DIALOGUE WITH GOD: ST. THOMAS, SPIRITUAL TEACHER

 DIALOGUE WITH GOD: ST. THOMAS, SPIRITUAL TEACHER (1)

All our talk is but a response

Almost exactly sixty years ago, on August 6, 1964, Pope St. Paul VI published his first encyclical letter. Entitled Ecclesiam suam, or The Church in the Modern World, it was quickly overshadowed by the publication of Lumen Gentium just three months later, and by the publication the following year of Gaudium et Spes, which had the same subtitle as Paul's encyclical, as well as by the more controversial and therefore better-known encyclicals published by the Pope himself during his pontificate.

Although in many ways a forgotten encyclical, Ecclesiam suam (ES) still deserves attention. It is particularly relevant to this conference because in it we find the longest presentation of a theology of dialogue in any magisterial document. The relationship between God and human beings, Pope Paul says, is a dialogue, a conversation. The Church has a communication to make, but only because God has first communicated with his people. God addresses us in revelation and we respond in prayer (ES 70). Any dialogue undertaken by the Church must model itself on what Paul VI calls "the dialogue of salvation," the way God has addressed humanity. The first characteristic of this dialogue is that the initiative belongs to God, and at this point the Pope quotes the First Letter of St. John: "God loved us first" (1 John 4.10; ES 72).

This means that every way we address God -- in prayer, in preaching, in theology -- always has the nature of a response to a previous address. Just as God first loved us, and all our love is an echo or response within this primordial love, so God first addressed us, and all our speaking -- to God, of God, about God -- is always an echo or response within this primordial speaking from God.

Paul VI is probably the last Pope with an integral Thomistic formation, and it is not surprising that the spiritual theology of St. Thomas fits exactly with what he says about dialogue. In creation God expressed Himself and in revelation God spoke, first through the prophets and finally in Christ, illuminating the meaning of what He had expressed in creation. In a recent and very interesting article, American bishop Daniel Flores argued that, for St. Thomas, creation is not yet a "speaking": he says Aquinas never describes creation itself in this way.  A speaking is such only when it is ordered to a manifestation, but God must first tell us a word about it if we are to know what he means by the act of creation, in order to make creation a communication in the full sense. (2)

This God does in revelation, speaking his word through the prophets and culminating in the incarnation of the eternal Word. It is through revelation that we come to know that creation also speaks to us about God. Even the words of the prophets remain enigmatic, Flores says, until the incarnate Word clarifies and fulfils their meaning. The clearest word spoken by God is the death of Jesus, he says, which is "the singularly effective manifestation of God's great love" and which we can understand only through the Spirit of love poured into our hearts.

God is ecstatic, coming out of the intimacy of his own life, by virtue of the goodness that God is, to accomplish those works we call creation and salvation. In the last days, as the Letter to the Hebrews says (1.2), God has spoken to us through his Son, who not only shows us the way to eternal life, but shines backward illuminating the words of the prophets and enabling us to see that creation itself is a word of God, which also groans in anticipation of sharing in the freedom of God's children (Romans 8.19-23).

It is through our participation in the life of the Holy Trinity that we hear and see in creation what creation itself cannot say: this is Bishop Flores' conclusion. In this way he warns us against too easy a reference to creation as the "second book" in which God reveals himself. It is that second book, but this is only seen in the light of Christ and through participation in the love that is the Spirit. This is what St. Thomas himself says in ST I q.32 a.1 ad 3: we must know the divine Persons in order to think correctly about both the creation of things and the salvation of humanity, ad recte sentiendum de creatione rerum ... ad recte sentiendum de salute generis humani.

Flores' presentation calls to mind one of the most beautiful questions in St. Thomas' Summa theologiae, Question 43 of the First Pars, where the missions of the divine Persons are discussed. It is the culmination of God's dialogue with us, when the Father sends the Son and Father and Son together send the Spirit. In this question Thomas gives us one of the most splendid phrases in his entire work, namely that the Word sent by the Father is Verbum spirans Amorem, the word that breathes love (ST I q.43 a.5 ad 1). (3)

Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, q.43 is a key text for any consideration of St. Thomas as a spiritual teacher. It is the last question in his treatment of the Holy Trinity, but it is also the first question in his treatment of creation and salvation. It is also the first point in the Summa where he considers at length grace and the deeper implication of God's approach to us, namely the indwelling of the divine Persons in the souls of human beings. This takes us directly to the heart of all Christian spirituality.

Our dialogue with God, whether in prayer, preaching or theology, if it is to be an adequate response to God's communication, must be in the same language in which God has spoken to us. This means that it must be in the dialect of "words that breathe love." In the Summa contra gentiles, Thomas says that the Holy Spirit, pouring God's love into our hearts, causes us to be not only loved but also lovers in turn (SCG IV.21). It is in being spoken to by God, and being loved by God, that we become speakers and lovers in our turn. Thomas is not afraid to speak of an "experience of God" when he describes the impact in us of the presence of the divine Persons. It is a kind of experiential knowledge, he says, notitia experimentalis (ST I q.43 a.5 ad 2) by which the human creature touches God, creatura attingit ad ipsum Deum (ST I q.43 a.3 in c).

