Apostleship of PrayerSpirituality
Dominican Spirituality
"To contemplate and to give others the fruits of contemplation."
Furthermore, the vocation of the Dominican was to be also that of a contemplative at large. So when Dominic came out of his cloister in response to some need of his age, he lived the life of a contemplative, his preaching being that of a contemplative praying out loud. So, in the formation of his members , Dominic was concerned with their growth as contemplatives with regard to God from which their preaching was to be derived; the goal of the foundation has always been to communicate by preaching and teaching the fruits which evolve from prayer and study within the fullness of contemplation.
The source for Dominic's contemplation was the Scripture especially Paul's Letters, and after that Cassian's Conferences. Again we find this Order producing such outstanding mystics as St. Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso. However, the contemplative was not merely to hand over the results of the contemplation to others, but that such knowledge was to be received just on faith:
The Dominican was to be educational in the highest sense for they were to form the consciences of men and women by educating them to reflect and to act for themselves.
The Preachers were to enter into the world as contemplatives so as to disseminate contemplation. Thus the Preachers brought a radical intellectualist approach to the Christian life and to contemplation. The mystical life for Thomas Aquinas "was characterized by the contemplation that matures from a Christian moral life."
Thus the contemplative rising to God is by an intellectual process, though it has to motivated "by charity, the form of all the Christian virtues. Man's multiple life concerns, life problems, and life activities are unified by love. This response to God in and through the concrete events of the everyday is Biblical contemplation." For Thomas the contemplative life means "a life in which [the] speculative interests predominate."
From the very beginning of the Dominican Order the aim was to give to the masses by preaching and teaching the fruits of their prayer and study, the dedication always being to an apostolic work and the salvation of souls. As we have seen above the lives of the Dominicans were lives of prayer and uninterrupted study so as to be authoritative teachers. The Order is dedicated absolutely to the Pope and under his authority the Dominicans elect their own superiors democratically with its laws generated from assembly of the Dominicans themselves.
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