A Cardinal, VC2, and Religious Life

In 1972, French Jesuit Cardinal Jean Danielou gave an interview in which he criticized contemporary religious life as "decadent."  He accurately diagnosed the disease infecting monks, friars, nuns, and sisters and found its cause in popular deviations from the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.  Because his diagnosis and cure were seen as a threat to the very decadence he called out, Crdl. Danielou was exiled from his community.

Interview of Cardinal Jean Daniélou on Vatican Radio, October 23, 1972

Q: Your Eminence, is there really a crisis of religious life, and can you give us its dimensions?

A: I think that there is now a very grave crisis of religious life, and that one should not speak of renewal, but rather of decadence. I think that this crisis is hitting the Atlantic area above all. Eastern Europe and the countries of Africa and Asia present in this regard a better state of spiritual health. This crisis is manifesting itself in all areas. The evangelical counsels are no longer considered as consecrations to God, but are seen in a sociological and psychological perspective. We are concerned about not presenting a bourgeois facade, but on the individual level poverty is not practiced. The group dynamic replaces religious obedience; with the pretext of reacting against formalism, all regularity of the life of prayer is abandoned and the first consequence of this state of confusion is the disappearance of vocations, because young people require a serious formation. And moreover there are the numerous and scandalous desertions of religious who renege on the pact that bound them to the Christian people.

Q: Can you tell us what, in your view, are the causes of this crisis?

A: The essential source of this crisis is a false interpretation of Vatican II. The directives of the Council were very clear: a greater fidelity of religious men and women to the demands of the Gospel expressed in the constitutions of each institute, and at the same time an adaptation of the modalities of these constitutions to the conditions of modern life. The institutes that are faithful to these directives are seeing true renewal, and have vocations. But in many cases the directives of Vatican II have been replaced with erroneous ideologies put into circulation by magazines, by conferences, by theologians. And among these errors can be mentioned. . .

Read the whole article.

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Working. . .

Thank you all for the questions!

Just FYI:  I'm working on my responses.  Look for them later today.

God bless, Fr. Philip Neri, OP
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Go out and frighten the world!

5th Week of Easter (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Jesus drops a rather somber warning on his disciples, “I have chosen you out of the world. . .and the world hates you. . .[but] realize that it hated me first. . .If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” We know that the world persecuted Jesus, and we know that the disciples were persecuted as well. Despite the best efforts of the world to bludgeon, burn, crucify, and exile the Good News from its realm, the news got out, and we've been here for more than 2,000 years. Like a body infected with a deadly virus, the world reacts to the presence of the Church—attacking, repelling, isolating. But we're still here. Despite the best efforts of some in the Church to surrender to the world, to bring the world into the sanctuary, and give her away like a rare virgin bride, we're still here. We're still here not b/c we are deserving of preservation, b/c we're earned the privilege of God's protection. We're still here b/c Christ promised to be with his Church always. Because the world needs an ordinary means of receiving his Father's abounding grace. So long as the Church remains, the body of the world remains infected with the saving virus of the Good News. This is why the world hates us: they do not see any need for rescue. 

If you feel no danger, you very likely see no need for rescue. Sitting comfy and cozy on your couch, reading a good book, you would probably dismiss a neighbor who barges in yelling, “I'm here to rescue you from your comfy, cozy couch!” If you were kneeling in prayer in church, confident that all was right with your spiritual life, the rantings of a crazy friar from the pulpit about sin and God's love would be distracting but hardly alarming. However, if your world were collapsing, if your family, your nation, your civilization, all that you have come to rely on were spinning out of control, and someone offered you a way to leave that world behind, the first thing you would need to do is admit that your world was coming apart. You would need to see the destruction, hear the system tearing at its seams, feel the angst and anger rising. In other words, you would have to confess that the world you helped to build and operate was losing its soul, spiraling into a dysfunctional waste. If you make this confession, then rescue is possible. If you refuse, if you deny the truth, rescue is impossible, and you will grow to hate those who offer you a way out. 

