You are lacking one thing...

28th Sunday OT: Wisdom 7.7-11; Hebrews 4.12-13; Mark 10.17-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX


Here’s what I know to be true about everyone in this church, everyone who can hear my voice right now, here’s what’s true about you: you desire to know God, you long to be touched by His spirit, you want more than gold, silver, or cold hard cash to be in His presence and to know his healing grace. How do I know this? There is no other reason for you to be here. No other incentive or reward to come to this place this evening than to encounter the living God. If you are here—and you are—then you are here b/c the Holy Spirit has thumped your ear, kicked you in the rear, or maybe even two-by-foured you upside the head. You are here b/c you know that you will not be filled, will not be settled, will not be gentled or graced or rested with anything or anyone less than the One Who made you. No gold, no silver, no cash, no love, no job, no amount or kind of power will slake your dry thirst, feed your yawning hunger, or tame your wild longing for our Father’s love. He is our beginning and our end, our source and our finish. And nothing shortens His love for us or diminishes His mercy to us. He knows what we need more than air to breathe and water to drink and He is here to give us all that we need. And this is why we are here.

So let me ask you: what riches do you put between you 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?

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 poverty. Freedom from stuff. Freedom from ownership. He has many possessions. He is possessed by 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 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 be 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. We cannot give our hearts 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? Knowing UD students as I do, my guess is that not many of you 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 sufficient to elicit an affirmative response from the ground of your Being to the invitation of the Ground of Being Itself to become more Grounded in Being. 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.

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 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.

It's not about Christ; it's about BEING Christ

27th Week OT (F): Galatians 3.7-14 and Luke 11.15-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Jesus is at war with the Devil’s kingdom. The gospel stories of exorcism are sometimes battles between Jesus’ desire to reveal who he is himself and the shock and awe of the demons who know who he is and who want to scream his name in terror. Jesus orders them to keep his secret! Demons may not reveal Christ’s identity to God’s human children. As purely disobedient intelligences, demons know who Christ is but do not experience him as Savior and Lord; therefore, they can reveal information about Christ—his identity, e.g.—but they cannot share his saving love, his healing mercy. In other words, they can tell us Christ’s name, but in their disobedience they cannot BE Christ for us. We are not only able to be Christ for one another, we are healthiest, wealthiest, and wisest when we do so. And the Church—fully armed and well-guarded—stands tallest against the siege of lies and violence that mark the Devil’s domestic and foreign policy!

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes that Christ died not only as the Messiah of the Jews but also as the only means of salvation for the Gentiles. Jesus expanded his Father’s kingdom to include all those not under the Mosaic law, not under the Old Covenant. And so, we are subjects of this kingdom in virtue of our baptism, citizens of a new realm, and heirs to the Father’s riches. But I wonder, looking at the Church today, if we really believe this. Do we really believe that we are subjects of the King, citizens of His realm, and heirs to His riches? A kingdom divided cannot stand. A realm split apart is weakened at its root. Riches scattered are easily squandered. And without the unity of the Body, from where do we draw the strength, the energy to be Christs for one another? Without obedience to the historic faith; allegiance to long, apostolic family narrative; without ears and eyes opened to the scriptural revelation of the Christ, we stand apart, divided, weak in our isolation, desolate in our individuality, and defeated before we are properly armed.

There are many ways that we fail the Kingdom and help the enemy. Let me identify one of the most damaging: when we limit our Christian activity in the world to gathering and distributing information to others about Christ instead of being Christ for others, we imitate the demons and hand them victory. In other words, when our ministry to the world is anything but the ministry of Jesus on earth—preaching and teaching the Father’s Word of truth; admonishing sinners; and healing and forgiving those same sinners,—anything but the work of Christ among the nations, then we are mute witnesses and blind guides.

The Good News, the Great News, is that we have received the promise of the Spirit through faith. Our failures of unity are not inevitable nor are they permanent. We know that the Kingdom has come in the person of Jesus Christ. We know that the Devil’s church has been razed and the ground salted. We know that the Word triumphs in creation, bringing every living thing to its natural and supernatural perfection in Christ—he is the firstfruit of all creation! We know, we know, we know. But knowing is not enough. It never has been. Never will be. We must know Christ, of course, and share Christ, always. But we must BE Christ first. Anything less, anything meaner or smaller than this full baptismal witness feeds the unclean spirits of disobedience and lazy charity, and seduces us into pride.

The Great News is that there is nothing disobedient or lazy in the promises of God. Nothing stingy or mean in the promises of His abundant Spirit. We are well-armed, fully charged, beautifully graced, and wholly loved. A joyful witness is ours to make. The kingdom is ours to claim: the Lord will remember His covenant forever.

Childlike acceptance and the impossibility of divorce

27th Sunday OT: Genesis 2.18-24; Hebrews 2.9-11; Mark 10.2-16
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX


What does it mean to accept the Kingdom of God like a child? Jesus says quite plainly that we must come to accept his Father’s Kingdom like a child would, recognize His reign, unlock our lives to His rule if we are to be a part of the glory that is to come. Living with God forever is not a reward for good behavior or right belief, it is the supernatural consequence of a life lived in right relationship, in righteousness, with He Who loved you into being, loved you into redemption, and loves you even now, drawing you to Him, seducing your heart, wooing your soul back to the source of all peace, of all happiness, —pulling you back to Him.

To accept the Kingdom of God like a child means first that you respond to our Father’s clarion call to come home to Him without argument, without pretense, without guile, without need for evidence or proof. You come home to rest because home is where you most belong. Because resting in God is the rest that cradles your angriest hurts, your most tedious worries, and your meanest desires. You come home to rest in God because you know and accept—as any child would—that there is no argument for love, no pretense in belonging. The bond between you and God, between all of us and God was forged at the welding of creation, from the instantaneous convulsion of Nothing into Everything, we are bound to Him, indelibly marked by His love precisely because He is Love and Love is Who He Is. To know as true and accept as real that you are brought out of nothingness, shaped body and soul by Love, held in being by Love, and seduced back to Love in your chase after holiness—to know these as true, to accept these as real—THIS is what it means to look up into the face of Jesus, to come to him, to be embraced and blessed by him and to live with him forever.

Forgive me, I’m going to become a professor for a second: Coming before everything we have freely chosen ourselves to be is the primal kinship between each of us and God. There is nothing about us more basic, more fundamental than the fact that we exist. We ARE. This fact means that we are loved. God is Love. And we continue to exist because He loves us. God made us in His image and likeness. He made us for no other reason than to live in perfect relationship with Him. It follows then that every relationship we can name, every connection we can point to, every single kinship we have is given to us by God and is a reflection of our most primitive relationship with Love, with God. We can have no relationship with each other or with anything in creation that is not first a relationship with God, first a kinship with Love Who made us. Now, I can say: the question the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce misses the point of our creation, misses the point of our very existence; in fact, it betrays a deep misunderstanding of who we are made to be finally.

You are probably saying, “Wow, Father, took you long enough to get to divorce!” It did. Here’s why: how easy for me to stand up here and teach what the Church teaches about marriage and divorce, pointing to all the relevant texts—all read this morning—and pointing to the CCC and telling you what you already know: marriage is permanent, therefore, divorce is impossible. But you might think that this is a social policy issue or a cultural problem or a private choice. You might think that the Church needs to loosen its teachings on marriage or ease its overly harsh understanding of divorce. I spent so much time laying out our childlike relationship with God Who Is Love so that I can say this: divorce is impossible because it is impossible for us NOT to have a relationship with God—even if that relationship is broken, deeply impaired. What God has joined, no man must separate.

OK. That sounds odd. Divorce is impossible because it is impossible for us not to have a relationship with God. Think about it: God created Man, Adam and Eve. In the more detailed telling of the two Genesis stories of creation, God uses Adam’s rib to create Eve. God brings the newly created person to Adam for a name. He names her “woman.” The story continues with this explanation of marriage: that is why a man leaves his mom and dad and clings to his wife and the two become one flesh…perhaps it should read, “and the two become one flesh again.”

My point is simple: our most basic relationship is with God, the One in Whom we find our completion, our wholeness, and our end; marriage then embodies the search for and discovery of wholeness and the consummation of a single person’s separated existence into a completed existence. In other words, the sacrament of marriage signs and makes present the joining of the creature with his or her Creator. Marriage is a sacrament of redemption. Divorce is impossible because divorce implies that marriage, a sacrament of our healing, can mean something else entirely. It cannot.

Fine. So, the next question: what do we do with Catholics who have divorced and remarried? This will sound harsh. We do with divorced Catholics what we do with all those who disobey God, what we do with all those who manage to mess up their relationship with the One Who loves us completely. We do with divorced Catholics exactly what we do with fornicators, apostates, adulterers, abusive priests, grossly irresponsible bishops, and heretics; we do what we do with you and with me—we stand here imperfect in the truth of the faith, clearly proclaiming the golden standard of holiness to which we are all called, readily naming our own sin, our need for forgiveness, and we welcome them—all of them—back to a life of righteousness, always back to Love, always back to that which they and we resist only in the most hateful moments of gross pride: Christ’s patient, loving embrace. There is no alternative here. No other way to go.

