On Being Dominican

Extract

“They began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance . . . and their hearers were bewildered because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”

We are the “Friars Preachers”, the preaching brethren, a community that specialises in talk. This is the mystery to which we have all been summoned. I say this community is a mystery in the sense in which a sacrament or a work of art is a mystery; there is a depth of meaning in it that is by no means obvious on the surface at first sight, a depth that reveals itself only gradually and in hints and glimpses as we enact and re-enact the mystery. Macbeth is a good thriller; but as we grow familiar with it, it yields profound secrets about man and nature and time, secrets that can only be revealed in this way, indirectly, as symbolised, as half hidden. Again, the Eucharist is a commonplace symbolic meal, a token of hospitality and friendship, but as we enter into it, it reveals the depth of love which is God, the love enacted on the cross. And so it is with us; we are a commonplace gathering of men meeting to make decisions about our work, men partly anxious, mainly bored, hoping to get a few things cleared up as well and as quickly as possible so that we can get away: but there is a depth here too.

The depth is not something alongside, added on to, associated with the surface significance; the deep meaning of Macbeth is not additional to the story of murder and intrigue; the grace of the Eucharist is not something associated with, linked with, the sacrament; the mystery of our community is not something alongside, additional to, our day to day life and work and difficulties: it is just the depth within them. We do not have a professional job together with a spiritual life, the depth and the spirituality are just in the living together and the doing of the work.