Telling us what we need to remember

6Th Week of Easter 2006 (M): Acts 16.11-15, John 15.26-16.4
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m telling you this secret so that you will think I am important and you will admire me. No, that’s not right. I’m telling you this secret so that you will repeat it and look like an idiot in front of others. No. Got it! How’s this: I’m telling you this secret so that when our enemies come for you you will remember both the secret and my willingness to share it with you and both will comfort you and give you strength.

Jesus has been very busy these last few days, sharing secrets with the disciples, telling them important things so that they will know who and what he is and remember who and what he is after he is gone and the real trouble with the Powers That Be begins. Jesus tells the disciples that there is no greater love than to die for a friend. He tells them that no slave is greater than his master. He tells them everything the Father has told him so that they may know joy and know it completely. And now, this morning, he tells them that he will send from the Father an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to testify to him and this Spirit of Truth will help his disciples to testify to him as well. Why? So that they may not fall away when they are booted out of the synagogues and killed as offerings to God.

Here’s what Jesus knows all too well: that the good news of salvation he preaches is possible only b/c he and the Father are one and b/c he will suffer, die, and rise again to bring that good news to its perfection. Those who fear this playing out of history fear him and his task b/c they do not know him nor do they know the Son. To bear witness to the Father and the Son with the spirited help of the Advocate is the principal job of those Jesus leaves behind And so, Jesus says to them: “I have told you this so that when your hour comes you may remember that I told you.”

All that the disciples remember of the Lord, everything he told them, taught them, showed them, everything he left with them is touched by the Spirit of Truth and is now our history, our back-story and the foundation stone of a faithful memory that not only comforts us in trial but pushes us out there to serve and witness, to be useful to our world as a people freed from sin and turned to love.

Watching this nation’s culture we are tempted to despair—our Enlightenment liberal democracy has become an Orwellian babysitter state! But here’s what we must remember: history trumps culture, salvation history trumps particular culture everytime; in other words, in the hearts and minds of the Christian witness living in the world, what matters is the memory passed on, the memory, the testimony of our creation, our fall, God’s faithfulness in calling us back to Him, our failures to hear his voice, His scandalous incarnation as Jesus Christ, and his even more scandalous death and resurrection for us.

This is what we must remember in a culture with a may-fly memory and an insatiable appetite for unruled passion: the Spirit of Truth is with us not to make us citizens better than most or enlightened souls suffering the flesh or self-righteous prigs driven to moralism; no, the Spirit of Truth is with us so that the history of our salvation, the memory of who and what is Jesus Christ is to us and for us might live in us and so that when we speak his word of mercy, his word of love, that Word crashes into the world as so obviously True and Right that no one may deny it.

Our witness to Christ in the world is our memory, handed on. And it cannot be a secret left untold.

Ridiculous Commandment

6th Sunday of Easter 2006
Acts 10.25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4.7-10; John 15.9-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX


Jesus concludes this farewell in John with a simple enough admonition: “This I command you: love one another.” He has called his disciples friends and told them everything that he has heard from His Father. He’s told them that they are the chosen not the choosers. And he’s admonished them to bear fruit and ask of the Father what they need. Can’t you see the disciples sitting there with him, wide-eyed, expecting another astonishing revelation, some thundering pronouncement on the nature of divinity or redemption or the end times. And what does he say? He commands them to love one another! Uh? Love one another? Sure. Says you. You’re God. You are Love. Loving is what You do b/c Love is Who You Are. Not so easy for us poor creatures. Have you looked at these people you want us to love? Have you talked to them?! Do you know what you’re asking?

Ah. You see, there’s the problem: he isn’t asking us to love one another. He’s commanding us to love one another. And the difference between asking and commanding tells us all we need to know about the nature of Christian love, of charity in the Spirit.

Jesus says to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” How does the Father love the Son? The Father and the Son love one another absolutely, unconditionally, without prejudice or complaint. They are One in the love that is the Holy Spirit. And Jesus loves us in exactly this way: completely, categorically, without reservation or criticism. When we keep his commandments, we too remain in his love, we too are One with Him in the love that is the Holy Spirit. So, Jesus commands us to love one another, commands us to live day-to-day in the love of the Blessed Trinity.

Why? Why does Jesus command us to love one another? On the face of it, it is a ridiculous command. Love cannot be commanded. It can be encouraged or exhorted or reciprocated or found. But commanded? How can a passion be commanded? You either love or you don’t. Simply put: love can be commanded, ordered when we understand that love is also about acting, willing the good for another.

Love is not just a passion; it is also the movement of the body and soul toward goodness for another, a movement of the body and soul toward needing the best for others, wanting deeply what is right and true for your neighbors. If we limit love to the smallness of a cuddly tingling in our bellies, make it into little more than a physical reaction to physical attraction, we make it impossible to obey Christ; essentially, we make it impossible for us to know and live joy. Think about it: if love is only about the passion we have for those we find attractive, then we cannot love one another in the way that the Father loves the Son nor in the way that the Son loves us. We fail in joy.

Jesus tells his disciples outright: if you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. He explains: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” The commandment to love is a revelation, it reveals to us and for us the way to perfected joy, our means of achieving finished delight, total peace. To fail in joy, then, is spiritual suicide; it is the death of our peace, the impossibility of ever finding delight in the Lord—to fail in joy is to fail to love.

Ask yourself: how do I fail to love? When do I simply refuse to will the good, refuse to move body and soul toward others in mercy? When do I narrow my love to immediate family, friends and fail to emulate the Father’s love for His Son by failing to love effusively even the apparently unlovable? Who is it that I cannot love, will not love? Who is it that does not deserve my love? Who will I not love until he/she loves me first? Do I withhold my love in exchange for favors, good behavior, attention? Do I use my love as a weapon to hurt enemies and friends? Is my love a costume for show or a mask for the public or a flashy piece of glass pretending to be a diamond—dazzling and deceiving?

Ask yourself: did Jesus fail to love? Did he simply refuse to will the good, refuse to move his body and soul toward others in mercy? Did he narrow his love to just his immediate family, friends? Did he fail to emulate the Father’s love? Did he fail to love effusively even the apparently unlovable? Who is it that Christ cannot love, will not love? Who is it that does not deserve Jesus’ love? Who will Christ not love until he/she loves him first? Does Jesus withhold his love in exchange for favors, good behavior, attention? Does Jesus use his love as a weapon to hurt enemies and friends? Is Christ’s love a costume for show or a mask for the public? Is his love for us dazzling and deceiving?

