Refiner's fire, fuller's lye

Presentation of the Lord
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

With the baby Jesus—just 40 days old—Joseph and Mary travel to the temple in Jerusalem to fulfill the requirements of the Mosaic Law. Since the birth of the Christ Child, the Blessed Mother has been considered legally “unclean,” that is, she has been deemed impure for the purpose of worship in the temple and restricted from touching anything considered sacred to the Lord. We must note here that her impurity is not moral or physical but legal. There is nothing morally or physically wrong about being a mother. The Law set this requirement—think of it as a 40 day fast—in order to emphasize the importance of offering a firstborn son to the Lord as a “first fruits sacrifice.” In the temple, Mary and Joseph meet Simeon, a devout and righteous man, and Anna, a prophetess. Both recognize Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and acclaim him as the Savior. With Christ's presentation in the temple, we recall Malachi's prophetic questions: “Who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?” Are we prepared for the refiner's fire and the fuller's lye? 

Where Mary was required by the Law to seek legal purification by offering her first born son in the temple, and thereby regaining access to the holy of holies, we are granted access to God by the “once for all” sacrifice of her son on the Cross. Some thirty years after Mary and Joseph present the Christ Child in the temple, Jesus offers himself—as both priest and victim—for the salvation of the whole world. The Christ's birth and death as one of us brings all of us to the threshold of the heavenly temple and invites us to step into the holy of holies, to follow his excellent Way, and submit ourselves to what the prophet Malachi calls “refiner's fire,” “the fuller's lye.” To be purified of all impurities, to be bleached of every stain: so that we may be presented to the Lord as spotless sacrifices on His altar. What do we sacrifice? Nothing and everything. Nothing we have and nothing we are is ours to give. And everything we have and everything we are is given. Because Christ the Lamb precedes us to the altar, our sacrifices are his and his are ours. . .IF, if we follow his excellent Way and submit ourselves to a life- long fast in love: surrendering hatred, anger, vengeance, greed, lust, jealousy, and pride. Are you prepared for the refiner's fire and the fuller's lye? 

Please forgive me this image, but it is more than apt. Have you ever been prepared for a colonoscopy, or some other sort of gastro-intestinal diagnostic procedure? The doctor can't do his best work if you are—shall we say?—“unclean.” It is necessary to spend some time purging the impurities from your system before a proper examination can be done. Think of your sins, all your vices—great and small alike—and imagine them poisoning your soul, imagine them clogging your spiritual system, restricting your access to the Lord's blessings. What we need is a way to flush those impurities, a way to wash away all those habits of mind and body that prevent us from absorbing the divine nutrients of God's graces. In the same way that we can be prepared physically for a medical exam, we can be prepared spiritually for the final exam of our soul. We call this the sacrament of confession. 

Mary endures 40 days of fasting from the temple and all things holy so that she might exult in presenting her son to the Lord. Because Christ presented himself to the Father on the Cross as a once-for-all sacrifice for us, we do not have to endure 40 days of fasting from the altar, or from His graces. We have immediate and unlimited access. There is no good reason for us live with the impurities that sicken us. Step into the refiner's fire and the fuller's lye. . .and be made clean! 

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Big Faith not required

32rd Week OT (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our Lady of the Rosary/St Dominic Church, NOLA

I was ordained to the priesthood in 2005 at St Peter's Church in Memphis, TN. Home of Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion. My first priestly assignment took me to Dallas, TX. Home of big oil, the Cowboys, and the Ewings. Big cars, big houses, big swimming pools, and, of course, big meals! Even living with Christ in TX was big. Megachurches and Christian theme parks. Christians in the south in general tend to live a large faith, an all-consuming preoccupation with the Bible and Jesus. But like the super-sized meals we love, a super-sized faith can be dangerous, especially when that faith is measured in terms of quantity. You can hear preachers telling the sick that they will be healed if only they have “enough faith.” Or that a new job or a real estate deal will come if you just “believe enough.” This idea that our faith is about quantity seems to be reinforced by this morning's gospel. From Mark, we hear Jesus tell the apostles that the Kingdom is like a mustard seed: small but packed with the potential to grow into “the largest of plants.” However, when it comes to our faith, our trust in God's promises, size doesn't matter. 

