Spiritual athleticism is NOT the Way

St. Margaret of Scotland

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I served the first three years of my priesthood right here at UD. 2005-2008. I was a campus minister and professor of English and theology. After three months of hearing confessions, I realized that some (maybe most?) Catholic UD students suffered from a form of Pelagianism. How so? They seemed to believe that God only loves them when they were sinless, thus making holiness possible w/o grace. IWO, in word and deed, they believed that grace was earned by being sinless. This is heresy. Plain and simple. Here's the truth: there is literally nothing you and I can do to beg, borrow, steal, or earn God's love. And there is literally nothing we can do to make God cease loving us. God is love. He is love by nature. Who He is is Love. God isn't someone above and beyond love Who loves. He isn't a super powerful human-like being Who loves this but not that. To be God is what it is to be love. We cannot beg, borrow, steal, or earn God's love b/c we cannot beg, borrow, steal, or earn God Himself. If God were to cease loving me, I would cease to exist. In fact, all of reality would cease to exist b/c God would cease to be love in failing to love me. So, how do you know – with absolute certainty – that God loves you? Easy. Do you exist? If you say, Yes, then God loves you. Freely, absolutely, unconditionally.

Now that that question is settled, we can move on to the more complicated question: do you love God? God loves b/c He is love. You and I are not love. We participate in His love (b/c we exist), but we are not love itself. IOW, we can sin. We can fail to love as we ought. This is where our problems start. One way of experiencing my sin is to feel or sense that God has stopped loving me. In the presence of Perfect Love, my imperfect love feels like divine abandonment. It feels like God has set me aside. Then, in my desolation, I start trying to earn back God's love with penances and prayers, sackcloth and ashes. We turn to moral perfectionism. Maybe if I am an absolutely morally Good Boy/Good Girl – forcing myself to commit no sins – God will love me again. We turn to liturgical athleticism. Maybe if I kneel longer, pray slower, add six more daily devotions, and wear three more scapulars, God will love me again. We start comparing ourselves to Those Other Sinners. Well, at least I am holier than him. He never goes to daily Mass! I do. Surely God loves me now. The Devil eggs us on in our vain efforts to win God back. Why? B/c all these efforts work to keep hidden from us the one truth we find hard to accept: God's love for us is absolute, free, and unconditional. Nothing can keep God from us. But we are more than expert at keeping ourselves from God. Our love for Him is almost always relative, bound, and conditional. So, Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” What did he tell us? God is love. He – Christ – is in God's love. And we remain in His love by following His commandments. What is his command? “Love one another as I have loved you.” And how does he love us? Freely, sacrificially. If you want a spiritual challenge, something to really put your faith to the test, forget the religious theatrics. Forget the idea that it's remotely possible for God to stop loving you. Drop the heresy that you and I can change God through pious deeds. Instead, go to your family and friends and ask for their forgiveness. Then, forgive them in turn. That's how you start and live your life in Christ.

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Don't give beer to snakes

St. Albert the Great

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Albertus Magus is in trouble with the Prior. In a fit of experimental zeal, he's taken some of the brothers' beer and fed it to a snake. The inebriated serpent escapes Albert's cell and is terrorizing the less scientifically curious friars by flopping around like a...well...like a drunken snake. For the sake of weak hearts and a calmer convent, the Prior forbids any future experiments with alcohol and snakes. We don't know what hypothesis Albert was testing empirically, but it was not done merely for the sake of curiositas. Albert – teacher of Aquinas and future doctor of the Church – was exercising the virtue of studiositas, the rightly ordered acquisition of truth with the whole of reality in view. Curiositas is an excess of the virtue of studiositas, leading one to attempt to acquire truth in a disorderly manner, or to grasp at only partial truth for the sake of another vice. Albert's drunken snake might appear at first to be a prank or a misguided attempt at acquiring scientific knowledge. However, we know that Albert believed that knowing something about creation is to know something about the Creator.

When we look for and find the first causes of the Real, we look for and find Wisdom. In a purely natural world, we might say that wisdom is knowledge plus experience. Wisdom is a long familiarity with what works. When we put God in the picture, we have to expand our definition. We have to look beyond what works and look for why what works works. This “why” is the core of knowing a thing scientifically, knowing its causes. And knowing the causes always leads us back to the First Cause, God. Sirach puts it beautifully: “Like a Mother [wisdom] will meet [the one practiced in the law], like a young bride she will embrace him, Nourish him with the bread of understanding, and give him the water of learning to drink.” When we want to come closer to God, we don't usually think of science as a viable method. But St. Albert did. By exploring – in an orderly fashion – created things, he found the ordered causes and effects of creation. Built into these created things is the divine purpose, a final cause, a telos. This telos is to give glory to God by being exactly what God made them to be. Nothing more or less. Be the perfect snake. Be the perfect rose. Be the perfect human person. Flourishing in one's final cause is the glory of God made manifest.

As unusual as it may sound, we can come to know and love God by knowing and loving His creation. Such knowledge and love will be imperfect, of course, but along with Scripture and our relationship with Christ through his Church, we can have all we need to realize our final cause. All that stands in our way is the disordered desire to be God w/o God – Pride. Pride fuels curiositas, leading us to think that we know what we cannot know. That our own efforts – unaided by grace – can coerce God into loving us more. Even as we work overtime to earn God's favor, we reject the very gifts He gives us to love Him by loving one another. It's a form of madness! To think that you or I can do something as a creature – as a made thing – to do something to make God love us. When we are only here to think that in the first place b/c He already loves us! St. Albert explored the created world and saw and heard and touched Divine Love and poked and prodded all the made things and found God in the perfectly ordered causes and effects of providence. He spent his life tracing causes/effects. Each cause is a psalm and every effect a prayer. He shows us how to be perfectly human by showing us how to be perfectly loved. Joy abounds where love is abundant.

