Thoughts about vocations

I’ve been thinking about vocations a lot lately. My province—Province of St Martin de Porres—is having a vocations weekend at the priory on Nov 10-12th. I’ve invited several young men from the university to attend and most of them have accepted. We’re expecting between 10 and 12 retreatants.

I wanted to suggest the following about vocations:

1). There is no vocations crisis. God is calling more than enough men to the priesthood to cover the needs of the Church. The real crisis is twofold: a). crisis of commitment and b). crisis of encouragement. The crisis of commitment is the result of the reluctance of the men who are called to say YES to their call. Most men called to priesthood are opting for careers that will only partially perfect their gifts. They can be happy, of course, but they are not picking up the greater challenge of sacrificial service in the Church. The crisis of encouragement is more complex. Basically, mothers and fathers are not supporting sons who express an interest in say YES to God’s call. This has to do with a decline in the prestige of the priesthood and the easier availability of a formal education for lower and middle-class men. We also have to look to the bishops, their vocation directors, and their discernment and vetting processes. Do the people the bishop trusts to recruit and vet his vocations really believe that an ordained priesthood is necessary for the flourishing of the Church? Is there a culture of priestly community in the diocese? Are the priests happy and encouraging of vocations? Bottomline: no sensible young man with a vocation is remotely interested in signing on to a religious order or a diocese if it is clear that those in charge think his vocation to ordained ministry is an ideological problem, a theological inconvenience, or a political obstacle to the Great Lay Revolution. And no young man is remotely interested in joining an order or a diocese controlled by bitter, angry ideologues who loudly and proudly celebrate the coming demise of the priesthood. Who wants to jump on a failing project as it sinks under the weight of its stewards’ neglect?

2). If we have all the vocations we need, but those vocations aren’t saying YES, what do we need to do? First, give God constant thanks for the vocations He has called. Gratitude sets the stage for humility and the current crisis in commitment and encouragement needs all the humility it can get. Second, pray that God will encourage (literally, “strengthen the hearts of”) those whom He has called. Pray that they will say YES. Third, personally, one-on-one invite a young man to think about priesthood. If there’s any inkling in his mind that he has been called, your affirmation will reinforce that inkling into a stirring and the stirring into a desire and so on. Fourth, make sure that you understand who your priest is. I mean, study up on the nature of the priesthood. Get the Catechism and spend some time studying what the Church teaches about priesthood. Ignore functional models of priesthood (i.e., the priesthood is a job or a role) and ignore attempts to turn the Catholic priest into a Protestant minister (i.e., a minister of the Word in the pulpit but not a priest at the altar of sacrifice!). Also avoid all attempts to understand that priesthood is rooted in baptism only. We all minister to one another out of our baptisms. But the ordained priest ministers out of his baptism AND out of his ordination. To say that he ministers as a priest out of his baptism only is an attempt by some to diminish the sacramental character of Holy Orders and reduce the priesthood to something like a Parochial Facilitator of Charisms. One more thing to avoid: please don’t lump a vocation to the priesthood in with vocations to the married life, the single life, ad. nau. Of course, these vocations are perfectly true and good and beautiful. But we aren’t suffering as a Church from a lack of husbands and single women. Lumping priestly vocations in with all other Christian vocations tends to level the priestly vocation and hides the urgency of the crisises of commitment and encouragement. This is NOT about the priestly vocation being “better” than any other vocation. It is about the Church being loud and clear that we need priests and that we value the vocation for itself and not as a tacked-on afterthought during the prayers of the people.

Those called to priesthood will not be encouraged to say YES to their call until it is crystal clear to them that we need them. Communion Services and other forms of “celebrations in the absence of a priest” only serve to reinforce the idea that a priest for Mass is a luxury. Given all the other negatives about the priesthood these days, do we really need to carry on with our Sunday worship as if the priest were a rare creature slowly moving into extinction? I imagine a young man in the pews at St. Bubba’s, attending a month or two’s worth of Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest and thinking, “Hey, I don’t need to say YES to God’s call to priesthood. We’re getting along just fine here at St. Bubba’s w/o one.” In fact, why don’t we just elect one bishop somewhere in Kansas to consecrate several warehouses of hosts every week and then use FedEx to ship those hosts to all the parishes in the country for communion services. That way we can get rid of the priesthood and the episcopate altogether. Much cheaper and easier than educating men to be parish priests. Well, I guess we would have to keep one priest and one seminarian in the pipeline at all times as replacements.

Being Perfect as Our Father is Perfect

PODCAST!

One of my regular readers wrote to me recently, asking me to speak to the following issue:

“What I really want to say is, that when you are teaching, or when the topic of Confession comes up, please, please, please, tell people that it is God's job to perfect them. I did not understand this and so I think I stayed away for that much longer thinking that I had to be perfect. You'd have thought that every parish I went to was populated by Saints, not by people just like myself who were really struggling!”

The Catholic understanding of redemption is simple: God became man so that man might become God (2 Peter 1.4 and 1 John 4.7-13). Christ makes it possible for us to partake in the divine nature. I teach my students here at UD this definition of Catholic spirituality: spirituality in an academic setting is the study of the ways that we are perfected in our participation in the divine nature. Notice the passive voice of the verbs in that sentence. That is very intentional. We are perfected. We do not perfect ourselves. Aquinas teaches that an imperfect creature cannot perfect itself. For an imperfect creature to be perfected it must be perfected by something more perfect than itself. For us, that’s God—Perfection Himself. The spiritual project that we are cooperating with is the conversion of our lives in such a way that we are living now as if we were already in heaven. The five-dollar theological phrase for this is “living eschatologically,” living toward the Eschaton (The End). Our End is always God. Our Goal, Purpose, Reason for Existence, The Point of Us Being Here is God. Nothing we can do, say, believe, think, feel, or buy will perfect us. Because everything we can do, say, believe, think, feel, or buy is imperfect as well and nothing imperfect can perfect the imperfect. Bottomline: you exist b/c God is Being Himself. You are redeemed b/c God is Love Himself. You are being perfected b/c God is Perfection Himself. You will come to live with Him forever in heaven b/c God is Beauty Himself.
Fr. Philip, OP

Love makes you fat, bald, and stupid

St. Martin de Porres: Philippians 4.4-9 and Matthew 22.34-40
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass & Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!
Here are a few reasons why we should ignore Jesus’ command to love one another. Oh, “loving God,” by the way, is fine b/c that’s mostly an abstract sort of thing that doesn’t really require us to do much beyond saying that we love God. It’s not like the God-lovers glow or anything. OK. Back to the reasons to ignore Jesus:

1). Love is messy and it makes you act stupid: as a passion love is fine, but when indulged it turns the lover into a hopeless mess and promotes really dumb decision-making. Take Jesus, for example. Because he indulged in loving us, he ended up a real mess on a whipping post and nailed to a cross. He could’ve stopped the blood bath at any point and gotten off that brutal carnival ride, but he didn’t. He died for us instead.

