Post #6180

His mother, while carrying him in her womb, had a dream of him, in which she seemed to be carrying a small dog with a torch in its mouth with which, once it was born, it would set the universe on fire. This dream meant that the splendor of his holiness and doctrine would inflame people to Christian piety. The outcome proved the omen, for he verified it for himself, and then continued it by means of the members of his order. His talent and his virtue were especially marked in combating the heretics, who sought to pervert the Tolosans by their pernicious errors; in which he works he employed seven years. Then in October 1215 he went to Rome with the bishop of Toulouse to the IV Lateran Council, to obtain from Innocent III the confirmation of the order which he had instituted. While they were deliberating, Dominic, on the advice of the Pope, returned to his house, in order to choose a rule. Back in Rome, on 22nd of December 1216, he obtained the approval of the Order of Preachers from Honorius III, Innocent's immediate successor. To which order Dominic gave, for arms, the shield of truth to teach the doctrine, and the sword of the word to preach it: the Dominicans count precisely numerous male and female saints who "applied themselves to study", such as their founder, the Word of God in the Gospel, the book of truth and "the book of charity" as St. Dominic calls it. He founded two convents in Rome, one for men and the other for women. He also called back three dead to life, and performed many other miracles, whereby the Order of Preachers began to spread wonderfully. He loved the Blessed Virgin Mary in a special way. But while convents were erected everywhere through his work, and very numerous people regulated their lives according to religion and piety, he was attacked by fever in Bologna in the year of Christ 1221. Realizing that he would die of it, he gathered his friars and those who were being formed under his direction, he exhorted them to innocence and integrity of morals. Lastly, he bequeathed them charity, humility, poverty as a certain patrimony; and while the friars said these words in prayer: "Hurry, Saints of God, come to meet him, oh Angels", he fell asleep in the Lord on the 6th of August. Then Pope Gregory IX included him in the number of saints, on July 13, 1234. His body, since June 5, 1267, has been kept in a precious marble ark, in the basilica of the same name in Bologna. On the occasion of the seventh centenary of his death, on June 29, 1921, Pope Benedict XV dedicated the encyclical Fausto Appetente Die to the figure of Saint Dominic. In it, the Pontiff writes of the Apostolic Patriarch, the following: «How he was completely a man of God and truly Dominicus [i.e. man of the Lord], so it was all of the Holy Church, which has in him an invincible champion of the Faith. The Order of Preachers established by him was always a valid bulwark in defense of the Roman Church. Therefore, not only can it be said that Dominic "in his days fortified the temple." (Ecclesiasticus L, 1), but that he provided for the defense of it also for the future, coming true the prophetic words that Honorius III wrote in confirming the nascent Order: “… the friars of your Order will be athletes of the Faith and true luminaries of the world”».