Now, you might say here, “Well, if faith the size of a mustard seed can grow into the Kingdom of God, then surely even the tiniest bit of faith could cure cancer and restore sight!” You could say that, but you would be missing the point entirely. In Luke's version of the Mustard Seed Parable, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith so that they can accomplish a seemingly impossible task, i.e. forgiving an offending brother every time he asks to be forgiven. Jesus' answer to this request tells us plainly that it is not the size or amount of our faith that matters, but the intensity, the integrity with which we exercise it. A bigger hammer is not necessarily a better tool if it is improperly used. A smaller hammer expertly used can be an excellent tool. So, the question is not “how big is your faith?” but rather “with what degree of strength and skill do you wield your faith?” In the same way that good tools must be sharpened, oiled, cleaned, and properly stored, so our faith must be expertly honed and maintained. We have on hand the expertise of the Church Fathers, the saints, the sacraments, the magisterium, and we have one another. All of these are specifically designed to assist us in keeping our trust in the Father's promises brightly polished, razor sharp, and squeaky clean. When we make full use of them, use them regularly, sincerely, and with an eye toward our ultimate end, our faith can only be strengthen. The tallest tower can collapse with time. The biggest monument can erode away. But our faith—even faith the size of a mustard seed—is invincible, indestructible if we take care to use every godly gift we have been given. 

A finely honed and well-polished faith is also a good tool to use in building our confidence. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read, “Remember the days past when. . .you endured a great contest of suffering. . .you were publicly exposed to abuse and affliction. . .You even joined in the sufferings of those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you had a better and lasting possession.” That better and lasting possession is eternal life through your faith in Christ. That faith—even the tiniest seed of faith—sustains, nourishes, and strengthens us when it's time for us to suffer persecution. “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence. . .You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised.” 

Living large with Christ doesn't require a Big Faith. Even the tiniest seed of faith can sprout into the Kingdom of God. 

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The Church is not a slave to fashion!

The Holy Father's Household Theologian, Fr. Wojciech Giertych, OP explains the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood and responds to several common objections made against this reality. Good job, fra. Wojciech!

Hat Tip: Fr. Z.
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A ghost in my library?

Around 2.30 this morning I was awakened by a soft thump near my bed. 

I "heard" the thump as books falling from a nearby shelf.

 

Having a vivid imagination and a theological mind, I went back to sleep thinking that a demon/poltergeist/ghost was messing around with my library, trying to frighten me.

These sleepy ruminations turned into a dream where I awoke at my usual 4.30am to discover all of my books piled up in neat stacks on the floor.

When I actually awoke at 4.30am, I fully expected to see my bookshelves bare and my floor covered by teetering towers of books!

After a few seconds to get my glasses on, I saw three books on the floor, face down.  One written by BXVI on preaching; on written by de Lubac on interpreting scripture; and a third by Pelikan on the history of the BVM.

So. . .what's the demon/poltergeist/ghost trying to tell me?

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Dangerous and inefficient

3rd Week OT (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Sitting in a boat at sea, Jesus teaches a crowd gathered on the shore. Instead of giving them a five-point lecture with a PowerPoint presentation, he “teaches them at length in parables.” Now, as we all know, parables are a terrible way to teach. They're vague. Easily misinterpreted. Often padded with useless information. And b/c they are basically just stories, the story itself sometimes obscures the lesson. Jesus would have done just as well (or even better!) if he had written out his lessons in a verse form like terza rima or a sonnet. Of course, storytelling was The Mode of instruction for teaching a largely uneducated audience at the time. Parables are memorable and the details are easily adapted to your listeners. But still. Highly inefficient and dangerous. This begs us to ask: why parables? Why use such an uneconomical and dodgy literary form to teach universal truths? Jesus understands that moving the human soul is all about moving the whole person not just the mind. Convicting the person—the whole person—of a truth requires providing food for both feeling and thought. So, Jesus says, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Do you have ears to hear?

When he finishes telling the parable of the Sower, Jesus says that those with ears to hear ought to hear. He makes it sound as though there will be some in the crowd who understand the parable and some who won't. Those who understand will be saved and those who don't understand will be lost. Well, that hardly seems fair! If understanding the lesson he's teaching is so vital to salvation, then he ought to teach in a way that everyone can understand. You can't let souls be lost just b/c you prefer one method of teaching over another. You'd think that an educational expert in the crowd would point this out. To make things even worse, he pulls his brown-nosing teacher's pets aside and whispers the meaning of the Sower's parable to them. Why are they so special? Why not just tell the whole crowd your secret, Jesus? He answers, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Whoever listens with faithful ears will hear the truth; whoever has ears obedient to God will hear the Word, nurture it, and harvest abundant fruit. 

