Pagan babbling, Christian prayer

1st Week of Lent 2006 (T): Isa 55.10-11; Matthew 6.7-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Do you babble like the pagans or do you pray as Christ taught us to pray? To babble like a pagan is to rattle off memorized lines like a fifth grader streaking through a recitation of a bad poem for an English class. To babble is to believe that those memorized lines of bad poetry are magically effective, some sort of voodoo that gives one control of God. Pagan babbling is also almost always about “just getting it done,” a formal “doing one’s duty,” pro forma obligation fulfillment so that the goodies may now start to fall from heaven. Christians cannot pray this way because there is nothing magical, merely formal, or hurried about how we talk to our Father.

We do not pray to change God’s mind. We do not pray in order to negotiate with God. Our prayers are not spells that if perfectly performed guarantee perfect results. For us, to pray is to ask God for good things, to offer Him praise and thanksgiving, to intercede for others with Him, to bless and adore Him, and to be still, quiet in His presence, waiting on His fertile Word.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says of prayer, “Prayer is intimacy with God […]For the effect of prayer is union with God[…]” What we do in prayer is bring ourselves as a living sacrifice to the Lord. We give ourselves up so that we might be made holy in Him. We turn our hearts over to Him so that we will be made proper instruments of His living Word. We surrender our will, humble ourselves in a pure act of creaturely awe. Prayer is the perfect answer to the Lord’s gratuitous summons to live with Him now, to participate fully in His divine nature forever. We cannot babble nonsense because we pray His Word for us, in us, through us.

God speaks to Isaiah, telling him that like giving seed to one who sows seed and bread to one who eats bread, the Lord will give His Word to those who will speak His Word so that that Word will not return to Him as wasted sound, mere breath but that it will do His will, doing all those things that the Lord wills it to do. In other words, we are given prayer so that we might know and do God’s will. The words we speak in prayer, if we pray in His Spirit, are, in fact, The Word—not just any old words, but The Word given to us, planted in our hearts to produce excellent fruit, to spread like abundant vines, and to be shared copiously with any and all.

Christ the Word made flesh teaches us to pray, a particular prayer and a model of praying. He teaches us to call God our Father, the One Who made us from nothing. We bless His Name, so that we can be living witnesses to His blessings. We pray that His kingdom will come for us and through us, working in the world as agents of His Spirit, members of His body to do what His Word asks of us. We pray for what we need not because He doesn’t know our needs, but because by asking for what we need we are truly humbled—not degraded—but made better aware of our dependency on Him for everything we need. We ask to be forgiven in the same way that we forgive. A daring prayer! And we ask for protection against temptation and evil.

None of this is babble. It is the Word given to us so that our words glorify Him, so that our hearts and minds are shown His love for us, so that we are made ready for our lives with Him now and in glory forever.

With the Devil in the Desert

1st Sunday of Lent 2006: Gen 9.8-15; 1 Peter 3.18-22; Mark 1.12-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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I find him sitting with his back against a rock, staring at the heat waving above the dry-cracked river bed. He smells of hot cedar smoke, burnt bees’ wax, and drying sweat. When my shadow touches his bare feet, he moves them away and turns as if to look at me, then stops and stares again at the blistering sand. I wave my hand to greet him, my shadow again touching his feet and legs. This time he doesn’t move. It’s always the same with him. He knows I’m here. Right here with him. But he stubbornly ignores me or moves away at my dark touch. I take a deep breath, gather my silk robes around my legs to sit, and as I fall into place in front of him, he sighs and begins to pray aloud. Scratchy, mumbling nonsense. Groveling little bits of spontaneous poetry and half-remembered words and phrases stolen from thin, crumbling scrolls. I just listen and wait. Most days we sit together in silence like this, waiting on one another.

When the sun touches the tallest mountain, he stops muttering. The dry burn of the desert wind eases a bit. There’s a promise of wet air, of moisture from somewhere out of the north. I clear my throat. I see a small smile on his lips. Just as I open my mouth to argue again, wild beasts begin to gather near us. This happens every night about this time. And I am surprised again, always surprised, by the fierce brilliance of the crown of angels that seems to float miles away behind his head. Tensed to fight, they just hold there radiating His glory—a sky crowded with angelic mirrors flashing His beauty. How very servile of them to pose so. How very grand it all is. A perfect waste of power.

I catch him watching me watch his ministers. You see, he knows that I know that he won’t call them. He could. No doubt. But he won’t. It’s a matter to pride with him. That’s my secret weapon: his pride. He’s the favored Son. I’m the fallen Daystar. He’s the Anointed One. I’m the Marked One. He is Righteousness and I am Rebellion. And I’m here, again, to show him the error of his Way, to offer him something far better than a life wasted on dumb humility, unrequited love, and pointless sacrifice. I am here to tempt him away from his self-destructive path, away from the terrible, bloody death that those dirty little apes he loves so much will give him. I will show him riches, power, and his own pride. I will tempt him to resist me on his own, without those shiny angels coming to his rescue!

I gather myself for the show, for the theatre of the absurd that will surely wake him up to his desperate folly. But before I can collect myself fully, he starts to chuckle. Just a small laugh at first. Then he burst out with a deep guffaw! A belly laugh from the Son of God. I just stare at him. Surely the heat has driven him mad. He stops. And he opens his eyes, looking at me, through me, right to the center of the goodness that is my very existence. I fumble for an excuse, some reason to protest the invasion of my privacy, but I can only stare back at the fullness of beauty, goodness, and truth that He Is.

Without moving he says, “Perdition, you are here again to lie to me, to put between me and our Father a temptation. Do it then.” I swallow hard and plead, “My Lord, can’t you see that the course laid out for you is disastrous? Can’t you see the possibilities for us, the potential of our rule if you would turn to me for help? Can’t you see your ignominious end? The scandal of it!” He chuckles again, “You are worried about scandal? Try another one, Deceiver. Put yourself behind me so that I may go forward. You are dust and wind.” He gently waves his hand toward the cooling desert. I grow angry at his dismissal, “Wow! You really are stupidity itself, aren’t you. Wasted power, wasted opportunities.”

I sputter for a while longer, hoping that my indignity at his rudeness will move him to talk to me again. Nothing. I conjure images of wealth—jewels, fine horses, palaces. Nothing. I conjure images of power—a throne for the worlds, slaves, armies. Nothing. Finally, I conjure images of personal dignity—his freedom from the trails ahead, the esteem of his rabbinical colleagues, the love of the crowds cheering him. Nothing. Again, nothing.

I gird my silk robes, bracing myself for one final assault on this mulish Nazarene. I shout at him: “You’re proud! It’s pride that makes you think you are better than my gifts, too good to pick up what I give you. Pride!” He shifts his feet under him, rises to stand before me. He looks over my head as if reading a text behind me, “You are nothing, brother. Shapes, shadows, quick glimpses, and shallow sighs.” My indignity is unmatchable! “I am Lucifer, Morning Light! I am First Chosen of the Angels! I know who I am!” His eyes move to focus on mine. He squints against a finally setting sun, “I will teach you who you are. Fallen creature. Sinner. Liar. Killer of Hope. Tempter. I know your true names: Perdition. Chaos. Betrayal. You cannot win with me because I am driven here by the Spirit of our Father to fast and pray and to prepare myself for what I am about.”

