The Way of Truth

Extract

Though it is eminently true that there is but one way for all men through the tangled wilderness of human life, namely the way that has been opened and trodden by Him Who declared: I am, the Way, nevertheless there is a sense in which it is true to say that the ways of God are as diversified as the individuality of those who seek Him. All are Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, but the hierarchy of place and function within that Body comprehends, and indeed demands, a variety of state and action that covers all the needs and capacities of human nature. It is not a difference of way, but rather a difference of emphasis. In its essentials the Christian life and the Christian ideals are the same for all men—union with God through union with the God-man; but in its variety of emphasis the Christ-life which men are called to lead is a jewel of a myriad facets.

It is in this sense of emphasis, therefore, that we may speak of Dominican spirituality as the Way of Truth, without wishing to appropriate that quality exclusively to the Order of St. Dominic. The word Veritas, the distinctive motto of the Order, undoubtedly sums up the ideal which St. Dominic realized in his own life and set before the members of his Order as the essential means of their sanctification and of their apostolate. Into how great a tree this mustard seed can grow is made strikingly clear in a notable work of the late Père Joret, O.P., which has recently appeared in its English translation.