2). Love is expensive: show me one act of love that is free, and I’ll show you some land near 114 that’s prime for a catfish farm. Love always seems to have a price. What’s the point of willing the Good for others when it will likely lighten your wallet, cost you a gallon of gas, or force you to spend several minutes of your life doing something charitable. Again, let’s look at Jesus. Was his act of love for us free? Well, OK, free for us! That’s fine. But it cost Jesus his dignity and his life. Expensive, indeed.

3). Love requires us to focus too much on others: it would seem that the basic point of love is to fawn all over other people, wait on them hand and foot, and pretend to be all about their needs and their hurts. It’s all about them, them, them! What about me?! I have my needs and my hurts and my wants and me, me, me…Perfect example of this problem: Jesus tells his little band that if they want to be first they have to serve others! What is that? What kind of logic is that? To be first I have to be last, willing to sacrifice prestige, place, honor, and power in order to SERVE! Jesus does this for us—again—but look at his conclusion. Great for us. Not so great for him.

4). You have to lie when you love: not that lying is a problem when you have to do it, but loving is doubly difficult b/c to keep people liking you you have to tell them what they don’t want to hear. You can’t “love” if you make people uncomfortable or if you say unpleasant things to them. It would seem that charity requires us to lie in order to keep the peace. Being peaceful is more important than speaking the truth. Obviously! Didn’t Jesus say that he came to divide with a sword, to both cut the bonds of sin and to split apart families and friends? Is that what love does when it forces you to tell the truth? Who thinks that’s good? He spoke the truth and ended up dead. Not a good example of peacekeeping.

I’ve given you four good reasons why loving one another is a problem: love is messy and makes you do dumb things; it is expensive; it requires you to focus too much on others; and it makes you lie. All good reasons to forget about love. And this is why Jesus doesn’t just suggest that we love one another or hint at the possibility of loving one another. He commands us to love. Commands. Do it! Love is the greatest commandment b/c our relationship with God depends on it. We cannot understand what God is saying to us through the prophets if we fail to love. And we cannot know what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, and excellent if we will not love. What’s worse: we cannot know anything of Goodness, we cannot imitate God, we cannot become Christ if we will not love.

It’s command. Not an argument or a suggestion or a caption for a child’s poster. It is a command, an order. And if you will be more than you are, if you will be made perfect in the Father’s love, you will love—Him, us, yourself and you will rejoice in the Lord always b/c He loved you first…and loves you still.

Blogs, Devils, and Jesus

30th Week OT: Ephesians 4.32-5.8 and Luke 13.10-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!
When I should be doing just about anything useful and good, I can usually be found reading blogs. Worse still, I can be found carrying on long, tedious debates in the comboxes of blogs! Recently, I got tangled up in a debate that is just beyond stupid. I won’t go into detail; let it suffice to say that it was about the regulation of the liturgy. We weren’t arguing over the nature of God or the best means of achieving holiness. We were fussing about a tiny little point of liturgical etiquette. The equivalent of arguing about whether it is more sinful to steal one dime or two nickels. Sad, I know, but the smaller the stakes the more vicious the game.

Jesus goes to the synagogue and finds there a woman who has been crippled by a dark spirit for eighteen years. He heals her. The synagogue’s leader is outraged, so runs to his blogsite and posts a long, detailed flame on Jesus, quoting scripture, obscure scholars of the Law, popular itinerant prophets, arguing vehemently that Jesus has desecrated the Sabbath by performing an exorcism. The comboxes fill up with “Preach it, brother!” and “The rabbis have spoken and that’s good enough for me” and “We can’t take scripture literally…” and “A recent document from Jerusalem, Keeping the Sabbath Holy, says in chapter nine, paragraph twelve, sentence seven, third dependent clause from the end beginning after the second semicolon…”

Etcetera and ad nauseum until the blogsite crashes and the leader is forced back outside. Jesus looks him in the eye and yells, “Hypocrite!” The leader faints b/c he’s spent the whole weekend on the internet, eating nothing but Nacho Cheese Doodles and drinking low-fat iced mocha frappacinnos. Jesus soldiers on, asking the leader and the crowd: “What better day to free this woman from the bondage of Satan than the Sabbath?” Jesus’ opponents were humbled and the crowd rejoices. His point? Paul says it better than I can: “Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving of one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God…” He says to live in love, to love as Christ loves, to avoid obscenity and silly talk, rather give thanksgiving, live as a breathing testament of gratitude to the Father. We are children of the light not of the darkness. He says to get off the blogsite comboxes and stop arguing about how to fold the altar linens and get out there and do something holy and grateful and kind and forgiving for someone!

I have to remind myself constantly that Jesus didn’t suffer bloody beatings and an ignoble execution so that I can continue to labor under the Law. Of course rules and regulations are an essential part of our human community, but like the sacraments, they are not binding on God. God is not limited to dispensing his grace through the sacraments. Nor is He limited to specific days for healing. Jesus argues that the Sabbath is the perfect day to work a healing miracle. What better way to honor God, seek out rest, and witness to the Father’s power and mercy than to free someone from an oppressive demon? Again and again Jesus has taught us that we aren’t freed from the Law but freed within the Law to love God and love one another. And what can be more perverse than for us to take the greatest commandment, written on the flesh our hearts, and shrink it back into a legal proposition written on stone? A truly sad idolatry.

If you find yourself greedy for the Law, for a regulation or rubric to worship, remember Paul’s words: no idolater has an inheritance in the Kingdom of God. Hell is for Pharisaical nitpickers and combox devils.

What do you want Jesus to do for you?

