Mission One: Sin

Advent Mission One: Galatians 5.13-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Alva, OK


Do we like sin? I don’t mean do we like to sin. The answer to that is obvious. I mean, do we like the idea of sin, that is, the very notion that there is a category of behavior or a set of attitudes that count as Sins. I think we might prefer “inappropriate behaviors” or “unhelpful attitudes.” These carefully morally neutral phrases allow us to wiggle around the problem of defending absolute moral standards, the problem of standing up for Right and against Wrong. The word “sin” demands our attention in a way that no other theological word does. Words like Incarnation and Redemption and Resurrection are HUGE! They are too big, too large and complex to soak into our daily routine, our hum-drum pecking about getting things done. But Sin. Well, Sin goes straight to the heart of what it means to be believers. Calling this or that act or attitude a sin immediately places the actor into an intricate web of meaning, reference, history, spirituality, and religious commitment. The act is not just inappropriate or “uncalled for” or rude—it’s a SIN!

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let’s take a controversial subject like homosexuality. For centuries, men and women with same-sex attractions were “handled” in western culture in basically two ways: religiously or legally, that is, the idea of homosexuality was defined in religious terms (morally disordered, sodomy, sin, etc.) and in terms of the law (crime, penalty, violation). It wasn’t really until the late nineteenth century that homosexuality received both its scientific name and a whole range of scientific terms and treatments to go with it. Now we have a huge body of literature from the scientific world along with a huge body of literature from the religious world and legal world to handle same-sex attraction. None of this touches on the more recent political treatments of homosexuality. My point here is that a human act can be understood through a number of competing explanatory languages. We can understand homosexuality as a sin to be forgiven in religion, as a crime to be punished in the law, as a pathology to be cured in medicine, or as a alternative lifestyle choice to be celebrated or condemned, depending on your political proclivities.

Labeling an act or an attitude as a sin instantly places that act or attitude into a big machine, a language system that determines how we treat it. And that label, “sin,” that description requires that the act and the actor be handled according to an entirely different set of rules and guidelines. The actor is now a Sinner, and we can no longer avoid the problem of Right/Wrong, Good/Evil, Obedience/Rebellion, Virtue/Vice, and Salvation/Damnation.

As committed Christians, I would argue that we are first and foremost about our relationship with the Father through His Son in the Holy Spirit. Other humane discourses might require our allegiance momentarily, but the bottom-line for us, faithful Catholics, must be obedience to revealed truth as taught by the Church and understood within the limits of human intelligence. Thankfully, as Catholics we know that there is no fundamental conflict between faith and reason, so we are free to pay attention to other discourses w/o chucking the faith or becoming fundamentalists!

OK! Let’s get to what sin is. Here’s an excellent definition from the Catechism: “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and the right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as ‘an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law’”(n. 1846). Perfectly clear. Let’s break that down a bit and look at the pieces.

First, sin is an offense. It is a transgression or a trespass, a violation or breach. Second, it is a violation against reason, an embrace of irrationality or a welcoming of uncontrolled passion, an act without proper, rational deliberation. It is a trespass on truth, a willful lie, a distortion or knowing twist of what is real—what is Good and Beautiful. And sin is a crime against right conscience, a deliberate move against one’s properly formed sense of the Right, an assault on what you recognize as God’s will. Third, sin is a failure to love God, neighbor, and self; because, fourth, we are inordinately attached to some good in the world, some temporary good like food, sex, money, power, etc. In other words, we have replaced God in our lives with some other good, replaced The Good with a good and now we worship an idol. Fifth, sin injures who we are as individual creatures of God and it injures who we are together as a community of God’s creatures. This is personal sin and social sin, respectively.

Clearly, as the Catechism says, “Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become ‘like gods,’ knowing and determining good and evil”(n. 1850). All sin then, great and small alike, is like the first sin of Adam and Eve. These two sinned—violated God’s love for them—by believing and acting on the serpent’s lie that they could become “like God” w/o God, in other words, they believed the lie that they could be gods, deciding as they willed which acts were good and which were evil. Sound familiar? When we take it upon ourselves, as creatures of a loving God, to determine for ourselves what is Good and what is Evil, we take upon ourselves the judgment proper to God alone; we take upon ourselves the vain task of creating reality using ourselves as the blueprint, our desires, our wills, our wants and, guess what?, we get along with these all of our faults, our flaws, our pathologies, our crimes and illusions. Instead of living now as if we were already in heaven, we brutally chain ourselves to our limits, our smallest ambitions, our grandest mistakes, and our meanest tendencies. We repeat the Fall and suffer the consequences.

If all of this is true—and it is—then we have to wonder why anyone sins at all! Why do we insist on pitting ourselves against the love of God, against the charity and mercy He has shown us in our creation and in our salvation through Jesus Christ? The Catechism’s definition tells us a little about why we sin. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, this evening’s reading, tells us even more. Basically, we sin when we choose the works of the flesh over the works of the Spirit. This is not to say that every choice for the flesh is a sin. We need to eat, drink, have babies, etc. But it is when we are facing a choice between a fleshy work and a spiritual work and we choose the fleshy work over and against the spiritual work that we sin. This choice is made in freedom—an abuse of freedom, by the way—and you are choosing to pay attention to this world and to use this world’s things to satisfy a disordered want, a lack of some sort.

It is not disordered to want food. It is disordered to want to eat your own weight in food at one sitting. It is not disordered to want sex. It is disordered to want sex outside the marriage bond. It is not disordered to be angry about an injustice. It is disordered to be angry about a social slight. And once you eat your weight in food at one sitting and have sex outside the marriage bond and get angry because someone has slighted you socially, once you have done these things, you have replaced The Good—God—with a good—food, sex, anger—and you have attempted to make yourself into a god—one who determines what is Good and what is Evil.

Now that we have a good definition of sin, I want to take you back to our attitudes about sin itself. Earlier I said that we have something of a tendency to think that it is better to talk in terms of “inappropriate behaviors” or “unhelpful attitudes.” These are carefully morally neutral terms that do not allow us any room to argue about objective moral standards or absolute Good and Evil. These terms have a very particular use in the workplace or the classroom. Basically, they are designed to allow us to express disapproval of someone’s behavior or attitude w/o appearing to be “judging them,” in other words, we can say to someone, “Your attitude right now is unhelpful” and really mean something like “Your smart mouth is causing me problems. I wish you would just shut up!” These two phrases (and all their kin) are dodges; they are faux assertions that mean almost nothing in themselves and simply disguise a desire to make a moral judgment. Though controlling this impulse is good, controlling it in this way—using these dodgy, morally empty phrases—reinforces the false notion that there is no place for moral evaluation in our daily lives or that differing moral viewpoints should be reduced to psychobabbly “I-statements” and treated with equal respect, regardless of the potential social damage some moral viewpoints will cause.

My point here is simple: when we, as Catholics, replace our moral vocabulary with pop-psychology terms or “educationese,” we risk losing out on enchanting our workplace with the Spirit of love that God calls us to carry into the world. When we honor Political Correctness with a sacrifice of truth on the altar of “tolerance,” we sacrifice more than fact, we sacrifice identity, history, family, and faith. That’s right! We sacrifice it all b/c there are but a few delicate steps between surrendering our public moral language and surrendering our necks. The linchpin issue here is sin—its reality for us, its effect on our community, and, finally, its forgiveness. The pressure to adopt morally neutral language comes from those who would see our relationship with God damaged b/c they themselves fear what a relationship with God might mean for themselves. Without a proper understanding of what it means to disobey God, to sin, we cannot understand what it means for us to obey, to be in right relationship with him.

I’m not suggesting here that you run back into your offices in the morning spouting the Ten Commandants or flinging moral condemnations left and right. I am suggesting that you become more aware of how gentle pressures in the workplace slowly creep up on your core beliefs, your basic virtues and try to wrest from you your sense of being a Christian in the world. Righteousness is surely about knowing where we stand with God, and as Paul makes clear: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.” That means living, working, playing, loving, serving, dying in ways plainly in the life of the Spirit. Your witness to God where you are, your obedience to His will for you, is your ministry as priests, prophets, kings. Please understand then: the move to remove God from our public discourse is rooted in a fear of anything being called Sin. When we get to the point where nothing is sinful, anything will be permissible and we will have failed to minister to the world in Jesus’ name.

So, let me ask you this: do you have a healthy sense of sin? I mean, do you understand what sin is, how it happens, why it happens, and what to do about it when it does? My experience as a priest tells me that Catholics these days tend to fall into one of two very large demographics when it comes to sin. Those for whom everything is a sin and everyone a sinner. And those for whom nothing is a sin and no one is a sinner. No one ever accuses me of being shy, so I’ll say it now: both of these are nonsense, both are heretical.

The first group is perhaps the smaller of the two. Since VC2 we have as a Catholic culture shrugged off much of the odd anti-body spirituality borrowed from the French Janenists. This spirituality condemned the flesh as evil, called for constant purification of the body for the benefit of the soul, and just generally held a rather gloomy outlook on life. Much of that spirituality immigrated to the US and we went through a period where everything was a sin—a mortal sin, at that!—every thought, word, and deed was tinged with sticky sin. No good deed was purely good. No selfless word was truly selfless. And we were never confident that we moved in God’s grace. There was a persistent fear that God was playing a GOTCHA! game with our souls, so we dwelled not in love or mercy, but abiding fear and tragedy. This fear is translated into a constant worry about offending God, about crossing boundaries with Him or violating His will. Sin becomes the language that we use to talk about God and our relationship with Him. This understanding of sin denies God’s love. It fails to grasp mercy and fails to respect God’s promise of rescue. There is an almost obsessive quality to the need for spiritual cleanliness—understood in sacramental terms as a need for frequent confession and a deep sense of being unworthy to receive communion. No amount of priestly assurance or cajoling or teaching touches this Catholic’s gnawing anxiety that he or she sits on the edge of Hell, wobbling toward the fire.

