Loved beyond death

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
Isa 7.10-14, 8-10; Heb 10.4-10; Luke 1.26-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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A sign for us as deep as the nether world and as high as the sky! A sign as bright as the collective angelic glory and as generous as the bounds of the cosmos! Isaiah tells King Ahaz that the Lord’s sign of His favor, the seal of His loving covenant is this: He will come to us with meat and skin and bones by the womb of a virgin and she and her husband will name him Emmanuel, “God With Us!” And why do we need this sign? Isaiah reports that “[King Ahaz’s heart] and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” when they heard that their powerful neighbors were coming to wage war against them. Our God, wearied by their anxiety, showed Isaiah this sign of His enduring presence. Our God is always with us! And so we celebrate today the angelic announcement to Mary the Virgin that our Lord has fulfilled His promise and is here with us now. Christ has come into the world, and he has come to do the Father’s will.

John Paul II wrote in his letter to women, Mulieris dignitatem (1988), “Do we not find in the Annunciation at Nazareth the beginning of that definitive answer by which God himself ‘attempts to calm people's hearts’?” No one here will be surprised when I say that ours is an age of anxiety, an era of raw psychic upheaval and potentially deadly spiritual negligence. The truths of the faith that set us firmly on the Way often find us disbelieving, mistrusting, uncaring, and wearied by constant assault. The news that our neighbors might be arrayed against us, ready for ideological warfare, seems almost predictable and expected. Isn’t the culture circling us, moving in, coming closer and closer, strangling us, pushing us to the edge of irrelevance? Aren’t we seeing the end of the Christian West, the coming reign of Baal in America? And Mohamed in Europe? Surely, if we are not winning, we must be losing!

Truly, our hearts are anxious and wearied. But what we are anxious about? What wearies us? Maybe you are worried about the decline of the Christian West. This is U.D. after all! But if I had to bet my stipend I would say that most of us are wearied by trails slightly less dramatic than the collapse of the Enlightenment Project into postmodernity. Say, small things like money, relationships, children, family, work, health, spiritual well-being, academic success. These things will gnaw at our trust, nibble ever so gently at our peace, until we are weary and it looks as though our enemies are arrayed against us and God Himself is paying no attention.

The Annunciation of our Lord’s conception to Mary at Nazareth is God’s announcement to us that He is with us. Always with us. Always has been. Always will be. Our Lord did not write new laws for us to assure us of His presence. He did not send yet another prophet to preach His love, to proclaim His fidelity to His covenant. He came Himself. He came Himself to tell us that He loves us and to seal the deal of our salvation with His own body and blood. His wrecked body on the cross is our one sacrifice for all of us, for all of our sins. And his resurrection from the dead is our assurance that we will never be alone. He was born of a virgin and named Emmanuel, “God With Us.”

We can hear in the angelic annunciation to Mary the beginning of God’s definitive answer to our unsettled hearts. Where’s the rest of His answer? The Paschal Mystery! The rest of Emmanuel’s life as a preacher and healer; his teaching the truth of the Father’s mercy; his life with his mother and father and friends; his betrayal by those same friends; his trial before the priests and Pilate; the beatings, the ridicule, the pain and blood. Of course, the Cross. And the Empty Tomb. Here’s our answer: we are loved beyond joy, beyond truth, beyond family and friends; we are loved beyond Law, beyond pain and death; we are loved by Love Himself.

Gabriel said to Mary, “The Lord is with you!...Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.”

The Art and Grace of Forgetting

5^th Sunday of Lent: Isa 43.16-21; Phil 3.8-14; John 8.1-11
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

[NB. This homily is a mess. Look for a revision later on...]

[P.S. OK, it makes a bit more sense now that I've preached it. Check out the Podcast and tell me what you think.]

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I count everything as loss…

Everything: picking beans in our Mississippi garden; learning to drive at 12 and denting the Pontiac fender on a tree; my Boy Scout awards and their red velvet matte and frame on my dad’s office wall; the grocery store encyclopedias my mom bought one at a time week by week; that time in Mexico when fireworks woke us for prayer and we went instead to buy silver; climbing the Great Wall of China in August and making bead necklaces for Peruvian orphans in March; all those childish fits of impatience and anger b/c I would not see or listen; my hard head and the seventeen years I ran from God…I have accepted the loss of all things in Christ, but I can’t yet call them all rubbish. Like Paul, I have not yet attained perfect maturity, but b/c Christ has taken possession of me, I run after the hope that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and that once dead myself, I may rise with Christ! But for now, I strain forward and fail.

