ORDER OF PREACHERS
The Dominican Family
Trinidad & Tobago

JUBILEE 800

Eight hundred years ago, St. Dominic founded the first ‘Dominican’ community, the Nuns at Prouille. Ten years later he received Papal approval for the friars. The first year of Jubilee celebration is a year of thanksgiving to God for the gifts the Order has received. The following nine years will be a novena of years in preparation for the 800^th anniversary of Pope Honorius’ III approval of the Order.

Below there is the Circular Letter of the Master to the Order for the Jubilee he set up.

Then there is the message of the International Commission of the Dominican Order meeting in Fanjeaux with the Master of the Order to celebrate the anniversary of the first foundation in Prouille in which they share their reflections, ideas and commitments to enrich the holy preaching at this momentous time in the Order’s history.

Finally there is the Jubilee Prayer.

LETTER OF THE MASTER TO THE ORDER

Letter to the whole Order announcing the Jubilee Year for the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the first community of contemplative nuns.

29 April, the Feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, 2006 Dear brothers and sisters

:I send you this letter from the Monastery of Blessed Mary in Prouille, the first monastery of the Order, on the Feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, our older sister, “into whom, it seems, ‘the whole soul of Dominic passed (as indeed into Blessed Jordan of Saxony)’”.^[1]

In our history there are many events that encourage us to renew our faithfulness to our vocation as sons and daughters of Saint Dominic: ‘to contemplate and share the fruits of our contemplation’.

“The nuns of the Order of Preachers came into being when our holy Father Dominic gathered women converts to the Catholic faith in the monastery of Blessed Mary of Prouille. These women, free for God alone, he associated to his ‘holy preaching' by their prayer and penance’.^[2] Blessed Jordan wrote: ‘the Order of Preachers had not yet been founded; it was rather a question of its institution, as Saint Dominic was still dedicating himself fully to the ministry of preaching ... And so, from the death of the Bishop of Osma - Diego - until the Lateran Council, approximately ten years passed, during which bro. Dominic was practically alone in the region’.^[3]

800 years have now passed since this historic event. As we consider what is, in some way, the first Dominican community, truly the hidden seed of the Order, analogously we celebrate as well the theological priority that contemplation holds in our life and mission.

It is truly right and just that we thank God for the gift of our contemplative sisters! They support us in the path we follow; they participate in a special way in our preaching; they welcome us that we may share the hopes and joys, the grief and anxieties of our itinerant ministry. As Saint Catherine of Siena did, so they encourage us to have no fear, to go forth in the highways and byways to meet those who thirst for God; they compel us to live a passion for Christ and for humanity.

We must live this anniversary with the serene joy of Saint Dominic. God willing, and with the whole of the Order of Preachers, beginning with the first Sunday of Advent (3 December 2006) and continuing through the Epiphany in 2008, we will celebrate a Jubilee Year, dedicated to the memory of these 800 years of our contemplatives. We will live a ‘novena’ of years that will take us to another important event: the 8th centenary of Pope Honorius III's confirmation of the Order with the Bull Religiosam vitam of 22 December 1216.

We will concentrate our celebration during this Jubilee Year in each and every monastery throughout the world. The contemplative charism of our nuns is certainly not tied to any one particular site or community. For this reason, we have not planned any functions, events or ceremonies centred in Prouille. Nevertheless, as an eloquent sign of the communion with all of the monasteries of the Order, on the first day of the Jubilee some of the friars of our General Curia will celebrate the Eucharist in monasteries that the Order considers ‘true sanctuaries’ due to their special connection with the life of Saint Dominic: the Monastery of Blessed Mary in Prouille (founded in 1206-1207); the Monastery of the Holy Rosary (ex-Saint Sixtus) in Rome (founded in 1219); the Royal Monastery of Saint Dominic in Madrid (founded in 1218-1219); the Monastery of Saint Dominic in Caleruega (founded in Caleruega in 1270).^[4] Each monastery could organize similar initiatives involving the whole Dominican Family.