The second is definitely more prominent in the Church. No doubt this group constitutes most Catholics to varying degrees. Some theologians have interpreted the documents of VC2 in ways directly contrary to the plain text of the documents and contrary to the received tradition out of which they were written. One of the most egregious examples of this is the use of the document, Diginatius humanae, to undermine our proper Catholic sense of freedom and conscience. Without this proper understanding of freedom and conscience, we can (and have) easily arrive at the conclusion that I create what is good and evil, I decide what is right and wrong for me.

The oft-quoted bit from this document is this: “In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience”(n. 3). OK. Good enough. This is perfectly Catholic so long as you understand conscience properly. What happened after VC2, however, is that purely secular notions of freedom were imposed on the language of this document and we ended up with Catholic theologians, clergy, and laity arguing that VC2 has declared that nothing is sinful unless my conscience—my private arbitrator of truth—tells me it is. The problem here is that the above quoted is what gets quoted. What doesn’t usually get quoted is the sentence immediately preceding the favored quote. It reads: “On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience”(n.3). Exactly! Conscience mediates divine truth. Conscience does not create truth or decide the goodness or badness of an act. Conscience is our God-given faculty, God’s gift to us for recognizing His truth. There is a huge moral difference between “creating a truth” and “finding a truth.” Can you tell me difference between “baking a pie” and “finding a pie”? Big difference.

The result of this willful misinterpretation of the DH is that we have at least two generations of Catholics who feel unbound by the teachings of the Church, the teachings of scripture, the magisterial office of the bishop and the pope, any reason or deliberation. It is enough for them to shout the magic words, “In conscience, I do not believe that!” Please hear me plainly, folks: say that with great care. You might be committing your soul to a truth. Or you might be selling it to a lie. Without the guidance of the Spirit through His Church, you just don’t know. And if it isn’t the teaching authority of the Church—for all the problems of the teachers!—that guides us in the tradition, who helps us then to understand? Who tells us again and again the faith story of this family? Who recognize falsehood and has the courage to label it as such?

You are not freed from sin by declaring nothing sinful. You are simply once again enslaved to falsehood. It is not enough to invoke the voodoo of conscience to justify your sin, your dissension, your disobedience. A properly formed conscience can misunderstand a moral teaching. It can not quite fully grasp the fullness of a teaching. You can even disagree with the way in which a teaching is taught or communicated or argued for. But a properly formed conscience stands humble before 2,000 years of tradition and rather than saying defiantly “I won’t believe that!” says instead “I will believe it to the degree that I am able right now and will continue in humility to learn more.”

To believe that every human act is a sin denies God’s love. To believe that nothing a human can do is sinful denies God’s will. We are freed to follow Christ in the Spirit. We are freed from sin so that we are free to obey. Paul says that we are never freer than when we are slaves to Christ. How odd! But when we understand that our perfection lies in Christ, then it makes sense to say that being obedient to the source of our perfection is necessary.

Let’s conclude by looking a little more closely at Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I have been drawing on this reading all through this homily, but now I would like to be more specific about the text. Paul teaches some amazing doctrine in this passage. Taking each in turn: first, he shows us how to use our freedom to oppose sin; second, he gives us a quick teaching on Jesus’ first commandment of love; third, he shows us how sin arises out of a conflict between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit, listing in some detail prominent sins; fourth, he teaches us about the fruits of the Spirit; and finally, fifth, he encourages us to follow Spirit.

Look at how we are to use our freedom in Christ: to serve one another through love! That love is not ours from our own hearts, but God’s from His very nature. We are able to love one another b/c God loved us first and most. Paul quotes Jesus when he says that whole of the Law hangs on the commandment of Love: love God, love neighbor, love self. But what does any of that mean? How can we tell if we are loving, if we are loved? One easy test: do you will the Good for others? Do you actively seek out and pursue what is best everyone in your life? Are you stingy, mean, tight with your affection? Paul says to love and not to bite and devour one another, not to consume one another. We are not hungry dogs at a dinner bowl, anxious over the lack of plenty. We are children of a Father who loves us and gives us all that need to grow in holiness with Him. Only our sin, our disobedience blocks the flood of blessings, diverts all the good He pours out for us.

Look at the sins Paul lists for us: idolatry, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, selfishness, dissensions, factions, bouts of drunkenness, and many others. What’s the common thread here? God doesn’t want us to have any fun, right? No. God is a prude with no sense of humor? No. The common thread is this: each of these acts, each of these attitudes will set up an altar in your heart and demand your devotion, require your honor, your allegiance, and your very life. Each will consume you like fire on fall’s leaves. Sin demands a wholehearted welcome, a warm embrace, and it will leave you lonely, cold, and starving. It can’t do anything else. When we sin we turn from God to Nothingness and nothingness cannot feed a soul hungry for love.

Chew on sin and spit out ashes. Swallow, if you will, and burn from the inside out. Nothing good can come from sin. Nothing true or beautiful for you will ever come from sin. Paul says that the fruits of the Spirit are joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control. What’s common here? God writes for Hallmark? No. God is a hippie on an acid-love trip? No. The fruits of the Spirit are ways that we use our gifts from God to serve others and the ways that God comes to us to perfect His love in us. Good works are not about being socially conscious do-gooders. Good works are not about parading around showing others how open we are to difference and diversity and how ready we are to engage those left out. Surely we can do-gooders and surely we can be open to engaging those left out. But the point of the works of Spirit is the perfection of God’s love in us and among us in preparation for the coming of His Kingdom.

Sin is real. You know this. To pretend otherwise is foolish. To dress sin up in the latest fashions from the university or the coolest new outfits from the lab is pointless. Don’t we feel the burn of sin? Don’t we see the consequences of our disobedience? Tangled lives, stunted relationships, wasted chances to love? Sin is hard. Love is easy. Sin is complicated. Love is simple. Sin takes time, energy, wasted talent. Love takes a YES. And a life of YES’s—a life of service. Those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh. Have you kept out a part? Saved back a piece to rot and stink? Give it all! If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. Christ gave it all. Follow him. Give it all.

Mission Two: Grace and Divinization

Advent Mission Two: 2 Peter 1.3-7
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Alva, OK

I was born in the Mississippi Delta into a cotton-growing family. This means that I grew up in the middle bible-believing Baptists—hard-shell, heart-felt, deep-down Jesus folks who were certain of their salvation, possessed of a perfect understanding of their redemption. There was no doubt, no hemming or hawing, not even the passing shade of a question that Jesus is Lord. Their personal meeting with Christ defines who they are and who they will become: upright, moral people, righteous, God-fearing and heaven-bound. Salvation for them is an acre-sized mural painted with sharp lines, undiluted colors, and exactly framed. And this mural hangs, perfectly balanced, in the center of their lives. These folks know their faith. They can tell you what you need to know about Jesus, the Bible, about sin and salvation, and they can do it with profound conviction.

Here in Alva, OK you have no doubt heard the following questions: are you saved? Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Do you know Jesus?

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

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

In his second letter, Peter points us unswervingly to the conclusion that for us to be saved in Christ we must become Christ; we share in his cup and his sacrifice, partake in his divine nature. There is no other name under heaven given to us by which we can saved. We are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed, but we do know that when what we will be is revealed we shall be like him. Ss. Irenaeus and Thomas Aquinas have proclaimed: Brothers and sisters, see what love the father has bestowed on us—He became man so that we might become God!

Are you saved? Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Why are you here this evening? I hope you are here this evening to hear of God’s mercy; to listen to the Word proclaimed and preached; to offer praise and thanksgiving to God; to ask for what you need and to ask for others what they need; to place yourself—your worries, your loves, your resentments, jealousies, your impatience, yourself—all of you, placed on the altar to be offered to God, sacrificed, made holy in surrender. All of your wounds can be closed up. Now the question is: do you want to be healed? Will you do what is necessary to properly use God’s gifts to you? In other words, will you go out there and look and work and play like a redeemed child of the Father? Or will you refuse your redemption by failing to use your gifts for the service of others?

For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “holistically integrated as a person,” if by this we mean nothing more than to be made psychologically balanced. Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to treat a psychiatric diagnosis. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “made one with Earth.” All of creation will be redeemed in time, but Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to show us the love and faithfulness of Mother Earth. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “absorbed into the Universal Oneness.” Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again so that we might be dissolved into stardust and fall back into the ocean of space like a drop of water. For Catholics, to be redeemed is not to be “liberated from oppressive economic and gender hierarchies” Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again to spark an academic revolution that fetishizes authoritarian political correctness and moral anarchy.

For Catholics, to be redeemed is to be made a son and daughter of the Father through the freely given sacrifice of the Son in the love of the Holy Spirit. To be redeemed is to be repaired, to be rescued, to be healed. We are found by our shepherd. Loved as children; raised from death by the Only Name given to us for our salvation. To be redeemed is to be brought to Him as an votive offering, a sacrifice; made holy, perfected in His image and likeness. To be redeemed is to be transformed into Christ through Christ. And to do what Christ did while we wait for his coming again.

The longest tradition of the Catholic Church understands our redemption and sanctification, our one time rescue and our growing into holiness, as an on-going process of turning each of us individually and all of us together into Christ. The Biblical tradition, the Patristic tradition, the scholastic tradition, and all of the traditions of the Church loyal to the magisterial ministry of Peter agree: God became man so that men might become God. That’s right. You heard me correctly: to be saved is to be made God. We call this deification or divinization—the God-initiated, God-driven, God-bound process of bringing a man or woman into the fullest possible participation in the divine life. Think about what the phrase “to partake” means. We can partake in a meal. Partake in a game of poker. Partake in an discussion. This means that we are involved, engaged, deeply committed to the activity, and open to the players, the actors; open to the game, and ready to be caught up, absorbed, taken in and changed. You eat a steak and that steak becomes part of you. You drink a glass of water and that water becomes part of you. You marry and your single flesh joins another single flesh to become one flesh. You eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ and you become Christ. You are what you eat!