Paul teaches us to be conformed to Jesus’ death and to share his sufferings and count everything a loss b/c we have found righteousness in him. What do you count as loss? What have you lost in finding Christ? In Christ, in his righteousness, we see the impermanence of things, the instability of creation at its root and its inability to satisfy our greatest longing; in Christ we see and hear his Word seducing us with hope, rejuvenating us with faith, and giving us a final purpose, a reason to live, in love. What can’t we count as loss when held up next to “the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus”? What will you count as more important, grander, of greater value than the friendship, the love of Him Who made you? The Lord said to Isaiah, “I am doing something new!...In the desert I make a way…” And that way for us in this Lenten desert is the way of forgiveness and forgetfulness, the way of the Cross with the Cross as our goal. We must practice the art and grace of counting everything as loss so that we “may gain Christ and be found in him.”

Perhaps you have not yet taken hold of the hope of the resurrection? Perhaps you have not yet attained perfect maturity in living day to day our Father’s Easter promise? If not, why not? There have to be as many reasons out there as there are people to sin! But I wonder what light Paul and our gospel narrative can shine on this question? Notice that Paul admits his spiritual immaturity but suggests that the cure for his ailment is “forgetting what lies behind…straining forward to what lies ahead…” In other words, if he must count as loss everything he has b/c of Christ, then he must also forget everything he has lost and pursue, in righteousness, Christ Jesus. What is this “forgetting”? To forget is to fail to remember; to cease to ponder on or think about; to leave behind and to cease recalling mind. To forget someone is to remove them from your life as an influence, as a subject of thought; to forget them is to stop remembering them intentionally. They are history out of mind.

Do we see this forgetting in the gospel? Yes. But first we see what happens when we remember. The woman accused of adultery stands before the crowd. Once Jesus has heard the charges against her, he says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” You can see the men in the crowd stop and think. What were they thinking about? They were remembering their sins! They had not taken possession of the Word, the promises of the Father, b/c they were looking behind to their transgressions. Though the scribes and Pharisees came to test Jesus on a point of Law, they themselves were tested on a point of Love. They could remember their sins b/c they had not received God’s forgiveness; literally, they had not obeyed the Lord’s greatest command: love God, self, and others with all your being, everything you have and are. Jesus then teaches the woman (and us) what it means to forgive and forget: “I do not condemn you. Go, from now on do not sin any more.” Mercy and an admonition to be holy.

Earlier I asked you if you had taken hold of the Father’s promise of the resurrection? Do you believe His Word? If not, why not? Look at the scribes and Pharisees. They didn’t bring that woman to Jesus b/c they wanted her executed or b/c they abhor adultery and needed Jesus’ consent. They brought that woman to Jesus to test him. They wanted a word from him that would allow them to charge him with breaking the Law. And why did they think that the case of this woman’s alleged adultery would give them what they wanted? Simply put: they had heard that Jesus was forgiving notorious sinners their sins and they misunderstood his reasons for doing so. They suspected him of laxity, of being too wet and squeamish when it came to judging sinners. How wrong they were! They slinked away thoroughly judged and condemned by their own memories! They tested Jesus b/c they failed to hear his Word and to see him as the Christ. Their desire to test him—to exam him and put him on trial—that desire is both the dark that blinds them and the reason for the darkness. All they have is their loss and so they clamor after defeat as if it were a prize.

Is this why you are having difficulty taking hold of the Father’s Easter promises? Is this why you struggle and strain in despair and anxiety this Lenten season? Are you testing Christ? Are you holding up the sins of others for public scrutiny and all the while remembering your own? Will you forgive and forget? With stone in hand, how would you answer Jesus’ challenge? To throw the stone is a lie. To drop it is the truth. But to drop the stone while remembering your sin is a defeat. Drop the stone and embrace your loss in Christ.

There is an art and grace to accepting everything as loss in Christ. That long shadow you see on the desert sand is the Cross cast darkly against your sin. You’ve been here for a month now and all those Lenten temptations have set your weaknesses to ringing aloud like bells. What does the desert know about you that you don’t? What have you learned about your immaturity in Christ? About your growth in righteousness? What stones do you need to drop? What tests for Christ do you need to cancel? What have you lost in finding Christ?

