Show me the Father

4^th Week of Easter (S)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We already know that knowing is not believing. Knowing is a piece of what it is to believe, but the two are not synonymous. We know that there are various sorts of knowing – knowing what, knowing that, knowing how, etc. Belief doesn't really get distinguished in this way. We just believe. Sure, we say things like “I believe that is true” or “I believe that is how it is done,” but what it is to believe remains the same. True to our Enlightenment traditions as modern Americans, we tend to prefer knowledge to belief. Even among Catholics, I think this is true. Would you rather go to an atheist doctor who possesses knowledge of how to heal, or a Christian doctor who possesses beliefs about healing but no knowledge? Why do so many faithful Catholics flock to reported apparitions or spend so much time discussing alleged Eucharistic miracles? Isn't belief enough? Like Philip, do you need to be shown the Father before you can believe? And if you are shown the Father and assent to His existence as a result of seeing Him, can you say that you believe in Him? Maybe Jesus is bridging the gap between knowing the Father and believing in Him. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?”

So, why does Philip ask to see the Father? There's a tradition of God's prophets asking to see Him. Philip is echoing Moses in the Book of Exodus where Moses asks to see God's glory. Maybe Philip thinks he's supposed to ask to see God. Maybe he's just curious. Or maybe he's disbelieving and wants to believe. Whatever his real intentions, he says, “Show us and that will be enough.” Enough for what? To obey? To believe? To die as witnesses? Remember: Jesus has just announced to the disciples that he is leaving them. Show us and that will be enough for us to endure our grief and carry on with all that you've asked of us. Jesus answers, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me... whatever you ask in my name, I will do.” Believe, ask, and you will know that I am with. Always with you. Belief is knowing without being shown. Belief is trusting Christ before trusting yourself. It's trusting yourself because you trust Christ first. Philip needs reassurance because his beloved Teacher is leaving him. What he gets instead is a promise from Christ that he will never be left alone. Christ is with us always.

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Plain Talk

St. Athanasius

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The crowd demands that Jesus speak plainly. They want a plainly spoken answer to the question: are you the Christ? Jesus replies, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. . .The Father and I are one.” The Father and I are one. How much more plain can you get? If he's shown them who he is by doing his Father's works and said to them plainly that he and the Father one, then what's the problem? Why are they still yammering for him to identify himself? Jesus knows why: “I told you [who I am] and you do not believe.” They know who he is, but they do not believe. They know, but they do not trust. When it comes to the faith, knowledge without belief is no better than rank ignorance. So, the ignorant continue to demand more evidence as if more evidence will move them to the saving truth. William Blake, the great British Romantic poet, wrote: “Rational truth is not the truth of Christ, but the truth of Pilate.” Rational truth is indeed true, but it's a truth constituted by the human mind. It's not a truth revealed in divine love. We call that a mystery.

Here's the thing we need to remember about mystery: mystery is not about not knowing; it's not about being ignorant of the relevant facts. You can have all the facts, the critical skills to interpret these facts, and the will to put them all together to form a reasonable conclusion. But even with a reasonable conclusion in mind, with all the facts neatly lined up to support you, you can still have a mystery to contemplate. So, if mystery is not about being ignorant of the facts, then what is it about? Note again what Jesus says to the crowd, “I told you [who I am] and you do not believe.” Knowledge is not enough, knowing is not sufficient to relieve the tension we experience when confronted by the unknown. To understand the mystery of who Christ really is, we must first believe; we must transcend facts, logic, experiment, and evidence, and submit ourselves to the dangerous adventures of trusting Jesus at his word, trusting his work among us: “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. . .The Father and I are one.”

It would be too easy to dismiss the art of believing without evidence as a fool's game, a trick to trick the gullible. But dismissing belief as irrational misses the point of what it means to experience mystery. For those who know the facts about who Christ is and put their trust in the revelation of his words and deeds, the mystery he presents produces joy rather than suspense, hope rather than anxiety. There is no temptation to remain in ignorance, demanding irrelevant evidence, “I told you [who I am]. . .The Father and I are one.” We don't resolve this mystery, we live it.

