On this third Tuesday in the series of 15 Tuesdays in honor of our Holy Father St. Dominic, our reflection ponders the mystery of loving contemplation and radiant joy in Our Lady of the Nativity and our Holy Father St. Dominic.
If you are joining us after the beginning of the 15 Tuesdays, don’t worry! Fifteen weeks is a long time, and you can begin at any point to grow in love of God and devotion to St. Dominic through joining in.
Loving Contemplation, Radiant Joy: Our Lady, St. Dominic and the Mystery of the Nativity
In the Annunciation, Our Lady received the Word, surrendering her whole life as the handmaid of the Lord. In the Visitation, she bears the hidden presence of the Word to Elizabeth and all those in need of encountering him. Now in the fullness of time, Mary adores with perfect contemplative love, the Word Made Flesh, Love Incarnate, as He makes visible in Himself the face of God. On that luminous night, heaven and earth adored the face of God revealed in the infant Jesus, held and beheld, by Mary His radiant Virgin Mother. In all the mysteries of the Rosary, but especially this one, we are invited to “contemplate the face of Christ with Mary,” as Pope St. John Paul II puts it in his encyclical on the Rosary. Our Lady was and is the contemplative par excellence. Contemplation is that simple loving gaze directed toward God. Mary kept constantly before the eyes of her soul, her beloved Jesus, loving Him always, and letting that love direct and orient everything in her life.
St. Dominic too, had a special capacity and gift for contemplation. He spoke either with God or of God, constantly focused on God and the things of God. It is no wonder that Our Lady personally entrusted to his preaching the Rosary, the contemplative prayer par excellence and the most powerful prayer after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass itself. St. Dominic has rightly been called the favorite of Mary, for she entrusted to him her own contemplative memories of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and so fructified his preaching that the grace of conversion might be given to countless souls. The living waters of Our Lady’s own contemplative life flowed out in the apostolic fruitfulness of St. Dominic, and all who encountered this knight of Our Lady were moved to deeper love.
What is contemplative love but adoration? We see this clearly in the light of Mary’s face aglow with pure love for her newborn king. As a true son of St. Dominic’s genius, St. Thomas Aquinas speaks in his Summa Theologiæ about the true happiness that all men are made for, that all ultimately seek and desire: the vision of God, seeing the face of God, the contemplation of the divine countenance. Although perfectly realized only in heaven, this can and should still be done here on earth according to our capacity. For even this side of heaven, our happiness is inextricably bound up with it. The joy of heaven is possible to us and is meant to begin here and now, and nourishing the contemplative life through adoration is one important part of that. All are called to contemplation because all are called to heaven.
Contemplation Leads to Radiant Joy
The natural fruit of contemplative love and adoration is joy. At the Annunciation, Our Lady received with joy the Word in her womb. At the Visitation, her joy in bearing the infant messiah overflowed in a canticle of gratitude and love. Now, caught up in radiant love of her Son and God, Mary was too swept up in joy even to utter a word. The bright star adorning the Bethlehem sky was as nothing compared to the radiant countenance of the Blessed Virgin lost in contemplative wonder of her dear little Son.
“O lumen…” Every night, the antiphon chanted by Dominicans all over the world recalls a short litany of Our Holy Father Dominic’s shining qualities. The first of these titles is Lumen Ecclesiæ—Light of the Church. Because St. Dominic was a man of deep contemplative love and adoration with a special share in Our Lady’s own interior life, on fire with zeal for the truth, God used him as a shining torch in a world fraught with the darkness of confusion and error. The joy that flowed from his rich interior shown through in every aspect of his life, and even appeared as a brightness about his countenance, as numerous witnesses for his canonization process testify.
As we think about our Holy Father St. Dominic in light of the mystery of the Nativity, let us remember and ponder that holy silent night. With St. Dominic, let us ask Our Lady for a share in her own interior life of contemplative love, adoration, and holy joy, that we also may gaze upon the face of God, here and now, and for all eternity with St. Dominic and all the saints in heaven.
A Special Note about our Perpetual Rosary Vocation
We cannot think about this topic without an intimate connection to our own vocation in the Order and the Church. As contemplative Dominican nuns of the Perpetual Rosary, we are particularly dedicated to this precious work of imitating Mary and St. Dominic in their contemplative life of adoration and love. Our life is a special sign pointing toward heaven as the reality toward which all else should be directed. We are uniquely called to a life of contemplative love in adoration, in union with Our Lady’s own interior life of pondering the mysteries of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. In this way, the Word Made Flesh continues to be fruitful in the apostolate of preaching of our Dominican friars, and all those for whom we pray. It is no coincidence that both the foundation of the Dominican nuns, and the preaching of the Rosary, both took place towards the beginning of St. Dominic’s apostolic vocation. St. Dominic knew the importance of contemplative love and built it firmly into the foundations of his marvelous work of preaching for souls.
Additional Prayers
If you would like to observe this day with additional devotions, we have posted the following prayers in the past: