Christ, Our Well-Water

3^rd Sunday of Lent: Ex 17.3-7; Rom 5.1-8; John 4.5-42
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

[NB. This is a revision of the homily immediately below this post...]

Is the Lord in our midst or not?

Jesus went into the desert after his baptism “to be tempted by the Devil.” For this reason alone did he step into the arid wasteland of temptation. He did not go to fast or pray or to do penance. He went so that he might be tempted. Though we sometimes embrace temptation as a welcomed break from the apparent tedium of holiness, I doubt that many of us work up a sweat running into the Devil’s theater to beg the dark angel to entice us to act deliberately against our Father’s will for us. Most of us prefer to skirt the edges of temptation, only peeking through the doors and catching glimpses of perdition as our more foolish brothers and sisters push past us and on into their spiritual demise. This is indeed foolish, reckless even, considering the long-term effects of disobedience on one’s soul. However, if the folks who braved the desert with Moses are any sign to us of our own frustration with the hiddeness of God, we too can find ourselves at Massah and Meribah, crying out to heaven, “Is the Lord in our midst or not!” How you answer that question will determine whether you arrive at the Cross in Jerusalem on Good Friday as a living sacrifice or a cheering spectator.

What’s the difference between these two? Answering a question with a question: how pliable is your heart and head? A hard heart and a harder head make for useless spiritual tools. Neither will seek out water to kill a thirst. Neither will seek food to kill a hunger. Neither will ask for help to relieve distress. However, both will faithfully rely on a dull will, a lazy intellect, and a careless concern for little beyond the moment. Moses’ people cannot look beyond their discomfort and so they cannot see their desert trek as anything other than a mistake, or an unmerited punishment. And so they whine incessantly, “Why did you make us leave [our slavery] in Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst…?” In answer to Moses’ worried prayer, the Lord gives them water, but He names the place of their infidelity, Massah and Meribah, that is, “testing” and “quarreling”—the two things a hard heart and harder head do best.

So, here we are. . .in the desert of Lent, slowly winding our way to Jerusalem and the Cross. Are you thirsty yet? Hungry? Are you tired of the journey? Lent is noon-high, half-way finished but the most difficult leg of our trip is still ahead. The betrayal. The Garden. The trial. The beatings and the Way of Sorrow. We’re not there yet, but we’ve been there before. Will you arrive to ride on the donkey? Or, will you cheer the riders on? Will you stand before the crowd for its judgment? Or, will you join the crowd to judge? Between now and then, hold firmly in your heart and mind the Well of Living Water. Not the flow of Massah and Meribah where the infidelity of the ungrateful poisons even the rocks. But the Well of Christ Jesus and remember, remember the water changed to wine; the water poured over Jesus’ head; the water that held him up as we walked the sea to save his friends. Let that water soften your heart and open your head! See and hear the waters of this gospel. . .

This gospel teaches us that: the Good News of God’s mercy is to be preached to everyone, excluding no one not even those with whom we have significant religious differences. The Living Water of God’s grace is immeasurably deep and sunrise to sunset wide. We receive this Water as a gift, given to us without a price or a debt, liberally handed-over in for no other reason than love, and this Water is dipped from the well of Christ Jesus himself.

The Living Water of God’s saving grace flows easily and freely over the dirtiest feet, into the foulest mouths, through the most unclean hands, and it washes away any and all afflictions.

The Living Water of God’s grace waters the cruelest heart, softens the hardest head, and tames the most passionate stomach. No dam or pipe or bucket or cloud is high enough, long enough, deep enough or empty enough to hold the gifts that our Father has to give us.

The Living Water of God’s grace is the Bridge between blood enemies; the Way across all anger and pride; the Means of health and beauty; the only Gate to truth and goodness. Built on the confession of Peter and guarded against Hell itself, the Church floats on its ocean, unsinkable, unshakable, His Ark.

The Living Water of God’s grace wets everything it touches, stains anything it falls upon, and indelibly marks for eternal life anyone who will say with the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water.”

We learn from this gospel reading that we cannot worship I AM THAT I AM on any single mountain; in one church and not another; nor can we pray in Jerusalem only, Rome only, or Dallas only. We learn that we are to worship the LORD in Spirit and in Truth, not with spirits and lies, but in His Spirit and His Truth; alone with Him and all together, we pray where we are, when we are, and we ask for one gift: voices eager to praise His glory, voice set afire to preach the Word of God’s mercy.

Jesus says to the woman, “I am [the Christ], the one who is speaking with you.” When she tells her neighbors this truth, they come to Christ and listen to the Word. For two days they listen. When the time for him to leave comes, the Samaritans say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” If she had held her tongue, quieted her voice and failed to speak the Truth, they would not have heard. Where then would they find hope?

Paul writes to the Romans: “…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If we are not disappointed in the grace we have received, how much more passionate are we then about speaking a simple truth, just one word to our neighbors about the gift of life we have received. There is no hope on the dry land promises of secular religion or science; no hope in the dry mouths of politicians or professors; there is no hope in the small spaces of test tubes or books. No hope that lasts. Our hope, our one hope is the depth, the breadth, the width of our Father’s immeasurable mercy—the sky-wide and valley-deep well of His free flowing and ever-living Water.

Walking this desert of Lent to the Cross, let Paul remind you: “…only with difficulty [do you] die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person [you] might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners [still sinners!] Christ died for us.” Our Lord gave Moses’ people the water they needed to quench their thirsty tongues. But their infidelity, their testing and quarreling, poisoned even the rocks. Now, Christ comes as the Living Water of our Father’s final grace, and all we need to do to gulp our fill is shout out like the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water!”

Is the Lord in our midst or not? Bring your biggest bucket and taste for yourself!

Drowning in Well-Water

3^rd Sunday of Lent: Ex 17.3-7; Rom 5.1-8; John 4.5-42 (Vigil Mass)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

[NB. This homily is something of an experiment for me. . .so, I am very eager to hear comments!]

Here’s what we are supposed to learn from this gospel reading: the preaching of the Good News is to go out to everyone, excluding no one not even those with whom we have significant religious differences. The Living Water of God’s grace is immeasurably deep and awesomely wide. We receive this Water as a gift, given without price or debt, liberally handed-over in love, and dipped from the well of Christ Jesus himself.

