"A [preacher] who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they are necessarily reflected in his [preaching]." — BXVI
27 September 2007
Entertaining the Novices
I recently discovered this Universal Fact:
Any word placed in front of the word "monkey" makes a funny phrase.
Try it. . .
Thanks, Rewrite, and Hire me!
I also want to thank all of those who posted comments here and the ones who sent me private emails--including one or two or more?--gentlemen who wear pointy hats to Mass. Your support is invaluable.
I will mention one criticism here in particular and offer to make amends for it. More than one commenter on another blog and more than one in private emails took me to task for they called "problems with tone," i.e. they noted that I am coming across as "sarcastic and bitter." OK. I am a bit sarcastic. OK! OK! I am a lot sarcastic. I'm not bitter at all. I am frequently a Disappointed Idealist, but I do not wallow in regret or bitterness. No fun in that.
Also in my defense: 1) I'm a born and bred Southerner and we have a weird sense of humor down here, and 2) I survived liberal arts grad school in the '90's...which means I have a "survival of the fittest" attitude when it comes to debate. We were trained by Hungry Pitbulls with Radical Political Agendas. Sometimes my Mississippi "Suffer No Fools" humor and my "Gut Them Before They Gut You" mentality combine to create a literary monster. These are reasons...not excuses.
Anyway, my critics claim that my legit message would be better served w/o the smart-ass attitude. [Why does my Mama's voice suddenly ring in my head?!] And I agree to a degree. I think what resonates with people in that post is my willingness to "tell it like it is."
The emotional energy of the post is frustration and just a bit of anger. A passive critical slap in the direction of the offenders would have been much less effective with those who read this blog regularly. In other words, I was writing to my audience.
Now, I also realize that the sarcasm does not come off as very professional and this may lead people who don't know me to believe that I am an Unprofessional Priest. Far from it.
So, here's my offer: if anyone out there wants to use my post, "Kids These Days..." but finds the sarcastic tone to be too much or potentially off-putting to those you think might benefit from the actual argument, let me know via the combox and I will rewrite the post in more "professional" language for your use.
I'm only going to do this if there is a demand for it. Please, don't ask me to do just to see what such a post might look like. If you want to reprint in a bulletin or something like that, well, OK...I'll do it.
The answer is: YES!
I have done all of the above on more than one occasion. And I am happy to do more. The only problem is that I am incredibly busy with my full-time job and two part-time jobs plus community commitments.
That said: I like to stay busy. So, it can't hurt to ask.
If you want to inquire about having me come speak or teach or "dance liturgically" (that would be U-G-L-Y, btw) or write something for publication, contact me at neripowell (at) yahoo (dot) com. You can also contact me through the Campus Ministry office of the University of Dallas (here).
The Priory usually asks for travel reimbursement and an agreed-upon stipend--contingent on time spent in prep work, degree of difficulty, time on-site, etc.
God Bless, Fr. Philip, OP
24 September 2007
Addition to the Hanc Aquam!
Also, you can enter your email address on the Player and receive notice that I have added a new homily!
Don't forget to stop by the buy POETRY for Fr. Philip Wish List or the buy PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY for Fr. Philip Wish List. There are lots of lonely books there just waiting for an eager Dominican friar to read them!
Use it or lose it
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory,
[Click podOmatic Player to listen]
With what do you listen? Eyes? Nose? Of course not! Ears? Maybe but no good. An opened-mind? Better but still not good enough. A contrite heart? Closer, much closer but not quite there yet. Hint: take care how you hear because “there is nothing hidden that will not become visible and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” Visible. Light. So, we do hear with our eyes after all! No. Eyes see. Ears hear. How you hear is the work of the Spirit—the Light of heaven shining to you, through you, and out of you “so that those who enter may see the light.” So, we have been given the Light to shine to others? Yes. Shine it for others and more light will given to you. Bundle it away under a vessel—say, fear of mockery, hoarding greed, or useless anxiety—and what little light you have will be taken away. Use it or lose it, right? Right. Begging to live in the Light of Heaven and then hiding it once you have received it is something No One does. And he who is No One is not someone you want to be. No One will whisper to you that you are being prideful when you shine out Heaven’s Light for others to see; that you are bragging about living in the Light; that you should be more humble, much quieter, less attention-seeking. It’s all about the Light, right? Yes. But the Light shines out through you to others. Without you that particle of Light, that wave of Light that you have been given will not shine. It is lost under the lie of No One. Take care, then, how you hear. Hear with a spirit longing to shine. Hear with the spirit of Someone who longs to glorify Light Himself.