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Votin' ain't prayin'

34^th Week OT (Th)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

One utopia after another has fallen to pride, greed, and violence. Robespierre's France. Stalinist Russia. Maoist China. Pol Pot's Cambodia. Castro's Cuba. Hitler's Germany. The human impulse to establish the perfect society seems deeply embedded in our DNA. What these murderous regimes really are is nothing less than perversions of our supernatural desire for the Kingdom of God. But we are impatient. So, we reach for the Kingdom of God w/o God. And we get Kingdoms of Men w/o godly rule. Pope Benedict XVI warned us not to “immantentize the eschaton,” that is, don't try to bring the fulfillment of salvation history – heaven – into the present age. We are not capable, right now, of governing ourselves or others through the radical demands of sacrificial love. We can serve the poor, the hungry, the sick and injured, the hopeless and abandoned. But cannot eliminate poverty, hunger, and disease through merely human effort. Inevitably, these efforts create brutal regimes that systematically grind down human dignity and spit on the imago Dei. Jesus says that the Kingdom is among us. So, we wait for Christ's coming again and the fulfillment of the Kingdom.

That we cannot create a perfectly just human society is no excuse not to try. Nor is our inability to be perfectly just an excuse to be unjust while we wait for the Kingdom. For now, we turn to God's mercy and the power of forgiveness to be as just as we can be. When we show mercy and forgive, to the best of our ability, we edge closer and closer to the perfection of the Kingdom among us. But even then, we wait for Christ. And we are on guard against the many false Kings that pretend to the throne. During this last election cycle, the friars probably grew tired of my constant refrain: “Brothers, put no trust in princes...or princesses!” No politician can save us. No policy or procedure or committee can save us. Certainly no party or ideology can save us. If asked, “Do you believe that President X or Governor Y can save you?” 100% of us would say no. But do we behave as if that no were true? Watching reactions to the 2024 election results – both good and bad – makes me wonder. Politics isn't religion. Voting is not praying. Winning is not salvation. Nor is losing damnation.

The Kingdom of God is among us. And you are a subject of the rightful King to the degree that you remain wholeheartedly committed in word and deed to the great work of bearing witness to His mercy. Your task – and mine – is to be agents of the King in subverting the rule of the worldly powers. Our subversion comes in the form of speaking the Truth. Diffusing Goodness. And celebrating Beauty. If you've never thought of yourself as a guerrilla fighter or a saboteur, well, perhaps it's time you start. What else could you be as follower of Christ?

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Why will you drink the Lord's cup?

29^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The Sons of Thunder ask Jesus for a favor. He listens to their request and says, “You do not know what you are asking.” Hearing this quiet rebuke, do the Sons blush, shamefaced? Do they withdraw their impertinent request? Maybe they bristle and double-down by insisting that they deserve this honor. Or make the argument that – practically speaking – they are the best men for the job. Mark doesn't record their reaction, so we are left to speculate. Had they been paying attention to their Teacher, they would've never made the request. Just before this tense scene, Jesus laid out his future for the disciples: “...we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise.” Is this the future they want? If they follow him, this is the future they will get! So, Jesus rebukes their favor, saying, “You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” They answer, “We can.” I like to think that their voices trembled in fear...just a little.

It never hurts for us to remember that we have committed ourselves to a Way of Life that ends in sacrifice. If your faith amounts to a consoling story of Being Good and landing in Heaven, then actually living the faith in the world is going to be rough. If the cup you drink is filled with sentiment, fluffy angels, weeping statues, and avoiding being naughty, then the Cross is going to come as a big surprise. James and John have it in mind that sitting at the right and left of Jesus is about power, influence, and prestige. Few of us share this delusion. But we may have our own fantasies to dispel. Maybe we think that following Christ is a guarantee perfect health. Or a promise of material wealth. Or the perfect middle-class family lifestyle. Some seem to believe that their faith in Jesus is a ward against having to think rationally, or actually participate in the life of the world. For others all this is just a respectable place to be on a Sunday morning. Good for business and way to keep the neighbors from talking. I dare say that whatever the case, the Cross is going to come as a surprise for us all. Despite everything the Lord has said, despite our long history as a Church, it will be a Big Surprise.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Wow. Father didn't get his coffee this morning!” Not true. I did. It's just that this Gospel scene always brings to mind my motives for belief. Why am I doing this? “This” being “being a Catholic; serving as a Dominican friar and priest.” And then I start to think about the motives you might have for doing this. For being Catholic, for being here at St. Albert's for Mass, for following Christ in an increasingly insane world. For being a novice friar just starting religious life. There are as many motives as there are people to have them. No doubt we all have a story to tell about our faith. How we came to it. How we keep it. How we win and lose day-to-day. And then I remember James and John and their ridiculous request and Jesus' sad rebuke. Can you drink the cup I will drink? IOW, can you hang on the Cross I will hang on? We say we can. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't say we can. But can we? Not as long as our faith is little more than a family-imposed requirement, or a social nicety, or a middle-class American habit. No one eagerly goes to the Cross for those reasons. The only reason to hang with Christ on the Cross is b/c you have become Christ and that's just how it ends. For him, for you, for the Church.