To be clear: we cannot lie about divorce or adultery or fornicator or any sin for that matter. Pretending that sin isn’t sin or renaming sin to hide its ugliness does nothing to the reality of a broken relationship. We might as well conclude that gravity is inconvenient and decide to ignore it. Dropped dishes will still fall. Airplanes will still need speed and thrust to fly. And divorce is impossible not because the Church says so, not even because Jesus say so, but because marriage is a living witness to the most basic hunger we have, the most basic satisfaction we can find: the love of God. Marriage cannot be what it is not. And neither can we.

Know and accept, therefore, the embrace and blessing of Christ. If you are married, make that commitment shine like the sun for our good and yours. If you are divorced, come back; come back to us for your holiness and ours. We need you. We are one flesh, one Body in Christ. Pope Benedict writes in his letter, Deus caritas est, that when we embrace Christ and his blessing, “God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” There is no better measure of mercy and no better way home.

If they listen, what do they hear?

26th Week OT(F): Job 38.1, 12-21, 40.3-5 and Luke 10.13-16
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass and Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX

(NB. The preacher preaches to himself first…)

Job stands before the whirlwind and requires answers of Being Himself. He whines to the Voice who speaks the Word that snaps everything there is out of the void. He demands that I AM THAT I AM justify his suffering. And though Job suffers most immediately in his body, the true insult is to his ego, his sense of self-righteous Self. No prideful creature wants to hear the story of its proper place in the universe. What self-important Self actually wants to know where it fits in the scheme of things? Oh sure, there’s a place, but this place is a Place of My Choosing, My Plan, My Way. And the Plan unfolds according to My Timetable at the pace and intensity of My Will. I am the Master of My Circumstance! I rule My World! As I see all of creation from My Viewpoint, I am the Center of All There Is.

And God addressed Job: have you ever in your life lifted the sun over the horizon? Have you ever brought the dawn to the sky? Have you ever shaken the world to shock the wicked? Have you touched the mouth of the seas? Strolled along the abyss? Seen the gates of death, the dwelling place of darkness itself? “Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth?” You were born before there was light and darkness, right? You were born before the boundaries of all things were made, right? You have so many years of wisdom! “Answer me, if you have understanding.” Job answers: “I will put my hand over my mouth. Though I have spoken once. I will not do so again.”

Jesus tells the Seventy that whoever will listen to them, listens to him. And whoever rejects them, rejects him. And whoever rejects him, rejects the Father, the One Who sent him. Question: those who listen to you, watch you, live with you, work with you—what do they hear you saying, see you doing? I don’t mean to make you paranoid. But you are listened to. You are watched. Daily you swirl around with others, mingle and flow and you leave an impression, an image to remember and consider. You say this and that, do this and that. And you do not say and you do not do. We all do and do not. Those who listen to you, watch you, what do they hear? What do they see?

Do they see a well-loved creature well-seasoned in humility? A man, a woman upright in the Lord, directed to His will, driven by His passion for justice, intent on righteousness in Him? Or do they see and hear insufferable whining? Self-important grief? Do they hear the great sucking sound of the universe being re-centered on your needs, your pleasures, your prerogatives? Do they see service? Good will? Mercy in militant practice? Can they obey—listen with intent—to your truly holy deeds. Not those pious, theatrical deeds—the street corner hijinks that draw cameras and kudos from religious tourists, but truly, deeply charitable works done in His name.

God’s address to Job and to us is not about making Job and us feel like dirt. Feel like puppies who have piddled on the new rug. God is not in the business of humiliating us. He is in the business, however, of telling us the truth about Who He is and who we are in relationship with Him. The truth is this: we were not there at the foundation of the world. We did not name the stars or swirl the cosmic gases or swat the comets into their paths. We did not raise ourselves from dust and breath the living word into our own bodies. We are wholly, totally, completely, down to the last atom, the most basic element, without reservation, entirely His. And if we will speak His Word and Do His Deeds, then we must, must! say with Job as he stands before the creating whirlwind: “Though I have spoken once, I will not do so again…unless it is to praise you, Lord, and to speak your holy name to all who will listen.”

You are marked!

St. Francis of Assisi: Galatians 6.14-18 and Matthew 11.25-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

I. Do not boast but praise God and come to Christ. Paul prays that he may never boast in his own deeds. He has done nothing worthy on his own, nothing deserving credit or praise without the cross. The world he evangelizes is crucified. Sacrificed and given up for holy. And he is crucified for the world. Himself set aside for a single work and marked not by circumcision but by the wounds of Christ on his body and thus made a New Creation in the loving surrender of Jesus on the cross. What is there for Paul to boast about? Will he boast about his turning from sin? Will he boast about his grand commission to preach to the Gentiles? Will he boast about the miles he has traveled or the crowds he has exhorted? Will he boast of his wounds? No. He was turned from sin. He was given his commission. Christ walked those miles and Paul followed. The crowds belonged to Jesus from the start. And the wounds are his as well. So is the victory and ours if we will not boast.

II. Do not boast but praise God and come to Christ. Jesus gives praise to his Father for revealing to His little ones the wisdom of salvation, for revealing to those who are not wise in the world or learned in the flesh what it means to be of the Body and Blood of Christ. Jesus gives praise to his Father for His gracious will, His will that only those truly trusting, truly faithful—not planners or schemers or jostlers for power and position—only those who look to Christ with opened eyes and opened ears may know the Father’s wisdom. And that wisdom is this: All things have been handed over to Christ by His Father and we come to know the Father through Christ b/c Christ wishes to reveal Him to us. Why is this praiseworthy? Why offer an orthodox shout—a yelp of right praise—for this wisdom? What is there better to praise than the gift of knowing and loving God? What is there better to praise than the grace of Christ’s revelation of his Father? What is there better to praise than the presence of God among us as Man, attending to our wounds in sin, healing the breaks and tears and cuts of self-inflicted disobedience? Praise God! Lord of heaven and earth!

III. Do not boast but praise God and come to Christ. Jesus asks us to come to him. To drop the pretense. Drop the haughty posturing and ridiculous anxiety. Throw down the excesses of Self that burden your spirit—that small self that strains to hold up the prestigious job, the pretty degrees, the grand SAT score, the grand GRE or LSAT or MCAT score, the perfect GPA, the best job offer, the right car, the fear of failure, the worry of getting it wrong, the pressure to marry or not. Throw off the expectations of the world, the world that will make you into a pinched and nervous adult, anxious about everything that cannot matter and carefree about the one thing that does: Christ! Go to him. Take him on as your teacher. Let him show you the fertile field in front of you. And he will take you in hand and give you rest. There is no point in being a Christian if we stubbornly refuse to follow Christ, demanding our own way from God. Demand nothing. You are marked! So, do not boast. But praise God for His wisdom. And come to Christ.

Avoid the worms and quench the fire!

26th Sunday OT: Num 11.25-29; James 5.1-6; Mark 9.38-43, 45, 47-48
Respect Life Sunday

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irivng, TX


Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that all the people of the Lord were lions with angel wings to fly instead of walk! Would that all the people of the Lord grow trees with golden leaves and flowers with diamond blossoms! Would that all the people of the Lord had free utility hookups to the Guinness brewery and the chocolate factory! Would that all the people of the Lord were born beautiful, talented, intellectually gifted, filthy rich, and flawlessly generous. And would that all the people of the Lord find perfect peace, lasting happiness, and reciprocated love before dying gloriously defending the faith in a pitched battle against the heretical armies of poststructuralist critics, scientistic historians, indifferentist ethicists, and all the elite nastinesses of syncretistic theologians, modernist theorists, and snotty cultural savants. How glorious a battle that would be!

Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets. Not a good idea, Moses. Sorry. All that prophesying, all that divine madness and noise and rattling on about God’s will and God’s word and What the Lord Would Have Us Do…blahblahblah. No. Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on all His people! Again, sorry. No. All that spirit floating around settling on folks would be chaotic. Too dangerous, of course. Very messy that. No procedure. No policies. No paperwork. Bestowing spirit like throwing confetti on a Labor Day parade in New York City. Sounds kinda communist. Wishful thinking. Cry in one hand and wish in the other—see which one gets filled first. Joshua has the right of it, Moses, “Stop them, my Lord, stop them from prophesying without the proper credentials!”

And Jesus said to John, “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.” In what might be called a rather generous inclusivity, Jesus throws his own prophetic mantle around the shoulders of all those who do mighty deeds in his name. Careful. He recognizes the authority of those who perform mighty deeds in his name b/c for them to do so is an act of conversion to his cause. He’s not saying here that just anyone who claims to do mighty deeds in his name is doing them with his authority. What he’s saying is, “The fact that this guy does a mighty work in my name will guarantee that he is unable afterward to speak ill of me.” In other words, if some guy is pretending to perform an exorcism or a healing in Jesus’ name and is (surprise!) successful, that success will make it impossible for him to oppose Christ b/c such a mighty work can only be successfully done in his name. Not against me? Must be for me.