30th Sunday OT: Jeremiah 31.7-9; Hebrews 5.1-6; Mark 10.46-52
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
HTS: Catholic Social Scientists; St Paul’s Hospital; Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!
So, there you are. Blind. Begging on the street. Hoping that someone would drop a few coins in your lap or pitch a bite of food your way. The street seems busier than usual. Noisier. There’s an electric vibe to the air. Something blazing. Something, someone…beautiful is coming. You feel the mobbed road swell. The people push you away. Swatting at you to move back. You feel...something, someone walking along the way and you feel… excitement? Longing? Hunger? Hope? What is it? And then, just as you know the feeling, you hear someone whisper, “It is Jesus of Nazareth!” Faith! Yes, faith! That’s it. You yell over the mob, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.” Those around you, those who ignore you everyday or kick at you to move to another corner or tree, those who might spare you a small meal…they shush you, tell you to be quiet. They rebuke you for your shamelessness, your eagerness to be heard, to be seen. You cry out again, “Son of David, have pity on me.” The people in the crowd grow more impatient and you feel their building violence, their reckless bodies pressing in. You’ve been a target before and do not wish to be a target again. He is gone anyway. Then, a voice: “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.” Calling you? He heard you. He heard your voice. He sees you. You jump up too fast and go to Jesus. You can’t see him looking at you, but you feel his eyes on yours. In a flash, your skin is electric, your blood speeding, every bone vibrates. And you hear him say, “What do you want me to do for you?”

And so, here you are. Sitting there. Maybe hungry? Thirsty? A bit worn from a day of reading, listening, arguing? Enlivened by good company, good conversation. The way is not crowded. No one is kicking at you. You don’t need to beg. If you shouted now, called out for Jesus, we might all stare at you embarrassed, but no one would try to shut you up. At least, not at first. So, happy, free, comfortably housed, recently fed…why are you here? Are deaf and want to hear? Mute and want to speak? Dead and want to live? Bleeding? Demon possessed? Unable to walk? Cowardly? Leprous? Are you blind and want to see? So, here you are. Sitting there. And why?

Jesus draws the nearly naked man into his reach, searching in his black eyes and finding what he needs, he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” The man’s black eyes glint a terrible trust. He says, “Master, I want to see.” Master, I want to live. Master, I want to hear, to walk, to be free, to sin no more, to serve you. Master, I want…I want to follow you. “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Jesus offers him his first chance to use his sight: go your way. You trust me. Go your way. The man’s black eyes brighten. They are brown or dark green or hazel. He sees. “Immediately he received his sight.” He takes his first chance as one who sees to make Christ’s way his own way. He follows our Lord.

The man who had black eyes sat on the roadside waiting for his sight. When Jesus walked by he had the guts to yell for his gift, to shout over the crowd, despite the crowd, in defiance of the people’s polite shock at his disreputable display. He asks for Christ’s compassion. Notice: the man did not yell, “Master, make me see!” He asks for mercy, twice. And Jesus’ disciples strengthen his heart—encourage him—by saying, “Jesus is calling you.” With this, “he threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” Bartimaeus has a need. Jesus has his gift. Bartimaeus begs for compassion. Jesus offers him his merciful service. In answer, Bartimaeus boldly, confidently speaks aloud the name of his gift in faith and he is saved—he is healed, made whole. Free in trust, he makes a choice to follow Christ.

And so, here you all are. Sitting there. Why are you here? Are you here to proclaim your praise for the Lord, the One who delivered His people from slavery? Are you here to shout with joy that you are healed of your sins, unchained from devilish persecution? Are you here to be consoled? Guided? Delivered from ignorance and error? Weakness? Are you here for your inheritance? Let me ask you this while we asking questions: can you claim your gift? I mean, are you able to speak aloud in faith and ask for the Lord’s blessing? If Jesus found in the middle of your darkness, your most radical despair, and he said to you: what do you want me to do for you? What could you say? What would you say? Do you have the courage to name your gift in faith?

Despite the naysaying whine of our moronic media machine and despite the greedy crowds of meretricious politicians and despite the herds of obscenity obsessed cultural technicians and despite the novelty idolaters of the academy—despite this Legion of increasingly embarrassing and clattering poltergeists, can you, will you stand up with your disabilities, your flaws, your disgraces, your histories of stupidities and mistakes, stand up with your blindness, your muted tongue, and your oftentimes chilly-heart and shout over the crashing, drowning din of the professional pagans, shout to the Lord, “Lord! I need your compassion! I need your pity!” If you will, your trust will be rewarded. And you will follow him. Yes, to glory. But possibly first to ignobility, to abandonment, to a gut-wrenching cry on a cross you don’t get to choose.

If someone were to ask me why all of you are here I might say: for the fellowship, for a time and place away from the secular, for a chance to visit the Holy, to offer praise and thanksgiving, to hear the Word proclaimed and preached, to offer Christ on his altar, to see Calvary again. If I said that, all of those would be accurate but inadequate. True but not entirely satisfying. We are waiting on a roadside. But there is no elbowing crowd. We are blind or deaf or proud or disgraced or cold-hearted. But we’re here. We are the disciples on the road. And we are Bartimeamus, shouting to the Lord for our gifts! We are here for courage. We are here because Christ is calling us. We are free before Jesus. And we hear him say, “What do you want me to do for you?”

If you will claim your inheritance as a child of our Father, you will stand in the crowd and shamelessly beg for God’s mercy; you will shout for His compassion over the noise of the industry of disbelief. And when he asks what blessing you would have of him, say, “Only to follow you, Lord.” You will be beautiful then, naked and perfectly clean.

Finally! A Solution to Abortion!, or Thanks again, Sisters

More moral clarity from the “Catholic” sisters of the National Coalition of American Nuns…please compare:

We encourage respect for the moral adulthood of women and will choose legislators who will recognize the right of women to make reproductive decisions and receive medical treatment according to the rights of privacy and conscience.

vs.

We believe all children should be safe from sexual predators in their homes, schools, churches, in government offices and on the Internet[…]

Here’s the solution to all our abortion problems! The Pro-Life movement needs to re-classify “Mothers” as “Primary Sexual Predators” and then the NCAN will write a stinging manifesto calling on Congress and the United Nations to pass laws to protect unborn children against the Primary Sexual Predator who dares to hire Secondary Sexual Predators to shoot them full of saline and then suck them piece by piece out of their Primary Sexual Predator’s womb. This is genuis! Thanks again, Sisters!

The problem with killing children, or Thanks, sisters!

The Denver Post reports on an attempt by the National Coalition of American Nuns to sway Catholic voters to vote for “Culture of Death” candidates:

Opposing war and treating immigrants with compassion are included in a list of seven issues outlined by the group. Mary Ann Coyle and Anna Koop of Denver and Sallie Ann Watkins of Pueblo are the other Colorado nuns on the board.

The letter also states, "We encourage respect for the moral adulthood of women and will choose legislators who will recognize the right of women to make reproductive decisions and receive medical treatment according to the rights of privacy and conscience."

So, apparently the problem with war is not that children are killed; it’s that they aren’t killed by their mothers. Or is it that war tends to kill children publicly and the sisters think they should be killed privately. Or maybe it’s the whole “presence of a medical professional” thing that they think distinguishes kids unintentionally killed in a war zone by soldiers and bombs from kids intentionally killed in a nice, sterile abortion clinic by MD’s and moms?