The Living Water of God’s saving grace flows easily and freely over the dirtiest feet, into the foulest mouths, through the most unclean hands, and washes away any and all afflictions.

The Living Water of God’s grace waters the cruelest heart, softens the hardest head, and tames the most passionate stomach. No dam or pipe or bucket or cloud is strong enough, high enough, deep enough or empty enough to hold the gifts that our Father has to give us.

The Living Water of God’s grace is the Bridge between blood enemies; the Way across all anger and pride; the Means of health and beauty; the only Gate to truth and goodness. Built on the confession of Peter and guarded against Hell itself, the Church floats on its ocean, unsinkable, unshakable, His Ark.

The Living Water of God’s grace wets everything it touches, stains anything it falls upon, and indelibly marks for eternal life anyone who will say with the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water.”

We learn from this gospel reading that we cannot worship I AM THAT I AM on any single mountain; in one church and not another; nor can we pray in Jerusalem alone, Rome alone, Paris alone, or Dallas alone. We learn that we are to worship the LORD in Spirit and in Truth, not with spirits and lies, but in His Spirit and His Truth; alone with Him and all together, we pray where we are, when we are, and we ask for one gift: voices eager to praise His glory, voice set afire with the Word of God’s mercy.

Jesus says to the woman, “I am [the Christ], the one who is speaking with you.” When she tells her neighbors this truth, they come to Christ and listen to the Word. For two days they listen. When the time for him to leave comes, the Samaritans say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” If she had held her tongue, quieted her voice and failed to speak the Truth, they would not have heard. Where then would they find hope?

Paul writes to the Romans: “…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If we are not disappointed in the grace we have received, how much more passionate are we then about speaking a simple truth, just one word to our neighbors about the gift of life we have received. There is no hope on the dry land of secular religion or science; no hope in the mouths of politicians or professors; there is no hope in test tubes or books. No hope that lasts. Our hope, our one hope is the depth, the breadth, the width of our Father’s immeasurable mercy--the sky-wide and valley-deep well of His free flowing and ever-living Water. Walking this desert of Lent to the Cross, let Paul remind you: “…only with difficulty [do you] die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person [you] might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners [still sinners!] Christ died for us.”

Wasting Love on Sinners

2^nd Week of Lent (S): Micah 7.14-15, 18-20 and Luke 15.1-3, 11-32
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

The Pharisees hate sinners. Jesus loves them. For the Pharisees, Jesus’ love of sinners is more than just annoying; it’s downright dangerous. Any sensible person can see that loving sinners—even while hating the sin—can easily lead the sinner to think that his or her sin is somehow OK. We can’t have sinners thinking, “Well, I’m a sinner but folks seem to love me anyway, so my sinning must not be so bad after all…” This is a dangerous way to think. True, Jesus loved sinners. But surely there are seriously practical limits on which sinners get loved. Just random, gratuitous, free-for-all loving Everybody just seems so untidy? So messy and free! Where’s the cost of sinning when we just love everybody all the time regardless? Isn’t love all about rewarding the Good?

Fortunately, we have the Parable of the Prodigal Son to answer this question! The standard parsing of this parable goes something like this: the younger son is the Sinner. The older son is the self-righteous Do-Gooder. And the father in the story is God. The Sinner sins. The Father welcomes the Sinner home. The Do-Gooder whines about not being rewarded for being a do-gooder. The moral of the story: no matter how sinful we are we are always welcomed home by God our Father—even over the objections of the jealous prigs in the church. Nothing wrong with that. It occurred to me, however, that if we focus on the prodigality of the younger son, his adventures in squandering his inheritance, we might see, through slightly squinted eyes, another, fruitful way to parse the parable. Bear with me.

We call the younger son “prodigal” because he wastes his inheritance on wine, women, and song: “…on a life of dissipation…[he] freely spent everything.” There is no good reason, however, to limit the notion of prodigality to useless waste. Why can’t we think of prodigality as useful waste, or as the extravagant giving of gifts without regard to merit or the possibility of repayment? The younger son took his share of his father’s property and bestowed it freely on prostitutes, bartenders, waiters, and hookah baristas. I doubt these folks saw his largesse as wasteful. He expended his treasure, and his “wastefulness” benefited others. In fact, his generosity brought him very close to death—the last sacrifice he could make. In the rank humility of his destitution, he calls out to his father for help, pledging himself to yet another prodigal enterprise: conversion, confession, contrition, and penance. He is received by his father, who is “filled with compassion,” and his return is abundantly celebrated.

In one very important respect, our prodigal pal looks like Christ. What could be more extravagant, more over-the-top, more excessively unnecessary and wasteful than giving your life away on a cross because you find yourself in love with billions and billions of sinners. What is more ridiculous than squandering your very life to love sinners. . .some of whom will never love you back, will never love anyone at all. Is there a less efficient means of loving sinners than sacrificing your life for them. . .just on the off-chance that some of them, maybe most, maybe just a few, on the off-chance that some will come to love perfectly with you. The Prodigal Son wastes his inheritance on sinners. So does Jesus. The Prodigal Son finds himself hungry, alone, and near death. So does Jesus. The Prodigal Son calls out to his father in the last moment, surrendering himself to his father’s will. And so does Jesus. One lives and one dies but both are welcomed home by an exceedingly compassionate father. One lives as an example to sinners. The other dies as a sacrifice for sinners. Living and dying, both did so copiously, richly, prosperously.

The moral of this telling of the parable? It is impossible to love sinners too much; impossible to spread your love too thin; impossible to sow the seeds of mercy too wide; so long as you love because God loves you, it is impossible to exhaust the harvest of the Cross; so long as you love because God loves you, it is impossible not to be Christ.

You are the Christ

The Chair of Peter: 1 Peter 5.1-4 and Matthew 16.13-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

[NB. Confession time: I don't like this homily...]

Preachers like to point out that today is the only day on the Church calendar when we celebrate a piece of furniture. Of course, we aren’t celebrating a piece of furniture, we are honoring the shepherding office given to Peter by Christ and held today by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Even so, some would claim that the office of Peter—as it is currently understood by the Church—is a kind of furniture: a decorative chair, too pretty to actually use; a chair sealed in the plastic of tradition, away from the grubbiness of life; a chair moved out of the museum of the grandma’s sitting room only when important guests show up, but otherwise kept hidden away; a chair, in other words, too delicate to sit on, too fragile to clean up, and in much need of a good repair job. Let’s see what the connection is between Peter's confession and the teaching office of Peter.