We are commanded to love one another in the same way that the Father loves Jesus and in the same way that Jesus loves us. When we disobey this command, when we choose apathy, spiritual sloth, we choose the death of our joy; we kill deliberately our peace, our delight, and we rot the fruits of the Spirit. Rushing in to fill the vacuum left by dead and dying fruit: anxiety, anger, restlessness, dangerous curiosity/ears itching for spiritual novelty, despair, melancholy, loneliness, mistrust, desperation, pain, and a life in lived in constant emergency, constant distress.

If love brings perfect joy and you are not joyful in the Lord, then perhaps you need to think seriously about how you love or about how you fail to love. It is not too bold to claim that most, if not all, of our spiritual diseases can be diagnosed as failures to obey our Lord’s commandment to love one another. John writes to us in his letter this morning: “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” No love, no God, no joy, no peace.

The disease of spiritual apathy, to be without a passion for goodness, to be willfully despairing, this is the greatest gift we can give the Devil. He wants our disobedience, our rebellion against the Father’s love but what he wants more than our disobedience is our allegiance to the lie that our Father will not forgive us our violence against His mercy, our resistance to his love. The Devil yearns for our Yes to the proposition that this or that sin is too big, too deep, too horrible, too frequent to be forgiven, to be forgotten in love. Reach this point in your spiritual life and you have delighted the Devil; his joy, perverse and twisted though it is, is complete when you fail to love and when you come to believe that God is capable of failing in love. To believe that God will not, cannot forgive you is atheism.

Love one another because you are commanded to love. Love one another because you are made to love. Love one another because you are no longer slaves but friends. Love one another because Christ loved us in his suffering, his death, and his rising again. Love one another because to do anything less, anything smaller or meaner is to delight the Devil and forsake your soul.

Being pruned in truth

5th Sunday of Easter 2006: Acts 9.26-31; 1 John 3.18-24; John 15.1-8
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas


That summer I sat on a five-gallon pickle bucket all day everyday pruning tomato vines. The hothouses in the field lined up like barracks and buzzed in the heat. Each of the twelve houses, covered in thick plastic, fluttered as a huge fan pulled the air through, cooling the plants. I started at the first house nearest the road and worked slowly each week from the first house to the twelfth house, pruning the suckers that grow in the between the branches and the vine. Cutting the suckers away is a necessary step in the growth of the plant. Suckers drain moisture and nutrients from the vines. They look exactly like the productive branches; however, one bears fruit, the other doesn’t. Cutting the branch that bears no fruit makes the whole plant healthier.

Sweeping up the pruned suckers at the end of each day seemed like confession or bathing, an exercise in cleaning up, unloading, or perhaps a sacrament of clearing away, brushing out the debris, pushing along the stuff of distraction, diversion, and disease. Each day ended in fire—the dried suckers burning at the edge of the field, sending acrid smoke into the trees and making my eyes tear.

Jesus reveals to his disciples that he is the true vine and that his Father is the vine grower. His Father cuts away branches that do not bear fruit and prunes the ones that do. Then Jesus says to the disciples: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” Because I have revealed the Father to you, because I have taught you the way of salvation in mercy, because I have given you to one another as a Body, because I am the Word speaking the Word to you, because you have died with me and will suffer for me, because you will rise again with me and see the Father face-to-face, and because I am the way, the truth, and the life—because I have taught you, given you, shown you, lead you, and because I love you, you are pruned, cut, productively wounded and more than ready to bear the fruit of the Spirit that marks you as mine.

Are you pruned to produce the fruits of the Spirit that mark you as a child of Christ? In his letter to us this morning, John writes: “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth[…]this is how we will know that we belong to the truth[…].” We know that we belong to the truth—to Christ the true vine—when we produce the good fruit of charity, when we not only talk about doing good for others, but when we actually do the good for others. To produce the good fruit of love is to fashion from the Word given you a life wholly surrendered to the service of the truth, to the service of Christ, the true vine. To keep his commandments of fidelity—to believe in his Name, Jesus Christ, and to love one another—this is what pleases him.

Are you wholly surrendered to the service of the truth? Being good postmodern folks, I bet most of us heard a little whisper in our hearts just then, the small voice of Pilate asking: what is truth? Aren’t we conditioned to ask these sorts of questions, trained to a certain skepticism about claims of this or that being true? We know that a truth demands our obedience, morally obligates us to believe, so, eyes askance and lips pursed, we ask what any sensible soul would: what is truth? In his letter this morning, John writes: “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from Him whatever we ask[…].” The NRSV says that we have “boldness before God” because we believe and pray in obedience to His will for us. The disciples in Jerusalem did not believe that Saul was a son of the true vine. Only after he had spoken boldly, confidently, in the name of Jesus, teaching the faith in truth and love to the Hellenists, only then did they recognize him as a brother in Christ.

Truth, then, is a relationship, the way that we live and move in the love of Christ, the way we witness publicly to him. Truth is that love that the Father and the Son have for one another, the love of the Holy Spirit. John writes: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.” Those who surrender their lives to the service of the truth—to the service of the love shared in the Blessed Trinity—are true branches, fruitful in charity, ready to be pruned.

What do you need God to prune? What suckers are sucking the life from your branches, depriving your good fruit of nourishment? What falsehoods have attached themselves to the truth? What lies scar your relationship with Christ? What sins block your roots from receiving the good food of the Spirit? What do you need God to prune?

Do you need God to prune away the false notion that there is another way to Him other than His Son, Jesus Christ? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that conscience decides truth rather than merely recognizes it? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that love is just a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes us cuddly to others? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that loving means unconditional acceptance and approval of any and everything any and everyone wants to believe or do? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that you can earn His love, work for His approval? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that He will condemn you in anger, in righteous fury, or disinterest? Do you need God to prune away the false notion that you can live fruitfully in love without truth?

We cannot bear the fruit of love without the vine of truth. Cut off from truth, our love withers. Cut off from the true vine, from the vine grower, we find ourselves in the fire at the edge of the field, burning, sending up acrid smoke and puffs of ash. Our assurance that we remain in Christ and he remains in us is our life in the Spirit, our participation in the life of the Body, the Church. How else do we maintain a fruitful confidence, a boldness before God that we are loved? With hearts schooled in the Word, hearts strictly poised for obedience, eager to hear and listen, we are one mind, one spirit surrendered to truth, given to the service of God for one another, and brought to perfection as disciples who greatly please our Teacher. Surely we can look around and see the drying suckers of falsehood pruned from our branches. Surely we can see the suckers that still need pruning. But more surely, most certainly, we know that so long as we remain in Christ—believe in his name and love one another—he will remain in us.