To partake of the divine nature, then means to share in, to participate in, to live with right now and forever the Blessed Trinity. To be supremely intimate with God the Father who loves His Son in the Holy Spirit. But we have to be absolutely clear about one thing: we do nothing to deserve this gift of the divine life; we do nothing to merit our redemption in Christ; we cannot reach for God until God teaches us to reach; we cannot grasp at an everlasting life until God teaches us to grasp; we cannot pray, sacrifice, sing, forgive, confess, repent, show mercy, grow in holiness—none of this!—we can do none of this until God teaches us to pray, sacrifice, sing, forgive, confess, repent, show mercy, grow in holiness.

Last night, I preached about Adam and Eve and their disobedience. They fell for the lie of the serpent who told them that they could become gods w/o God. Essentially, the serpent told them that they could make themselves into gods. Common sense tells us that no imperfect thing can make itself perfect. How can two creatures of the Creator make themselves into the Creator Himself? Impossible! It is not impossible, however, for the Creator to bring His creatures to Him and make them a part of His life. Adam and Eve enjoyed God’s favor until they decided to become gods w/o God. Now, thanks to these two, we are plagued by the same temptation, the same devilish bait; and we fight—I hope we fight!—against the seduction of a divinity that cannot be ours unless it is given to us by God Himself.

And thank God that He does want to give us a share in His life. God has been calling us back to Him for generations, for centuries, through empires, wars, prosperity, disaster, and leaps in human development, and we have responded eagerly at times, soberly at others, sometimes violently and sometimes joyfully. Regardless of our response, He wants us with Him but He wants us freely, of our own accord, or not at all. Because of the Fall we are unable—alone—to say Yes to God, to come to Him as He wishes. So, we are graced. The Catechism defines grace this way: “Grace is favor, the free, undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life”(n. 1996).

Thomas Aquinas teaches us that grace is God’s invitation to live the divine life with Him. To say, “I am graced” is to say “God has invited me to live with Him forever.” To say, “God gives me the grace I need to resist temptation” is the same as saying “God’s invitation to me to live with Him forever is all I need to obey His will for me.” Grace is not magic; it is not quantifiable in inches or pounds; it is not measurable in minutes or hours or days; grace cannot be bought, sold, or exchanged. There is no economy of grace that runs on barter, credit, or your good looks! Grace, by definition, is free. Gratis. It is a gift. Unmerited. Undeserved. And without limit or appeal.

God wills that you be with Him always. He also wills that you come to Him freely. To free you from sin—a slavery of disobedience—He sent His only Son to become one of us, like us in all things but sin, to take on our humanity in order to heal humanity, to restore us to a right relationship with Him so that His invitation to us to spend eternity with Him could be clearly heard. Jesus spoke this invitation over and over and over again, healing, preaching, teaching, praying, publicly witnessing to the Father’s grant of mercy, witnessing to the death sin’s power, calling everyone, from everywhere to come to Him, to confess their disobedience, to repent, and to live a life of holiness now, waiting on the coming of the Lord so that we might live in holiness with Him forever.


You see, brothers and sisters, the Devil has convinced us—at least some of us!—that we do not deserve God’s grace and that we should be horrified that He would grant us anything much less mercy for our sins. The Devil, as usual, is only half-right. We don’t deserve God’s grace. Getting what you deserve is called justice. Getting a favor granted when there is no good reason to have it granted is called a gift, a grace. The Devil needs for you feel bad about this grant of mercy. He needs for you to be upset that your sins so are easily forgiven. You are supposed to say, “I can’t believe that God just wiped all those sins away! I’ve been horrible!” Then you are supposed to worry that your sins haven’t really been forgiven or that only some of them have been forgiven or that God is playing a game where He says He’s given you but really He’s waiting to pounce later on and punish you for your disobedience. The Devil needs this from you b/c he wants you focused on your misery, your contrition; he wants you anxious about many things, the most prominent being the possibility, the likelihood that you will sin again and fall into despair. He wants despair. He wants you to come to think that your sins are so awful, so heinous that there is simply nothing God can do in the face of your terrible treachery, your murderous betrayal. If he can get you here, you will stop asking for God’s grace. What’s the point of grace when you’ve done nothing to deserve it?

Be careful! When you start believing that you have to be good or do good to make God love you, you are standing on the edge of a bleak abyss, a soul-sucking desert that will draw you in like moisture to a dry sponge and set you on a spiral of self-destruction and chaos that has no other end than your permanent death in Hell. Let me say that again: if you think that you can earn God’s love, in some way work your way into God’s favor or somehow wrangle a bit more love out of Him by “being good,” then you are poised right on the edge of handing your soul over to the Devil. Do you think I’m being too dramatic? The whole point of grace, folks, is that it is undeserved. Gifts are freely given. If you give a gift to get a gift, it ain’t a gift! It’s an exchange of goods. If you give a gift to get a favor, it’s not a gift; it’s a bribe. We, as creatures, are in no position to bargain with God. We have nothing He needs. Everything we have and everything we are is His already. We don’t need to convince God to love us. God is love. It is Who He Is to love. And He loves us most of all!

Now, we have to be careful again. The Devil is always a liar and sometimes he lies by telling the truth. It is absolutely true that God loves us unconditionally. He grants us His favor without condition. Christ died once for all. Everyone is invited to the banquet table, everyone gets an invitation to the wedding feast. But remember: Gods wants us to come to Him freely. He freed us from the slavery of sin so that we might come to Him unhindered, that we might travel His Way to Him without restraint. No angel, no devil, no person can stand in the way of your journey. No one but you. God’s grace strengthens your legs to you to walk His path. But grace will not walk the path for you. God’s grace holds out a helping hand. But grace will not grab you and drag you home. God’s grace will enlighten your mind on the way. But grace will not overwhelm your will. You cannot be a puppet and love God. Only the freed children of the Father can love in freedom.


It is true that God loves us unconditionally. But this doesn’t mean that God’s love has no consequences for our lives. God loves us to change us. He loves the adulterer, the rapist, the murderer, the pornographer, the child molester. He loves the liar, the thief, and the wife beater. He loves men who gossip, women who cheat at cards, teens who lie to mom and dad, men who look too long at the check out girl, and boys who spend too much time in the bathroom. But we must not think of God’s unconditional love for us as approval for our sin. God loves the murderer to change him into a saint—to make him passionate for holiness. God loves the gossip to change her into a prophet—to make her tongue into a witness. God loves the wife beater to change him into a good husband—to change his rage into furious charity. God’s grace is never permission to sin or to remain in sin or to plan to sin some time down the road. The Devil will whisper to you on the Way, “Ah, go ahead and do what you want. God loves you regardless, right?” Yes, He does. And He will love you as you choose again and again to defy Him and He will love you when you make your final choice to live without Him and He love you right into Hell. Your choice. Not His.

Peter tells us tonight that God’s “divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness [so that we may] become partakers of the divine nature.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, b/c God has granted you all that you need to live in abundance and to grow in holiness, work to enrich your faith with good habits and work to strengthen your good habits with wisdom and use your wisdom with temperance, with self-control and charity. Show your godliness with affection for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Mean-spirited holiness is like muddy cleanliness or dirt poor wealth. Doesn’t make sense. If you are unwilling to show charity. Don’t expect it. If you are unwilling to forgive. Don’t wait to be forgiven. Jesus assures us that we will judged in the same way that we judge others—measure for measure. You’ve been warned! So be careful that you do not become your sin. Be careful that you do not allow pride or envy or greed or lust to set up an altar in your heart and demand worship from you. The Psalms tell us that those who worship idols become the idols they worship. Will you become the nothingness that never gets full, the blackhole of want and need that never closes, never stops taking and taking?

Are you saved? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? If you have been baptized by water into the Body of Christ and in the name of the Blessed Trinity, and you have received the seal of the Holy Spirit in the anointing of oil, and you have eaten at the altar the Body and Blood of Christ himself, then you had better believe you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior! And what’s more you have stepped into the adventure of living with Christ in the Father’s love and growing holier and holier with the grace of the Spirit. Do not be made a fool by the Devil: we are the freely adopted sons and daughters of a loving Father who wills that we come to Him now and stay with Him forever. We can’t live just Now and ignore Forever. Nor can we live just Forever and ignore Now. We are given the difficult task of living Now as if we were in heaven already. But thank God we are also give all the grace, all the gifts we need to do all this perfectly.

Tomorrow night we will gather here again to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. Between now and then I want you to ask yourself two questions to prepare for your conversion: 1) when have I failed to use my gifts to serve others for God’s glory? and 2) how do I plan to make better use of God’s gifts tomorrow and tomorrow?

Remember: as Catholics we do nothing alone! Our holiness is an art and a science. We paint with bright lines and pure colors. And we grow in wisdom and knowledge. But we do so only b/c God has loved us first. And He loves us even now!

Mission Three: The Sacrament of Conversion

Advent Mission Three: James 5.13-20
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Alva, OK

I think of sin and repentance and I think of wild prophets going about the nations shouting at anyone who would come close enough to hear: Repent and believe! Seeing the sin—the broken friendships, the worship of false gods, the mistreatment of the poor and sick and widowed; seeing the hungry go unfed, the lonely left alone, the stranger ignored—seeing all this, the prophets stood up in righteous anger and pointed; they said Look! See! Hear! Listen! The Lord our God calls you, shouts out to you, Repent and believe that my Law will bring justice. And obey. Your hard-hearts and stony heads and heavy hands disobey my word and you fall into grave, given to death, from where you cannot praise me. Repent then and believe b/c you live to give thanks and praise to the Lord your God.

Surely it would be unusual to find a wildman prophet roaming the streets of Alva or Oklahoma City or even New Orleans or New York. A truly anointed prophet, called and sanctified by God to preach His Word among the people, is a rare thing these days. Our prophets are more subdued. Smaller and more subtle, perhaps. But prophets do what prophets do whether their public stature is great or small. Prophets call us back to God, away from our disobedience, to a life of lawful love, and forward into a kingdom of abiding peace and praise. A prophet hears the Word spoken out of his heart, words loudly proclaimed from his center, from where his human life touches the divine life and from where he finds the strength and favor to listen and obey. The single message of every anointed prophet is the same: Repent and believe!