In a scene that we have come to recognize as a “teaching moment,” Jesus sits with his students and asks a thunderclapping question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples give a variety of answers, covering all the bases: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet sent by God. You can almost see Jesus nodding, slightly amused by the answer but very understanding. Notice that the first formulation of this question asks who the Son of Man is. Once the disciples have shouted out their answers, Jesus changes the question, “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus answers his own question by changing the terms of the question the second time around. He is the Son of Man! Peter, obviously the eager-beaver leader of the student group pipes up immediately and says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Notice something else here. All of the disciples are implicated in the initial, incorrect answers. Only Peter answers the second question. Alone, he answers correctly. And like the good professor he is, Jesus praises Peter by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah…”

What does this extraordinary exchange tell us about the commission Jesus gives Peter when he, Jesus, calls Peter the Rock and gives him the keys to the kingdom? The most basic revelation here is the direct link between the truth of who Jesus is for us and the teaching office of Peter. It falls to our Holy Father to constantly put before the Church the reality of the God-Man, the truth of the Incarnation; it falls to our Holy Father to call us back, to always call us back to the essential confession of every Christian (Catholic or not!) that the man, Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, is the promised Messiah of the prophets, that he is the Anointed One of the Father, that he is the Lamb, who upon the Cross, makes it possible for us all to participate in the divine life.

The Chair of Peter will be a piece of furniture when we look back from the Throne of God; but for us now, looking forward to Throne, the Chair of Peter is a compass, a roadmap, an infallible guide. Notice that we do not celebrate the Popes as a category. We celebrate this or that pope as a saint. We celebrate the office of the papacy. But we do not lift up and honor The Popes as men incapable of error or sin, as men separated from their ministry as Peter’s successors. The reason for this is simple: no man is above sin. We know that this or that pope made it to the Throne of God as a Saint. And the Chair of Peter itself sits in honor near the Throne. But as we all know, our history is spoiled with the avarice, lusts, pride, and arrogance of men who have sat in that Chair. This is precisely why Peter’s confession—“You are the Christ!—must remain on our lips as we pray, as we work, as we play, as we live and die.

Today’s feast of the Chair of Peter is not a celebration of Joseph Ratzinger or Karol Wojtyła or Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli or even Peter himself! Today we celebrate that teaching office of the Holy Spirit that shouts from first century Judea all the way to twenty-first century Irving, TX: “Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ!"

Sand for Water

Lenten desert? YES! Sand in the fonts? NO!

After the 7.30pm Sunday Mass on campus, a woman approached me and asked, "Father, why is there water in the baptismal font?" Used to esoteric questions from my U.D. students, I took a breath and geared up to give a ferverino on the sacramental uses of water and the first known uses of fonts in the patristic period. . .before I could say a word, she grumbled, "There's not supposed to be any water in there. . .it's supposed to be sand!" I stared at her for a sec and said something like, "Well, that was an unauthorized innovation from the 80's. Trendy nonsense. We don't renounce our baptisms in Lent." She turned and walked away. I was prompted to find this little piece of liturgical arcana. . .

________________________________________
Prot. N. 569/00/L

March 14, 2000

Dear Father:

This Congregation for Divine Worship has received your letter sent by fax in which you ask whether it is in accord with liturgical law to remove the Holy Water from the fonts for the duration of the season of Lent.

This Dicastery is able to respond that the removing of Holy Water from the fonts during the season of Lent is not permitted, in particular, for two reasons:

1. The liturgical legislation in force does not foresee this innovation, which in addition to being praeter legem is contrary to a balanced understanding of the season of Lent, which though truly being a season of penance, is also a season rich in the symbolism of water and baptism, constantly evoked in liturgical texts.

2. The encouragement of the Church that the faithful avail themselves frequently of the [sic] of her sacraments and sacramentals is to be understood to apply also to the season of Lent. The "fast" and "abstinence" which the faithful embrace in this season does not extend to abstaining from the sacraments or sacramentals of the Church. The practice of the Church has been to empty the Holy Water fonts on the days of the Sacred Triduum in preparation of the blessing of the water at the Easter Vigil, and it corresponds to those days on which the Eucharist is not celebrated (i.e., Good Friday and Holy Saturday).

Hoping that this resolves the question and with every good wish and kind regard, I am,

Sincerely yours in Christ,

[signed]

Mons. Mario Marini Undersecretary

An opened hand is your measure

2^nd Week of Lent (M): Daniel 9.4-10 and Luke 6.36-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Tit for tat. Quid pro quo. Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. We understand these colorful phrases to mean one thing: you do me a favor, I do you a favor—an equal exchange of labor and good will. Implied in the exchange is the possibility of indebtedness, that if I do you a favor now, but you can’t do one for me immediately, you owe me. The longer I hold your debt the more unequal the exchange is going to be. Eventually, I will end up asking you to do something way out of proportion to the favor I did for you. The difference between favors at this point is to be found in my gentle patience, my all-too-human generosity in allowing you time to repay the favor. You end up repaying the debt and rewarding me for not calling in the favor before you are ready to repay. We call this interest…even if it isn’t strictly calculated as a percentage of value.

In Luke’s gospel this morning, Jesus is teaching his disciples two lessons about forgiveness: 1) forgive always so that the one you forgive will be obligated to forgive you when the time comes and 2) be as generous as you possibly can so that your generosity will be repaid in kind. The key to both these teachings is the last sentence of the reading: “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Jesus tells his disciples to be merciful as their Father is merciful. Not an easy job! Our God is more than merciful. He is Mercy per se. How do mere creatures imitate that? We stop judging others. stop condemning others. This means that we are to stop formulating final decisions about the guilt or innocence of others in sin. We are to stop passing sentence on their sins, drawing conclusions about the state of their souls. This does not mean that we are to close our eyes to sin and refuse to call sin Sin. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is not a biblical way of saying, “Mind your own business and I’ll mind mine!” We know this because our interpretative key—the measure you use to measure will be used to measure for you—this key tells us that we do not want our “business” ignored…I want my business measured in mercy and forgiven! Therefore, I had better be ready to repay that measure of mercy with an equal measure of my own.