Boldly ask for what we need. Start with what needs pruning. Start with what clogs your roots, what prevents your growth in love and truth. And then in all humility ask to love more, to love larger, deeper, wider, longer, to love in greater truth, to bear much good fruit and to love, always to love, for His glory and His glory alone.

The lie that kills

4th Week of Easter 2006(F): Acts 13.26-33; John 14.1-5
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation


Are you, are we lost in a lie that kills?

Jesus tells Peter that he, Peter, will deny him three times. Peter cannot follow Christ nor can Peter lay down his life for Christ. Who and what Christ is for Peter, the disciples, and for us is not yet fully revealed and won’t be fully revealed until tongues of fire lick their souls and they and we are set ablaze with the Holy Spirit and witness the birth of the Church. Peter’s desire to follow is undeniable as is our own. Our deeply-hooked hearts long for the privilege of walking behind our Lord, taking on his teachings, preaching his words and his Word, but, like Peter the desire to follow him, the desire to die for him—no matter how hot, how large in our souls—is not enough. What we must recognize, take in and make part of our very being is the radical assertion made by Christ to his disciples: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

What does Peter deny in the chaos of the garden on the night of Christ’s betrayal? He denies that he knows Jesus. He denies that he is a disciple of the Teacher handed over to Pilate and the Chief Priests. He denies to all who ask that he follows Christ. In every word he speaks and by fleeing the garden, he denies that Christ is his means to the Father; he denies his certainty for salvation, and instead lays claim to death as his Master. Peter denies that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And so, he is lost in a lie that kills.

Are you, are we lost in a lie that kills? This is a dangerous question. Dangerous because it requires us to believe several unpopular truths. First, that there is truth. Second, that we are morally obligated to believe the truth. Third, that the moral obligation to believe the truth and actually doing so will give us life. Fourth, that to fail to believe the truth will lose us in a culture where undifferentiated assertions about truth weigh equally against our conscience and we are told to choose the one prettiest to our eyes.

These truths about the Truth are dangerous to hold and teach because they identify you, pick you out, and label a desire for certainly, clarity, and righteousness—all elements alien to a culture (and some parts of the church!) given over to spiritual and religious indifferentism; a culture that hugs itself to moral wandering and calls it an ethical path; a culture that enshrines relativism and calls it tolerance of difference; a culture that habitually chooses death and calls it choice, or retribution, or defense.

Are you, are we lost in a lie that kills? The way, the truth and the life that is Jesus Christ is the way to the Father, the truth about the Father, and life in the Father. Jesus assures his disciples that he goes before them to prepare the way, he travels on ahead, leading the way. Wanting to walk the way and walking it. Desiring the truth and seeking it out. Yearning for a holy life and living a holy life. Wanting, desiring, yearning…and doing. Different sorts of things. Peter desired Christ powerfully. And denied him easily.

The lie that kills is that there is another way, another truth, another life, something or someone other than Christ who will clear the path for us, assure us in trust, and give us eternal life. There is no other. And you are his witnesses before the people that he has brought you to this fulfillment: that you are found, that you walk the way, and that you have eternal life because you desire it from him and because you live it with him!

Holy Pyromaniacs!

4th Week of Easter 2006: Acts 12.24-13.5; John 12.44.50
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

[Fair warning: preaching the gospel of John sometimes makes me weird!]

Get comfortable, breath deeply, let go of all fear, guilt, anxiety, thought, and surround yourself with bright, white light. “Run to the Light, Carol Ann! Run to the light!” Focus on your inner child and project a ray of light into the world. Hold hands in a circle, clear your minds, and generate a barrier of brilliant light around Earth. When I died I saw a welcoming, nonjudgmental Light at the end of the tunnel, urging me forward. Lord, give us your Light…small “l” light, capital “L” Light, and “lite,” l-i-t-e.

Sun, moon, stars. Fire, electric bulbs, phosphorus. Exploding gas, erupting volcano, lightning flash. Radiance, illumination, glow. Morning, day, noon. Rescue from Darkness, lamp at midnight, candle against the pitch. All of these are images, words, ideas linked to our primitive need for light, our primordial search for knowing, seeing, figuring things out. We reach for light switches, table lamps, headlights in order to cook, read, drive to work. In seeking out and finding what is lost, we manage it best in the light--distinguishing between this and that, avoiding danger, stepping around obstacles and over limits, seeing edges, relative positions.

Darkness is a vast sameness, an infinite indistinction, an absence of shapes, sizes, limits, edges. To be in darkness is to be without definition, without clarity or contrast. Light, however, shines on reality, brightening what is there, making the stuff of Here and Now visible—height, length, color, identity. To be in the Light is to know definition, clarity, contrast. Darkness is ignorance…light is knowledge.

Jesus concludes his public ministry by declaring rather sharply what has only been hinted at up until now: believe in me and what I have taught and you accept my Father who sent me. Do this and you step into the light of our salvation. Disbelieve in me and what I have taught and you reject my Father who sent me. Do this and you remain in darkness. Come into the light or dwell in darkness. The choice is stark and easy. And it is one we make daily, hourly against the temptations of despairing of God’s mercy, surrendering to the passions, submitting to false teachings; choices against the temptations of setting up idols and altars to our egos, our inordinate desires, our failures to love; choosing against the temptation to blind ourselves to the shapes, sizes, and edges of the truth.

When we believe the Word, we take it in, we plant it, we let it grow—wildly, without fence or tie—we feed it our love and obedience, letting its brightness shine out, radiate through the words of our mouth and the work of our hands to light the way for others. When we believe the Word, it sets us ablaze, urging us to spread the fire. We become Holy Pyromaniacs—crazy for speaking the truth, thirsty for righteousness, hungry for heaven. And possessed by a spirit of holiness that needs for us to speak the Word to the world, to talk about the light of Christ, to make what we do illuminative of his saving work for us.

The Father’s command to us is eternal life. To live in His glory, his splendor. Hear Jesus’ words then, believe them, observe them, and know that you are rescued from the dark.

Fr. Corbon's quote on deification

In my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (below) I quote from Fr. Jean Corbon’s book, The Wellspring of Worship (Ignatius Press, 1988). This is one of the most beautiful books available on the Church's understanding of our redemption as deification.


