6_01 - Dominican choir singing at the mass on Sunday to celebrate the 800 years of the Dominican Order in Ireland. Photo: John McElroy. The Master of the Dominican Order was in Dublin on Sunday to help commemorate the eighth centenary of the arrival of the Dominican Order in Ireland.
In 1224, three years after the death of their founder, St Dominic, and nearly eight years after the foundation of the Order in 1216, twelve members travelled from Oxford to Dublin, setting up a priory on the north bank of the Liffey where the Four Courts now stand.
There are now 125 Dominicans in Ireland, of whom 17 are young men currently in formation.
“Today, we thank the Lord for the gift of 800 years of Dominican presence and preaching here in Ireland. Mercy and compassion moved Jesus to do miracles. Mercy and compassion prompted the friars to venture to places far and near to preach Jesus, the Light of the world, lumen gentium, to accompany people so that, with the light of Christ, they may overcome what St Thomas Aquinas calls the twofold darkness of ignorance and sin,” Fr Gerard Francisco Timoner, OP, told the hundreds in attendance at St Saviour’s Priory on Dominick Street in the heart of Dublin city.
“Thanks to God’s unending grace, our Dominican confreres brought and continue to bring the Gospel to countless persons here in Ireland and beyond this beautiful island. It is tempting to think that your endurance and growth as a province concretely indicates how much God loves you. To a significant sense, that is true. But the number of friars and the thousands of people you serve are an indication of how God provides, i.e. foresees, not your needs, but the needs of the Church and the world.
“The past 800 years are a manifestation of Divine providence, of how God provides for his people. God cares for you, God cares for his people through you,” he said.