It is through the gift of sanctifying grace that the divine Persons come to dwell in us and in so doing conform us to God. The Spirit, who is love, makes us lovers, and the Son, who is Word, makes us wise. The Word is not just any intellectual word, Thomas points out, but a word that prorumpat in affectum amoris, a word that explodes with the affection of love. Son and Spirit cannot therefore be separated. Grace is always Trinitarian. Truth and love come to us together. Our participation in the divine nature means being conformed to both the Son and the Spirit. The Spirit gives us words when we do not know how to pray as we should, interceding for us with sighs too deep for words (Romans 8.26-27). God's Word instructs us about the Spirit of truth, points us to the Spirit, breathes the Spirit on the disciples, bursts with the affection of love when he hands over his spirit on Calvary, as we read in John's Gospel (19.30). Thomas describes prayer, in another beautiful phrase, as desiderii interpres, interpreter of desire (ST II.II q.83). Once again, we hear the echo of the divine Persons, for the Word is our interpreter and the Spirit is the one who puts the Father's desire into our hearts.

This reflection has led us to see how the missions of the Persons of the Trinity and their indwelling in the souls of human beings are at the heart of spiritual theology for Thomas Aquinas. Elsewhere in the Summa theologiae he articulates the effects of this grace especially in terms of the virtue of charity and the gift of wisdom from the Holy Spirit (ST II.II qq.25, 45). Once again, we see that Son and Spirit cannot be separated, for we acknowledge a debt to each for these gifts of charity and wisdom, sometimes appropriating them to one and sometimes to the other, but always assigning them to both.

Reading, prayer, meditation, contemplation

Shortly after the death of St. Thomas in 1274, a text appeared that recorded St. Dominic's ways of praying. Popularly known as The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic, it is believed to have been composed by a Dominican friar in Bologna around the year 1280. In discussing Dominic's eighth way of prayer, a fourfold distinction of the acts involved in human dialogue with God is used, a distinction that had become classic by the 13th century. These are lectio, oratio, meditatio and contemplatio. This is the order in which we find them in the Eighth Way of Prayer, although the more usual order places meditatio second and oratio third. The term "prayer" in our modern languages may be limited to what oratio meant to Thomas, that is, the prayer of petition in particular, but it is also generally used in a broader sense in which it includes the other three of these acts, lectio divina and meditation in its various forms, including the highest form of meditation which is called contemplation. Together they sum up the human response of prayer in dialogue with God. (4)

Although the explicit treatment of prayer in the Summa theologiae focuses on oratio, St. Thomas is also aware of this fourfold distinction. He is particularly indebted to the School of St. Victor for what he received and incorporated on this point. His most explicit use of it is in one of the articles dealing with contemplation, ST II.II q.180 a.3. The fourth objection in that article refers to Hugh of St. Victor who says that contemplation is not a single act but includes prayer, reading and meditation. (5) Thomas also adds listening, since Mary, Martha's sister, whom he believes represents the contemplative life, is said to have sat and listened to Jesus. In his response Thomas says that one comes to the knowledge of the truth in two ways. Note that for him contemplation means primarily coming to see the truth. We can come to the knowledge of the truth through what we receive from others, either from God, in which case our way to this knowledge is prayer (oratio) by which we come to possess the spirit of wisdom (Wis 7:7), or from other people, in which case our knowledge of the truth comes either by listening to them or by reading (lectio), and reading, in particular, the sacred scriptures. The other way to arrive at knowledge of truth is through personal study, which requires meditation (meditatio). Contemplation is the ultimate goal; the other acts of prayer, along with listening, are all in view of the goal of contemplation.

In ST II.II q.83, his lengthy question on prayer in the sense of oratio, there is another reference to Hugh of St. Victor, this time speaking of three ways in which vocal prayer can work (a.13 in c): one is to pay attention to the words so as not to be mistaken about them, a second is to pay attention to the meaning of the words, and a third is to pay attention to the purpose of the prayer, that is, to God and what one is praying for. This last aspect seems essential, adds Thomas, who adds, with uncharacteristic irony, "even idiots can do this." Although we are dealing with vocal prayer, with which we associate neither meditation nor contemplation, it is tempting to see in the second and third functions attributed to vocal prayer something akin to meditation (paying attention to the meaning of what is said) and something akin to contemplation (paying attention to God and what one prays for). The first function could then be understood as lectio, that is, paying attention to the words so as not to be mistaken about them. Hugh of St. Victor says that the last function of vocal prayer, giving attention to God and to what one is praying for, can be so strong as to bring the mind to God in such a way as to empty the mind of everything else, and this seems a good description of contemplation. (6)

Although there is no time to do so, an interesting way to proceed from here would be to offer further reflections on each of these acts of prayer as we see them in the life and writings of Thomas Aquinas. Lectio, for example, was one of the three tasks of the master of theology. These tasks - legere, disputare, praedicare - were seen as originating in St. Paul's Letter to Titus 1:9. This means that the academic and intellectual work of a theologian like Thomas originated from a pastoral concern, central to Dominican spirituality from the very beginning: study is undertaken in order to be useful to one's neighbour.