Though I am no prophet, this is my message to you tonight. Turn from sin, to God, away from rebellion, to obedience and love, away from hatred, strife, diseased stress, to passionate charity, unity, and relaxation in the promise of our Father to bring you to Him if you will it and cooperate fully with His grace. My message tonight is that you are ill b/c of sin. Maybe not physically ill, but spiritually. To the degree that you are turned from God, you are turned toward sin and the sin you embrace is the sin that shapes your soul. What shape will your soul take on? Primitive violence? Consuming greed? Black despair?

What gift have you failed to use for the good of another and now in its disuse the Devil has found a way into your soul? He will twist truth into fiction, goodness into mere usefulness, and beauty into lust or gluttony—making what is attractive to us b/c it shows God’s beauty into an opportunity to abuse, defile, and exaggerate. The Devil is never happier than when he can tempt us into misusing our gifts for his ends. The Devil rejoices when we lie, refuse charity, and celebrate the ugly.

Have you ever thought of sin as a form of Devil worship? It is! We place his will for us, his desires for us, his needs for us at the center of our lives, dumping Christ from the tabernacle of our hearts and we replace the divine with the diabolical and pray, “Myself, who art on earth, hallowed is my name, my kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in heaven! Give me this day whatever I want. I have no sins to forgive b/c nothing is forbidden me. And I will never forgive those who have offended me. Lead me into every temptation and deliver me to evil as quickly as possible! For mine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory until I’m dead. Amen.” And why not, right? I mean, if we will not obey the Word of the Author of the universe, then we might as well obey absolutely the whims of our bellies, our eyes, our impulses and our excesses. And we might as well make a spirituality out of it, a whole religion for that matter!

Let’s review what we’ve covered so far during this mission: sin and grace. First, sin is an offense against God. It is a transgression, a trespass, and a violation of His will. Second, sin is a violation against reason; it is an irrational embrace of uncontrolled passion. Sin is a trespass on truth, a willful lie, a distortion of the Good and the Beautiful. And sin is a crime against right conscience, a deliberate move against one’s properly formed sense of the Right, an assault on what you recognize as God’s will for you and from us all. Third, sin is a failure to love God, neighbor, and self; because, fourth, we are attached to some good in the world, some impermanent good like food, sex, money, power, etc. In other words, we have replaced God in our lives with some other good, replaced The Good with a good. And now we find ourselves worshipping a creature, a thing in the world, an idol. Fifth, sin injures who we are as single creatures of God and it injures who we are together as a community of God’s creatures. Sin is chosen rebellion, a deliberate rejection of God’s Word, and it does bloody violence to our journey on the Way.

God’s grace lifts us to Him and makes our obedience possible. From the CCC, “Grace is favor, the free, undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life”(n. 1996). Thomas Aquinas teaches us that grace is God’s invitation to live the divine life with Him. Grace is not a mystical potion or spell; it is not measurable in feet or ounces; it is not numbered; purchased, sold, or borrowed. We cannot barter for grace or lend it on credit. Grace, by definition, is free. It is a gift. Unmerited. Undeserved. And without limit, unbounded. And we need it to say Yes to God. We need it to walk the Way. We need it to come through those doors, to step up to the confessional, to name our sins to God’s priests, to accept our penance, and hear with thanksgiving the words of absolution. We need God’s grace, b/c without that hand up we remain in darkness and envy the dead.

So what is required of us? Remember that we cannot earn or buy our way into God’s love. He loves us b/c He is Love. The question here is about how we are to respond to God’s love for us. First and foremost we are called to conversion, that is, we are required to change, to grow, to become people wholly perfect in God’s charity. How do we convert? Here’s a longish quote from the CCC on conversion: “Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one’s brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance”(n. 1435). These are all tasks that presume a disposition of humility and surrender. I’m not talking about a passive surrender to circumstance or a quietism or a relaxation of vigilance. What I’m saying is that the proper disposition for conversion is docility—an old-fashioned word that means basically meekness or submission. Again, not a hopeless surrender to fate but a hopeful submission to God’s will through His grace.

We’re talking trust here. Can you trust God to do what He says He will do? You are forgiven. But for that forgiveness to become effective for you, you must accept it. A gift is a gift only if it is accepted. This is why we pray during the offertory of the Mass: “Brothers and sisters, pray that this our sacrifice may be acceptable to God our Almighty Father. May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands…” No acceptance, no gift. Money in the bank helps with the bills only if you access it. Medicine helps to cure an illness only if it is taken. Untouched money is useless. Untouched medicine is useless. For God’s forgiveness to work its miracle in your life, you must accept it and put it to work for you. You are poised here tonight to take the first step in accepting God’s forgiveness: you are preparing for the sacrament of reconciliation! By being here and by moving closer to the sacrament, you are showing God and your fellow travelers that you trust our Father to keep His promises. That’s faith!

The Church recognizes two conversions. The first is the conversion from pagan to Christian in the sacrament of baptism. Having been made a member of the Body of the Christ and given a permanent seal of the Spirit, you are placed at the beginning of your journey to perfection and supplied with all that you will need to get to your destination. Along the way, you will ride across bumps, ruts, thieves, bad weather, and threats of abandonment! When we find yourself falling away from the shining path, you are called to a second conversion—the conversion of the sacrament of reconciliation. The CCC teaches: “Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance for all sinful members of his Church: above all for those who, since Baptism, have fallen into grave sin, and have thus lost baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion”(n. 1446).

The ancient Fathers of the Church called this sacrament the Second Plank of salvation, the second chance for conversion, reconciliation, and the return to God’s invitation of eternal life. Notice that the CCC teaches that the grace of Baptism can be lost, that is, it is possible for us to sin in such a way that the favor we obtained in Baptism is destroyed. This destroys our relationship with God and injures the bonds we share in the Church with our brothers and sisters. To be reconciled to the Church is to be reconciled to God. To be restored to the grace of baptism is to be welcomed back into the Body of Christ and right relationship with the Father!

Our return to the Church from the darkness of mortal sin requires the work of the Holy Spirit and our own work as well. The Spirit of God, working in Love and mercy, grants the human heart all that it needs to come to contrition, to confession, and to make satisfaction. Through His ministers, God will forgive any sin for which we are sorry, any sin we confess, and any sin we are prepared to make satisfaction for. You demonstrate that you are prepared to accept the gift of forgiveness from God by making an act of contrition and by completing the penance given to you. The priest’s absolution forgives your sins and the sacrament strengthens you to obey God’s will for you in the future. This is why the Church urges us to celebrate this sacrament frequently.

Let’s take a moment to look a little more closely at the three basic elements of this sacrament. This will give you a better idea of what is required. First, the CCC teaches that your contrition for sin comes first. What does this mean? Basically, are you truly sorry for your sins? Do you feel the division btw yourself and God, btw yourself and the Church? Are you convinced of the ugliness of your sins and the need for forgiveness? Motivated by a fear of being punished for our sins, we can be imperfectly contrite. We can also be perfectly contrite, meaning that we are sorry for our sins b/c we know that they offend God who loves us above all things! Both kinds of contrition are motivated by the Holy Spirits and both will move you to confession. However, to grow in holiness, to develop in spiritual excellence, it is best to cultivate perfect contrition. A life lived in terror of God—rather than in awe—is perilous and not particularly good for one’s own charity to others.

Second, the CCC teaches that once moved by contrition—sorrow for our sin—we are taken to confession, or the disclosure of individual sins. This is an opportunity for us to clearly name our sins, to give them an unavoidable identity, and to expose them to God’s priests for their destruction. To name a thing is to give it a personality, a “face,” if you will, and makes that thing difficult to ignore. Naming our sins to the priest makes it possible for us to recognize them later if tempted again. Using euphemisms like “impurity with another” or “used impure images” deflects the weight of the sin and fails to give it a proper face. Say, “I had sex with someone who is not my spouse” or “I looked at porn on the internet.” Think of the demons Jesus confronts during his ministry. He demands their names to expel them. Name the sin clearly in confession and take power over it in God’s name.

After we are moved by sorrow for our sin and brought to confess individual sins to a priest, we receive God’s forgiveness in absolution and then a penance is assigned. Why do we need to complete a penance? The CCC teaches that our sin damages not only the soul of the sinner but the Church as well. More than absolution is required to repair of sin: “Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must ‘make satisfaction for’ or ‘expiate’ his sins”(n. 1459). To be clear: your penance is not a purchase of grace; it is not the “price” of the sin you’ve committed. Your penance is your chance to take the grace of the sacrament and produce the first fruit of reconciliation: an act that openly repairs the damage you’ve caused.

Above all this is what you need to know about the sacrament we celebrate this evening: you are here b/c the Holy Spirit has thumped you on the head and said, “Go to confession!” We cannot pray w/o the urging of the Spirit. We cannot fruitfully partake of the sacraments w/o the Spirit’s help. If you are here tonight to come back to God and His Church, then you are here b/c God wants you back. You are feeling the longing for health, the desire for His love and peace. Your restlessness, the wandering, the anxiety, the frustration and anger are too much and the distance to travel back seems monumental and unbridgeable! It is monumental and unbridgeable. For you alone. You couldn’t cross the distance that one sin puts btw you and God if you lived twenty lifetimes. And that’s the point of this sacrament, brothers and sisters: you are here, on the edge of coming home, b/c God’s love has drawn you to Him, hooked you like a fish and reeled you in! And this moment of grace is the moment when you obey your heart’s deepest hunger and find perfect satisfaction in Him.

Honestly name your sin in sorrow. Resolve to follow Christ, bearing your cross, doing as he did, loving God, your neighbor, and yourself. Be God’s revelation of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty to those around you and treat them as God’s revelations to you. And above all, brother and sisters: give God thanks for His grace. If you will grow in holiness, if you come to flourish in Christ, you will have constantly on your lips a prayer of thanks to God. Give thanks for everything you have and everything you are. Yes, give thanks for the trials, the illnesses, and the weirdoes in your life. Everything in creation reveals the Father’s love and teaches us more and more about Him. Your gratitude makes you humble and your humility will open better and larger ways of living with Christ.

