Studies
in Dominican Spirituality
CHARACTERISTICS OF DOMINICAN PRAYER
"St. Dominic at the Foot of the Cross"
by Bl. Fra Angelico (1400-1455)
By Fr. Fabian Stan Parmisano, OP
Practiced and preached in our western world today are many
different methods of prayer and meditation from a variety of religious and non-religious
traditions. One has only to think of such oriental imports as Zen, Yoga, Aikido, Hindu and
Buddhist chant; or turn to the secularized adaptations of these like transcendental
meditation, mind control, Arica, body reading, physical and mental massage; or recall the
more familiar (and so less known?) forms of Christian prayer: liturgical worship, the
rosary, Ignation spiritual exercises, Benedictine, Carmelite, Carthusian, Trappist,
Franciscan modes of contemplation--all still alive and well enough among us; or consider
the free, easy, spontaneous approach to prayer promoted and popularized in and through the
Christian charismatic renewal. For those who have eyes that see and ears that hear, there
is invitation and method aplenty to move beyond our prevailing stifling materialism into
the lighter, fresher world of the spirit.
St. Dominic
and his Eucharistic Orientation
Dominicans, too, have their way of prayer which they have inherited from
their founder. St. Dominic was born into an ancient tradition of prayer, that of the
Eucharist, and early in life became a Canon Regular, whose chief duty and joy it was to
offer the Eucharistic sacrifice and pray the liturgy that led up to and flowed from it.
True, this was the Church's public worship, but it became Dominic's private prayer as well
in that he became personally absorbed in it and allowed it to shape his solitary
contemplative prayer.
For him the Eucharist was Christ's last and perfect prayer to his Father
for the healing of humankind, and Dominic's concern was to say "yes" to it,
become one with it, and pattern all his individual prayer upon it. Dominic looked to
Christ in his sacrificial act of total giving and with Christ looked also to the Father,
knowing that it is through such perfect orientation that humankind begins to be saved. It
is not so much method, then, that characterized Dominic's and so Dominican prayer, as
orientation--a constant moving outward into God that He might save the world.
The Divine Office
As part of, and as an outgrowth of, his personal and private communication
with God, Dominic was always devoted to the public recitation of prayer in the Divine
Office. As a Canon of Osma Cathedral, he had been intimately involved in the official
prayer of the Church, and he passed this on to the Order he brought into being. During his
lifetime, Dominic was faithful to common prayer in the choir, which he saw as a mainspring
to the development and continuity of a true community life. While private prayer was not
neglected because of choir, neither was public prayer neglected in favor of personal
devotion; today, his sons and daughters strive for this same balance between the
individual and God and the group and God. The very discipline of combining the two into a
harmonious unity is a means of growth in itself.
Thus Dominican prayer--personal or communal--is objective, with a dynamism
that continually moves beyond subjective self, beyond the world, beyond even the healing
humanity of Christ, into God and further and further into the depths of God, confident in
the belief that this right order to God makes for a right order within the world. But the
order of the world is secondary and not the prime reason for prayer. A person can and
should pray for the world, for oneself, for the success of one's good work, for those dear
and not so dear to one, but unless one has learned to reach beyond all this into God
himself, for God himself, he makes an idol of the world and so eventually destroys the
world.
Meditative Study
This note of objectivity carries over into another distinctive feature of
Dominican prayer: study, principally of sacred revealed truth, but also of all truth
wherever it may be found. It was difficult in Dominic's time for many to see any
connection at all between prayer and study, especially careful, detailed, scientific
study. It's equally difficult in our time. More often than not, study--the diligent use of
the mind--is seen as an obstacle to prayer, which is regarded as the pious exercise of the
heart.
But Dominic saw it as a deeper, more loving penetration into the
Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers which surrounded and permeated that great
Eucharistic prayer of Christ and as a way of uncovering and entering into the objectivity
of God. Dominic was aware of the dangers, especially that of mind crushing heart, and so
he sought to keep study reverent by setting it within the context of semi-monastic
liturgical life; but he was more aware of the need for study, that an enlightened mind
might help to direct the heart and keep it moving outward, in love and desire, to God.
For the Dominican, then, study is, or is meant to be, meditation. Not the
kind of meditation popular in our time--an emptying of the mind, a peaceful abiding in
darkness. Dominicans are for this, too, but as a first step in an advanced degree of
prayer, which is contemplation. Prior to this, however, one's mind and heart must be
informed by Christ--who He is, what He means, where He points and leads to. Then when the
darkness at last comes and the emptying is accomplished, it will be Christ and not some
thwarted spirit of self or Satan that will arise from the depths, bringing light and
fullness and the joy of God.
Contemplative Action
A fourth characteristic of Dominican prayer is its issue. Contemplata
aliis tradere (to give to others the benefits of one's own contemplation): not only an
absorption in God but a return from Him, and with Him, into the lives of others. With
Him--this is important. Again, it is Christ who saves. And so not only is the Dominican's
prayer meant to be contemplative, i.e. centered upon God, but his action in the world is
also to be contemplative. Not, therefore, a nervous, feverish action that is anxious for
results, especially the kind that we ourselves anticipate, but a still, quiet action that
leaves room for God and is patient for God's results in God's time. Here again the
movement is outward, with little if any break in one's prime concern. One contemplates
God, reaching further and further into Him; one acts for the world, reaching deeper and
deeper into it for the best of it, which is the very God who is above and beyond it.
Praying Whole
Still another feature of Dominican prayer is its use of the body. It
involves a kind of physical yoga, but nothing exaggerated or extreme. Merely a few simple
gestures toward the harmonization of body and spirit. This also Dominic bequeathed to his
Order, having himself learned it in part from the Eucharistic liturgy with its rich and
delicate blend of word, chant, and gesture--the whole of the person engaged in worship. So
from an early document we learn of the nine ways of Dominic's private prayer: He would
incline profoundly, prostrate his body upon the ground, genuflect, scourge himself, raise
his arms to heaven--in short, he would pray while standing, sitting, kneeling,
prostrating, walking.
Dominic's "nine ways" were probably nine time ninety. His body
was as flexible as his spirit and just as engaged when he was aware of his God, which was
always. So also with the modern Dominican. He or she prays, or should pray, whole. And
this prayer should be a varied and personal response to God's varied and personal touch
upon one's life. A Dominican may borrow methods from other traditions to help dispose him
or herself for prayer, to quiet the body and still the nerve and imagination and
thought--all so necessary especially in tense and nervous times like our own. But these
the Dominican sees only as a beginning. A Dominican must move through and beyond them to a
personal meeting with God and to where Christ and His prayers are.
Fr. Fabian Parmisano is retired and currently
lives at St. Albert's Priory, the House of Studies
for the Western Dominican Province, in Oakland, CA |
