20th Week OT: Ezekiel 37.1-14 and Matthew 22.34-40
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX
PODCAST!
Prophesy over these bones! Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man! The people of God have been saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.” The people of God have been saying, “Our Church is in ruins, our priests are lost, and we aimlessly wander a new desert without certain Truth, without sure teaching, without good Christian example.” Therefore, prophesy over these bones! Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man and say over these bones, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord: I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life[…]O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them[…]I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”
And surely He did: the birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of His Only Son for our redemption fulfilled this promise, bringing His people back to Him, making us a nation of prophets, priests, and kings, making us a holy family, participants in His Divine Life through His Son. And yet, with Ezekiel, we can walk the plains of the Church and see in every direction dry bones, members of the Body dying and drying out, worrying themselves raw with scandal, dissension, contests over how we will pray together, pitched battles over who and what counts as “Catholic,” and who has power and who doesn’t and on and on. Sometimes my own hands ache with anxious twisting and I think my bones will dry out worrying. Surely, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.
Thus says the Lord, “O my people[…]I will put my spirit in you that you may live!” And that spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the love that the Father and the Son have for one another, the love that breathed the Word over the void: “Let there be Light!”; the Word spoken to Moses and Aaron and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Word spoken to the prophets—“Thus says the Lord!”; the Word spoken to Mary by an angel; the Word conceived in her womb and given to the world; the Word that knocked Paul off his horse; the Word that silenced the naysayers who ridiculed Jesus; the Word that healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, the demonically possessed, and brought the exiles home; the Word that defies Roman law, suffers Roman violence, dies on a Roman cross, and bleeds for the salvation of Rome and Jerusalem and Athens; the Word that breathes its last across the world, rips the temple veil, and re-creates the whole of creation—a New Man, a New Covenant, a new image and a new likeness.
If we will participate in this creating and recreating Word, this breath of God and the love of the Blessed Trinity, we will hear this commandment with ears eager to obey, eager to listen: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, your soul and your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You shall. Not a suggestion. Not a wistful hope. You shall. That’s an imperative. A command. And it means that we hold in our hearts, our souls, our minds the whole of the law and the prophets, the salvation history of a holy people—not drying bones and wasting flesh, not hearts flabby with worry or stretched thin by anger, not minds clouded with alien philosophies and speculative theological junk, but hearts and minds eternally abandoned to God, just thrown away to His will.
Can these bones come to life? Ezekiel answers, “Lord, you alone know that.” We can answer, “Yes! Even dry bones have hope in Christ’s love. Our dry bones can love since Christ has loved us first.”
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX
PODCAST!
Prophesy over these bones! Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man! The people of God have been saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.” The people of God have been saying, “Our Church is in ruins, our priests are lost, and we aimlessly wander a new desert without certain Truth, without sure teaching, without good Christian example.” Therefore, prophesy over these bones! Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man and say over these bones, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord: I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life[…]O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them[…]I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”
And surely He did: the birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of His Only Son for our redemption fulfilled this promise, bringing His people back to Him, making us a nation of prophets, priests, and kings, making us a holy family, participants in His Divine Life through His Son. And yet, with Ezekiel, we can walk the plains of the Church and see in every direction dry bones, members of the Body dying and drying out, worrying themselves raw with scandal, dissension, contests over how we will pray together, pitched battles over who and what counts as “Catholic,” and who has power and who doesn’t and on and on. Sometimes my own hands ache with anxious twisting and I think my bones will dry out worrying. Surely, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.
Thus says the Lord, “O my people[…]I will put my spirit in you that you may live!” And that spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the love that the Father and the Son have for one another, the love that breathed the Word over the void: “Let there be Light!”; the Word spoken to Moses and Aaron and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Word spoken to the prophets—“Thus says the Lord!”; the Word spoken to Mary by an angel; the Word conceived in her womb and given to the world; the Word that knocked Paul off his horse; the Word that silenced the naysayers who ridiculed Jesus; the Word that healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, the demonically possessed, and brought the exiles home; the Word that defies Roman law, suffers Roman violence, dies on a Roman cross, and bleeds for the salvation of Rome and Jerusalem and Athens; the Word that breathes its last across the world, rips the temple veil, and re-creates the whole of creation—a New Man, a New Covenant, a new image and a new likeness.
If we will participate in this creating and recreating Word, this breath of God and the love of the Blessed Trinity, we will hear this commandment with ears eager to obey, eager to listen: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, your soul and your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You shall. Not a suggestion. Not a wistful hope. You shall. That’s an imperative. A command. And it means that we hold in our hearts, our souls, our minds the whole of the law and the prophets, the salvation history of a holy people—not drying bones and wasting flesh, not hearts flabby with worry or stretched thin by anger, not minds clouded with alien philosophies and speculative theological junk, but hearts and minds eternally abandoned to God, just thrown away to His will.
Can these bones come to life? Ezekiel answers, “Lord, you alone know that.” We can answer, “Yes! Even dry bones have hope in Christ’s love. Our dry bones can love since Christ has loved us first.”