The full quote (i.e. without my editions) follows:

“Following these three pathways of the transfigured icon, we are divinized to the extent that the least impulses of our nature find fulfillment in the communion of the Blessed Trinity We then "live" by the Spirit, in oneness with Christ, for the Father. The only obstacle is possessiveness, the focusing of our persons on the demands of our nature, and this is sin for the quest of self breaks the relation with God. The asceticism that is essential to our divinization and that represents once again a synergy of grace consists in simply but resolutely turning every movement toward possessiveness into an offering. The epiclesis on the altar of the heart must be intense at these moments, so that the Holy Spirit may touch and consume our death and the sin that is death's sting. Entering into the name of Jesus, the Son of God and the Lord who shows mercy to us sinners, means handing over to him our wounded nature, which he does not change by assuming but which he divinizes by putting on. From offertory to epiclesis and from epiclesis to communion the Spirit can then ceaselessly divinize us; our life becomes a eucharist until the icon is completely transformed into him who is the splendor of the Father”(223).

This comes from Chapter Sixteen of the book. A large portion of the chapter is reproduced on the Ignatius Press blogsite here.

Enjoy!

Fr. Philip

Are you saved?

4th Sunday of Easter: Acts 4.8-12; 1 John 3.1-2; John 10.11-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation



Are you saved? Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Do you know Jesus?

As a Catholic, how do you understand your salvation? When we talk about our redemption, what do you hear? If you were asked by a Protestant friend—“Are you saved?”—what would you say? Another (more indirect) way to ask this same question: what are you doing here this morning? Why are you here? Meeting an obligation? Did mama drag you outta bed? Roommates badgered you into showing up? Guilt? Habit? Piety? The need for true worship? The presence of the Risen Lord in the sacrament? Why are you here? Answer me that and you can answer me this: “Are you saved?”

I grew up in rural Mississippi surrounded by bible-believing Baptists—hard-core, heart-felt, deep-down Jesus folks who were assured of their salvation, in the possession of the perfect knowledge of their redemption. There was no doubt, no wavering, not even a passing shadow of uncertainty that Jesus is Lord. Their personal encounter with Christ defines who they are and who they will become: upright, moral people, righteous, God-fearing and heaven-bound. Salvation for them is a picture painted with bright lines, pure colors, perfectly framed. And it hangs in the center of their lives.

Do you as a Catholic understand what it means to be in a redeeming relationship with the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit?

Peter in Acts, John in his letter and his gospel this morning point us unswervingly to the conclusion that for us to be saved in Christ we must become Christ; we share in his passion, death, and resurrection. There is no other name under heaven given to us by which we can saved. We are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed, but we do know that when what we will be is revealed we shall be like him. Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me.” I will lay down my life for my sheep. I can lay down my life and pick it up again. And he can pick us up with him. Brothers and sisters, see what love the father has bestowed on us—He became man so that we might become God!

Are you saved? Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Why are you here this morning? I hope you are here this morning to confess your sins and hear God’s mercy; to listen to the Word proclaimed and preached; to offer praise and thanksgiving to God; to say again with us “I believe in One God, the Father Almighty;” to ask for what you need and to ask for others what they need; to place yourself—your worries, your loves, your resentments, jealousies, your impatience, yourself—all of you, placed on the altar with the bread and wine to be offered to God, sacrificed, made holy in surrender.

I hope you are here this morning to say AMEN to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, to his suffering, death, and resurrection; to this moment of eternity brought down for us to draw us back up, to catch us up in his glory—body, soul, divinity—to make us his children, his heirs.

I hope you are here this morning to eat his body and drink his blood, to take into your bodies his very person, to reap the harvest of his gift of himself to us, for us. And I hope you are here this morning to learn, to come to know that your salvation, your redemption is accomplished in this sacrifice of the altar, this liturgy of deification. We are not acting out a play here. We are not mumbling a script or miming a drama. We are not here to “git ‘r done” in time for lunch. We are here to cooperate in the redemption of our bodies and our souls! What we do here this morning is the public work of making us all Christs, the work of our Triune God in transforming us, perfecting us, making us like Him.

The great Dominican theologian, Fr. Jean Corbon, writes of our redemption in the Mass: “From offertory to [the moment the priest calls down the Spirit] and from [that moment] to communion the Spirit can then ceaselessly divinize us; our life becomes a Eucharist until the [image of God that we are] is completely transformed into him who is the splendor of the Father.” Perfectly said!

For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “holistically integrated as a person,” if by this we mean nothing more than to be made psychologically balanced. Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to clear up a DSM-IV diagnosis. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “made one with Earth.” All of creation will be redeemed in time, but Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to show us the way to Gaia, Earth Mother. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “absorbed into the Universal Oneness.” Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again so that we might be dissolved into stardust and spend eternity dodging gravity wells and rouge comets. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “liberated from oppressive hierarchies and socio-economic structures of exclusion.” Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to spark an elitist social revolution that worships the totalitarianism of political correctness and moral anarchy.

For Catholics, to be redeemed is to be made a child of the Father through the freely made sacrifice of the Son in the love of the Holy Spirit. To be redeemed is to be repaired, to be rescued, to be healed. We are found by our shepherd. Beloved as children; raised from the dead by the Only Name given to us for our salvation. To be redeemed is to be brought to Him as an offering, a sacrifice; made holy, perfected in His image and likeness. To be redeemed is to be transformed into Christ through Christ.

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God!

The proper response, the only response worthy of this gift is to live your life in sacrificial thanksgiving—giving thanks to God by serving all His children in charity, by taking His Word to the world in hope, by offering to Him the course and plan of your life in faith; loving, hoping, trusting; knowing that our Father gives us an inheritance, an eternal estate.

Are you saved? Yes, every time you celebrate this liturgy. Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Yes, and even better: you’ve eaten his Body and Blood! Do you know Jesus? You know him and he knows you. He is the Good Shepherd and you are his brothers and sisters.

Now, having cleared all that up, it’s time for the really tough question: watching you, listening to you, do the people who see you everyday, do they you know you as Christ?

Offered, changed, consumed

3rd Week of Easter 2006 (F): Acts 9.1-20, John 6.52-59
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation


We will eat the Body of Christ and drink the Blood of Christ, taking into our own bodies and blood the Word Made Flesh for us. We do this, this sacred eating, not to remember Christ, not to symbolize Christ, not to firm up shaky communal bonds; no, we do this, this sacred eating, so that we might live, so that we might share in the divine life of Christ right now and always.