And these sisters wonder why their congregations are dying. I don’t know any young women who are ready to waste their lives in a “catholic” religious order that defends the proposition that it is a moral good for a mother to kill her child. This is beyond sad; and it is truly despairing.

Satan, Goats, Fire, and Jesus

29th Week OT(F): Ephesians 4.1-6 and Luke 12.54-59
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation


The EU will implant microchips in its citizens. The computer that controls the chips is called “The Beast.” Osama bin Lama will be killed and then rise again in three days to become the Anti-Christ. Apparitions of the Blessed Mother warn that there is a Great Chastisement coming. Secular powers, controlled by a cabal of modernist Satanists, will systematically persecute the Church. Bishops, priests, entire religious orders and even a future pope serve these Satanists. These are just a few of the dire predictions about our future as Catholics in the world. I won’t even touch on the Protestant disaster scenarios I grew up with. Here’s the problem with these predictions: even if they prove to be true, so what? I mean, what does it matter?

Jesus knows that the hypocrites in the crowd know who he is and why he’s preaching. He knows that they know that he’s fulfilled the prophecies and that he is among them as the Christ. Though they can easily read the signs in the sky and on the earth to predict the weather, they pretend not to be able to read the signs of his coming as the Messiah. Why? Likely b/c a correct interpretation of the signs would require them to consider seriously the necessity of conversion, the necessity of starting over in a New Life in Christ; meaning, they would have to leave the old self behind and start fresh. That’s frightening and arduous. In some bizarre sense a life of sin is comfortable, familiar. The prospect of having such a life revolutionized by acknowledging the arrival of the Messiah must be terrifying!

If you think that I am implying that we shouldn’t waste our time with the fantastic predictions of devilish demise, you’re wrong. I’m not implying it at all. I’m saying it outright. Don’t waste your time. The only prophecy that need concern a Catholic is the prophecy of the arrival of the Messiah. He’s here. Let’s move to making sure that everyone who meets us, hears us, sees us, reads us, or even hears rumors about us knows that we have a single mind, a single heart, one Word, one miracle in faith; that we move and breath and grow and hope to die in one Spirit, preserved in unity through the bond of peace. Let’s be absolutely sure that everything we do and say fulfills with love the prophecy of his coming, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, and his coming again. Does the world see the Body of Christ, the Church, coming in glory to suffer in love, to serve in hope, to persevere in faith no matter what comes? Or do we look like a secret society with something to hide?

When we grind away our short hours here wringing our hands over weird visions and crazy fortunes, we waste the gift of time for witnessing to Love Who saved us and Who will bring us to Him forever. A preoccupation with these visions opens us to all sorts of sins of omission. What are we not doing for God’s people while decoding biblical numerologies and arguing about the authenticity of another Marian visit. What gets left undone? Never does Jesus tell the disciples that they will find themselves among the roasting goats in Hell for failing to properly interpret and apply the message of one of his mother’s apparitions. They will go to Hell, he tells them, for failing to clothe the naked, for failing to visit the imprisoned, for failing to feed the hungry, and for failing to welcome the stranger. In other words, for failing to do the work Christ did, we fail as his students and ambassadors and we reject his grace. Goat, let me introduce you to Fire. Goat, fire. Fire, goat.

We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism and we have one witness: to bear with one another through love so that the world is astonished by our generosity and comes to Christ b/c our joy in his grace is irresistibly contagious! We must prove that being a prisoner for the Lord is the freest anyone can ever be.

Only the rich go to heaven...

29th Week OT (M): Ephesians 2.1-10 and Luke 12.13-21
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


The Gospel of Power and Wealth has been in the news much lately. All those megachurch celebrity-preachers who buy used football stadiums and fill them up with folks desperate for a message of easy hope and cheap grace. Here’s the formula: take a few tidbits of folksy conventional wisdom; gently mix in a few carefully selected biblical images or ideas; fold these with several large dashes of alliteration and bumper sticker brevity; bake for a few years on cable access and strip mall storefronts; then package as a Prosperity Gospel with the subtitle: “God Wants You to be Rich.” Your former stadium becomes a “church” and you, a former used car salesman, are now a “pastor.”

We have to be careful. I don’t mean to mock those who do find hope and grace in these communities. My point is a bit more subtle than taking a few jabs at the competition. My point is this: when you put material prosperity, earthly treasures, at the center of your spiritual life—whether as an indicator of God’s blessing or a reward for strong faith or as a consequence of sound biblical financial planning—when you make your stock portfolio or your savings account the measure of your holiness, the benchmark of your righteousness, you risk—dangerously risk!—losing the true riches that God has for you. Making your wealth in things rather than your poverty of spirit the measure of God’s grace working in your life is foolish—literally, “without any wisdom.” God, surveying the vain attempts of the rich man to store up his treasures, says to the man, “You fool!” You are poor in the things that matter to God.

So, what matters to God? Our Father has mercy in great abundance. And because he has such love for us as His children, He has brought us back to life despite our sin. We are restored to life with Christ, lifted up with him, and seated next to him in the presence of God. And why? Paul writes to the Ephesians: “[so] that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace…for by grace you have been saved through faith…it is a gift of God.” Not from our works. For we are his handiwork.

The public sign of our abundant riches is not the Lexus, the Gucci wardrobe, the Rolex, or the micro-mansion in Plano. The public sign of our wealth in Christ Jesus is our willingness to serve through good works, our eagerness to repent and to forgive, our excitement at the chance to witness to our trust in God, our ready obedience to one another, and our humility before the historic faith. And even with these the riches of God’s grace are immeasurable. What is prosperity? What is wealth? What is abundance? What is any of this held against the infinite progress of His gift of life and eternal life?

It is true: only the rich go to heaven. Only those greatly blessed with great wealth will see God face-to-face after death. In fact, there’s not much point in the poor struggling now for heaven later. If we will not take the treasures given freely by God now, there’s no hope of finding ourselves in the crowd around the throne later. Everything you need to live abundantly is freely given by the Father through His Son in the Holy Spirit. Your life is freely given. Your redemption is freely given. Your blessings are freely given. Your sins are freely forgiven. And you are brought to the Divine Life pristine, glorious, and free. Only the rich see God face-to-face. Only those rich in His mercy, only those freed as His possessions.