God as truth is the object of Dominican study and prayer, and we have already seen that for Aquinas it is the goal of contemplation as well. Could we then reflect on what kind of "reader of texts" Thomas Aquinas was, how he took in the thoughts and arguments of others, what virtues and holiness were manifested in his way of pursuing this task of the teacher? A recent scholar of Aquinas, Leonard E. Boyle OP, a palaeographer by profession, developed an approach he called "integral palaeography," a methodology of receiving texts that is actually a kind of pastoral care. For Boyle, who was a devoted student of St. Thomas, this meant receiving a text as one would receive the person who wrote it, with respect and compassion and a desire to hear what the author wished to say. This is all the truer for the text that is Scripture, for its human authors and even more so for the one who is its primary Author. To welcome the other well requires not only intelligence but also a spiritual disposition, a kind of holiness. (7)

As already indicated, there is a long and well-known treatment of oratio, prayer in its literal meaning of "asking something of someone," in Summa theologiae II.II q.83. In it he gives us much practical advice on praying aloud or silently, on praying until the purpose of prayer is achieved, on praying for whatever we want, so that prayer becomes a school in which our desires are ordered and purified, the most powerful prayers in the liturgy, and so on. Prayer in this sense is always effective because it always brings us closer to God. The Christian person aligns his prayer with that of Christ, as Christ himself encouraged us to do, so that our every request is addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

In Puer Iesus, a sermon delivered in Paris on the Feast of the Epiphany, probably in 1271, Thomas expounds at length on the methodology of study. (8) Not surprisingly, what we have discovered about prayer and contemplation is repeated here, for in the Dominican conception prayer and study coincide: both are concerned with knowing what is true. In Puer Iesus Thomas lists four activities that constitute good study: listening generously, searching diligently, responding prudently, and meditating carefully. This last activity Thomas associates with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is a model of prayer, meditation and contemplation. She "kept all these words, meditating on them, in her heart," Thomas quotes from Luke's Gospel (2:51). He also cites the gloss to this verse by "a certain Greek," who speaks of "the most prudent Mary, the mother of true wisdom, who made herself a pupil of her little son, looking upon him not as a boy or a man, but as God, and as she conceived his Word in her womb, so now she conceives all his deeds and words in her heart."

Meditation, says Thomas, is "the key to memory." You can read and hear many things, but you cannot retain them unless you meditate. He means what later spiritual teachers called "discursive meditation." We need to chew things, break them down and digest them. Mary's meditation teaches us this. She kept "all these things" in her heart, and we too should meditate on everything we hear. If we do so, our meditation, like Mary's, will be integral and deep, and therefore fruitful.

As is well known, there is also an extensive consideration of contemplation toward the end of the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologiae. There is only time to take up what was said in the first part of this talk, namely that Christian contemplation involves charity as well as wisdom, the Spirit of truth as well as the Word of life. In all these matters Thomas often speaks in a way that brings us back once again to the Word that breathes love, to the words that break into love: note for example vita contemplativa terminatur ad delectationem, quae est in affectu (II.II q.180 a.1 in c), dilectio Dei et proximi requiritur ad vitam contemplativam (II.II q.180, a.2 ad 2), contemplatio in affectu terminatur (II.II q.180, a.3 ad 3), haec est ultima perfectio contemplativae vitae: ut scilicet non solum divina veritas videatur, sed etiam ut ametur (II.II q.180 a.7 ad 1).

Conclusion

In the Summa theologiae, Tertia Pars, q.40 Thomas considers what he calls the "conversatio" of Christ, a term that, in the Latin of his time, means something like lifestyle, way of life, perhaps even "spirituality" as some use it today. In this question 40 we find much of what is identified as characteristic of Dominican spirituality. Indeed, this question represents Jesus as the first Dominican. Thomas says this explicitly: Jesus lived as he did ut daret exemplum praedicatoribus (ST III q.40 a.1 ad 3). He says Jesus lived the mixed life of contemplation and sharing with others the fruits of contemplation (ST III q.40 a.1 ad 2; q.40 a.2 ad 3).

Leonard Boyle has convincingly argued that the Summa theologiae is, in its conception, fundamentally a moral theology, calling the Order of Preachers to undertake moral teaching in a radically new context. (9) To this we can add that the Summa theologiae is fundamentally a spiritual theology, offering a rich and extensive consideration of all the themes that belong to such a theology: the transformation wrought by grace, the new law as the grace of the Holy Spirit, the articulation of grace in the theological virtues, the gifts of the Spirit, the beatitudes, the fruits of the Spirit, the acts through which our relationship with God is expressed and fortified, and so on. Central to it all is his teaching on the missions of the Persons of the Holy Trinity who are sent by the Father and who prepare the human person to be a dwelling place for God. This gift of God's conversation with his people takes shape in us as charity and wisdom, and is expressed concretely in our response to God's prior communication, reading the Scriptures, meditating on them, turning to God in prayer at all times, and beginning, however tentatively, to contemplate in love God as Truth. Recalling these texts, who can doubt that Thomas Aquinas, a penetrating philosopher and inspiring theologian, is not also a profound spiritual teacher?

ENDNOTES

1 This talk was first given at a study day organised by the diocese of Latina-Terracina-Sezze-Priverno and the Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso d’Aquino, and held at Latina and Fossanova on 24 and 25 May 2024. The theme of the meeting was San Tommaso d’Aquino: Maestro di Dialogo. It is published in Italian in Serge-Thomas Bonino e Mariano Crociata, editors, Tommaso d'Aquino Maestro di Dialogo, Citta Nuova 2025, pp. 103-112.

2 Daniel E. Flores, ‘Scriptural Signification, the Humanity of Christ, and the Homo Spiritualis’, in Thomas Aquinas as Spiritual Teacher, edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer OP and Roger W. Nutt, Sapientia Press, Ave Maria University, Florida, 2023, 88-107

3 Reading Msgr. Flores' article, this phrase inevitably comes to mind, so it is no surprise to find that he chose it as his episcopal motto.