Feeding the Fire Who loves you into His beautiful presence, burn yourself to cinder and ash.
23 September 2007
Growing Up to be What You Love Most
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation,
Here’s a basic spiritual principle that you can apply to your living out the faith day-to-day: I am now and will become that which I love most. So, one way to figure out what you want to be when you grow up is to figure out who or what it is that you love most. The underlying theological truth here is that since God holds us in being and since God is love, then it is love that holds us in being and love that defines our existence fundamentally. How we choose to participate in the love that is God is a decision about how we will shape, express, and nurture love for God, self, and others. In other words, what or who you choose to love most now is who or what you will become…eventually. Love God most, become God. Love money most, become money. Love sex most, become sex. Though this may sound appealing at first glance, please keep in mind: vanity, vanity, all is vanity…except Truth, Goodness, and Beauty—that is, God. So, whatever/whoever you choose to love and eventually become, make sure that that What or Who is permanent, everlasting, eternal b/c choosing anything less is the first choice you will make for your inevitable annihilation. Just ask yourself: do I want to become something or someone that will or who will die, rot, and never rise again?
Before moving to the gospel, let’s make a quick stop in the Psalms to shore up this basic teaching about superlative love and our existential future. Psalm 115 starts with a question from the enemies of God and ends with a profound insight into human nature: “Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’/Our God is in heaven; whatever God wills is done./Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands./They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see./They have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell./They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and no sound rises from their throats./Their makers shall be like them, all who trust in them.” The idols have all of the features we have as humans (eyes, ears, noses), but they do not have life. They have no souls, no spirit; they are dead matter and without love. As the psalmist makes clear: if you love these idols, these lifeless statues, then you too become lifeless, without a soul, unable to love—the makers of idols, all who trust in the idols, will become their idols, their gods. Our God is in heaven—permanent, eternal, loving, and merciful—and so our destination, if we love God most, is a permanent, eternal, loving, and merciful life in heaven.
From psalmist to evangelist—St. Luke, specifically. In this gospel, Jesus says to his disciples: “No servant can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” The standard read on this teaching, and the standard homily derived from it, focuses on not becoming too attached to material goods—Mammon being the pagan god of wealth and all. A perfectly good approach. However, I want to bring in the prophet Amos and then go in another direction. Amos warns: “Hear this! you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!” Who is he shouting at? Amos is shouting at those who will, after the festivals of the New Moon, begin to cheat the poor of the little that they have by rigging their scales and selling the refuse of the wheat. To them the Lord through Amos says, “…by the pride of Jacob: Never will I forget a thing [you] have done!” And just to emphasize this warning to those who would cheat the poor, the Church places Psalm 113 right next to this reading. Our response to this psalm: “Praise the Lord, who lifts up the poor!”
Let me ask you again: what do you want to be when you grow up? Listen again to what the psalmist sings this evening: “The Lord raises up the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill he lifts up the poor/to seat them with princes, with the princes of his own people./Praise the Lord, who lifts up the poor!” Now, by show of hands: who here wants to grow up to be among the poor? Exactly! It’s not the first choice of many. But it will be the last choice of those who remain. How can I say such a thing? “No servant can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Who will be the Master of your life? In more contemporary terms: who will you choose to be your Teacher? Will you choose to love most Wealth and take your lessons, get your education from earthly treasure? Or will you choose God to love most and take your most basic education from the One Who made you and loves you most? I doubt anyone here is going to shout, “Oh! I choose Mammon!” But do you choose Mammon in quieter, more subtle ways?
Let’s see. Who is Mammon? Yes, “who.” Mammon is a “who,” a noun; he is a demon, in fact, mentioned by St. Thomas Aquinas: "Mammon being carried up from Hell by a wolf, coming to inflame the human heart with Greed.”
Lets’ go back to our basic spiritual principle: I am now and will become that which I love most. Given everything said here tonight: what do you want to be when you grow up? Are you ready right now to pray to God to put you among the poor? How ridiculous, Father! We’re students…we can’t get any poorer! Ah, but you see: that’s just a delirium brought on by all those Ramen noodles you’re been eating. You can be poorer. Much poorer. You could empty yourself entirely for another. You could give your life for a friend. You could die on a cross for your worst enemy. You could be starved to death in the
One more time: who do you love most? Love Love Himself and become Love for others—emptying yourself on the cross you have been given, using the gifts with which you have been graced. Anything, anyone less than this is to squander your inheritance as a child of God; you trash that which makes you loveable, you spit on the image and likeness of God Himself; to love anything, anyone less than God Himself—to serve a Master smaller and weaker, to take your education from a Teacher who will not die for you, who did not die for you—is to choose a life of folly; it is the choice to live your life as an enormous fool. You cannot serve two Masters. Nor can you love two Masters. Nor can you grow up to be both of those Masters. You will grow up to be one or the other. Choose then to be counted among the poor, those who have nothing but Christ and will die for everything they have.