Panicked, I reach for what I have, anything at all, and say, “They won’t love you for your sacrifice, you know? They will not come to you after you are betrayed and convicted, and sent into the dead ground. They will deny you. They will run and hide and waste time pointing fingers and accusing one another. I will make sure that they forget you.” If anything he looked calmer, “Yes, I suppose you will. But they like me will have their forty days in the desert, their time and place apart to burn away the excess, to trim the burdensome and ridiculous, to pray and serve, and to remember that they are dust—dust given life by our Father’s breath and made holy in His love for them.”

What arrogance! The man is insane. I have to ask, “You came into this dead waste to pray and serve and to remember that you are dust? You? The favored Son? The Messiah? You fled to this place? Why? Why would you do such a stupid thing?” Again, he smiles slightly at me, at my vehemence, and says, “I will teach you again, Satan. I am in this desert for forty days to remember the journey of Moses and his people out of slavery. I am in this desert for forty days to teach those to come how to live with our Father. I am here to survive with Him alone, to live stripped of pretense, theatre, guile, and luxurious want. I am here so that those whom you will tempt tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will know that they need only to call upon the Father’s mercy, to repent, believe the gospel, and then know that they are free of you forever.” His eyes blaze for a moment, then calm again.

I give up! My time with him is up anyway. My time with him is wasted breath. You, you however, well, you’re just beginning, aren’t you? What, day five or six, now, of the forty? Come, let me show you to my favorite rock and the riches I can offer you. Let me show you my toys, my little inventions, and help you choose a Way more to my…I mean…your liking.

So tell me, little ones, what tempts you?

Here I am

1st Friday of Lent 2006: Is 58.1-9; Psalm 51.3-6, 18-19; Matt 9.14-25
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club & Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

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A homily in three parts:

I. Psalm 51

We pray for mercy, God’s compassion. Relying on His goodness, we acknowledge our sins, the guilt of our disobedience, and beg His mercy. Asking for mercy, begging to be cleaned from our sins when we deserve punishment for them is audacious. Or is it? Audacity requires risk, a gamble of sorts. Audacity is a kind of daring against the probability of failure, a cheeky, swaggering bravery that risks one’s life, one’s reputation. We dare God’s mercy and ask for it with humble and contrite hearts. There is no audacity there. Without doubt, knowing with trembling hope that we will receive mercy, we ask nonetheless because asking is how we are changed, how we are perfected. Animal sacrifices are vain gestures, blood offerings poured over deaf stone. The Lord hears our sacrifice when the victim offered is our heart humbled, a heart that knows that He is our Only One, and when the victim is our contrite heart, repentant and turned to Him. We know that we will not be spurned. But we ask so that we will be changed. Ask, be changed, and hear the Lord eagerly say, “Here I am!”

II. Isaiah

Fasting simply to fast is pointless. Fasting with a quarrelsome heart, with selfish goals is not fasting. When we fast for reasons other than to glorify the Lord in our mortality, we fail to fast, fail to sacrifice. Oh, we may give up something, we may deny ourselves all kinds of things. But fasting is fasting only when we do it to glorify the Lord, when we do it to set aside a day and make that day acceptable to the Lord. And what makes a day acceptable to the Lord? A day acceptable to the Lord starts by making our righteous voices heard, heard on high. Without holding back, with full-throat, we are to cry out our sin. Bending our heads like reeds and putting on sackcloth and ashes is not what the Lord wants when we fast. What does He want? The fasting He will see and reward is the loosing of those unjustly held, “untying the thongs of the yoke” of those who are enslaved. Sharing what He has given us with those who have no homes, no clothes, and taking gentle care of our own. On this acceptable day, this day of righteous fasting, will we be healed, our wounds dressed and nursed, with our absolution going ahead of us to announce the mercy and love of the Lord. Fasting is holy service and not merely mortal deprivation. True fasting makes it possible for us to call out to the Lord for help and hear him say, nearly breathlessly, “Here I am!”

III. Matthew

What do you mourn? What have you lost and now long for? Who do you mourn? Who is it you have lost and now grieve for? To fast is to mourn, to lament passing life, impermanence and passing days into passing nights. Fasting brings to mind again the lack, the absence of what is necessary, what is needed for joy, for flourishing. So fasting is a kind of memory, a way to remember what is lost, who is lost. And a way to remember that who and what is lost is necessary, very much needed. Fasting is not always ash and tears and torn clothe. It is a way to recover, to regain. It is a way for us to cry out to the Lord, to wail his name in distress and hear him, gently, with confident comfort, say: “Here I am.”

The pride of dust

Ash Wednesday 2006: Joel 2.12-18; 2 Cor 5.20-6.2; Matt6.1-6, 16-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts! Not your garments.

Where do we begin this pilgrimage of forty days? How do we get this time away, this time apart from worldly obsession started?

What jumpstarts our Lenten pilgrimage is first an awareness of our dependence on God for absolutely everything. That we exist at all is contingent, totally conditioned on the goodness of God. Our lives are gratuitous, freely given, radically graced.

Begin this Lenten trek, then, in humility and give God thanks for your life.

If your Lenten pilgrimage is going to produce excellent spiritual fruit you cannot spend these forty days wallowing in sorrow, self-pity, and mortal deprivation. We deny ourselves always if we would grow in holiness, but this isn’t the kind of denial that looks like the public posturing of the Pharisees. Our Lenten denial is the self-emptying of Christ, that is, our best work at doing what Jesus did on the cross. Lenten denial is about making our gratuitous lives sacrificial. We sacrifice when we give something up and give it back to God.

Therefore, turn your heart over to God. Give your life back to Him. Repent of your disobediences, rejoice in His always ready forgiveness, and then get busy doing His holy work among His people.

If your Lenten trek is going to be about little more than pious public display, don’t bother with Lent this year. Jesus teaches his disciples that performing righteous deeds for show—fasting, giving alms—will win you nothing from our heavenly Father. He calls those who strut around showing off their piety hypocrites. It’s a show, pure theater. Nothing but thin drama for public consumption. He says, “[…] when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting[…].”

Jesus’ admonition here is about our tendency to think that we’re doing something substantial when really all we’re doing is something very superficial. Does that rosary around Madonna’s neck really mean she venerates the Blessed Mother? Does the cross of ashes most of us will wear today mean that we’re truly humble before the Lord? That we’re wholly given over to repentance, to a conversion of heart, and a life of holy service? If that cross of ashes is going to be a mark of pride for you today or a temptation to hypocrisy, wash it off immediately. If that cross of ash is going to be the sum total of your witness for Christ today, wash it off immediately. In fact, when you fast, wash your face.

Our Lord wants our contrite heart not our empty gesture. Our Lord wants our repentant lives not our public dramas of piety. When you pray, go to your room and close the door. When you fast, wash your face. When you give alms, do so in secret. Rend your hearts not your garments.

