, accompanied by his brothers or separated from them (when he does his personal prayer). It keeps silence during the accustomed hours while the traveling continues; it sings anthems and psalms to be in communion with God. In the communities, following Dominic, the brothers must meet to celebrate the Eucharist and to say in common the Liturgy of the Hours, adapting these prayers to a life that will be ruled by other rhythms and missions.
Study Life
St. Dominic founded his Order for the purpose of the salvation of souls, therefore he prescribed study as an essential part of the Holy Preaching (LCO 76). He recognized that the brothers must be well educated for the preparation to preaching for salvation of the soul, because in the 13th century the clergy were generally not well educated. With the blessings of Pope Honorius III, St. Dominic sent friars to the great universities of his time to study and to preach in these great centers of learning. This practice continues today.
The object of Dominican study is the Word of God revealed through Scripture, Tradition, and the natural world, whose fullest manifestation is the very person of Christ himself.
Knowledge sought for its own sake is certainly a worthy pursuit, but Dominican study seeks to make us useful for the salvation of souls and our neighbors, a spiritual work of mercy. The study facilitates a more effective proclamation of the truth and is motivated by the love of God and the love of neighbor.
For a Dominican, the study is the work of a lifetime. We attend to the Church’s rich teaching, individually and collectively, drawing especially from the wisdom of our own brother, St. Thomas Aquinas. His concern for reasoned argument, attention to counterarguments, and alternative viewpoints remain powerful examples for us. He also has the crucial insight that God, in Christ, desires our knowing, trusting, and friendship. This life of study finds meaning only when we share what we have learned with others.
Study and prayer are closely united; they give strength to both heart and mind. We cannot love what we do not know. We grow when sustained by what we learn of God’s majesty, generosity, and mercy. Theology provides food for contemplation, the fruits of which we then communicate to others through preaching.
Community Life
St Dominic built the Order to be communitarian, where the decisions made are reflective of the brothers’ voices.
Preaching
It is the element that brings together the other three and gives them their key. In 1216 Saint Dominic founded an Order of Brother Preachers whose purpose is summarized in the words of Pope Honorius III: God inspired you with the pious purpose of embracing poverty and professing a regular life, to consecrate yourself to the preaching of the Word of God, making the name of our Lord Jesus Christ known throughout the world. Dominic had a great intuition in the thirteenth century: he perceived that the first step towards evangelizing of faith and the formation (or reconstruction) of the Christian community is the preaching of the Good News of Jesus.