The Sower's parable is a parable about listening to parables; that is, the Sower sows parables among the various kinds of souls. Some souls will hear but not listen. Others will hear and listen but not understand. Some will hear and listen, but they will also allow the thorns of sin to choke their understanding. And still others will hear, listen, and understand only to starve the sprouts of truth through prideful neglect. Jesus leaves the truth of his gospel hidden in parables in part to confuse his enemies. Those with ears to hear are those who understand that his arrival among us marks the coming of his Father's kingdom. We hear his parables and know their meaning b/c we listen with faithful ears. Good for us. Now what? If we hear, listen, and understand, do we then go on to cultivate, nurture, and harvest the fruits of his Word? Or do we allow the thorns of rebellion and disobedience choke his truth? If the seeds of sacrificial love, abundant mercy, and reckless hope fall on our souls, what do we do with them? Feed them to the birds? Starve them through neglect? Or do we expend ourselves making sure that love, mercy, and hope flourish, making sure that they always produce new seeds, new fruit, and new harvests? Parables are dangerous and inefficient. So is the Gospel. But wild and fierce is God's love for us, and His forgiveness will destroy generations of willful neglect and water the driest soul. 

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God, Being, and Mark

What are we discussing in class tomorrow (Tues), you ask. . .?

Well, we'll be delving into Anselm's Proslogion and the ontological argument for the existence of God. . .

And the Gospel of Mark.
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Angelic Thanks!

On this Glorious Feast Day of the Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, my deepest Dominican thanks go out to M.R. for sending me Goest and The Problem of Knowledge from the Wish List.

What better way for a Dominican to celebrate this feast than to cozy up to a Kantian critique modern science and a volume of postmodern poetry?

God bless, Fr. Philip
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Once for all

St. Thomas Aquinas, OP
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us: “Christ is mediator of a new covenant. . .” The old covenant btw God and His servant, Abraham, was mediated—negotiated or worked-through—the Law. To be part of the old covenant meant following the Law: the purity codes, the dietary restrictions, the prescribed temple sacrifices made at the appointed times. This attention to religious detail assured that you were always conscious of our covenant relationship with God and it habituated you to living with a fundamental truth of human reality: as long as you were alive, you lived, moved, and had your being in God. The whole purpose of the old covenant was to keep you in right relationship with God—properly aligned with His will—so that you could prosper from His abundant blessings. The new covenant serves this same purpose. However, b/c the new covenant is mediated through Christ, all of our religious obligations under the old covenant have been fulfilled by Christ. In other words, he entered the temple of heaven and made of himself an eternal sacrifice, once for all. 

Just yesterday we heard Jesus read to the men of his synagogue an 800 year old prophecy made by Isaiah and announce to them that this prophecy had been “fulfilled in their hearing.” That prophecy foretold the arrival of a Messiah, one blessed by God with His Holy Spirit, one who would bring to His people liberation from the death of sin. Christ says (in effect) to those with him in the synagogue: “I am the long-awaited Messiah.” From that moment on, Jesus spends his days preaching the Good News of God's mercy to sinners and preparing himself to be the last sacrificial offering made to the Father. He prepares himself to enter the temple of heaven by praying, fasting, healing the sick and injured; feeding the hungry; freeing souls from unclean spirits; and releasing captives from sin. He did all these things to demonstrate that he is the Christ, the Son of God, so that we might come to believe in him and share in his once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. To be part of the new covenant means following the law of love: following Christ to his cross and loving one another sacrificially, loving one another all the way to death for the sake of love. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding about what it means to love sacrificially, let me spell it out. The love that Christ commands us to give is not the love that the world seems to hold so dear. Worldly love demands that we be indifferent to truth and goodness. That we ignore or sweeten falsehood and treat goodness as little more than opinion. What is truth? Who decides what's good or evil? It's all just depends on circumstance, or what your personal values happen to be. That's not love. We cannot love someone and lie to them. We cannot love someone while pretending that evil is good. Loving others as Christ loves us means leading them to truth and goodness, leading them into a right relationship with God. It means being willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to tell the truth, standing ready to proclaim the Good News, and living every minute of our lives as if Christ himself were standing right behind us. Love isn't about avoiding unpleasant conflicts, or “being nice.” Jesus entered the temple of heaven through his death on the cross and offered himself for us once-for-all. That's love. He gave his life so that we might live. That's love. As those who would live the new covenant, we are vowed to stand as Christs for others. Loving them all is our sacrifice.