On Wednesday this week I'll teach the novices that homilies are supposed to be exhortatory. Encouraging. Yes, they can be challenging. Should be challenging. But above all, they must be encouraging. Like a coach at half-time during a tied game. So, where's the exhortation? Whatever your motivations for being here, for being a follower of Christ, know that Christ is with you. And not only Christ but his Church as well. We do none this alone. Even if you see yourself as a lone sheep among the wolves, you are not alone. You are part of a Body. James and John wanted – foolishly – to be at the head of the body. Jesus put them in their rightful place. Serving. That's where Christ should find us when he comes again. Serving. Take your gifts – that which brings you joy – and put them at the service of the Body. That's how God perfects us. Through the gifts He's given us. Each gift, every gift works together to bring the whole Body closer and closer to perfection. When it comes time to go to the Cross, you will go with the millions who have gone before. And once there you will greet the millions who follow after. Hold fast to your faith, praying, “We can. We can drink this cup.”

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Love God and do what comes supernaturally

28^th Week OT (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

“Licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness...” Paul says that these are works of the flesh. Works that indulge our appetites in a disordered fashion. These works keep us from entering the gates of eternal life. Not only do they prevent us from finding eternal unity with God, they also poison our witness here on earth and give scandal to those we are sent to serve. If we devote ourselves to the works of the flesh privately while bearing witness to Christ publicly, we become “unseen graves.” We become hypocrites. Jesus charges the Pharisees and scribes with weighing down God's people with burdens they themselves refuse to carry. But why should it matter that the Pharisees and scribes fail to follow the rules they impose? If following their rules makes me holy, why should I care if anyone else follows them? Jesus' point is that the rules don't make anyone holy. They are superfluous burdens. And the evidence for this is that the rule-makers don't follow their own rules! What makes us holy is the love of God and our love for Him. So, love God and do what comes supernaturally.

Now, it's this kind of wishy-washy “just love God” talk that makes us cringe. Maybe we don't want to admit it out loud, but we like the rules. We want the boundaries of good/evil. Clear, crisp lines that mark off right and wrong. If we're being totally honest, we love these black and white rules – most especially when they are applied to those sinners over there. Can you see the hypocrisy starting to creep in? If we talk about holiness purely in terms of loving God, then how do we know that everyone else is loving God in the same way I am? One way is to say “doing X and not doing Y” means you love God. That's what the Pharisees do. Pay your tithe of mint and rue and that means you love God. Don't work on the Sabbath and that means you love God. What happens over time? Doing X and not doing Y is taken to be “loving God.” Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus says no. It is not only possible but quite easy to do X and not do Y and still fail to love. Love of God and neighbor must come first and then everything you do and say and think follows. What you do, say, and think is evidence of your love. Or your failure to love. And the truest test of love is mercy. How quickly do you forgive? How sincerely do you will the best for others? How deeply do you desire that Christ be fully known by all? How much at peace are you in the world?

The Pharisees and scribes are hypocrites b/c they invent and then impose useless measures of what it means to love God. They don't follow these rules b/c they know the rules are useless. Christ has freed us from the works of the flesh, including the impulse and temptation to play at being holy for the sake of appearances. He has freed us from the need to sniff around others, searching for sin. He has freed us to love. So, love and do what comes supernaturally!      

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Trust needs no evidence

28^th Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jack comes home from work two or three times a week reeking of another woman's perfume. He “works late” frequently and seems to have lost interest in his marriage. The last straw is the way he hides his cell phone away so his wife doesn't see the texts he receives after hours. Seeing all these signs, Jill hires a PD to gather evidence of Jack's infidelity. After a month of following him around town, the PD reports to Jill that Jack is not having an affair. She sighs in relieve and says, “I knew he wasn't b/c I trust him completely!” This tells us that Jill does not understand the meaning of “trust.” If she “trusts” Jack after the investigation, it's b/c she has conclusive evidence. That's not trust; it's knowledge. She knows that Jack is not having an affair. If she had trusted him, she would have never hired the PD. Which comes first in the life of Christ: faith or evidence? Do we trust Christ and then understand the evidence in the light of faith? Or do we look for evidence and then decide whether or not to believe? The crowds want a sign. They want evidence that Jesus is who he says he is before they believe. Jesus says, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah.”

Of course, the sign of Jonah is Christ's three days in the tomb and his defeat of death in the resurrection. That's The Sign. The only evidence we need to believe. Believe that and the rest follows. Don't believe it and nothing else can or will follow. To say that faith comes first is not to say that only faith matters. God gave us reason to understand what we believe. But reason alone cannot get us to faith. Why? B/c reason alone never requires us to trust. What saves us is our participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ – our own partaking in the sign of Jonah that Jesus says is the only sign we need. So why do we clamor after additional signs? Locutions and apparitions? Why do we think we need something else to demonstrate the rightness of our faith? Well, why does Jill send a PD after Jack? She suspects that her trust is misplaced. She worries that she's been duped. She needs more. If you need more than the sign of Jonah to trust our Lord, you can certainly look for that more. Whatever it is. But know that that more is not really more. It's all you have. It's not faith or trust or belief. It's evidence. And that evidence quickly becomes your god. You become a follower of proof rather than a follower of Christ. And proof cannot save you. Paul says it plainly, “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”

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Don't be possessed

28^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

What riches do you put between yourself and our Father’s love for you? Here's the scene: the rich young man asks Jesus how he might inherit eternal life. Jesus patiently recites the commandments given to Moses. The young man tells Jesus that he has observed the Law all his life. And then in an moment that deserves its own gospel, Jesus looks into the young man’s heart, loves him, and with this love sees the gaping hole in the young man’s soul—the lack, the longing that defines him. Jesus sees the young man’s enslavement to things. What the young man lacks but desires is true poverty. Freedom from stuff. Freedom from ownership. BUT he has many things. And most importantly, he is possessed by those many things.

