Exhortation on Vocations, or No Time for Fear!

(delivered at the 7.30pm Mass at the Church of the Incarnation, Nov. 5, 2006 before the final blessing)


PODCAST!


Please give me five minutes to say something that must be said…

I will jump immediately to the punchline. To the men here tonight, if you know that God has called you to serve His church as a priest or even if you think he might have called you to serve, it is time to put aside your worries and your doubts and your fears and your hesitations and it is time to answer with a resounding YES!

There is no vocations crisis in this country. None. There is a crisis of courage. God has called all the men we need to serve His Church as priests. More than enough. There is never a lack of abundant blessings from our Father. There is, however, a lack of generous acceptance of His abundance. We, as a Church, can only benefit from those blessings that we accept, only those that we eagerly bring in and use and give thanks to God for! So my question is: if God is sending us all the vocations we need, why do we have such a shortage of priests?

The young men God is calling aren’t saying YES to the call. Why? The reasons are as old as the world: money, sex, prestige, or should I say the fear of not having any money sex, or prestige. Forgive me for saying this, but it needs to be said: there is a profound lack of courage among you who are called but will not say YES. What do you fear? If God has called you to the priesthood, what more do you need than His word setting you on the way? Yes, you will have to give up sex, money, and prestige. Why is this a problem for a Christian? Have you bought into the pagan ideal of the virile man? You can’t be a man if you don’t have a treasure box full of gold, an enviable career, and a little black book full of women?! No, I’m not saying that the vows of a Catholic priest are easy to live out. Far from it. It takes courage, resolve, and a lot of hard work with God’s grace to be a faithful ordained man of God. And the reward for this hard work isn’t always what we might want. But that’s what sacrifice is—giving to God the best we have and trusting that He will use it to the best possible end.

I was going to tell you what got me so riled up about this topic, but after several drafts I couldn’t find a way to tell you charitably. So rather than tell you what got me so angry, let me tell you what we need in the Church right now. We need young men—faithful, courageous, smart, eager to serve—young men who will give themselves to the tough work of leading the church through the first half of this century. Bishops all over the country are setting into place the self-fulfilling prophecy of priestless Sundays and activists are slowly preparing American Catholics for the disappearance of the priest. He is to become a relic, a rare thing seen only once or twice a year, and eventually, b/c of the terrible shortage that we all lament, of course, he is to become a luxury we can no longer afford.

We need young men who will step up and offer themselves as servant-leaders. We need young men who will battle the dissenting professors in the seminaries, who will step up and take charge in the parishes as men of God, who are not embarrassed by their vocation and who will proudly proclaim themselves religious, priests, and servants. We need young men who will patiently work with faithful lay men and women to prepare them for leadership roles proper to the lay charism. In other words, gentlemen, we need you to say YES to God’s call to you. We need young men with great big hearts to stand up, come forward, and do the job that Christ has left us to do: to teach, to preach, to celebrate his sacraments, and to show us the Way as faithful men of this century.

Tuesday night at Dinner and Discourse, Fr, Joe Koenig, the diocesan vocations director, will be here to speak. The university’s Serra Club will provide I Fratelli’s pizza for dinner and we will have dessert. Dinner starts at 5:30pm in Anselm 230. The talk begins at 6:00pm with a showing of the video, Fishers of Men. Come fill your bellies as all good Catholics should and come fill your hearts to serve.

Men, step up! There’s no time for fear.

How do we fail to love?

31st Sunday OT: Deut 6.2-6; Hebrews 7.23-28; Mark 12.28-34
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Ours is an erotic faith. A faith of eros! We are made to love, to be loved, and in loving we are made to become Love Himself—to join our Creator, our loving Father, in His kingdom and offer to Him our praise, our thanksgiving, and to offer our very lives as living sacrifices for His glory. We are created, redeemed, and made holy so that we might grow in agape, be perfected in agape, diffuse the beauty of our God’s eros—His creating, redeeming, sanctifying love of us—to diffuse His eros for us so that we are able to love one another as He loves us. To put it very crudely: God “eroes” us so that we might “agape” one another. Because he eroses us first, we are able to agape each other always. And this is the only way for the children of the Father to live in the Spirit. To fail to love, to will not to love is a mortal wound on the Body, a fatal shock to the heart. It is blunt force trauma to the head and it is the death of the soul.

God is love. When we dwell in love, we dwell in God. When we refuse to love, we refuse God. Refusing God is refusing eternal life. And that, my friends, is Hell—your final decision to exclude yourself from the love of God forever. Literally: let’s not go there!