The Lenten pilgrimage we begin today is an excursion into mortality, a chance for us to face without fear our origin and our destiny in ash. It is our chance to practice the sacrificial life of Christ, giving ourselves to God by giving ourselves in humble service to one another. Lent is our forty day chance to pray, to give alms, to fast and to do it all with great joy, smiling all the while, never looking to see who’s noticing our sacrifice.

Remember, brothers and sisters: dust is never proud.

New and Improved with Fresh New Scent

8th Sunday OT: Hos 2.16-17, 21-22; 2 Cor 3.1-6; Mark 2.18-22
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas


Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome one and all to the Newest, Happiest, Shiniest Show on Earth! Welcome one and all to the Latest, Trendiest, Freshest philosophies available on the planet. We offer you the most innovative, the most original, the most novel means to perfect happiness, total freedom, ultimate satisfaction, AND shiny and more manageable hair! Our colors are brighter, our aromas are sweeter, our textures softer, and our sound, WELL, our sound is louder, sharper, and clearer than ever! We work around the clock to insure that no opportunity to improve, to change, to revolutionize our finest products is ever missed. We have research facilities packed with the best-educated people in the universe, working 24/7 on ways to make your contentment a ready, easy, and inexpensive reality in a SNAP!

Ladies and Gentlemen, you are tired of being tired, run down from being run down? Are you exhausted by the work of enlightenment, holiness, and just plain ole Being Good? I have right here the Secrets of the Ancients! The Keys to Total Fulfillment! And the Elixir of Eternal Life! It’s new, it’s shiny, it’s the Latest Thing, and, boy, does it smell good! Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:___________________! And it can be yours for the low, low one time price of your soul, or you can pay in installments over your lifetime with just one Big Sin a month. That’s right: just one Big Sin a month! How easy is that? All you need to do is surrender your reason to intellectual and media fashion; surrender your will to herd and flock morality; rent out your body to the cosmetic, diet, and pharmaceutical industries, and worship at the altar of celebrity politics, and VOILA!, you’re a vacuous, trend-following, bubble-headed neo-pagan just like the rest of us! Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Hell!

Hear the Lord this evening: I will lead you into the desert and speak to your heart. You will be espoused to me in fidelity, and you shall know the LORD. The letter of Christ is written not on tablets of stone but on your hearts of flesh. The letter of the Law brings death, but the Spirit gives new life. Therefore, He says, new wine needs to be poured into fresh wineskins.

Newer, shinier, and fresher, the Spirit of the Lord moves over His creation to renew, to polish, and to refresh. He moves over His creation to bring to life again the desire to seek after, to find, and to live the good life of holiness in Him. He speaks to our hearts with a voice spilling over with love and mercy, with a voice steeled against swift judgment and vengeance. His is an eternal voice, a Word spoken long ago and right now, at the beginning of all things and at their end. He renews life b/c He is Life. And He touches our place of covenant with Him, our hearts. He touches them as the One Who gives us tempo and blood, pulse and breath. We are espoused forever, espoused in right and justice, in love and in mercy. And we know the Lord!

The pimps of pop-culture and academic fashion need for you to believe just one thing in order to hook you, just one thing. They need for you to believe that YOU can make yourself new. They need for you to believe that you are deficient, incomplete, all so that you run to them—the purveyors of fashionable thought and ever-evolving philosophies. They feed on our anxiety, our firm suspicion that something isn’t right, something is missing and deeply wrong about our lives. We could be better, more productive, more energetic, more alive! Sure we could! But how? Building on these small worries, they create larger worries, bigger anxieties by constantly dragging in front of us the new and improved, the latest and brightest.

And we buy it. Over and over again, we buy it. And the more we buy it, the more they sell it and we become a culture more and more enslaved to the lie that I alone can make myself new; I alone can bring renewal to my sadly inadequately, shamefully deficient life. The fact that I alone, just like everyone else, have to sell my soul to celebrity and fashion in order to be this renewed individual is missed entirely, hidden in the sparkle, the electric rush of novelty. We cannot renew ourselves. Sure, we can shine ourselves up, trim down, brighten our teeth, wear new clothes, and get all our fat and sagging parts sucked thin and tightened up, but we cannot renew ourselves.

We cannot pour the new wine of our espoused spirits into the old wineskins of fashionable lies.

Though we cannot renew ourselves, we can be renewed. We can find ourselves remade, refashioned, and completely redone for the Kingdom. But this transformation is the work of God through His church not the work of the cultural prostitutes who would sell us anything to get their hands on our Everything—our souls, our reason for being here, our covenant with the Father. We are espoused, promised to God by God, in righteousness and justice, in love and mercy, so that we might know Him, so that we might have as the foundation, the rock bottom foundation, of our lives His fidelity, His faithfulness, and…Him—His presence among us, the Spirit of Life, the Bridegroom of this wedding feast. And it is in being with us that He renews us, in the sacraments, in the Word proclaimed and preached, in His creation, and in one another through charity and service, covenant and ministry.

Standing in stark contrast to the gospel of self-renewal and suicidal individualism is the gospel of the renewing Spirit preached by Christ and his apostles, handed down in promise to their children, and given to us in the faithfulness of the Lord’s Church. You can nip, tuck, suck out, work off, rethink, revision, plan, work out, project, and self-actualize and still find yourself restless, bored, exhausted, hungry, empty, and weak. You can retreat, study, massage, align, and mediate and still find yourself craving, needing, searching and not finding. There is nothing to discover. No secret to reveal. No exercise program or diet to follow. There is God’s mercy, His invitation to us to share with Him His divine life. There was our first Yes and our everyday Yes, our first fast and our everyday fast.

There is the temporary and the eternal, the passing and the permanent. We are free to attach ourselves to fleeting illusion or graced presence, to the refundable moment or to the renewing foundation. We can listen to and heed the seductive voices of our culture’s carnival barkers, spending our divine gifts on ideas and movements and celebrities that will sour, dry up, and blow away like old wine. We can gather around and gawk at the shiny new toys, the bright new ideas and innovations, eagerly entertaining the temptations of alien philosophies, the spurious promises of faked prophecies, borrowed spiritualities, and tourist religions. Or we can remember who we are: espoused of God forever in love and mercy, in right and justice; ministers of the new covenant commended by the Spirit and given new life. We are disciples of Christ, new wine poured into fresh wineskins. Forever beloved. Always forgiven. And again and again made new. Always new.

Will you live your life commited to one faith and one Lord? Or will you live as a marketing stat, a poll demographic, a victim of novelty’s populist cult?

The Spirit alone give life.

Patience. Perseverance. Permanence.

7th Week OT(F): James 5.9-12; Mark 10.1-12
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory & Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

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The first few jobs I had after I left grad school had a theme: I kept families apart. My job was to keep husbands away from their wives, to keep children away from their mothers and fathers. I worked for Child and Family Services in the battered women’s shelter and in the treatment facility for children and teens who had been sexually abused by family members. My job as an employee of the county was to help these folks provide for themselves what they couldn’t, wouldn’t provide for themselves without help: stable, drug-free, abuse free family lives. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we didn’t. Whether we won or lost, I saw over and over again the hopeless choices people were making, sometimes forced to make, in the struggle to get along, to just make it. And it was almost always the case that what drove them to a debilitating despair was the false Spirit of Choices Without Consequences. What I saw acted out again and again was the farce of the human person believing that his or her choices were utterly free from prior commitment, utterly free from consequence, and utterly free from any sort of moral evaluation. Of course, this particular farce was written long ago and is, quite possibly, the longest running show in human history. And, if I had to guess, we’ve all played a part at one time or another, large or small.