If we will be conformed to his death and his resurrection, we must share in his sufferings and count all things as loss. The shadow of the Cross just touches our feet now. The prize is on the other side.

Killing Christ

4^th Week of Lent (F): Wisdom 2.1, 12-22 and John 7.1-2, 10, 25-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation

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What are you looking for? What are you running after? You know there’s something missing. A hunger, a thirst that drives you out there for satisfaction, for completion. And everything you eat or drink or read or buy or steal to quiet the growling…all of it is…wrong? Less than your need? Like dripping a palmful of water into a desert sand. Too little, not nearly enough. And seeing this, knowing this plants a black frustration in your heart and nurtures it until you are ready to burst, ready to implode in a self-destructive crash of thwarted desire: disobedience, impatient searching, cyclical failure. You mistake a desire for the Creator as a desire for something creaturely and mire yourself in the bad habits of the world. Sinking, you grasp at what passes by: politics, hobbies, New Age superstition, food/drink/sex, shopping, academic achievement, the will to power, the idol of the Self, whatever runs by and reaches for you. All dribbles of water in a vast desert sand.

What are you looking for? What are you running after? Maybe the better questions are: Who are you looking for? Who are you running after? John tells us that “the Jews” were looking for Jesus in order to kill him. Rightly so. Jesus was a dissident, a heretic, a blasphemer. He claimed to be God, broke the Law, roused the rabble. He claimed to bring a sword that would destroy families, end friendships, turn husband and wife against one another. He threatened eternal condemnation for those who refused to believe his word and follow him. He failed to affirm the value of religious diversity and uphold the universal validity of all spiritual paths. Truly, he deserved to die. And so, they looked for Jesus to kill him. But they were blinded by their wickedness; the wisdom of God was hidden from them and they couldn’t see his innocence. How odd.

Who are you looking for? Who are you running after? And why? Are you trying to kill Christ? Think hard before you answer! Those chasing after Jesus in Judea failed to catch and kill him this time around b/c his hour had not yet come. Has his hour come now? Liturgically, no. Historically, yes. We know the story yet we live through it each year, go again through the details—lash by lash, bloody step by bloody step, nail by nail—and we know that his hour has come, is coming, and will come again. And so we look for him. To thank him? Praise him? Question him? Kill him? Yes. He came to us and comes to us for our thanks, our praise, our education, and our lives. And for us to live, he must die. His death…for us…at his hour and by his choice…ends every search for redemption, every search for peace, every hunger, every thirst; no longing is left to hurt, no anxiety is left to worry, no fear left growling in the dark. We are freed. We are free. And we are freeing.

There is no empty tomb of Easter without the cross of Good Friday. And there is no Cross without the desert. Turn your face to Jerusalem and feel your desire, know your hunger for Christ. Where are you? Who are you looking for? Do your palms and feet itch for Roman nails? Are you ready to bleed?

Who's ya daddy?

Solemnity of St. Joseph: 2 Sam 7.4-5, 12-16 ; Rom 4.13, 16-22; Matt 1.16, 18-24
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Anywhere one Mississippian meets another there is a ritual exchange that establishes a familial bond to rival actual blood relations. First, we have to find out exactly where in Mississippi our new friend is from. If we know anyone—literally, anyone at all—from that county or town, we name them. Second, we ask the ageless question of familial identification: who’s your mama and daddy? Once this question has been answered both parties enter a truly mystical state called Figuring Out If We’re Related. The calculations involved in this rite of bonding are complex and arcane and the ability to complete them accurately is inherited genetically. If we are not related, we console ourselves with the possibility that somewhere in the deeper end of our common genetic pool our ancestors mated and that we are, in fact, cousins of some sort. If we are related, we immediately exchange info on who’s dead, sick, divorced, recently married, or newly born. That we might not know any of the people mentioned is irrelevant. They’re family and we need to know. After a glass or two of syrupy sweet iced tea, we part company satisfied that the world is rotating in balance and that fried chicken and butterbeans will be served at the heavenly banquet. And, truly, is heaven worth the effort w/o cornbread?