Joshua and John seem to have a legit worry. What will happen if just anyone who wants to can prophesy or exorcise demons or heal the sick? Joshua and John are worried about the reputations of their masters. They are worried about division—literally, schism, resulting from divided loyalties among those who might claim to do mighty deeds but who really just want to foment discord or rally opposition to established authority. Moses knows that the Lord has rested His spirit on the elders who missed the tent meeting. And Jesus knows that no one can work a deed as mighty as exorcising demons unless they are doing so properly in his name. Moses eases Joshua’s anxiety by praying that the Lord would make all His people prophets, that the Lord would send His spirit on all His people. Jesus eases John’s worry by assuring him that no one who works in his name can be against him and must therefore be for him. Jesus knows that his arrival as the Christ among the people heralds the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Lord’s sending of His Spirit in answer to Moses’ prayer: would that all the people of the Lord were prophets.

The Lord bestows His spirit on all of His people! All of His people are prophets! No wishing thinking here. No lions with wings. No golden trees or dreamy LOTR martyrdom fighting against the armies of darkness. By baptism we are prophets. By the sacraments of initiation into the Body of Christ, we are made into prophets, priests, and kings—those upon whom the Spirit rests—and we are given authority to do mighty works in Christ’s name. This is not an invitation to radical ecclesial innovation or convenient schism. This is not an open door to personality cults or whackoes claiming mystical powers. This is not permission from the church to engage in wild displays of spiritual powers. What it is is a clarion call to you, all of you and each of you, to take on the mantle of your baptism and to be a prophet in Christ’s name. To be one upon whom the Spirit rests. To claim your proper authority as one who does mighty deeds in his name, as one who speaks his mighty word to those who need to hear.

Do these works in his name for his glory and you cannot be against him. Do these works for applause, for personal gain, for power, control, or for pietistic theatre; do them against his Body, the Church, the little ones who believe in him, and find yourself gutted by hell’s immortal worms and roasting in eternity’s trash heap. Find yourself wishing for a millstone necklace and deep blue sea.

How will you prophesy in the Lord’s name? What mighty works will you do in his name for his glory? You see, if your life is a sacrificial outpouring of charity, of mercy, of love to your neighbors, you do mighty works; you speak a mighty word. If your life bursts at the seams with the gifts well-used, treasures easily shared, talents on godly display, then you do mighty works and speak mighty words in his name. If, however, you store up your wealth against the danger of a last day; if you greedily hoard the gifts the Lord has given you to disburse freely; if you withhold from the Lord’s little ones your generosity and forgiveness or waste your treasured time sitting in judgment of those you have no right to judge, then “you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.” Check fat heart-eating worms. Check unquenchable fire for roasting.

To live a prophetic life in Christ is to live a life of rebellion, a life in revolt against the dictates of this culture’s deadening, soulless ideologies: all the ways the world strives to turn the human person into useful labor or genetic produce or cosmic accident or just plain ole meat. To live a prophetic life in Christ is to live a life of violation, a life of disobedience to this world’s spiritual discouragement, public ridicule, material temptation, and religious and political violence. To live a prophetic life in Christ is to live a life of infection, to spread the deadly virus of daring and saintly deeds, to spread the bellicose bugs of holiness and righteous awe. To live a prophetic life in Christ is to live your life soaked through and deeply planted, heavily swathed and tightly wrapped, beautifully adorned and righteously arranged all in the Lord’s name! All for his glory!

Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on all His people! He has! He has. Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! We are! We are. Now. Prophesy and shake the foundation of the world.

Can you be a prophet?

26th Sunday OT: Num 11.25-29; James 5.1-6; Mark 9.38-43, 45, 47-48
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Andrew Kim High School Student Retreat, October 1, 2006


Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!

Two men not of Moses’ group received the spirit of the Lord and began to prophesy in the camp. A young man jealous for Moses’ sake runs to tattle on them. Joshua, an old friend of Moses said, “Moses, my lord, stop them.” What is this guy worried about? He’s concerned that Moses will be dishonored by the men who prophesy w/o Moses’ authority. He is worried that there will be divisions in the camp. One side for Moses and another against him. He is worried that these prophets will lead the people astray. And he is anxious for his friend, Moses, and his reputation. What Joshua doesn’t understand is that the spirit of the Lord rested on these men as well and made them prophets. Moses comforts Joshua by saying, “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!”

You see, Moses understands that the Lord will rest His spirit where he pleases. On me, on you, on all of us if He chooses. And he will make us all prophets if he likes. He will give us the job of prophesying, the job of telling everyone of His great deeds and His loving words. Though we have rules and job descriptions and policies and requirements, the Lord doesn’t. He will send His spirit as He pleases.

So here’s my question to you: can you be a prophet? Can you go and tell everyone the great deeds of the Lord, proclaim to everyone His loving words? What does it take to be a prophet? Well, it seems that you have to be really old. Lots of wrinkles, lots of gray hair, maybe a pair of glasses and a hearing aid. Moses’ seventy prophets were elders, old guys who knew a lot b/c they had lived a lot. It also seems that you have to be a guy. The elders were all men. So maybe the spirit of the Lord will rest only on old men. You have to be old and male. What else? The big one, of course: you are not a prophet unless the spirit of the Lord comes to rest on you. Can you be a prophet?

Let’s look again at the story from this morning’s gospel in Mark. It’s almost exactly like the story of Moses and the young man, isn’t it? John finds out that there are people out there casting out demons in Jesus’ name—people not of Jesus’ group! John tells Jesus: “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Just like the young man in the first story, John tattles to his teacher that someone not of their group is doing something that only members of their group should be doing! Jesus says basically the same thing that Moses said, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus is saying here that you don’t have to be a member of his small group of disciples to be on his side. Anyone who does a mighty deed in his name is on his side!

So, can you be a prophet? Remember now: only old men who have the spirit of the Lord on them can be prophets, right? WRONG! Jesus is clear: anyone who does a mighty deed in his name is on his side! And what do prophets do but do mighty deeds in the Lord’s name. The job of the prophet is to tell everyone of the Lord’s great deeds and His loving words. The Lord brought Moses and his people out of slavery in Egypt. He destroyed the armies that chased them. He guided them though the desert. Gave them food and water when they had none. And brought them to the Promised Land. Great deeds! And he made a covenant with them: you be my people and I will be your God. Loving words!

Our Lord Jesus does all of this again for us, for everyone in this room. He brings us out of our slavery to sin. He destroys the power of the Enemy over us. He guides us through our deserts, all of our dry and troubled times. He gives us food and drink, his Body and Blood in the Mass. He brings us to the Promised Land of heaven. Great deeds! And he makes a New Covenant with us: I will die for you so that you don’t have to die; love me, love one another, teach and preach what I have taught you.

Be prophets! Tell everyone of the Lord great deeds and loving words. Learn your faith as best you can and tell the truth to anyone who will listen. Learn you faith as best you can and make sure that the way you live your life is an excellent example to others. Do not cause someone to fail in their faith b/c of your sin. Be careful! Jesus tells his disciples: “Whoever cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” What does he mean? He means that we should never lead anyone into sin, we should never be an example of sin for others, we should never cause damage to anyone else’s faith. If we do, it would be better for us if we had a giant stone hung around our necks and then tossed into the ocean to sink.

Your job as a prophet, as one on whom the spirit of the Lord has rested, your job is to tell everyone about your faith, about how Christ came into your life, about how you know and love the Lord, about how the Church is the Body of Christ, and about how the Lord uses his Church to bring all of his gifts to his people and the world. This sounds like a lot of work. Probably embarrassing work at times. It’s not always easy for us to talk openly to others about our faith. They may get offended or tell us to shut up or just walk away. True. They may do all these things. But prophets are often ignored or told to shut up or sometimes worse. But you see here’s the thing: the great deeds of the Lord and His loving words must be told. Told and lived. Not just spoken again but done. The sick must be cured. The hungry must fed. The naked must be clothed. The imprisoned must be visited. Those enslaved to sin must know they are now free. Do these things. Tell others about the mighty works of God by doing these things yourself. Our Holy Father, John Paul II, said over and over again to us, “Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid!”

Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! We are! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all! He has! He has.

Angelic ministers

Feast of the Archangels: Revelation 12.7-12 and John 1.47-51
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation


Clouds of incense rise and curl around the taller candles, running faster up the flames and spreading in a thin fog around the book and cards. Each homemade card turned brings to mind a color, a scent, a flavor, a task, and each has a name and purpose. Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uzziah…Hebrew names, Latin names, Sumerian names, and other names unsayable. The last card turned was Azareel. Blue. One of the seven angels given dominion over the Earth. Protector of the Waters. Friend to fishermen. My homemade angel cards were telling me that my link to the Divine, my line of communication with The One and All was Azareel.

