What do you want from the Desert?

1^st Sunday of Lent: Deut 26.4-10; Romans 10.8-13; Luke 4.1-13
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Luke Parish, St. Paul Hospital, Church of the Incarnation

[Fair warning: this is a strange one...I dunno...]

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People of God! Where are you this morning/evening? Where are you? We stepped into this desert three/four days ago, looked up at the sun, put the first foot in front of the other, said a prayer of thanksgiving to God, and set our hearts and our feet on Jerusalem. The cross is there, somewhere. And Jesus. No. No, he’s here with us…somewhere, isn’t he? Yes. Yes, he is…somewhere. The sand is scratchy and hot. The wind is brittle dry and stinging loud. The first fast of this “going into the desert” was good, wasn’t it? The plan and promise was there; the spilling-over-wonder at our blessings, the nearly painful longing to please God with our small sacrifices, just one day’s offerings. Even the desert is bright and daring watching it from home, from settled comfort, and abundance.

You watched the desert, expecting this Lenten trek and you wanted…you wanted…something. Someone? What? Think back! Go back and see it! Ash Wednesday is like a barge on the church calendar, plowing through ordinary time to arrive like a liturgical bully at the dock of the altar. No sweet hymns. No decorative treats or cute secular totems. Just ash and a reminder: you are made from ash and to ash you will return. From dust to dust. At that moment, with that memory: what did you want? Now, what do you want? You need to know this. The desert knows. I mean, the time you spend these next 35 days or so wandering the desert of the spiritual life, what you most desire, that which we need most will come to you. And not necessarily in a form or fashion that you will recognize. Lent is not about avoiding temptations. Lent is not about fasting or prayer or being good. Lent is about wandering into the emptiness, the vanity, the wreckage we have made of our spiritual lives and finding one more time the stalwart presence of God, the inexhaustible workings of the Holy Spirit. Seeking and finding the face of Christ.

These forty days are a countdown for detachment, for unplugging. Lent is a time for us to detach from all the teats of our poisoned culture and to stop sucking at the breasts of market-tested nihilism and brand-name conformity; to stop the sewer-flood of Hollywood-funded debauchery and sadism into our homes; to speak the gospel Truth to the dark powers of “might makes right” moralities; to witness against the suicidal, all-you-can-eat buffet of liberal religious candy our children are fed daily...even in our Catholic schools. Lent is a time for you to remove your lips from the honeyed breasts of genetic science and its Faustian promise of near-immortality. You will live forever but not by murdering a child; you can be beautiful forever but not at the price of harvesting our children like melons.

Lent is a time for you to calculate with cold reason and a clean heart your commitments in this world. Where are you bound? To whom do you owe your money, your livelihood, your dignity…your soul? Who owns you? What ideas possess your mind? What passions fuel your heart? What images cloud your vision? What do you worry about and why? Here’s the question with which to examine your conscience before confession: exactly how would anyone know Jesus owns me body and soul?

Know the answers! You must. Because the desert knows and the desert will tell. The desert will tell the Devil and he will color in those drab images, season those dull fumes, stoke the fires of weak passion. He’ll parade your desires, sharpened and concentrated, parade them before you, lying to you, pampering you, telling you how much you deserve what you cannot possibly need and only vaguely want. When those ashes were traced on your forehead…at that moment, what did you want? Mercy? Forgiveness? Love? To be seen as pious? You will find it in the Lenten desert. But will your desires look like gifts among all that scarcity?

Pay careful attention to the gospel. Jesus went into the desert to pray, right? No. He went into the desert to fast, right? No. He went into the desert to start his new diet? No. Of course, he prayed and fasted. But he didn’t go into the desert to do those things. Rather he “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.” He went to the desert so that he could be tempted. The devil tempted him with food, power, and worship. Jesus refuses each in turn. He quotes scripture and dismisses each temptation as a mere shadow of what His Father offers. The devil offers Jesus illusion, impermanence. And he will offer you the same. And you will accept his offer unless you understand with near perfect clarity and will what you want, what you desire as a faithful follower of Christ.

Lent is not about avoiding temptation. Lent is about walking the hot sand of deprivation so that what tempts you worms its way to the surface. Discomforted, what tempts you selfishly proclaims its own praise, shouts it own name. Not yours. And then you know the truth: you are not your sin; you aren’t even the sum total of all your sins! Yes, you’ve fallen, given in, even welcomed Rebellion and Disobedience into your life. Praise God then that Lent is about clearing the wreck of your worldly life so that He Who moves you at your core, rises, speaks His name with authority, claims your soul, and makes your life among the things of this world a tireless prayer, a breathless hymn, and an inexhaustible fiat! This is more than a mere reminder of who’s in charge of your Christian life; it is a renewal of the bond of affection between Father and child, the rediscovery of an unshakable peace and infallible grace.

One foot, then another. The sand swirls. The desert is liquid hot, waving fumes above the dunes. We’re just four days in. Where are you? Where is your eager fast, that laughing prayer of praise? Evaporated already? No worries. Jesus is here with us. Not just somewhere but here. He’s with us here and now, and he waits for us at the cross. We choose to follow him. We picked up his cup. Shared his blessing. Ate his flesh and drank his blood. We’re more than his now, more than students or friends. We are his flesh and blood. The desert knows this. It will collect its tempting spirits and whisper to us of power, hunger, self-righteousness, revenge, violence, the many poisons we seem so eager to swallow. Listen carefully with the ears of Christ to the bargains and deals, the attempts to haggle and posture. And then what? Fight? Resist? No. Why? Why would you fight? Don’t fight the Devil! Why would you fight a defeated foe? Do what Christ does during his Lenten fast: call on the Word, confident in a victory already won, and teach this fallen angel who you are!

Don’t waste your forty days dieting. Spend this time in the desert ruthlessly paring away your allegiances, brutally assessing how you contribute to the preaching of the Word, to the spreading of the Gospel. What do you want, child of God? When you received your ashes and were told that you are mortal, what did you want to find in this Lenten desert?

How eager are you--exactly--to find the cross?

Fasting vs. dieting (Round One)

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isa 58.1-9 and Matthew 9.14-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

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[NB. The preacher preaches to himself first…]

More on fasting, uh? Well, it’s only right since it is Lent and all. But you’d think that we would have the whole fasting/contrite heart thing down by now, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s not a difficult concept. It’s not like trying to grasp double predestination or the state of the soul before the general resurrection or the mystery of the theological Trinity. It’s just fasting. Don’t eat as much as you usually do and do this because it helps you to stay focused on what’s important in your growth in holiness: your total, undiluted, raw dependence on God for absolutely everything. Of course, we also fast to show honor, obedience, the strength of a beggar’s heart, humility in need, gratitude in abundance, sorrow and grief, solidarity with the suffering, a heart turned from sin and rushing to the Lord in tears.