We want to know where we came from. Not just the raw biological facts of our conception and birth, but the longer story of how All This came about. Grand narratives like the Creation Story of Genesis serve to place us squarely in the longest possible telling of history. That we can pick our way back through the paragraphs and pages of what went on before gives us the power to plow on confident that we are plowing ahead with a purpose at our backs and a goal before us. We need to know where we came from in order to know who we are. This bit of knowledge doesn’t mean we have no choices in defining our paths or personalities. We do. It does mean, however, that we are brought into the world with Givens. We are given life itself, reasonably predictable genetic coding, a socio-economic status, etc. We are also given a legacy, an inheritance, some wealth that needs our protection, our fruitful use. We need to know who we are in the greatest story ever told b/c that story ends with our immortal souls and resurrected bodies forever giving praise and thanksgiving around the throne of the Most High.

We are the sons and daughters of Mary and Joseph. Mary, the virgin, and Joseph, her righteous husband, gave us Christ, our Savior, and made us not only children of a covenant authenticated by and unbroken genealogy, but also heirs in Christ to the jewels of our Father’s bottomless treasury. Joseph, our adopted father, stands for us as the man of men who think and act in and out of a holiness that can only be a gift of the Father Himself. Like Abraham he acted out of a raw trust in God’s promises and established a nation, a holy people, and tribe made worthy by his faith. Joseph, encouraged by the angel, is unafraid and obedient. He drops his perfectly just objections to Mary’s pregnancy. He drops his anxiety and fear. He listened to the Lord and gave Mary and her child a home. He made his own fiat. His own Yes to God.

Knowing Joseph and Mary’s familial line gives us a sense of stability, a sense of being well-grounded, well-connected. Of course, the purpose of the genealogy is to authenticate Jesus’ claim to David’s throne, but it does more than that. For us, in this era of decentered narratives and ideologies of violent power, knowing who Joseph was places him firmly within the apostolic faith and binds us ever more tightly to God’s promises of eternal life for those live in the righteousness of Christ.

Unlike Abraham, we do not have to hope against hope that our Father’s promises will be made good. We know they have been made good. Joseph and Mary made them good. We have a Savior and his name is Christ Jesus. So when we meet a fellow Christian along the way and we ask, “Who’s your mama and daddy?” we can say, “Joseph and Mary, cousin.” And all is right with the world b/c we are not orphans nor are we neglected. We are His children, His heirs and He has taken us into His home to live forever.

You will betray Christ...

4^th Sunday of Lent: Joshua 5.9, 10-12; 2 Cor 5.17-21; Luke 15.1-3, 11-32
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX

(NB. I didn't actually preach this homily this morning. Turns out I didn't have the Mass at St. Paul's after all! I recorded it in my office.)

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Can you smell the wood of the cross from here? It’s still too far to see…just the smell of it is closer. Just about eighteen days more in this desert and we will be there to see him nailed to the wood. Then it will be the scent of wood and blood. Maybe vinegar and sweat as well. And some stinging smoke from the trash fires. And more caking dust. Will you run with the disciplines from Gethsemane? Will you walk with him along the sorrowful way and jeer with the other invisible bodies, adding your cowardly squeak to all the other taunts and cries from those he loved and fed and healed? Will you deny him to protect your safety, to conceal your once-professed love? Will you betray him? Of course you will. And so will I. It is what we do when given the choice to die for a friend or live for a cause. These moments of truth-telling make prudence easy and courage foolish. Praise God then that He does not wait for us to come to Him but rather comes to us first. His memory is holy and ours in need of sanctification.

Paul teaches the contentious Corinthians that “…God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to them the message of reconciliation.” So, we are forgiven and then given the ministry of forgiveness to spread in the world, the work of bringing together those split apart, broken under, distant and made alien. The first reconciliation is with God. No other bond of friendship or love makes the least bit of sense outside the bond of love that our Father has for us. That we love is His doing. We cannot love without Him. And without love we can know nothing of Him or His creation—nothing about ourselves, others, or the things of this world. Just beyond the moment of creation itself, to be reconciled to God through Christ Jesus is the primitive move of love. Nothing stands before His love and remains broken, sick, injured, lonely, or distant…nothing, that is, but the stubborn refusal to be loved.

And why would anyone refuse to be loved by Love Himself? To be loved by God is to be changed forever. Clenched fists, an obstinately set jaw, a cold-heart do not easily release control to airy promises of safety and bliss. Even divine promises of safety and bliss. This an anxiety so profound that the Legions of Hell are frightened for us—even they believe! But we are capable of choosing still whether or not we will be changed forever by our desire for God or left squalling helplessly in our mulish refusal at the door to eternal darkness. There are worse choices than betrayal. There is the decision against love. And then crippling despair.

