The Master of the Order of Preachers visits Caleruega

The Master of the Order of Preachers arrived in Spain on Monday accompanied by Bro Miguel Ángel del Río, Socius for the Iberian Peninsula, and Bro Florentino Bolo, Socius for Apostolic Life.

Accompanied by the Prior Provincial, Bro Jesús Díaz, and by the Secretary of the Province, Bro Juan Carlos Cordero, they went to Caleruega where the community of friars welcomed him, and then visited the nearby Monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos, where they were received by the Abbot, who accompanied him on a guided tour of this jewel of Romanesque architecture, after which they prayed vespers with the Benedictine community.

In the choir there was a beautiful combination of black and white habits, praying together in the place that was so significant for St. Dominic of Guzmán and his mother Juana de Aza. The day concluded with dinner and a time of dialogue and conversation between the Master and the friars of the convent of Caleruega.

On Tuesday, the 12th, the feast of Our Lady of the Pilar in Spain, the day began with a visit to the Dominican nuns, who had the opportunity to speak at length with the Master in an emotional meeting. In the monastery, the Master visited the exhibition St. Dominic de Guzman, a universal saint, organized by the Foundation of the VIII Centenary of the Cathedral of Burgos, guided by one of the curators of the exhibition, fr Ivan Calvo.

Fr Gerard presided the Eucharist in the Dominican church, accompanied by the Prior Provincial and the prior of Caleruega, Bro Arsenio Gutiérrez, and in the presence of the mayoress of Caleruega, Lidia Arribas, the deputy in the Cortes de Castilla y León José Ignacio Delgado, and many of the faithful.

The Master expressed his joy at the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist in such a special place as Caleruega. In his homily on the feast of the Pilar he began by asking how to preach in times of pandemic: “How do we preach the closeness of God while keeping a safe distance from one another? How do we preach the closeness of God to people in isolation? How do we preach hope in times of despair? And he recalled how Mary has always been there, that “she comes to our aid when we need her, that her motherly presence transforms our isolation into consolation”.

The Master referred to the three dialogues that made Mary an essential part of our lives: the dialogue with the angel Gabriel “who made Mary the Mother of God”, the dialogue at the wedding feast of Cana “clearly shows Mary as our intercessor who encourages us to obey God, to be his disciples” and the dialogue at the foot of the cross in which “Jesus gave Mary to us so that she would be “our” Mother”. In the words of Fr. Gerard, “dialogue changes us, it opens our horizons of understanding”.

Bro Gerard then referred to St. Dominic of Caleruega as a man of dialogue: “either he speaks with God in prayer or of God in preaching”. But beforehand Dominic also “listens attentively to God and to others”. He recalled the time when Dominic spent a whole night in dialogue with the innkeeper, who in the end was converted, but in addition to dialogue “Dominic must also have learned a lot from that conversation. He must have learned from that experience how to dialogue better with those who do not believe”. So he wondered whether as Dominicans here in Spain, “do we try to listen to and learn from people who are no longer interested in the Catholic faith? Perhaps, before converting others, we must convert ourselves to a way of preaching that speaks to the hearts and minds of the people of our time”.

After the Eucharist he went down to the “pocito”, the place where tradition says that St. Dominic was born, accompanied by some friars and Dominican Sisters of the Teaching, who came from Aranda de Duero, who sang the O lumen in a simple but beautiful moment of fraternity.