4   Lines 209-210 of the critical edition of the Nine Ways prepared by Simon Tugwell read as follows: Mos enim iste propheticus uiro dei erat cito ex lectione superferri ad orationem et ex meditatione ad contemplationem, which Tugwell translates (in Early Dominican: Selected Writings, Paulist Press 1982, p.101) as "the man of God had a prophetic way of moving quickly from reading to prayer and from meditation to contemplation." These are the four classic elements of the medieval account of our ascent to God in prayer, Tugwell continues, although the more usual order is lectio - meditatio - oratio - contemplatio. He suggests that the change occurred perhaps to emphasize how powerful Dominic was in prayer, moving directly from reading to meditation and from prayer to contemplation (Early Dominicans, n.184 at p.119). The text ofThe critical edition can be found in Medieval Studies 47 (1985) 81-92.

5 Hugh of St. Victor, Allegoriae in novum testamentum 3,3 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, 175,805)

6 Hugh of St. Victor, De modo orandi 2 (Migne, Patrologia Latina 176, 979)

7 For his methodology of integral palaeography see, for example, Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction, Toronto, 1984, xi-xvi

8 The text of the Leonine edition can be found in Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Opera Omnia, Tomus XLVI,1 (Commissio Leonina, Rome and Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 2014) 100-112

9 Leonard E. Boyle, The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas, Toronto, 1982

Dominican Education

 A talk at celebrations marking 150 years of the Dominican school at Köszeg, Hungary

12 October 2018

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Saint Dominic’s intuition

To understand what the specific characteristics of ‘Dominican education’ might be let us look firstly to Saint Dominic himself to see how he engaged in the activities of learning and teaching. Dominic’s life was turned upside down by the shock he experienced when he encountered the Albigensian heresy in the south of France in the early years of the 13^th century. The Albigensian heresy was just one form of a particular tendency that is always lurking around the boundaries of Christianity, a tendency to spiritualise human and Christian life at the cost of denigrating the physical and material world. In doing so this tendency under-values and even despises the body, marriage and sexuality, dismisses the Incarnation of the Son of God and Christ’s ongoing presence in the sacraments, rejects the body which is the Church with its obvious limitations and illnesses as all bodies are limited and prone to sickness.

So the first intuition of Dominic is to defend the goodness of the physical creation, to show the coherence of God’s plan of creation and redemption, and to convince people of the reliability of nature and reason. This is a first characteristic of Dominican education: trust in the intelligibility of nature and the reliability of reason. If nature and reason are to be trusted because they come from the hands of a loving God, then human beings too are to be trusted because they come from the same hands and are destined to share the divine life in God’s eternal kingdom. So a second key aspect of Dominican education is already clear: Dominic trusted people, trusted the workings of thought and understanding in them, trusted the movement of the Holy Spirit to enlighten and to strengthen all who sincerely seek to know what is true.

Study, conversation, disputation

His own teaching methods centred on shared study, conversation, and disputation. His project in response to the heresy was, from the beginning, a communitarian one. A great Dominican of a later generation, Albert the Great, spoke about the joy of searching together for the truth. When Dominic sent his first disciples to the university centres of Europe he sent them in the first place to study. From the early sources we see in the first Dominicans a never-ending need and desire for education. The first convents of the Order were all schools. Each one had its professor or teacher, called a ‘lector’ or reader, whose lectures were attended not only by people in the neighbourhood but by the friars of the convent who were obliged to be permanent students. There is always more to be known and understood about the world, about human life and experience, and about what God has revealed.

We see Dominic in conversation on many occasions. Famously, he spent a night in discussion with an inn-keeper at Toulouse, arguing about the teachings of Albigensianism and the orthodox teachings of the Church. With his bishop, Diego, he engaged in a crucial conversation with Cistercian legates whom the Pope had asked to lead a campaign of preaching against the heresy. Their work was failing and it was failing because their methods was not in accordance with the gospel.  They were relying on an impressive display of wealth and power. Diego and Dominic saw that they needed to return to the greatest of teachers, Jesus himself, and to remember his instructions for the mission: it was to be undertaken in simplicity and poverty, in fraternity and trust, in constant study and contemplation.

Dominic and his companions engaged also in disputations, more formal and confrontational conversations, in which the arguments of each side were put to various tests, not least the test of public opinion. Sometimes these disputations went well for the new band of preachers and sometimes they did not go so well. But the way forward was clear: a renewed preaching of the gospel, a new evangelisation if you like, in which the tasks of study and preaching were undertaken in a common life of prayer and contemplation.

Thomas Aquinas following Dominic

It has sometimes been pointed out that the mission of great charismatic saints of the Church has often been supported by another great figure whose task is to give philosophical and theological expression to the insights and intuitions of the charismatic person. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of this many years ago pointing to examples like Antony of Egypt and Athanasius of Alexandria who wrote Antony’s life, Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure, and in the case of the Dominicans, Dominic and Thomas Aquinas.

When reflecting on ‘Dominican education’ it is tempting to begin (and perhaps to end!) with Thomas but I think it is essential to turn first to Dominic, to recall the original and originating insights that gave rise to the Order which Thomas was later so determined to join. Thomas saw something of great importance in the life and mission of the preaching friars and he put his own extraordinary gifts at the service of that life and mission. In the words of Damian Byrne, Master of the Order, ‘it was the genius of Thomas Aquinas to carry forward Dominic’s fundamental orientation and to broaden the basis of theological education in the Order through his study of Aristotelian philosophy, which enabled him to give an intellectual foundation to the theology of the goodness of creation and the rejection of dualism’ (The Role of Study in the Order, Letter of 25 May 1991).