 Christ's offer to rescue the world is an accusation. To say, “You need rescuing” is to say “You are in danger,” and I am in a position to help. The hardest part of being rescued is admitting that help is required. Why does the world hate Christ and his disciples? Because the Church sees the world in danger and knows that the only way to be rescued is to embrace Christ and leave that dangerous world behind. Leave behind contesting for social standing; compromising the truth to gain political influence; rutting with violence for the applause of mob; to leave behind self-righteous do-gooding, the easy hatred of imaginary enemies, and the lust for things and people. Christ's offer of rescue is an accusation, but it is also—if accepted—a vindication, a victory over the world, a win for those who would confess that they can only lose without God. No slave is greater than his master. If we are slaves of Christ, then we can expect nothing more from the world than he himself received. The rulers of this world fear another King, and they fear his followers. When the world stops hating the Church, we know that we have stopped preaching his Good News. Therefore, go out and frighten the world! 

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I'm sick of love.

5th Week of Easter (F)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

I’m sick of love. Sick of reading about it. Sick of hearing about it. Sick of preaching about it. Love, love, love, blahblahblah. Seems like every time we turn around in the Easter season we’re listening to John prattle on about how Jesus commanded us to love one another or how Jesus wants us to love our enemies. Sorry. Just makes me a bit queasy—kinda syrupy, sweet, sticky. Too cute. Is this what we’re about? Cute love? Jesus suffered the whip and died on a cross so that we are free to whisper cutesy clichés about warm-fuzzies and hugging teddy bears? Do I need to go put on the creamy-pink vestments and my Bunny slippers? No. Thank God and all the Saints…no. Love is not cute, cuddly, creamy, sticky, sweet, pink, huggable, warm, or fluffy. Love is not careful, balanced, gentle, meek, or meager. And love is most certainly not neutral, tolerant, ambiguous, confused, or permissive. Love is none of these. So, what is love? 

 The One who sits on the Heavenly Throne says, “Look! I make all things new.” The old order has passed away. No more death. No more grief. No more pain. No more crying. What has always been is no more. What is/is going. What is coming is new, fresh, clean, and pure. And this will not be accomplished by a tame passion or a commericalized infatuation. Love is the divine juice of renewal; the power of perfecting gift; the living breath of re-creating wisdom; the Spirit that cuts away dead flesh and shocks a weaken heart; love is God’s passion, God’s might, His transformative command: God speaks His Word to nothing and everything IS…and it IS only in Love. What’s pink, fuzzy, sweet, or gentle about that?! Let’s see Hallmark put this on Valentine’s Day card: “How do I love you? Let me count the ways: first, I gave birth to reality using Nothing as my source; second, I took dirt and gave you a body and breathed a soul it in, only to watch you betray me; third, I destroyed the face of the earth and all but a few of you b/c of your disobedience; fourth, I sent my only Son to be whipped bloody and spiked to a cross to pay for your sins…this is how I love you! XOXOXO—God the Father.” No, that wouldn't be a bestseller for Hallmark. 

Maybe one reason we get sick of hearing about love during Easter is that preachers, especially Catholic preachers, tend to think of love in purely secular terms—Hallmark, Oprah, doe-eyed celebrities. These guys preach love as a kind of permissive passion—an excuse for all our favorite sins, leaving the false impression that we can deal with our sin by emoting it away, or by wishing it away on the grounds that we all fall short of His glory. Just follow your heart! Only love matters! The only truth is what you love! Right? Well, yes, but we must remember what Divine Love is and what it isn’t. Divine Love perfects the imperfect. It shines up, buffs off, and sharpens. If you will become a well-oiled, surgical tool for God’s Word—like Paul and Barnabas—you will love. You will speak the truth, spread goodness, honor beauty; you will correct error, confront sin—especially your own—, forgive all offenses; and you will build up the Body with sacrificial service and open the doors of faith to the stranger. Your life in Christ is a gospel epic not a cheesy Hallmark poem. Love us as Christ loves us…right to the blood smeared cross, to the tomb, and on to the Father’s right hand in glory! 

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Have you joyed today?