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Entering through Repentance

4^th Sunday of Easter

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Thieves, robbers, wolves, strangers with strange voices. Creatures of malice and deceit, trying to steal the Lord's sheep from his sheepfold. It's nothing new. It's been going on since the beginning. How the wolves and robbers attack the flock differs from age to age. But their intent is the same: the destruction of the flock. Early on, it was the Judaizers, demanding that Gentiles be circumcised before being baptized. There were dozens of Gnostic sects – exclusive, expensive, occult – that appealed to the elite social class in the Church. More recently, the flock has been attacked by wolves pushing their death-cult ideologies – abortion rights up-to-birth, transgenderism, neo-pagan eco-terrorism, and, of course, the ever pervasive and pernicious Wokeism that's metastasizing through our institutions. It's nothing new. In it's essentials, none of this is new. It's all just the Serpent's Lie using updated vocabulary. Jesus says, “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved...A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” So, how do we enter through the gate of Christ?

Peter and the Eleven tell us. Preaching to the crowds in Jerusalem – this is on the day of Pentecost – Peter proclaims, “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made [this Jesus whom you crucified] both Lord and Christ.” The text tells us that when the crowd hears this proclamation “they [are] cut to the heart,” meaning the truth Peter speaks slices through their hesitation, their fear, their worry, all of those years of religious indoctrination; everything and anything that pads their consciences from feeling the full force of God's Truth. Their next question is obvious: “What are we to do, my brothers?” Peter's answer is simplicity itself: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you […] and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” How do we enter through the Gate of Christ? “Repent and be baptized...” How do we re-enter the Gate of Christ if we have allowed ourselves to be deceived by a wolf in sheep's clothing? Repent. How do we re-enter if we have abandoned the flock through serious sin? Repent. How do we become a sheep again if we ourselves chose to be a wolf among the lambs? Repent. The Good Shepherd's voice never changes, never wavers, never speaks an untrue word. So long as we have ears to hear, we are welcomed back through the Gate of Christ in repentance.

Repentance – turning around and running back to Christ – is how we answer the wolves that try to seduce us. Peter preaches: “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” The generation he's warning us about is every generation from the birth of Jesus to the Second Coming. Any generation a Christian has lived in, is living in, or will be living in is a corrupt generation. It is the nature of the world to be corrupt. From this we might conclude that it is better for us that we run to the hills and live in caves until the End. That's not our mission. Our mission is to sanctify the world not abandon it. We're charged with preaching and teaching the Good News of Jesus Christ to every nation. We can't do that if we're hold up in a bunker or running scared from the agents of the Enemy. Nor can we complete our mission if we see those agents themselves as the Enemy. They aren't. We cannot confuse the advocates of evil with Evil Itself. Those advocates can repent. Evil cannot. Our charitable witness can “cut to the heart” of persons who do evil. Our mission is to bear witness to them – in the way we live our lives – to the divine mercy we ourselves have received. They can still hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. As sinners ourselves, we are tasked with being Christ's hearing aids!

I know the temptation well. We want to fight. We want to conquer; we want to prevail, achieve a final victory over the enemies of the Church. That's not the goal of the Church in this age. Christ won the last victory on the Cross. From all eternity, the Enemy is defeated. And he knows this. He wants to take as many as he can down with him. Our mission as a Church is to be the sacrament of reconciliation and mercy in the Enemy's world. Our mission is to remain steadfast in the flock while going out into the world to show the wolves that we are free. To show the wolves that they are the ones chained to misery, deceit, and temporary power. Our mission is to show them that death is defeated. That sin is self-chosen-defeat. That this world is both beautiful and passing. And that coming to Christ, coming back to Christ is always an option. Ask yourself this: am I speaking, acting, thinking like a shepherd looking for the Lord's lost sheep? If not, maybe it's time to repent. It's time to turn around and start over...again.

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