So, practically speaking, how do we fail to love? In everyday life, how do we fail to dwell in eros and thus fail to agape one another? Let’s focus on just three Big Ways we fail in order to understand how to succeed.

First, we can fail to love God and one another when we refuse to reveal God’s beauty. God’s beauty is His means of seduction, His erotic means of attracting us to Him and reeling us closer and closer to a life with Him. His beauty is our wonder, our fascination, our appreciation of His awesome glory. God’s beauty is the perfection of Being and all beings—the completed project of bringing all of creation to its fullest possible excellence. You reveal God’s beauty. Everyday. You walk in God’s beauty, you talk in God’s beauty, you sleep, eat, play, work, exercise, study in God’s beauty and you show His beauty out, you demonstrate it like a proud Hoover salesman. Just existing, merely being a creature of God makes you beautiful and you shine that glory out to the world. So, the question is: what of God’s beauty are you showing us? Do you walk, talk, sleep, eat, play, work, exercise, and study in the full knowledge that every muscle in your body, every thought in your head, your very soul shouts out the splendor of God’s beauty? In other words, do you love us—all of us—with your heart, mind, soul, strength? When you reveal, when you expose the Divine Beauty of love to the rest of us, you live your life as a prophet and a priest—you hear God and obey His Word and proclaim that Word and you offer (willingly, eagerly) your life as a sacrifice for others.

Second, we can fail to love God and one another when we refuse to reveal God’s goodness. This isn’t just about living a morally good life. That’s part of our job, of course, but the life of revealing God’s goodness is more about living out of a heart of flesh where the Law is deeply inscribed. In other words, revealing God’s goodness is not about living a life of meticulous rule-following or scrupulous regulation loving. Such a life too easily leads to a life of soul-killing hypocrisy and scandal. If the gospel today is about anything it is about the maturity of our spirituality. Love God. Love self. Love neighbor. Easily said. Each of these admonitions unpack about a thousand do’s and don’t’s. But the Father’s goodness is simple: desire nothing but His love, nothing but His approval, nothing but His strength. He is One and there is no other than He. You fail to reveal God’s goodness when your life reveals a conflict of allegiance, a confusing loyalty: what do you love more than God? What idols decorate your life? Do you worship the popular pagan gods of money, sex, substances, passions, ego? Or do you worship the seemingly baptized pagan gods of Pelagianism: rules, rubrics, rituals, edicts, and law? What sits on your heart and rules your soul, your mind, your strength? If your heart is the Word made flesh—show us! If not, shut up and listen so that your stony heart might be replaced with one of godly flesh!

Third, we can fail to love God and one another when we refuse to reveal God’s truth. Is our first impulse here to ask Pilate’s question: what is “truth”? Likely. It is the postmodern question. And one that opens the yawning gates of Hell for all those who will use their doubt—legitimate or otherwise—to dodge our Father’s truth for the sake of a false intellectual freedom. There can be no doubt that asking questions and looking for answers is fundamental to the Catholic faith. Ours is a trust that enthusiastically runs after knowing more and better what we believe to be true. But that’s where we have to start: believing what is true. Our search for understanding is not about finding evidence for our faith or finding reasons to believe. Our search for understanding is first and foremost an admission that we are ignorant in the face of all that is real and that it is our trust in the living God and the resulting humility that throws us into seeking to know Him better. And so, the question here is: do you reveal the truth of the faith to others? Even in doubt, intellectual turmoil, or raw disbelief, do you shine out the objectivity of truth, the absolute truth of what our Father has revealed to us in His Word: the Bible, the Very Good of Creation, the Word Made Flesh? Doubt is not a problem when that doubt rests in acknowledged ignorance, an admitted humility that is ready to be taught. We fail God’s truth when we assume that our ignorance is a failure on the Church’s part to adequately reason out a teaching or when we lift up—out of pride—our private intellectual judgment as superior to the 2,000 year judgment of the Body of Christ. To reveal God’s truth is to accept in faith, to trust that He is showing us what we need to know to love Him and one another, to be freed from our slavery to sin, and to be brought to Him in the end.

How do we fail to love? We do not love God or one another when we fail to live our lives as revelations of God’s beauty, goodness, and truth. When we fail to reveal His glory; when we fail to worship Him alone; and when we fail to trust His truth first and seek to understand His truth as a function of our trust, we fail to obey the first commandment Jesus gives us. These three failures result in One Big Failure for us: we will not live with God forever. Live apart from Him now and live apart from Him forever. Live with Him now and live with Him forever.


Live your day, everyday, as a revelation of God’s beauty, as a revelation of God’s goodness and truth. Ask yourself: is what I am doing right now showing those around me exactly how much God loves them? If you do this, Christ will say to you: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

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.