5th Week of Easter (Th)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Do you want your joy to be complete? Before you answer, think about what it means for your joy to be incomplete. What is this “incomplete joy”? Isn't joy just joy. . .happiness, delight, positive thinking and feeling? It is. So, what is “complete joy”? We'll let Jesus answer that one, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. . .” Lots of love-talk but nothing in that answer about joy. Well, he continues, “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” He tells us to remain in his love by keeping his commandments so that our joy might be complete! Almost. We left out one important part. He tells us to remain in his love by keeping his commandments so that his joy might be in us and our joy might be complete! In other words, our joy alone is incomplete. Complete joy is our joy joined with Christ's. OK, to quote a Tina Turner song, “What love got to do with it?” But before we answer that, let's ask one more time: do you want your joy to be complete? 

If you want your joy to be complete, then you will keep Christ's commandments, the first of which is: love God with your whole heart, mind, body, and soul, with all your strength. The connection btw love and joy is the connection btw virtue and act, btw thinking about a good habit and actually acting upon that habit. Thomas Aquinas gives us this definition: “. . .virtue is an operative habit, wherefore by its very nature it has an inclination to a certain act. . .love of God is accounted a special virtue, namely charity, to which joy must be referred, as its proper act” (ST II.II.28.4). When we run that through our translator we get: virtue naturally inclines us to do good deeds. . .loving God is a very special kind of virtue called charity and the good deed that charity inclines us toward is joy. Joy is the proper act of loving God. So, when Jesus says that he places his joy in us so that our joy might be complete, he's saying that he is placing within us his own love for his Father so that we can love the Father along with him. “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.” He tells us this so that we know that our love for God is no longer incomplete.

Now that we know this, let's reexamine joy as the proper act of loving God. The first thing to notice is that joy is defined as an act, not an emotion or an attitude but an act, something done. We never use joy as a verb. I'll joy you tomorrow after Mass. Y'all come on over, we joying. We say “joyful acts,” or “joyous singing;” we also use enjoy and rejoice but never joy as a verb. In what sense then is “joy” an act? As the proper act of loving God, joy is an act of the will. Joy is the movement of our heart and mind in the love of God. When we “joy,” we intend to place ourselves fully into, to wholly surrender to the boundless Truth and Goodness of the Father. Joy isn't a physical act like shaving or washing dishes; it's the free and deliberate act of the whole person in cherishing God: to treasure Him for His own sake, to seek His friendship and counsel, and to emulate His love for us by loving all others. Our joy is complete b/c Christ gives us his own joy. With our joy completed, we are vowed to go out and “joy” all over the place, all over everyone we meet; “to proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all the nations,” and to do so for no other gain than to see God's joy—His act of love for us—complete among His creatures. 

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Questions for the Friar

Ask Father a Question (or something like that) was a regular feature on HancAquam for a year or two. . .mostly from emails or questions asked after Mass.

Let's start it up again!  Questions theological, philosophical, spiritual, Dominican, liturgical, culinary, etc. 

We'll call it something pretentious, like, Quaestionibus frater. 

If you don't want a question posted in the combox, just say so.  I moderate all the comments.

Fire away!

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Wednesday Fat Report

Almost forgot to report!

Down to 323lbs.  

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Ask for whatever you want. . .

5th Week of Easter (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Jesus says to his disciples, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” Whatever we want? Really? Just ask for whatever we want and it will be done? Yes, IF we remain in Christ and his words remain in us. He follows this spectacular promise with, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” Let's break this down. How do we give glory to God? Jesus says, “...bear much fruit and become my disciples...” Alright, how do we become disciples and bear much fruit? Jesus answers, “Remain in me, as I remain in you...Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit...” But why must we remain in you, Lord, in order to bear much fruit? Jesus says, “...because without me you can do nothing.” Ahhhh, so, when we ask for whatever we want, it is really you who are asking through us b/c we cannot ask for what we want without you? Jesus says, “Bingo. You got it.” When we pray for what we want in the name of Jesus, we surrender our wants and needs to his Word, the Word remaining in us. In other words, to pray in his name is to pray with his will. 

