Transformed By Grace for Full Stature:
Preaching the Truth & Beauty of the Gift
By Fr. Michael Dominic O’Connor, O.P.
“If you knew the gift of God, you would ask for it…” These words of Our Lord to the woman at the well capture both the fundamental conviction and method of Dominican Preaching. The Dominican is one who believes with the deepest confidence that preaching the truth and the beauty of the Gift of God is precisely what gives rise to the path of surrender and love in souls, which is the very path of their transformation in Christ.
The dual dynamic of gift and path that is at work here is wonderfully captured in the first homily that Pope Leo XIV preached after his election to the Chair of St. Peter. The Holy Father reflected on this dual dynamic in the life of St. Peter and at the heart of all Christian salvation, saying: “Peter understands both of these things: the gift of God and the path to follow in order to allow himself to be changed by that gift. They are two inseparable aspects of salvation 4 | entrusted to the Church to be proclaimed for the good of the human race” (Homily, May 9, 2025).
Two inseparable aspects of salvation: but two aspects that—most importantly—rely upon an inner logic of ordering and movement. It is always the gift of God that must come first, that must first be made known and be welcomed— in order that the path of discipleship and conversion and transformation might be born within the human heart, in that very place where the one who has encountered the gift of God comes to desire it all the more: asking for it, and allowing himself to be changed by it.
Pope Leo rightly notes that this twofold mystery of salvation—the gift of God and the path to follow in order to be changed by the gift—has been entrusted to the whole Church to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth for the salvation of souls. But in a special way, the Dominican rejoices in this articulation of the evangelical mission of the Church because it corresponds so deeply to his own defining conviction and to the grace of St. Dominic that is his charism and inheritance.
St. Dominic is known to have especially treasured the Epistles of St. Paul. One might well wonder if his favorite Pauline verse was not that very verse wherein the Apostle articulates to the Romans this principle which resonates so profoundly with the mission of the Order of Preachers: “Be transformed by the renewal of your minds” (Romans 12:2)—by the faith that sees the truth and the beauty of the gift of God. St. Dominic believed that it would never be sufficient for the preaching of the Gospel to center on moral exhortation, to focus firstly and lastly on “behavior modification.” This lover of the Truth understood that the deepest and surest transformation of the human person into Christ could only come by way of “putting on the mind of Christ,” by seeing more and more—with the light of faith and the gift of grace—as God sees. Indeed, St. Dominic knew that when one sees as God sees: one sees that everything is gift in the One Who is all in all.
Living and abiding in the grace of St. Dominic, the Dominican preacher believes firmly and truly that it is the primacy of God’s grace, the centrality of God’s gift, of His divine initiative, of His saving work in every human soul, that alone can sustain and foster and bring to full fruition the complete transformation of the human soul by that same gift of grace. And so it is that the Dominican wants nothing more than to be a “preacher of grace”—one who never tires of unveiling the truth and the beauty of the gift of God: the Gift that is the very person of Jesus Christ.
In the arresting words of St. Augustine: “You cannot love what you do not know.” If love is the crowning glory and ultimate end of the Christian life, it belongs to the preacher to lead souls to the full embrace of that love by opening their minds ever more to the beautiful, glorious, saving truth of Who God is, of what He has done for us in Jesus Christ, and of all that He has prepared for us in the Heaven of His own Heart. Because: if you truly know the gift of God—you will ask for it, and welcome it, and allow yourself to be changed by it ever more—unto eternal life.
✠
Fr. Michael Dominic O’Connor, O.P., entered the Order of Preachers in 2006 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2012. He is the Director of Liturgical Music and lecturer at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD. He is also the Director and Co- Founder of The COR IESU Project, a Dominican preaching initiative that assists in priestly formation..