Brothers and sisters, fasting w/o true contrition and true repentance is called Dieting. And the Lord wants us to understand the difference between the prophetic act of fasting and the often-times vain act of dieting. The Lord tells the prophet Isaiah to say to us: “Would that today—Friday, February 23, 2007—would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!” You bow your head like a reed and slob around all day in sackcloth and ashes! “Is this the manner of fasting I wish […] Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” So how do you fast today so as to make your voice heard on high? Isaiah cries out full-throated and unsparingly, like a trumpet blast: release those who have been imprisoned unjustly! Untie their yokes. Set free the oppressed. Share your bread with the hungry. Shelter the homeless. Clothe the naked. Help your own. Fast as the Lord wants you to fast! And your innocent verdict will go before you and God’s glory will come behind you and when you call on His name for help, He will say, “Here I am!”

So, will you fast or will you diet? Jesus says that we cannot fast so long as the Bridegroom is with us. Is he with us? Well, no. He departed for the throne and sent us his Holy Spirit. So, we can fast and mourn his absence. However, he’s with us now. Present because we are more than two and gathered in his name. He’s fully present in the Eucharist. So, we cannot fast or mourn. The Bridegroom has not been taken from us! Isn’t this the Christian life exactly? We are called to be prophetic witnesses, to stand up and shout out the truth of the gospel victory of sin and death. Yes, Christ is gone from us. And no, he is here. The battle is won and it is not yet fought. This is what it means to live in the meantime of God’s plan for us: we free the unjustly imprisoned now b/c they have all been freed by Christ in his victory. Their imprisonment is doubly unjust.

Dieting will not help them. Dieting will break no yokes, cancel no debts, fill no empty stomachs, nor will dieting free anyone from Satan. In fact, Satan counts on us spending this Lenten season dieting. It’s his best time of year for ripe self-righteousness and hypocrisy. John’s disciples and the Pharisees are worried about Jesus’ liberal band of party animals—why aren’t they fasting like we do?! Jesus says, in effect, “Don’t worry. They are my disciples and they will fast when I am gone.” We know what that means; what it means for his friends to drink his cup, to carry his cross, to die preaching and teaching the Good News of God’s mercy. Our Father wants a humble and contrite heart. Not a diet plan. He wants obedience and service. Not mumbled prayers and luke-warm sentiments. He wants laborers for his Lenten and His Easter fields. Not religious dilettantes and mystic wannabes.

Take your diet. Turn your heart and mind to the service of God in humility. And change that diet into a fast worthy of your soul! Thirty-eight days and counting...and the cup is yours is bear...

"WASH YOUR FACE!" --Jesus

Ash Wednesday: Joel 2.12-18; 2 Cor 5.20-6.2; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

What does the Lord want from us? He wants now what He has always wanted: the sacrifice of our contrite hearts. Keep the burnt offerings, the bulls and rams, the incense and flowers. He wants your heart, split open, artfully arranged, freshly washed and anointed; your heart repentant, rueful, intensely sorry, and wounded by love. He wants your clean heart and mind placed on the altar, freely given, offered up in praise, turned forever to His will for you. God wants your fasting, your weeping, your mourning; He also wants your feasting, your laughter, your joy. He wants a heart rent top to bottom in true sorrow for your sins, so rend your garments if you must, but know that torn garments, smudgy foreheads, and dour faces, though signs of a proper contrition, are not contrition in themselves. It is better to be truly contrite and happy about it than to be faking contrition and hiding behind public displays of piety!

Playing at religion is a very dangerous thing, brothers and sisters. God wants our hearts and minds; He wants us to return to Him whole and entire. Do you think He can’t see through the layers of religiousy junk we sometimes slathered over our miserly souls? Do you think He can’t smell the failure of our public piety, or the rank odor of desperation in that good work we did to curry favor before Lent? Jesus himself could not be clearer than he is this morning: give alms in secret so that only the Father knows you give; pray in secret so that the Father may properly repay your trust; fast privately without being gloomy, without neglecting your appearance; anoint your head and WASH YOUR FACE! Do you think the Lord is going to smile on your grand sacrifice of walking around with ashes smudged on your forehead today? Tell me what a great witness that is and I’ll tell you to do it everyday!

Here’s your proper public Catholic witness on Ash Wednesday: first, wash your face in all humility and resist the Devil’s temptation to strut around as a “Proud Catholic.” Then look to the Lord in the desert. He goes out from the crowds. Away and into the desert. He withdraws to be with His Father. And finds himself confronted by the Devil and his lies. With what would you confront the Devil in the desert? How would you repel his seductions and deflect his temptations? Jesus is God. You aren’t. Would you fight Satan with false piety? Theatrical religiosity? Would you ward him off with some sort of amulet or spell? Let me suggest that there is no fight with the Devil when one’s heart is truly contrite, filled with grace, given over wholly to the Father as a sacrifice of praise, and lifted up on the altar.

Why am I being so hard on the public witness of piety? I know from personal experience the seduction of believing that I am accomplishing something good for God by playing at being religious. Jesus is also worried about us and how easy it is for us to confuse show and substance. This is an acceptable time for us to be truly reconciled with God, but that reconciliation is done through a heart and soul converted to God’s law of love not a smudge of ashes or a much-discussed fast or a grand gesture of almsgiving. If your day to day life at work or school or the office fails to give a faithful witness to God, then a dot of dust or an unusual bag of carrot sticks for lunch won’t change minds. In fact, more than anything, without a daily witness of true service that dot of dust says, “I’ve decided to trot out my religion today for your consumption. Isn’t it cool?”

Yea. That’s what Jesus died for. Cool. Fortunately, we have forty days to figure this out. Forty days to live intensely in the presence of the Lord. Forty days to sit at his feet and learn humility. Forty days to learn to be happy and purged, joyful and emptied. Forty days to cleave our contrite hearts, stoke the fires of sacrifice and offer our very selves to him. So, wash your face and clean your heart.

Deep and Wide: stretch pants and morality

7^th Sunday OT: 1 Sam 26.2 (et al); 1 Cor 15.45-49; Luke 6.27-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Luke’s, St Paul’s, Church of the Incarnation

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It’s been years in the making. And I’ve waited a long, long time, but with a little nervousness, I’m ready to confess something publicly: it’s time for my extreme makeover! Do you watch these shows on cable where crews of highly trained professionals descend on some poor soul’s house or wardrobe or car or hair or makeup? And then they spend the next hour ripping the unfashionable apart; destroying the old and installing the new; rouging every pale spot, spackling every wrinkle, painting every ill-colored curl; new art, new flowers, a new couch, tighter jeans, a sparkled halter top, and witchy-poo pointed boots…you know the shows, right? OK. Well, I’m ready for my makeover. Let’s contact the renovation crews and tell them we have an emergency case: an ample Dominican friar with a wardrobe from the Deep and Wide section of the Burlington Coat Factory and no budget for shoes. We won’t mention the ragweed facial hair or the tree-climbing possum toenails. Even professionals can be creeped out!