Here’s my final warning: if you pray in gratitude and grow in humility be prepared for an outpouring of blessings that will test your resolve to be grateful! Opening yourself to accept the Father’s blessing in thanksgiving, especially in the frequent celebration of this sacrament, is the fastest means to sainthood. And, before you know what hit you, the mantle of the prophet may fall on your shoulders and the Word of God may fall from your lips and you will say to the rest of us: Repent and believe!

Some Hard Advent Questions

2nd Sunday Advent: Baruch 5.1-9; Philippians 1.4-6, 8-11; Luke 3.1-6
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Time to ask some hard Advent questions: what is suffocating God’s good work in you? What is strangling His gift of joy, His grant of mercy to you? Who or what serves as the false focus of your spiritual vigor, your soulful oomph!? Shall I list the ways? Are you: nursing a petty hurt? Anxious about a roommate’s apparent immorality? Dodging your parents over money matters? Slowly rotting in lies or pretense or illusion about your achievements, your love life, your future? Are you wasting your material gifts on decadence, frivolous diversions and attempts at escape? Are you betraying a husband or a wife or a child or a friend by being someone you cannot be for them forever? Are you serving alien gods? Who or what rules your heart? Ambition? Money? Accolades? Public attention? Are your gods named Stomach, Ego, Career, and Sex? If you cannot love God, yourself, or your neighbor, why? It’s in you to do so. What can’t you say to God? What won’t you pray for that will spring open your heart? What do you fear? And, finally, who is it that you are really angry at?

Yes, these are Advent questions b/c Advent is our time to make clean the way of the Lord, to sweep the road to our hearts, to polish the stone path to our minds, and to prepare for questions deeper, brighter, more passionate than anything I can ask you from here! Oh, one more question: has your love increased more and more, knowing what is good and true and beautiful, so that when Christ returns, you can stand before him pure and blameless and filled with the fruit of righteousness? If not, now’s the time to start.

John the Baptist visited us this Advent week as a jumpy fetus, banging around in Elizabeth’s womb, jumping and rejoicing in the presence of the Blessed Mother, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. In vitro, he knows the power and majesty of the Anointed Son, not yet born and he bows before the One who will come and hang on the cross freely and finally, for all. What John knows, even before he breathes, is that his purpose, his reason for life has come and what better event, what more glorious person to honor by jumping and rejoicing than the coming of the Promised One of God. He is the One Who has begun in us a good work and continues to complete that good work until he comes again. This season of purple begs us to wait and wait and anticipate and anticipate and hope and hope. Waiting, we must repent of our sin. Anticipating, we must turn from the slavery of disobedience. Hoping, we must call on mercy and the promise of eternal rescue. John points the Way. But he will not drag us, kicking and screaming, to our repentance. Your life must be freely given in sacrifice or not at all.

Paul is quite confident that God’s good work is seeded, sprouted, and growing furiously in each of us. I wonder, are we as confident? Are we as sure as Paul that we carry a good work in us and with us and that our Lord works to complete that good work? Advent is a season for repentance, for turning around and coming back, for surrendering to the Father, and letting Him do His work in you. If we fail in our confidence, in other words, if we succumb to cowardice, we deny that God has done anything good for us at all! I’ll be more pointed: if you believe that God has not begun a good work in you; if you deny Paul’s confidence and hold that you are basically evil, incapable of pursuing the Good, or unlovable even by Love Himself, then do not recite the Creed with us, do not offer your prayers, do not walk the aisle for communion or cross yourself at the blessing! For all purposes that matter, you are excommunicated, formerly in communion…now in denial. You are the one John was sent to rattle!

John’s job is to herald the coming of the Christ, to run before and warn and rejoice and make aware and to shout: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths!” Clearing a path through any crowd, John walks ahead, pulling the attention, the allegiance, and even the ire of those who come to see Jesus. He preaches, teaches, pronounces judgment, corrects error, gives good example, and, for all his hard work, he loses his head to a dancer. But for that time he called out his warning and his joy, he was a voice crying out in the desert, the one we know from Isaiah and the one we know who first knew that the Christ was among us. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

So, we honor John the Baptist by asking: what is suffocating God’s good work in you? What is strangling His gift of joy, His grant of mercy to you? Do you believe that God has made you a good work? Or do you wallow still in the Devil’s lie that you are the sum of your sins? Do you believe that God has forgiven your sins, raised you up as His preacher and witness, and made you a prophet to shout out his praise in the markets and the schools and the offices? Or do you persist in the false modesty of being a “little one” below His notice, too meager to be loved and charged with an apostolic mission? Do you believe that God will restore all creation to His just ways, putting everything there is under the rule of his Son, and subjecting each of us to His mercy? Or do you still need to hold on to the illusion that God is angry and cruel and just waiting to leap out from behind his Throne and yell, “GOTCHA!” Isn’t this about our self-righteousness and a demonic spirit of judgment than it is about who God really is?

You see, joy is not about bouncing around smiling, laughing, and having a good time. Of course, we can express joy in these ways. But joy as such is about peace. A quiet stillness in our hearts, a stony trust that electrifies our soul to reach and grasp the offered hand of God, to stretch and strain for the fingers of our Savior who put his body and soul on the cross for us. Joy is sure knowledge, passionate assurance, and the gift of a life swimming in the light of our final end. We en-joy Christ when we take him in, make him welcomed as King of our hearts, and move and breath and do and speak everything necessary to show out what he has done for us.

John announces that Christ will fill every valley, make low every mountain and hill. His arrival will signal that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Therefore, breathe! The Holy Spirit comes among us as mighty wind, a desert whirlwind and an ocean tumult. Breathe in the fire of Father’s love for His Son and watch your love increase more and more, knowing what is good, true, and beautiful so that you may then stand before God, pure and blameless, filled with the fruits of righteousness. Prepare yourself in repentance. Turn from disobedience and toward humility. From petty hurts to generous helps. From alien gods of the earth to the One God of Heaven. From your choked life of spiritual disappointment to deep breathes of the Spirit. From the coming of the Lord to his arrival.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy!

Mary's YES is our mission

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the BVM:
Gen 3.9-15, 20; Eph 1.3-6, 11-12; and Luke 1.26-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and the Church of the Incarnation


Our first Mother, Eve, willfully participated in an act of disobedience against God and lost our just relationship with Him in so doing. Her NO to God gave reign to sin. Our only Mother in Christ, Mary, obeyed God and participated willfully in the ultimate act of sacrifice to win back for us the possibility of a just relationship with Him. Her YES to God gave us a King to reign in our lives. Adam and Eve’s sin lost for all creation its righteousness before God. Jesus and Mary’s sacrificial offering of their bodies to the Father’s will restored all creation to righteousness. Today we celebrate our Blessed Mother’s clean beginning, her immaculate conception, and honor her for her fiat: “Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.”

Our family of salvation, the Church, has done an amazing job over the centuries of preserving for us a proper understanding of Mary and her place in our history of faith. The dual temptations of worshipping Mary as a goddess or ignoring her as a necessary means have haunted our magisterial duties w/o possessing the machines of dogma and doctrine, and possibly distorting who she was and is for us and to us: Mary is our first and only Mother in Christ. She said Yes to the Holy Spirit and bore the Word of Creation and Re-creation into the world. She carried that Word, witnessing in her body the humanity of our Savior, giving him flesh and blood, and participating, free from sin, in our salvation. The honor due Mary is never the worship due the Blessed Trinity, but the love and honor we pay our natural mothers, the love of children for the one who gave us life out and nurtured us to maturity.

Mary is the Mother of our salvation and she is the apostle of our mission as daughters and sons of a loving Father. At our baptism we picked up the mission of bearing the Word to the world. We became preachers of the Word. We picked up the perils of resisting all that the world worships as True, Good, and Beautiful. Preaching the Truth against the Lie stirs up the worst bitterness and the most violent passions of those who resent Mary’s Yes, who resent the gift of the Infant Jesus, and who will not to participate in their perfection in the Divine Life. We are imperiled by the threat of social and physical violence, but more problematically we are imperiled by the temptation to see the people threatened by us as hopeless or deserving of divine punishment. This second temptation—our judgment of others—is scandalously common and unworthy of the virgin-child who made our own Yes possible.

Our Mother’s Yes to bearing the Word in her body to us contains no taint of selfishness, anger, vengeance, malice, or arrogance. Her Yes was and is spoken purely, spoken willingly and eagerly, without irony, pretense, or sarcasm. Free from the swill of Adam and Eve’s original disobedience she sees cleanly, hears immaculately the call of the Spirit to be a willing vessel, a co-worker, a handmaid for God, with God, and to God. And because of her chosen and accepted labor of love, we honor her mission and ministry by doing what she did: by saying Yes to God, by bearing His Word into the world, by living lives of mothering grace, by walking with him to the cross—following his Way—, and by dying and rising with him.

Honor our Mother Mary, her immaculate conception, by saying with great conviction: Lord, let it be done to me according to your Word!

Faith, Authority, Redemption

1st Week Advent (M): Isa 2.1-5 and Matthew 8.5-11
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Let’s get a clear picture in our minds of what’s happening here…Jesus gets to Capernaum and a Roman officer approaches him b/c the officer’s servant is in need of healing. The officer asks for Jesus’ help but acknowledges that as a Jew Jesus is not permitted to enter a Gentile’s home. This is what the officer means by “I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.” The officer goes on to say to Jesus, “…only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me.” The officer is using an analogy to explain to Jesus why he believes that Jesus’ word alone is enough to heal his servant. He is saying: in the same way that I am subject to military authority and those under my command are subject to my authority, the diseases and injuries of this world are subject to your authority as the Son of God. Your authority, your rule can be exercised anytime, anywhere without the limits of time and space. What happens next is the joy of Advent!

Matthew reports that Jesus is amazed at the officer’s faith in his authority. Turning to those following him, Jesus says, “I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.” How do we understand this puzzling statement? The Council Fathers of Vatican Two write in Gaudium et spes that the Christian will die and rise again with Christ and that this promise of resurrection gives hope to those who suffer trials and tribulations for Christ’s name. They continue: “All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery”(n 22). Christ died once for all! The joy of Advent, therefore, is the coming of the Lord to the whole world!