How to Transform Suffering and Death

29th Sunday OT: Isa 53.10-11; Hebrews 4.14-16; Mark 10.35-45
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!
Think about how we avoid discomfort, suffering, and death. To avoid discomfort we have invented air conditioning, bucket seats, padded shoes, thermal underwear, and even complex social manners to avoid awkward moments at parties and in public restrooms. To avoid suffering we have invented philosophies that deny evil, political utopias where no one is rich or poor, and religions that believe suffering is as an effect of desire and so we must eliminate desire. To avoid death we have invented material immortalities: surgeries, pharmaceuticals, diets, exercises, genetic therapies, nanotechnologies. To avoid death we have also invented ways of creating and re-creating ourselves out of death, or beyond it—the beautiful immortalities of art, literature, monument, heroism, memory, music.

How much of our daily living is about avoiding discomfort, suffering, and death? Better question: as members of the Body of Christ, heirs to the Father’s Kingdom, are we called to avoid discomfort, suffering, and death? Is this part of our ministry as disciples, as apostles? When is sacrificial service NOT about discomfort, suffering, and death?

Isaiah sets us up to understand exactly how suffering—willingly taking on pain for a godly purpose—is essential to sacrificial service: “If he gives his life as an offering for sin…the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.” Note these three: “if he gives his life,” “because of his affliction,” and “through his suffering.” And note the progression: the Lord’s servant freely offers himself for the sin of others…he sees the light in fullness b/c of this sacrificial service…and through his suffering—his willing acceptance of our sin for a higher purpose—the servant brings many to righteousness. He justifies us before the Lord. In other words, because he was discomforted, b/c he suffered, b/c he died, we do not have to. We are instead comforted, free of anxious worry, and we may live eternally.

So, if this is true—and it is—why then do we still work so hard to avoid discomfort, run so fast from suffering, and dodge the death of repentance so arduously? We do not want to be last. We are creatures of Firsts—first across the line, at the top of our game, highest score, fastest time, strongest lift, best grade, first prize, deepest soul, lightest spirit, hardest body…all to weaken, all to weaken and fade, all to weaken and fade and die. Dust. Shade. Snap of an echo. Gone.

Who wants to be a servant? Who wants the work of serving others? There is no glamour there, no applause, no dramatic ovation or spray of roses. It’s humble grubbing, embarrassing effort that makes someone’s life better but it just gives me wet armpits, dirty hands, a sore back, and a logjam on my own homework or my TIVO watching. Surely, it is better to be served; better to be first and not last; a Master and not a slave. It is!

If you will be in this world and of it, then you are morally obligated to pursue the best, the first, the highest. To be in and of the world is to be in and of the virtues the world holds up as Good. To be otherwise is suicide. You must honor the bottom-line. Praise efficiency. Worship at the altar of productivity. Practice winner-take-all competition. Lose the losers. Appeal to no power mightier than civil law. Here’s your bumper sticker: “If you have yours, I can’t have mine.” You must celebrate my needs as my rights, otherwise you are oppressing me. You must also celebrate my wants as my rights, otherwise you are hating me. Requiring me to serve others is just you trying to control me with guilt. I don’t do guilt. My adult spirituality is an eclectic weaving together of the best elements of a variety of religious traditions—none of which require anything of me, especially not sacrificial service! If you will be of this world and in it, you must conform to its virtues: work-pride, self-avarice, power-lust, gift-envy, success-gluttony, failure-wrath, and soul-sloth. Play with these worldly virtues or risk their opposing vices: ignored in modesty, disrespected for generosity, mocked for purity, taken for granted in kindness, ostracized for abstinence, laughed at for mercy shown, and hated for one’s holy industry.

If you will be great among the Lord’s disciples, you will serve. If you will be first among the apostles, you will be a slave to all.

The pain that Jesus endured on the cross did not and does not save us. The beatings by the Roman soldiers, the betrayal of his disciples, the political backstabbing wheeling-dealing of Pilate—all of these caused Jesus pain. This pain did not save us. Pain is not redemptive. Isaiah heard the Lord say, “If he gives his life as an offering for sin…the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him.” If he gives. James and John ask Jesus to be honored in his kingdom. Jesus says to his honor-seeking disciples: “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink…?” They say, “We can.” We can drink the cup that you, Lord, drink—the same cup that Jesus later prays will pass him by! For the Servant’s pain to be redemptive, for Jesus’ pain on the cross to be redemptive, it must be suffered, that is, “allowed.” It must be taken on with a will and directed to the benefit of others. To wallow in pain is to wallow in pain. Nothing more. To take up pain in the service of others, to designate pain as a sacrifice, to make it holy by giving it away for a holy end—that is suffering! And this suffering mocks the Devil. It scrubs the world clean. It rotates the unholy virtues of pride and greed and blesses them as humility and generosity.

Discomfort is eased. Suffering is avoided. Death is delayed. We will invent and re-invent human civilization after human civilization in order to ease our discomfort, to avoid our suffering, and to delay our deaths. And we will lift up and parade the secular virtues to justify our refusal to take on service for others. But is this what we as Christians are called to do? Are we called to avoid discomfort, suffering, and death? No. We are called to transform discomfort, suffering, and death; to make each into the good habit of being Christs for others. We are called to turn discomfort into the luxury of humility; to turn pain into the art of redemptive suffering; to turn death into a witness to everlasting Life!

Our Lord did not die on the cross so that we might be blue ribbon winners or gold medalists. He died on the cross to show us how to be the friends of God. How to be servants to one another. He gave his life as a ransom for many so that we will know how to give our lives as a ransom for many more.

What does your life stand for? What do you represent in the world? Whom do you serve? Here’s a question for you: will you die for me? For that guy behind you? For your next door neighbor? If you will give your life as an offering for sin, the will of the Lord will be accomplished through you. And because of your affliction you will see the light in fullness of day.

Will you be small in the kingdom of God by dying to pride and greed in the service of others? Or will you insist on being great among the Great of the World and in the end find yourself among the Great who proudly rule the smoldering trash heaps of Gehenna?

Beat Hypocrisy! Eliminate Standards!

28th Week OT (F): Ephesians 1.11-14 and Luke 12.1-7
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass and Church of the Incarnation


Here’s my solution to the problem of hypocrisy: let’s get rid of ideals! Get rid of standards and goals. That’s really what causes hypocrisy, right? We fail to live up to what we believe to be right and good and true and then we end up on the front page of the paper. The headlines blaring: CHRISTIAN IN SCANDAL, SOMEBODY’S GETTING SUED. You might be one of those hard cases who thinks we should try harder to live up to our professed values. That we should strive more diligently to be good example of Christian ideals. OK. Live in la-la land if you want. You idealists just make the world more difficult for us realists. Wake up and smell the failure, you glassy-eyed freaks! Standards and ideals are just ways to make us feel bad about being human, ways to create a false sense of hope that we can be better than the simple animals that we are. It’s easy, really: no standards, no failure; no goals, no let-downs. Don’t profess any values, no one can call you a hypocrite when you inevitably fail to honor those values. Easy. Too easy.