Though reconciliation with God is first, it is not the only reconciliation required of us. To love God is something too easily left in the world of forms, the merely abstract gesture of good will toward divine being. Something more concrete, more worldly is required of our love. We must be reconciled to one another in Christ. The Prodigal Son returns to a party thrown in this name. His father welcomes him home without reservation because he is the father’s son. Despite the son’s gross irresponsibility and near criminal immorality, the father opens his arms to receive the wretch, drapes him in his finest robes, slaughters a fat calf, and celebrates the feckless life of this reprobate. Sorry. I’m with the obedient brother on this one. Why the celebration? The natural consequences of the son’s irresponsibility are absolutely just. He wasted his inheritance, scattering it like seed on sand, and reaped the bitter harvest. He deserves his fate. Yes, exactly, he deserves his fate and his father’s harsh judgment! But he receives mercy, forgiveness, and a welcome home party. He is reconciled in love b/c he was dead and now lives. B/c he was lost and now he is found. Our faith is about excess and waste, overflowing love and beautifully squandered gifts. There is nothing pretty or genteel about the cross. Nothing efficient about the empty tomb. Love reconciles like a thunderstorm soaks dry earth.

We will betray Christ before he reaches the cross. Despite our fervent fasting and pristine prayers, despite our honest intent and good will, despite everything we did, do, and will do during Lent, we will come to the decision that it is best to live for the cause than to die for our friend. And we will go on…to be reconciled to God, to one another, and to become the ambassadors for Christ that Paul urges us to be. We will remember our betrayal as a sign of weakness, anxiety, sin. We will recall again and again the exact moment we did not speak up for Christ, the exact moment we let some insult to his faith slide by, the exact moment we chose to be his enemy dressed as his friend. We will remember when we choose to blend in with the crowd, to throw a stone or two on the sorrowful way, to shout a curse at his stripped and bleeding back. We will remember our betrayal. But he won’t.

Can you smell the wood of the cross? There are many more steps between here and now and the foot of the tree. The hot sand blows stinging hard and everything and everyone you’ve left behind calls to you out of friendship to come back. What’s ahead after all? Blood, bits of flesh, spit, gall, deception, cruelty, violence…your betrayal of a friend. You can turn back now. Do it. Just for a second. Look back to Ash Wednesday. What do you see? Hot promises? Eager intentions? A hunger for holiness? I’m going to do it this time!? Sure. And will you? Not likely. You’ll make it to the cross alright. But you won’t make it there any holier than when you left on Ash Wednesday. Do you think the purpose of Lent is to make you holy? Holier? The purpose of Lent is to show you your need for God. You will make it to the cross b/c God wants you at the cross. Holy or not. Your dieting and fasting and fussing about prayer and alms are at best distractions if they don’t serve to clear up God’s will for you: smell the wood, then see the wood, then taste it. Then feel it against your skin, your hands, your back and feet, feel it—burning, wet, raw, sharp. You are Christ. Lent is not your time to flee from weakness and temptation. Run to them! Lent is your time to pray like the Prodigal Son, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and you, I no longer deserve to be called your son…” And then wait for God the Father to forget your sins and drape you in His finest robes and slaughter the fattest calf to welcome you home again.

Sniff the air. The cross is coming closer. The cup is full. Will you drink from it? Or will you pour it into the desert sand?

No strength in flesh, no hope in anxiety

2^nd Week of Lent (R): Jer 17.5-10 and Luke 16.19-31
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Alternative Spring Break Pilgrims’ Blessing)

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What’s wrong with seeking and finding our strength in flesh? What could be more real, more immediate, more readily available than the helping hand or the generous heart? Seeking and finding our strength in the flesh—in our own hearts and minds and bodies, in our own humanity and communities—this seems more than just the obvious answer; it seems like the only answer to our weaknesses! We turn to one another in service, in generosity, trusting in compassion and endurance. And we often find in our most desperate moment of need, at that instant of near panic in the face of overwhelming hardship—what? Neglect, abuse, cruelty, cold criminal hearts, disdain for others’ needs, blaming those in need, a rationalization for inaction, and weak, weak flesh. Of course, we also find heroic generosity, self-sacrifice, zealous service, and compassion. And here we find the Lord and His hope.