So, knowing that the young man seeks eternal life and knowing that he desires to be free of these things, why doesn’t Jesus just free him from his possessions? Why not cast out the demons of avarice and liberate the young man from his bondage? Jesus does exactly that. Jesus tells him as precisely as he can: go, sell your stuff, give to the money to the poor, and follow me. His exorcism is complete. But you see, an exorcism is effective only on those willing to be freed from their demons. The young man desires to be free. But he doesn’t will it; he doesn’t act. And so he remains a slave to his possessions. Jesus offers him control over his greed, control over his stuff, and instead, at the words of exorcism, the young man’s face falls and he goes away sad to remain sad all his days.

Here’s what you must understand about desire. Desire is at once longing and lacking, hungering and not having. To desire love is to long for it and to admit that you don’t have it. Jesus looks into the heart of the young man and sees his brightest desire, his strongest lack, and he loves him for it. But we cannot be a slave to two masters. You cannot give your heart to two loves. We must be poor in spirit so that we can be rich in God’s gifts. We must be poor in spirit so that there is room for Christ, room for him to sit at our center and rule from the core of our being. This is what it means for us to prefer wisdom to scepter and throne; to prefer wisdom to health and beauty; to account silver and gold as sludge. In wisdom, all good things come together in her company.

This is the point in the homily when I am supposed to exhort you to give up your earthly attachments. Exhort you to surrender your chains: your inordinate love of cars and money and gadgets and sex and drugs and rock and roll…But you know all that, don’t you? You know as well as I do that none of that is permanent. None of that can substitute for the love of God and the grace of his mercy. None of that will bring you happiness. It is ash and smoke and shadow and will never – despite the promises of luxury and attention – will never make you happy. You know this. I don’t need to tell you that nothing created can do what only the Creator can – give you a permanent love and life everlasting.

But let me ask you again: what riches do you put between yourself and our Father’s love for you? What possesses you and holds you back? If Jesus looked into your eyes and said to you: “You are lacking one thing for eternal life.” What is that one thing? My guess is that not many of us are held back by expensive possessions. Not many are held back by lands and jewels and gold reserves! Not many of you are suffering under the weighty burden of Gucci, Prada, Christian Dior and Yves St. Laurent!

Let me ask a different set of questions. Let’s see how many hit home. Are you rich in a fear that God doesn’t love you enough? Are you unlovable? Are you so rich in sin that a righteous God couldn’t possibly forgive you? Are you so rich in self-sufficiency, self-reliance that you don’t need other people? So rich in a personal knowledge of God that you don’t need others to reveal the Father to you? Are you so rich in divine gifts that you don’t need the gifts of others to make it day to day? Or maybe you’ve stored up your wealth in good works and can survive without grace for a while? Maybe you don’t need Jesus to look you in the eye and love you because your grasp of the theological and moral constructs of the human experience of the Divine are enough. Are you burning through your life on the fuel of self-righteous certainty – the false assurance that you’ve got it right all on your own (objectively and absolutely) and that there is nothing else for you to learn and no one competent to teach you? Are you so wise? Are you angry that no one else notices your wisdom? Does your desire for piety and purity bring you closer to your brothers and sisters in Christ, or is this desire an excuse to keep them at a safe distance? Is your public holiness also a private holiness, or is it a pretense that hides a furious lack of charity?

Let me ask the hardest question: what do you fear? More often than not we are slaves to our fears not our loves and we can dodge public responsibility for our fears. We cannot dodge Christ: no creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.

Despite these gard questions, I’m not worried. Not even a little. Here’s what I know: we desire to know God, we long to be touched by His spirit, we want more than gold, silver, or cold hard cash to be in His presence and to know his healing grace. We are here b/c He loved us here and we got off the couch, off the computer, off the cell phone, and we made it here this morning for this reason and no other: we cannot be happy w/o Him and there is no better or messier or more graceful place to find Him than among His mongrel children at prayer. Bring your lack to Him and do what needs to be done to follow Him.

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Let the angels do their job

St. Jerome

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We can separate the good fish from the bad – the fat catfish from the bony gator gar. We can keep the good fish and toss the bad back. That's a decision we make according to our culinary needs and tastes. It's not likely that anyone will along and dispute our choices. Small bass go back into the water. Big ones go on the wall as a trophy or into the skillet as supper. What happens when we extend the Good Fish/Bad Fish analogy to the parsing of souls at the end of the age? We can come away thinking that it's my job and yours to figure out who gets thrown into the bucket as good souls and who gets thrown away as bad. But here's where the analogy breaks down – as all analogies inevitably do. Fishermen separate good and bad fish. Angels separate good and bad souls. The analogy is about the separation of good and bad, not who does the separating. Fishermen are not angels. And neither are we. The standards we use to decide which fish to keep and which fish to toss back cannot be translated into standards for weighing souls. That's why the job at the end of the age goes to the angels. They are not burdened with our limited vision and animal prejudices.