Both James and Jesus direct their evangelical spirit to the question of forming lasting friendships, unbreakable familial and social bonds. And neither one of them say much that we want to hear. James tells us that we must look to the prophets who persevered in the face of constant hardship, working out of an enduring patience against opposition and oppression. Patience. He says that we call “blessed” those who managed to stick with it to the end, those who persevered like Job. Perseverance. Jesus tells us that marriage is more than a convenient social relationship based on mutual attraction for the other’s cool stuff. It is a permanent bond, two becoming one flesh, a bond made by God that cannot be put aside. Permanence.

There are two pieces of Good News today. The first is that the Lord is compassionate and merciful. The second is that our Yes and our No will mean precisely that when given in the spirit of patience, perseverance, and permanence that James and Jesus preach.

Against the vanities of the age, this age of disposal relationships, Instant Message Marriages, and quickie “hook-ups,” our Yes and No in Christ witnesses to the truth of the existence of the absolute, the universal, the enduring, the permanent, and the unambiguous. Our Yes and No in Christ stands as testimony to the possibilities and the power of surrender, sacrifice, and emptying out to be filled again with the Spirit. The mercy and compassion of God toward us and with us and through us transform our daily commitments into gifts of service, gifts of patience and, yes, oftentimes, into gifts of trial and grief. But it is precisely because we have said Yes and No in Christ that these trials will not always be trails and grief will not always be grief.

We have seen the purpose of the Lord: our life in the Kingdom right now and our life with Him eternally.

Sure, we have all played some role or another in the longest running farce in human history—the script plotted to make us believe that we can act without commitment, without consequence, free from all moral evaluation. Our Yes and No in Christ has closed that show. Demolished the theatre. We play on a new stage now in a play directed by the mercy and compassion of the Lord.

Risking against the impossible

7th Week OT (M): James 3.13-18; Mark 9.14-29
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Not a very impressive exorcism. Great show before the main event though: foaming at the mouth, gnashing of teeth, flailing about. But not a very impressive exorcism. A simple command made in faith through prayer, a few more jerks and shouts, and, “It came out.” Done. No twisty head, no spewing split-pea soup, no cryptic messages pressed against the flesh from inside the boy’s body, no rattling off quotes from long-forgotten texts in longer-forgotten languages. Not impressive at all. Boring, in fact.

I wonder why Jesus bothered. He had a great crowd gathered. According to Mark the crowd was growing by the second. Jesus has time for a few loud supplications to the Father, time for a couple of florid thanksgivings and elaborate praises. He even had time for a quick garment-rending and maybe a dramatic fall to his knees (if he hurried). He had more than enough time to tap up the drama, to milk the crowd, to show off and make a point. But he didn’t. Instead, upon seeing the rapidly growing crowd, he concluded the real drama of this scene and cast out the demon tormenting the boy. What was the real drama? The Father’s struggle with belief and unbelief.

You can almost see the distress on the father’s face. There’s torment there and love and a sort of dreadful hope, the kind of hope that one needs to feel in order to keep going, but at the same time the kind that is often broken against the impossible, too often made into a lie by the improbable. Just imagine that barely above a whisper, the father, with great reluctance and equally powerful expectation, says to Jesus, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And then there is that long moment between giving his hope words, the long wait between expressing his trust in the power of a stranger and the stranger’s answer, “’If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Is it relief? Or joy? Or more desperation? The father cries out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” Wise man. He understands that his unbelief is at the root of his often dashed hope. And he understands that it is his belief that will give that hope healing power.

“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom.” James could be writing about the father of the demon possessed boy. The drama of his admission of faithfulness, of belief, to Jesus (I do believe!) and then his plea for help, his admission of faithlessness, of unbelief, (Help my unbelief!) is wisdom. This is an act of true humility, a confession of total trust now and a confession of debilitating doubt then, a historic doubt that daily killed his hope. The fruit of his righteous belief sows peace for himself and his son.

The boy’s father makes a humble admission in wisdom: “I trust you, heal my distrust.” And Jesus works with this prayer to cast out the demon. Like this father’s faith, our faith is never about quantity, about having “enough faith.” We don’t “have faith” in the way that we “have money.” Faith is the habit of trusting God to do what He says He will do. Our faith, our habit of trust in God, can be measured in depth, strength, endurance, or sincerity, but never quantity. Nor will we often find our faith on stage, at the center of a drama, and so publicly tested. But there is in us a virtue, a habit of being, that makes it possible for us to reach out to God and say without fear, “I believe, Lord!” and confess without fear, “Help my unbelief!” This is wisdom from above, full of mercy and good fruits.

The drama of our faith is the risk we take when we hope against the impossible.

I am doing something new...

7th Sunday OT: Isa 43.18-19, 21-22, 24-35; 2 Cor 1.18-22; Mark 2.1-12
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

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The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. The Lord is bringing us fresh water, good food, cheerful company. And we, well, we bring flat sodas, stale bread, and stingy, griping hearts. The Lord laughs and we cry. The Lord forgives and we nurse our wounds. OK! We’re not that bad, but I’m making a point: it is Who God Is to bring in, to make welcome, to spread abundance, to forgive offenses, to make well, induce joy, persuade to repentance, and to reconcile. It is Who God Is to send out over and over and over again the summons for us to come back to Him, to return to His family, and rest in His abundant love and grace. Like the man paralyzed, we can be made sick by sin, paralyzed—spiritually—with fear, anxiety, self-loathing, and a nearly insatiable longing for forgiveness. And like the paralyzed man, we can be healed. But do we (do you?) want it? Do you want to be healed?

The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. The Lord is healing the sick—the leper, the man born blind, the man born deaf and unable to speak—; he’s tossing demons out of long-possessed souls, freeing them from the grip of the Evil One; he’s teaching his law of love and his law of mercy to his students and the crowds; and he’s standing there and here, hand out, waiting, waiting, waiting for them, for you, me, for us to take it and get well. To be reconciled, made whole again. Do we (do you?) want to be healed? What possesses us and prevents us from the simple act of reaching back, taking Jesus’ hand, and making all things right again?

The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. The paralyzed man, lowered from the ceiling, is not hoping to be given the freedom of his arms and legs again. There is no guesswork there at all. He knows his healing is in reach. He knows his freedom, his recovery is right there in the person of Jesus Christ. The wiping away of his sin, the washing clean of his spirit is just inches away. And he knows that he will rise, pick up his mat, and walk home. The scribes doubt; they fidget and worry, murmur and twitch about the alleged blasphemy, the seemingly outrageous claim of Jesus to heal by forgiving sins. But they end up astounded; they end up glorifying God, and saying with everyone else: “We have never seen anything like this.” Their doubt is banished by undeniable evidence. What prevents us (you?) from reaching back to Jesus for healing, for forgiveness?

