SEVENTH CENTENARY OF ST. DOMINIC

New Zealand Tablet, 3 November 1921, Page 18

SEVENTH CENTENARY OF ST. DOMINIC

CELEBRATION IN DUBLIN. A Dublin message under date September 1, says; In St. Saviour’s Church recently there was a special celebration of the severfCh centenary of Saint Dominic. High Mass was solemnised and the celebrant was, in accordance, with custom, a Franciscan. Dealing with the labors of the Dominicans in Ireland, the preacher said that, Dominican historians are agreed that one of the brethren who witnessed the miracle of the loaves in the refectory of St. Sixtus in Rome, was an Irishman, who three years after St. Dominic death, came to. Ireland bringing some of his brethern with him, Through seven > centuries they had remained with the people of Ireland. He need not tell them how the Dominicans and the Franciscans labored through the centuries of religious persecution to keep the Faith alive in Ireland. What heroes were among them in those trying times! Dcrmod O’Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, bore with inconceivable patience the corrosive plasters they put upon his limbs, and they cut away his flesh Jbefore they put him to death. Richard Barry, Prioi; of Cashel, whose noble’ bearing so won the respect of his judges that he was .offered his freedom if he would only take off his religious habit, answered : “These garments are the livery of Christ. I have worn them from my youth and never will I put them off.” 1 ; : He was accordingly roasted over a slow fire. Lawrence O’Farrell , of Longford, when led to the scaffold, put his Rosary beads around his neck, folded his hands, and was - hanged. When suspended in the air, to the great amazement of the onlookers, he withdrew one of his hands and held his cross above his head in token of' his triumph. Such were the Dominicans in the Penal Days. It was not only by their preaching and the example of their . holy lives that they kept the Faith strong and lively,

but also indirectly by the propagation of the Rosary. In those dark days,. when it was a crime against the laws that ran in this land for a priest to say Mass or administer the Sacraments, the people gathered together in the homes of one another, or in some secluded spot on the mountain side to recite the beads of Mary. So, too, in the Famine days, when the priest was called to minister to those who were dying of the fever, whether in the country districts or in the streets of our cities, • again and again he found the people grasping in their emaciated fingers their Rosary beads, showing their undying confidence in the power and protection of the Mother of God.