Paul teaches the Corinthians that the first man, Adam, “became a living being.” He was a natural man, of the earth, earthly. The “last Adam” became a “life-giving spirit.” He was a spiritual man, of heaven, heavenly. In the order of creation, the natural man came first, then the spiritual man. Adam then Christ. And just as we are creatures with bodies, we are earthly. And just as we are creatures with souls, we are heavenly. We bear the image of dust and the image of light. As rational animals, human persons, we are bodysouls. We are not bodies that contain a soul. We are not souls trapped by flesh and bone. We are persons created in the image and likeness of God. We live our lives in a world created to praise the Creator. So our moral choices are not just spiritual, not merely theoretical. Our moral choices are given flesh. And Christ has a claim on that flesh.

With what do we love our enemies? How do we do good for those who hate us? Why would we think to bless those who curse us instead of cursing them back? And why would we waste our time with God in prayer to pray for those who abuse us? What honor is there in allowing ourselves to be libeled, assaulted, persecuted, and reviled? What grace is there in giving to everyone who asks; lending without expecting repayment; loving our enemies and serving them? What dignity is there in forgiving wrongs, failing to judge justly criminal transgressions, failing to uphold the Law? The honor, grace, and dignity of doing these apparently ridiculous things is easy to see: you are the children of the Most High and he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked; therefore, be merciful, just as God is merciful. After all, before our baptismal makeovers, we stood outside ungrateful and wicked, wanting in, wanting mercy.

Paul’s teaching to the Corinthians gives us a way of thinking about our salvation history, that is, the way we have come to understand the story of our relationship with God. Our lives as redeemed creatures begins with Adam in the Fall and ends with Christ in Heaven. Adam loses eternal life. Christ restores it. Adam loses God’s justice. Christ brings us mercy. Adam falls never to rise. Christ falls to rise again. We fell with Adam in sin and we will rise with Christ in grace. And it is because we live and move and have our being in God’s presence that Jesus sets for us these seemingly impossible moral standards.

He makes these outrageous claims on our freedom and happiness precisely b/c we are being perfected in the Spirit of God. Jesus is calling on his disciples back then and on us now to live right now as if we were already in heaven, already perfected, already standing in the unmediated glory of the Father enthroned. When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, to give whatever is asked, to bless without condition, he is looking at us to see through us to the End, demanding that we do not wait until heaven arrives to live as his brothers and sisters. He is demanding that we be merciful now. That we be generous now. That we be loving, forgiving, untiring in service, grown hoarse in prayer for those who hate us...now not later, now not whenever.

Jesus was no fool. He was human like us in all things but sin. He knew the temptations of pride, excess, anger, of selfishness and disordered desire. He knew the temptations of the flesh, the spirit, the heart and mind—all those demons that claw and gnaw at our resolve, at our determination and courage. He knew then and knows now that what he is asking of us is likely beyond our strength, beyond the widest stretches of our control. And so, he gives us two incentives, two helps in bringing our bodies and souls back on the path of his Way: 1) he points out what those who do not follow his Way are capable of and, 2) he gives us a concrete measure of holy success.

For the first, even the sinner, a lost one, loves those who love him. Returning love for love is no supernatural feat. And neither is it any special spiritual accomplishment to do good to those who do good for you. Anyone can do that. The sure sign of God’s grace, the sign that His blessing on you, is loving those who hate you, doing good for those who wrong you. There you have a sign of radical holiness! For the second, Jesus tells us to ask ourselves this: how would you have others treat you? Be careful! The measure you use to treat others will be the measure Christ uses to measure you. In other words, you will judged by the standards you use to judge others. If you persist in judging others harshly against a rigid law of purity, well, don’t be surprised when you are denied mercy in the end and judged in exactly the same way. And Jesus doesn’t mean here that you are to ignore another’s deadly sins b/c you don’t want your own sins pointed out. It is merciful to admonish a brother or sister in sin. The point is to refrain from judgment, that is, to resist making a final determination of guilt and punishment. Leave that for the one who knows the human heart inside out.

We have all received an extreme makeover. Our transformation from Adam to Jesus, from fallen man to risen Christ, is the ultimate makeover, the Final Do-Over. Though we stand at the bottom of Christ’s demands on our moral lives, looking up at what he has called us to, we are capable of climbing, capable to reaching and grasping perfection b/c he has gifted to do exactly that. Christ wants us with him in heaven, so why would he set for us a standard below perfection? Why would he ask us to do that which we could do without him? His life with us and his death for us completes us, makes us whole and entire, healed creatures perfectly motivated and energized to be the sons and daughters of the Father. We cannot be alone; we are never abandoned.

As you work at meeting Christ’s demands on your body and soul, choose your moral measures carefully. Make sure they are all both deep and wide. Given eternity, a generous cup is far more comfortable than a stingy one.

Deny, take up, follow, repeat

6^th Week OT (F): Gen 11.1-9 and Mark 8.34-9.1
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation

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One voice, speaking to the crowd, says clearly: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Christ. This is one voice, speaking with authority and grace, teaching those called to service how to be and do what they are being called to be and do. This is an instruction on saving one’s life. Here we have the adult directions on how to apply the salve of Christ’s one voice, one teaching to a life beset by the demands of our culture’s spiritual Babel. Cutting through the din, the smoke and mirrors, the lies and half-truths of this world’s religious marketplace, Christ’s single voice teaches a powerful truth: if you want eternal life, you must lose this life for his sake and the sake of the Gospel. How?

Deny yourself. This does not mean deny the existence of the Self. We are not Buddhists. “Deny yourself” means to refuse to yourself those things that tend to feed your disordered sense of yourself as the center of the universe. This means refusing the vice of selfishness—the bad habit of placing personal needs and wants above others’. This doesn’t mean starving yourself so that your neighbor might eat six times a day instead of three, but it does mean shaping your life around the imperatives of abundance and generosity: relieve suffering, replace lacking, repair damage and do all these out of your abundant blessings. To deny oneself is to dethrone ego, to topple the monument of Self and let others claim the riches of our lives just as we claim the riches of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

We can lose our earthly lives for Christ and his Gospel by denying ourselves and by taking up our cross. Surely this means picking up some heavy burden and carrying it to our deaths. Surely this means gracefully bearing under the weight of some duty or command. Yes. Very likely. But keep in mind that the cross for Jesus was a tool of execution. The cross for Jesus meant death. The cross for us is a tool of salvation. For us, it means life. Not necessarily a care-free, duty-free, burdenless frolic, but it must mean both a weight and a freeing, to be loaded down and to be set free. What burden can you pick up to lighten your spiritual load? Think always in terms of your gifts—what am I good at? What brings me joy? What am I called by God to be and to do for others? What burden can you take on in service to another? Before you’re done here, your cross must be about self-emptying sacrifice and steady hope. If not, you’ve walked the way of sorrow for nothing.