The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. One very harmful “same old thing” that we keep doing over and over is believing that we can come to good spiritual health on our own. We can work at prayer hard enough, labor away at fasting and abstinence long enough, plug away at fighting temptation, engaging in spiritual warfare, and building up enough credit with God over time that we can cash it all in and buy some grace, purchase for ourselves a little piece of divine real estate. Maybe turn away the Lord’s anger with a neat little gift of holy work. Yea. Good luck with that.

Let’s be perfectly clear: the battle against sin and death is over. We won. There is no battle to fight. To war to wage. There is no work left to do. Jesus won the last battle on the Cross. Sin and death are dead. We are free. That we continue to sin results from the exercise of that freedom; its abuse. The right use of our freedom enslaves us to God’s will and yanks us gleefully to the Father to do His holy work for others. Our Father’s love cannot be earned; it cannot be bought; it cannot be begged or threatened or negotiated for. How can it? It is ours already. Freely given on the altar of the Cross. Freely given on this altar of sacrifice. Why would it ever occur to us (to you?) to kill ourselves working to pay of something that is not only free but ours (yours) already?!

The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. Another harmful “same old thing” we do is cling to our sins once they are absolved. We mull them over, worry about them, fret that maybe, just maybe the Lord missed one, or that I didn’t really feel sorry enough for that one, so it’s still there. Sins forgiven are sins forgotten. Let them go. No one cured of cancer fondly remembers the tumor. So, why do we cling to our sins once they are forgiven? There is a appropriate sense of guilt at work here. Good people feel guilty about sinning. Good, they should. It means they are fundamentally good people and not sociopaths. But completing the assigned penance is enough. You are forgiven. Now forget and rejoice in your victory! If you won’t hear me, hear what the Lord said to us through Isaiah: “You burdened me with your sins, and wearied me with your crimes. It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” Your sins I remember no more.

The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. OK. You’ve had some time to think about it: what prevent us (you?) from reaching back to Jesus, from laying claim to the freedom of the Cross, from going to confession? No doubt it’s different for everyone, but my guess is that it is b/c the sacrament of reconciliation not only requires confession of sins, contrition, and penance, it also requires repentance, conversion of heart and mind and the resolve to sin no more. Conversion is the hardest thing we do as Christians. Conversion means taking a hard look at our lives from God’s view. Making a clear, honest assessment of where we are with God, where we’re going, and saying with some integrity: “I’m stuck. And I’m stuck b/c my sin is weighing me down.” The grace to move toward the sacrament, the spiritual energy (if you will) is provided by the Holy Spirit. If you feel moved, prompted to confess—do it! The Holy Spirit is thumping you on the head and saying, “What are you waiting for? Your sins are forgiven. Go claim your victory in the sacrament! I have work for you to do and you’re just sitting there stuck.”

Our Lord’s invitation to live with Him forever is open-ended. Always there, always new and fresh. The victory against sin is won. That battle is over. We just have to claim the victory, reach back to Christ through his church, name our sins, ask for forgiveness and feel the freedom of a white-washed soul, a pristine spirit, ready for doing the Lord’s work in the world. The Lord is doing something new. Always new. And we, well, we keep doing the same old things over and over again. But we don’t have to—we are freed from destructive routine, habitual sin, malicious memories of our past, the compulsive need to earn mercy, and the reluctance to face our sin and ask for absolution.

We are free. We are healed.

Rise! Pick up your mat! And come home!

How do you train to die on a cross?

6th Week OT: James 2.14-24, 26; Mark 8.34-9.1
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club & Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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To become a doctor, you major in something like biology or chemistry, go to med school, do your internship, and practice, practice, practice. To be a lawyer, you major in something like history or philosophy, go to law school, and practice, practice, practice. To be an English professor, you major in English, go to grad school, write a dissertation on a literary figure or genre, and you practice, practice, practice. And so on. Every profession, every career path, and job available to us has similar components: a desire to be or to do this or that, a period of learning, maybe a period on hands-on training, and then the actual practice of the profession, the performance of the job.

So, how do you train to die on a cross?

If we want to come after Jesus, that is, if we want to pick up the work he was doing then and continue on with it now, we need to be ready to be consumed by the effort—the first work of the Gospel is the work of saving our lives from pointless spiritual labor, from uselessly exerting ourselves on a religious treadmill, an exercise machine that tones but does not travel. We’re not summoned with the disciples and the crowd to hear Jesus say, “Piddle away your lives striving for vague spiritual wellness, contentless religious comfort, and your own personal revelation of Deity.”

Jesus tells his students and the crowd he has summoned that if they will come after him, take up his work, they will commit themselves wholly to the work of the Way, give themselves over to the best and worst of the job, even to the point of giving their lives for his sake. They will put aside every want, every entitlement, every privilege. They will put aside any priority, any demand, any claim. They will “do the faith,” lose their lives along the Way, and find themselves most alive, most profitable, most blessed.

So, how do you train to die on a cross? Practice, practice, practice.

Our lives in the gospel must be more than ritualized exercises of piety, of observance. There’s every benefit to devotional prayer, fasting and abstinence, and sacred reading. But where do these take you? Where do you go with these? Jesus warns his students and the gathered crowd that they are taking up a cross that will bear them to the end, to their end, with him in both terrible suffering and glorious resurrection. They are preparing themselves for the ultimate forfeit, the final exchange of expending their lives in the labor of spreading the gospel. Jesus isn’t telling them that they will best be about his work when they gather together in conferences to dialogue and process. Unless dialogue and process concludes concretely in the faithful witness to the truth of the gospel he taught us. Unless it ends in the doing of his work. He isn’t teaching them that his cross is lightly carried in the pious imitation of a favorite saint or in the recitation of affectionate prayers. Unless, of course, these conclude in doing his work, by doing that which will threaten one’s settled life.

We are to turn away from what eases us into a false security. Our security is the trust we place in the Lord. We are to pick up that which will kill us in the end: our loyalty to the gospel, our allegiance to Christ First. We are to follow him on the Way, to the Cross, through death, to life everlasting.

It is not enough to believe, to process, to gather, to pray, to read, to be pious. Our faith is done. Worked at. It is a labor. We cannot be ashamed to do the faith as strongly and as energetically as we believe it: what would you do in exchange for your life?

What's to understand?

6th Week OT (Tues): James 1.12-18; Mark 8.14-21
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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What’s to understand?! What is there for the disciples to understand? Taking almost nothing—a few fish and loaves—and increasing it to an abundance—enough for thousands—, Jesus shows, literally shows, the disciples what he is all about: growing the meager into the plenty, spreading a little around until it becomes a whole lot more. The disciples don’t grasp what Jesus is trying to teach them about the blessing and abundance of the Father, about the proper disposition of the heart to see and hear how the Word works in the world.

Jesus warns them not to allow the “leaven,” the negative influences, of the Pharisees and of Herod to poison their thinking about what they have heard and seen. The disciples take this to be an admonishment about forgetting to bring some bread along on their boat ride. You can almost see Jesus rolling his eyes and barely restraining himself from slapping the nearest disciple! He says, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?” What’s to understand?! And why don’t they get it?