Near the top of the List of Top Ten Questions Catholics Ask Priests is the question: why doesn't God answer my prayers? Probably the most common answer is: He did answer your prayers. . .He said no. Though this answer is likely true, it isn't very satisfying. Didn't Jesus say that if we remain in him and he in us, ask for whatever we want and it will be done? Indeed, he did, and he meant it. So, why didn't I get what I wanted? There are at least two answers to this: 1). you did get what you wanted. . .you just didn't get it in the way that you wanted; or, 2). you didn't get what you wanted b/c you haven't remained in Christ. Jesus promised to do for you whatever you wanted IF you remain in him. “Remaining in Christ” means willing his will for yourself. If I want something that is not his will for me, then I am wanting outside his will and it will not be given. This why the first petition of the Our Father is “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” How is the Father's will done on Earth? It is done by those who remain in Christ and he in them. When we pray in Jesus' name that the Father's will be done, we commit ourselves to being instruments of His will. If Christ's words remain in us, then His will is already revealed to us. We know what He wants for us and from us. In other words, we've been pruned!

Jesus says to his disciples, “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” If the branch of the vine is to bear much fruit, it must be pruned, stripped of its dead leaves and barren offshoots. Christ is the vine and we are the branches. His Word is the pruning knife. Love God with all your heart, all your strength. Snip. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Snip. Repent of your disobedience and return to righteousness. Snip. Forgive every offense and leave vengeance to me. Snip. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, free the captive. Snip, snip, snip, and snip. We are already pruned by Christ's Word. If his Word remains in you, pruning away dead leaves and offshoots, then your will resides in his and whatever you ask will be done. He is with us always b/c without him we can do nothing. 

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Alone with the Alone

Retreat Day for me!

I've got some praying to do. . .
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Coffee Cup Browsing (Afternoon Edition)

Empty seats for an empty campaign event, starring an Empty Suit.

Steyn rips B.O.'s composite (i.e., "fake") girlfriend, his creepy campaign woman-bot (Julia), AND that "Indian women" running for the Senate in MA. 

America's future is France.  Eventually, you run out of other people's money. 

Chutzpa:  B.O. tells France's new socialist prez not to raise taxes and increase gov't spending.

Comment dites-vous, foutre le camp outta Dodge?

ווי טאָן איר זאָגן, באַקומען די גענעם אַוטאַ דאַדזש?

Best Tweet caption for this pic:  "Taxidermists strive to not make eyes look that creepy."

U.N. to U.S.:  return stolen land to the "Indians."  I'm all for it. . .if it means dismantling the useless and expensive U.N. and ejecting it from Indian land.

Say NO to wimpy priests!  (But not being wimpy doesn't mean being a jerk)

What's got BXVI smiling?  I mean, besides Jesus. . .

Is better marketing the solution to the Church's Youth Drain?  No.  Challenge them with the Real Faith and they'll hang around.  Kids can spot a gimmick miles before it arrives.

Jesuits invite B.O.'s Top Abortion Pusher to their commencement.  Well, they covered the "IHS" for him in 2009, so why not?
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Stand Up Straight Outreach Ministries

5th Week of Easter (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

If we were ask Jesus, “Lord, how do we know who loves you?”, he would say, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.” Both our question and Jesus' answer imply that there will be those who love the Lord and those who won't. Judas (not Judas Iscariot), asks, “Master, why do you reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” As we have come to expect, Jesus doesn't answer the question Judas asks. Instead, he elaborates on his first statement, “Whoever loves me will keep my word. . .Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. . .” When we put these two statements together, we get, “Those who love me keep my word; those who keep my word love me.” In other words, Jesus establishes a direct connection between loving him as your Master and following his commands: it is impossible to love the Lord and at the same time ignore or violate his command to love. That you are seen and heard carrying out his command to love is conclusive evidence that you love him. When we love the Lord and follow his commands, the Father makes of us a dwelling place, a living temple of the Holy Spirit. 