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Are you Christ?

NB. Been busier than a one-armed paper hanger (as Scuba Mom would say).  Below is a draft of today's homily from 2007.  It will be revised and re-posted by 6.00pm today.

3rd Sunday OT 2013
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

If I were to ask you this evening: who are you? How would you answer? Most of you would give me a name. Bob. Sue. Gladys. Some of you would add a job or career description: George, an accountant. Barbara, a nurse. Some of you might even throw in a relationship descriptor. Linda, clerk and mother of three boys. Harold, postal worker and grandfather. What else could you add? Your hometown; your parish; a bit of family history; maybe a quick medical run-down. All of these descriptors—name, job, relationships, history—all of those pick us out of the herd, I mean, they identify you as you. These are differences about us that distinguish us from them, you from me, me from them and so on. Oh, and you would likely throw in there somewhere that you are a Christian. So, let me ask: who are you as a Christian? How does this descriptor pick you out, make you different?

The reading from Nehemiah tells us something about what it means to be a faithful member of a faith-filled group. Ezra, a priest, brings out the book of the law and reads aloud. The assembly—men, women, children—listen to the law being read. We read twice in the space of four lines that the assembly is made up of men, women, and children old enough to understand. This group is picked out not by sex or age but by its attentiveness to Ezra’s reading of the book of law. They hear and listen. And then Ezra shows them the book, opening the scroll “so that all the people might see it.” They stand. And with one voice—as a people—they raise their hands, shouting “Amen, amen!” They bow. They prostrate. They fall to the ground on their faces. They weep. And then they receive instruction from Nehemiah himself. He tells them not to weep for today is holy; instead go feast because rejoicing in the Lord is their strength.

Pay careful attention! Those faithful people—men, women, children—gather; listen to the Word read aloud; receive instruction; accept an invitation to a great feast; and together they hear: to give glory and praise to the Lord, to offer Him rejoicing and thanksgiving must be their strength! Let me break that down for you: rejoicing in the Lord is how we must endure; giving God thanks and praise is how we must persevere. This is not muddling through til we die. This is not just one step after another until we drop. Today is holy to our Lord! Rejoice, give thanks, praise His name and continue on: persist, stick with it, keep going. Weep, rage, laugh, cuss, pitch a fit, flop around on the ground screaming if you must—but it is in rejoicing that you will find the strength to endure.

Those who survive while praising the Lord stand out. Those who succeed while praising the Lord distinguish themselves. But what does this have to do with being Christian? Paul writes to the Corinthians that the church is one body with many parts; one body made up of Jews, Greeks, slaves, and freed men who are no longer Jews, Greek, slaves, or freed men. Because they have all been baptized into one body and because all have drunk of one Spirit, what they were before is no more. Now—together—they are Christ’s body, working at Christ’s work, praising his Word, healing his people, feeding the hunger, finding the lost, enlightening the ignorant, together being the hands and feet of Christ. These former Jews, Greeks, slaves, and freed men survive and succeed b/c they stand out as living, breathing, fleshy machines of mercy and service, blood and bone engines of charity and freedom. They drink from one Holy Spirit, give body and soul to the only Son, and offer filial obedience to one Father. They know Christ and they know his will and they do his will to become Christ.

If I were to ask you this morning: who are you? How would you answer? Would answer, “I am Christ”? Can those words fall from your lips w/o blushing, w/o qualification? For you, for me, for any of us to admit—“I am Christ”—we must first know who Christ is. We must answer the question: who does Christ say that he is?

Luke’s gospel this morning teaches us that Jesus is the anointed one; the one upon whom the Spirit rests; the one chosen to bring joy to the poor, liberty to slaves, sight to the blind, and to set free those oppressed. We know this b/c Luke reports that Jesus goes to his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath and reads aloud from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah a description of the Messiah. When he has finished reading the passage, he sits down. All in the synagogue are watching him. He says to those gathered, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” He says to them (in effect), “I am the Christ, the Anointed One from the Lord.” Can you imagine the surprise? The anger? The shock and awe? The relief? What did those who heard this proclamation think? Here is a hometown boy who reads from Isaiah’s prophecy a description of the Messiah and then claims that in hearing the description read aloud that the prophecy is fulfilled! This man is the one promised by the prophets? Can you listen and not believe?

