Christianity is a religion so incarnate that it proclaims a Divine Mystery that takes our created humanity and shines the light through it. This is one of the key messages of Fr. Marie-Joseph Le Guillou. The Dominican theologian’s interpretation of Vatican II was formative for Pope Francis, and his thoughts on the transfiguration of our humanity—even of the body—have been no less significant for my journey.

According to Fr. Le Guillou, “the Christian life consists in allowing oneself to be taken by the light in order to become an epiphany of the love of God.”[1] This has implications for the body itself. No phenomenology of the body will ever be complete without attention to the Transfiguration of Christ and its meaning for the transfiguration, in the midst of crucifixion, of Christ’s disciples:

Participation in illumination allows the being to become what it ought to be. There is a transfiguration of the entire being, intelligence, body, sensitive nature. The flesh itself, the human being in its corporality, in its senses, is wholly recreated by charity. Charity has to pass all the way to our fingertips. If that doesn’t happen, something is awry![2]

I think this is such an astonishing thesis that it deserves widespread acknowledgment and a multiplicity of applications. I’ve tried my hand at this from time to time. Still, one question has always nagged at me: Why does Fr. Le Guillou arrive at this preoccupation in the first place? Certainly, the theme of transfiguration is worthwhile in itself. But there must also have been personal and historical factors that led Le Guillou into this terrain. What were they?

Recently, I was reading a compilation of early Dominican writings.[3] I had picked this book up and finished it before Pope Leo referenced it.[4] However, the Holy Father’s use of the tome has brought me back to meditating on its contents a bit more. As I ponder the early days of the Order of Preachers, I realize that this was a group of people who were intrigued by the very theme that become so characteristic of Fr. Marie-Joseph Le Guillou.

The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic

Dominic of Caleruega, or Dominic de Guzmán, founded an Order to preach and be preachers. But what we preach has to have meaning in our lives. And so his early followers were interested in Dominic’s whole life. One of the treatises that emerged in the first century of Dominicana is The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic. Rather surprisingly, the different ways are mostly bodily postures.

This text is for the most part a stale how-to booklet. At one point, however, it breaks free and falls into the orbit of divine beauty in a particular and remarkable way. The author tells us about the manifestation of divine love in Dominic’s own body:

Sometimes it seemed from the very way he looked that he had penetrated heaven in his mind, and then he would suddenly appear radiant with joy, wiping away the abundant tears running down his face. At such times he would come to be in an intensity of desire, like a thirsty man coming to a spring of water, or a traveller at last approaching his homeland. Then he would grow more forceful and insistent, and his movements would display great composure and agility as he stood up and kneeled down.[5]

Joy radiates from the saint. The tear ducts themselves are, as it were, seized by the Mystery of God. Dominic, from among the tragedies and weights of this life, is molded in some sense corporally by God.

Historical documents and canonization documentation

Other material amassed by the earliest disciples, especially for the sake of the canonization of the saint, is equally illuminating.[6] Various pieces can be assembled to paint a cohesive picture. First there is a nun of St. Mary in Tempuli, Sr. Cecilia. She provides the only physical description of the saint that has come down to us:

I would describe the appearance of Blessed Dominic in the following way. He was slender and of medium height. His face was handsome and somewhat ruddy. His hair and beard were reddish and his eyes beautiful. From his brow and eyes emanated a kind of radiance which drew everyone to revere and love him. He was always cheerful and gay, except when he was moved to compassion at the sight of someone’s affliction. His hands were long and well-formed and his voice was of a pleasing resonance. He was never bald, although he wore the full corona, which was sprinkled with a few grey hairs.[7]

Aside from a plethora of details which we could take or leave at the theological level, Sr. Cecilia remarks here the radiance which drew everyone in. It emanated from his face, particularly the area around his eyes. Sanctity was visible. Its mysterious power was attractive.