Barnabas and Paul discover that being living temples of the Holy Spirit can be a dangerous temptation to one's pride. Preaching and teaching in Lystra, the two apostles see the faith of a crippled man. Paul shouts at him, “Stand up straight on your feet.” The man jumps up and walks around. The people who witness this miracle cry out, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” They name the apostles Zeus and Hermes and scramble to offer them sacrifice. Paul and Barnabas see an opportunity to create a little prosperity, a chance to do God's work and reaps some of the benefits for themselves. They accept the sacrifices and reinvest the donations in building up a global network of franchised ministries called Stand Up Straight Outreach Temples! They open the main campus of Stand Up Straight Academy and begin merchandising Stand Up Straight tee-shirts, mugs, banners, and Zeus and Hermes bobbleheads. They build a TV station, a radio program, and an amusement park. Within a few years, their global ministry is worth billions of drachma! Surely, these two are much loved by the Lord. Well, not these two. But the two real apostles are much loved b/c they redirect the fervor of the crowd toward the source of the crippled man's healing, “We proclaim to you good news that you should turn from these idols to the living God. . .” 

Paul and Barnabas love the Lord, so they follow his command to love others as they love him. Rather than take advantage of the crowd's religious fervor by lying to them, the apostles eschew credit for the miracle and tell the truth, giving all the glory to the Father. Paul tells the crowd that though they do not yet know God as He has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus, they were not left without testimony, “[God] gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filled you with nourishment and gladness for your hearts.” Even without the Christ, those who will to see and hear can watch and listen to the goodness of the Lord in His creation. His command to love is given in and through all that He has made. As living temples of the Holy Spirit, we are powerfully tempted to give ourselves credit for the good that we do. Remember what Jesus says, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” Our good works will bear fruit only if we remain in Christ. Only one spirit may live in the temple of our body: the love of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. 

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Flavored Zombies?

This cracked me up!

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Dare to ask for pruning

[NB.  An edited homily from 2006. . .]

5th Sunday of Easter (2012)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

During the summer of 1991, I sat on a five-gallon pickle bucket all day everyday pruning tomato vines. The hothouses in the field were lined up like barracks. Each of the twelve houses were covered in thick plastic and they fluttered as a huge fan pulled the air through, cooling the plants. I started at the first house nearest the road and worked slowly each week from the first house to the twelfth house, pruning the suckers that grew in the between the branches and the vine. Cutting the suckers away is a necessary step in the growth of the plant. Suckers drain moisture and nutrients from the vines. They look exactly like the good branches; however, one bears fruit, the other doesn’t. Cutting the branch that bears no fruit makes the whole plant healthier. At the end of each day, I would sweep up the pruned suckers and it felt like going to confession or taking a bath, a sacrament of clearing away, brushing out the debris, pushing along the stuff of distraction, diversion, and disease. I ended each day with a fire—the dried suckers burning at the edge of the field, sending bitter smoke into the trees, making my eyes water. 

Jesus reveals to his disciples that he is the true vine and that his Father is the vine grower. His Father cuts away branches that do not bear fruit and prunes the ones that do. Then Jesus says to the disciples: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” Because I have revealed the Father to you, because I have taught you the way of salvation in mercy, because I have given you to one another as a Body, because I am the Word speaking the Word to you, because you have died with me and will suffer for me, because you will rise again with me and see the Father face-to-face, and because I am the way, the truth, and the life—because I have taught you, given you, shown you, lead you, and because I love you—you are pruned, productively wounded, and more than ready to bear the fruit of the Spirit that marks you as mine. 

Are you pruned to produce the fruits of the Spirit that mark you as a child of Christ? In his letter to us this morning, John writes: “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth[…]this is how we will know that we belong to the truth[…].” We know that we belong to the truth—to Christ the true vine—when we produce the good fruit of charity, when we not only talk about doing good for others, but when we actually do the good for others. To produce the good fruit of love is to fashion from the Word given you a life wholly surrendered to the service of the truth, to the service of Christ, the true vine. To keep his commandments of fidelity—to believe in his Name, Jesus Christ, and to love one another—this is what pleases him. 