22 September 2007
Kids These Days: What they don't want from the Church
There’s a lot of hand-wringing over the sharp decline in youth participation in the Church in the last few decades. I won’t go into the stats b/c I have always believed that Math is of the Devil…
21 September 2007
Mercy not sacrifice, sinners not the just
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass & Church of the Incarnation
Follow Christ.
If Jesus can approach a Jewish man who works for the Roman version of the IRS, and say to him with all sincerity and grace, “Follow me,” then we can all find ourselves sitting at that customs post, working for the enemy of our own people, our own nation, and hear Jesus’ call to repentance, living lives worthy of that call. We, along with Matthew, are sinners and we, along with Matthew, are pressed into a daily conversion, a weekly transformation that moves us step by step, leap by leap closer and closer to the One Body, the One Spirit, “the one hope of [our] call.” That one hope is this: that we come to allow into our lives, lives made worthy by Christ and our repentance, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all”—one Father of ALL.
The one sacrifice of Christ on the cross is every sacrifice will we ever need to make. There is nothing else for us to sacrifice. What can we sacrifice that is a better gift, a greater oblation than the self-sacrifice of the Son of God for our eternal lives? My own life, given in suffering and death for another, is efficacious only b/c Christ gave his own life in suffering and death for us all first. In other words, my death for you or your death for me is a sacrifice worthy of our call b/c Christ, in his one sacrifice on the cross, has already made every sacrifice we will ever make a success before we make it. Therefore, as ones called to live worthily in Christ, we are to live lives of mercy and not lives of sacrifice!
What would such a life look like? Paul, a prisoner of the Lord, writes to the Ephesians that they are to live their lives “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace…” Let me suggest that “the bond of peace” is not some kind of “live and let live” or a “you do your thing and I will do mine” morality, but rather a bond that frees us from fighting with one another and wrangling over the petty stuff so that we may hear the Word and see the Word in one another, maturing in the hope of our call--“one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all.”
Jesus says to the vile tax collector, Matthew: “Follow me.” Matthew gets up and follows Christ. He follows Christ to the desert, the sea, the houses of prostitutes, dinner with Roman officials, to the markets, to the Garden, and eventually, to his own cross. Grace is given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Some will be graced to lives of quiet witness. Some to lives of noisy work. Some to lives of poverty and sickness and others to lives of wealth and health. And because God loves us all and each differently, we will all be made worthy according to our gifts. Some will be teachers and some preachers and some prophets and others will be fathers, mothers, and others still will be eunuchs for the
And because he died for us, we must give to one another mercy and expect from one another mercy alone.
19 September 2007
Dominican Rite
Check it out!
Reaction from Santa Sabina
Rome Dominicans surprised at Dutch proposal for priestless Masses
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The general curia of the Dominicans expressed surprise over a booklet published by its order in the Netherlands recommending that laypeople be allowed to celebrate Mass when no ordained priests are available. In a written statement released by the Vatican Sept. 18, the Dominicans' Rome-based leaders said that, while they "laud the concern of our brothers" over the shortage of priests, they did not believe "the solutions that they have proposed are beneficial to the church nor in harmony with its tradition." The statement, dated Sept. 4, acknowledged the Dutch Dominicans' concerns about the shortage of vocations to the priesthood and the difficulty in offering the faithful in the Netherlands a wider celebration of the Eucharist. But while the statement said Dominican leaders shared those same concerns it said they did "not believe that the method they (Dutch Dominicans) have used in disseminating" a booklet to all 1,300 parishes in the Netherlands was an appropriate way to discuss the issue.
I've search in vain for the text of the statement from Santa Sabina. I'm curious about who signed it.
17 September 2007
Podcast links...
So, if you want to hear my homilies preached, please click on the Pod-o-Matic badge on the left hand sidebar.
Click over there!
CAUTION! Prayer is dangerous...