And notice that it is in hearing Jesus read the prophecy that the prophecy is fulfilled. Open ears. Open eyes. Listen, see. Remember the people gathered before Ezra to hear the law read, to see the book opened. They hear, listen, see, and rejoice, finding their strength in praise: Your words, O Lord, are spirit and life! They find their strength and we find ours.

Who are you? Will you say, “I am the Christ”? Does this identify you as a Christian? Does this proclamation pick you out as someone wholly given to God? Does it make you queasy to admit such a thing? It’s a big job being a Messiah. Huge job. But your part is one part in the Body of Christ. Your part is the one part you are alone are gifted to complete. You, like the rest of us, will shine out the face of Christ to all who will listen and see. You will do it uniquely. And in so doing, God’s love will be perfected in you. Will you get it wrong sometimes? Yes. Fail? Yes. Refuse to be Christ for others? Of course. And so will we. We will ignore the poor, teach falsehood, fail to free captives, leave the blind blind, the lame lame. We will embarrass the Church, dissent in order to commit our favorite sins, blow off our tradition and history, ridicule legitimate authority. We will sin. And when we do, we then become the blind in need of sight, the lame in need of healing, the captives in need of freedom, the oppressed in need of liberation. In sin, we become those for whom the Christ came.

There is one Body, many parts. One Christ, many christs. Who are you? Who will you free today? Who will you heal? Who will you feed, clothe, comfort, visit? The Spirit of the Lord is upon you because He has anointed you to do His work. Find your strength in praising the Lord. Stand out as men and women given wholly to God. And serve the broken, the lost, and the fallen. Be a Christian. Better yet: be Christ!

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Techie-dummy gets it right

I finally figured out the problem btw my Yahoo email account and Firefox.

I've been faithfully downloading Firefox updates. However, I wasn't installing them. I thought this was being done automatically. Apparently not.

Basically, Yahoo email was constantly changing while my browser was still a dinosaur.

I got Firefox up-to-date and now everything is fine. Even the sign-in bar for HancAquam has re-appeared!

Please resist the temptation to mock my lack of techie awareness. . .when it comes to computer stuff, I believe in magic.

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All over the place this weekend!

Weird weekend for me liturgy-wise. . .

Memorial Mass at Dominic's at noon today.

Confessions and Vigil Mass for an Mens' Emmaus Retreat in Ponchatoula at 7.00pm

Sunday Mass at St Dominic's at 8.00am

Sunday Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary at 6.00pm.  

Starting Monday, Fr. John Dominic Sims (our new parochial vicar) and I will be going over to Our Lady of the Rosary for the 7.00am daily Mass.  Their pastor is on a leave of absence.
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Knowing ain't loving

2nd Week OT (R)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Why does Jesus command the unclean spirits to be silent about his true identity? You'd think that given his mission to spread the Good News of God's freely given mercy to sinners he'd take all the help he could get. As Mark makes painfully clear, the disciples are not among the Lord's brightest and best—not yet anyway—so they can't be much help at this point. The crowds following him around the countryside (threatening to crush him death) are chasing him b/c they think he's just a healing prophet or an exorcist. The only ones who know much of anything at all about who and what he is are the demons! And Jesus won't allow them to break his cover. Why not? Well, would you want a legion of unclean spirits testifying on your behalf if your worst enemies were accusing you with blasphemy? Sure, the demons know who and what Jesus is, but they cannot serve as witnesses to his mission and ministry. To be a witness for Christ, one must be capable of repenting of one's sins; receiving God's mercy, and following His law of love. This means that knowledge about Christ is not the same thing as following Christ. Knowing about love is not the same as loving. 