Have you wholly surrendered to the service of Truth? Being good postmodern folks, I bet most of us heard a little whisper in our hearts just then, the small voice of Pilate asking: what is truth? Aren’t we conditioned to ask these sorts of questions, trained to a certain skepticism about claims of this or that being true? We know that truth demands our obedience, morally obligates us to believe, so, eyes askance and lips pursed, we ask what any sensible soul would: what is truth? In his letter this morning, John writes: “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from Him whatever we ask[…].” The NRSV says that we have “boldness before God” because we believe and pray in obedience to His will for us. The disciples in Jerusalem did not believe that Saul was a son of the true vine. Only after he had spoken boldly, confidently, in the name of Jesus, teaching the faith in truth and love to the Hellenists, only then did they recognize him as a brother in Christ. 

Truth, then, is a relationship, the way that we live and move in the love of Christ, the way we witness publicly to him. Truth is the love that the Father and the Son have for one another, the love of the Holy Spirit. John writes: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.” Those who surrender their lives to the service of the truth—to the service of the love shared in the Blessed Trinity—are true branches, fruitful in charity, ready to be pruned to perfection. 

What do you need God to prune? What suckers are sucking the life from your branches, depriving your good fruits of nourishment? What falsehoods have attached themselves to the truth? What lies scar your relationship with Christ? What sins block your roots from receiving the good food of the Spirit? What do you need God to prune? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that there is another way to Him other than His Son, Jesus Christ? Do you need God to prune away the false teaching that your conscience decides what's true and false? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that love is just a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes us all cuddly to others? Do you need God to prune away the false teaching that loving means unconditional acceptance and approval of any and everything any and everyone wants to believe or do? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that you can earn His love, work for His approval? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that He will condemn you in anger, in righteous fury? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that you can live fruitfully in His love but without His truth?

We cannot bear the fruit of love without the vine of truth. Cut off from truth, our love withers. Cut off from the true vine, from the vine grower, we find ourselves in the fire at the edge of the field, burning, sending up acrid smoke and puffs of ash. Our assurance that we remain in Christ and he remains in us is our life in the Spirit, our participation in the life of the Body, the Church. How else do we maintain a fruitful confidence, a boldness before God that we are loved? With hearts schooled in the Word, hearts strictly poised for obedience, eager to hear and listen, we are one mind, one spirit surrendered to truth, given to the service of God for one another, and brought to perfection as disciples who greatly please our Teacher. Surely we can look around and see the drying suckers of falsehood pruned from our branches. Surely we can see the suckers that still need pruning. But more surely, most certainly, we know that so long as we remain in Christ—believe in his name and love one another—he will remain in us. 

Boldly ask for what you need. Start with what needs pruning. Start with what clogs your roots, what prevents your growth in love and truth. Boldly ask to have pride, anger, lust, and fear pruned. Boldly ask to have hatred, selfishness, spite, and self-pity pruned. Boldly ask to have envy, pettiness, vengeance, and despair pruned. And then in all humility ask to love more, to love larger, deeper, wider, longer, to love in greater truth, to bear abundant good fruit and to love, always to love, for His greater glory, to love for no other reason than to praise His holy Name and share the abundant good fruits of His Holy Spirit! 

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PNP, OP Updates

Thanks for the notes inquiring about my blood pressure/general health!  My cardiologist has wrangled the HBP into decent shape with a handful of pills.  The weight continues to S-L-O-W-L-Y melt away.  Feeling pretty good these days.

A couple of New Things are on the horizon for me. . .please pray that God's will be done and that I have the courage to say Yes.

Starting in May, Yours Truly will be a teacher in the Master Catechist certification program for the archdiocese.  I'll be teaching Sacraments/Worship and The Creed.  

Also, I'm hoping/praying for an adjunct position in philosophy or English at Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA, starting in August.  

I'm off to Summit, NJ in June to sit in seminar with the Most Holy Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary.  We will be reading and discussing BXVI's Deus caritas est.  Help the Good Nuns by visiting their soap shop!

In October, I'll be in Ortonville, MI with the Most Holy Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of Mt. Thabor. 

Yesterday, I was invited to bless the state championship rings of the girls' soccer team at Mt. Carmel Academy.  Congrats, ladies! 

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Thanks

A shout out to Shelly R. for the Garrigou-Lagrange book. . .

Thanks!  And I'm very glad that you enjoy the homilies.

Fr. Philip Neri, OP

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