The first sign from God to me that I probably shouldn’t be spending my time with candles, incense, and homemade angel cards came when, hungry for more info, I did an internet search on Azareel. Most everything I already knew was confirmed—blue, water, fishermen. I was humbled to learn, however, that Azareel is primarily responsible for curing human stupidity. I hear ya, Lord; I hear ya.

To avoid any scandal, let me say quickly: I was not Catholic when I went on this little angelic adventure, and I was very young. I was also smitten, as we all often are, by the possibilities of knowing more about those who live above us, beyond us; those who are in some way like us but better, similar enough to communicate but different enough to show us what we think we want to see but can’t see on our own. Created with a desire for the transcendent coursing through our veins, we stretch for those moments of going beyond, stepping over, those instances of standing at the limits of what we know and can experience and just barely peeking into the darkness, whispering some unsayable word into all that dark longing, hoping for an answer or an echo.

The temptation here, of course, is the temptation of the occult. Not just the usual suspicious nonsense of suburban bookstore potions and spells, but the temptation to learn that which is hidden and then believe that you are somehow graced above others because you have the secret knowledge, the truth of the universe only a few know. This is the Devil dangling pride on a golden chain and stroking your intellect with delicate, well-practiced fingers!

The shield against this temptation, the sure-bet foil for inviting this particular stranger into your spiritual life is the advent proclamation of the angelic voice: “Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night. They conquered him by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death. Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them.”

The Loud Voice of Revelation reveals the strategy of the war against the fallen angels and gives us in the telling our own strategy for combating and defeating the temptations of occult curiosity: he who tempts us to seek and acquire what is not ours to seek and find is defeated, done in. The one who strokes our pride to find answers and echoes in divining the angels or the demons or the cards or the birds or the alphabetic board, he has lost. The angels serve the Lamb. And so will the demons. The angels minister to their Lord and his family. They are servants, messengers, manifest signs of God’s glory. They are not gods.

You will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man and you will come to know not a carefully guarded secret or a hidden key; you will come to know fully, perfectly what we celebrate in this Mass—his coming in splendor, his arrival in glory, and his eternal reign as Lord and King.

Rats squeaking at stars

St. Vincent de Paul: 1 Cor 1.26-31 and Matthew 9.35-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory


How do the foolish shame the wise? How do the weak shame the strong? How do those who are nothing reduce to nothing those who are something?

We are art. Made things. Like paintings in color or sculpture in shape and size or music in speech or poetry in both our lyric complexity and sometimes in our doggerel simplicity. Being made things, we have a Maker. Creatures have a creator. And having a Creator means that we have a relationship with something or someone more complete than we are, in fact, fully complete, completely actualized, Pure Act in a gratuitous relationship with our unactualized potential, our still to be perfected gifts. If we know that we are 1) creatures, that is, made, and that 2) we are imperfect but perfectible, then we cannot boast before God. We cannot hold ourselves, haughty and ridiculously puny, before Him Who made us and boast about who we are, what we’ve done, why we did it, and where we are planning on going next.

Mice can roar at the sky and claim to move the clouds, but rodents squeaking at stars are just rodents squeaking at stars.

Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord. Boast in the Lord. Not in power. Not in noble birth. Not in human wisdom. Not in strength. Boast in the Lord’s power, His kingship, His wisdom and His strength. Because “it is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus…” It is His power, wisdom, and strength that gave us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Nothing you did or can do, nothing I did or can do, and nothing we did together did or can do together will accomplish our redemption or complete our righteousness without our Creator. We are art. Made things. And we are made holy by the One Who made us.

When you brag of your good deeds, when you brag about your academic accomplishments, your athletic prowess, or your artistic genius, when you brag without giving thanks to God, you brag as one whose strength is weakness, whose power is poverty, whose wisdom is foolishness. You brag about empty deeds, pointless accomplishments, useless prowess, and abused genius. You have done nothing. With God, you have done everything!

So, what’s there to brag about but that we are fatally loved, killed in repentance and made new again, made more perfect, by a God who gave us His wisdom in His Son? What’s to brag about but that His Christ looked out over the troubled and abandoned crowd and was moved with pity, touched by compassion for them and gave them for the ages laborers from the master of the harvest? What’s to brag about but that the weak in Christ are stronger than strength, more powerful than power, more regal than any king, wiser than any created wisdom, and loved by God to death and life again and forever?

The foolish shame the wise by praising God for His wisdom. The weak shame the strong by praising God for His strength. Those who are nothing reduce to nothing those who are something by praising God for His creation and for their creaturliness. When we boast w/o praising God for our excellences, we boast like the mice who claim to move the clouds. We are rats squeaking at stars.

Make no arrogant claims, refuse no one

25th Week OT (M): Proverbs 3.27-34 and Luke 8.16-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


What is the best you can offer to the rest of us, to all of us here and to everyone out there? What riches have you piled up? Which of your many talents have you neglected? How much time do you fritter away waiting waiting waiting for something to happen to you, for you, against you—time squandered, unworthily spent, time better offered to us, all of us here and to everyone out there. What is the best you can offer us and what is the best we, the Body of Christ, can offer to the world?

Proverbs says: “Refuse no one the good on which he has a claim when it is in your power to do it for him.” What is the good for us, the best for us? Who has a claim on this good? And when is it in our power to do this good for those who have a claim on it? In the gospel Jesus teaches us that no one lights a lamp only to hide its light. No one does the work of enlightenment, the arduous labor of seeking, finding, and obtaining the truth only to hide it away, to conceal it in a vessel or set it under a bed. The good for us is the light of the gospel truth shining out from us—not hidden but clearly, brightly visible.

And who has a claim on this light, this truth? Anyone who sees it, anyone who needs it. The theological thrust of Paul’s missionary efforts to the Gentiles is that the saving truth of the gospel is universal, feely given to all for all. There is no race, sex, nationality, creed, sexual orientation, political allegiance, martial status, socioeconomic class, or handicap that is excluded from seeking, finding, and obtaining the saving truth of the gospel. To all who have ears, listen. To all who have eyes, see.

When do we have the power to do the good for those who will listen and see? Always. We always have the power to shine the light, to direct its beam and focus its illumination. There is never a moment when we are restrained by any power beyond our own volition from giving the gospel truth to those who need it. Never. True, we often feel constrained. Social pressure not to cause trouble with religious discussions. Embarrassment at some of the scandals in the Church. Reluctance to “impose” your beliefs. Worries that others will think you are a zealot or a nutter. All are anxieties that tempt us to silence when a holy noise is required.

Proverbs says: “Refuse no one the good on which he has a claim when it is in your power to do it for him.” We always have the authority—each of us has the authority—to teach and preach the truth of the gospel to anyone who needs to hear it and is willing to listen. Refuse no one, then, this good. Refuse no one your witness. Refuse no one your generous, charitable work. Refuse no one the ill-kept secret of what we become when we take on Christ and fail and rise and fail and rise. “To anyone who has, more will be given.” Faith exercised in good works, in public witness builds a stronger, more resilient trust. “From the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” Faith without good works, without witness is empty, it only “seems.” And even this little bit will be taken away.

“Take care, then, how you hear.” Arrogance in your witness to the truth is vanity. A triumphal certainty that one “possesses the truth” is conceit and as such witnesses only to meaner, baser spirits. To the humble does the Lord show kindness. To those who see and hear the gospel truth and offer it freely in humility, these the Lord blesses with clarity, peace, and the fire of the true Spirit.

Refuse no one the light, the love, the help, the comfort, the fire, the passion, the suffering, the death and the new life of Christ in the Spirit. Refuse no one.

Get those nasty fingers out of your ears!

24th Week OT (F): 1 Cor 15.12-20 and Luke 8.1-3
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation


The Corinthians are causing trouble again. They’ve been spending way too much time listening to their philosophers—the ancient world’s version of some of our itchy-eared career theologians in the academy. Speculation is rife. There is a prevailing spirit of free-wheeling conjecture, a ubiquitous riffing on borrowed intellectual fantasies, stolen fragments of Greek myth, mathematical idolatry, appeals to demiurge hierarchies, and some pop-star adoration in the form of personality cults centered on charismatic figures willing to scratch all those itchy ears in exchange for a little attention. One result of all this imaginative intellectual doodling is a denial of the resurrection of the dead. Essentially, a denial of Christ’s resurrection and a rejection of Easter morning’s Empty Tomb. This denial, this rejection is not simply one reasonable theological conclusion among many reasonable conclusions. It is an emptying of the faith, a draining off of the Spirit, the murder of our life in Christ. It is a mortal wound to the Body, the Church.