The idea that we are made holy by acquiring holy knowledge is an ancient heresy. In the first century of the Church, groups of Christians, the Gnostics, began to teach and practice a gospel not taught and practiced by the apostles. Gnosticism (from gnosis) is a broad descriptive term used to cover hundreds of competing sects that taught that salvation was a matter of knowing the right prayers, the right rituals, and the secret names of helpful divine beings. For the Gnostics, ignorance was damnation, so acquiring occult knowledge meant salvation. In other words, for them, knowing about Christ was sufficient to get a seat at the heavenly table. Following Christ to a bloody Cross was just an allegory or a mystical ritual. Set beside the real gospel of Jesus Christ—repentance, suffering, persecution, and the necessity of sacrificial love—it's pretty easy to see why Gnosticism was particularly popular among the wealthy and the well-educated, among the cultural elites of the early Church. It provided all the benefits of being a Christian w/o any of the painful, sticky, embarrassing, low-brow grubbing that the apostolic faith seemed to preach. Needless to say, like the unclean spirits, the Gnostics were not capable of providing credible testimony to the truth of the Gospel. 

This brings us to the inevitable question: are we/you capable of providing credible testimony to the truth of the Gospel? If you have sinned, have you received God's mercy? If so, have you told anyone about it? If you have suffered, have you received God's healing? If so, have you told anyone about it? If you have sacrificed in love b/c Christ lovingly sacrificed for you, have you told anyone about it? If you have sinned, suffered, and sacrificed and reaped the graces that come with repentance, prayer, and God's love, and you've not told anyone about it, why haven't you? Jesus silences the demons, not you. The Church silenced the Gnostics, not you. Christ tells his disciples many times that it will be as witnesses to his life and work that they will bring many into the family. Of course, knowledge about Christ will be necessary along the way, but what most lost souls need to hear is that being lost is not a permanent feature of their lives. In fact, being lost, being w/o Christ is an unnatural way for a sinner to live. How best to tell others about the Good News? Follow Christ. Publicly. Daily. Out loud. Visibly. And w/o apology, embarrassment, or hesitation. Christ did not silence his faithful people nor will he silence us. With spirits immaculately clean, go, and give the Good News a public witness! 

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Silence is not the right answer

2nd Week OT (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

When given the chance to speak out in defense of their most deeply held convictions, the Pharisees choose instead to play games with a man's life. Jesus calls the man with the damaged hand up before the assembly and asks, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” This is a clever question b/c it forces the Pharisees to consider the consequences of obeying the Law beyond just the repair of a man's hand. In effect, Jesus is asking, “Is it legal for me to save a man' life on the Sabbath, or should I let him die?” To the Pharisees' way of thinking, if saving a life on the Sabbath is a form of work. . .well, they'll have to think about that and get back us. I can't tell you how they answered Jesus' question b/c after he asked it, “they remained silent.” They remain silent while a rabbi violates the Sabbath in the synagogue! What's more important to them: honoring God's Law, or playing gotcha games with an ideological opponent? Jesus knows their hearts, “Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart,” Jesus heals the man. God' love is God's law, so silence cannot be the right answer to the question of sin. 

For most tough questions, silence is almost always the right choice, the prudent choice, but not always. I was once told by a wise and learned friar, “Br. Philip, prudence is the art of knowing when to keep your big mouth shut.” Well, I've never been particularly good at art, or keeping my big mouth shut. I'm not built intellectually to let a challenge go unanswered. However, even with my tendency to imprudence, I recognize the genius of the way Jesus sets up the Pharisees. They have two choices in answering his challenge: 1) admit or deny that the Sabbath Law forbids life-saving work; or 2) remain silent. The first choice either exposes them as heartless, legalistic religious robots; or opens the door for reckless disobedience. Not good P.R. either way. The second choice (silence) leaves them looking slightly foolish but at least they have plausible deniability if someone accuses them of being heartless, legalistic, or reckless. Unfortunately for them, their silence angers the Lord and verifies for us that their hearts have grown hard in following the Law. What this tells us is that there is something more fundamental and vastly more important than the Law: God's infinite love for His creation. Christ is that love given human flesh. He is the promise of God sent to save our lives, the Law fulfilled. 