The clear intent of Jesus here is to point us to the boundless generosity of the Father’s love and mercy. There is no room for stinginess in a heart once cleansed of sin by divine forgiveness. His grant of redeeming grace through the death and resurrection of His Son is the monumental gift of creation restored to right relationship. How do creatures repay that favor? How do we stand under that gift, accept its benefits, and prepare ourselves to repay the favor? We don’t. We can’t. And in creaturely terms, our debt to the Father grows every minute, every second we fail to repay. Fortunately, our Father calculates interest on debts in divine terms, in terms of limitless abundance, boundless generosity—He has paid the debt for us. No interest accrues on our divine favors, so the measure with which we are measured is no measure at all but the open hand of God pouring gifts in love.

So, be merciful as your Father is merciful.

Fear Nothing!

2^nd Sunday of Lent (A): Gen 12.1-4; 2 Tim 1.8-10; Matt 17.1-9
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

“Rise, and do not be afraid!”

Are you wondering yet why you decided to take on a Lenten fast? Why you chose this or that bad habit to surrender to the desert? Are you finding yourself counting the days maybe, just waiting it out, maybe twitching a little now and then, maybe standing up and marching right into that Chinese buffet or right into that Marble Creamery or right into that tobacco shop? Is your tongue itching to tell someone off? Or maybe your credit card is keeping you up at night softly sobbing from loneliness? Imagine calling the whole thing off. Right now. Just stop Lent and get off. Stop the fasting, the abstaining; stop the extra prayers and just break those promises of weekly confession and daily Mass. Just stop. Just say NO to Lent. And get off this purple-hazed roller coaster of a liturgical season! I mean, really now…is Jesus coming back in 2008? 2009 even? Who knows?

Imagine the disciples for a second. There they were WITH Jesus, their beloved teacher, and they are having trouble understanding all this cryptic talk of suffering and dying and coming back to life again. The disciples! The guys who know him best, the ones who have known him face-to-face are struggling with this whole desert-thing. Here we are 2,000 years later and we’re trying to understand, to believe, to obey, and to benefit from the lessons of his own temptations among the sand dunes. Sure! You had better believe I would conjure up some bread after forty days without food. Not to mention a case or two of good German beer! Of course, I would call down angels if the Devil appeared to me and started talking. And, yes, ruling the world seems like a heady vocation. But I, like you, must do what Christ did and will do again. And in case we’re scared out of our minds, frightened at the very idea of what’s ahead, we have Christ on the mountain with Peter, James, and John. And we have his promise: “…his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light.” What sort of promise is this? What are we to make of the transfiguration?

The disciples, gawking in fear at the sight of the transfigured Jesus, Moses and Elijah with him, fall flat on their faces in the dirt. Jesus touches them and says, “Rise, and do not be afraid!” When they rise, Jesus alone remains standing before them, brilliant bright, shining clean. He stands there for a moment. Moses and Elijah are gone. The joyous light dissipates. All he says to the dumb-struck disciples is: “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” That’s it. That’s his explanation of what just happened. So, what just happened? What are we to do with this theatrical revelation now that we have it?

Let’s go back to Paul and his second letter to Timothy. Paul writes to this friend, “[God] saved us and called us to a holy life, NOT according to our works but according to His own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus…” What makes this holy life we are called to possible? Nothing other than the gifts we have received from God, the grace “now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus…” Paul, writing long after the revelation on the mountain, is reminding Timothy that he must “bear [his] share of hardship for the gospel…” How? “…with the strength that comes from God.” Jesus’ transfiguration, his transformation before Peter, James, and John is our Lord’s seal on an ancient promise: endure with my strength, endure with the gifts you have been given, endure with one another, and you too will be transfigured; you too will shine like the sun, white as light.

What do we do ‘til then? Jesus touches his frightened disciples and says to them, “Rise, and do not be afraid!” We can hear echoed here all of the promises our Lord made to Abram: “I will make you a great nation…I will make your name great…I will bless those who bless you…All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.” None of this is ours by right or inheritance. It is ours in faith by the promise of He who blesses His creation with His presence. We cannot lay claim to a single blessing, not one gift from our Lord if we are face down in the dirt…frightened by our promised future. Or if we will not look up into the eyes of Christ; or if we refuse in our sinfulness to be transfigured, to be changed into He Whom we adore. So, rise and do not be afraid! Do not fear small sacrifices or large ones; do not fear little fasts or days of abstinence; do not fear that the Body of Christ is sick beyond healing, or that the Word is mute against the world’s unbelief and violence. Meet your temptations for what they are: lies. Meet the Devil for who he is: a liar. And rejoice that you have been given a seal on the promise of your salvation! A bright shining promise made by he “who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

What awaits our Lord in Jerusalem is an ignoble death on the Cross. He knows this. Yet he rides into Jerusalem like a slave on a donkey. And though he is cheered as a king, he is abandoned like a beggar to beg for his life. . .even as he dies. His face shone like the sun on the mountain. But it bleeds on the Cross. His clothes become white as light on the mountain. But when he is lifted up on the Cross, he wears a king’s purple red with his own blood. And when he stands before the disciples shining and bright on the mountain, he stands with Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets; yet in the garden he is alone. On the Cross he is among thieves, a criminal. He knows all of this. And he appears to his disciples to seal an ancient promise of mercy. He appears, transfigured, to ease their doubts, to strengthen their resolve, to bolster their lagging faith.

Are you ready yet to abandon your Lenten fasts? Your desert sacrifices? Are you ready to chat with the Devil and shop among his illusions of wealth and glory? Are you ready to stop this crazy ride and get off? If so, hear this one more time: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Listen to the emptying Cross. Listen to the crash of the temple veil as it falls. Listen again to Paul: “Beloved, bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” Listen to Jesus say as he touches your hand, “Rise, and do not be afraid!”

Confessional Advice

Advice from Fr. Philip Neri’s Confessional

I. Starting point:

1. Sin. When we sin we abuse a gift from God. Just about every sin we commit can be traced back to a disordered use of some grace we have received from God. Abusing God’s gifts is a dangerous practice b/c it is through the charitable use of our divine gifts for others that God perfects His love us. If you are not using your gifts for the benefit of others then God’s love is not being perfected in you.

2. Forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness we are not asking God to do something He has not already done. All of our sins are forgiven right now. All of them. Then why go to confession? God gives us forgiveness always, constantly, without ceasing. We go to confession to receive His forgiveness. Let’s say I call you up and tell you that I’ve purchased a nice Easter ham for you at Central Market. It’s a gift from me to you and your family. I give you this ham. For the ham to be a proper gift, you have to go get it. Once you have received the ham, it is a gift. The ham is no less real b/c you haven’t picked it up yet. The ham doesn’t materialize out of thin air when you go to Central Market and ask for it. The ham is just sitting there waiting for you to come ask for. The same is true for God’s forgiveness. Just ask and you will receive.

3. Charity. Once you have received your gift of forgiveness, you need to put it into action as a gift for others. We do not have the option of failing to forgive. We are commanded to love and when we love, we forgive; i.e., You give your gift of divine forgiveness away by forgiving me my sins against you. In this way, you enact your most basic ministry as Christ to me.

II. The Sins (in order of frequency heard in the Box)

4. Lust. What gift does lust pervert? You might be tempt to say “love” or “sex,” but I would say “beauty.” We know from the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei verbum) that God reveals Himself to us through His creation, His only Son, and scripture. As the rational members of His creation, we humans are particularly capable of revealing Who God Is, that is, of revealing Divine Beauty, Goodness, and Truth to others. In other words, you are a revelation of God to me and I to you. When you see a beautiful woman (or man) she is beautiful b/c God’s beauty is being revealed through her. She serves as an icon through which God shines His beauty and through which you receive His beauty. Your attraction to her is the attraction you know and feel for Beauty Himself. When you take that Beauty and pervert it for temporary pleasure (porn, masturbation), you sin against God.

Advice: Begin to habituate yourself to giving God thanks for the Beauty He reveals to you. When you see an attractive person lift them up in your mind and say, “Thank you, Lord, for showing me your beauty through this beautiful person!” Be truly grateful each and every time. Over time, it will become harder and harder to think of others as objects when you know that they are actually icons.

5. Envy: What gift does envy pervert? I would say that envy perverts the nature of giftedness itself. We are all created as graced creatures…THAT we exist at all is a grace, a gift of God. Beyond the gift of existence, each of us is gifted in some particular fashion—singing, writing, patience, piety, etc. These gifts are mixed and matched and combined in all sorts of odd configurations. Our job is to organize these gifts into a coherent “charitable personality,” to become the best possible version of ourselves that these gifts will allow. The way we do this is to use the gifts for others. When we do this God’s love is perfected in us. However, when I lust after the gifts of my friends and neighbors, ignoring my own gifts in favor of coveting theirs, I fail to use my own gifts and God’s love is not perfected in me. So, envy is a double-edged sin in that it promotes covetousness and makes us lazy in being charitable.

Advice: Being grateful is the key here. When you feel yourself becoming envious of another’s gifts, stop and give God thanks for that person’s gifts. Pray that they might use their gifts well and grow in holiness. Gratitude is one of the things that the devil can’t fight against. A truly grateful heart is well protected from temptation.

6. Gossip: What sin does gossip pervert? Gossip tends to pervert the gift of Truth, or in other words, gossip distorts our view of objective reality in favor of the illusions generated by lust, envy, jealousy, etc. Depending on the subject of the gossip, gossip is exciting b/c there is the great potential there for making oneself look good or better in front of friends. It is important to us that we appear to be “hooked in,” so we gossip. Gossip, in its worse form, is also a form of tearing people down—lying exaggerating, etc. all build up a false picture that then gets used to make rash judgments.

Advice: St. Philip Neri once took a penitent to the top of his church. He handed the woman a feather pillow and told her to rip the pillow open and scatter the feathers. She did so, watching the thousands of feathers fly all over the city. He then told her that her penance was to go and collect every feather. Such is the nature of gossip.

7. Doubt/Not praying: These sins can also be understood as a perversions of God’s Truth. One thing we have to get clear, however, is there is doubt and there is Doubt. Little “d” doubt is acceptable if and only if you are truly confused about or unsure of the right way to think about and believe an article of the faith. Being ignorant of a teaching can lead to doubt, so can the complexity of some of our beliefs. Big “D” Doubt occurs when you are actually rejecting a de fide (of the faith) teaching of the church for no other reason than you don’t like the teaching or that you the teaching teaches against your favorite sin. This occurs a lot with contraception, masturbation, and pre-martial sex. So, when you confess “doubt” be sure and distinguish between the two. Doubt often leads us to stop praying or to stop using the sacraments.

Advice: Know your faith! You are responsible for knowing and living the faith as it has been given to the Church. If you are truly confused about a teaching, ask for help or get a copy of the Catechism. If you find yourself Doubting, try saying to yourself: “I am one person in a two-thousand year old Church. I’m smart but I’m not Two-Thousand Years Smart, so I will assent to this teaching and assume that my rejection of the teaching is based on my ignorance and not on the falsity of the teaching.” This is a properly humble way of approaching difficult teachings. When you find yourself unable to pray with any eagerness or force, just pray anyway…”fake it ‘til you make it through the dry spell.” Prayer is a habit like any other and requires constant maintenance. Prayer is the means by which God speaks to us, so keep the channel open even when you are convinced that there’s no one on the other end. Think of yourself lost on a deserted island and you have a radio. When you give up hope that you will be rescued, you will turn the radio off. How will the rescue team find you then? Leave it on so you catch anything that might come through. In fact, pick several times during the day when you will sit with the radio and broadcast your location.

8. Lack of charity: This is a really BIG sin. This sin perverts God’s love. First, we are commanded by Christ to love one another. He never says that we have to like one another. This is the whole problem with equating “loving others” with “being nice to others.” We should be nice to other out of a sense of civility but the failure to be pleasant or polite is not a sin. When you find yourself actively working against the Good of another person, then you are in trouble. Charity requires that we will the Good of the other at all times. I can truly dislike someone and still will the Good for them. In fact, there may be more merit to loving someone you dislike. “Willing the Good” requires that we treat others as persons with their own ends, meaning we treat others as fellow creatures created in the image and likeness of God. We cannot use people as means to other ends. This is uncharitable.