Jesus tells his friends that not even the smallest bird escapes the notice of God. He says, “Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” If the sparrow is worthy of God’s notice, then how much more worthy are we to stand in His presence and be noticed by our Father? And not only noticed but loved and being loved by Him capable ourselves then of loving others. That we are able to love because we are loved first by Him is the key to understanding why we do not need to be afraid of Him who has the power to cast us into Gehenna. How so? If we are able to love b/c God loved us first, and love is Who God Is, then it follows that we are able to do all the things we need to do to grow in holiness b/c God did them for us first. He forgives us, so we are able to forgive one another. He died for us, so we are able to die for one another. After all, all of our hairs are counted and we are worth more than many sparrows.

God has set the standards for our lives. He has marked the goals and defined the virtues that will bring us to Him. And He has made it possible for us to meet these standards, to reach these goals by first showing us that they can be met, can be reached. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a living benchmark, a breathing exemplar of His perfection. A human creature like one of us, flesh and temptation, he excelled in every test, hit every target. There was no hypocrisy in him because he was and is the completed union of human potential and divine act.

One way to end hypocrisy to eliminate standards. I think we’ve tried that already. Huge mess. We could also just say that everyone is a winner; everyone has met the standards. Bigger mess. Another way for us to eliminate hypocrisy is to admit up front that we will fail. And admit up front that our failure will sometimes be scandalous. This isn’t permission to fail; it’s an acknowledgement that we are not yet whole. We also have to say that despite our failures and despite the probability of scandal we do not lower the standards, shorten the goals, or create easier targets. The benchmarks of human holiness aren’t ours to revise. They belong to God. What we can do is confess that we are creatures, wholly and entirely—made, loved, redeemed, and brought to perfection as children of the Father. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, “In Christ we were also chosen…so that we might exist for the praise of his glory…”

Hypocrisy then is not the failure to live up to the standards that we profess in God’s name. Hypocrisy is the prideful refusal to admit that we will fail. It is the refusal to admit that we will fail if we will not live and love in the life and love of Christ.

Perhaps the road to Gehenna is paved with the skulls of tight-lipped realists!

Semiotic illiteracy

28th Week OT(M): Galatians 4.22-24, 26-27, 31-5.1 and Luke 11.29-32
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


I was lost in Nice, France with my good friend, Patrick. We had decided to take a bus from Villefranche to Nice to visit the Chagall and Matisse museums. When it was time to head back to our ship, we took a bus to the Garibaldi station and waited for the transfer back to Villefranche. And we waited and we waited. Three or four buses stopped but none was ours. We asked a woman at the station how to get back to Villefranche. I should say, we mimed and shouted and grunted and wildly gestured b/c neither of us speak French. The poor woman energetically responded to our desperation with what I can only assume was beautiful French. Let’s just say, her gestures were impressive! She repeatedly pointed to the signs on the bus stop and the signs on the street corners and the signs on the many construction barriers along the road. No good. Patrick and I wandered the Garibaldi area of Nice for an hour or so—illiterate and lost. Finally, we found our bus and made it back to the ship. The moral of the story? All the signs in the world will do you no good if you can’t read them.

Why is Jesus being so mean about the reasonable request of the crowd for a sign of his identity and power? Why is he being so stubborn all of a sudden?

There are at least two ways of reading Jesus’ signs, that is, two ways of interpreting his miracles. First, they can be seen as magical events, mysterious tricks that tickle the imagination and satisfy some sort of basic human need for the mystical. Second, the miracles can be seen as helps, as divine assistance for and confirmation of our initial trust in Jesus’ word that he is who he says he is. Signs as magical tricks have to be repeated, done again and again, and rarely if ever do they establish anything resembling faith in the human heart. Signs as help for our trust in Jesus’ word require faith first. They cannot confirm in us what doesn’t exist in us. Looking out over the crowd, Jesus knows that those clamoring for a sign are really clamoring for a circus trick. They will not believe even if he stops the sun and calls angels by the thousands.

The only sign he will give them is his death, his three day stay in the grave, and his resurrection. The sign of Jonah. They will either read this sign as a trick or it will confirm their faith. If they fail to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, they will be condemned by the queen of the south and the Ninevites at the judgment. She came looking for the wisdom of Solomon not knowing that the Messiah had come. How could she? No one believed, so no one witnessed. The Ninevites repented at the sign of Jonah. They believed and were confirmed in their faith. They will judge this evil generation for its stubbornness and willful ignorance. Christ risen from the tomb three days later is a greater sign than Jonah’s three day stay in the belly of the fish.

Do we clamor after signs? Look for indications that our faith in Christ is justified? Are we running after apparitions or miraculous events or private revelations to confirm what we already know to be true? Will we be like the Ninevites who hear the Word preached and repent? Or will we be like those of the evil generation and chase after signs to have confirmed what we do not believe in the first place?

We are set free in Christ. Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. The greatest sign of Christ’s fidelity to us—greater than Jonah and Solomon—is the Christian living a holy life of sacrificial witness and service. This is a sign easily read and universally understood. No magic. No tricks. No stage. No drama. Just charity in action—the surest sign that Christ is among his people.

You are lacking one thing...

28th Sunday OT: Wisdom 7.7-11; Hebrews 4.12-13; Mark 10.17-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX


Here’s what I know to be true about everyone in this church, everyone who can hear my voice right now, here’s what’s true about you: you desire to know God, you long to be touched by His spirit, you want more than gold, silver, or cold hard cash to be in His presence and to know his healing grace. How do I know this? There is no other reason for you to be here. No other incentive or reward to come to this place this evening than to encounter the living God. If you are here—and you are—then you are here b/c the Holy Spirit has thumped your ear, kicked you in the rear, or maybe even two-by-foured you upside the head. You are here b/c you know that you will not be filled, will not be settled, will not be gentled or graced or rested with anything or anyone less than the One Who made you. No gold, no silver, no cash, no love, no job, no amount or kind of power will slake your dry thirst, feed your yawning hunger, or tame your wild longing for our Father’s love. He is our beginning and our end, our source and our finish. And nothing shortens His love for us or diminishes His mercy to us. He knows what we need more than air to breathe and water to drink and He is here to give us all that we need. And this is why we are here.

So let me ask you: what riches do you put between you and our Father’s love for you? What possesses you and holds you back? If Jesus looked into your eyes and said to you: “You are lacking one thing for eternal life.” What is that one thing?