At least part of what’s going on with the disciples is that they are being tempted by the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. And who isn’t? The Pharisees are swallowed in procedure, scrupulously cataloging their behavior and comparing it to the perfection they believe the Law represents. They demand signs from Jesus because they are unable to bring themselves to believe beyond the available evidence and experience the workings of the Holy Spirit. Where the Pharisees reject Jesus with a kind of anxious longing for proof, Herod simply mocks Jesus, thinking of him as John the Baptist risen from the dead to haunt him. The Pharisees needle Jesus constantly for proof of his Sonship. Herod is a politically motivated skeptic. And Jesus is warning the disciples that both these attitudes toward the blessing and abundance of the Father are dangerous. Deadly dangerous.

Jesus questions the disciples to make sure they remember what they saw and heard when he fed the thousands. They answer correctly and Jesus concludes: “Do you still not understand?” What’s to understand!? With a heart settled squarely in the covenant, resting peacefully in the revelation of grace that Christ is for us, there is little to understand but the generous abundance of the Father’s mercy for us, the plenty of His goodness freely given and freely taken.

Perhaps we, like the disciples, mistake Jesus’ teachings for arguments. Or maybe we mistake his miracles for attempts at proof of his identity. Perhaps, like the disciples, we long for more concrete demonstrations, more “real” evidence, of who Jesus claims to be and the truth of what he teaches. Trust that requires proof is not trust. Hope that demands a guarantee is not hope. This is where we must step off into the beauty of the Lord, his revelation of himself to us, and trust and hope, and to believe and to be convicted of the truth without reference to Another, without looking away from him to some other “ism,” some other, more basic philosophy or scheme.

We trust a man not an idea. We believe in the blessing and abundance of the Father not a human, merely social system. What’s to understand?! James writes, “He willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” Do you understand: we are the blessing and the abundance of the Father!

Wizards? Professors? Witnesses!

6th Sunday OT: Lev 13.1-2, 44-46; 1 Cor 10.31-11.1; Mark 1.40-45
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX and Church of the Incarnation

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What sort of witness is Jesus teaching us to be?

Jesus is spending a great deal of time healing the sick, preaching to the crowds, teaching his favored disciples, driving out demons. And he is spending a great deal of time telling people to be quiet about what he is doing and who he is. Remarkably so, among the first to witness to Jesus’ divine Sonship are the demons, the unclean spirits who bellow out his identity: “We know who you are: the Holy One of God!” Jesus silences them with a word. The men and women Jesus makes new with his healing touch also bear witness to who he is. And he sternly orders them to silence as well. For all the good it does! What sort of witness does Jesus want us to be?

Jesus seems driven by the need to show us who he really is and at the same time restrained by a need for secrecy, for silence. Let me suggest that the reason for this terrible tension is prophetic, that is, the tension is there so that it might be played out in our witness now, in the charge we have been given to be the prophetic bearers of the Word, voices for the Good News.

Think about it: if Jesus had come to us like a Dungeons and Dragons Wizard, throwing fireballs, casting spells, riding giant eagles to fight the demons, we would have had a fantastic show, a brilliant demonstration of raw, unearthly power. Now that would be an event to witness to! But don’t you think that this sort of theatre would have to be repeated again and again? Repeated to the point that it became nothing but a show? What Jesus is trying to teach—the Good News of our salvation—would be so easily overshadowed by the sparkle, the smoke, the glittering mirrors. What would we see? The God-man dying for our eternal life? Or some sort of weird version of David Copperfield, dying horribly on the cross, and then snapping back to life and inviting us to the ten o’clock show?

Or, if he had come to us as a staid philosopher. With tweed jacket, pipe, bad graying comb-over, Jesus gathers a crowd of over-educated, middle-class egghead wanna-bes and spends one afternoon a week expounding on the Christological taxonomies of the Hebrew prophetic witness and deconstructing the meta-narrative prejudices of a bourgeois modernist cultural hegemony that insists taxonomies adequately sign “reality.” But don’t you think that this sort of theatre would have to be repeated again and again? What Jesus is trying to teach—the Good News of our salvation—would be so easily smothered by pretentious academic jargon, superficial ideological fantasy, and the always tempting intellectual moves: make it all just about symbol or just about history or just about myth.

I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.

Jesus’ public ministry in Mark’s gospel looks confused because Jesus doesn’t want us to see him as a magician, a wizard out to build a fan base. He doesn’t want us to see him as a philosopher in the classical Greek tradition, a man of High Reason, logic, and impeccable pagan virtue. Jesus wants us to see him. Him, as is. Fully God, fully man. Capable of claiming his Father’s power to re-create the perfection of human health, to make right the wrong of sin, to bring back from the edge of total, soulless darkness the soul that reaches out, that needs saving. Jesus wants us to see him as he is: as a man with limits—a need for rest, food, companionship, love, solitude AND as God—He Who rests in our hearts as the engine of our covenant; Who feeds us the food and drink of heaven; Who is with us always as friend and Father; Who loves us without limit, without prejudice, loves us to repentance; and the One Who is here even in our solitude, the One Who fills our longing and loneliness with immaculate mercy, perfectly refined joy.

I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.

Jesus Christ is a man we can witness for. Jesus Christ is God whose Word we can bear, whose promises we can shout about. We can be witnesses who tell stories of healing, stories of radical mercy and forgiveness, stories of unexpected grace and enlightenment. You can see and hear the gospel. You can train your mind to think with the Church, your heart to beat with the saints, and your voice to proclaim the always re-creating Word.

Paul asks the Corinthians to imitate him as he imitates Christ. We cannot all live in the circus, being showman for Jesus. Nor can we all live in the university, being bookish geeks for the Lord. But we can know and love and talk about the Jesus of this gospel. The God-Man who touches diseases and heals, who touches a disposable outcast and makes him family again. The God-man who seeks out a little solitude to recharge, to recover from the hard work of being a preacher of the Good News to Word-starved crowds.

You can be a witness for Christ by imitating Christ: speak a word of healing, of peace, of charity wherever you find yourself. Shine out joy! Tell the truth about our redemption in Christ: he died for us so that when we confess our sins, repent of them and do penance, we are able to receive God’s forgiveness as freed men and women, and then put that forgiveness to use as healthy food for our growth in holiness. You can be a witness for Christ by doing everything you do for the greater glory of God, by not seeking first your own benefit but the benefit of others, and always, always telling the truth of the faith.

Jesus seems restrained by a need for secrecy and silence. Are we restrained in our witness as well by secrecy and the need for silence? Do we contain our witness as a private matter, a personal religious thing that we practice alone? Maybe there is a spirit of shame or embarrassment gagging your witness? Or maybe a spirit of intellectual pride or fear of ridicule? Maybe you have been bitten by the All-Religions-Are-Basically-the-Same bug and think that witnessing to Christ is somehow intolerant of religious diversity or unnecessarily provocative. Or perhaps your witness has been silenced by the anger and spite of dissenters within the Church. Regardless—literally, without regard to any these or for any these—you approach this altar today/tonight to take into your body the Body and Blood of Christ, the One Who died for you, the One who reached out across creation as the breath of life over the void and touched you; touches you, heals you.

Go. Show yourself to the World, to the Church, and offer as your witness the cleansing that Jesus Christ has accomplished in you. Spread it abroad. And keep coming back and keep going out.