Thomas on teaching

When Thomas speaks about teaching in his Summa theologiae he does it at a point in the work that may seem surprising. He considers it when he is speaking about ways in which some creatures can share with God the work of guiding creation. Within the creation there are creatures that are intelligent and free, made in the image and likeness of God, and so capable of understanding truth, of choosing goodness and of appreciating beauty. The human being is one such creature (the others are the angels). Education normally means the process by which some human beings teach other human beings, sharing knowledge with them, assisting them in understanding and helping them to put this knowledge and understanding at the service of human development.

For Thomas the work of the teacher is analogous to that of the medical doctor. Just as the doctor cannot do the body’s healing for it but can assist, from outside, through the remedies and practices that she can recommend, so the teacher cannot do a student’s understanding for him or her, but can assist, from outside, through the various skills and practices that are involved in pedagogy. For some things we do not need teachers, Thomas says, because we find them out for ourselves. But for other things we need help, people who will point us to sources of information, who will explain to us how to understand things, who will if necessary show us how to do things.

As in all his work there is in Thomas’s account of education a deep respect for the dignity and capacity of the individual human person. Teaching and learning involve real work and are creative in bringing about in the world things that did not exist before. Education is not just the unveiling of what has always been there. Nor is it a kind of ‘plugging in’ to some common store of knowledge, opening a kind of channel along which knowledge can flow. Learning and teaching are much richer activities which bring about real changes in the world and so they belong to the creature made in the image and likeness of God. That creature has capacities not only of understanding and freedom but also of initiative and creativity. Many teachers will say that their greatest joy is to see students going beyond anything that they themselves have achieved, growing beyond them in knowledge and understanding, and contributing new things to the world through their gifts and inventiveness. Where has it come from? It is the student’s own ability, gifts of nature and grace, but facilitated, stimulated and helped along by the teacher.

The skills of the teacher: signs, questions, love

One can summarise Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of pedagogy, of teaching methods, with the phrase ‘putting imagination at the service of reason’. Part of the appreciation of creation that comes from Saint Dominic’s insight is the conviction, supported philosophically by Aristotle, that all human understanding begins in sensation and remains always dependent on sensation. The highest philosophical and even theological understanding depends always on the simplest activities of which human beings are capable: seeing, hearing, and touching, remembering and imagining. Any teacher knows the truth of this. To explain something we need to illustrate it with a story or an image, with a sign or a symbol, something that speaks to sensation and imagination, so that our intellectual understanding can make progress.

The greatest teachers, Thomas says, do their work by giving good signs, illustrating well what it is they are trying to help the students to understand. It means good stories and good pictures, good physical presentations especially when it is something abstract that is being taught. The great teachers work also by asking good questions, the best possible questions. We think of the learners as the ones with the questions and it is important that they have time to put their questions. It is important that every question be respected. One of the comments of a teacher that I remember from my schooldays was this, that there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers. But part of the teacher’s skill is also to ask good questions, better questions than those the students themselves come up with. It is a very effective way to stimulate the minds of those who are learning to present them with perplexing and difficult questions, paradoxical questions, questions that puzzle.

As well as giving good signs and asking good questions, a teacher must also love the people he or she sets out to teach. Vincent McNabb was a well-known Dominican of the English province who preached regularly in public in London, engaging in conversations and disputations with anybody and everybody. Speaking to a group of Dominicans he said ‘if you do not love the people you are preaching to then shut up, go away, and preach to yourself’. We can say the same about teaching. If you do not love the people you are teaching then it is better to take your briefcase, go away, and try some other profession. Another comment by a teacher which I have always remembered was made to me by a Dominican brother when I began to teach almost forty years ago. ‘Don’t forget’, he said, ‘that you are not in the first place teaching theology, you are teaching people’.

The greatest teacher of all

It is a very important point with many practical implications for successful teaching. When Thomas Aquinas finally puts the question, ‘so who is the greatest teacher of them all’, and gives as his answer ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, the reasons for this evaluation are the criteria just mentioned: signs, questions, and love, these are the techniques or strategies of the teacher and we find nobody better at these things in the history of humanity than Jesus. The other candidate would be Socrates, regarded by the pagan world as the greatest of teachers. Notice that neither of these wrote books. They wrote directly onto the hearts of their students, Thomas says, and this is far more effective teaching than writing onto paper (or we might add onto the screen of a computer). The signs Jesus gave are his parables and miracles, the ways by which he led his disciples to understand what he was teaching them. The questions he put were stimulating and thought-provoking: ‘who do you say that I am?’, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’, ‘will you also go away?’, ‘do you want to be healed?’. And of course there is nobody who has loved his students as Jesus loved his disciples.

All of this comes together in the Cross, Thomas says, and he is not the only one to say that everything of importance that we need to learn, we learn from the cross of Jesus, in the scientia crucis. There Jesus gave the disciples, and the whole world for all time, the most powerful sign, the most paradoxical question, revealing the greatest possible love for the Father and for humanity. Thomas quotes Augustine speaking about Jesus as a teacher who on the Cross is sicut magister in cathedra, like a professor on his chair. The Cross of Christ continues to perplex the world, presenting us with the most fundamental question about life, giving us the most startling sign, drawing us into the deepest love.