The rich young man asks Jesus how he might inherit eternal life. Jesus patiently recites the commandments given to Moses. The young man tells Jesus that he has observed the Law all his life. And then in an moment that deserves its own gospel, Jesus looks into the young man’s heart, loves him, and with this love sees the gaping hole in the young man’s soul—the lack, the longing that defines him. Jesus sees the young man’s enslavement to things. What the young man lacks but desires is poverty. Freedom from stuff. Freedom from ownership. He has many possessions. He is possessed by many things.

So, knowing that the young man seeks eternal life and knowing that he desires to be free of these things, why doesn’t Jesus free him from his possessions? Why not cast out the demons of avarice and liberate the young man from his bondage? Jesus does exactly that. Jesus tells him as precisely as he can: go, sell your stuff, give to the money to the poor, and follow me. His exorcism is complete. But you see, an exorcism is effective only on those willing to be freed from their demons. The young man desires to be free. But he doesn’t will it; he doesn’t act. And so he remains a slave to his possessions. Jesus offers him control over his greed, control over his stuff, and instead, at the words of exorcism, the young man’s face falls and he goes away sad to be sad all his days.

Here’s what you must understand about desire. Desire is at once longing and lacking, hungering and not having. To desire love is to long for it and to admit that you don’t have it. Jesus looks into the heart of the young man and sees his brightest desire, his strongest lack, and he loves him for it. But we cannot be a slave to two masters. We cannot give our hearts to two loves. We must be poor in spirit so that we can be rich in God’s gifts. We must be poor in spirit so that there is room for Christ, room for him to sit at our center and rule from the core of our being. This is what it means for us to prefer wisdom to scepter and throne; to prefer wisdom to health and beauty; to account silver and gold as sludge. In wisdom all good things come together in her company.

This is the point in the homily when I am supposed to exhort you to give up your earthly attachments. Exhort you to surrender your chains: your inordinate love of cars and money and gadgets and sex and drugs and rock and roll…But you know all that, don’t you? You know as well as I do that none of that is permanent. None of that can substitute for the love of God and the grace of his mercy. None of that will bring you happiness. It is ash and smoke and shadow and will never—despite the promises of luxury and attention—will never make you happy. You know this. I don’t need to tell you that nothing created can do what only the Creator can—give you a permanent love and life everlasting.

But let me ask you again: what riches do you put between yourself and our Father’s love for you? What possesses you and holds you back? If Jesus looked into your eyes and said to you: “You are lacking one thing for eternal life.” What is that one thing? Knowing UD students as I do, my guess is that not many of you are held back by expensive possessions. Not many are held back by lands and jewels and gold reserves! Not many of you are suffering under the weighty burden of Gucci, Prada, Christian Dior and Yves St. Laurent!

Let me ask a different set of questions. Let’s see how many hit home. Are you rich in a fear that God doesn’t love you enough? Are you unlovable? Are you so rich in sin that a righteous God couldn’t possibly forgive you? Are you so rich in self-sufficiency, self-reliance that you don’t need other people? So rich in a personal knowledge of God that you don’t need others to reveal the Father to you? Are you so rich in divine gifts that you don’t need the gifts of others to make it day to day? Or maybe you’ve stored up your wealth in good works and can survive without grace for a while? Maybe you don’t need Jesus to look you in the eye and love you because your grasp of the theological and moral constructs of the human experience of the Divine are sufficient to elicit an affirmative response from the ground of your Being to the invitation of the Ground of Being Itself to become more Grounded in Being. Are you burning through your life on the fuel of self-righteous certainty—the false assurance that you’ve got it right all on your own (objectively and absolutely) and that there is nothing else for you to learn and no one competent to teach you? Are you so wise? Are you angry that no one else notices your wisdom? Does your desire for piety and purity bring you closer to your brothers and sisters in Christ, or is this desire an excuse to keep them at a safe distance? Is your public holiness also a private holiness, or is it a pretense that hides a furious lack of charity?

Let me ask the hardest question: what do you fear? More often than not we are slaves to our fears not our loves and we can dodge public responsibility for our fears. We cannot dodge Christ: no creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.

I’m not worried. Not even a little. Here’s what I know: we desire to know God, we long to be touched by His spirit, we want more than gold, silver, or cold hard cash to be in His presence and to know his healing grace. We are here b/c He loved us here and we got off the couch, off the computer, off the cell phone, and we made it here for this reason and no other: we cannot be happy w/o Him and there is no better or messier or more graceful place to find Him than among His mongrel children at prayer.

Bring your lack to Him and do what needs to be done to follow Him.

It's not about Christ; it's about BEING Christ

27th Week OT (F): Galatians 3.7-14 and Luke 11.15-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Jesus is at war with the Devil’s kingdom. The gospel stories of exorcism are sometimes battles between Jesus’ desire to reveal who he is himself and the shock and awe of the demons who know who he is and who want to scream his name in terror. Jesus orders them to keep his secret! Demons may not reveal Christ’s identity to God’s human children. As purely disobedient intelligences, demons know who Christ is but do not experience him as Savior and Lord; therefore, they can reveal information about Christ—his identity, e.g.—but they cannot share his saving love, his healing mercy. In other words, they can tell us Christ’s name, but in their disobedience they cannot BE Christ for us. We are not only able to be Christ for one another, we are healthiest, wealthiest, and wisest when we do so. And the Church—fully armed and well-guarded—stands tallest against the siege of lies and violence that mark the Devil’s domestic and foreign policy!

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes that Christ died not only as the Messiah of the Jews but also as the only means of salvation for the Gentiles. Jesus expanded his Father’s kingdom to include all those not under the Mosaic law, not under the Old Covenant. And so, we are subjects of this kingdom in virtue of our baptism, citizens of a new realm, and heirs to the Father’s riches. But I wonder, looking at the Church today, if we really believe this. Do we really believe that we are subjects of the King, citizens of His realm, and heirs to His riches? A kingdom divided cannot stand. A realm split apart is weakened at its root. Riches scattered are easily squandered. And without the unity of the Body, from where do we draw the strength, the energy to be Christs for one another? Without obedience to the historic faith; allegiance to long, apostolic family narrative; without ears and eyes opened to the scriptural revelation of the Christ, we stand apart, divided, weak in our isolation, desolate in our individuality, and defeated before we are properly armed.

There are many ways that we fail the Kingdom and help the enemy. Let me identify one of the most damaging: when we limit our Christian activity in the world to gathering and distributing information to others about Christ instead of being Christ for others, we imitate the demons and hand them victory. In other words, when our ministry to the world is anything but the ministry of Jesus on earth—preaching and teaching the Father’s Word of truth; admonishing sinners; and healing and forgiving those same sinners,—anything but the work of Christ among the nations, then we are mute witnesses and blind guides.