How so? Paul makes two very practical observations about the absurdity of a Christian denying the resurrection. First, he says that this denial renders your faith vain. Quite literally, your trust in the promises of God is worthless, without hope. Second, the denial of the resurrection is a conclusive admission that you have been a false witness to God, that is, to say that Christ was not raised from the dead and to say that no one else will be raised either directly contradicts the content of our apostolic witness, our historic faith and serves as testimony against God. We are pitiable Christians indeed if we turn so easily from vowing ourselves in baptism to the life-long proclamation of the Empty Tomb to having our itchy ears scratched by the dirty fingernails of mythic conjecture and itinerant theological curiosities. Remove those attention-seeking fingers from your ears. Turn away.

Turn instead to the women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, those faithful women who “provided for [Jesus and the Twelve] out of their resources.” No doubt Luke is reporting a very mundane reality here. The women made sure the preachers had basic food, clothes, the stuff everyone needs to survive while traveling around. Their generosity to the preachers of the gospel is more than kindness, more than bigheartedness. They were the instruments of the Lord’s providence. They were how the Lord chose to provide for His Son and Son’s student-preachers. The women’s generosity, their open hands and open hearts were a holy preaching.

These women witness against the urbane Corinthian boredom with the central truth of our apostolic faith. Your witness, literally, your martyrdom, must be as open-handed, as open-hearted as the preaching of these women. Your witness to the core hope of our trust in God—that as Christ was raised from the dead so too will those who believe in him be raised—your witness to this Christian truth must be exceedingly generous, ridiculously rich and disproportionately extravagant. If we cannot or will not testify to this truth, then we testify against God and we publicly renounce our baptismal vows. Truly, then, we are forever dead.

Rather than preaching a faith informed by vacant, speculative curiosity or a faith that merely monitors the Spirit dissected and comfortably pinned to fashionable secular prejudices, preach Christ crucified and risen, Christ raised and ascended. From the abundance of your godly trust, the excessive stockpile of our Christian riches, preach the Risen Christ…and get those nasty unfaithful fingers out of your ears!

Getting Shot Everyday of Your Life

St Andrew Kim and Companions: Romans 8.31-39 and Luke 9.23-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Her whole family has just been shot in front of her. “’Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,’ the old lady mumbled[…]” With this moment of desperate doubt on her lips, the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” collapses in the ditch with the serial killer, The Misfit, standing over her. He expresses what can only be described as a distinctly western skepticism about things mystical, “I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t.” The Misfit goes on to claim that if he had been there, he would know for sure whether Jesus raised the dead or not. This knowledge might have saved him from becoming a murderer. The story continues: “His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’ She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.” The Misfit orders Hiram and Bobby Lee, his fellow misfits, to drag her body off into the woods with her family. Bobby Lee says, “She was a talker, wasn’t she?” The Misfit, his eyes “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless looking,” said, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Paul asks the Romans, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution…?” He then quotes Psalm 44, a lament, as his strange answer: “For your sake we are slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.” We are being killed daily for God’s sake. You might say that it is b/c we are being killed daily that Paul asks the question about what will separate us from the love of Christ. Or you might say that since we are not being killed gratuitously but rather for God’s sake, Paul argues then that nothing can wrench us from Christ’s love. Regardless, both lead us to the same conclusion: we would be better Christians if there were someone to shoot us every minute of our lives.

The Grandmother’s empty and terribly haughty religiosity kept her pinned in a bourgeois mud hole. She wallowed in respectability, distant affection, whiny self-righteousness, and crisis superstition. It wasn’t until she found herself in a real mud hole with a gun in her face that her spirit grasped the truth of who she is. At that moment of the Misfit’s greatest vulnerability as a sinner, she reached out: “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” She took up her cross, perhaps for the first time. And died as Christ for her son. Her murderer.*

What does it take for you, for us to see with crystal clarity that nothing—not angels, not powers, not death—that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ? If nothing, nothing at all, can separate us from the love that gave us birth as new men and women in Christ, what are we waiting for? What fear, what anxiety, what worldly claim on our souls, what possible embarrassment holds us back from our witness, our daily martyrdom for God’s sake? The Psalmist cries out to God, “For your sake we are being killed all day long!” Daily we are being killed. Will your death today be a witness or a waste?

If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

*The Misfit is a Christ-figure for the Grandmother. After all, it’s his moment of suffering that brings her to her own epiphany and his gun that martrys her.

Who does Jesus say that you are?

24th Sunday OT: Isa 50.4-9; James 2.14-18; Mark 8.27-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Last night I walked in the common room of the priory to hear a very familiar, distinctly southern voice on the TV. Even before I made it around the couch to see his face, I knew that Fr. Aaron was watching Brother Billy Graham preach. The logo in the corner of the screen told me that this was a “Billy Graham Classic.” Br. Graham’s powder blue polyester suit and full head of brown hair told me this classic was from about 1976. I listened with the ears of a child and I heard the familiar stories of the Bible, the familiar cadences of my Baptist past, the comforting assurances of a personal meeting with Christ, and I heard again and again the signature Protestant theology of faith alone, the lone sinner coming to salvation in a moment of decision, the instantaneous clarity of one’s relationship with God accomplished in a flash of acceptance, just one heartbeat of true openness to the Father’s mercy and BAM! you’re done! At the all too familiar altar call, I watched hundreds of people stream down the aisles of the stadium to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior. And I thought to myself: “You people have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into!”

Who here wishes to lose his life? Who here wishes to deny herself, take up her cross, and follow Jesus? Who here will refuse yourself what you think you need, what you think you want, will reject all those people, all the stuff and prestige that seems so essential, reject all that in exchange for a life of sacrificial service? Who here will heft the instrument of your greatest pain and eventual death, heft it onto your shoulders and carry it to the garbage dump of your unjust execution? Who will follow Jesus?

Be careful. Be very careful. Denying yourself what you want and need, inviting suffering and death into your life, and walking on the path of Christ-like passion and righteousness is dangerous. It’s more than dangerous; it’s explosive, it’s a volatile risk, a decision reached with grace in awe and lived with ears wide open and tongue loosely freed. This is no stunt. No walk along the trimmed paths of a safely tailored wood. This is soul-shattering serious business, commitment to the brim of your deepest well, filled up and overflowing with just two words: “The Christ.” Who do you say that Jesus is? The Christ. The Anointed One of the Father. Messiah. Emmanuel. God With Us. Be careful. Be very careful. Risk nothing on a vain word, a futile gesture. Risk nothing on a pretense. Risk nothing on a drama, a skit, a made-for-TV moment of tears. We’re not playing at Church here! But please, risk everything, all things, on a steadfast truth, a faithful word. Risk everything answering that groaning longing, that bone-deep, itching desire. Rest your restless heart where Peter has rested his. With confidence, he takes his well-rewarded risk: “You are the Christ.”

Who do you say that Jesus is? Prophet. Brilliant teacher. Rabbi. Essene monk. Son of Joseph and Mary. Pacifist revolutionary. Radical social reformer. Delusional cult leader. Figment of the imagination. God. What possible difference does it make? Labels are peeled off as easily as they are slapped on. One label, two labels, three. No matter. Who he was then and who is now is largely irrelevant. Largely inconsequential to who I was, to who I am. He can be a teacher of ethics, a cultural pioneer, a non-violent demonstrator, an unwed mother, a suicidal teenager, a laid off fifty-something year old, a mad priest, a delicate child. He’s all things to all people. What does it matter who I say he is? If you do not know who he is, cannot or will not say who he is, how will you deny yourself for his sake? Whose sake? Will you take up an empty cross? Who will you follow? You must know who Jesus is and you must speak the name of Jesus so that your works may be signs of your faith. To demonstrate your faith, your works must be worked in the name of Jesus the Christ. Who do you say that Jesus is?

And perhaps more frightening than that question, is this one: when Jesus the Christ looks back at those claiming to follow him, when he looks over the crowd, all those yelling “Lord, lord!” who will he say that you are? Will he see a half-hearted wannabe or a hero of the Word? A mush-mouthed apostle or a proclaimer of the Good News? A wallower in anger and despair or a rejoicer in love and mercy? A slave to disobedience or a freed child of faith. Who will he say that you are? Who do you say that you are?

What do your works say about you? How do you demonstrate your faith? In other words, to say that you have faith, to say that Jesus is the Christ, and then fail, utterly fail to act as though you believe this, to fail to demonstrate concretely your claim to faith, this failure is death. And what a silly way to go. Do you think for a moment that our loving Father would ask us to believe in his Son for our redemption, to accept His invitation to live with Him forever, and then turn around and make it impossible or even difficult for us to do so? Everything necessary for our redemption and our growth holiness is freely given, freely infused in us for our use, just waiting for our cooperation. We are graced, gifted with all that we need to name the Christ, to deny ourselves for his sake, to carry our cross, and to walk in his ways. In other words, when he looks back at us, those following in his way, bearing our crosses, we may ask him, “Lord, who do you say that we are?” He can say, because his own suffering, death, and resurrection has made it so, he can say, “You are the Christs.”

