Preaching & Study
by Fr. Reginald Martin, OP
WDP Promoter of Preaching

I cannot imagine I am the only member of the Province who, watching the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou” a couple of years ago, was touched by Allison Kraus’ singing about going down to the river to pray, “studying about the good old way….” A song, like any other artifact, is the result of choices, and here the songwriter made a choice that renders this song altogether Dominican. Any two-syllable verb would have completed the song, but the word she chose was “study.”

The dictionary defines study as “the application of the mind to the acquisition of knowledge, as by reading, investigation, or reflection… a zealous endeavor or assiduous effort.” Think for a moment what this song would mean if – instead of studying – the singer had been “bothering,” “chattering,” “muttering,” “stuttering,” “pondering,” “dithering,” “grumbling,” or simply “wondering” about the “good old way” on her way to the river.

I’ve been invited me to give my vision – as Promoter of Preaching – for our common vocation, and I can sum it up in this one word: study.

When I was installed as pastor in Seattle a few years ago members of the parish’s Pastoral Council asked me what I thought of the Mission Statement they had recently drafted. I suggested only one change – adding the word “study,” so that the statement read “…we invite all people to deepen their faith through prayer, study, and the preaching of the gospel.” Study is the obligation of any Dominican who preaches, and those who come to hear us preach have the right to expect that before we open our mouths we have applied our minds to “the acquisition of knowledge… by reading, investigation, or reflection.”

John Chrysostom said we don’t define something by what it has in common with similar things, but by what sets it apart. Scholarship characterizes any school, so our ministry sites must be more than lecture halls. A former Master of our Order said that if Dominican parishes are not centers of evangelization we should give them up. Therefore, our ministries and our preaching ought to extend an invitation to those we serve – that they, too, may study for the preaching of the gospel.

I realize this may sound commonplace, but study is the defining characteristic of Dominican spirituality. The song from “O Brother” speaks of going off “…to pray, studying about the good old way….” The activities of prayer and study are parallel, and although this, too, might seem commonplace, it is, in fact, a particularly Dominican way of dong things. Benedictines or Franciscans pray and study differently than Dominicans, and I believe Benedictine or Franciscan sermons differ (or at least ought to) from ours.

I spent a summer in a Benedictine abbey, and I watched the monks read, and read, and read – not (as I understand it) to acquire knowledge, but to raise and unite their minds to God in prayer. A Benedictine may become smart along the way, but that’s not the reason to read. Benedictines read to become holy.

Franciscans produce great scholars, but this seems almost to be an accident; St. Francis himself was suspicious of school. At his Order’s first General Chapter someone argued that the Franciscan rule ought to be more practical. Francis replied

The Lord told me that He would have me poor and foolish in this world and that He willed not to lead us by any way other than that. May God confound you by you own wisdom and learning and, for all your faultfinding, send you back to your vocation whether you will or no.

For a Dominican, the work of study – the acquisition of knowledge – is an act of piety ordered to an end outside himself. Our study may not make us holy, but at the very least it ought to make the people we preach to think. It ought to call them to God, and it ought to equip them to preach in their own words.

In the song that began this reflection the singer extends a series of invitations. They are wonderfully balanced: “come sisters,” she says, “come brothers, fathers, mothers” and, finally, “sinners. The singer is not a priest, but she says she studied – acquired some knowledge – and this personal “zealous effort” has equipped her to invite everyone to join her in the river. That’s my vision of Dominican preaching.