Follow me! Come after me. Get behind Christ. Put the butt end of your cross in the rut his cross has left in the hard packed clay and walk with him. No caution. No hesitation. No caught breaths or startled wincing. Where can’t you go in the shadow of his cross, in the way of his footsteps, behind his broken body, following his trail of blood to the altar of Golgotha? Following Christ is more than being good. It is more than being comfortably charitable and nice. Following Christ is doing what Christ did. Being who Christ was and is and will be. Following Christ is ending up where he ended up—on his cross, disowned, dead so that others might live, but also assured of a new life, assured of an eternal life. What would you give in exchange for your salvation? What is your soul worth? Our Father gave us his only Son for our salvation. And He thinks our souls are worth the suffering and death of that only Son.

Those voices of our spiritual Babel chatter about nirvana or enlightenment or self-actualized potential. The one voice of Jesus says, “I call you my friends. And I will die for you. Come. Follow me.”

Translation Wars?

I’ve had a few emails asking me to comment on the “translation wars” raging in the English speaking Catholic world. I’m not sure I have anything new to add to the discussion, but here are some thoughts:

1. There is no inherent contradiction in having liturgical language that is: beautiful, functional, and orthodox. Only translation ideologues insist on privileging one of these to the detriment of the others. The current translation of the Missale strikes me overly functional, not very beautiful, and dodgy with regards to orthodoxy (can we all say, “Semi-Pelagian?”).

2. I’m not sure a slavish translation of the Latin text is going to get us an English text that is broadly useful in the American church. Don’t get me wrong: I want an accurate translation…but I also want a translation that is not going to be overly decorated and unintentionally funny. Theological accuracy and clarity are more important than beauty; but, again these are not mutually exclusive.

3. The debate over using “theological terms” (i.e., consubstantial) strikes me as absurd. American Catholics are well-educated and willing to learn. Put three lines in the bulletin explaining the theological terms and move on. To claim that we shouldn’t use theologically accurate language b/c folks might not understand it is insulting. Let’s challenge Catholics to rise a little above their current understanding of the faith. Why is that a problem?

4. The Vatican’s call for the development of a “sacral vernacular” (Liturgiam authenticam, n. 47) is a fantastic idea. This is an opportunity for a meeting of the minds—theological, practical, pastoral, creative, etc.—in the creation of a “dialect” for Catholics to use in their worship. Two extremes seem wrong: using marketplace language in the liturgy or using overly elevated or decorated language. What would a sacral vernacular look like, I wonder? Surely an accurate translation of the Latin Missale would be a good start…but we risk making the Mass sound like a bad parody if we don’t adjust some of the more florid repetitions and obscure concepts.

5. For those who complain about a distinct language for worship: given the reality of multiple daily languages (work, home, friends, colleagues, superiors, etc). why is a language for worship so odd? I mean, any given person in the country is required to function within several languages in order to succeed. We move easily between the language we use at home to the language we use at work to the language we use with our boss. Why not a language that marks out the liturgy as something distinct? Granted: these are not languages per se, but they do constitute different ways of construing and managing daily circumstances.

Well, for what it’s worth…comments?

Making Cain's sacrifice

6^th Week OT (M): Gen4.1-15 and Mark 8.11-13
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Tim and I enjoyed the philosophical banter that undergrads seem to enjoy. We solved many of the world’s most difficult philosophical problems sitting in that cafeteria over eggs and coffee. But here’s where we parted company: Tim put his logic and the need for empirical evidence above his need to fall in love with Christ. He would not step off, trusting, into the logicless glory of faith and take on the eyes of Christ to see his world, returning, inevitably to right reason and good sense but reason and sense now directed to one end with one purpose in Christ: union with God. I wouldn’t do this either, mind you, but I knew I should, and I wanted to, but while Tim waited for the machines of logic to grind out his arithmetical proof of divine existence, I floundered somewhere between an urgent desire for God and a fear of throwing myself into a Love with no obvious boundaries. Tim’s faith in calculative logic and my weak courtship of both agnosticism with good liturgy and outright fundamentalism earned us each a punishment. I became a High Church Episcopalian. And Tim became a lawyer.

Will I go so far as to say that Tim and I were latter-day brothers, following Cain and Abel? No. But I will say this: the sacrifices we brought to the altar in worship, though radically different from one another, were both comparable to Cain’s offering. Neither of us would put our lives on the altar. Neither would budge on the central question that requires a leaping YES into Love. We held back our first fruits, our choicest pieces, and withheld from God the very sacrifice that would have brought us the wisdom we seemed to desire. We would not make our lives holy by giving them up in service to Christ. We hesitated because we needed more from him—better evidence, tighter logic, a stronger feeling of purpose, a message or memo, some sort of guarantee delivered personally by God that our ultimate sacrifice would be rewarded to our satisfaction. We held back waiting for a sign. In the meantime, we settled for comfortable substitutes, non-threatening alternatives; namely, various academic “—ism’s,” paper ideologies that mimic the faith but fail to strike at the heart the way the Word will. Truth will sear the toughest muscle.

Now, I know I heard Jesus sigh more than once during those years. With the Pharisees he sighs at their stubborn hearts “from the depths of his spirit.” He is truly exasperated with their unwillingness to accept the most obvious indications of his identity. They wait for one sign after another, another prophecy to be fulfilled, another “pointing to,” another witness from the ages. And Jesus asks, “Why do you seek a sign?” The answer is obvious! But his real question is: why won’t you believe? Why won’t you trust? No amount of evidence will guarantee the truth if there is no trust. Think: do you trust your husband or wife, brother or sister, best friend, do you trust these people in your life b/c you gathered sufficient evidence and logically concluded that they are trustworthy? Did you watch for signs to indicate their worthiness? Do you hold back fully trusting them in order to test their integrity? When is does the test end? When will you decide that the evidence is compelling? If you don’t trust, you have no measure to rein in suspicion, no border to mark off paranoia. If you will not trust the Lord to keep His promises, to bless your life, to forgive your sins, then you will flounder btw needing Him and pushing Him away.

Cain brought his second best to the altar of God. He gave his brother’s life to the thirsty soil—a sacrifice to Rage. Since he did not trust God, he could not give himself to God. And he too received a just punishment. If we will be in that boat with Jesus, our first sacrifice will be our trust—no need for signs, no tempting God with requests for miracles. We know b/c we have first believed!

In praise of curses

6^th Sunday OT: Jer 17.5-8; 1 Cor 15.12, 16-20; Luke 6.17, 20-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Luke’s Parish, St. Paul’s Hospital, Church of the Incarnation

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Praedicator primum sibi praedicet!