If I were a Baptist preacher, maybe Br. Billy Graham, I would cue the choir to start “Just As I Am.” While they sang softly, I would ask all those touched by the Lord this night to come forward, to stand before the altar and ask Jesus into your life. I would urge you to accept Christ into your heart and make him your personal Lord and Savior. But since I am a Catholic priest and Dominican preacher, I will instead invite you forward to take into your bodies the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, to eat his flesh and drink his blood. To take into your life—your flesh and blood—everything that he is for us. Teacher. Savior. Brother. Master. Son of Mary. Word Made Flesh. Father and Holy Spirit. God. And then I will invite you to leave this place with his blessing to grow in holiness by serving one another, to proclaim the Good News with your tongue and with your hands, to thrive wildly in the abundance of graces that the Lord hands you, the talents He gives you to use for His greater glory.

If you know what you’re getting yourself into, walk these aisles this morning/tonight, stand up and come forward to eat and drink, and know that you stand and walk and eat and drink and serve because he is the Christ, he is the Anointed One of God, and he says to us all and to each: “You are the Christs. Follow me and do our Father’s will.”

Mary's revealing sorrow

Our Lady of Sorrows: Hebrews 5.7-9 and Luke 2.33-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX


Just think: all his life the prophet Simeon heard the whispered revelation of the Word in his heart, the approaching thunder of our salvation; what must have been a constant rumble, a persistent, portending drumbeat: “The Christ is coming! The Christ is coming!” And now, right there, the child stands fully made, fully revealed, a sign against the world, a man to save the world. His coming, his suffering, death, and resurrection offers a choice, a choice that reveals the human heart, that unveils the place of covenant in our souls: choose life with him or choose death against him.

Standing there, looking at Jesus, does Simeon feel the shaking of history? Does he feel the prophetic wave break against all creation, loosing the bonds of death, slicing cleanly the knots of miserable fortune—the tied-tight grip of what everyone thought of as their predestined end? What did it feel like to witness the cracking of the world’s foundation, the beginning of death’s end? What is it like to have your bones rattled by the choice of heaven and hell blooming before you?

Prophet, behold your sign. Mother, behold your son. Children of God, behold the sword.

Blessing Jesus’ mother and father, Simeon must hear again the prophecy he has heard all his life, the prophecy of Isaiah: “…he shall be a snare, an obstacle and a stumbling stone to both the houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to those who dwell in Jerusalem; and many among them shall stumble and fall, broken, snared, and captured.” Is this how we think of Jesus? Do we think of him as a scandal, a stumbling block, a trap on the path, a snare? Do think of him as one who will net us like prey or break us against the rocks? Surely, Jesus is a comforter, a consoler, a reconciler, and a man of peace. Surely, Jesus comes to forgive, to loose from bonds, to free from snares, and to gently guide.

Yes, surely, this is true. But he comforts with truth not fairy tales. He consoles with what is not with wishes. He reconciles with stark choices not compromise. And we are freed. Freed from the bonds of sin. Freed by our trust and our allegiance. Freed from the snares of lies. Freed by the knowledge of the truth. And your heart is revealed in the decision you make: will you be free to live and love forever or will you continue to pretend that your slavery is license? Will you learn obedience so that you may be made perfect in His love? Or will you continue the devil’s puppet show of sin, playing the stooge on a string?

We don’t like stark choices. The black and the white. We love the gray. We love the infinite progress of options. And we wear ourselves out doggedly chasing after alternatives. We want the Pick and Choose Buffet, the marketplace of boundless selection—the perfect fit, the flattering color. And so we resist the idea that Jesus is a sign of contradiction, a signal of negation: he is for us a trap, a snare, a pit; he is a moment in history, a time marked by decision. He trips us up b/c his life, his suffering, death, and resurrection reveals our heart, our most primitive desire: what do you want? Life or death? To fall again or rise with him? Eternal gray or brilliant glory?

Joseph and Mary were amazed at what Simeon said about their son. How much more amazed was Mary when Simeon prophesied that she would be pierced by a sword so that hearts may be revealed? Our mother’s sorrow over her son’s death moves us to the choice of our heart’s most profound desire: we choose life, and that abundantly!

Naughty to Holy

Saints Behaving Badly, Thomas J. Craughwell, Doubleday, 2006

I was very skeptical at first. The title of the book, Saints Behaving Badly, sounded like one of those screeds written by an anti-Catholic Catholic who tries to convince us that we can ignore the current Pope because somewhere in the distant past some Pope had a girlfriend or pilfered from the papal treasury or drank a little too much. I thought: “Great. Another book ‘exposing’ the saints of the Church as sinners in order to promote some ridiculous dissident agenda.” I could not have been more wrong. Thomas Craughwell writes of his intentions: "The point of reading these stories is not to experience some tabloid thrill, but to understand how grace works in the world. Every day, all day long, God pours out his [sic] grace upon us, urging us, coaxing us, to turn away from everything that is base and cheap and unsatisfying, and turn toward the only thing that is eternal, perfect, true--that is himself[sic]" (xii). Is Craughwell a Dominican? Maybe I can persuade him to give the life of a preacher a try! Though the title is misleading, the book is anything but a juicy expose of saintly misdeeds. What Craughwell gives us is a well-written and lively picture of exactly what the Church is all about: the proclamation of the Good News that even the worst sinner can become a saint. Moving from St. Matthew to Venerable Matt Talbot, Craughwell chronicles the morally chaotic lives of the malcontents who became some of our best examples of Christian holiness. My favorites: St. Christopher, Servant of the Devil; St. Augustine, Heretic and Playboy; St. Columba, Warmonger; St. Vladimir, Fratricide, Rapist, and Practitioner of Human Sacrifice; St. Francis of Assisi, Wastrel; and St. Peter Claver, Dithering Novice. What’s fascinating to me about all these saints is that moment of grace that turns them around, that instant in time when the Lord touches their cold hearts with the fire of his Spirit and sets these guys ablaze with his love. Some of the stories may not be appropriate for younger readers (blood and guts, sexually suggestive content), but older adolescents will benefit tremendously from reading that their worst sins probably don’t rate the title “Satantist” or “Hedonist” or “Mass Murderer” and that even these sinners found God’s grace and His salvation. Over at Disputations, Tom suggests that the book would make a good reading group for a parish. I agree. Perhaps confessors could recommend the book to penitents whose pride prevents them from accepting God's forgiveness because their sins are truly horrible. Tell them to read the book and ask themselves: "Am I THAT bad?" Or maybe the parish youth group could use the book as inspiration for a revival of the medieval tradition of staging conversion dramas! However you choose to use the book, it's worth a read.

Paul vs. Jesus, Law vs. Love

23rd Week OT: 1 Cor 5.1-8 and Luke 6.6-11
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

To perfect our participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity we first come to love God as He loves us. Our ability to love God is itself a gift from God Who Is Love. The degree to which we listen to and comply with our vocation to love God by loving one another is what we call “maturity.” A more mature spirituality will be one that has better perfected the gift of love.

Now, forgive my pedantic start. But there is a point here, I promise! We have two apparently conflicting scriptural readings this morning. Paul hears that there is a notorious sinner among the Corinthians, a man living with his father’s wife. He demands that the church expel this man from the community and “deliver [him] to Satan for the destruction of his flesh…” Over in Luke, we have Jesus battling the Pharisees again over the proper understanding of the relationship between the letter of the Law and the spirit of the Law. The Pharisees practically dare Jesus to heal a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath. Of course, he does! And he asks, “…is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save a life rather than to destroy it?” Paul says that we must boot the sinners out and Jesus says that the letter of the Law is always understood in light of the greater good.

Our temptation here is to run to one pole or the other. If you will follow Paul on this issue, you will uphold the right and responsibility of the church to discipline its members using biblical and traditional measures of moral action. If you will follow Jesus on this issue, you will privilege the greater good in the spirit of the Law over a legalism required by the letter of the Law. The perversion of Paul’s position becomes self-righteousness, Pharisaical legalism in the name of purity. The perversion of Jesus’ position becomes indifferentism, a toleration of sin in the church in the name of spiritual liberty. Both legalism and indifferentism are immature spiritualities, that is, neither will help you cooperate with God’s grace in perfecting His love in you.

Recently, our bishops published an updated version of their Program for Priestly Formation. In the chapter titled, “Human Formation,” they write: “The foundation and center of all human formation is Jesus Christ […] In his fully developed humanity, he was truly free and with complete freedom gave himself totally for the salvation of the world”(74). Here is the key to our spirituality: Christ-like freedom. We will wither in sin if we fail to hold one another to basic moral standards. And we will smother the fire of the spirit in us if we lock our conscience in a legalistic coffin.