For your growth in holiness and the maintenance of your graced soul: let the angels do their job. At the end of the age. Right here, right now, your job, my job is to serve as a kind of bait for any fish that might pass by. By word and deed, we serve as a lure, as an attractive enticement to taste the Good News...and maybe even take a big bite. What self-respecting soul sees a sour face, hears a harsh word, or feels a building judgment, and thinks: Yeah, I'll bite! If – as bait – we radiate potential condemnation to the fiery pit of Gehenna, then who will bite the hook? The Lord's bucket could be empty on the last day. And that means we have failed as bait. What happens to useless bait? Rather than trying to do the angels' job, do yours: be joyful tabernacles of the Lord's presence. Meet anger, pride, lust, despair with peace, humility, chastity, and hope. Meet ignorance of God with knowledge of His love. Meet the shame of sin with a word of mercy. And remember: the angels do the separating at the end of the age. Not me. Not you. Pretending to do the work of the angels just might get you a lesson in wailing and grinding of teeth.  

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How do Catholic witness?

Padre Pio

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I grew up in a world dominated by Southern Baptists. Not the suburban, semi-professional kind of Baptists, the almost non-denominational sort who are happy to live and let live. No, my Baptists were in-your-face evangelizers. The kind who would invite you over for a pizza party and then announce that we all had to go to church before dinner was served. The kind who'd take you aside and talk to you in whispers about asking Jesus into heart as your personal Lord and Savior. All this sales pressure naturally rubbed my introverted disposition the wrong way, so I went off to college and got baptized in the Episcopal Church – where Jesus was rarely mentioned! When I finally swam the Tiber at 33yrs old, I was happy to see that the Catholics weren't much into the whole We're the Sales Team for Jesus thing either. Catholics were happy to let their deeds do the witnessing. Out in the bigger world, this sort of witnessing bears much fruit. Hospitals, pregnancy centers, Catholic Charities, KoC – all and more speak volumes about the faith. But how do Catholics bear witness to the faith in a place like the very Catholic UD? How do Dominican friars witness to one another?

You might think that a place like UD or men like OP friars don't need to be witnessed to. We have the faith. We have daily access to the sacraments. We have Christ in the tabernacle and we carry him with us everywhere we go. We've got Cistercians, Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, LC, Dominicans (friars, sisters, and laity), FOCUS missionaries, seminarians, hundreds of lay faithful, and even the Jesuits! What more do we need to grow in holiness? Well, we need what every other sinner needs: constant, faithful witness to the love of the Father and His freely offered mercy. When OP friars profess simple and solemn vows, we ask for God's mercy and the mercy of the brothers. Giving and receiving this mercy is the only way any of this works. The light we refuse to hide under a vessel is the light of forgiveness. Grudges, slights (imagined and real), the desire for revenge, self-righteous anger, and the dark works of Pride prevent us from shining that light. Take a moment and ask God to reveal to you who it is you need to forgive. Who needs to see in the dark with your forgiving light? We bear witness by being Christ's instrument of mercy to sinners. And we start closest to home.

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Clericalism Sunday

25^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We're all familiar with Divine Mercy Sunday. We have Laetare Sunday during Lent and Gaudete Sunday during Advent. I propose we call today Clericalism Sunday! While the other especially-named Sundays are celebrations, CS will serve as a warning, as a warning to avoid the hazards of ecclesial ambition. And to be clear from the start: this is a warning for the clergy and the laity alike. We begin with a definition of clericalism: clericalism occurs when the legitimate authority of the clergy is abused; this abuse is usually motivated by ambition, but it can also be motivated by any or all of the Cardinal Sins. Clericalism manifests in dozens of ugly forms: the celebrity cleric who uses his celebrity to enrich himself; the failed actor-priest who uses the liturgy as his stage to perform; the failed politician-priest who uses the pulpit for campaign speeches; the failed CEO-priest who uses the parish as his personal investment bank; or the failed therapist-priest who uses his parishioners as patients. The most egregious form of clericalism is the pervert-priest who abuses his charges sexually. The most common kind of clericalism is described in the Gospel this morning: ecclesial ambition – “Who will be the greatest among us?”

The disciples are arguing quietly among themselves. Jesus asks, “What were y'all arguing about?” But they remained silent. Why did they remain silent? Because “they had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.” Their silence tells us that they know that along the Way of Christ there is no time for wondering who's the greatest among them. At least they had enough humility to be embarrassed! Good. There's hope for them yet. Jesus could've rebuked them severely. Instead, he tells them a simple truth: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Jesus tells us that ambition, especially ecclesial ambition – which infects the laity as well! – is best countered with child-like wonder and trust, receiving the Father's gifts with open hands, open hearts, and open minds, always willing and able to take in whatever the Lord sends our way. How do we fail at this child-like disposition? James tells us: “You ask but do not receive. . .” We ask for God's grace, but we do not receive them. And we cannot use what we do not receive.