Dominican Educational Institutions

In the 800 years of its existence there have been hundreds of educational institutions established and managed by the Dominicans. Still today in all regions of the world there are universities and colleges, academies and schools, centres for research and teaching, where Dominican men and women work as administrators, teachers or chaplains. There are the houses of study of the Order itself concerned particularly with philosophy and theology, as well as centres for specialised research at high academic and intellectual levels. There are schools for the deaf, an area in which Dominican sisters have been pioneers in various parts of the world, as well as schools for the poor, for children with special needs of various kinds, and vocational schools that help young men and women to develop the knowledge and skills they need for satisfying work and for building up the communities to which they belong.

The principles that guide all this research, learning and teaching can be summarised as trust and love. We see these principles emerging in the intuition of Dominic and we see them in Thomas’s intellectual development of that intuition. There is trust in God in the first place and in the truth of God’s creation, in its coherence and intelligibility. In one place Thomas says that truth is strong in itself and nothing can prevail against it. Such a conviction explains the openness and courage with which he engaged with all kinds of texts and arguments, not afraid of any research or conclusions, because the truth is an objective reality and it is what all people seek to know.

This trust implies also a trust in the capacity of human reason to come to knowledge of the truth. It would make no sense to be a teacher unless we had this double trust: in the truth itself as an objective and intelligible reality, and in the capacity of human beings to grow in their knowledge and understanding of that truth. We must be obedient to the truth when we come to see it, whether it is demonstrated in the various ways in which scientific truth can be demonstrated, or shared with us by reliable witnesses in the various ways in which we come to possess all kinds of knowledge.

Along with trust, the other basic principle is love which lies at the heart of the Gospel and which is – as our created nature itself reminds us every day – the reality or experience in which our deepest fulfilment is to be sought. Teaching can happen where truth is loved and where people are loved. Jesus teaches this by his example and by his words. We are not to set any limits to the reach of our love just as we are not to set any limits to our searching for truth. Who is my neighbour? We all know the answer Jesus gave to that question. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan, educating us to see that our neighbour is any human being in any kind of need, our neighbour is any human being who reaches out to us in friendship, fraternity or collaboration.

A Dominican understanding of education will therefore be theological in the first place. But it is a theological conviction about the capacity of human reason to come to knowledge of the truth. Presenting a theological vision might seem like a threat to the independence of reason, to the freedom of intellectual endeavour. But understood properly it is not so. We can describe a Dominican understanding of education as a form of Christian humanism in which faith and reason, the two wings that carry us to knowledge and truth, are working together in a harmony which is difficult to describe completely in words but which we recognise when we see it in practice. It honours faith and it honours reason. It values teaching and it values research and demonstration. In the Dominican vision faith and reason are not opposed sources of knowledge. Rather are they complementary, reason within faith articulating and understanding more deeply what is believed, faith within reason extending its reach and strengthening reason’s confidence in the value of the truth it comes to know.

The Homily and the New Evangelization

Although the word ‘homily’ can be used for any sermon, our focus here is the homily in a more precise sense, namely the preaching done in the course of a liturgy.  When we think of the preaching work of Jesus we probably first imagine him out and about, on the road, by the lake, on a mountain, or in people’s homes. But we know that he taught also in the Temple and in the synagogues (Mark 1:21; Matthew 13:54; John 6:59; 18:20) and that it was his custom to visit the synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke 4:16).

Jesus’ Homily in the Synagogue at Nazareth

            The homily Jesus gave in the synagogue at Nazareth may be taken as the prototype or pattern for any homily (Luke 4:16-30). The Introduction to the Lectionary identifies four aims for the homily (§41) and at Nazareth Jesus addresses all four. These aims are

·                    to lead the hearers to an affective knowledge of Holy Scripture

·                    to open them to gratitude for the wonderful works of God

·                    to strengthen the faith of the hearer

·                    to prepare them for communion and for the demands of the Christian life.

            How does Jesus’ homily at Nazareth meet these aims? First, he chose a text from the Book of Isaiah, the passage which speaks of the Spirit of the Lord coming to anoint the Lord’s messenger, deputing him to evangelise the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to bring sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’, Jesus says, and we are told that they ‘wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth’ (Luke 4:21-22). Literally it means the words about grace that he spoke. The passage from Isaiah tells of the grace, or favour, of the jubilee year in which a fresh beginning makes new life possible. They are heartened and encouraged by this. Later in the Gospel of Luke we hear of disciples whose hearts burned within them as he opened the Scriptures for them (Luke 24:32) but already at Nazareth all spoke well of him.

            ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. This may be taken as the fundamental task in preaching a homily, to show how the Scripture that has just been read is being fulfilled in the lives of those who are listening.  The second aim of the homily is to open people to gratitude for the wonderful works of God. These works are read about in the Scripture readings not just to recall great events in other places and at other times but with a view to showing how they continue to be effective here and now. The Word of God is ‘sacramental’, therefore, bringing to pass in the lives of believers the realities of which it speaks. We might say that it is good news only when those who listen are helped to see how the Word that has been proclaimed is working in their lives.

            Jesus preaches in order to strengthen the faith of those who hear: this is the third aim of a homily. The text of Isaiah was presumably already well known to his congregation and he seeks to interpret its meaning for them. The difference in his teaching, we are told elsewhere, is that Jesus spoke with authority and with wisdom, often confirming what he taught by signs and wonders (Mark 1:27; Matthew 13:54; Luke 13:10). But at Nazareth his preaching breaks down and the situation becomes complicated.

