Do you love God?

St. Margaret of Scotland

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I've been a priest, confessor, and spiritual director for 17 yrs. I've served as a seminary/university professor and priest-formator for 13 of those yrs. Without hesitation, from my experience, I can tell you that the single most difficult truth for Christians to accept is that God's love is unconditionally, absolutely free. That is, 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. Here's why: 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 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 and weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Enemy cheers on our efforts to win God back b/c all our efforts 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 us 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.” Freely, sacrificially.

Where's the noise?

33^rd Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jesus' healing of Bartimaeus – the blind man – isn't a big, dramatic scene. The actual, physical healing of the man's blindness, that is. Jesus doesn't demand allegiance, or question the man's faith, or slap him on the forehead, or anything fun like that. Jesus just says, “What do you want?” Bartimaeus says, “I want to see.” Jesus says, “You can see. Your faith has saved you.” BOOM! He can see! Except there is no boom. No angels' choir. No flock of glowing white doves. No one has to catch Bartimaeus as he is slain in the Spirit. No one has to rush forward to fan his sweating face. The whole miraculous healing is accomplished in 21 words. No gestures. No spit. No mud. Jesus doesn't even touch him. So, where's the action in this scene? Where's the noise? The noise comes before and after the healing. The crowd is noisy, proclaiming Jesus' presence. Bartimaeus is noisy: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” The crowd starts yelling at Bartimaeus to be quiet. But he keeps on yelling. Finally, Jesus calls him over. [Insert anticlimactic healing here]. And Bartimaeus starts giving God the glory and the crowd starts praising God. The point of this scene is to show us that persistence is key in calling on the Lord for help. Not b/c we can change his mind with nagging but b/c persistence builds endurance and strengthens our faith. Perhaps a lesser point is that there will be some in our lives who want to shut us up b/c our faith is embarrassing. Our persistence is annoying. It draws attention and disrupts the expected. If you can't see the Lord, but you know he's near, and you want to see him, then you will be noisy, even embarrassing. You'll ignore the shushers and carry on until you meet Christ and receive your sight. This is good for you and the shushers. You get to give God the glory for your healing, and they get to see that persistent faith brings salvation. They also get to grow in holiness by giving God praise. The Lord says to the Church in Ephesus: “I know your works, your labor, and your endurance...you have endurance and have suffered for my name, and you have not grown weary.” When the shushers try to shush your faith; when they try to keep you from the Lord – persist, endure, and never grow weary. Your faith will save you. And when it does, do not fail to him thanks and praise. Give God the glory.  

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Predicting The End

33rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I was introduced to the Bible when I was nine years old. An older friend told me about the Great Tribulation found in the Book of Revelation. I was particularly struck one image he mentioned from chapter 14: “. . .the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth’s vintage...blood poured out...to the height of a horse’s bridle for two hundred miles.” Being an imaginative kid, I had no trouble seeing in my mind's eye the angel, the sickle, the wine press, and the great ocean of blood. I rushed home to read the rest of Revelation and found myself hooked on the fantastic images and language of the End Times. For the next decade, I worried about the apocalypse and my place in it. Are the signs showing us the end? When will the Lord return? Will I be among those raptured into heaven? These were the years when Evangelical Protestantism dominated religious programming on TV: Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell. Their best fundraising pitches always revolved around matching current events to the signs and symbols from the prophet Daniel and the BoR. Their biblical numerology was mesmerizing. Still, I wanted to know: when, Lord? When will you come again? I wanted to be ready! But the signs were unclear. Unfortunately, Jesus gave me no answers.

He does prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. His listeners want to know when this will happen. Of course, he doesn't give them a date, a day and time. Tues., March 3^rd at 4:15pm seven years from now. That's the answer we want. That way we can be ready! Or more likely, so we know exactly how long we have to party before the end. What he gives them instead is a string of cryptic “signs” that could apply to any day of the week or week of the year. Wars, rebellions, plagues, earthquakes, famines, “awesome sights and mighty signs [coming] from the sky.” Had I been among his listeners, I might have yelled out: “But those happen all the time!” And Jesus would have pointed at me and said, “Exactly! So, be ready!” The Nine Year Old Me and the televangelists wanted the signs and wonders of the BoR to match up neatly with current events so we could calculate the exact timing of Christ's return. We didn't consider the possibility that Christ could come again at any moment. That we ought to be always ready. Some forty years after Jesus' prophecy, in 70AD, the Romans destroyed the temple. I wonder if any of those who heard his prediction were there to see the temple pulled down and remembered. . .

We can be frustrated with Jesus' answer. And we can continue to run after apparitions and biblical numerology and seers and visions in a quest to understand the day and time of his return. Or, we can take him at his word and simply listen. What he is describing is the past and future history of the Church living in the world. Creation is fallen. Earthquakes, floods, plagues, and wars are everyday events in a fallen world. In a fallen world, men will claim to be the Messiah. I found a list of about 40 claimants btw 1830 and 2022. In a fallen world, teachers will teach false doctrine. Some of those teachers are ordained. Some have PhD's and others wear miters. In a fallen world, the world will persecute the Church. 360 million Christians live in parts of the world where following Christ will get them killed. Our persecutors can be religious – mostly extremist forms of Islam. Or atheistic – mostly forms of left-wing political ideology, e.g., Chinese communism and woke progressivism. In a fallen world, those who follow Christ serve as an irritant to the comfort of those who serve the world. Our allegiance belongs to Christ not the princes, politicians, and prophets of this Age. Our citizenship is in His Kingdom. We're just passing through.

Jesus assures us: “You will be hated by all because of my name...” OK. So, where's our hope? Where do we find our strength? He continues: “...but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” Alright. Good to know. But what do we do in the meantime? “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” By persevering we will be victorious. Persevering in what, exactly? Persevering in trust. Persevering in hope. Persevering in loving one another. Persevering with the Body of Christ in the Body of Christ to live wholly and only for Christ until he comes again. How do we persevere? Obedience to the Spirit. Not just compliance but truly listening to the Spirit as He speaks to the Church and by consecrating ourselves – setting ourselves aside – in His service. The Spirit has spoken, is speaking, and will continue to speak. And He has said, is saying, and will continue to say just one word: Christ. He says nothing new. Nothing contrary. And nothing contradictory. False Messiahs, teachers, and prophets will tell us that the Spirit is doing something or saying something new, something completely novel. No. The Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. That love is eternal. And there is nothing new in eternity. Our NO to the novelty of the Age puts us in conflict with the world. And this conflict is what Jesus is describing to us this morning. Our persistent, persevering NO to the world is also a persistent, persevering YES to Christ. The temple was destroyed as he prophesied. When will he return? Any minute now. Any day now. My job, your job is to be ready.  

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