MASS OF THE AUGUST 3

FRIARS OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS
GENERAL CHAPTER OF PROVINCIALS
Bogotá – 2007

MASS OF THE AUGUST 3
By
Fr. Michael Mascari, O.P.
Provincial Prior
Province of St Albert the Great (United State)

The month of July was a time when many of us celebrated national holidays, beginning with Canada on July 1st and ending with Peru on July 280th. In between these, we had the United States on July 4th, Venezuela on July 5th, Argentina on the 9th, France on July l4th, Belgium on the 21st, and Polish Liberation on the 22nd. And of course we had the wonderful celebration of Colombian independence on July 20th with banners waving, patriotic singing, festive dancing, and even, dare I say, a delightful battle between the colonial soldiers and the army of mother Spain. Clearly, it was a special day, a sacred time when our Colombian brothers looked to the past to remember not only who they were then, but also who they are now, as they strive to remain faithful to the vision of real freedom and justice that their revolution promised.

So it was also with our Jewish brothers and sisters as they celebrated their sacred time, their sacred places, their powerful experience of God’s presence and action in their lives. The past for them was not something that lay dead and buried, an artefact to be uncovered and excavated like some ancient ruin, rather it was vital, active, and dynamic. For them the great feasts described in Leviticus, the Feast of Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or the Feast of Pentecost identified with First Fruits and the giving of the Law, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths, which we now call Rosh Shanah were more than memories of how God had protected them and rescued them in the past, they were opportunities to again experience the saving action of their Lord. In these great feasts and celebrations, God was again fighting Pharaoh, again giving them the Law, again forgiving their sins. As they ate their unleavened bread each year, consumed the roast lamb and bitter herbs, and proclaimed that their father was a wandering Aramean generation after generation, the past came alive in the present. Even as this history celebrated a past that gave rise to the present, it also pointed them to the future, to the promises made by God to their fathers, a vision that remained incomplete, yet drew them like a magnet to its fulfilment. For our ancestors in the faith, their celebrations recalled the past, gave meaning to the present, and anticipated the future.

Without such celebrations, without this sense of their own rich and living history, without a sense of sacred time, we are in danger of being condemned to a narrow and impoverished view of the present, a present that led the citizens of Nazareth to not recognize Jesus for who he was, because they could not move beyond their limited experience and shallow knowledge of him as nothing more than the carpenter´s son.

So it is, brothers, that as Christians we also cling to our own sense of sacred time and sacred space. For in our celebrations, we not only remember Jesus Christ crucified and risen; we find also our present identities and our future hope. The salvation that Jesus won for us by his life, his teaching, his healing, his death, and his resurrection is more than a past event we find in the ancient texts of the Scripture. As Christians we believe that Jesus is in our very midst. The Risen Christ is present among us, where he continues to teach, and heal, and suffer and rise in this Body of his that is the Church. Even as he is present, Christ in the power of his Holy Spirit impels us into the future with hope and energy and strength because he is with us ah days, even to the end of the world. When we as Christians celebrate our sacred time in our sacred space, when we enter into the paschal mystery of Christ crucified and risen, during the Triduum, or on Sundays, or at the daily Eucharist, we acknowledge a past that breaks into the present and leads to the future, a mystery that we proclaim with faith and unwavering hope as we say, Christ has died in the past, Christ is risen in the present, and Christ will come again in the future.

Just as we have our sacred times and spaces as Christians, so also as Dominicans we have our own sense of sacred time and sacred space. This General Chapter in Bogota is one such time and one such place. Here we recall St. Dominic and the vision that he and our earliest brothers had for the Order. Here in Bogota, St Dominic and his vision once again comes to life, as we struggle how we may best continue the mission to preach and teach, not as individuals but as a community of brothers, enlivened by prayer and a love of study. In this sacred time and in this sacred place, St Dominic once again lives and breathes and points us to the future, helping us to recognize the real challenges and difficulties that face us as an Order, even as he imparts to us an extraordinary sense of confidence and hope, a hope that we have become mindful of in the prayer we sing each day at Vespers, O Spem Miram, Ó Wondrous Hope. May St. Dominic who inspired us and brought us together as an Order in the past, who continues among us in the preaching mission and common life of the whole Order, urge us forward to fulfil in our time his vision at Fanjeaux of a world on tire with the light of Our Lord Jesus Christ!

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