Advice: Giving thanks for everyone in your life is key to being charitable to these people. Pay attention to how you are thinking and feeling about the people you interacted with daily. For everyone you meet send up a prayer that whatever they need to grow in holiness will be given to them. If there is someone you really, really dislike make that person a part of your daily thanksgiving. Have a Mass said for them! Beware one common pitfall: “Please, Lord, help Philip to change his ridiculous ways and make him a agree with me about X.” This is a prayer to change me to fit your expectations of who you want me to be. For some reason, I find mothers are terribly burdened with this temptation, especially when it comes to their children! Try instead: “Lord, I give you thanks for Philip. Grant him all he needs to grow in holiness.”

III. Resisting Temptation

9. Temptation: Temptation is the pressure we feel when our disordered desires rise up and urge us to indulge them against God’s will for us. Entertaining a temptation is not a sin. Merely thinking about lying is not the sin of lying. However, if you decide to lie and do so “in your heart,” then you have lied whether you actually give voice to the lie or not.

10. Resistance: When you resist temptation on your own you are rejecting God’s grace and denying the victory of the Cross. There is no reason to resist temptation. You are perfectly free not to sin. Rather than steel yourself against temptation and fight like mad to resist the sin, turn and face the temptation square on. Name it. Hand it over to God. And move on. Resistance is actually the first step we take toward the sin. Be honest: how many times have you resisted a temptation only to submit to it eventually? What you are doing is habituating yourself to surrendering to sin. Break the cycle here by taking control of the temptation itself. Let’s say you are being tempted to lie to your professor about cheating on a paper. Say to God, “Lord, I am being tempted to lie to Dr. Jones about my paper. I give this temptation to you to deal with. I’m going to the library. Amen.” This is both an act of the intellect and an act of the will. Habituate yourself to using Christ’s victory over sin and stop resisting temptation!

______________________________

No doubt there is much more I could say here. Much, much more. But these are the common sins I hear in the Box. Keep these basic principles in mind at all times:

You are free. Right now, right this second, you are free. You do not have to sin.

You cannot sin in ignorance or by accident or by being forced or coerced.

Mortal sins “kill charity in your heart.” Ask yourself: have I killed charity in my heart? Don’t turn every sin into a mortal sin “just in case.”

For most sins only you can decide whether or not you have sinned, meaning, sinning is a highly subjective affair and you must decide what your intent was at the time. Of course, there are intrinsically morally evil acts but these acts have to be committed before they are sins in the real world. If you commit an IMEA, then you have sinned objectively. Examples of IMEA’s are murder, apostasy, adultery.

I hope these help during your Lenten journey to Jerusalem and the Cross!

If you find these helpful or if you enjoy my homilies, please consider supporting the Dominican friars of St Martin de Porres Province. You can click HERE for more info on how to donate to the friars and become part of our efforts to evangelize the South! If you decide to help us out, please make sure that you indicate that your donation is the result of my request for help. Just put "Powell" someone on the donation. God bless!

The heart of the other

1st Week of Lent (F): Ez 18.21-28 and Matt 5.20-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation

Aren’t we accustomed to Jesus saying ridiculous things? He always seems to be pulling some kind of joke on his disciples. It’s like that 70’s martial-arts western, “Kung Fu,” where the novice monk, young Cain, is challenged by his blind master to walk on rice paper without tearing it or to catch a fly with his chopsticks or wrestle with a riddle like “what was your face before you were born”? Jesus tells his disciples to abandon family and friends and follow him to a certain death on a cross in Jerusalem. He tells them to walk on water, cast out demons; he tells them that they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. As our Brit brothers and sisters say, “He’s having a laugh.” All the more unusual then is this teaching from Matthew that makes perfect, practical sense: your sacrifice at the altar of God is rendered unacceptable, unclean by a heart darkened with selfish anger toward a brother or sister; with a sin against family or friends; or squeezed by the cold vise of rash judgment. Be reconciled first with the one against whom your heart is set, and then offer your gift at the altar. Very sensible. But Jesus can’t seem to resist just one small twist to keep us vigilant.

What’s the twist? Listen carefully, “…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave the gift there…go first and be reconciled…” Did you catch it? If you recall that your brother has anything against you. Jesus tweaks his otherwise sensible teaching with a characteristically Jesus tweak: we expect him to say, “If you have anything against your brother…” What he actually says is quite different: if you know that your brother has something against you, it is your responsibility to go to him and reconcile. This tweak in the teaching serves to emphasize (in dramatic fashion) how important it is to serve our Lord a clean, a contrite heart—the one and only sacrifice we make for holiness! By making it my job to approach the brother I’ve sinned against, Jesus lifts us the radical nature of God’s love, the divine love that makes it possible for us to love in the first place. He turns us out of our self-pitying navel-gazing to face the one we’ve rashly judged.

The Lord tells the prophet, Ezekiel: “…if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life…” The wicked man “turns away” (i.e., repents) of his sins and lives. But his “turning away” is made good not by the act of turning away (remember: we do not earn forgiveness) but by the mercy of God who has promised (repeatedly promised) to honor our conversions from sin with forgiveness. In other words, we are forgiven NOW and urged to repent in order that that forgiveness might be made productive for us.

Jesus’ tweak—his insistence that I approach the one whom I have sinned against, the one whom I have given reason to be angry with me—this tweak guarantees my obligation to seek reconciliation, holds me directly responsible for helping my brother or sister to approach the altar with a contrite heart. For this difficult requirement we can only be grateful b/c when one member of the Body is reconciled to God, we are all made one soul cleaner! Notice also that this tweak assumes that you know you have sinned against another. Yet again, Jesus makes it difficult for us to say something like, “Well, if she has a problem with what I said or did, she needs to come to me and say so.” That attitude makes you the fool and the one you have sinned against “will hand you over to the judge…”

We march our way across the Lenten desert to Jerusalem and the Cross of Christ. This is the time to cry out from the depths of your heart and seek the Lord’s kindness in repentance. Does your soul wait for the Lord? Do you know that if He held our sins against us, we could not stand at His altar?

Go into all the world and apologize in my name...

Here is the inevitable result, the tragic and entirely predictable end of syncreticism in the Christian church:

LOS ANGELES - The Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles has issued an apology to Hindus worldwide for what he called "centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them" reports India Abroad. The apology was given in a statement read to over 100 Hindu spiritual leaders at a mass from Right Reverend J John Bruno. The ceremony started with a Hindu priestess blowing a conch shell three times and included sacred chants.