The proper understanding of Christ’s authority as the Son of God will mitigate against what appears to be an argument favoring the heresy of universalism. Notice two essential elements of the exchange between Jesus and the centurion: 1) the centurion acknowledges Jesus’ authority by requesting his help, and 2) he submits to Jesus’ authority by trusting him to do what is right. It is the centurion’s acceptance of Christ as the Son of God and his trust in Christ’s authority that moves Jesus in amazement to say, “…in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” And then he makes the statement that gives us such joy in Advent: “many will come from the east and the west” and take part in the King’s banquet.

Many will come. Not all. Many will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not all. Many will acknowledge his authority as the Son of God. Not all. Many will submit to his authority and ask for his healing touch. Not all. What is universal here is the invitation. Christ died once for all. And many will come. The centurion’s faith in Christ’s authority is evidence that anyone may be moved by mercy to seek out the Lord and say, “I am not worthy, Lord, to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and I will be healed!”

Rejoice! Your salvation is at hand.

Advent is scary!

1st Sunday of Advent: Jer 33.14-16; 1 Thes 3.12-4.2; Luke 21.25-28, 34-36
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation


Be vigilant at all times and pray! Stay awake and pray! Look alive and pray! Be prepared and pray. The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill my promises, when I will give to my people the king they long for, the Son they need. Be vigilant against sloth, stand guard against vanity, beware of deception, easy compromise, weakened trust, diluted teachings, unjust law, and comfortable prophets preaching comfortable prophecy to comfortably bloated ears. If Advent doesn’t scare you, you ain’t paying attention!

Pay attention: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill my promise…” Over the horizon, yet to arrive, are those days ahead of us when the Lord will make good on His promises to bring us back to Him, to rescue us from darkness and make us into children of the Light. He sent his prophets and His Law. We killed the first and violated the last. And grew no holier for our trouble. And the Lord grew no more patient. He promised Abraham children as crowded as the stars and He promised those children that He would never abandon them, never exile them, never punish them, never again start from scratch, hoping to replace them. Instead, He promised them a King and a Savior, a Lamb and a High Priest. He promised them a Son of Man and a Son of God, a single rescuer for all creation. One for us who is like us and who will make us like him, one with him, one like him, a single heart and mind, a single path, one goal, one road, two feet, and a promise from the mouth of God Himself: the days are coming when I will fulfill the promise I made.

Jesus says to his disciples: “There will be signs […] and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world…” What is coming upon the world? What, exactly, are we waiting for? If we wait for the Lord to fulfill His promise to the house of David to send the nations a savior, then we want for the arrival of the Messiah at the nativity feast. We wait for the coming of the Anointed One. If we wait for the Lord to give us a few more clues on the time and location of the Apocalyspe, then we wait in vain. In fact, we wait only anxiously—unbelieving and fretful—doubting the Lord’s promises and growing increasingly hostile and weak. The acid of impatience eats away at vigilance and loosens the ties that bind us together in love. Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy! Be vigilant at all times and pray. The trials and obstacles wait for us. But so does the Lord. He is what is coming upon this earth, He is what we await.

Just getting through a day w/o adding one more anxiety, one more problem, one more distraction—how difficult! Does it seem to you that you collect worries and stress like couches collect dust bunnies? One more thing to burden you, one more thing to blow into your life and gather tension. You scramble, dodge, work fretfully, but one task done usually leads to two more that cause even more hassles! No doubt, “doing stuff” makes us feel productive. Being busy seems to add value to our lives, to give us a powerful feeling of accomplishment. In fact, and I hate to say it, I get more done when I am busy. But I’m all that much less peaceful. Not all that closer to God b/c of my scurrying around. Perhaps we should begin each task with this question: how will doing this job and finishing this job get me closer to God?

What does “be vigilant” mean in Irving, TX in the year 2006? At the very least it means handing over to God everything you have to worry about, everything you have to do, everyone who demands your time and attention, everyone who needs you now and tomorrow. It means consecrating your life to the service of the little ones—the poor, the abandoned, the neglected, the forgotten. It means watch the signs of the times and hope in Christ’s return. This is not about guessing games and biblical numerology—trying to figure out the date of Christ return. It is about paying attention to world events and watching for the providential hand of God in the events of the world.

If you were asked to note the Devil’s work in the world, could you identify it? Could you point to God’s work and tell us all how he has gifted you to contribute to the work of this Body, the Church? How much easier it is to read the papers and point out Satan’s victories—abortion, the destruction of marriage, terrorism, inter-religious competition and hatred, oppressive anti-Christian governments! Too much, too much. And, then again, not too much. Behold, I am coming soon!

We have one job in the Church: to be Christ for one another and for the world. We all do that job differently. Some as students, some as religious, some as priests, some as teachers, mothers, fathers, etc. Being Christ for one another and the Church is simply the practice of charity in all things, the activity of love and fertile joy. Not judgment or cruelty or moral nitpicking or gossiping or envying another’s gifts. Charity in all things—not always an easy job, right? Absolutely right! But vigilance in prayer and perseverance in faith will keep us awake and waiting for the coming of the Lord!

Paul writes to the Thessolonians: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all…” Here’s what’s scary about Advent: yes, the Lord is working to fulfill His promises, but the promise He made is the promise of change, of purification; He promises to love us regardless and we are radically transformed by Love focused in our souls. The advent of transforming Love is frightening…we will not be the same. Ever. And if we will come to Christ as children ready to be transformed, we will strengthen our hearts against the seductions of pop-culture, popular opinion, celebrity, the temptations of material excess, and the temptations of spiritual impoverishment. Our movies, our newspapers, our stars, our stuff, and the lightweight, spiritual-ly junk that we carry around will seduce us, reel us in and leave us disheveled, broke, embarrassed, and dirty. Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy! The day of the Lord will surprise you like a trap.

Here’s how you can prepare for the coming of the Lord—ask yourself as you begin and complete each task of your day: how will doing this job and finishing this job get me closer to God? How will keeping to this hectic schedule get me closer to God? How will eight meetings, three appointments, two errands, and a flat tire get me closer to God? How will saying YES to every request for help, every demand for my time, every plea for collaboration get me closer to God?

Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to endure until the coming of the Lord. And when he does: stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand!

Excellent Spiritual Reading

I picked up a copy of The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006 a few days ago and it is great! I was surprised by the number of essays from First Things and Christianity Today, and the number of excellent poems, including my new favorite poet, Franz Wright. Over the last few years this series has tended to select pieces more appealing to the Sleep In on Sunday Morning Read the Times and Listen to NPR crowd than your more consciously religious reader. I think the 2006 edition, though certainly not a Catholic apologetic, will appeal to religious folks who want a little more out of their faith than a cultural tag and who generally look for that More in literary sources.

Pools of Fire lapping at unrepentant souls

Last Week OT (F): Revelation 20.1-4, 11-21.2 and Luke 21.29-33
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation


What are we to do with readings like this one from the Apocalypse? What are 21st century Catholics supposed to do with visions of Satan in chains, throngs of bloodied martyrs crowding the throne of God, a scary Book of Life, pools of fire into which damned souls are thrown and a new heaven and a new earth? Take it seriously? Literally? Literarily? With a big grain of salt and a weak apologetic grin? Take it historically or prophetically or humorously, but take it; take it all and read it as a maternal text, a paternal narrative that conceives and gives birth to an incredible faith-history out of which we rise as children set to inherit a kingdom. I mean, these vivid apocalyptic images and dire warnings about the consequences of betrayal and the need for fidelity do more than inform our theology, they haunt our imaginations; they are vigorous spirits populating our Catholic vocabularies—our language and art and worship and our dreams about who we are and who we will be forever. Never think that God leaves our imaginations bare. He persuades in Surroundsound and High Definition Technicolor. And…he awaits our repentance.

Being very much a Jew and a teacher, Jesus grabs hold of the End Times speculative mind of his listeners and gives them a hard warning: decisions about fidelity to the Lord cannot be deferred indefinitely; time ticks away toward an end and the End is nearer than skin: “…this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” This is not a rhetorical scare tactic or Jesus fear-mongering. He is simple telling the truth about the human person—our completion as creatures of a loving God will take place. We will not left to rot in the ground or float randomly in voided ether. There is an end and an End—a stopping point and a resolution with purpose.

Jesus says, “…the Kingdom of God is near.” Be glad, tremble, cry, laugh, leap around like an idiot, do whatever, but, keeping all those fantastic images from the Apocalypse firmly in heart and mind, choose: health or disease, love or indifference, mercy or judgment, freedom or slavery, life or death. Be subject to the King of kings, the Lord of lords, or take residence in the former heaven and the former earth and pass away with the sea.

The kingdom of God is near, Jesus says; pay attention to your life, your choices, your graces, your service, and your faith. Pay attention to this moment, your history, your future; pay attention as if you will be called upon to account for each word and deed done and not done in Christ’s name. Does your prosperity witness to the generosity of God? Does your poverty give glory to God’s abundance? Do you speak the language of conclusion, of divine purpose: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God…” Do you believe that Christ’s word will never pass away? If so, have you chosen to make his Word your word?

What are we to do with crazy readings like this one from Revelation? Believe it. The Devil is defeated. But still loose to tempt us against one another. Faithful witness of the gospel may get you beheaded, especially when we refuse in Christ name to submit to an idolatrous culture. Our God reigns and all is well. Death does not relieve us of our responsibility to serve those who need us most. Refusing Christ burns. And everything and everyone we know now and everywhere we have ever been—all of it and all of us—will be changed. Made new. Completed.

We will, in the End, be loved into eternity.

Sign up and die!

Last Week OT (W): Revelation 15.1-4 and Luke 21.12-19
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory


I’m afraid that Jesus would not last long in the advertising business. Look at his recruitment strategy in Luke: Join me and all those who oppose me will round you up, beat you, spit on you, put you on trial for treason and blasphemy, and then put you to death. Oh, and by the way, some of those who do these things will be your mom and dad and your little sister and the guy next door with the yappy dog. Can you imagine this recruitment campaign bringing in the crowds in 21st century America?