Of course, we will also remember Christ, symbolize his last friendly meal with his students, and we will strengthen our communal bonds in the Eucharist, but unless we are ordered to, focused on seeking out and living a divine life as our proper goal, memories, symbols, and community are little more than idols to be dusted off until we’re dead, second-class effects pretending at greatness. The Body and Blood of Christ—confected, worshiped, and consumed in this Mass—is the “medicine of immortality,”* true food/true drink, the banquet of salvation, and the feast of our holiness.

The profundity of what we do here everyday is astonishing. Perhaps the habit of it dulls the sharp edges of our own sense of audacity, but the radical nature of what happens here cannot be dulled. Why? Because ultimately we do nothing here. It is Christ who offers Christ for Christ to Christ through Christ. It is ultimately the Word Made Flesh that speaks the words of consecration as he did at the Last Supper. It is the Word Made Flesh who lifts up his body and blood and offers himself to his Father for us. It is the Word Made Flesh that binds us together in blessing, ties us up in the sacrifice on the altar of the cross, and lifts us up in offering, a sacrifice of our lives in service to one another for the greater glory of the Father.

But none of this makes sense if we leave here thinking that what we have done, what has been done to us and for us is mere remembrance, just symbolic, or simply communal. The quarrlesome Jews ask, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” He cannot give us his flesh memorially. What can we who were not there remember about Christ giving his Flesh to his disciples? He cannot give us his Flesh symbolically. A symbol of his Flesh is a symbol of his Flesh and not his Flesh itself. I can give you a crown and call it a kingdom, but, ultimately, it is just a crown. He cannot give us his Flesh communally, that is, we cannot understand the sacrifice of the Eucharist as a work of the community. We cannot give to the Father what has not been given to us by Him first.

Memories, symbols, communities all pass away and none bring eternal life. Christ gives us his Flesh in the sacrament, in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood for us, true food/true drink for our transformation, our perfection. The Word Made Flesh enters our bodies as divine food, seizing every muscle, every bone, every cell, transforming, changing our flesh and blood into the Christ so that we share now in the eternal life of the Father, all the while preparing ourselves to share His eternal life always.

The gifts of bread and wine are offered, changed, and consumed. And we are offered, changed, and consumed—gifts placed on the altar. We are given to Christ by the Father to be made holy in sacrifice, and raised on the last day to a shared glory, a divine union, a life perfected in love.

The Devil's poisoned bumperstickers

3rd Sunday of Easter 2006: Acts 3.13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2.1-5; Luke 24.35-48
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Why are you troubled? Why do questions arise in your hearts? What do you fear? What worry eats at your spirit, chewing your joy? Who took your peace?

I am convinced that for a whole lot of us it is the Devil who teaches us our theology, the Devil who instructs us in the faith. He uses half-truths, whispered hints at beauty, mumbled tries at goodness. He hands you a penny and calls you rich; he burps in your face and calls it a gentle summer breeze. And you buy it. We all do at one time or another. He tells us what we think we need to hear. What we wish were true. He lies and we believe it and we take notes and we repeat to him what he taught us because he fears the truth all the time as much as we do only some of the time.

The Devil doesn’t have to work up an elaborate theological lie to teach us when he can take the truth of the faith and give it a new spin, tweak it just a bit, perhaps “make it relevant for modern times.” His teaching works so well precisely b/c he begins with the truth of the faith and dips a single poisoned finger—just his pinky—into the edge of truth, hoping we won’t notice the spreading rot of dis-ease, anxiety, and fretting infection. Hoping we won’t bother to test his tasty, deadly dish until it is too late. But we do notice when we are troubled. We notice when we are confused. We notice when worry chews at our joy.

You know this already but it is a truth worth repeating: Christ suffered and died and rose again and it is written that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all nations. And so it has. And along with it the Devil’s slightly tainted, bittersweet version as well, chucked-full of half-baked half truths and raw lies. Here lie the lies that worry us, that thump our hearts and minds too sweetly, too gently to resist even when we know the gentle thumping is a bloody beating and the sweetness hides a poison.

So that we are not deceived I want to point to two of the Devil’s lies. The first is captured perfectly in the bumpersticker mantra: “God loves us unconditionally; God accepts us just as we are.” The second is as easily captured: “I have an adult faith; I’m into spirituality not religion.” These two are directly addressed in the readings.

To the first: “God loves us unconditionally; God accepts us just as we are.” Now, is this true? Yes. But it is only a half-truth. It is absolutely true that God loves us without condition, without prerequisite. Deus caritas est. God is love. And it is true that God welcomes us in, accepts us as He finds us—as sinners, as doubters, as deniers, in our ignorance, even in our defiance. This half of the truth is clear.

Listen again to Peter, John, and Luke for the other half: “You denied Christ to Pilate; you released a murderer in his place; you put the author of life to death; you acted out of ignorance; you worry, you question—but we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is our rescue from sin. ‘Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.’” God loves us unconditionally, accepts us as we are in order to change us. It is God’s love for us that motivates us to repentance. God does not love us so that we may remain in our sin. He does not love the thief so that we might come to see that stealing is OK. He does not love the adulteress so that we might come to see that adultery is OK. He loves the thief and the adulteress so that they will stop stealing and stop committing adultery. God loves us to change us.

To the second bumpersticker half-truth: “I have an adult faith; I’m into spirituality not religion.” At the heart of this often-heard contemporary mantra is the truth that as adult Christians we rely on a spiritual relationship with the Father, that is, we grow and flourish in a relationship with God based on love, trust, mercy, hope, and constant conversion. An adult faith moves beyond the mere formalism of religious obligation, the raw legalism of ritual observance into a living, breathing, maturing relationship where the conscience is well-formed by truth and goodness and beauty.

All true. But that’s only half the truth. Listen again to Peter, John, and Luke: “God has brought to fulfillment what the prophets preached: that His Christ would suffer and die; he is the righteous one who died for our sins and the sins of the whole world; he rose from the dead so that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name; to know him as your savior is to keep his commandments; those who say they know him but fail to obey him are liars, the truth is not in them.”

Our second bumpersticker half-truth makes a distinction between “spirituality” and “religion” that allows the gullible to believe that there is a theological difference between “relationship with God” and “obligation to God,” a difference between “knowing Christ” and “obeying Christ.” This bumpersticker hopes to teach us that an “adult faith” is one where we are in relationship with God without any obligation to Him or His church and that we can know Christ as our Savior without obeying Christ as our Lord. More often than not the battle cry of “I have an adult faith” is usually a more educated way of saying: “I will do this my way or no way and besides you’re not the boss of me!” More adolescent whining than mature self-giving, isn’t it?