The Good News, the Great News, is that we have received the promise of the Spirit through faith. Our failures of unity are not inevitable nor are they permanent. We know that the Kingdom has come in the person of Jesus Christ. We know that the Devil’s church has been razed and the ground salted. We know that the Word triumphs in creation, bringing every living thing to its natural and supernatural perfection in Christ—he is the firstfruit of all creation! We know, we know, we know. But knowing is not enough. It never has been. Never will be. We must know Christ, of course, and share Christ, always. But we must BE Christ first. Anything less, anything meaner or smaller than this full baptismal witness feeds the unclean spirits of disobedience and lazy charity, and seduces us into pride.

The Great News is that there is nothing disobedient or lazy in the promises of God. Nothing stingy or mean in the promises of His abundant Spirit. We are well-armed, fully charged, beautifully graced, and wholly loved. A joyful witness is ours to make. The kingdom is ours to claim: the Lord will remember His covenant forever.

Childlike acceptance and the impossibility of divorce

27th Sunday OT: Genesis 2.18-24; Hebrews 2.9-11; Mark 10.2-16
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX


What does it mean to accept the Kingdom of God like a child? Jesus says quite plainly that we must come to accept his Father’s Kingdom like a child would, recognize His reign, unlock our lives to His rule if we are to be a part of the glory that is to come. Living with God forever is not a reward for good behavior or right belief, it is the supernatural consequence of a life lived in right relationship, in righteousness, with He Who loved you into being, loved you into redemption, and loves you even now, drawing you to Him, seducing your heart, wooing your soul back to the source of all peace, of all happiness, —pulling you back to Him.

To accept the Kingdom of God like a child means first that you respond to our Father’s clarion call to come home to Him without argument, without pretense, without guile, without need for evidence or proof. You come home to rest because home is where you most belong. Because resting in God is the rest that cradles your angriest hurts, your most tedious worries, and your meanest desires. You come home to rest in God because you know and accept—as any child would—that there is no argument for love, no pretense in belonging. The bond between you and God, between all of us and God was forged at the welding of creation, from the instantaneous convulsion of Nothing into Everything, we are bound to Him, indelibly marked by His love precisely because He is Love and Love is Who He Is. To know as true and accept as real that you are brought out of nothingness, shaped body and soul by Love, held in being by Love, and seduced back to Love in your chase after holiness—to know these as true, to accept these as real—THIS is what it means to look up into the face of Jesus, to come to him, to be embraced and blessed by him and to live with him forever.

Forgive me, I’m going to become a professor for a second: Coming before everything we have freely chosen ourselves to be is the primal kinship between each of us and God. There is nothing about us more basic, more fundamental than the fact that we exist. We ARE. This fact means that we are loved. God is Love. And we continue to exist because He loves us. God made us in His image and likeness. He made us for no other reason than to live in perfect relationship with Him. It follows then that every relationship we can name, every connection we can point to, every single kinship we have is given to us by God and is a reflection of our most primitive relationship with Love, with God. We can have no relationship with each other or with anything in creation that is not first a relationship with God, first a kinship with Love Who made us. Now, I can say: the question the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce misses the point of our creation, misses the point of our very existence; in fact, it betrays a deep misunderstanding of who we are made to be finally.

You are probably saying, “Wow, Father, took you long enough to get to divorce!” It did. Here’s why: how easy for me to stand up here and teach what the Church teaches about marriage and divorce, pointing to all the relevant texts—all read this morning—and pointing to the CCC and telling you what you already know: marriage is permanent, therefore, divorce is impossible. But you might think that this is a social policy issue or a cultural problem or a private choice. You might think that the Church needs to loosen its teachings on marriage or ease its overly harsh understanding of divorce. I spent so much time laying out our childlike relationship with God Who Is Love so that I can say this: divorce is impossible because it is impossible for us NOT to have a relationship with God—even if that relationship is broken, deeply impaired. What God has joined, no man must separate.

OK. That sounds odd. Divorce is impossible because it is impossible for us not to have a relationship with God. Think about it: God created Man, Adam and Eve. In the more detailed telling of the two Genesis stories of creation, God uses Adam’s rib to create Eve. God brings the newly created person to Adam for a name. He names her “woman.” The story continues with this explanation of marriage: that is why a man leaves his mom and dad and clings to his wife and the two become one flesh…perhaps it should read, “and the two become one flesh again.”

My point is simple: our most basic relationship is with God, the One in Whom we find our completion, our wholeness, and our end; marriage then embodies the search for and discovery of wholeness and the consummation of a single person’s separated existence into a completed existence. In other words, the sacrament of marriage signs and makes present the joining of the creature with his or her Creator. Marriage is a sacrament of redemption. Divorce is impossible because divorce implies that marriage, a sacrament of our healing, can mean something else entirely. It cannot.

Fine. So, the next question: what do we do with Catholics who have divorced and remarried? This will sound harsh. We do with divorced Catholics what we do with all those who disobey God, what we do with all those who manage to mess up their relationship with the One Who loves us completely. We do with divorced Catholics exactly what we do with fornicators, apostates, adulterers, abusive priests, grossly irresponsible bishops, and heretics; we do what we do with you and with me—we stand here imperfect in the truth of the faith, clearly proclaiming the golden standard of holiness to which we are all called, readily naming our own sin, our need for forgiveness, and we welcome them—all of them—back to a life of righteousness, always back to Love, always back to that which they and we resist only in the most hateful moments of gross pride: Christ’s patient, loving embrace. There is no alternative here. No other way to go.

To be clear: we cannot lie about divorce or adultery or fornicator or any sin for that matter. Pretending that sin isn’t sin or renaming sin to hide its ugliness does nothing to the reality of a broken relationship. We might as well conclude that gravity is inconvenient and decide to ignore it. Dropped dishes will still fall. Airplanes will still need speed and thrust to fly. And divorce is impossible not because the Church says so, not even because Jesus say so, but because marriage is a living witness to the most basic hunger we have, the most basic satisfaction we can find: the love of God. Marriage cannot be what it is not. And neither can we.

Know and accept, therefore, the embrace and blessing of Christ. If you are married, make that commitment shine like the sun for our good and yours. If you are divorced, come back; come back to us for your holiness and ours. We need you. We are one flesh, one Body in Christ. Pope Benedict writes in his letter, Deus caritas est, that when we embrace Christ and his blessing, “God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” There is no better measure of mercy and no better way home.