To be free, truly free as Christ is free, and therefore ready, willing, and able to cooperate with God’s gift of love to us, we cannot see our freedom as a license to do whatever we want. Our freedom came in a moment in history. We were liberated from the inevitability of death due to sin and given a renewed purpose, a new goal, a new life in Christ, to become Christ, and live with God forever. We mature spiritually when we submit our will to the law of freedom, the rule of the living Lord in our lives, and then give our lives for the good of others—sacrifice in love.

Paul insists that the sinner be expelled so that his soul may be saved. Jesus appeals to the greater good of a higher Law. Paul does not re-establish Pharisaical rule over the Corinthians. And Jesus does not sever us from the moral responsibilities of the Good. We cannot call on Paul to justify self-righteousness and we cannot call on Jesus to justify libertine abuse of moral freedom.

A truly adult spirituality then is a child-like submission to our final end, our ultimate human purpose: to be perfected as our Father is perfect—to become sacrificial Love.

"Can't get no..." (revised)

23rd Sunday OT: Isa 35.4-7; Jas 2.1-5; Mark 7.31-37
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
U.D. Freshmen Retreat, St Paul’s Hospital, Church of the Incarnation


In the late 1960’s a prominent philosopher and cultural critic wrote the following, anxious cry for the human condition: “I can’t get no satisfaction/I can’t get no satisfaction./’cause I try and I try and I try and I try./I can’t get no.” He goes on to argue that the information doled out by the media is, at best, without merit. He writes, “When I’m driving in my car/And that man comes on the radio/And he’s tellin’ me more and more/About useless information/Supposed to fire my imagination./I can’t get no, oh no no no.” The media fails us in the end. His argument ends in what can only be called pathetic mewling and a denial of the possibility of final happiness: “I can’t get no satisfaction/I can’t get no satisfaction./’cause I try and I try and I try and I try./I can’t get no.” We can’t get no satisfaction…and so, we are afraid.

And so the Lord says to those whose hearts are frightened: “Be strong, fear not! Here is our God!” Our God comes with vindication, with absolution and acquittal. He comes with divine recompense, with reward and reimbursement. The blind see. The deaf hear. The desert sand pours out water. And so He says to us, “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God!” What we need most, what we need best and soonest, what we need deeply and widely—the love of our Creator—His love is here, now, God is with us. Here is our strength, our courage, and our God.

Our philosopher and cultural critic, Professor Jagger, perfectly captures the condition of the soul frightened by the apparent absence of God. While we can say, “Be strong, fear not! Here is our God!” Those with frightful hearts can only moan and cry, “I am weak and afraid! Where is God?” And what frightens their hearts? What grabs their very being and squeezes it with terror? Death? Loneliness? Sickness? Trial? Temptation? Failure? If it is fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of sickness and trial and temptation that terrorizes your heart---be still! And know that God is here.

He could not hear, could not speak. Jesus took him away from the crowd and ministered to his lock up ears and his locked up tongue. “Be opened!” And the man heard and spoke and the crowd was exceedingly astonished. Jesus ordered them to keep quiet about the miracle, but the more he insisted on their silence, the more they witnessed to his power. “He has done all things well.” They could not be silent. Nor can we. Our silence now is vanity, a useless calm that herds us to destruction.

We live by the promises of a God who loves us. We live by the promises of a God who became flesh for us, suffered for us, died for us, and rose again so that we might have eternal life. Our satisfaction—despite the destruction, the despair, and the seduction of a nearly mad world—, our satisfaction, what fills us up with joy, is the strength of the Lord, His awesome power, His constant presence. What bodily temptation or spiritual perversion can stand against the creating and recreating power of Love Himself? What hole in your soul cannot be filled with His plan for you? What lack, what poverty can’t He remedy? What gift, what talent can’t He complete in you? And use for His greater glory?

Professor Jagger sings about a bleak and sterile landscape, an arid cultural desert, littered with the wrecks of the idolatries of self, power, and riches. We are confronted by sadistic and alien religiosities; theologies of absolute domination and public terror; televised political pomp and ceremony masquerading as peace and social justice; the destruction of human dignity by market oppression packaged as economic freedom; the collapse of basic familial structures in the name of choice and liberty; the suicidal destruction of our historical memory, our collective ability to recall who we have always been. We are forced to attend to the daily freakshow of activist clowns slyly distracting our consciences with colorful tricks while they do violence to our tradition by renaming their silly social novelties as “civil rights.” And what of the Church? Have we forgotten our promises? Our vows to be apostles? Our promises to be faithful witnesses? Have we been dithering on the playground of scandal and dissent for so long that we have forgotten just who we are and why we are here?

But even in this ruined desert of consumerist nightmares and ecclesial amnesia, we are not fatherless. To those with ears opened to hear, our loosed tongues must say to them, “Be strong, fear not! Here is our God!” The persistent witness of scripture and tradition is that despite our best efforts to remove the Lord from our lives, our best efforts to ignore Him, to neuter Him into a Platonic demiurge, to reduce Him to a cosmic process, or to loan Him out to alien religions as “Visiting Diety-in-Residence,” He remains with us. He stays right here. If the flux and flair of our culture frightens you, gives your heart pause in trusting the promises of the Father to be with us…do not be afraid! Emmanuel! God is with us! Biblical witness, traditional witness, magisterial witness, personal witness…every witness kindled by the Spirit’s fire speaks the same Word with the same Breath and repeats over and over and over: God is with us! God is with us!

What will your witness be this year? What will your words and deeds tell us about your spirit? What will you tell us about who you are as a student and missionary of the Lord? Will you open ears around you to hear the Word and loose tongues to offer praise to God? Will you serve in righteousness the poor whom God has chosen as heirs of His kingdom? Will your mercy inspire mercy? Your love inspire love? Will you be Christ?

Your life this year can be a life of worry, anxiety, stress, sickness, and unbearable pressure. Your life this year can be a life of joy, trust, peace, good health, and leisure. Your life this year can be lived in a tiny box where the only voice you hear is your own. Your life this year can be lived on the opened field where the all the voices you hear speak the Word of Life, the Word of Truth. You can be deaf and mute. You can be closed and silent. Or you can be opened by Christ to repair the ruins, to challenge the clowns, to stand up against the slow and steady crumbling of our faithful past; you can open your mouth and speak the words of wisdom, proclaiming to the crowds that God is with us and He is ready to touch ears, touch tongues, ready to open everything, all His works, to receive the Word of Christ.

Can’t get no satisfaction? Well, make the t-shirt if you must. Yes, buy the CD. Order the poster and hang it on the wall…but do not forget the promise of our Mighty Father: “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God!”

Not "once upon a time" BUT "Here with us"

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Rom 8.28-30 and Matt1.18-23
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX


There is no “Once upon a time…” in the Catholic faith, no “Long ago and far away…” The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the New Covenant, the Father of all creation operates in history for our salvation—dates, times, places, people, events—real history, real stories, faithful narratives of His people struggling to love Him and to be loved by Him. The Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian, John Zizioulas, writes: “History is the sacrament of Israel’s religion.” Meaning that history, the record of God’s creative and re-creative work in His world, reveals God to us, makes Him better known to us. Through His Word from the Law and the Prophets, through His Word to Mary, our Mother, and through the revelation of the New Covenant in the Word Made Flesh, our Father brings us to Him, reels us in, and gives us new life. The celebration of Mary’s nativity is a celebration of our redemption in history—not an escape from this world in timeless myth but the blessing of this world in Christ’s birth as Lord and Savior.

OK. Why the theology lecture, Father? Here’s why: how easy is it for us to fall into the foggy mush of neo-pagan escapism, the near-Gnostic desire to understand our salvation as some sort of mystical escape from the dirty world, from the heavy stuff of living in bodies that betray our spiritual efforts, and other bodies—you people out there!—who won’t stop sinning, who won’t Do Right and make my work at getting holier easier for me! How quickly and easily we can come to think of our spiritual lives as the difficult work of ridding ourselves of what makes it possible for us to be perfected in God’s love: one another.

If we will be saved together, then we must live together in holiness and that means living in this world, in this history of God’s creation, among His works of beauty and goodness AND among the uglinesses and evils we build from what He has given us. Salvation is not about getting out of here as fast as possible. Salvation is about getting back into the family of God and witnessing, preaching, and teaching His healing Word; living every day, every hour, every minute in thanksgiving, in humble gratitude to Him for your very being, saying “thank you” for the fact of your existence, and the existence of everyone else, all of whom reveal Him to you.

Celebrating our Blessed Mother’s birth exalts her sacrificial fiat, her “let it be done to me” as a moment in history, a real event that calls out her predestined purpose, her prophetic place as the one who gives flesh to the Son. This took place. This took a place. An event with a location and a time. It took place to fulfill what the Lord had said in His Word through the prophet. And b/c it was done to her according to His Word and her Yes, the child is named Emmanuel, God-With-Us. And He is with us—in His family gathered here, in His priests, in His sacrifice of the altar, in His history, and in His Church.