Neither the Law nor the law can save us; that is, neither the Law of Moses nor the law of man can reach to heaven and heal the wound between God and His creation. However, when a civil law reflects or embodies God's law of love, the edges of the wound can be drawn closer together, if not closed completely. Conversely, if a civil law violates the law of love, the edges of the wound are spread farther apart and infected by sin. When challenged to defend one of their most cherished laws, the Pharisees remain silent. Why? For nothing more than political advantage over an enemy. Their silence is complicity, participation in the violation. When we are challenged to defend God's law of love, our silence—fear, cowardice, or political calculation—is complicity, participation in the legal vandalism of divine love. Man-made law is just when it reflects and embodies God's law of love. However, when civil law demands that we sin, to violate God's law of love, our resounding NO! to that demand ought to shake the earth and rattle some teeth. The Pharisees missed their chance to stand up for their deeply held convictions, selling their integrity for a chance to kill one inconvenient enemy. If we will not stand up for God's law of love, then we become our own enemy for sake of convenience. 

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No such thing as naked being

One of the fundamental metaphysical insights of the Catholic faith is that creation is good, all creatures are good insofar as they exist. This goodness is called ontological goodness and is distinguished from moral goodness. 

Below is an excerpt from an article by Alice von Hildebrand: 

Genesis informs us that when God completed creation, He saw that “it was very good.” Surprisingly enough, these luminous words can easily be misread or misinterpreted. 

God is clearly telling us that every single being to which He has freely granted “to be” is not only benefiting from the nobility of existence, but moreover that all these beings not only “are” but moreover have qualities and perfections which, according to a huge scale, reflect God’s infinite beauty. A star-studded key awakens in us a feeling of awe, but the most modest insect hidden in the grass, also speaks of God’s glory. 

There is no such a thing as “naked” being. Pure being is an abstraction. Let me repeat: All existing beings have qualities and perfections the scale of which is immense – from the awesome greatness and beauty of a star-studded sky to the modest perfection of a gnat. All of them reflect the greatness and glory of God: “Heaven and earth are filled with His Glory.”

Please, do your growth in holiness a favor and read the whole thing!

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We are not servants of the Law (or the State)!

NB.  Here's a homily preached in Rome (2010) on today's readings.
 
2nd Week OT (T): Readings
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

By necessity—for the sake of good order and the flourishing of justice—our lives are shaped and guided by laws both natural and man-made. There are limits set by the natural order that define us as human. We cannot violate these limits and remain rational animals. No amount of government intervention, no number of rules or regulations, no army or police force can require us to set ourselves against the laws of nature. Even the attempt is unnatural. The laws we make as social creatures often have less to do with our natural means and ends than they do with our need to express what we perceive to be right and wrong behavior in the community. Sometimes, perhaps more than we are willing to admit, man-made law fails to conform to the natural law, and we are confronted with the possibility of protesting with acts of civil disobedience. A recent example of this emerged in the U.S. With the publication of the Manhattan Declaration. A group of leading Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, and Orthodox church leaders signed this statement , callinig on Christians in the U.S. to stand against the culture of death and prepare themselves for civil disobedience against attempts to further violate the dignity of the human person by the government expansion of abortion rights, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, and the invention of same-sex marriage. These leaders ask Christians to be ready and willing to fight a war against the legal notion that the Pharisees assume when they accuse Jesus' disciples of violating the Sabbath: man serves the law. Jesus' retort sets the bar higher: no, the law serves man. 

Few of us get out of bed in the morning thinking of ways to commit criminal acts. It's safe to say that most of us never give it much thought at all. We are law-abiding citizens here in Italy and in our own countries. We do not seek out opportunities to cause trouble nor do we do out of our way to look for unjust laws. So long as we are left alone to study, pray, enjoy our basic freedoms, and flourish as children of God, we are happy to go along with whatever parliament or Congress orders. As governments grow bolder and bolder in their attempts to infringe on basic human rights through legislation that violates the natural law, our peace with the legal status quo grows more and more uneasy. It may not be inevitable that we find ourselves in jail for civil disobedience but it seems that the chances grow with every time parliament meets. How do we respond? 

Yesterday, in the U.S., Americans remembered Martin Luther King. In 1963, from his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, he reminded the Church of her successful witness and current failure: “There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. . .Small in number, they were big in commitment. . .By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. . .Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.” Jesus says to the Pharisees, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” 

Being just is easy in the absence of challenge. Doing justice in the face of government sanctioned oppression—especially the oppression of our religious freedoms—is difficult at best, impossible if we surrender. Our fight will not be against local politicians but with a universal lie: man serves the law. When the time comes, remember Jesus standing in the field, teaching the Pharisees: “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” And if he is lord even of the Sabbath, how much more is he our Lord as well? 

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