Jeremiah says that comfortable flesh—the cold, stingy heart wallowing in abundance—is cursed. Why? Well, where is the hope of one who finds his strength in passing flesh? Where is his trust? What more can he hope for, long for, than more comfortable flesh and a smaller heart grown colder in meanness? Let me give you a simple analogy: you fall off the deck of a cruise ship. One sailor throws you a standard life jacket connected to a long nylon rope. Another sailor throws you a life jacket made of cardboard and connected to a long string of paper clips. Now. It is entirely possible that both could save you under near perfect conditions, but knowing the composition of both jackets, the effects of water on paper, the strength of paper clips hauling your wet weight, which jacket do you choose to save your life? The standard one, of course! But spiritually speaking, how many of us consistently choose the cardboard jacket b/c it’s more fashionable or the person tossing it to us is better looking or b/c we do not trust the one throwing the life jacket that will save us?

Do I really need to tell you that placing your trust in the flesh and your hope in the world is both foolish and vain? Look at the Rich Man in hell. Where is his hope? Easy answer: where was his treasure? Look at Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. Where is his hope? Easy, again: he had no treasure in the flesh but dies covered in lesions. Where does he die? And this is probably the most poignant moment in the gospel today…he dies lying at the rich man’s door! At the entrance to fleshy abundance, a door to comfortable safety, Lazarus dies wanting nothing more than table scraps. Having everything, the rich man dies wanting everything and now he pleads for a drop of water. From Lazarus. Who died at his door hungry.

Here’s a question for the ASB Pilgrims: where is your hope? Where is your trust? What is it that you think you’re taking to Peru? Shoes? Baseball caps? School supplies? Building skills? Do you think you’re taking Jesus to Peru? He’s there already! What are you taking? What will you leave? What will you bring back? Are you ready to see Christ revealed to you in a three year old orphan? A gangly teenaged boy? A middle-class Sunday school teacher? A grouchy airport clerk with a distaste for Americans? In one another?

We’re not going to Peru to save the Peruvians. We going to Peru to meet Christ. Our gift to the Peruvians is our love, our attention, our fellowship in Christ, our willingness to work side by side. They are letting us serve them. And that’s their gift to us.

Take Christ with you. Leave Christ there. And bring him back. No flesh—American or Peruvian—can be your hope for blessing. God alone is our help, our drop of water in a thirsty desert.

PLAYBILL: "O, Wounded Me!"

2^nd Week of Lent (M): Daniel 9.4-10 and Luke 6.36-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

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When I know that it is time for me to forgive, I resist. My grip on the hurt tightens. The hurt is like one of those egg layers from the Alien movies…those creatures that attach themselves to your face with a long, reptilian tail snaking around your throat. Try to remove them and they squeeze your throat until you surrender. Oftentimes our injuries, our wounds do the same. Try to remove them by forgiving their source and they tighten, squeeze. They dig in a little deeper and attach themselves to bone.

Somehow it feels good to pick at our scabs, to stroke our wounds and feel them hurt us all over again. My salt seems to burn a little sweeter. And how wonderful it is to discover that having been offended we now have power over our offender; we hold him or her dangling by the toes! There’s that tasty threat of vengeance or exposure. Not to mention the perverse delight of replaying the wounding over and over again for full effect. A sort of feedback loop where each rehearsal of the injury gets more and more vivid, brighter and louder; the details take on an epic cast, a Broadway drama starring Me as the victim. With top billing and my own dressing room, why would I choose to end this production of “O Wounded Me!”?

Besides the obvious advantages of being the victim, aren’t we just a little afraid of forgiveness? Just a little anxious about giving or receiving forgiveness? What does it mean to forgive someone who’s hurt me? Am I saying that he or she didn’t hurt me? That it was OK? Is forgiveness an implied permission to do it again? Am I telling my offender that I am weak? Does forgiving mean forgetting? Who do I become if I forgive? The hero? The saint? Jesus teaches his disciples that “…the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” So, the question is: what do you want forgiveness to be? Wiping the slate clean? A small start toward reconciliation? A grudging gesture just to keep the peace? A pro forma ritual to save face? The measure will be what you want it to be. And it will be exactly that for you when it comes time for you to be measured.