Sr. Cecilia also mentions tears. We’ve already seen those in the Nine Ways. Moreover, they crop up in the testimony of Bl. Jordan of Saxony, Dominic’s successor as head of the Order:

Like the olive tree that flourishes and the cypress that grows taller, [Dominic] walked the floor of the church day and night, devoted himself unceasingly to contemplation, and hardly showed himself outside the monastery. God had granted him the singular grace of weeping for sinners, for the unfortunate, for the afflicted: bearing their misfortunes in the depths of the sanctuary of his compassion, he let the ardent emotion from which he was boiling inside escape out of his eyes.[8]

An abundance of tears, that transfiguration of the eyes in the midst of this vale here-below, is not the only transformed corporal reality that Jordan speaks to, however. He circles back around to a “kindly joyousness” already familiar to us:

His mind was always steady and calm, except when he was stirred by a feeling of compassion and mercy. And since a happy heart makes for a cheerful face, the tranquil composure of the inner man was revealed outwardly by the kindliness and cheerfulness of his expression… By his cheerfulness, he easily won the love of everybody. Without difficulty he found his way into people’s hearts as soon as they saw him.[9]

As a modern biographer puts it, Dominic “always seemed ‘smiling and joyous’.”[10] There was, that same biographer insists again, a “joy emanating from him, joy which showed plainly on his face.”[11] This was the case despite adversity: “Dominic was joyous in the midst of tribulations. and all the more radiant in proportion to their bitterness.”[12] Transfiguration takes everything—or should—but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that the beatitudes are realized on this earth.

It is clear that these early descriptions of Dominic had an influence on his Order, if not responded to a felt need. Something had attracted attention. Such attention tends to replicate itself. It reaches for new territory. Apparently, “the early Dominicans had the same proclivity for tears of repentance, conversion and prayer, as The Beginnings [by Bl. Jordan] and the lives of the first brethren indicate.”[13] Whether mimicry or contagion, Dominic’s presence is felt.

The interpretation of Dominic’s experiences—or what he offered on display, whether with or against his will—were not seen by his religious brothers as coincidental. They were appreciated as part of the Christian mysteries; they were properly religious experiences. Indeed, as a biographer writes, “it should not surprise us that his whole person was lit up with the kind of radiance characteristic of ascetics and men of prayer, and that this radiance was viewed as eminently religious in nature.”[14] This is one reason we have the Nine Ways in the first place.[15] Dominic’s community was taken by the bodily effects of Dominic’s prayer. They wondered about what elements of this were replicable, even if the way that God takes hold of us corporally is not subject to experimental verification and control, solid predictions, and uniformity.

… and Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, and me, and you

Taking this little historical detour to southern Europe in the thirteenth century is, I think, worthwhile. It fills out a lot of my understanding of the theme of the transfiguration of the body. Not only is Dominic himself a fascinating case of the physical manifestation of God’s beauty. But his earliest followers thought so. This is a part of the Dominican tradition. It is not, then, entirely unexpected that the Order of Preachers should attract or produce a Marie-Joseph Le Guillou.

Of course, though, the taking up of human beings into God—not only in the soul but also in the body, “down to the fingertips”—is not only a historical theme. It is part of the mystery opened to us today. This entails a certain hopefulness. There is hope even for the least of us or especially for the least of us. In this world, divine beauty has its beachheads.

[1] Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, Qui ose encore parler du bonheur? (Paris: Éditions Mame, 1991), 90.

[2] Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, Des êtres sont transfigurés. Pourquoi pas nous? (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2001), 17.

[3] Simon Tugwell, ed., Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982).

[4] In his Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te (October 4, 2025), 66n54.

[5] The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic, in Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 94–103, at Fourth Way of Prayer, 97.

[6] My sources here are two recent and less recent biographies: Augustin Laffay and Gianni Festa, Saint Dominic and His Mission, trans. Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2025); Guy Bedouellle, Saint Dominic: The Grace of the Word, trans. Mary Thomas Noble (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1987).

[7] Sr. Cecilia, Miracles of St. Dominic, 15; Lehner, 183–84, in Laffay and Festa, Saint Dominic, 54.

[8] Jordan of Saxony, Libellus, 12; Bériou-Hodel, 612–13, in Laffay and Festa, Saint Dominic, 13.

[9] Jordan of Saxony, The Beginnings, 103, 104, in Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 95.

[10] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 96, citing Bologna, 7.

[11] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 219, referring to Jordan of Saxony, The Beginnings, 103.

[12] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 96.

[13] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 99.

[14] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 100.

[15] Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 245–49.