It is also the case that the distinction made here between “spirituality” and “religion” –that spirituality is about relationship and religion is about rules—is made so that we can privilege spirituality over religion, or better yet, exclude religion in favor of spirituality. This is simple impossible in a truly adult faith. Our spirituality is how we understand and live out our religion. Our religion is how we know that our spirituality is based on revealed and well-reasoned truths. To have an adult faith is to know Christ as Savior and Lord; it is to be in a right-relationship, a spiritual communion with the divine firmly grounded in revealed religion.

These two half-baked half-truths steal from us the breath of life, the food and drink of our holiness. They promise us treasures and give us Crackerjack prizes. They are Happy Meals pretending to be the Heavenly Banquet. The bald-faced, open-handed, simple truth of the faith is this: God loves you—w/o condition, just as you are. God wants you to live with Him now and forever. God’s love for you and His desire for you to live with Him now and forever is all you need to repent of your sin, to come to Him in obedience, and to be radically changed, made into something utterly new, truly perfected in Him.

Why are you troubled? Why do questions arise in your hearts? We have an Advocate with the Father. Therefore, repent and be converted; be at peace and witness to his mercy; keep His word and…beware devils selling poisoned bumperstickers.

Takes a beating...

2nd Week of Easter 2006 (F): Acts 5.34-42; John 6.1-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation


Hearing the account of the apostles before the Sanhedrin in Acts this morning, I just couldn’t help thinking of the old Timex watch commericals: “They take a beating and keep on ticking!” If that’s too irreverent for a homily, I apologize. But I just have to think that the apostles, filled to the brim with the joy of the Lord, might chuckle as well, seeing in the dark humor of their predictament—the ripping sting of the scourge—the powerful effects of the Father’s favor. Here, between the Resurrection and the Coming of the Holy Spirit, do we see the powerful effects of the Father’s favor in our lives?

Here we are between Easter and Pentecost and we find ourselves pushed by the elation of the Resurrection and pulled by the expectation of the coming of the Holy Spirit—the joy of Christ’s defeat of death by emptying the tomb and the hope, the sure promise, of the help of God’s Spirit. To be delighted in the Lord and expectant of his coming again seems to me to be the perfecting recipe for holiness, the formula for feeding our growing right-relationship with God. We are at once convinced of his historical resurrection, the actual emptying of his tomb on Easter morning, and we are hopeful, expectant, sure of the coming arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Living faithfully, flourishing in this between-time, this between-place graces us, gathers us up with Christ, raises us to the Father, offers us to Him in sacrifice, to be made holy and pure, and set aside, preserved to receive his sanctifying Spirit—the Love of the Father and Son for one another, the Love that creates, redeems, and blesses; the Love that washes dirty feet, surrenders to unjust authority, suffers a bloody beating; the Love that carries a cross to the city dump, takes nails in hands and feet, and dies, accepting, willing, freely, and for us; the Love that death cannot contain, cannot corrupt; the Love that returns to the Father—blood returning to the heart, breath to the lungs.

With this love heavy in our hearts, with hearts weighed in the exceeding good will of the Father, we are pushed by the Resurrection and pulled by Pentecost, but do we see the powerful effects of the Father’s favor in our lives? Those eating the barley loaves and the fish with Jesus and his astonished disciples saw the wealth of God’s grace, His limitless favor. The apostles, bloody again from another beating, saw the wealth of God’s grace, the honor done them—to be found worthy to suffer for His name.

What grace astonishes your life? What honor do you receive for His sake? What blessings find their way to your work of perfecting holiness? If your righteousness, your right-relationship with the Father, is a merely human work, a work of your will discordant with the Father’s will for you, your perfection “will destroy itself.” If your work at perfecting holiness accords with the Father’s will, it will be invincible, undefeated even in death.


This time, this place between the Empty Tomb of Easter and the Mighty Rushing Wind of Pentecost is the time and place to ask yourself: do I see the Father’s favor in my life? Have I made my life a constant prayer of gratitude?

Can I take a beating and keep on ticking?

Reading List: Catholic Spirituality Fall 2006 U.D.

Christian Spirituality: History of the Catholic Tradition, Fall 2006
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP, PhD

Aumann, Jordan. Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, Ignatius Press, 1985.
Egan, Harvey. An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, Liturgical Press, 1991.
O’Connor, Flannery. Three By Flannery O’Connor, Signet Classics, 1983.

(NB. All texts found in the Egan anthology unless otherwise noted. Additional texts TBA found on-line or distributed in class)

Patristic/Late Antiquity (JA, 1-74)

Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs
Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs
Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos
Augustine of Hippo, Homily on Psalm 41
John Cassian, Conferences, 10: On Prayer
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology
Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel
John Climacus, The Ladder
Maximus Confessor, The Four Hundred Chapters on Love

Early Medieval (JA, 80-140)

Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns of Divine Love
William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs (sermons)
Aelred of Rievaulx, On Spiritual Friendship
Richard of St. Victor, On the Four Degrees of Passionate Charity

Medieval (JA, 80-140)

Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias
Francis of Assisi, The Stigmata
Hadewijch of Antwerp, Letters
Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God
Mechtild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead
Jordan of Saxony, Libellus (selections, handout)
Gertrude the Great, The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude
Angela of Foligno, The Book of Divine Consolation

Late Medieval/Early Renassiance (JA, 8-140)

Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue
Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing
Julian of Norwich, Showings
Catherine of Genoa, The Spiritual Dialogue

Dionysian/Devotio moderna (JA, 144-175)

Meister Eckhart, Blessed Are the Poor, et al
Gregory Palamas, The Hagioritic Tome
Henry Suso, The Supernatural Experience, et al

Post- Tridentine (JA, 178-211)

Ignatius of Loyola, A Pilgrim’s Journey
Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
John of the Cross, The Dark Night
Blaise Pascal, An Experience of God

Modern (JA, 218-277 and handouts)

Therese of Lisieux, My Vocation is Love
M. Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy in My Soul
Rainer Marie Rilke, First and Ninth Elegy, Duino Elegies (handout)
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away (novel)
Pope John Paul II, Rosarium virginis mariae (excerpts)
Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est

The victory that conquers the world

2nd Sunday of Easter 2006: Acts 4. 32-35; 1 John 5.1-6; John 20.19-31
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The victory that conquers the world is our faith. And so, peace be with you.