So, “give and gifts will be given to you.” This isn’t about a quid pro quo gift exchange; it’s about learning how to receive a gift as a gift. Gracefully. Full of grace. It helps to know who you are as the receiver of the gift! Look again at the sinners from the reading in Daniel. Who are they? They are wicked, evil rebels; disobedient servants, shamefaced traitors to God; they are base criminals. And despite all of this…their own description of themselves, by the way!...despite their wretched state, they can call on God’s compassion and forgiveness. Knowing yourself to be a sinner and calling on God’s mercy anyway is exactly how you learn to receive the forgiveness of others. And to give it. To be asked to forgive is a humbling moment. To forgive is even more humbling. To forgive as I would be forgiven is an act of total dependence on God. It is all about looking over the questions, through the objections, around the hurt and fear, and staring straight into the face of Christ on the cross and knowing that I cannot waste one lash, one nail, one thorn on another second of self-indulgent drama. Pampered wounds never heal.

Those egg laying creatures from the Alien movies eventually die, releasing their choke hold and falling from your face. But before they do, they plant a monster in your gut. In time, the monster explodes from your chest in a spray of blood and bone. And it runs off to create more monsters…

Forgive and be forgiven before your monster finds its way out.

On a mountain closer to Jerusalem

2^nd Sunday of Lent: Gen 15.5-12, 17-18; Phil 3.17-4.1; Luke 9.28-36
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

[NB. No PODCAST for this homily...I couldn't get the recorder to work at Mass!]

Lord! It is good that we are here! Here in your house. Here in your desert. With you and your family. With the Spirit and all the possibilities of your Love. But why are we here, Lord? In this desert: without, leaving behind, giving away, going further and further toward that bone-dry waste, in this desert of fasting and prayer? Why are we here? Jesus went into the desert to be tempted by the Devil. He went so that he could be tempted, tested against his knowing who he really is, tested against his trust of the Father, his patience, his willingness to walk the bloody, sorrowful way to the Cross. The Devil started small, where most of us fail, with our stomachs, and then he went Big: power, prestige, wealth. Jesus calls on the Word and teaches the Devil. Jesus does not so much resist the temptations as he skillfully turns them upside down and reveals their goodness. Nothing wrong with bread. Nothing wrong with worship. Nothing wrong with calling on our guardian angels. There is nothing wrong with any of these per se if they are divinely ordered and used for their proper ends. The Devil gets his righteous lesson, but remember how that gospel reading ends: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Jesus for a time.” For a time. And that is why we are here! The Devil’s back.

Lord, it is good that we are here. Here in your desert. With you and your disciples. All your students and friends. We are fully awake and ready to hear, fully awake and ready to listen—a bit nervous, a little frightened maybe, but we’re here. We see Moses and Elijah and Jesus in their glory and we hear them talking with Jesus about his exodus to Jerusalem. We offer to build shrines in honor of the prophets, but we do not know what we are saying. The cloud comes and the shadow darkens the sand and we all hear the voice from the cloud: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” And everyone is silent……….are we fully awake? Can we be silent?

What does it mean to be “fully awake” and to be “silent”? Notice that Peter, John, and James see the glory of the three men before them once they become “fully awake.” Having fallen asleep while Jesus prayed, they awake to this glory and say, “Master, it is good that we are here…” Being fully awake in Christ then is not simply a matter of not being asleep. Being fully awake is a matter of attentiveness to Christ’s presence, a focused effort toward seeing and hearing and listening to Christ every minute, every second of your day. Being fully awake is being alive with the Spirit, electric white and dazzling! Can you confess that it is good that you are here? Here in this house? Here in this desert? Here with us?

Being fully awake is also about being completely aware of what would make us into fools, that which pulls us away from Christ and pushes us toward a truly empty desert. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, warns against the “enemies of the cross of Christ.” These enemies run to their own destruction, worship their appetites, and revel in what brings them shame. They minds are possessed by “earthly things.” You’ve heard me call out these “earthly things” before, all those “ism’s.” It’s become a litany for me. In fact, I’ve made it into a real litany.

A Litany Against the Enemies of the Cross of Christ

(Please stand)

Let us pray: “Lord, your servant Paul warns us against scratching our itchy ears with alien philosophies and foreign religions; he also warns us not to conduct ourselves like those who are enemies of the Cross of Christ. Clear our hearts and minds and keep us fully awake so that we may hear your Word as we pray: Save us, O Lord!

From…

…the pride of materialist science and all its future Frankensteins… Save us, O Lord!