How can we be cursed? Let’s count the ways! We can be cursed with an inattentive spouse, rebellious children, busybody in-laws, impatient creditors, sickly and lazy co-workers, an over-stuffed schedule, a small salary, bad insurance coverage, no retirement plan, insomnia, depression, binge-eating, binge-drinking, another form of emotional illness, another form of addiction, repair bills, tax bills, grocery bills, tuition bills, car payments, house payments, and so on and so on. We can also be cursed with spiritual apathy, a hard heart, a weak will, an easily fooled intellect, a bag of vices and not many virtues, a love of money and all the seven cardinal sins. So, we can be cursed physically, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, financially, and domestically. And how does this happen? How do we end up cursed? Jeremiah says, “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” When we expect our blessings to come from the flesh—other people, other flesh—we, in effect, turn from God and look to a creature to give us what only the Father can give: abundant, fertile blessings, everything we need to live and thrive. Blessings may come through other flesh, but they always originate with God—He is the only source, even if one of us might do the heavy lifting.

If I were to ask you to name your blessings, to call out the great things that God has done for you, how many here I wonder would call out: God has blessed me with poverty! God has blessed me with hunger! God has blessed me with mourning and tears! God has blessed me with hateful neighbors who exclude and insult me! How many here could lift up their curses in thanksgiving and praise God for their troubles? Are you prepared to give God thanks for your failures, your diseases, your daily crashes and crippled faith? It is no easy thing to celebrate weakness, destitution, illness, emptiness, and despair. It is no easy thing to lift your eyes to heaven and say, “Thank you for my trials, Lord, thank you for my suffering!”

No doubt you are thinking about now: Father is cracked! He’s gone off the rail and is running on his last rim! Not at all. I’m preaching the gospel. And sometimes that means starting with the strange and racing head-long into the stranger still. Jesus teaches the Twelve that all those we routinely think of as cursed—the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the despised—all of them are, in fact, blessed with riches, satisfaction, laughter, blessed by the Christ of the Father and made holy in their imperfection. Jesus plainly teaches his apostles that on the day we are excluded and insulted and denounced for his name’s sake, we are blessed. And so, on that day we must “rejoice and leap for joy…!” In other words, we must give God praise and thanksgiving for how we have suffered, how we have failed, how we have been injured and diseased. And not only that—we must thank Him for our enemies, for those who made us suffer, for those who injured us or dis-eased us.

This is the Way of Perfection: to surrender to God wholly, entirely, now and forever, your curses and blessings, your health and your death, your goods and all your debts; to submit your strength, your courage, your stamina and grace, all of your mistakes, successes, your warts and your shiny smile, your wallet or purse and checkbooks, your children, grandchildren, and anyone else you love: place them and place yourself under the eternal strength and sheltering love of the Father, trusting and hoping in His Word to us—Christ Jesus—that we are freed in His grace, perfected in His love, and brought to Him in His power and glory. And that no VISA bill, car payment, nosey mother-in-law, surgery, or toothache possesses the power to poison the blessings that come from His hand to your heart, if (if!) you love…and love excessively, wastefully, painfully all that and those you have willed (up to now) not to love. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord!

Defending to the Corinthians the truth of Christ’s resurrection, Paul writes, “If for this life only have we hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” In other words, by saying that Christ did not rise from the dead on the third day, they are saying that they do not believe in a life with Christ in heaven. Paul says that this is a pitiable waste of hope if this life is all we get. Why hope at all? Why trust? Paul’s question is powerful. If all we get is what we have and the few years left, then hope and trust are pointless existential exercises in self-delusion. They serve merely to numb our twitchy consciences with promises of pie-in-the-sky. Religious distraction and empty P.R. for Church, Inc. But Paul reasserts what he knows to be true: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” To trust that this is true defines us; I mean, to hold that Christ was resurrected from the dead is an investment we make into helping God shape us, giving us form and function and planting ahead of us a seductive end, an attractive goal. We trust and we flourish. We hope and we shine. When we trust and hope to the end, we live with Him forever, rejoicing and leaping for joy!

On easy days, trust and hope are, well, easy—sometimes doing as little as avoiding distrust and hopelessness is enough. And that may be enough for awhile. But at some point that spiritual sloth will have to erupt into an apostolic purpose, an evangelical movement toward actively praising God and giving Him thanks for your blessings and then going out to use your gifts, your blessings to help someone else, to bless someone else with what you yourself have been blessed with! Jeremiah tells us that those so blessed will be like trees planted next to a stream: evergreen leaves, carefree blossoms and fruit—even in drought years the leaves and blossoms and fruit will come abundantly! This tree’s beauty and bounty are best shared not hoarded, put into service not left to rot. It is the cursed bush, the barren desert shrub that stands in a lava waste—a salty, empty soil—that dries, cracks, stands without blossom or leaf or fruit: this is the heart that has turned from God!

Keep your hearts rich and pliable, strong and generous by surrendering to the Lord with joy and rejoicing. Give thanks for blessings and curses. Yes, even curses! How else will you turn that which threatens your heart into a benefit, a salve? Do you imagine yourself fighting the realities of day to day misfortune and willful failure by yourself? How will you fight? Willpower? Your personal goodness? Good luck. The longest spiritual tradition of our catholic church tells us that total surrender to the will of the Father—complete obedience—, a prayer life of constant thanksgiving in praise, and persistence in making a sacrifice of our service for others will transform what curses us into what blesses us. Fight the curse without God and feed it. Give thanks to God for the curse and starve it.

One last question: will you suffer those curses in silence, or will you open your lips, proclaim the Lord’s praise, and give Him thanks for everything you have and everything are?

Walk while you talk or just shut up

5^th Week OT(Fri): Gen 3.1-8 and Mark 7.31-37
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Praedicator primum sibi praedicet!

We are made to become God. But we cannot become God on our own. That which is imperfect cannot bring imperfection to perfection. Only perfection can draw the imperfect to its completion. In other words, if we are going to become God, we must do so with God. This is the lesson Adam and Eve missed when they disobeyed God in the garden and gave in to the serpent’s temptation to become gods without God. They believed the lie that it is possible for that which is incomplete to bring itself to completion. They ended up naked, exiled, in pain, and eventually dead. And yet we are daily tempted to throw our spiritual well-being into the boxing ring of ridiculous theories and practices in order to achieve our perfection without resorting to Perfection Himself.

Daily visited by the serpent, we have our ears tickled by the sibilant promises of obtaining divinity w/o obedience, w/o sacrifice, w/o suffering, w/o our dark nights. We know, however, that to become Christ, we must take up his cross and follow him. The credibility of your witness rests squarely on the degree to which you are willing to surrender your imperfection to His perfecting love, and to the degree to which you are willing to share the good news of his perfecting love by behaving in the world like one who is being polished to reflect the Father’s glory. There is a road to walk, a Way to travel, and there is a difference btw talking about walking that road and getting on your feet and walking it.

