We find the answer in the gospel chosen for today. Before he died, Jesus sends the disciples on their mission. As the Father sent him, so he sends them. This fragile and fearful little community is scattered. And yet they are to remain one as the Father and the Son are one, for they are to gather humanity into the unity of the Kingdom, God's own unity. The disciples are scattered and gathered together.

When Dominic dispersed the first sixteen brethren, to study and to preach, they resisted. They did not wish to break up their cozy little community in the south of France. But for once Dominic insisted. He had a vision of a new sort of religious Order, perhaps the first of its kind, which would be sent to the ends of the world and yet remain one. The unity of the Order is part of our preaching of the one Kingdom. And that is why the Order has always remained one, unlike some others. It would make no sense to have a divided Order of Preachers.

When the brethren and the sisters of San Rafael arrived here on the West Coast, it was in a sense the end of the journey. Dominic could send us no further westward. But it was a new beginning, because here on the Pacific Rim all worlds meet. West meets east. Here you can encounter every sort of culture, every nationality, every religious view, every crazy sect, every political option. How can we realize here Jesus' prayer, that we shall all be one, as he and the Father are one? This is the challenge here. How can we gather God's varied children into the unity of the Kingdom?

Today's gospel roots that unity in the truth. "Consecrate them by means of the truth. Your word is truth." The truth unites us. And Veritas, truth, is the motto of the Order. It was this that first brought me to the Order. When I left school, I became a friend for the first time of people who were not Christians, and who tried to convince me that my views were crazy. And the insistent question for me became: "Is my faith true? If it is, then it must be the most important thing that there is. And if it is not, then I ought to be honest and give it all up." At this point, I remembered that there was an Order that had the motto "Truth," and I decided that I wanted to join it. The problem was that I could not remember which Order it was. So I telephoned the Benedictines who had educated me and they told me it was the Dominicans. Within days, I was in the Provincial's office, telling him that I wanted to join. Admittedly it was a bit frustrating: he wanted to talk about football and I wanted to question him about transubstantiation. But here I am!

In the truth, we are one. But in the contemporary Church it is often claims to the truth that appear to divide rather than to unite us. Different groups within the Church claim special insight: conservatives, liberals, Thomists, feminists, liberation theologians. And we can be immensely intolerant of those who differ from us. There is a new stridency in the Church, which threatens our witness to the Kingdom. I must say that I have not found the brethren and sisters here to be deeply split and divided. But if we are to be preachers of the kingdom, we must still reflect on how to be bearers of the truth that overcomes divisions and unites.

I am always told that San Francisco is the land of tolerance. Anything is possible here. Tolerance is good, and we Christians could benefit from a lot more of it. But tolerance alone is not enough. Absolute tolerance fails to take the other person seriously. It is patronizing. I am told that 25% of all Americans believe in reincarnation, but if someone tells me that they were Napoleon in a previous life, or that God is a green rabbit, then it is not enough to say: "Well, if that is what makes you happy, then it is fine by me; just be comfortable with your feelings." That is immensely condescending.

Jesus prays to the Father to consecrate the disciples in truth. God's truth consecrates, makes holy. It transforms us. We are tempted to make the truth something that we possess, our property. We wrap it up in a few formulas. We try to master it. And this is not surprising in a society that is dedicated to private property. Like everything else in the world, the truth has become something that you possess.

But God's truth cannot be owned. It is a gift that cannot be mastered. It breaks open all our attempts to trap it in our words. It busts open our little ideologies. The word of God is truth that searches and probes us. It is a two edged sword. De Chazal said that the Bible is not a book that we read. It reads us. It brings us face to face with the truth of who we are. It confronts us with the truth of the other person. It brings us to glimpse the inconceivable truth of the Holy God.

To be a preacher requires two apparently contradictory qualities: confidence and humility. We need the confidence of Paul who wrote in the second reading: If you confess with your heart that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." There is a clear declaration. Without confidence, we cannot preach. We must dare boldly to proclaim our faith.

But also we need the humility of those who know that we know so little. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, of God we know nothing. We are mendicants for the truth, happy to beg a little bit of illumination from everyone whom we meet on the road. As Gregory of Nyssa said, we go from beginning to beginning to beginning. We must learn humility in the face of the other person's beliefs. They may be wrong in many ways, but they have something to teach us. Thomas remains a permanent inspiration for us Dominicans, because he had that perfect balance of confidence and humility. He could write the Summa Theologica, and claim that all that he had written was as straw. The mystery dissolves all arrogance.

I remember, as an eager young student of theology in Oxford, meeting a great Dominican theologian, Cornelius Ernst, on the staircase. It was the feast of the Assumption. And I stopped him and said, "Come on Cornelius, please tell me in a few words what this feast is all about." I was in a hurry and had no time to waste. It was time for breakfast. And he smiled and said, "Oh dear. Go and buy a good bottle of wine and come and see me this evening." By the end of the bottle, I realized that I was just at the beginning.

Consecrate them in truth. This is a truth that heals and unites because it is a truth that transforms us, that undergoes all our claims to domination, explodes all ideologies, and breaks down the boundaries. It consecrates us in the love, which is the life of God.

Many of the divisions between human beings, and even within the Church, spring from fear. We may absolutize our own positions because of a fear of those who are different. Fear hardens genuine insight into ideology. The traditionalist may fear that the tradition will be betrayed and the Church will fall into chaos; the feminist fears that the wisdom and value of women will be denied; the liberation theologian fears that the injustices of this world will be left unchallenged. These fears are perfectly understandable. I share them all.

But Jesus has prayed to the Father that we may be one in the truth, and Jesus' prayer is answered. He prays that the disciples may be protected by the most holy name, to which this Western Province of the brethren is dedicated. The Father hears him. We have no need to be afraid of anything.

If we are indeed consecrated in the truth, then there is no need for anxiety. We have no need to take refuge in ideological fortresses from which to take pot shots at the other. We can dare to continue together on the pilgrimage towards the truth that makes us free, and holy and one.

This was the confidence of Dominic, that courageous man. He sent the novices to preach; he took the risk of giving every brother a voice in the government of the Order. He sent us, brothers and sisters, to the ends of the earth, even as far as the West Coast of the United States. He trusted that the Lord will be with us. It is this trust that can make us preachers who are so confident and humble, who know so much and so little.

Today we celebrate 150 years since the brethren and the sisters of San Rafael established the Order on the West Coast. I went to Benicia, to see the graveyard where nearly every sister and brother is buried. A few are buried elsewhere, such as Brother Joseph Alemany, the first Archbishop of San Francisco, who lies with his successors. There in the graveyard we are indeed one, in what one brother described as the perfectly united community. There are no ideological tiffs in the graveyard. Today we remember all those who have gone before us, all those previous generations, and celebrate our unity with them. This is not an ideological unity. Our predecessors would have been surprised at much that we say and do, and a bit shocked that we do not get up at 3 am to sing Matins and that we eat meat. We would be equally surprised if we knew what those who will come after us will get up to! What unites us is a deeper truth, that we can barely begin to imagine; a truth that consecrates us, and draws us beyond all divisions; a truth which is the unutterable love which is God. This is the mystery we are called to preach.