Why do we ask for graces but fail to receive them? Part of the problem here is that God gives us gifts we didn't ask for. I asked for a better job and God gave me more responsibility. I asked for an “A” on an exam and God gave me more time to study. I asked God for a faithful spouse and He gave me lots of chances to be faithful. Another problem is that we sometimes don't recognize His graces when they come to us. That rare moment of quiet given to us to recollect ourselves. That gesture of goodwill from a troublesome co-worker. That chance to practice patience. Both of these problems – getting what we didn't ask for and failing to recognize a gift when it comes – both of these derive from the same source: ambition in prayer; that is, wanting, needing, desiring out of a sense of entitlement. The disciples have ambitions for power in Christ's Kingdom. Priests have ambitions for positions and influence in the Church. Laity have ambitions for recognition and reward in the world. All this ambition clashes with the child-like wonder and trust Jesus tells us is essential to flourishing along the Way: “. . .whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

So, how do we receive in a way that moves us along the Way? First, we must let go of any notion of what God's grace will look like. Any person or event could be a moment of grace. Since God can bring good from evil, even ostensibly “evil” people and events can be instruments of grace. Second, we must learn to ask for what we truly need not merely what we want. We ask not b/c our Father is ignorant of our needs but b/c in asking we receive. We acknowledge our dependence on His providence and cultivate the good habit of gratitude. Third, we must accept and live-out the truth that we ourselves can be instruments of God's grace to others – if we choose to be. Do I act, speak, think, feel in a way that signals to others that God uses me as a vehicle for his providence? Clericalist priests and clericalized laity signal entitlement and narcissism not the presence of divine gift. Lastly, how do I pray? Do I rattle off a litany of wants? Do I pester God with pet peeves and petty desires? Or do I ask Him to open me up and help me to receive all He has to give me? Am I willing to sincerely pray: “Father, help me to be the least so that I may do your great work in the world”?

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Music to the ears

24^th Week OT (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

If wisdom is freed by her children, then who or what is keeping her prisoner? Jesus says that the wisdom to see and hear his message of liberation is held fast by a stubborn need to see and hear nothing less than what we want to see and hear. The children of the age – that's us – play their lutes for John, but he does not dance. And we sing dirges for Jesus, but he does not weep. We say that John is demon possessed b/c he fasts from food and wine. And yet we say that Jesus is a glutton and drunkard b/c he does not fast. What is this generation like? Like children who want what they want but refuse to receive what they want when it's given to them! Those who accept John's fasting and Jesus' joy as both necessary for salvation liberate wisdom from the fickleness of the age. Now, obviously, Jesus is addressing this to those who were present to hear him and John preach the necessity of repentance from sin for salvation. For some, John's mortifications were too much. Too gloomy. Too Old School Religion. For others, Jesus' enjoyment of his Father's creation and his proclamation of divine mercy were too hippyish. Too bright and shiny. Too New Age Spirituality. Taken together, however, we get the wisdom of the Gospel.

And the children of the Gospel liberate wisdom from her fickle captors. The Gospel is both fasting and feasting. It is both a Word about sin and the Father's mercy. It is both a diagnosis and a cure. The Gospel convicts and frees. Totals up a debt and forgives it. Christ's message of salvation from sin and death is both hard to hear and music to the ears. It can be difficult to dance to and perfectly choreographed. Anyone who's sincerely and persistently lived a Gospel life can tell you that there will be days of joy and weeks of despair. Accepting both and loving nonetheless is the soul of wisdom. As Paul writes, “If [you] speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, [you are] a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.” Only the truly foolish believe that following Christ brings instant relief from living in the world while being set apart from it. Christ never promises us bliss on Earth. Nor does he order us into misery to bear witness to his Word. He does, however, promise us his love and orders us to love in return. Fasting, feasting, dancing, standing against wall, whatever. . .we are ordered to love, and we are ordered to be loving.  

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Unblocking Spiritual Constipation

24th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We can forgive Peter his panicked outburst. We know what it is to love someone and hear that someone say that they are going to die. Our impulse is to deny; to find a way around the problem; to defend. We're shocked by our loved one's apparent acceptance of death. We're surprised that they seem so much at ease with the inevitable. And we're wholly unprepared for the cold wave of grief that washes over us. Peter's outburst at hearing his friend's fate is almost instinct – “God forbid, Lord!” Jesus' response is unexpected, maybe even a little cruel: “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter goes from being The Rock to The Tempter in a matter of days. He goes from being The Keys to the Kingdom to being An Obstacle for the Lord so quickly that we have to ask what happened? Yes, Peter is upset that his beloved teacher has prophesied his own suffering, death, and resurrection. He's also upset that his teacher's enemies score a major victory over the gospel. But Jesus says that Peter is thinking like a man, like a creature, not like the Creator. He's seeing and hearing Jesus' end through the imperfect eyes and ears of someone who himself fears pain and death. And b/c of his limitations, Peter denies not only Jesus' mission of salvation, he denies his own part in that mission.

We can forgive Peter his panicked outburst. But maybe we shouldn't. He's spent three years with Jesus. Eating, traveling, teaching, healing, cast out unclean spirits. He's correctly named Jesus as the promised Christ. He's even been given the keys to the Kingdom, rising up to take charge of the other disciples and the Church. Yet, yet, he still hasn't denied himself, taken up his cross, and followed Christ. IOW, he's got the easy part of the Gospel mission down pat. But he's yet to wrestle with the costs of being a beloved disciple. Jesus' rebuke – “Get behind me, Satan!” – tells us that Peter's failure to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ is a temptation for Christ himself and for us. How so? So long as our faith remains a set of rules, or a list of beliefs, or an action plan for good moral behavior, we are an obstacle for ourselves. So long as we are pulling the minimum, doing to the least required, or playing at being holy, we are an obstacle. We are blocking ourselves from truly following Christ. And even worse – we are standing in the way of others truly following Christ. How do you move from being an obstruction to faith to being a catalyst for faith? Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ.

