October 13, 2015, 12:32a.m. – THE FAITHFUL and lay Dominicans were urged to practice humilty and forgiveness on the first day of the Asia-Pacific Region Dominican Family Retreat at the UST Quadricentennial Pavilion on Oct. 12.
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., former master of the Order of Preachers, called upon the faithful to extend forgiveness at all times.
“Sometimes, it’s hard to forgive because we consider ourselves as the victims,” Fr. Radcliffe said.
Fr. Radcliffe said the faithful should trust the power of God’s forgiveness. “If we believe in God’s forgiveness, then even in the desert of our lives, God could bring fertility. We are trusting that God’s creative forgiveness will work,” he said.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines and member of the priestly fraternity of St. Dominic, said the Jubilee Year of the Order of Preachers should also be a year of “intense renewal.”
“If you want renewal, you have to get down and kneel. If we are to be faithful to the spirit of St. Dominic, we must kneel again,” Villegas said in his homily during the opening Mass.
Villegas said the Dominican community should practice humility.
“If we are to be an Order of Preachers, we must firstly be an order of kneelers who are willing to serve, to wash the feet of one another. The world stops turning for the beloved one,” Villegas said.
The retreat runs until Oct. 14 at the UST Quadricentenial Pavilion. Lea Mat P. Vicencio