To prepare our hearts for this celebration, each monastery will offer its own suggestions and proposals for events, initiatives and celebrations to help the whole Dominican Family renew our vocation by concentrating on the riches of the contemplative life, the well-spring of our preaching. The International Commission of the Nuns will also offer some subsidies to live more intensely this Jubilee Year.

May all of us, the sons and daughters of Saint Dominic, prepare ourselves to make this pilgrimage to our monasteries joyfully; let us there drink of the fresh simplicity of the ‘love we had at first’, feeling ourselves at the feet of Jesus, that we may be with Him and listen to Him. Let us live this time with intensity and grace, sharing with our contemplative communities the joy of their consecration, the fruitfulness of their silence, the beauty of their liturgy, their special love for the Word.

The Jubilee Year will be an expression of gratitude for our Dominican vocation through which we are called to Praise, to Bless and to Preach God with the Church, in the Church and for the Church.

The Holy Spirit providentially inspired Saint Dominic de Guzman to lay the foundations of the Order of Preachers in some way in the life and mission of our contemplatives. We shout Magnificat! for all that the Lord has done for us through them!

Fraternally in Saint Dominic, from the Monastery of ‘Blessed Mary’ in Prouille, 29 April, the Feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, 2006

Bro. Carlos A. Azpiroz Costa OP
Master of the Order

[1] Fr. Aniceto Fernández in Analecta O.P. 78 (1970) 481; see Mortier, Histoire des maîtres généraux de l'Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, I (Paris 1903) 139.

[2] Liber constitutionum Monialium Ordinis Prædicatorum n. 1, § I.

[3] Libellus n. 37.

[4] see ACG Providence 2001 nn. 321-323.

International Commission of the Dominican Order

A MESSAGE TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DOMINICAN FAMILY
FROM FANJEAUX, MAY 2006

We, members of the international commissions of the Dominican Order, meeting with the Master of the Order in Fanjeaux to celebrate the 800^th anniversary of St Dominic’s founding of Prouilhe, wish to share with the worldwide Dominican family our reflections, ideas and commitments to enrich the holy preaching at this momentous time in the Order’s history.

• We commit ourselves to renewing Dominic’s vision of a family together in mission.
• We commit ourselves to knowing all branches of the family better and to working together in harmony, mutual respect and truth.
• We commit ourselves to finding spaces to preach together as Dominic’s family.
• We commit ourselves to finding new, innovative ways of preaching that will especially touch the poor, the young and the aged.
• We commit ourselves to finding ways to link and nourish our prayer and mission.
• We commit ourselves to be more welcoming to all the other branches of the Order.
• We commit ourselves to a more attentive listening to the world as a fundamental Dominican value.
• We commit ourselves to working for justice together as a family.
• We commit ourselves to being in solidarity with those at the margins of society.

From these general commitments, kindled by the fire of Dominic’s vision by being present in these holy places, we urge all branches of the Dominican family in this period of jubilee, to:

• Be involved in mission by adopting local projects developed and implemented by all branches of the Order together
• Deepen our prayer life by praying the jubilee prayer prepared for us by the nuns of the Order and joining their liturgies in their monasteries wherever possible
• Work for justice by joining the rest of the Church in realizing the Millennium Development Goals, signed by all governments in 2000, to relieve our world of dehumanizing poverty and to promote integral human development.

These are some of the fruits of our contemplation over these days in Fanjeaux where Dominic first had his vision of establishing what became the first foundation of the Order and where he dreamed of how to set the world on evangelical fire by praising, blessing and preaching. We encourage you all to take up these challenges, to give them flesh and to implement them, following in the footsteps of St Dominic, as ways of witnessing to the Gospel in our time.

JUBILEE PRAYER

God of Mercy,
In your eternal Wisdom,
you called your servant Dominic to set off on a journey of faith
as itinerant pilgrim and preacher of grace.

With your Word of gentle Truth in his heart and on his lips,
Dominic invited the first sisters and brothers
to join him in a life of contemplative obedience
in the service of the holy preaching.

As we commemorate this Jubilee,
we ask you to breathe the Spirit of the risen Christ
once again into our hearts and minds.

Re-create us,
so that we might faithfully and joyfully
proclaim the gospel of peace,
through the same Christ, our Lord.

Amen.