24th Week OT(M): I Tim 2.1-8 and Luke 7.1-10
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Let’s say you’ve decided to live a life of prayer. What can you expect as an eager Pray-er? In no particular order, you can expect most of the following: an overarching sense of peace and joy; a lot of turmoil and struggle day-to-day; a slow growth toward obedience and charity; an occasional raucous tumble with angels and devils alike; long periods of spiritual productivity and emotional health; longer, darker periods of spiritual aridity and roller-coaster passions; the overwhelming presence of the Triune God; and His total absence, an absence that threatens you with despair. In other words, as a creature who chooses to obey God and to pray habitually, you will find yourself becoming more intensely a creature, more fully human as you work out your perfection in His grace. And it is vital, essential that you understand that in prayer your goal is to become fully human, perfectly human as Christ is perfectly human. You will fail if you think your goal is to become an angel. Prayer does many wonderful things for us. It will not, however, help you switch species. Therefore, let God worry about making you divine in His own time.
Our centurion this morning is the perfect pray-er. What does he do? First, he is praying, petitioning for someone else—an act of charity. Second, he involves the entire community in his prayer. He asks the Jewish elders to petition Jesus for help. Next, the Jewish elders acknowledge the centurion’s largesse to their nation and use this to persuade Jesus to do as the soldier asks. Jesus agrees. However, the centurion meets them half-way and then confesses, in great humility, that as a pagan he is not worthy of having Jesus in his house. And then he confesses, again with astonishing humility, that he knows that Jesus has the authority to heal his slave with a word. Jesus is amazed. The slave is healed. And prayer is once again shown to be a very dangerous practice.
When the centurion confesses his absolute trust in Jesus’ power, Jesus turns to the crowd and says, “I tell you, not even in
Is there anything more dangerous than that?
16 September 2007
Defeated by Love, we are found!
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul
Listen here!
To start, my guess is that we all know what a sinner is, but do all of us know why tax collectors are a problem for the priestly class of
You see, the Pharisees are causing two problems for Jesus: one religious and one political. The religious problem is that Jesus is a rabbi, a teacher of the Law. He doesn’t belong to either “school” of the Law represented by his accusers. In other words, he is neither a Pharisee or a scribe—for lack of a better term, these are names for “denominations” in Judaism. Jesus belongs to either another school that we don’t know much about (some say the “Essenes”) or he is simply free-lancing. Regardless, his authority as a rabbi more or less rests on his public reputation as an observant Jew, which we know he was. If his rep as a rabbi can be undermined, then his allegedly subversive teachings can be dismissed. So, his theological rivals attack him at what they think is his weakest spot: he is associating with traitors and sinners, which make him an unclean Jew, someone to be cast out and left out until he has repented and observed the rules of being made clean again. Jesus’ political problem is just as complex and dangerous. Jesus is preaching the coming of his Father’s Kingdom. This refers back to the prophecies of Isaiah and vaguely hints at some sort of anti-Roman, anti-Temple revolution. Is he claiming to be the King of the Jews in defiance of Roman rule? He is trying to destroy the
Now, we have to understand the Jewish notion of cleanliness. Simply put, very simply put: cleanliness is not transferable, while uncleanliness is. To associate with a sinner makes you a sinner. To associate with a saint, however, does not make you a saint. Jesus knows this—for all the obvious reasons, not the least of which is that he is fully divine!—but he goes right ahead and welcomes sinners into his company and then eats with them! And his reasons for doing so are even more shocking. Jesus claims that he is bound to offer friendship to sinners because he is the Son of God come to save sinners from their sin. For his religious and political enemies, this is at once scandalous and advantageous.
Jesus undoes their plot, however, with two parables (three in the longer reading for today). First, he notes that a man with 100 sheep will leave the larger portion of his flock to search for one lost sheep. Surely, this appeals to the practical sensibilities of his listeners. Who wouldn’t go off in search of lost property, right? Once the lost sheep is found, there is an excellent reason for a party. Likewise, our Father will leave his righteous to their graced state and go after the sinner. Once this sinner is found, there is great rejoicing. He says, “…there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” Therefore, it is not only perfectly acceptable for him (and for us) to eat with traitors and sinners, it is required of him (and of us). The second parable makes the same point. A woman with ten coins loses one and sweeps her house in search of the single lost coin. When she finds it, she throws a party in celebration. Again, Jesus says, “In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” So, Jesus does what Jesus does best: he interprets the Law and the received tradition through his own commandment to love. We do not abandon sinners to their sin out of fear of contamination; rather, we welcome them in, love them, show them the necessity of repentance, and then rejoice when they are “found.”