We might wish that Christ had given us a little more here. Like The Ten Easy Steps to Denying Self. Something that we can plug into our spiritual Fitbits and check off as we go. He didn't. What he gives us instead is a living witness. He doesn't tell us what denying self looks like. He shows us. Denying self looks like that [points to the crucifix]. It looks like dying for love. Not some slobbery romance novel love but agape love. The sort of love that arises from the deepest need to be of service. The sort of love that needs another to be rescued from sin and death. That sort of love can only be shown from the Cross – the tool of redemption. When Jesus tells us to take up our cross he means for us to accept, to welcome the means by which we will die for agape love. He doesn't mean to stop complaining about aches and pains, or to just learn to tolerate a rogue son or daughter. He means to search for, find, and embrace the instrument that will assist you in loving sacrificially. That instrument might be chronic pain, or a rogue child, or an intolerable injustice in the world. But it only becomes a saving Cross for you when you see it for what it is: your chance to love radically. Choose to embrace it.

Or. . .you can do what Peter does. Stare at your Cross, discern its demands, flinch, and become an obstacle for yourself and others. Find a mirror. Stare into your own eyes for thirty seconds. Say, “Get behind me, Satan!” Then. . .pick up your cross and follow Christ. Follow him all the way to Golgotha and on to the Wedding Feast!

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Your sin can't forgive my sin

St. John Chrysostom

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jesus is heaping hot coals on the hypocrites again! This time his target is the disciples. And by extension, us. So, it might be a good idea to figure out what hypocrisy is. Aquinas, quoting St. Isidore of Seville, tells us that the hypocrite is one “who come[s] on to the stage with a disguised face...so as to deceive the people in their acting” (ST II-II.111.2). He goes on to say that the hypocrite is “a sinner [who] simulates the person of a just man.” Hypocrisy then is essentially a form of lying, a dissimulation (Aquinas says) opposed to the virtue of truth. But what does this look like in daily life? Jesus gives us one example in his parable of the Splinter and the Wooden Beam. When I judge you for your sins while ignoring my own much greater sins, I am guilty of hypocrisy. Another example might be simulating holiness or piety while judging others for their apparent lack of such. Yet another example might be holding myself out as a fine example of right-thinking and right-doing while pointing out your apparent failure to be right and righteous. But at the center of hypocrisy is one of the worst sins a Christian can commit: self-righteousness – the lie that I determine whether or not I am right with the Lord.

Here's where the blind leading the blind becomes a real problem. If I am righteous by my own standards and in my own judgment, then I am as blind as I can be. Righteousness is a relationship with God, one that we – as sinful creatures – do not get to define. That's exclusively God's job. He requires our cooperation, of course. But whether or not you and I are righteous at any given point in a day is entirely His call. Not ours. When we take this job from God and give it to ourselves, we not only presume on His mercy, we also proclaim our divinity, a false divinity. Thus we succumb to the same temptation that Adam and Eve fell for in the Garden. We make ourselves gods. And we make the Devil happy. Unfortunately for us, this usurpation of God's prerogative to judge human righteous is fairly easy to achieve. We do it every time we mentally judge that guy at Mass who we know got drunk last night. Or that girl who's not dressed modestly for class. Or that neighbor who has the wrong candidate's sign in their yard. Or that friar who comes back to the priory after midnight. We do it in IOW every time we presume to declare a sinner guilty, knowing that we don't and can't have all the necessary information. Every time we think we are righteous b/c that guy over there is a sinner. As if his sin somehow makes my sin not a sin.

Jesus gives us a way out of this hypocrisy mess. Clean up your own act before you start worrying about your neighbor's act. When our spiritual lives are pristine, utterly pure, then we can point fingers and pass judgment. When will our spiritual lives be utterly pure? The hour we come to see God face-to-face. Not one second before.

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Surrender to Providence

23^rd Week OT (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Four Blessed are you's and four Woe to you's. Old English profs like myself call this parallelism. We love this literary device b/c it allows us to do that other thing we love: compare and contrast. Taking these eight Blessed's and Woe's together, we can figure out what Jesus means by “holiness.” Holiness is not about piety; that is, you can behave piously and remain comfortably among the accursed. Who was it that described the Pharisees, in all their pious finery, as “white-washed tombs”? Nor is being holy about morality; that is, you can successfully avoid every immoral thought, word, and deed that tempts you and still remain entrenched among the accursed. Does Jesus ever bless a good moral act in his sermon on blessedness? Nor is being holy about assenting to the truth of dogma; that is, you can memorize the Catechism and the Bible, recite them both w/o error in front of the Blessed Mother; swear you believe every word, and still find yourself playing among the accursed. Even the Devil can quote scripture. Having said all that, being pious, morally good, and orthodox are all necessary to growing in holiness but none of them (nor all of them together) is what it means to be holy. Holiness (blessedness) is principally about how we choose to suffer – that is, how we choose to understand and act on the pain and deprivation we experience while separated from our Father. Who does Jesus say is blessed? The poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those who choose to experience their mortal deprivations for the sake of his Name.