I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.

Be opened! And be quiet about it!

5th Week OT(Fri): 1 Kings 11.29-32; Mark 7.31-37
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP

Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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NB. My thanks to my Dominican brother, Fr. J.D. Logan, OP, for pointing out to me my gospel confusion. I conflated two miracle accounts: the healing of the man born blind and the healing of the man born deaf and unable to speak. The text has been corrected.

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What is Jesus doing? Running around the countryside healing disease, throwing demons out of the possessed, teaching crazy stuff to crowds of hungry folks, running for the hills when those same crowds press him too closely or threaten his peace. He is booed and hissed in his own hometown. He walks on water. He declares all foods clean. He produces a feast for more than five thousand by blessing what little they had to eat. And now, today, he takes off by himself a man unable to speak, unable to hear and frees him from his silence. What is Jesus doing?

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in their document on divine revelation, Dei verbum, definitively teach that: “To see Jesus is to see the Father.” This is what Jesus is doing: he is being God. And because he is God he has “perfected revelation by fulfilling [revelation] through his whole work of making himself present and manifesting Himself: through His word and deeds, His signs and wonders […]”(DV 4). So, if Jesus is God (and he is) and if he has perfected the revelation of his Father to us (and he has), then why does he tell the man he has just healed to be quiet about the miracle? Why not charge him with the task of the apostles: go out shouting the good news, go out yelling about the advent of the Messiah!

Jesus is not trying to keep the Good News a secret. If he were, he would heal no one. He would have no disciples to teach privately and charge with evangelization. Nor is he trying to establish a mega-church following. He wouldn’t bother seeking out the solitude of the deserted places and the slow, calming distance of the sea, if he were. He would be front and center. He would be the hub of doubt-killing miracles around which the sick, the possessed, and the lost would spin. Instead, he says, “Be quiet about this miracle. Tell no one you have been made new.” The miracle reveals the gospel. Silence reveals the way that gospel is heard.

Jesus is not preaching a gospel of showmanship antics or celebrity stunts. He is not gathering together the multitudes to wow them with gimmicky, magical tricks. He is revealing the Father, perfecting God’s Self-communication to us, for us. And for us that revelation can be the measured flowering of recognition or the breath-stealing thunderclap of immediate awareness. It can settle into us over time. Or lay waste to every obstacle to trust instantaneously. We each hear silence with our own ears.

Magical showmanship might titillate our fleeting curiosity, but what can be revealed to us in a rush of apparent tricks (even if they aren’t tricks!)? That this man Jesus has divine power? Sure. But does that instill faith and trust or does it instill envy, ambition, or perhaps even ridicule. Likewise, the failure to demonstrate a divine connection, the failure to reveal through the miraculous something of the authority of the Father, that would leave those hungry for spiritual food hungrier and more dis-eased than before. Perhaps the claim of divine authority is best assented to when it can be miraculously demonstrated?

What is Jesus doing? He is being God. The miraculous healing of the man born unable to hear or speak reveals the gospel. The silence Jesus wants reveals the way that gospel is heard and attended to and spread: “He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.”

This isn’t disobedience. It is true obedience. Hearing, listening, and complying: “Be opened!”

Defilement from within...

5th Week OT: 1 Kings 10.1-10; Mark 7.14-23
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

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Sin rises from our center, from our heart. Its seed is planted and nourished in the place of covenant, the place where we withdraw to rest in solitude with our Lord. Sin is the powerful enemy of holiness precisely because it sprouts so aggressively from “the dwelling-place where [we are], where [we] live”(CCC 2563). A heart choked with the weeds of sin beats less vigorously for righteousness, shrinks more quickly from the duties of mercy, and dies more quickly from one failure of charity after another.

Jesus teaches his students, “From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery […] All these evils come from within and they defile.” He had just finished telling the disciples that defilement, impurity does not come from what we put into our bodies, but rather from what comes out! Parenthetically, literally “with parentheses,” the NAB notes: “Thus he declared all foods clean.” But this is not so much a declaration of freedom from the purity laws regarding food as it is a declaration of moral, spiritual adulthood for his followers. A declaration with serious responsibilities.

Please note what Jesus is not doing here: he is not freeing his disciples from the obligations of the heart, meaning, he is not removing from them the God-placed hook that relentlessly reels them back to the Father. He is not abandoning the very notion of sin itself as his ancestors understood it. Sin is still disobedience and rebellion against the divine and natural order, the habitual failure to listen to and to comply with those truths revealed to us by God and those known to us by reason. And, finally, Jesus is not teaching his disciples (and us!) that we may abandon the basic precepts of the Law in favor of some sort of merely affective notion of moral behavior, in favor of some sort of modern therapeutic fetishes like “integrity” or “wellness” or “maturity.”

What Jesus is voiding is the “traditions of men” that have attached themselves to the Law. The most basic goods revealed to us by God—the Law—had become layered with interpretation, thick with commentary, nearly suffocated with picayune hairsplitting and ritual observance. Jesus simply cuts to the quick, as he often did, with an earthquake, a thunderclap: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person […]” Boom! Layers of regulation slide away and the heart of the matter is left open and clean.

We are not made unclean from anything we can take in. Sin is the mindful disobedience of the mature heart, the unsettling, the dis-easing of the seat of our covenant by what we do and why. Sin is not accidental. It is not done in ignorance. Sin is the failure to grow in holiness, the failure to make the best use of our freedom by serving one another for the greater glory of God. Jesus is painfully clear in announcing the foundational tenet of his mature spirituality: “[…] the things that come from within are what defile.”

An adolescent spirituality demands the hard, mathematically precise laws of personal and public behavior. An adolescent spirituality will also demand, as a matter of “being an adult,” total freedom from any law. A mature spirituality will bring us to settle peacefully into an easily regulated life, a life aligned with the Goods God has revealed to us and the ends of our natural order. A mature spirituality will recognize the Law at its root, at its most basic as a definitive expression of the truth, goodness, and beauty that God Is. And that true cleanliness, to be clean, is to pursue holiness with abandon, with reckless surrender, to give over wholly and free our hearts and minds, our center, our souls to Christ.

What Purpose do you serve?

5th Sunday OT: Job 7.1-4, 6-7; 1 Cor 9.16-19, 22-23; Mark 1.29-39
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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Everything is lost. Nothing really lives here. There is no light, no life, no hope of being found. There is work with no purpose. Movement toward no end. Day, then night, then day again. No meaning. Pointless striving. Unraveling hours of nothing at all. Sleep brings no rest. Work never tires. It won’t end soon enough. Or, too soon. Like an exhausted wind weakly blowing dust. Sigh. Job is not a happy man. He’s learned that his life of blessing and prosperity is very easily washed away. Troubled nights. Restlessness ‘til dawn. His life like a wind. Never to see happiness again. Job has lost his faith. And with it his humility and his gratitude. Self-pity and anger are not the seeds of blessing. So, he will be hopeless, restless, and sleepless until he finds again a purpose bigger than his small dreams, his little dramas of success.

We read tonight that Jesus and Paul know their purpose. And they know happiness in knowing their purpose. What makes you happy? What Purpose do you serve?