We have as a post-resurrection witness in
We too are defeated by Love. And thank God for this awesome defeat! For their disobedience, the Jews with Moses are again threatened with divine punishment. However, Moses appeals to God, “reminding” Him that His people now are the same people that He promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be “as numerous as the stars” and that “this land” would be for their children’s children a “perpetual heritage.” God relents. Why? Obviously, Moses did not change God’s mind. God relented because he demonstrated to God that he, Moses, remembered the covenant. This covenant, made by Love in love, is our Father’s promise to find us when we are lost, to come after us when we stray, to sweep up His house until we are recovered. Our worst sins, our most terrible wanderings are defeated by His promise to love us, to make us His people, to give us a lasting heritage as His children. And so, we gratefully sing with David in his Psalms: “Create for me, O Lord, a clean heart, and renew in me a loyal and dedicated spirit…Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth will proclaim your praise!” Defeated by Love, all we can do is love as we ourselves have been loved.
Now, does this mean that we love sinners in order to approve of their sin? Do we welcome sinners among us in order to say to the world, “We do not think that this sin is really all that sinful”? NO, absolutely not! We never welcome sin into our homes, or to our tables. Jesus ate with the traitors and sinners in order to show them his Father’s love so that they could repent. Knowing sin ourselves, knowing the devastation that sin has caused us and continue to cause us, we welcome fellow sinners into the House, to the Table in order to show them (and to remind us) what we have seen: our Father’s love defeating sin, conquering death, healing all wounds, and restoring life to those murdered by their own disobedience. No repentant sinner can ever be turned away. However, sinners coming to us to find approval for their sin, or refuge from the consequences of their obstinate sin should be shown the Way, and if they fail to follow that Way, shown the door and invited back when they heed the Spirit’s call to holiness in Christ. There is here a very delicate balance.
Let me end with what I think is the crux of that balance for us: your willingness, your eagerness to pray for yourself: “In your goodness, O Lord, have mercy on me; with your great love wipe out my sin… My repentant spirit, O Lord, is my sacrifice to you.”
Will you rise up and go to your Father?
15 September 2007
Agreeing with God
24th Sunday OT: Exo 32.7-11, 13-14; 1 Tim 1.12-17; Luke 15.1-10
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
U.D. Freshman Retreat (Vigil) & Church of the Incarnation,
Listen here!
Can we agree that. . .
. . .God treats sinners mercifully?
. . .the grace of Jesus Christ is abundant?
. . .faith and love are abundant in Christ as well?
. . .Christ came into this world as a man to save sinners?
. . .the more sinful you are the more mercifully God’s treats you?
. . .Christ is patient w/our stubbornness, waiting on our repentance?
. . .once we have repented and come to Christ, that Christ will use you as an example to those who would come to believe?
. . .our Lord, who strengthens us in our ministry, the work we do for him, that he deserves our praise and thanks for his mercy, his love, his faith, and for patiently enduring our stubbornness? Yes? Good! You have confirmed the witness of
You’ve been very agreeable so far. Let’s see what else I can get you to agree with. . .
Can we agree that. . .
. . .we are prone to disobedience, hard-heartedness?
. . .we often “turn aside from the way” God points out to us?
. . .we fashion idols to worship, Something or One above God?
. . .we are on occasion a stiff-necked people, stubborn, cold, deaf?
. . .we often deserve God’s wrath, to be judge justly according to the Law?
. . .we have heard God’s promise of mercy and his promise to make His people a great nation, a royal priesthood?
. . .we are ALL subject to His mercy, totally dependent on His grace; utterly w/o a thing, a name, a place, w/o being itself if not for His gift of Himself to us? Yes? Good! You have affirmed the witness of Moses to the ages.
Let’s see if you are still agreeable. . .
Can we agree that. . .
. . .we all fall short of the glory we long for?
. . .we all walk among the thorns sometimes, that we all run with sinners on occasion?
. . .we all stumble, trip-up, go down on our knees racing to self-righteousness?
. . .we all fail to deserve Christ’s trust, Christ’s love?
. . .we all become depraved, become despised and outcast?
. . .we all—at one time or another—become arrogant, jealous, unloving, and, as a consequence, become apparently unlovable?