And why are these folks blessed? What's so holy about being poor, hungry, mournful, and persecuted? There's nothing especially holy about any of these conditions as such. What's special about being poor, hungry, etc. is that each of these conditions offers the ones who endure them the chance to see beyond their earthly limitations and rely completely on the loving-care of God. They are given a clearer vision of what it means to be humble before the Lord than those who might rely on their wealth and good name for comfort. We are all called to holiness regardless of our state in life or the condition of our lives. Any one of us might choose to suffer poorly and attach ourselves to the bottle, the casino, the needle, or some other false god. Or we might choose to avoid pain and deprivation by causing others pain and depriving them of their due. True holiness entails genuine piety, righteous words and deeds, and right belief about the faith. But the next step beyond these necessities is choosing to throw ourselves completely and w/o hesitation on the loving-care of God. We call this abandonment to divine providence humility. The truly humble are already among the blessed.

If you have tried it, you know that surrendering to providence is no easy maneuver. Being attached to this world makes surrender simply difficult. But if you are attached to this world by wealth, comfort, mortal loves, and the applause of the world's ruling powers, then surrender is almost impossible. Why would any sane person surrender financial security, family/friends, and civil influence for the chance to suffer well for Christ? Well, all those attachments die when you do. An attachment to Christ lives forever. So the choice is stark: attach yourself to the temporary and become temporary. Surrender to the eternal and enjoy eternity. As Paul says, “...the world in its present form is passing away.”

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Are you ready to be a witness?

23^rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jesus heals the man's deafness and his speech impediment and then orders him to be silent. In fact, he orders everyone who witnesses the healing to be silent about what they saw. Mark notes, however, “...the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.” Two questions: why did Jesus order them to be quiet about the miracle? And why did they disobey? Our interpretative tradition answers the first question this way: Jesus did not want to be seen as a magician, a local crank who went around performing for crowds. Healing miracles drew a lot of attention, and he didn't want to draw the wrong sort of attention, i.e. the Jewish religious authorities or the Romans. The second question is answered like this: the crowds disobeyed b/c they had nothing to lose by bearing witness to the miracle. They didn't understand the purpose of the order, or they maybe they thought Jesus was being falsely humble as part of his act. There's nothing quite so juicy as a bit of forbidden gossip! These answers are fine as far as they go. But something else is going on here. Namely, the healed man and the crowds were not prepared to be proper witnesses to the fullness of the Gospel. IOW, the Gospel is more, much more than having one's ailments cured. They weren't ready, and their disobedience proves it.

The next question is pretty obvious: are you, are we ready to be witnesses to the fullness of the Gospel? The fullness of the Gospel. Likely, some of us are ready to bear witness to the reality of sin. Others are more than ready to give testimony to the power of prayer. Most of us will stand up and lay claim to being Catholic, but will we do so when doing so means losing family, friends, our livelihoods, and maybe our lives? We can be quick to witness to the political realities of being Catholic: pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-social safety net. And we can be just as quick to witness to the moral implications of the Gospel: go to confession; no sex outside the marriage bed; no transgender stuff; modesty in dress. All of these are indeed Catholic and worthy of being witnessed to. But taken together, they do not make up the fullness of the Gospel. They are bits and pieces, fragments loosely sewn to the whole cloth of the Gospel. But the Good News of Christ Jesus is deeper and wider than our human morality and our local politics. The Good News is about bearing witness to Christ by becoming Christ.

We are made and remade to become Christ. But we cannot become Christ on our own. The imperfect cannot bring itself to perfection. Only perfection can draw the imperfect to its completion. If we are going to become Christ, we must do so with Christ. This is the lesson Adam and Eve missed when they disobeyed God in the garden and gave in to the serpent’s temptation to become gods without God. They believed the lie that it is possible for that which is incomplete to bring itself to completion. They ended up naked, exiled, in pain, and eventually dead. And yet we are daily tempted to throw our spiritual well-being into the boxing ring of ridiculous theories and practices in order to achieve our perfection without resorting to Perfection Himself. How many Catholics believe voting for the right guy/gal is going to save them? How many believe they are morally right simply because they take the right positions on moral issues? That being registered in a parish is good enough to thread the Narrow Way? Or giving up caffeine during Lent is a sufficient path to holiness? All of these can derive from the Gospel, but – even taken together – they are not the Gospel's fullness.

We are visited daily by the serpent. Our ears are tickled by the sibilant promises of obtaining divinity w/o obedience, w/o sacrifice, w/o suffering, w/o our dark nights. We know, however, that to become Christ, we must take up his cross and follow him. The credibility of your witness rests squarely on the degree to which you are willing to surrender your imperfection to His perfecting love, and to the degree to which you are willing to share the Good News of his perfecting love by behaving in the world like one who is being polished to reflect the Father’s glory. There is a road to walk, a Way to travel, and there is a difference btw talking about walking that road and getting on your feet and walking it. If Jesus were to heal you, would he ask you to spread that good news? Would he look into your heart and mind and see a son or daughter who's willing to be obedient, self-sacrificing; one willing to suffer well for the truth and beauty of the Gospel? Or would he tell you to keep quiet b/c you are not yet – not yet! – prepared to bear witness to the fullness of all he has to offer? If you're not ready, hear again what Jesus says to the deaf and dumb man: “Be opened!”

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