Isn’t it easier getting out of bed in the morning knowing you have a purpose, knowing you have a goal to achieve, a To Do List for your life that needs some work? Isn't it easier making it to work or class or the next thing on the list knowing that your attention, energy, labor, and time will be focused on completing a mission, on getting something done? With the time we have and the talents given to us, don’t we prefer to see constructive and profitable outcomes? Even when we’re being a bit lazy, wasting a little time doing much of nothing, we have it in the back of our mind to get busy, to get going on something, checking that next thing on the list and moving toward a goal. It’s how we are made. It’s how we live in the world.

Paul writes to the Corinthians: “If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation have been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!” Paul has been given an end, a goal, a purpose beyond mere survival, beyond merely getting along. Having been smacked around by the Lord for persecuting the Church, Paul finds himself ordered to a regime of holiness, a kingdom of righteousness, that demands more than rule-following, more than simply showing up and breathing the temple air. Paul must preach. He must travel city to city, province to province, publicly witnessing to his repentance, to the power of Christ’s mercy.

Paul’s sleep is restful. His work exhausts him. He is a slave whose labor is never drudgery, never pointless. His end, his purpose is Jesus Christ, the telling again and again of his story, his bruising encounter with the man of love. And offering to anyone who will open their eyes to see and their ears to hear, offering to them the same restfulness, the same pleasing exhaustion, the same intense focus of a purpose driven by the need to proclaim Christ.

Jesus, doing his best to find a little time away from the crowds, responds responsibly when Simon and other disciples find him and say, “Everyone is looking for you.” Jesus, pursued, literally, by his purpose says, “Let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” Soon he will look out over the vast crowd and, moved by compassion, teach them many things. Now, nearly exhausted himself, he takes his students out again to preach and teach the Good News. It is his purpose—to show those hungry for God that God does indeed rule, that He holds dominion here, over all creation—heaven and earth, human and devil—and that healing flows from faith, light always overcomes darkness, and that evil, no matter how much ahead in the race, has already lost.

Job has lost his purpose and dwells in an anxious darkness. Paul is driven by his need to witness. Jesus reveals His Father’s kingdom—healing, driving out demons, preaching. Job recovers his purpose when the Lord dramatically reminds him who is God and who is creature, Who Is Purpose Himself and who has a purpose. Paul runs his preaching into every town he crosses, proclaiming the Word, setting up houses of prayer, and leaving behind men and women strong in the faith. Jesus moves inexorably toward the Cross, his work for the Way along the way reveals again and again the always, already present victory of Life over Death, freedom over slavery, final success over endless failure.

What goals do you serve? Why do you get up in the morning? What meaning does your work, your play have for you? Who are you in light of what you have promised to be and do? What makes you happy? Where do you find joy? Lots of questions! But all of these are really just one question: what is your purpose?

You have a given purpose and a chosen purpose. Your given purpose is dyed into your flesh, pressed through into your bones; it is a God-placed hook in your heart, a hook that tugs you relentlessly back to God, back to His perfecting goodness. Your chosen purpose is how you choose to live out day-to-day your given purpose, how you have figured out how to make it back to God. Student, mother, professor, virgin, priest, monk, artist, poet, engineer, athlete, clerk, scientist, father, nurse, dentist. When your chosen purpose best reveals your given purpose, when what you have chosen to do helps who you are given to be flourish, your anxiety finds trust, your sleeplessness finds rest, your despair finds joy. And you can say with Paul: “All this I do for the sake of the gospel,”—heal, study, pray, minister, write, research, teach, drive, build, all this I do for the gospel—“so that I too may have a share in it.”

What Purpose do you serve? I mean, when you work, when you study and teach and play, toward what end do you reach? What goal seduces you forward, pulls you to the finish line? Surely for us, all of us here tonight, that purpose is Jesus Christ. Our goal is his friendship, his love. And our goal is his witness, our telling of his Good News. We can waddle around in the darkness of sin, bumping around blind, reaching for what’s never there. We can wail into the wind like Job, moaning about the meaninglessness of life, the pointlessness of our daily striving. We can even refuse happiness, refuse to see that we have a given purpose. But you will find your release and your license, your freedom and your choice when you make yourself a slave to all, when you make yourself all things to all, to save at least some.

Like Paul, a trusted steward, a faithful child, preach the gospel. Live it right where you are. Make it your reason for getting out of bed, for going to work, for making it to class. Make it who you are, what you do, and everything you ever will become.

Everyone is looking for you. For what purpose do you live?

Misericordia veritatis

4th Week OT (Sat): 1 Kings 3.4-13; Mark 6.30-34
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

Hear it!

Compassion moves Jesus to teach the crowd. Not a need for attention, a hunger for the adulation or the warmth of the spotlight. It is his love for them that compels him to stay a little longer to teach, to go one more hour to show them the Way. He looks out over them and sees clearly the reason for his time among them: they are sheep without a shepherd, hungry souls needing the solid food of truth and compassion. And so, he stays to teach them many things. And they stay to be taught.

What does it take to teach and what does it take to be taught? More specifically, what does it take to teach the faith and what does it take to be taught the faith? Maybe there’s even a more basic question here that needs to be asked and answered first: why is it even necessary to teach and to be taught the faith? Why can’t we be solitary learners? Individual souls seeking truth? Captains for our own exploratory faith-vessels?

There is an element of individual effort in learning the faith, of course, some sense of being the unique soul seeking out the Face of God in order to better reveal Him to others. But my question is more about the nature of the faith itself than it is about the comparative effectiveness of diverse learning styles. The nature of our faith requires that it be taught. We can come to trust God without being told to, without being tested by a professor. But can we come to the fullest possible understanding of what that trust means for us without authoritative instruction, without the experienced witness of a teacher to poke, prod, stir-up, and direct?

As a shared trust in God, a witness passed on and handed down, our faith is not simply about feeling a connection with the Divine, not merely an affective jolt or glowy attraction to Something Transcendent. We trust a person, Jesus Christ. Not an idea. We have faith in the Son our Father sent to teach us. Not a system of principles or some sort of cabbalistic academic jig-saw puzzle.

Dominicans are committed to teaching misericordia veritatis, the compassion of truth. This is the mercy that the truth reveals, the compassion evident in exposing the truth. And we do this best as a fraternity, as an Order of Preachers. Not as singular friars motivated by academic incentive or the lure of the spotlight, but as a family committed to God’s Self-revelation in scripture, in His creation, and in the unique person of Jesus Christ.

As teachers of the faith, all of us must come to both the content of revelation and its subjective affect with the humility that true compassion requires. It is not enough to rehearse publicly propositional declarations of the faith. Nor is it enough to gather together and vigorously emote. The fullest possible understanding of the faith comes when we obey—listen to—what has been handed on to us and when we experience personally, run into, the man, Jesus Christ—in one another, the Church; in the memorial of his sacrifice for us, the Eucharist; and as living witnesses to his compassion.

To teach the faith is to show godly pity, mercy, to those starving for the truth of Christ. To be taught, to be a disciple, is to tame pride long enough to admit a basic ignorance and the need for instruction.

The crowd followed Jesus to a deserted place and with compassion he taught them many things. We, his students, his apostles, can do no less.