You might think that Jesus would take it easy after his passion, his death, his descent into Hell, and his resurrection! What better time, what better excuse would any of us have to take a break—“I was betrayed by my friends, beaten by the police, nailed hands and feet to a cross, left to die, stabbed by a spear, buried in a tomb, spent three days in Hell, and then my Father raised me from the dead. Yea, I think I’m gonna take the week off, relax, catch up on my reading, do the spa thing…” That would be me anyway. Jesus, on the other hand, has a much better work ethic than I do and seems particularly energized by his trial and tribulations; he’s revved up to continue his ministry, appearing to Mary Magdalene and the woefully hard-hearted and doubting disciples several times over the last week.

The disciples are wallowing in anxiety, self-pity, disappointment, and maybe even a little shame at their failure to better defend their teacher and friend against the self-serving powers of the Temple and the Empire. Are they reluctant to believe that he is truly risen b/c they are embarrassed to confront him? Maybe. They don’t seem all that ashamed when they finally come around and see Jesus for who he is. Maybe they are reluctant b/c they do not look like victors over the world; they do not look like those who have believed and conquered the world in faith. They are despondent, worried about many things, depressed, crowding together to comfort one another in their waiting, in their despairing anticipation.

What are they waiting for? What has paralyzed them so? Frozen their spirits and slowed their hearts? Why aren’t they out there in the world claiming victory in faith? Why aren’t they out there proclaiming the conquering Word risen from the dead and living among them? Why can’t they see? Why can’t they hear? Why won’t they believe?

Faith releases control, surrenders all possible options, gives up on freely available alternatives and the multiplicity of choices. Faith recognizes the powerful singularity of Truth, the breathtaking beauty of raw reality, the Very Good of all creation. Faith reorders priorities, reschedules plans, reorganizes futures. Faith is the seed of a covenant of love, a promise of boundless mercy and unconditional favor. Faith places you in the conquering good will of the Father—His will that you love, that you be loved, and His will that we keep his commandments. Faith comes first. Trust is primary. Then plans in faith, then philosophies in faith, then theologies in faith, then sciences in faith, then politics in faith…

The disciples will not believe absent the presence of Christ among them for the same reasons that you and I are not likely to believe. We like control. We need nearly infinite options, unfettered choices. We love the idea of relative truth—My truth, your truth, or no truth at all! We value human justice above divine mercy and cannot let go of vengeance. We have plans, expectations, back-up plans, important worries, dire anxieties, vitally important worries, extremely dire anxieties; we have schedules, deadlines, due dates, things to do, places to be, people to meet! And I don’t have what I need! And I don’t need what I have! I have sins; I have BIG sins. I’m a big sinner! A huge sinner! Lock the doors! Be afraid…!! Hell is rushing up to meet me and I’m running as fast as I can to meet the Devil….faster and faster and faster and…

And Jesus stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his hands and his side, his passionate wounds. As the disciples rejoiced, Jesus said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He breathed on them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And he gave them the power to forgive sin.

Thomas the Twin wasn’t with them when Jesus appeared and did not believe the apostolic witness when it was given. Thomas was not a doubter; he was a denier. Thomas did not say to his fellow disciples, “I’m having difficulties working through the implications of the Lord’s death and Resurrection.” He didn’t say: “The possibility that Jesus has been dead for three days and has risen from the tomb is troubling, and I’m struggling with it.” Thomas said: “I will not believe until I see it for myself.” That’s not doubt; that’s denial. He is placing his willful need for understanding above his trust in Christ and requiring that God be worthy of his trust.

The Lord lets Thomas feel his wounds and then lets him know in no uncertain terms that his denial is a failure of trust: “Have you come to believe b/c you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Jesus is not calling for “blind faith.” He is calling on Thomas, the disciples, and us to believe the witness of the Church, to trust the evidence of those who have lived their lives in faith before us. Jesus is not asking us to deny our intellect, to deny our good sense, or to leave our expensive educations at the door of the Church. Nothing about the Catholic faith requires us to assent to foolishness in order to be good Catholics. Nothing about the faith requires us to adopt willful ignorance.

Doubt as such is no obstacle to the faith so long as you are ready to doubt Doubt, that is, so long as you do not invest a great deal of trust in your doubts. St Thomas teaches us that even believing resembles doubt sometimes in that both have “no finished vision of the truth.” Have your doubts. Struggle with the Church’s witness. Ask questions and seek faithful answers. But understand that doubt is not a license to dissent; having doubts does not constitute a God-given right to deny. We are victors over the world in faith, in trust, not in suspicious denial and rebellion.

Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The victory that conquers the world is our faith. And so, peace be with you! Receive the Holy Spirit. Be unstuck, become unglued; be opened, enlivened, renewed; be born again in faith and victory; conquer this world by the power of your trust, your bone-deep, blood-rushing witness to the truth of our Catholic faith: the living faith of the faithful dead, unbroken and unchanged, for us and with us the same teachings of Jesus, the same preaching of the apostles, the power of the sacraments, the magisterial authority of the Church, the very Presence of Christ among us!

He is risen from the dead. And that victory conquers the world. Therefore, peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit, believe, and be at peace.

Impossible not to speak the truth

Octave of Easter 2006 (Sat): Acts 4.13-21; Mark 16.9-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory


Do you find it impossible not to witness to the truth of the Catholic faith? Do you find it impossible not to talk with others about the two thousand year old and still kicking tradition of Jesus, Paul, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Augustine, Benedict, Anselm, Francis, Dominic, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Pius V, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, Ignatius, Francis de Sales, Pius X, Pius XII, Edith Stein, Maximillian Kolbe, John Paul the Great, and Benedict XVI?

Do you find it impossible not to talk with others about the fruitfulness of the Blessed Mother’s intercessory prayer, the redemptive sacrifice of the Mass, the gratutious offer from the Father to share in His divine life and His offer of boundless mercy?

Do you find it impossible not to share your faith, not to share your tradition, not to share what you know to be the teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ? I hope so! I hope you find it painfully impossible to refrain from witnessing in word and deed, by your speech and by your work, to what you have seen and heard. I hope you will find yourselves among those who will dispute you, challenge you, deny you, perhaps even punish you for speaking the truth of the faith. It must be told. The truth of the faith cannot not be told. It will be proclaimed. If not by me, then you. If not the rich, then the poor. If not in America and Europe, then in Asia and Africa. If not by Catholics, then who? The Spirit will find His tongue and speak His Word.

Peter and John, ordered to silence by the elders, cry out, “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” This is not stubbornness, an obstinate refusal to be quiet. It is quite literally impossible for them to be silent. Everything that they are, their very being, bears witness to, holds up for viewing the mighty work of Christ in their lives. They are transformed, made new, brought to fruition, perfected and given the spirit of witness—the power of the Word moves their tongues to incite the gathered crowd to praise God!