            So what went wrong? (This is presuming that something did go wrong: perhaps what happened is an example of how effective preaching can be!) Thinking of the fourth aim of the homily, we can see that Jesus is trying to prepare them for communion and for the demands of living according to his new way, but this does not go down well with them. If there is to be encouragement in the preaching of a homily there is also to be challenge. Gracious words call to generous living: to be holy as God is holy, compassionate as God is compassionate, loving one another as Jesus has loved us.

            On the one hand Jesus in his homily says that the promises of God’s grace are being fulfilled even as they listen. These promises are being fulfilled in him, in his presence among them with his teaching and his works of power. Who would not be strengthened and encouraged?

            On the other hand he begins to explain the implications of this time of grace by showing how it calls his listeners beyond their place of comfort to reckon with deep and demanding aspects of God’s gracious work. He reminds them of how earlier prophets brought God’s word and power beyond the confines of Israel. His preaching breaks down as he invites them to break open their hearts and lives, to be receptive once again to the grace of the Living God. The ancient text has come alive and its blessings are welcomed but its demands are not. The mood turns from wonder to anger and he must pass through the midst of them to get away.

The Evangelizing Word, Ancient and New

            What might we learn about the homily and the new evangelization from this experience of Jesus at Nazareth? A first point worth pondering is that he is at home, ‘where he had been brought up’ (Luke 4:16). Home ought to be the place where he is most welcome but it becomes a place that rejects him. We can take ‘home’ to refer to places where the liturgy of the Church continues to be celebrated and where homilies continue to be given. We might think that such places have no need for the ‘new evangelization’ but are rather places from which it is done. ‘Home’ in this sense refers to countries, individuals, parishes, religious communities, and so on that have become content with their appropriation of the Word of God. When one speaks within a liturgy is one not preaching to the already converted? Won’t the new evangelization be done elsewhere, on the road, by the lake, on a mountain, on television and radio and the internet, but not in synagogues, or temples, or churches where people have already been evangelized?

            It is true that the homily is part of the ordinary teaching and life of the Christian Church. As such it becomes routine and can be predictable.  The Word that has found a home with us is in danger of becoming domesticated by us: we think we know what it is about, what its demands are, and what its reach is. One of the reasons why a new evangelization is needed is because people seem to have become tired of Christianity. It is aimed at individuals, communities and cultures that are ‘post-Christian’: they have heard and even tried the gospel but for various reasons have become lukewarm about it or perhaps given it up altogether. For them, the gospel message has lost its bite and its sting.

           One challenge from the new evangelisation to homilists is to show how the Word with which people have become comfortable remains a two-edged sword. Another is to show how the Word to which people have become indifferent continues to offer grace, light and life.

            Homilies given at liturgical celebrations of rites of passage provide opportunities to take up these challenges. People not yet evangelized will be present at such events as will people whose faith has grown weak or even died. At baptisms, weddings, confirmations, receptions into the Church, ordinations, religious professions, and funerals, as well as at Masses celebrated for graduation events, conferences, anniversaries, jubilees, and so on the one who speaks the homily has an opportunity to preach the good news to people who have never heard it and to those who might hear it afresh.

            In fact the term ‘evangelize’ is used in the text from Isaiah that Jesus quotes at Nazareth. The Spirit has anointed him to bring good news to the poor. This is what the term evangelization means, bringing good news. People may fail to receive this news either because it does not seem good to them or because they do not regard themselves as poor in ways that this news can do anything about. Much effort is put into making the good news seem good again. Part of this is helping people to see how the ways in which they know themselves to be poor are in fact met and healed by the Word of God present in Jesus. It may also mean helping people to realize that they are poor in ways they did not suspect.

            An essential part of the new evangelization is to keep the goodness of the gospel alive and fresh in those who already believe and have committed themselves to following Christ. All the great documents on evangelization from Paul VI to John Paul II to Benedict XVI agree that an essential element in it is the witness of vibrant and joyful Christian communities following Christ in faith, hope and love. The routine preaching of homilies is crucial in sustaining the life and witness of such communities.

The Importance of Failure

            The ones most in danger of domesticating the Word of God, in whom familiarity is most likely to breed contempt, are those who handle it from day to day. Teachers, catechists, deacons, theologians, readers, priests, and sisters – all can become so familiar with the Word and so committed to particular ways of communicating it, that in them also it can lose its sting and become domesticated.

            To be applauded for one’s ability to present the Word of God is a mixed blessing. Experience shows that praise is very often quickly followed by rejection or indifference: think of Jesus, Paul, and all great preachers of the gospel. This is why those moments in which preaching breaks down are to be welcomed. We have seen how Jesus’ homily at Nazareth broke down. In the Gospel of John we see that a much longer homily on the bread of life, which he gave at the synagogue in Capernaum, also ‘failed’: ‘after this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him’ (John 6:66).  In the Acts of the Apostles we hear of Paul preaching at Athens and making good headway with an audience of philosophers and other intellectuals, until he began to speak of resurrection, and judgment, and eternal life (Acts 17:22-34).

