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Dominus Illuminatio Mea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Timothy Radcliffe OP
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Extract

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When I received a letter from The Summoner of Preachers inviting me to preach this Sermon before the University, I felt deeply honoured. But this turned to alarm when I discovered that there was no set text or topic. I was invited to talk about anything I wished. And this disturbed me because, within my tradition at least, what differentiates a sermon from a mere expression of opinion is that it starts from a text, a text that you have not chosen, may not like, and may well not understand.

Anyone who attends the Eucharist will have to listen to some extraordinary texts, which celebrate the squashing of the Amelekites, Moab becoming one’s footstool, the cleansing of houses suffering from leprosy, and the torments of the damned. And after we have listened, we say: ‘Thanks be to God’. The purpose of the sermon is to help us to be thankful, to discover some apparently bizarre or alarming text as a gift. The preacher should be the perfect host who shows us how to welcome the strange text, an exercise in hospitality of the heart and the mind.

But there was no text. And then I spotted a text at the top of the letter, Dominus Illuminatio Mea, ‘The Lord is my light’, the motto of the University. It is a quotation from the beginning of Psalm 27 in the Vulgate, Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea. Quem timebo? The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?’

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 72 , Issue 851 , July 1991 , pp. 308 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Albert and Thomas, Selected Writings, ed. & trans, by Tugwell, Simon OP (New York, 1988.) p. 95Google Scholar.

2 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation; the political origins of our time, (Boston, 1957.) p. 73Google Scholar.

3 Lodge, David, How Far Can You Go? (London, 1981) p. 169Google Scholar.

4 Steiner, George Real Presences: Is there anything in what we say? (London, 1989.) p. 156Google Scholar.

5 Aquinas, Thomas St., How to Study, Commentary by White, Victor OP, (London, 1947.) p. 4Google Scholar.

6 quoted by Steiner, op. cit., p. 156.

7 ibid.