THE DOMINICANS AND THEIR HALLOWED HISTORY OF HONORING THE HOLY NAME

Blessed Jordan was a legendary preacher. His words were magnets for souls, especially the souls of young men who, after they heard Jordan preach the Gospel, would decide to trudge after the train of his dark cloak and become Dominican priests just like him. In the first half of the 13th century Jordan did the rounds of the university towns of Europe and he drew 1,000 professors and students into the cells of the Dominican Order. Jordan was an erudite German, whose straw blond hair wreathed a tonsure. A yarn (with threads of truth) had it that mothers kept their sons from going to hear Jordan preach for fear they lost their boys to him. Such was Jordan's eloquence that when news broke that he was on his way into a city, the Prior of the Dominicans who would welcome Jordan, bought large rolls of white fabric to make the white cowls for those who would join them.

What makes this all the more impressive is that Jordan inherited the reins from St Dominic just six years after the Order was founded. Jordan was Dominic's immediate successor. To be sure, Jordan was his own man, he had a charm all of his own, and was known for his rigorousness in making the priests in training adhere to the Rule, but he had a tenderness of heart towards his followers that made them gladly accept the dictates of being a Dominican. But that which he took from St Dominic was a reliance on the Holy Name of Jesus. Jordan spoke the name "Jesus" with palpable awe and reverence and the power of the Holy Name awoke in Jordan's listeners the call to religious life and in his relatively brief tenure as the leader of the Dominicans (he died at 47), Jordan founded 300 priories which were filled with new vocations.

It had been St Dominic who converted 100,000 of the men and women who had given themselves over to the Albigensian heresy. The Albigensian lie was a complex web, the spinners of which were convinced that all flesh was evil: thus they were given to the fatal falsehood that Jesus Christ was a creature made of essence but not human, because the Savior could not take on real flesh and blood because had He done so, He would have been in the confines of bodily matter which is intrinsically evil. They believed His birth and life was putative or apparent, almost like He had been a shadow of a man, but not a Person in reality.

The sects of Albigensians became ghastly death cults; propagating suicide to escape the evil flesh, promoting starvation as a virtue to waste the fiendish flesh and advocating perpetual chastity as a means of drastically limiting the births of squalling new members of the human species. If they had a satanic hate of the flesh (the Evil One was not keen on the plan for a race of humans made of flesh and blood) then that which drove this wickedness from their hearts was St Dominic's repetition of the Holy Name of Jesus in his preaching that Jesus was true Man and true God when he held audiences of them captive as he traveled through their strongholds in France.

Gregory X

Later in the 13th Century, after St Dominic and Blessed Jordan had gone to their eternal reward, the Catholic Church was mired in disorder. In spite of St Dominic's heroic efforts, the Albigensian heresy was still a bloody scourge. The reigning Pope was Gregory X - he called a council of Bishops in Lyons - so they might discern the best ways to weed out the Albigensian heresy which undermined the Divinity of Our Lord to the point they denied His humanity and often ended their own lives so as to be done with the foul flesh. Gregory X and his bishops discerned that they would propagate the remedy of the frequent, devout repetition of the Holy Name of Jesus among all the Catholics in all the countries of the known world. Gregory X entrusted the Dominicans with the mission of preaching the wonders of the Holy Name, and His Holiness set forth a letter to Blessed John (the Dominican leader who presided over the priories founded by Blessed Jordan) which commanded him, "to persuade the faithful to demonstrate more reverence for that name above all names, the only name in which we claim salvation- the name of Jesus Christ, Who has redeemed us from the bondage of sin...Wherefore, my very dear son, we, by our apostolic authority, exhort and enjoin upon you and the brothers of your Order to use solid reason in preaching to the people, that they may be led to comply with our desires."

It was also ordained that in every Dominican church an altar to the Holy Name be erected, and that societies be founded under the title of the Holy Name. If you wonder whether their efforts were successful, might I ask you, have you met any Albigensians lately?

A source on the life of Blessed Jordan is Marguerite Aron's St Dominic's Successor: The Life of Blessed Jordan of Saxony.

The text of the letter from Gregory X to Blessed John may be found here.

San Francisco is home to St Dominic's - an exquisite church - "truly a sermon in stone" wherein there is an altar to the Holy Name. I may have cause to visit San Francisco in the coming year and in such an event I will stop by St Dominic's.

St Dominic's, San Francisco