Henri Dominic LacordaireIn listing the greatest preachers produced by the Order which bears the name of "Preachers," one man who most certainly should be near the top of the list is Henri Dominic Lacordaire. After the original three great preachers, St. Dominic, Blessed Reginald, and Blessed Jordan, it would be hard to find any man who influenced so many people by his preaching. To Lacordaire, also, must go much of the credit for the rebuilding of the Dominican Order in its hour of need.

Henri Dominic Lacordaire was born in Burgundy in 1802, one of four sons of a doctor who died when the children were very small. Being delicate in health, Henri was left in the country when his mother went to the city to work, and he grew up among peaceful and beautiful surroundings, far from the turmoil that was agitating France at that time. He was a lively, intelligent boy with a gift of oratory, and soon became the favorite of a teacher who was intellectually gifted but spiritually disturbed. For ten years the brilliant lad wandered outside the Church, unwilling to abandon it, but unable to reason his way back. Finally, at the age of twenty two he returned to the sacraments at the cathedral of Notre Dame and, constitutionally unable to do anything by halves, threw over a promising career to become a priest.

At the Sulpician seminary he discovered that his impetuous and argumentative nature was a definite handicap. The Sulpicians were conservative and suspicious, as well they might be in a country still riddled with Jansenism. They finally sent their brilliant and uncomfortable student off to study theology in Paris. Here he was ordained in 1827, to the tremendous surprise of his friends and in spite of the doubts of the clergy. The Archbishop, who had ordained the impetuous young man against the better judgment of all the wise and prudent, temporized by sending the young firebrand to teach catechism to thirty school girls at the Academy of the Visitation. It was hard to see how he could get into trouble there, but he did; the sisters reported, regretfully, that he was too intelligent.

Bursting with zeal and with ideas of what to do with it, the young priest decided to go to America, which was desperately in need of priests. He was offered the post of superior of a seminary in the new country, and one can only wonder what American Catholic history might have been had he not, at the last minute, met a brilliant and misguided man who was to change the course of his life and that of thousands of others. This was the Abbé Lamennais, a twisted genius whose ideas of spiritual and social reform sounded excellent to the zealous young Father Lacordaire.

Lacordaire's association with this man was to last a year and to bring him to the brink of disaster. They worked together publishing a paper that set all France aflame with new religious energy and which did not, at first, show its anti clerical bias. They planned together for a new religious order. And then the Abbé Lamennais took issue with Church authority, and when the battle lines were clearly marked, his young friend had to turn sorrowfully away from him rather than defy the Church himself. Lamennais went from disaster to disaster and finally died outside the Church he had served so brilliantly but so imprudently. Lacordaire, to whom friendship was the most sacred thing on earth, had to pick up the pieces of his life and start over. The archbishop of Paris, who might well have penanced the young priest for his indiscreet zeal, acted upon inspiration and offered him the pulpit of Notre Dame for a series of Lenten sermons.

Lacordaire's success was phenomenal, his preaching causing a sensation that no one before or since has ever produced in Paris. His opening conference at Notre Dame was preached to 6000 people, mostly men; the numbers increased until there was "standing room only" for hours before the sermon was scheduled to start. For two Lents he packed the cathedral with people and preached to them on Christian doctrine. Then, on his last Sunday of the second series, he made an announcement that rocketed through Paris like lightning; he was retiring from the pulpit. He was going to Rome. Rumor added the incredible tidings that he planned to become a monk.

The religious orders were banned from France, and if Lacordaire became a monk he could never return, the ultimate sorrow for a Frenchman. Once in Rome, he thought over the situation, prayed about it and studied the rules of all the orders; then he came up with the most dazzling idea so far he would become a Dominican, and bring the Order back to France. It took courage, persistence, and daring, qualities to which he added a flair for the dramatic. His enthusiasm was contagious as always, and he and his companions went to the novitiate. The weather was cold and miserable, and they were foreigners among people who did not share their enthusiasm. Still, in spite of illness and drastic misunderstandings, the group persevered.

This first group of disciples is worth a second glance. They were all young men Lacordaire's appeal was always to the young all happy and doing well in their professions. Two were artists, one an architect, one a lawyer; Alexander Jandel had come to Rome to be a Jesuit, and there was a young Jewish convert among them. Two of the most promising members died of tuberculosis while in the novitiate. Still, the group survived, and the day came when Lacordaire set out for France, wearing the forbidden habit and carrying an old soutane which a friend had forced upon him in case he should have to wear it outside his habit. He struck Paris like an atom bomb. Some hated him, some thought he was another Elias; no one could possibly ignore him.

Once again the archbishop of Paris displayed the courage of his convictions, and though even he wondered about the wisdom of it, allowed Lacordaire to go into the most famous pulpit in the world wearing a religious habit that had been outlawed in France. The king argued with the archbishop, anticlericals marched; the great preacher remained. Lacordaire preached for seven years in the pulpit of Notre Dame, and became so much a part of that edifice that his name will always be synonymous with it to men of his country.

Lacordaire's attempt to bring the Dominican Order back to France was successful, even though it moved more slowly than he liked. He first of all organized Third Order groups, then opened houses of the First Order. When these were firmly established, he rebuilt the ruined monastery at Prouille, abandoned to the weather for nearly a century. His was a tempestuous approach to spirituality, that of an enthusiast. But, as he says plaintively in one place, "What is difficult is to carry the cross each day, the cross which is not bloodstained but which bruises the skin a little without making it bleed, and which is composed of restraint, tediousness, and languor. If one could only mount Calvary once and for all, and give one's body once and for all to the executioners, what pleasure! But no, the torment is in detail; a little cut of the whip, a little slap in the face, a little humiliation."

Père Lacordaire was occupying three positions when death caught up with him; he was provincial of France, headmaster of the boys' college, and founder of the Third Order teaching fathers, each of these a task which made endless demands on his strength. A few months before he died he was made a member of the French Academy, the highest honor his country could bestow on him, but those who saw him receive the honor wept without restraint, for the signs of death were on his face and in his slow movements. He fell victim to a paralytic stroke while saying Mass, and died some months later, in November, 1861, mourned by his country, by the Order, and by the world.