OK. Nothing wrong with apologizing for past hurts. . .IF you are the one who did the hurting. . .otherwise it is a form of public self-loathing and false pride.

But what instigated this need to apologize on the part of Mr. Bruno?

This meeting was the result of a dialogue, started three years ago, between Hindu leaders and Rev. Karen MacQueen, who was deeply influenced by Hindu Vedanta philosophy and opposes cultivating conversions.

And the result (i.e., punchline) of this "influence"?

"There are enough Christians in the world," [the Episcopagan priestess] said.

Yup. . .that is exactly why Jesus died on the Cross. . .so those who claim to follow him and those who vow to preach his gospel can betray him just one more time. . .

Link to the original article (though the headline makes no sense)

More poetry vids...(edited)

I had to edit these down to two vids b/c the post was so large it was causing download problems for some readers. . .you can find all of the vids I had here on YouTube.com. . .

BAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

1^st Week of Lent (M): Lev 19.1-2, 11-18 and Matt 25.31-46
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

To the sheep on his right our Lord will say on the Last Day, “Come, you who are blessed of by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you…” To the goats on his left our Lord will say on the Last Day, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” As we might expect, the accursed goats object to this judgment and Jesus unambiguously lays out the reasons for his judgment against them. What’s interesting (and unexpected) is that the blessed sheep are surprised by their judgment. After welcoming the sheep into the kingdom, our Lord explains his judgment saying, “…I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…” When the goats object to their sentence our Lord justifies his judgment by pointing out the chief failures of the goats, “…I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink…” What these two groups have in common is their surprise at having served or not served the Lord unawares. Both groups ask, “Lord, when did we see you a stranger and welcome you (or, not welcome you), or naked or thirsty and give you drink (or, not give you drink)?” Jesus’ resounding answer is almost harsh in its clarity: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did (or did not do) for one of these least brothers of mine, you did (or did not do) for me.” Always the good Jew, Jesus is showing his disciples how the Law is worked out with the Messiah in their midst.

Not a few Christians dislike this part of Matthew. I’ve found it to be a particularly sore subject for more traditionalist-minded Catholics who see the emphasis on “social justice/good works” as a possible danger to sound doctrine and proper devotion. They are not wrong to worry about this. I’ve heard many an eager Catholic say, “Oh, all we need to do is feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Leave all that rigid dogma stuff and sappy devotional nonsense aside. Just help the poor!” Unfortunately, both groups of our brothers and sisters have missed the point entirely. This apocalyptic scene of sheep blessing and goat roasting from Matthew is most certainly about the Last Judgment and what counts as a ticket to blessing or roasting. However, this scene is also—and I would bet mostly about—Jesus being a good Jewish teacher and showing his disciples what it means to not only follow the letter of the Law of the Decalogue but to fulfill its spirit for Christ’s sake. For—Christ’s—sake. That phrase is the difference that makes the difference btw an eternal life of bliss or an eternal life of blisters.

Remember now, both the sheep and the goats wonder when they have served (or failed to serve) the Lord. The Lord’s answer is beautiful in its simplicity: when you serve them (or fail to) you serve me (or fail to). When we serve the hungry, the foreigner, the thirsty, when we serve them and not our social justice agenda and not our corporal works of mercy devotionals and not our applications for law school or med school and not our guilty consciences and not our community service hours—when we serve them as brothers and sisters, we serve Christ. This follows the letter of the Law from Leviticus—“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy…[therefore] you shall love your neighbor as yourself”—AND it fulfills the Law in our Messianic age—“…whatever you did for the least of mine, you did for me.”

Our psalm this morning says it perfectly, “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye.” When faced, at last, with our Lord on his judgment seat attended by his throng of angels, let him see your joyful heart, your enlightened eyes. . .and your callused hands and sore back, your body bent from doing NOT the just thing or the pious thing, but all the merciful things that make us just and pious sheep.

What he assumes, he heals...*

1^st Sunday of Lent(A): Gen 2.7-9, 3.1-7; Rom 5.12, 17-19, Matt 4.1-11
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

John baptizes Jesus. Coming up out of the Jordan River, Jesus sees the Spirit as a dove and hears the voice of his Father, “This is my beloved Son…” Stepping onto the bank of the river, Jesus is seized by the Spirit and lead into the desert “to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus fasts for forty days and forty nights. When he is weak from hunger, possibly addled from lack of sleep, and vulnerable to attack, the Tempter comes to offer him what we all would imagine is foremost in his mind right that moment: food! Jesus refuses food. The Tempter then offers him two more enticements: one of pride (to exploit his status as the Son of God) and another of avarice and power (to become the ruler of the world). Jesus deftly turns both away, leaving the Devil to flee in order to make room for the Father’s ministering angels. Though we are no doubt delighted that Jesus won his battle of wills with the Devil, we may wonder why the Son of God, the Word Made Flesh, is “lead by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” in the first place? Does the Father need to test His Son? Does the Spirit suspect a weakness in the resolve of the Lamb to be sacrificed? Why is Jesus tempted in the desert? And how do these temptations lead him and us with him to Jerusalem and the Cross?

With a smudge of ash on the forehead and the solemn greeting on Ash Wednesday, “From dust you were made, to dust you will return,” we begin in earnest another Lenten trek with Christ to Jerusalem and his Cross. What are we marking with these ashes? What does that frightful greeting bring to mind? First, we are beckoned by an undeniable reality: our mortality, our frailty as creatures: the inevitability of death. Ash Wednesday is a crowded day at Church because we know we are dust and breath and that eventually we will die. Those ashes mark us as impermanent things…and they are a blessing on our transience. Second, we are summoned on Ash Wednesday to commit ourselves to the forty day/forty night trek across the Lenten desert with Christ. Nowhere else will our frailty, our weakness be tested so completely. Random chance, freak accident may surprise us with a test of faith and courage, but at no other time in the year do we knowingly step up, stare the Devil in the eye, and dare him to tempt us. Lent is our bravest Christian adventure. Finally, third, we are reminded again that though we are frail creatures subject to devilish temptation and the chaos of nature’s chance, we are Creatures—Made Beings, beings made, created in the image and likeness of a loving Creator! And what’s more, we are Redeemed Creatures—finally, mercifully saved creatures, loved into the Father through His Son by the Spirit. This is who we are as we touch the first tempting grains of Lenten sand.

