Praying at St. Dominic’s

St. Dominic de Guzman was a canon (priest) at the Cathedral of Osma when he met Cistercians preaching against the Albigensian heresy. He thought that there was a better way to preach against these heretics, so he pursued an ascetic life and set out to preach.

The order he founded, the Order of Preachers (or Dominicans), are known as the hounds of the Lord due to a dream that his mother, Bl. Joan of Aza, had while he was still in her womb. She saw a dog with a torch in its mouth setting the world on fire. Like the dog, her son would set the world on fire for Christ.

St. Dominic de Guzman. Note the dog with the torch in the bottom left from his mother’s dream.

A side character in today’s story was St. Dominic of Silos, St. Dominic de Guzman’s namesake. He was an abbot on the Iberian peninsula. When he was driven out of his first monastery by the king of Navarre, he moved to a less hospitable part of the country, where he founded a new monastery.

Blessed Joan of Aza prayed to him specifically because he is one of the patrons of pregnant mothers.

St. Dominic of Silos. Note his staff (abbot’s crozier) which would be in the room with the Queen of Spain when she was in labor.