Temptations to remain silent abound. There are the temptations of being too embarrassed to speak the truth—I may be challenged by unbelievers! The temptations of false humility—I’m not holy enough! Not smart enough! The temptations of relativism—None of us can know the truth! My truth is my truth, your truth is your truth! The temptation of Pontius Pilate—What is truth anyway? The temptation of Peter before the resurrection—Out of fear, I deny the truth!

Name these temptations what they are: Cowardice. Deflection. Procrastination. Laziness. And then remember Mary Magdalene, the one to whom Christ first appeared after his execution, and remember her radiant joy, her overflowing peace, and her excited need to tell the truth: He is risen! The tomb is empty! Remember the Eleven at table. Remember Christ appearing to them and rebuking them for their hard hearts. And remember his order to them: Go to the whole world and proclaim the gospel. Go to every creature and speak my truth, teach what I taught, preach what I preached.

And don’t be afraid. I am with you. Death is dead. And I am with you.

No one else did this

Octave of Easter 2006 (F): Acts 4.1-12; John 21.1-14
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Serra Club

Hear it!
None of the disciples dare to ask him, “Who are you?” They dare not ask b/c they know and to know from his own mouth the answer to that question would spin their world around, shake the ground harder than the day the temple veil fell in two, and bring to their despairing hearts the Best News of the Good News: their Lord and Savior had not only been raised from the dead! But he walked among them again, three times walked among them and made himself known to them in signs that the disciples would understand: in the breaking of the bread, in the wounds of his passion and execution, and in the sharing of the fishes and loaves.

And why is the Lord appearing to the disciples after his resurrection? Partly to encourage them—to strengthen their hearts for the hard times ahead. Partly to comfort their anxieties about his ignoble death—to ease their worries about the disappointing manner of their Master’s demise. Partly to show the Father’s power over life and death, over the impenetrable barrier between the living and the dead—His power as Creator of All reaches the darkness corners, the deepest wells of the world. But perhaps the most important reason that Jesus is appearing to the disciples is to reinforce his teaching that it is through his name alone, his suffering and death alone, his resurrection from the dead alone that his Father’s human creatures are saved.

None of the disciples dare ask him who he is. They know. To ask is to reveal the very possibility of a doubt. To ask is to express a weakness in trust, some crack in the foundation of the Good News. It is precisely who Jesus is that makes the economy of our redemption and sanctification work. It is precisely who Jesus is that freely offers us the invitation of the Father to live in enduring beatitude with the Blessed Trinity.

He is Jesus Christ, uniquely fully human, fully divine—one person, two natures—Jesus Christ, uniquely the only Son of God, the only Messiah, uniquely, finally the One Who Suffers for us, the One Who Dies for us, the One Who is Raised from the Tomb for us. There is no other name under heaven given to the Father’s human creatures by which we can be saved. No other name. No salvation through anyone else. He is the hobbled block, the crushed gravel, the cracked slate, the stone rejected. He is the cornerstone, the founding rock, the granite slab. He is the constituting Word, He Who Is for us Eternal Life.

No other name. No one else. Jesus Christ alone—uniquely, finally. Not mythic heroes, alien gods, comforting political agendas; not syncretistic religious chaos, not private revelation or self-serving authority; not pagan fantasy or invented theological novelty; not the whim of crowds or executive order; not money, works, talent, individual beauty, charm, intelligence or family name. Jesus Christ alone—uniquely, finally. No other name. No one else.


No one dared to ask “Who are you?” b/c they know who he is. He is the one who catches fish with a word. And brings a bounty ashore w/o tearing the net. He is the one who feeds his disciples breakfast. He is the one who sits with them and eats. He is the one who teaches, preaches, suffers, dies, and rises again for them. He is the one who appears to them three times after they have witnessed his death and then, three days later, find his tomb empty.

He is the one who saves them, saves us. No one else can do this.

No one else did this.

Revealing the Biggest Possible Picture

Octave of Easter 2006 (W): Acts 3.1-10; Luke 24.13-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert’s Priory, Irving, TX

Hear it!
They are slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Even now, after the betrayal by Judas, the trail before Pontius Pilate, the crucifixion on Golgotha, the last pleading words to God from the cross, and the rending of the temple veil, the disciples are slow of heart to understand the meaning of the prophetic events that find them without their Teacher. Mary Magdalene’s witness to the empty tomb jogs them a bit, enough to visit the tomb and see for themselves that he is not there. But still there lingers a small rumor of a doubt against the evidence: “But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place.” You can hear the disappointment in Cleopas’ voice; he is wistful, darkly pensive. How foolish they are! The disciples, slow of heart to believe, sometimes slow enough to test even the Messiah’s patience, cannot muster the—what is it? The courage? Trust? Spirit?—cannot muster the strength of heart, the faith to see the clear prophetic signs, the arc of Christ’s redemptive history to its predicted conclusion: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

What are they missing? Notice how this gospel begins. The disciples are “conversing about all the things that had occurred” in Jerusalem. They were talking and debating, rehashing events and worrying about what it all means. Jesus shows up and walks with them. Cleopas recounts to the disguised Christ the events in Jerusalem, “the things that happened to Jesus of Nazarene…” The disciples have the chronology right, this happened, then this, one event, then another. They have the plot and the characters. They don’t have, not yet anyway, The Story, the Big Picture. They lack the heart, the courage, to be witnesses to the Biggest Possible Picture of what happened on Golgotha, to teach the truth of the Empty Tomb. And so, Jesus walks with them on the road to Emmaus, teaching them how to see the Biggest Possible Picture. He reveals to them, opens for them, the text of the prophetic signs found in scripture and says, “I am here and here and here.” He gives them courage, hearts set ablaze with awe at the divine hand in human history.

And, as if this weren’t enough, he reveals himself again when he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. They are awakened from their disappointment and despair, from their wistfulness and pining depression into loving recognition and apostolic action. They go to the Eleven gathered in Jerusalem and witness to the witnesses that Jesus had made himself known to them in the breaking of the bread.

If we will survive as disciples until Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church, we will survive by hearing the Word of God and eating the Bread of Life. We cannot be foolish disciples, slow of heart to believe. Why? Because we have Christ breaking the bread for us daily, revealing himself to us on every road we travel. We have the witnesses of scripture, tradition, the magisterium, one another, and we have Christ among us, here, now in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread.

Do not be foolish or slow of heart to believe: “The Lord has truly been raised!”