Now that we are reminded of who we are, let’s go back to my first questions: why is Jesus tempted in the desert? And how do these temptations lead him and us with him to Jerusalem and the Cross? We have already run into the question, or one almost exactly like it: why must Jesus, the sinless Son of God, be baptized? Jesus is tempted for the same reason that he is baptized. For us. Jesus is brought through the desert to Jerusalem and his Cross for us as one of us. Fully human. A man like us in every way but one: he was without his own sin. With needs, passions, hurts, loves, and temptations, the Son of God was made flesh by the Spirit through his mother and ours, the virginal Mary. Why? So that every human wound, every human frailty, every human sin could be healed. His Cross—the tool of his torture and death—is our medicinal tool of salvation. Fully human, fully divine, he was baptized to baptize human flesh. He was tempted to temper human flesh against temptation. And he died so that we might live.

The story of the Fall told to us in Genesis tell us that our first father, Adam, was tempted to become a god in disobedience to God. He failed. Our first mother, Eve, was tempted to become a god in disobedience to God. She failed. Mary, the new Eve, was tempted by the Spirit to give flesh and birth to God, Jesus the new Adam, the Christ. She said YES! And as Paul teaches the Romans, “For if, by the transgression of [ the one Adam], death came to reign in life through [him], how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of [salvation] come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” Through the living and dying of Christ then we come to “reign in life” as Christs, New Adams and New Eves. And because of our baptism into the Body of Christ and because we eat his body and drink his blood at the eucharistic altar, we march through the desert of Lent guarded against the wiles of disobedience, protected against the lie that brings us constantly to the brink of damnation, the lie that we can become gods without God.

We have forty days and forty nights to confront head on the One Sin that all sins call “Father”—the single sin of believing that we are our own gods. Every sin we assent to, every sin we give flesh and blood to gives life to the serpent’s temptation: disobey God so that you might know what it is to be God. There is no thornier path, no road so crooked as the one that starts with disobedience and travels through the arrogance of believing that we save ourselves from ourselves, that we are able to lift ourselves to heaven and accomplish reconciliation with God without God. Such a belief, and the daily habits that result from believing so, are the deadly vices that kill us over and over again, that punch us in the heart and throw us back again and again into the serpent’s company. The stripped bare audacity of the Lenten desert is our training ground, our yearly boot camp for exercising the gifts of love and mercy that always bring us, again and again, brings us back to the Father. A successful Lenten trek will bring us to Jerusalem and the Cross bare and ready to walk the passionate way with our Lord, bare and ready to die among the trash of Golgotha, and rise with him on that Last Day.

We are able to put one foot in front of the another all the way to Easter morning because Jesus did it first. Along the way we will be shown the glories of power, the majesties of celebrity and infamy, we will be offered all that the Devil has in his kingdom. We do not need to resist temptation, to fight against the black jewels of the devil’s chain, we need only remember that Jesus met the devil first, always before us, and said, “Get away, Satan!” There are no battles left for us to plan, no wars against temptation for us to fight. The last battle was fought and the war won on the Cross in Jerusalem. All that we need do is follow Christ. One foot in front of the other, walking lightly on the sand in the shadow of his healing presence.

"Quod non assumpsit, non redemit." (Gregory Nazianzen, Letter to Cledonius) H/T: Fr. Dominic Holtz, OP

Mourning and weeping and fasting...

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isa 58.1-9 and Matt 9.14-15

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation


Maybe just an innocent question about spiritual practices, or maybe a “gotcha” question to prove Jesus a fraud, the question asked of Jesus by John’s disciple—why do we and the Pharisees fast, Jesus, but your disciples do not fast?—this question gets answered in a rather weird way. Jesus said, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” In other words, as long as Jesus the Bridegroom is with the wedding party, no one need mourn. What is the connection he’s making between fasting and his absence/presence? And what sort of fasting best honors Jesus’ “absence” until the eschaton?

I’ve heard it preached—not seriously, of course—that John’s disciples had grown weary of locust and honey and wanted to make a change to Team Jesus! All that fasting in the desert with God’s Bear was taking its culinary toll on their already unsettled stomachs. The question about why Jesus’ followers weren’t fasting while everyone else was fasting looks suspiciously opportunistic—both for those who might want to jump the Baptist’s strict ship for Jesus’ apparently more relaxed cruise liner, and for those who wanted to trap Jesus and see him taken off the preaching circuit a la execution. But the straightforward answer both groups were expecting to hear wasn’t spoken. Maybe they wanted to hear that the law of fasting had been revoked, or maybe that fasting this year was to be minimal. What they heard is that there is something about mourning the dead and fasting that go hand in hand.

It would be too simple to say that we fast to mourn the dead. We do, of course, but is this the point Jesus is making to John’s inquisitive and strangely hopeful disciple? No. The better question is: what do we do when we mourn; I mean, what is mourning that makes sense of fasting? Mourning is what we call the dulling pain of absence, the emptying out of one’s heart and spirit; mourning is the wail of a swiftly approaching reckoning, a brief, manic moment after a death to collect, solidify, and canonize a memory and then to witness that gathered-up portrait dissolve under the steady rain of consoling tears and begin to collect again in another entirely true (if wholly inadequate) picture of the dead. Mourning is the survivors’ reckoning of a life in friendship and love; it is an unswerving path to both remembering and forgetting. Mourning is what we do when we lose what we have been freely given: the gift of love in another.

If mourning leads us down the doubled path of remembering and forgetting, how does fasting follow so easily? What do we do when we fast? In the simplest terms, fasting is about removal, taking away from, moving out and leaving; fasting is about naming what is routinely Me, constantly Me, and waving to it “goodbye.” If we must “call to mind” and “pour out of mind” a love that can grow no more—a dead love, a departed eros—we fast in order to give our bodies to the public liturgy of remembering what we had in love and forgetting what cannot now be, the future of that love.

Jesus’ disciples cannot fast because they cannot mourn. Jesus is not yet dead. And at his death, they will mourn. Like anyone who has lost love in death, they will mourn, and how will they fast? Isaiah witnesses the Lord saying, “Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!. . .This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”

And there will be mourning no more. . .

Pic: Mourning

No, we can't. . .no, we can't!