. . .we all need to be loved, need to be consoled, need to be lifted up in grace, gifted with God’s righteous, and made clean in Christ? Yes? Good! You have affirmed the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Now, you are ready to hear again the gospel: Deus caritas est! God is Love. God loves b/c He is Love. Love is Who He IS and what He does. He sent us His law and His prophets; and He sent His only child, a son, to become one of us so that we might become His children. God became Man so that we might share in the eternal of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is no other reason for the coming of Christ Jesus than this: that we might eat his Body and drink his Blood for our salvation. If you will follow him—take up your cross, stop wagging your finger at all those sinners out there, preach God’s mercy, teach his Good News in word and in deed, and put yourself in plain view of the shepherd, in easy reach of the Christ, and find yourself Found! You will be greeted as a repentant sinner, as a lost soul found and rescued.
Can we agree that Jesus is Lord? Yes? Good! Now, you are ready to be the Good News for the world. . .
14 September 2007
In name of the Father, and the Son, and the Mother-Destroyer
The Exaltation (Triumph) of the Holy Cross: Num 21.4-9; Phil 2.6-11; John 3.13-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
These theologians believe one conclusion dogmatically: the shifting sands of culture triumph over the Rock of faith everyday, all day. And so we read paragraphs like this one from Fr. Peter Phan of Georgetown: “[The church would be very different] if the resources of other cultures are marshaled to reconceptualize the whole gamut of the church’s beliefs, liturgy, moral practices, and prayers. What if the God the church worships is depicted as a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-colored, gender-inclusive Deity? What if Jesus is presented as the Buddha, the Guru…?[. . .] What if Mary is seen in parallel with Kwan-Yin, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of compassion? What if the Bible is read and interpreted in the context of other sacred writings such as the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, or the [Buddha-Dharma], or the [Muslim] Qur’an?” (full article)
Notice: we are to “reconceptualize the whole gamut of the Church’s beliefs, liturgy, moral practices,” etc. based not on any further revelation or a deeper understanding of the revelation we have—fulfilled and finished in Christ Jesus—no, we are to reconceive and alter the whole of our Christian faith based on the demands of alien gods, books of foreign theologies, and practices contrary to the faith. Listen again: You will have no other gods before me! Where is the uniqueness of Christ? Christ isn’t unique! There are hundreds of saviors, hordes of avatars! Where is Christ the final revelation of the Trinity? Christ is not the last word of an on-going, unfolding revelation! There are millions of unwritten bibles out there. Where is the exclusive claim that God the Father has on our allegiance as His children? Exclusive claims! We are inclusive, open, free…all the gods claim us! Are there differences in how various cultures live out their Christian faith? Of course there are! But the faith comes first. Culture is shaped by faith. Sand blows around the Rock. The Rock doesn’t shift and slide every time the wind blows!
Alright, enough of that. Why am I beating these theologians, er, I mean, dead horses? Today we celebrate the exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Triumph of the Holy Cross over sin and death. Oddly enough, we must be reminded on occasion that we owe our eternal lives to the single sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. He emptied himself. Son of God, emptied himself. Became a slave like us, for us. He humbled himself and made himself obedient to death. Even to death on a Cross—ignoble, criminal, unclean, despicable; he was executed. And because Christ did all of this freely—yes, with some anxiety, with some sense of having been betrayed…again—but because he commended his spirit to his Father for our sakes, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Open your eyes to see, open your ears to hear: God loved His creation so much that He sacrificed His only Son, Jesus, on the cross. He did this so that everyone who believes in Christ might not die but have eternal life with Him. God did not send His only Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save us all through His Son, Christ Jesus. The final triumph of the Cross will never be the serene Buddha nailed to the wood of the cross or the gruesome Kali Destroyer sitting on the cathedral altar waiting for blood or a “gospel reading” from the elegant Koran. Never. The Son of Man, the Son of God “must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus Christ—final, unique, singular, the one and only name given under heaven and on earth for our salvation.
With apologies to our impatient theologians who complain against God and Moses: to dispel any confusion, let’s hear it one more time: “God greatly exalted Christ and bestowed on Christ the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…”
13 September 2007
Lest we forget. . .
from Dominus Iesus (which is Latin for "we don't know why we have to tell you that 2+2=4 but here it is...AGAIN!") :
1. The Lord Jesus, before ascending into heaven, commanded his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world and to baptize all nations:…"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world."
11. The Church's Magisterium, faithful to divine revelation, reasserts that Jesus Christ is the mediator and the universal redeemer: "The Word of God, through whom all things were made, was made flesh, so that as perfect man he could save all men and sum up all things in himself. The Lord...is he whom the Father raised from the dead, exalted and placed at his right hand, constituting him judge of the living and the dead." This salvific mediation implies also the unicity of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, eternal high priest.
17. Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches. Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.