Why does Jesus order the healed man to silence if he is trying to spread the Good News? It is highly ironic that Jesus would heal the poor man’s tongue and then tell him not to use it! Why? Here’s my guess: what does this man know about Jesus and his ministry? Little to nothing. He knows that Jesus can heal. He knows that Jesus is compassionate. Jesus heals him and the man becomes a walking, talking witness to the power of the Word Made Flesh. But again, what does the man know? Does he know the source of Jesus’ power? Does he know why Jesus heals? In other words, does he know Jesus at all? Perhaps the worry here is that the man healed and those who saw him healed are not prepared to adequately witness to the fullest knowable truth about who and what Jesus is. What will they tell others about what happened? Will the message of mercy and forgiveness get lost in the drama of the miracle? When does the evangelizing miracle of healing become the circus act, the magician’s trick? And perhaps most importantly, describing a gospel act of healing is not the same as performing one. Jesus knows that his best gospel witnesses can speak the Word and do the Word; they can witness to healing and they can heal. Talking about walking the Way is not the same as walking the Way.

Despite Jesus’ orders to the contrary, those who saw the man healed spread the news around. Perhaps some took the whole gospel with them and converted themselves into servants for love’s sake. Most, I would guess, gossiped about the incident and returned to their lives, letting the miracle’s power dissipate into rumor, conflicting facts, foggy memories. And some few, we know, not only saw and heard the whole gospel that day, but took it in, fed on it, drank from it, lived in it, surrendered themselves to its perfection and grew in obedience. They heard Christ speak to them when he spoke to the deaf man: “Be opened!” And they were. If we will be opened to speaking and doing the Word in the world, then we must surrender to God’s will and obey: hear and comply, listen and do what we are asked to do in Christ’s name.

If you cannot or will not be Christ in the world—healing, feeding, visiting, teaching—then heed his order to be silent about his gospel. Your silence is a better witness than your hypocrisy. When you are ready, however, “Be Opened!”, and join the prophets, preaching the fullness of his Good News.

Martyrs and Fools Attend!

St. Agatha: 1 Cor 1.26-31 and Luke 9.23-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

How wise is it to be killed for a belief? Most would say that no belief is worth one’s life. How could something as fickle and fragile as a proposition about what I think about a given issue equal my life? And even if I found an issue so deeply important to me that my belief about it was worth defending with my life, who would ask me to do such a thing? I mean, who would challenge my belief so aggressively, so violently that I would find myself having to decide whether or not to die to defend it? We know that our soldiers frequently cite “freedom” and “democracy” as the abstract reasons for willingly fighting in foreign wars. These concepts carry enough juice still to motivate the young to pick arms and kill the enemy. But war-time is extraordinary.

Let me ask you: what would you die for? An idea? A cause? And let’s say there was a who you would die for…let’s say you answered: “Christ. I would die for Christ.” What does that mean? Christ has died for you! What does it mean for you to die for him? How will you carry out your baptismal vows if you’re dead? You could argue that by dying for Christ rather than renouncing him or denying him is a radical form of witness and that it satisfies your vows at baptism to preach the gospel. Possibly. But then I would have to go back to my original question: who’s going to put you in a situation that requires your life for your belief? Seriously now, who here is threatened with martyrdom? No one! Bloody martyrdom is as far from Irving, TX as the moon is for glowworms.

So why do we celebrate these martyrs? They are supposed to be examples, but examples of what? Stubbornness? Foolishness? Extremism? Wouldn’t they and we be better served by examples of productive compromise and accommodation? Wouldn’t everyone just get along better if we weren’t so insistent on phrasing our beliefs so aggressively, you know, talking about the truth of the faith so plainly, so convincingly? It might serve us best to tone down the fervor a little, cut the joy and praising with a little prudent grumpiness. All this red draws unwelcomed attention to the fact that some few objected to the faith of Agatha and killed her for that faith. Really now, who could be offended if we thanked Agatha for her life and witness and turned today into an Interfaith Celebration of Spiritual Tolerance and Diversity? Agatha would understand.

Well, all of that might be wise by human standards but it is foolishness in the sight of God. God chose us to become His fools. We are not the fools of the world, but Holy Fools who do foolish things like die for our beliefs. We are not ashamed of Christ. We do our best to follow Christ by denying ourselves—prayer, fasting, penance, service. We do this b/c we hope to gain an everlasting life. This means being weak in order to be strong, being lowly in order to be lifted up, to be counted nothing in the world so that we might be counted worthy before God.

Consider your calling, brothers and sisters, if you want to follow Christ—an extraordinarily foolish thing to want to do!—then you must do what he did: preach, teach the truth of the faith; serve the poor, the sick, the forgotten, the put-out; heal, heal, heal; pray fervently, sacrifice often, be with the church; suffer for the rest of us; and die friendless on a cross. And if we aren’t too busy tolerating our diversity down here, we might remember to remember you once in a while.

If you wish to follow Christ you will lose your lives. Take up his cross daily then and follow him. Foolishness awaits!

Fish as if the Church depended on it!

5^th Sunday OT: Isa 6.1-8; 1 Cor 15.1-11; Luke 5.1-11
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

How easy it is for Jesus to show his disciples-to-be how to fish. All you need is Christ’s presence! Lower the nets. Reel in the fish. Where Christ abides, there is abundance. All you need do is be prepared to collect what his presence draws near. To be prepared you will need a partner or several partners to share the work, deep water, strong nets, sturdy boats, and a real sense of humility before the generosity of the Lord! Manage all this and you have an all-you-can-eat fried fish buffet with hushpuppies, fries, and cornbread before you know it! And really now, what more do you need to recruit strong fishermen than hot hushpuppies and Jesus?

I hear the question all the time: “Father, what can we do to get more priests? Is it allowing priests to marry? Ordaining women? What do we do?” Yesterday, I spent the whole day with the UD Serra Club on retreat. We read sections of JPII’s Pastores dabo vobis, his document on priestly formation. Our Holy Father accurately diagnosed the vocations crisis as both a cultural disease and an ecclesial malaise. In the culture, we are more apt to hear the gospels of corporate marketing, faux individualism, narcissistic prattle, relativist and subjectivist gibberish, hyper-sexed panting, the near-fundamentalist gospel of scientism and rationalism, and the always destructive and fear-mongering extremes of feminism. Each of these, just as dark spirits always do, specialize in digging under the faith of those called to serve and weakening the foundations of trust and the desire to sacrifice.

Corporate marketing begs us to worship mass produced objects by convincing us that each of us is a unique consumer, all the while shaping us into a corporate eater, a corporate buyer—just like millions of others. Narcissistic individualism preaches the power of ME, the source and summit for MY universe, a universe where I select my sounds, my tastes, my textures, my flavors, my images and a universe where I am ME and you are (if you in fact exist) you are here to mirror me to me. Relativism and subjectivism are routine postures for those who know that the truth of the matter doesn’t report what they want to hear. There is no argument here, only a sly redefinition what “truth” is and the casual dismissal of anything so medieval. Rationalism, and its religion scientism, work to kill the supernatural so that the bond btw Creator and creature is broken. And feminism in its extreme forms adopts most of these other “ism’s” and undermines the natural, created order of sexual differences. To even utter such a sentence is blasphemy in most churches and universities these days!