It is not immediately obvious to me why those who choose to follow Christ will be persecuted. What is specific or special about following Christ that enrages those who would persecute us? Jesus tells the disciples that they will be persecuted “because of my name.” Christ’s teaching on the fulfillment of the Law in Love seems to shock, but does it cause persecution? His willingness to violate pharisaical interpretations of the Sabbath rules for the sake of a lesson in mercy draws establishment ire but not systematic violence. He speaks to unclean enemies of the state and women! but it is not immediately evident that he is tried, convicted, and executed for this. Perhaps all together these transgressive acts against law and tradition add up to a criminal nature worthy of righteous anger. But notice: Jesus lists none of these as the reason for institutional and familial violence against his brothers and sisters on the Way.

Because of his name we will be persecuted. Have been persecuted. Are being persecuted. Christ name is who he is most fundamentally, most basically. His name draws out and highlights the most intimate relationship possible, the most intensely personal—person to person—joy possible, the most loving parent-child bond. His name is Anointed One, Messiah and his name is a brand, a sign, a sacrament, a rule, and a throne.

Christ is the friendship that lays the foundation of all other human bonds. Before husband-wife or brother-sister or mother-child there is Father-Son-Holy Spirit. Before state-citizen, before king-subject, before teacher-student there is Father-Son-Holy Spirit. And this is why we have been, are being, and will be persecuted: his name is the name above all other names and by proclaiming his name to be our own, we put him first and last and lay claim to an inheritance that not only shapes reality—social and otherwise—but also gives that reality a purpose, a point. His name and our claim to it testify to the kingship of Christ. And those usurped by his ascendancy in our lives have not been, are not now, and will never be happy about being demoted. Beware: you will be hated because of his name.

We have this: a promise of endurance in his name, a promise of perseverance—to hang on even in the face of the worst trials is testimony, faithful witness, and a guarantee of our eternal lives. We need not worry about a defense. He is there already. We need not worry about our stunted wisdom. He is there already. He has been there from the beginning and will be there in the end.

Listen again to the choir singing before the heavenly throne: “You alone are holy, Lord. All nations will come and worship before you…” All nations. Even those that, for now, curse his name. Baptize in his name, pray in his name, minister in his name and in so doing, ensure that his name is first and last in everything we do. If we are not his by his name, whose are we and by what name will be known—forever?

NO flash photography at a wedding???

I was told once by a parish priest of many years service that there are three guaranteed things a pastor can say to a congregation to get them really, really angry:

1). "Folks, Mass starts at 11am. Could you get here on time, please. Arriving during the homily is just rude."

2). "Folks, this is the Lord's House...and that's not the name of a strip club. Could you make sure your teenagers dress for Mass and not for MTV's Spring Break Bikini Special?"

3). "Folks, of course we all want to make a joyful noise to the Lord, but your child has been screaming non-stop for fifty minutes. As amusing as you might think we think that is...we don't. There's a Cry Room for a reason. Use it."

OK. I added the dashes of sarcasm, but you get the picture: asking people to arrive on time for Mass, dress appropriately, and to take their crying babies out of the Church proper are all ways for the Pastor to lose ground in the polls.

I've found another one. Before a wedding or a Baptism, say this to the photographer: "No flash pictures of any kind once Mass begins. None. Never. Not even one." And then make sure that the people in the congregation know it as well. Otherwise, the entire Mass becomes a media event complete with flashing paparatzi and whirring camera lenses!

I'm curious about what other presiders out there do about flash photography at weddings, confirmations, baptisms, etc.

Fr. Philip, OP

Who is the King of your heart?

Christ the King: Daniel 7.13-14; Revelation 1.5-8; John 18.33b-37
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation and St. Paul’s Hospital


Who or what sits on the throne of your heart? Who or what rules your mind, your body, your soul? Who are you as a subject of the Lord’s kingdom? Who are we together in his royal service?

The Solemnity of Christ the King celebrates the arrival and the coming of the Lord—his coming and going in disgrace in the beginning and his coming and staying in glory in the end. He has been given an everlasting dominion, eternal glory, and kingship in heaven and on earth. He is firstborn of the dead, ruler of the kings of earth, and he is the faithful witness to his Father’s accomplished promise: to us who love him, he has freed us from our sin by his blood, and made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father! He is prophet, priest, and king and we share in his prophetic ministry, his priestly duty, and his kingly rule. But we do not share these offices by right or reward; we share them by inheritance. In baptism we took on the mantle of the Anointed One and gave our lives to the work of giving the Living Word our hands and feet, our strong backs and big mouths, our determination and patience, and we gave all of our foreign allegiances to the sanctifying fire of Pentecost—no alien rulers, no sacrifices to false gods, no prayers to the elemental powers, no princes before The Prince, no king in our hearts but the King of kings, the Lord or lords.

His dominion must skate through your veins, flex your muscles, and draw your breath. His rule will accomplish in you the perfection of every gift, polishing every talent and treasure, and he will bring your will to bear on the need for renunciation and sacrifice, the need for surrender to the commands of love, the righteous orders of mercy and faith. The rule of Christ the King in your heart opens your ears: “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” That voice, his voice will not ask you, will not lead you to the worship of the idols of the market.

Who or what sits on the throne of your heart? Who or what rules your mind, your body, your soul? If you are not ruled from your heart by the Word Made Flesh, then you are ruled by some alien power, some foreign god. Let me name some them: there are spirits who would rule us—spirits of disobedience and arrogance; of narcissism and selfishness; of deceit and false witness; of judgment and self-righteousness; of confusion and syncreticism; of rage and violence. There are disordered passions that would rule us: lust posing as love; greed posing as desire; pride posing as self-esteem; envy posing as competition; gluttony posing as the entitlement; sloth posing as leisure; and anger posing as righteous indignation. There are fallen angels, counterfeit messengers, who would rule us with false information and corrupted wisdom: ancient seers, ascended masters, make-believe prophets, self-anointed messiahs, cults of personality, cults of scientism, cults of success w/no money down, churches of the Barbie Waistline and the Ken Pecs and Abs, and the demonic choirs of celebrities singing their own praises!

Who or what sits on the throne of your heart? Who or what rules your mind, your body, your soul?

Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you King of the Jews?” Jesus answers with a question, “Did you figure this out or did someone tell you?” Pilate says, “I’m not a Jew. Your own people gave me to you. What have you done?” Jesus responses to Pilate, but he doesn’t answer Pilate’s question. Instead he tells Pilate that he is a King, but not a king in this world or a king in the way the world thinks of kings. Jesus says, “My kingdom does not belong to this world[…]my kingdom is not here.” Frustrated, Pilate says, “So, you are a king then?!” Jesus simply says, “I was born and came into this world to testify to the truth.” And this is what he did from his debut at the Wedding at Cana up to and including this exchange with Pilate—Jesus has taught the truth of the faith, holding fast against expectation and convenience and popularity and betrayal and expediency; holding the truth of the Word so that that Word might be purely spread, pristinely heralded and heard.

There is no compromise here. No genteel dialogue btw individuals with competing but probably compatible interests. No exchange of heart-felt wishes and warm salutations. Jesus speaks the Word of Truth to Pilate. And says, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” What do those who belong to the truth hear? They hear: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty.” They hear a proclamation of Christ’s rule, a declaration of his reign and sovereignty. Son of Man and Son of God. Faithful witness. Firstborn of the dead. Ruler of the kings of the earth. No election. No voting. No audience participation. No American Idol final four. Lord of lords, King of kings. Mighty God. That’s all! And that’s everything!

Who or what sits on the throne of your heart? Who or what rules your mind, your body, your soul?

The implication of these questions is naked: answer them honestly and know immediately the state of your spiritual life. I don’t mean to say here that you will get some sense of whether or not you are fulfilled or happy or content. Or that you will come to feel better about yourself or less stressed out or better able to cope. Jesus promised his disciples and us—all of his preachers and apostles—persecution, trial, betrayal, and death. He never promised us contentment or self-esteem in this life. This doesn’t mean that we won’t be happy here and now or that we can’t find some measure of peace. All it means is that being stressed out or unhappy or anxious or doubtful is not evidence that you are a bad Christian. All of those nagging spirits and draining demons are, however, a pretty good sign that something or someone else sits on the throne of your heart; something or someone else rules you—body, mind, spirit, all of you. What you feel is dis-ease, instability, the uneasiness that we all feel when we invite a foreign ruler, some alien king into our lives.

But know that these spirits are temporary gods, paper doll deities folded together with Elmer’s and plastic glitter. They are houses of leaves, Styrofoam rocks and magic marker paint, a fleet of cardboard ships in icy water sinking. They are the Sons of Noise and the Daughters of Wisps, passing through, clouds and rank breezes; loud, dangerous, yes; but powerless before a true king.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice. Everyone who belongs to goodness sees his work. Everyone who belongs to beauty touches his face. Everyone who belongs to the Father welcomes his rule in their hearts. Everyone who belongs to the Son gives thanks for his sacrifice. Everyone who belongs to the Spirit rejoices in his gifts. And everyone, everyone who belongs to the kingdom serves One Faith, One Baptism, One Lord!

Is he lord of your heart? If not, who sits the throne and rules your life? He is the Faithful witness, the Firstborn of the dead, King of kings, Jesus Christ!

Second Wedding Homily (11/25/06)

Sacrament of Matrimony
Tobit 8.4-8; Hebrews 13.1-6; Matthew 22.35-40
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas


If marriage is about love then we have from Hebrews a sampling of what marriage means for Christians. Love is mutual, hospitable, empathetic, honorable, pure, contenting, a promise of care, and a cure for fear. And so is marriage. If marriage is not about love then it must be about selfishness, inhospitality, callousness, dishonor, impurity, agitation, a promise broken, and an infection of anxiety. Marriage without love is no sacrament at all but vain gesture and puffed up words, an agreement merely to tolerate someone else in your life. Much like a disagreeable rental contract or a necessary but mostly annoying roommate. Christian marriage is always about love. It must be. Because being a Christian is all about love.