            The breaking open of the Word cannot happen without the breaking open of hearts and lives. This applies in the first place to those who would think of themselves as ‘evangelizers’.  If the Word is true, and we believe that it is, then its grace can only flow where the barriers to truth are being removed. There are countless ways in which human beings defend themselves against truth, ways in which we are blind, imprisoned, oppressed and poor. One of the dangers for people involving themselves in the life of the Church is that they can turn holy things into obstacles between themselves and God. Saint John of the Cross speaks at length about this in his Dark Night of the Soul. The deadly sins are never more deadly, he says, than when they have our spiritual desires to work on.

            So we must be ready for moments when the work of teaching and evangelizing breaks down. It is admirable and right that we engage with the movements of thought in our culture, seeking to ‘take all thought captive for Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5). But we must remain alert for the moment of breakdown. Inevitably there will be something in what we preach that people will find objectionable, offensive, extreme, ridiculous, out-dated, a threat to common sense, or infuriating for some other reason. This is the world that is within us also and this adds to the difficulty: the first people needing evangelization are those who would evangelize others.

            Paul speaks about his state of mind and heart when he arrived in Corinth after his bruising experience in Athens. He came, he says, in fear and trembling, deciding that in his preaching he would not use arguments that belong to philosophy but would claim to know nothing except Christ crucified, a foolishness and weakness that are the wisdom and the power of God. There is sense in speaking of making the gospel ‘relevant’ to people’s lives, of showing how it connects with them. On the other hand the gospel is not a wisdom of this age that is passing away: if it is for this life only that we have hoped in Christ then we are, of all people, the most unfortunate (1 Corinthians 15:19). We must also, therefore, be ‘irrelevant’ because we are called to preach a gospel that does not just endorse and confirm all that we find in place but that promises a new life in a new heavens and a new earth.

Contexts of the Homily

            We are considering the homily in a specific sense, to refer to preaching done within a liturgy. The Irish Dominican liturgist and theologian Philip Gleeson has written that ‘homilies are worse than useless if they do not humbly serve the celebration of which they are a part’ (p.144). He quotes the German Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg who says ‘the sermon should serve, not dominate, in the Church. It should serve the presence of Christ which we celebrate in the Eucharist’.  All that is involved in a good celebration of the liturgy is therefore relevant to the homily since it is the context in which the homily happens. Not everything depends on the homily, however, even for the purposes of evangelization, since many other aspects of the liturgy – the music, the symbolism, the times of quiet, the great prayers of the Church, the assembly itself – might well be more effective in calling people to gratitude and to deeper faith.

            Another context of the homily is the lifestyle of the preacher. In an earlier moment of new evangelization, the beginning of the 13^th century, the Order of Preachers was established precisely with this conviction: that the credibility of preaching depended not just on the knowledge and understanding a preacher might have of the Word and of people’s lives, but also on the witness of the preacher’s own life. Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of this when he discusses the lifestyle of Jesus.  How ought Jesus to have lived considering his mission of bringing good news to the poor?

            The best possible form of life, Aquinas says, is the one whereby a person is called to share with others, through preaching and teaching, what has been contemplated. Jesus’ mission was to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37) and this required a public life of preaching. Jesus had to live openly among people, therefore, and not as a monk or hermit. He had to live a balanced life of prayer and preaching since preaching without prayer would be meaningless. Because he came to free people from the oppressions of sin, Jesus had to live among sinners, sharing the living conditions of the people and conforming to their circumstances. He lived among them in poverty rather than in power and wealth since poverty is appropriate to the task of preaching. Jesus taught the apostles that they must live in simplicity and detachment if they were to carry through effectively the mission he was entrusting to them.

            This wider context of the homily – living among people, sharing their lives, in prayer and simplicity – was the way in which Jesus needed to live if he was to fulfill his mission, and he also lived like this, Aquinas says, ‘to give an example to preachers’. We can also say that because he passed on to them the mission he had received from the Father, the bearers of good news in any age and in any place are best advised to live like this if their work of evangelization is to be fruitful.

Conclusion

            We have been considering the homily, a particular kind of preaching done within a liturgy. We have seen how this description applies to some of the preaching recorded in the New Testament. It may seem that preaching in this sense will more often than not be to people who are already committed to the faith and are practising it. But even routine homilies are opportunities to reach others who are not so convinced as well as to strengthen the faith of believers and challenge them to a more generous following of Jesus.

            For the new evangelization it is clear that people need to understand the function of the homily and that those entrusted with it should be very well prepared. We have seen how St Thomas Aquinas says that this requires prayer, sharing people’s circumstances, and living in simplicity.

            Documents of the Church on evangelization, on the liturgy, and on preaching, offer practical advice about the means through which the homily may be done well. Most recently we have the post-Synodal exhortation Verbum Domini whose section on ‘The Liturgy, Privileged Setting of the Word of God’ (§§52-71) is relevant to what has been considered in this chapter. ‘Our own time must be increasingly marked by a new hearing of God’s word and a new evangelization’, Benedict XVI says in Verbum Domini §122. The homily within a liturgy is one of the ways in which that new hearing, and that new evangelization, are done.

Resources

Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, chapter 3, II and III, §§135-159, Vatican Press 2014

Gleeson, Philip, OP, ‘The Homily: Serving, not Dominating’, in Vivian Boland OP, ed., Watchmen raise their voices: A Tallaght book of theology, Dominican Publications, Dublin 2006, pp. 135-44

Heille, Gregory, OP, The Word on the Web – http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listpreachergr.html

Hilkert, Mary Catherine, OP, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination, Continuum, London and New York 1997