These are the dark spirits that are tearing our vocation nets; these are the demons of the age that turn our young men’s heads and whisper fear and loathing in their ears. How do you say yes to sacrificial service to the people of God when on a daily basis for 18, 22, 28 years you have heard that you, as you are, you are the center of the universe; powerful as a purchaser, truly unique as a consumer; virile as a man only to the degree that you are sexual; educated only to the degree that you are committed to scientific-rational inquiry; and deeply afraid of saying anything remotely critical of the feminist dogma that “to be equal” is “to be the same.” With all of that riding on your back, you’d strain the vocations net too!

In his document, PDV, our Holy Father, JPII, offers the cure to the vocations crisis offered by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: hold to the faith in sacrificial obedience! You have heard the gospel! Hold to it. You stand in the gospel: lift it up. It is through the gospel that we are saved. So why sell our salvation to our Jack and the Beanstalk culture of death, fashion, promiscuity, disease, infidelity, superficial spirituality, and cults of ME. For priestly vocations to flourish, that is, for us to establish an atmosphere, a culture of service, in which young men might hear and see and taste the call to serve and answer “YES!” we must begin the arduous task of reclaiming the historic faith of the church for the church and placing at the center of our lives the gospel imperatives of love, trust, and hope.

And I don’t mean to rattle these three words off like a Bingo caller. There’s nothing shy or retiring or pretty about love, trust, and hope. Each is terrifying in its way, each is an awesome delight lightly flavored with dread. How so? What do you think love, trust, and hope require of you? A mumbled amen? The occasional dollar in the plate? An hour on Sunday morning? Hardly. All three require your soul; signed over, freely given. You’ve been baptized! Dead, buried, and risen again with Christ. Neatly, cleanly, conveniently, no doubt. But you’re signed now. Claimed for Christ and his forever. To love him, to trust him, and to hope in him is what you do now. Everything must start there. No “ism,” no theory—but with him who died for you.

With him here in the boat, the catch is full and those nets do not tear. There’s help—other fishermen, other boats, other hands to do the work, but the job in front of you is yours. Let me ask you two very difficult questions: 1) would your life in Christ lead a young man to say “yes” to the priesthood? and 2) would your life in Christ send a young man yelling and into the arms of our culture of death? I wish I could tell you that it’s not your job to stir up vocations. But young men called to priesthood are often demoralized by the national sex scandals, status seeking parents, oversexed friends, spirits of rebellion and entitlement, and priests, bishops, DRE’s, sisters who allow junk to pollute the faith if not kill it outright. The witness of the lay faithful is needed now more than ever! If the faith is to center our vocation efforts, then we need daily witnesses, daily teachers, and the everyday faithful. That’s you, folks! Ask one young man this week to consider the priesthood. Just one. Tell him he is needed. With Christ on board, put your nets into deep water and pull for all you’re worth. And do not be afraid! They are waiting to hear your word of encouragement, your invitation. Trust me! They are waiting to be caught. Fish long and hard and fish faithfully. But whatever you do: FISH!

"Master, according to your word..."

The Presentation of the Lord: Mal 3.1-4; Heb 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-32
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation

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How surprised the prophet Malachi would have been on the day of our Christ’s presentation to hear a child greeted as the Messiah! The voice of the Lord warns Malachi that the one he seeks will suddenly appear in the temple. This one is the messenger to prepare the way! This one is the messenger of the covenant! And the Lord asks, “…who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?” He will be refiner’s fire to purify and a fuller’s lye to strip clean. He will refine the sons of Levi so that their sacrifice will please the Lord. How very strange then to see This One, the One, this child, greeted by Simeon in the temple as “Master.” The Word Made Flesh among us is presented by his mother and father to his Father in Heaven as Jewish custom requires. Then and there he is titled “light for revelation to the Gentiles” and “glory for your people Israel.”

It is no mistake that Jesus is recognized as the Messiah while obeying the traditions of his people. His very life is the culmination of prophecy and vision. It is precisely as a faithful Jew that he is recognized and proclaimed. He is one who lives now the longest story of his people; one who stands here with the history and power of his family at his back and all of the future of his people before him. Is God tweaking our expectations by presenting the Messiah to us as a child? Of course! Is He showing us how He can surprise and delight us with the oddest twists of history? Of course! But these are not the point of showing us the Messiah at his Presentation in the Temple. The point is: the Messiah is a faithful Jew and those who recognize him will do so because 1) they have trusted in the words of the prophets like Malachi and 2) they have been disposed by the Spirit to recognize their salvation in Christ. They are prepared, in other words, to be refined like gold and stripped clean.

Simeon greets the Lord as his salvation and begs for death, knowing that there is nothing to fear in death but everything to celebrate. Christ came to share our lives with us as one of us so that he might destroy death by dying and thus granting freedom to those whose fear of dying chain them to sin as slaves. What fear remains then in taking the hand of the Lord and saying, “I have seen my salvation!” What fear remains in subjecting ourselves to the refiner’s fire, the fuller’s lye? Our Lord is a merciful and faithful High Priest before God—he is our priest, our sacrifice, and our God, expiating our sins with his own body and blood. How then can we not understand mercy? How can we not reach out to touch the Christ Child as Simeon did and say, “…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples.”

We are gold ready for refinement, silver ready for purification. We are the finest clothe ready for cleaning and the richest dyes. We are made fresh, empty, all-again new, and we are handed our freedom. If that freedom will flourish, our daily prayer will be: “Master, according to your word, let your servant go in peace and in peace serve you with sacrifice and praise and thanksgiving.” Who is this king of glory? He is Christ Jesus our Lord!

Prayer to Mary, Mother of Priests

Prayer to Mary, Mother of Priests, Pastores dabo vobis, JPII, 1992

O Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ and Mother of priests, accept this title which we bestow on you to celebrate your motherhood and to contemplate with you the Priesthood of your Son and of your sons, O Holy Mother of God.

O Mother of Christ, to the Messiah-Priest you gave a body of flesh through the anointing of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of the poor and the contrite of heart; guard priests in your heart and in the Church, O Mother of the Saviour.

O Mother of Faith, you accompanied to the Temple the Son of Man, the fulfillment of the promises given to the fathers; give to the Father for his glory the priests of your Son, O Ark of the Covenant. O Mother of the Church, in the midst of the disciples in the Upper Room you prayed to the Spirit for the new People and their Shepherds; obtain for the Order of Presbyters a full measure of gifts, O Queen of the Apostles.

O Mother of Jesus Christ, you were with him at the beginning of his life and mission, you sought the Master among the crowd, you stood beside him when he was lifted up from the earth consumed as the one eternal sacrifice and you had John, your son, near at hand; accept from the beginning those who have been called, protect their growth, in their life ministry accompany your sons, O Mother of Priests. Amen.

