Universalis: Today

Friday 8 August 2008
Saint Dominic, priest

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Tomorrow: Saturday of week 18 of the year
or Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr
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The Lord is our delight: come, bless his name.

St Dominic (1170 - 1221): He was born in Castile (part of modern Spain) and became a canon of the cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop (Diego de Azevedo) in a mission of preaching against the Albigensian heresy, which was then strong in southern France. While the official missions lived in formality and splendour, Dominic and Diego lived in extreme poverty, and prepared with great diligence for the debates that they held with their opponents. When the suppression of Albigensianism was undertaken by invasion and war of a particularly savage kind, Dominic continued to try to preach and persuade.
In 1216 he founded the Order of Preachers, dedicated to saving souls by preaching and persuasion. Like the Franciscans, founded a few years before, the Dominicans put great importance on poverty, both of the individual and of the community, and of the need to be involved directly in the world while still living some form of monastic life. At a time when the settled Benedictine monasteries had grown into great and rich institutions, this was a revolutionary and to some a subversive concept. The Friars made a lasting impact on the life of mediaeval Europe, and the Dominicans in particular altered the course of intellectual history by making a well-thought-out and rational response to the new learning that was appearing as long-forgotten thinkers such as Aristotle became known once more in the Christian West.
Dominic died at Bologna on 6th August 1221.
See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)	Deuteronomy 1:31 ©
The Lord carried you, as a man carries his child, all along the road you travelled.

Noon reading (Sext)	Baruch 4:28 - 29 ©
As by your will you first strayed away from God, so now turn back and search for him ten times as hard; for as he brought down those disasters on you, so will he rescue you and give you eternal joy.

Afternoon reading (None)	Wisdom 1:13 - 15 ©
Death was not God’s doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living. To be – for this he created all; the world’s created things have health in them, in them no fatal poison can be found, and Hades holds no power on earth; for virtue is undying.

August 2008
Thu 7	Thursday of week 18 of the year or Saints Sixtus II, Pope, and his Companions, Martyrs or Saint Cajetan, priest
Fri 8	Saint Dominic, priest
Sat 9	Saturday of week 18 of the year or Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr
Sun 10	19th Sunday of the year
Mon 11	Saint Clare, Virgin
Tue 12	Tuesday of week 19 of the year or Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, religious
Wed 13	Wednesday of week 19 of the year or Saints Pontian, Pope, and Hippolytus, priest, Martyrs
Thu 14	Saint Maximilian Kolbe, priest, Martyr

Calendar used: General Calendar

Scripture readings taken from the Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.

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