If and when you are tempted by the devil of spiritual escapism—a spirit that tempts us with the false notion that we must get away from the dirt and the ugliness and sordidness of created things, especially other people, in order to be saved—if and when you are tempted by this devil, give thanks for Mary’s birth. Give thanks for her fiat. Give thanks to her for bearing Jesus and bringing the Word to us. And remember that God is with us—not “once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away,” but right now, right here loving us through His family. Loving us back to Him until he comes again.

Speak a word of healing

22nd Week OT (W): 1 Cor 3.1-9 and Luke 4.38-44
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!
When you think about being sick or being well and not doing well spiritually and doing very well spiritually, do you think about how your body feeds your soul and how your soul animates—gives life to—your body? Since the human person is a body/soul—not a machine with a ghost inside!—but a composite of flesh and bone and animated life, there must be a some basic connection between being physically or spiritually diseased or healthy. After all, it is no accident that Jesus both preaches and heals, proclaims his healing Word and restores health to the afflicted. It is for this purpose that he was sent.

Cancer, infection, catastrophic injury. Useless anxiety, wounded empathy, and all-consuming narcissism. These are all demons, all maladies who speak too often and say too much, robbing us of our ease, our fitness and vigor. But what power do they have over us when we are focused on our purpose? How can they wound us, infect us, trouble us at all when we are living the life of Christ, when we are rehearsing daily our part in the gospel drama of redemption and growing in holiness?

Jesus rebukes the woman’s fever. Pulls it out of her. He speaks directly to the source of her illness, admonishing the worry and fret to leave her. It does. She rises and serves him. And the word of her healing spreads, bringing the sick from all over. Each is cured and demons are expelled. Isn’t this the pattern of our salvation and the preaching of the Word? Do you recognize it? We are brought to Christ by someone else; we hear his Word spoken; we are healed of our sin, we rise to serve his Body, the Church; the good news spreads; other are healed body and soul—cured of disease and relieved of their demons. And Christ’s purpose is made flesh and bone, given life again in our New Life in him.

We know the sources of most of our physical ailments. Medical science is more than capable of pointing us to the various causes of bodily disease. But what causes our spiritual dis-ease? What grows in us to make us anxious, cold-hearted, self-righteous, disobedient, basically, sinful? Paul tells the Corinthians that they are not yet a spiritual people—they are still fleshy, still infants in Christ. And he knows this b/c they are jealous and contentious, some claiming to be of Paul and some Apollos. They have forgotten their start and their end, their origins and their goal. They don’t know who they are b/c they don’t know where they are going. They have failed to understand that they were made for a purpose and then redeemed to fulfill that purpose.

There is no magic here. I am not suggesting that knowing our divine purpose mystically protects us from car accidents, stomach aches, and the flu; or that we will never feel the touch of a dark spirit. Knowing our divine purpose gives us a point above disease to focus on, a goal, a signpost beyond illness and injury, a future health for which we can reach, and in reaching, grasp with God’s perfecting gifts of love and mercy. We are not abandoned to our sicknesses. Being ill—in body and soul—is never about being forsaken by God. This is our chance to surrender any allegiance to despair, any commitment to something or someone other than Christ. Being ill is the crisis of body and soul that tightens the ear to hear the Word preached, to hear the healing rebuke of Jesus. Now, follow the pattern: spread that healing Word, speak your purpose and gather the crowd around our Christ. We belong to him. We are his field and his co-workers. We are his purpose, his Body--wounded, healed, and finally perfected.

What Comes Out Matters

22nd Sun: Dt 4.1-2, 6-8; Jas 1.17-18, 21-22, 27; Mk 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

PODCAST!
Eat five fruits and vegetables daily. Drink six to eight 8 oz. glasses of water daily. Don’t skip breakfast. Eat protein and good carbs six times a day. Don’t eat after eight o’clock at night. “Fat-free” doesn’t mean “calorie-free”—read the label! Take smaller portions and chew slowly. Wear a tight belt at meals. Don’t eat alone. Green socks will distract you during meals. Eat left-handed. Stick grapefruit seeds behind your ears to rev-up your metabolism. Watch back to back episodes of the surgery channel while eating—especially when they do the eyes! Eat naked in front of a mirror. Eat with your hands. Let someone else feed you. But under no circumstances are you to allow someone else to feed you while eating naked in front of a mirror wearing green socks with grapefruit seeds stuck behind your ears! That’s just silly. And we don’t want to be silly about what we put into our bodies, do we?

We have our own food-based prohibitions, don’t we? Long lists of what we will and will not eat. Long lists of fatty foods, fried foods, sugary foods, animal-based foods, artificially sweetened foods, high-carb foods, foods made from refined flour, foods from politically suspect countries, foods from politically suspect regions of the country, foods from certain corporations, foods made by non-union workers or maybe made by union workers…all sorts of prohibitions that give breath and voice to the virtues we want to cultivate and the vices we want to kill. There is one list of forbidden foods we do not have, however—a list of naughty foods given to us by God. God says, “Graze freely and fairly and share with those who can’t.” Not a bestseller…but the rule effectively illustrates the point Jesus is making to the Pharisees and scribes.

Once again Jesus finds himself having to teach the teachers of the Law the first meaning of the Law. The scribes and Pharisees accuse Jesus and his disciples of violating the traditions of the elders when they eat without washing their hands. Essentially, the disciples are ignoring the purification rituals done before meals. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus accuses his opponents of ignoring the Father’s commandment to honor Him in their hearts. They are doing little more than offering “lip service,” literally, they are “serving God only with their lips” when they merely ritually wash their hands. It’s a show. To be seen. A show to be seen by those who expect public displays of piety, religious theatre in plain view.

In opposition to this, Jesus teaches: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” This is not a simple reversal of conventional social values. Jesus isn’t “turning things upside down.” He is simply teaching the Law as it was given and showing now how it has matured: righteousness with God is a right relationship offered in love, accepted in total awe, and lived in the service of others. We are completed in God’s love and by God’s love as we use our God-given gifts to serve others. If you find yourself obsessed with the regulatory minutiae, the picayune procedure, the jots and tittles of public religiosity, you might want to consider again the passage from Isaiah that Jesus quotes to the Pharisees: “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.”

So, how do we honor God with our hearts and not just our lips? How do we worship Him in the true Spirit with love?

We hear in the letter of James: to honor God the Father with His Son through the Holy Spirit, we come to see that everything we have and everything we are is His gift to us. We come to see that He gave us birth by the word of truth, that we are knitted together with the every breath of truth and pushed out into the world graced as the firstfruits of His creation. We humbly welcome, we joyously receive the Word planted in us, that spirit of beauty and goodness that God completes in His love and that comes to save our souls. We are doers of this Word in the world not just hearers of it. We make His Word real, we give His word in us hands and feet, lips and tongues. We give His Word function, practicality, work, purpose, and finished goals. If His word remains in us unused, it will become a fragile thing easily broken by sin, quickly shattered by private doubt, or perhaps die from lack of charitable attention. And if we feed His Word nothing more than religiosity, mere ritual and mechanical prayer, or even worse, superstition dressed up as devotion, we risk blasphemy by using His name vainly, using His name to no purpose other than public show.

Pure religion, that is, a clean relationship with God is both interior and exterior, one leading the other and the other pushing the first: you serving others to serve God and you keep yourself undefiled by the world, unmoved by the prizes the world seeks after. Murder, theft, adultery, idolatry, folly, greed all come from within, all come from a heart darkened by a will untamed in truth and beauty, a heart closed to the Word planted in its muscle. To strengthen that Word, to bring it fresh blood and clean air, open your ears to hear, open your eyes to see; hear and see the Gospel, the whole Gospel of love that Christ preached—our perfection in obedience to the Father’s will, our completion as vigorous members of the Body, our growth as men and women in love with being servants to one another, and our joy in honoring Him who made us His people, His nation, His prophets and His priests.

To do him honor, purify your heart with a clean sacrifice of service, a spotless gift of unselfish work for someone who needs your hands for their own good. It is not enough that we carefully attend to the religious duties and the canonical obligations of being Catholics. We can certainly start there, but if we will mature beyond needing the spiritual training wheels of the Law, if we would worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth, in the fullness of His revelation and His perfecting grace, we will seek Him, find, Him, and serve Him, for His greater glory, among those thrown out, cast off, abandoned, and shamed. If we will do Him honor as your Father and Lord, we will uncover His forgiving Word, reveal His love, and put His compassion to work for the weakest among us. On the cross, He made Himself the least among us to serve us. Now, to serve the least is to serve the best.

What goes in—food, ritual, Law—all matter but not finally. What comes out measures your soul, weighs your spirit against the promises you’ve made. Eating naked in front of a mirror takes some courage. Standing naked before the Lord…well, that takes more than courage; that takes trust…and bruises and skinned knees and dirty hands and a sunburn and some sweat. It also takes the humility to say without flinching: how may I serve?!