Death of an Old School Master

I recently heard that Fr. Jordan Aumann, OP of the Central Dominican Province died this last Tuesday (1/23). I never had the pleasure of meeting fra. Jordan, but I am very familiar with his work. Two of his most important books are on-line: Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition and Spiritual Theology. Both of these books are excellent examples of Christian spirituality done well. So much of what passes for "spirituality" these days is New Age junk--Ennegram (astrology with numbers instead of stars), reiki (massaging your "energy points" with a "spirit guide"), yoga, labyrinths, psychobabble, mini-Zen gardens, aromatherapy, blahblahblah...If you want to see how Catholic spirituality is done Old School Baby, take a look at fra. Jordan's books. You won't be disappointed.

Love is cruel, possessive, & easily angered

4^th Sunday OT: Jer 1.4-5, 17-19; 1 Cor 12.31-13.13; and Luke 4.21-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

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A Reading from the Unholy Gospel of St. Narcissus…

Praise be to me and me alone!

My wretched Slaves and convenient Tools, you have heard that love is patient and kind, forgiving and humble; that those who love seek the good for the Other and rejoice in the truth. You have heard many things about the world that will not serve you well. And among these is the foolish sentiment that love is anything but Selfishness writ large across the Ego—a passion that will not be saddled and ridden like a domesticated tiger but loosely bridled and allowed its furious run. Love is impatient for love in return. Love is cruel because it must end. Love cannot be generous or polite. It is a passion, obsessive, possessive, and rude. Love is a grandiose tale, a violent power, a torrent of abusive lies aimed at your tender heart. Love has a temper and most certainly nurses hurt. Love will bear nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing, and endure even less. Love fails. My face in a gilded mirror tells the truth of love: distrust, despair, delusion. Love is vengeance on the weak for being vulnerable to need. Need nothing, want nothing. Be strong! And heal yourself. Enlighten yourself. Give yourself peace. Save yourself. Build idols to your silenced need and keep control. Finally, Slaves and Tools, remember and act: love is a desperate ruse, a way to see you bowed. If you must love, love my god…love Me.

This is the Gospel of St. Narcissus!

If I wanted to preach an unholy homily on the vices of love, I couldn’t do much better than to proclaim this gospel of St Narcissus and point out to you that, though we would deny the truth of this passage if pressed, most of us have experienced love as our impious saint has described it. Hurt. Loss. Aggravation. Passion given but not returned in kind. There is often a disordered feel to the way we love, a shaky balance to the way we will the good for the other. And why? When we love, why do we sometimes sense the presence of our unholy evangelist and his nasty gospel of ego-bloated cynicism? Paul is clear: love is the greatest spiritual gift. Love is a gift. A passion with which we are graced. Think of a green tea bag releasing its brew into a cup of hot water. God diffuses His love through us, infusing us with the best routine, the most excellent exercise of doing the good for everyone around us—the virtue of charity.

In an act of astonishing charity, Jesus stands in the synagogue, reads the messianic prophecy from Isaiah, and tells those listening that he is the Messiah of Isaiah’s prophet vision. They are amazed at his graciousness, at his generosity in revealing who he is. But they quickly turn skeptical when they realize that Jesus is a local-boy-made-prophet. His credibility teeters on the edge of the crowd’s fickle attention as Jesus attacks before he can be attacked. Essentially, he says, “Now I bet you’re gonna want me to do some miracle for you to prove who I am. Prophets are never accepted in their own hometowns.” He cites Elijah in Sidon and Elisha in Israel as prophets who were sent to lands and peoples other than their own to perform miraculous healings. Prophets wander, yes; but they wander at God’s command, His initiative—not their own! In effect, Jesus is refusing to prove to them through miracles that he is who he says he is. He is, therefore, a blasphemer and a rebel. The crowd pushes him to cliff to send him to his death. But Jesus safely passes through them and leaves Nazareth never to return.

Consistent with Jesus’ reluctance to prove anything with supernatural performances, he instead calls on those who hear his words to listen carefully to that spot, that space, that empty room in their souls where he would dwell, to listen carefully to their God-gifted desire for a divine life, to their God-gifted longing for healing, to their God-gifted need for rescue…to listen to his word, and let his Word call them to him. It is Love Himself to calls to their (and to our!) emptiness, our desolation, our grief, and frustration. No miracle can prove the satisfaction one feels at having been made clean, washed pure. No miracle will confirm or deny the electric truth of having been touched by the creating and re-creating Word of the Father—to see and hear and feel and smell the undiluted passion of our God for His creation, to taste His body and blood and know that Love became one of us, died as one of us, rose from his grave for us; and now, with wholly perfected charity, he sits in judgment on our obedience and on our yet to be quenched thirst for eternal joy.

Love judges you…so, be found at the time of judgment loving, rejoicing, believing, hoping, enduring. Love never fails us and we cannot fail in Love.

But we do fail without Love. Paul says that we are just noisy gongs without love, meaningless racket. That without love we gain nothing from our poverty and willing surrender. And the scariest of all—even with faith enough to shift mountains, we ARE nothing without love. Gifts of tongues, wisdom, knowledge, prophecy, all these gifts will cease; they are incomplete, partial-- “when the perfect comes the partial will pass away.” Like a racing wind, what we do and say and build and write without love will pass into the heated desert and evaporate. Faith, hope, and love will remain “but the greatest of these is love.”

Do you hear the gospel of Christ or the gospel of St. Narcissus? Which do you follow? Is your life in the faith joyful? Does being a follower of Jesus make you happy? Do you feel compelled to serve others? Can you release fear and anxiety and throw yourself on the promises of God? Are you angry, afraid, impatient, cruel, rude? Do you take your spiritual lessons from day-time TV and practice the saccharine self-help arts? Are you a spiritual athlete running to holiness under your own power, bypassing the weaker brethren and waving with self-sufficient pride as you pass? Do you believe that you invent your truth? Your right and wrong? Do you gamble against hope? Look for evidence to believe? Endure b/c failure is socially embarrassing? When your priest preaches on love, do you think he’s weak or liberal or mushy theologically? Do you think he ought to spend more time telling those sinners over there to Stop It! But Father, there are politicians, bishops, theologians, Catholic professors who need to be called out for the scandals they’re causing! No doubt. Can they look to you for a good example of how to love themselves back toward holiness and truth? Or will they learn from you, from me how to be quick-tempered, brooding, rude, and unloving?

If you know everything there is to know; if you ooze wisdom from your skin; if you prophesy in the Holy Spirit with 100% accuracy; if you sell everything, give the money to the poor, and surrender completely to God, running around butt-naked and broke; if you do all this and you do not love—you have gained nothing b/c you are nothing.

To be loved by God is life; to love b/c He loved us first is living. And so, preach this gospel: our God never fails—bear all things with Him, believe all things in Him, hope for all things from Him, and…endure, endure, endure. God never fails. God is Love. Love never fails.