To say that being a Christian is all about love is not to say that being a Christian is all about being mushy, weak-kneed, starry-eyed, and panting. Love is not just about passion; it is primarily about the Good; that is, love is essentially Who God Is for us so that we might come to Him and be with Him forever. Created to be completed in love, we seek out and sometimes find a love here and now that though no match for divine love nonetheless works to make that Love feel possible, works to make the Love we were created to be more probable.

In his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI writes about the various meanings of the word “love.” He points out the word’s patriotic, familial, romantic, and neighborly meanings. He concludes, however, “Amid this multiplicity of meanings […] one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness”(n. 2b). Marriage, then, is the Christian sacrament of God’s revelation of Himself to us through the committed love of a man and woman and they become together a living witness to the promises of grace given to us at baptism.

Christian marriage cannot be about passion alone or convenience or desperation; it must be sacramental, that is, revealing of God’s presence and His work in the world. Inasmuch as an ordained priest should be a living sign to the world of Christ the Head of the Body, so the married couple ought to be a living sign of the Father’s love for His bride, the Church. God does not love as we do; God is love. Love is Who He is to us and for us.

We use the word “agape” to describe Christian love. Benedict writes in DCE, “…this word expresses the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character […] Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead [agape] seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice”(n. 6). What Christian marriage will thrive unless the man and the woman find the courage of renunciation and the will to sacrifice, that is, the motivation to sanctify their lives together by setting aside selfishness—petty wants, superficial hurts, suspicions of neglect.

Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord [and] you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And he says that you shall do so “with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is not only a description of the Messianic fulfillment of the Mosaic Law, it is a command. You shall. Not “think about it” or “you’d be better off if you did” or “you could if you wanted to” but “you shall.” And not only “you shall” but “you shall” with every muscle, bone, and inch of flesh; with every thought, word, memory, and deed. You shall love! First God and then neighbor as self.

This is a command rather than a suggestion b/c we are weak, unfocused, fallen, and vain. Not constitutionally, mind you; but willfully…willfully weak, unfocused, and vain. And Jesus knows this. Thus the command to love. Our love for one another is too important to our holiness to be left to chance and will. Of course, we can refuse and spend eternity without Love, without God. But, knowing our inclination to habit, Jesus orders us to love and hopes the habit of loving sticks. And it does, it does often enough and powerfully enough that we see in the world bright examples of charity and mercy, living examples of mighty generosity and graced service. Christian marriage should lead us in love!

To family and friends: a warning—your participation here today requires you to not only follow the excellent example of love given to us by Larry and Christie, but it also requires you to reflect back to them the love that they shine out. In other words, you all must be ready to celebrate with them and mourn with them and support them when necessary—in the smooth times and the rough. And be ready to show them day-to-day what their ministry of marriage means to you; what their witness to God’s love for His Bride, the Church, means for us all. It is not enough to dress up, show up, stand up, sit down, and eat the buffet! There’s the “amen” here and the “amen” means “Yes, it is” and “Yes, I do.” Say “amen” with conviction and promise. B/c that is how God hears it.

Larry and Christie, Tobit and Sara prayed to the Lord on their wedding night for mercy and deliverance. They blessed the Lord and praised His name. They recounted their creation as man and woman and the need each has for the other in order to be complete. They are married for a noble purpose and ask to live together to “a happy old age.” With all that in mind, allow me to exhort you: make your love mutual—giving and returning in kind; be hospitable to one another—generous and affectionate; show empathy for each other and for others—b/c you are one body; honor each other—be faithful in thought, word, deed; let nothing and no one enslave your love—not money, not career, not things, not ideas; be ready to say without shame or hesitation: “I will never forsake you or abandon you;” and live together in holiness w/o fear, w/o rancor, w/o pining for options, w/o glancing over the fence. And love as Christ loves us.

With the Lord as our helper we have nothing to fear!

Our own den of thieves?

33rd Week OT: Revelation 10.8-11 and Luke 19.45-48
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory


The temple has become a den of thieves! What was given to the people for the worship of the Lord has been made into the resting place for those who would plunder the wealth of others. Rather than offer the proper sacrifices and pray lovingly from the heart, these thieves loot the wages of the poor, stealing what little the little-ones have to offer. Though surely stealing from the poor is crime enough, these thieves compound their crime by stealing the sacrifices that were to be made to the Lord! They are robbing the poor and robbing the Lord. No wonder Jesus lets loose a storm front of righteous anger. He pronounces his judgment against the thieves by driving them out of the temple area and then he rectifies their crime. Luke writes, “And every day he was teaching in the temple area.”

How does Jesus’ teaching rectify the criminal abuse of the temple? Not only were the temple bureaucrats stealing the monetary offerings of the poor, they were also stealing their inheritance in the Law; that is, Jesus is principally upset about the fact that the sacrificial system of the temple had become mechanical, rote, easy-cheesy grace, if you will, and the core of the Law, its righteousness in love, had been stolen by professionalized legalism and religious commercialism. The thieves, in other words, steal not only money but tradition and orthodoxy as well.

Of course, what they are doing in the temple area looks perfectly traditional and orthodox b/c “it’s always been done that way.” But it is clear that the Spirit is with Jesus as he teaches the fulfillment of the Law and not just its letter, the completion of the covenant in his ministry and not just the jots and tittles of ritual. The people “hang on his words;” they are brought to attention, given the Word of life, and sent to speak that Word to others, spreading the First Commandment that accomplishes all ten of the others in a single life of love. No doubt simple expediency, daily practicalities, and common sense slowly lead the temple administration to the set the system Jesus objects to so strongly. But it is precisely the destruction of the Law’s ideal under the creeping, erosive compromises of “getting along” and “adapting to the times” that make the temple into a den of thieves.

We have to wonder how the Church compromises with the present age and makes the temple into a resting place for thieves. Have those in charge robbed us of our inheritance and given us instead airy delusions of permanent theological and litrugical revolution? Have those in charge stolen our tradition and replaced it with process, compromise, guidelines, and procedure? We can say perhaps that the Spirit of the Law was once swallowed in prissy ritualism and then freed in active participation. But now liturgical busyness and didactic wordiness drown the transcendent in gyration and syllable. We need Jesus teaching in the temple all day, everyday.

Thankfully, we have you. All of you. Living, breathing, walking tabernacles of the Lord, spreading out to witness, to teach and preach, to bring Christ as Teacher and Lord to the world. But our first witness must be to the Church. Where do you see a den of thieves? Where do you see robbery? Trespass? Fraud? Where do you see our heritage being stolen, our inheritance being spent on fashionable twaddle and private curiosity? Where is the faith’s virtue being diminished in favor of the culture’s vice? Where are you being encouraged to silence, complacency, and intimidated to compliance with the requirements of our culture of death?

We celebrate the Vietnamese martyrs today. Like the crowds in the temple area they hung on Jesus every word. However, as martyrs, they literally found themselves “hanging on his words.” Speaking the Word to a hostile culture, they died. Their lives in death continue to seed the church.

Do not let their blood water a den of thieves.

Being who we ought to be while doing what we ought to do

St. Cecilia: Rev 4.1-11; Lk 19.11-28
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation

(NB. Fr. J.D. is losing his voice. He asked me about an hour ago to take the noon Mass. So, this homily is a little more rushed than usual. Please pray for Fr. J.D.!)

I imagine the kingdom of God will look very much like a Chinese buffet that stretches into infinity…along the way, say, every third pan of moo goo gai pan or so there will be a Border’s store that offers deep discounts to dead but risen Dominicans. My other vision of the kingdom of God involves ice cream, fried chicken, and blow ‘em up alien movies, but the Mass must go on. My point here is pretty simple: though the kingdom of God is now for God and will be for us eventually a reign of enduring praise and thanksgiving, right now, we can let our imaginations run wild! Perhaps children imagine boundless playgrounds. Mothers imagine uninterrupted peace and quiet. Fathers see golf courses and big screen TV’s. Jesus’ disciples envisioned booting the Romans out of Judea at the point of a sword and they thought Jesus was their man to lead them. Jesus uses the parable in the gospel today “because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.”

So, b/c they were approaching Jerusalem and b/c they thought Jesus was some sort of divine George Washington and b/c they had visions of stomping the Romans with the Son of God throwing fireballs and calling down avenging angels, b/c of all these, Jesus tells them a parable about how to wait for one’s master profitably. In other words, the kingdom is coming, yes! But we have some prep work to do in the meantime. How are you going to spend that “meantime”?

This gospel should sound familiar not only as another version of the talents parable in Matthew but also as a reinforcement of this last Sunday’s gospel. The basic idea is the same: the end is not going to look like you think it’s going to look and it’s not going to come when you think it’s going to come! Given these hard truths, we now have two questions that need to be answered together: what sort of persons ought we be and how ought we to spend the meantime btw now and the consummation of the Kingdom?

We ought to be people who are willing to cry out without fear of hypocrisy, without shame, without hesitation: “Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things; because of your will they came to be and were created.” We ought to be people who look on all that God has created for His glory and honor and spend our meantime lifting up one another as creatures who reveal—imperfectly, incompletely—as children who reveal the Father so that each of us and all of us may come to know Him more and better. We ought to be people who diffuse our heavenly gifts, who hone our graces, sharpen our talents and use them for the good of others so that God’s love might be perfected in us. We ought to be people who spend this meantime straining against spiritual isolation, prideful scruples, picayune legalism, rushed judgment and self-satisfying condemnation. We are a people to whom much has been given. We ought to be people from whom much is required.

Our Father and our Lord requires us to put the gifts he has given us to work for those around us. It is death to hide God’s gifts. It is hell on earth to refuse to live in this meantime as a man or woman for others to God’s glory. The kingdom of God will not match our wildest imaginings. Will you stand up and match up to the wildest gifts of the Spirits given for our good?

Will we say with the angels and the saints: “Worthy are you, Lord our God,to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things!”