…the gluttony of petite bourgeois consumerism and fashion and war…

…the greed of corporate and governmental irresponsibility and the nanny State…

…the lusts of Hollywood, its minions in TV and radio and the idolatry of celebrity…

…the sloth of self-help psychobabble, New Age junk, and religious syncretism…

…the envy of Enlightenment “freedom” and the prison of reason without God…

…the wrath of secular diversity, tolerance, and moral anarchy…

Save us, O Lord from these enemies and keep us fully awake. In Jesus name. Amen.

OK. A bit a fun. But I hope my point is clear: to be fully awake is in large part to be fully aware of what the faith is and isn’t, what defines us and what pretends to define us in order to destroy us. Our citizenship is in heaven, true, but right now, we live down here, and in the meantime, we have to be awake to our personal enemies, our daily temptations, and the enemies that work on a much larger scale. Lent, the desert, is where we go to confront these enemies head on! And there we will find the Lord already victorious.

We’re fully awake. Now, what does it mean to be quiet? Being quiet is not just about being noiseless. There’s silence, of course; but there’s stillness as well. Waiting. Not being tensed to spring into action. Not being ready to race or hurry. In fact, being quiet means being fully awake and completely empty, empty of an all-consuming Self, empty of disobedience and capital dissent; empty of inordinate desires for prestige, power, and advantage over others; empty of despairing, self-loathing, and resentment. Being quiet in the desert is about slowly shuffling your feet in the walk to Jerusalem—no proud marches; no eager skipping along, racing to the end; no arrogant stomping in defiance of authority; just humble walking. In silence. Fully awake. Without. And with Jesus.

The Devil is here too, of course. He left for a time. He’s back. And that’s why we’re here in the desert: to meet the Devil so that we can be tempted; and we’re here to see Christ in his glory and to listen. So, let me ask you: do you run from temptation? Why? Are you afraid of sinning? Or are you afraid of what might tempt you? I mean, do you fear what you desire? Do you think fear is enough to drive away something as powerful as desire? Or does fear sweeten desire, pushing it into the forbidden and the inscrutable, thus turning a mere temptation into an obsession? Fighting temptation is pointless. That battle is won already. You are free; you do not have to sin. So, don’t. Look carefully at what the Devil is tempting you with. He will always tempt you with an apparent good. Look at the temptation. What’s good there? What has the Liar twisted? Untwist it. Find the Good and give God thanks for that Good. Turn an occasion of sin into a grateful event!

Master, it is good that we are here…with you, with each other. On the mountain, he showed us his heavenly glory and pointed us to Jerusalem. So, one foot in front of the other. One step, one step. And the cross comes closer…clearer, louder, rougher. And the enemies collect as they always do. Stand firm. Stay awake and be quiet. Keep watch in silence, ready to hear and see and obey his Word.

The cross pulls us to Jerusalem. Easter morning is dark still.

WAKE UP! and Be Quiet

2^nd Sunday of Lent: Gen 15.5-12, 17-18; Phil 3.17-4.1; Luke 9.28-36
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Women’s Retreat for U.D. Seniors (Vigil Mass)

PODCAST!

Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Listen. Hear that? That thumping silence? The quiet of being attentive to nothing at all? That vacuum, that bare blare of Empty is the sound of God in the desert with you, His spirited breath, held for a moment, waiting for you to be quiet, to be still and settled, to be fixed on every possibility that His Word might create. Ssssshhhhhhhhhhhh! Would you clamor and clang and squeal and miss what He has to say to you? Are you fully awake?

If you are to be transfigured by your time in the desert, you must be fully awake and quiet. And not just “without noise” but also without hurrying, without pressured racing and competition, without distracted calculation and cautious deliberation. You must be Without. Entirely empty of envy, pride, desire for applause, desire for honors, desire for power; entirely emptied of self-pity, self-hatred, self-congratulation; emptied of self-righteous assurance, contagious despairing, and you must be emptied of our culture’s soul crippling scripts for women, those vacuous dramas of prince charmings, princess brides, the abused but dutiful wife, the mother eaten alive by maternal myths of all-consuming sacrifice. If you are to be transfigured by your time in the desert, you must be fully awake and quiet.

Full awake and quiet. Ssssshhhhhhh! The cloud speaks: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” Jesus was then alone and the disciples fell silent and did not tell anyone about what they had seen. And their silence about this miracle doomed the church. Their selfish silence thwarted the spread of the gospel; it destroyed any chance the apostles would have of casting the seeds of the Good News onto fertile, Gentile soil. Right? The Way died when Peter, John, and James sealed their lips in conspiracy and refused to talk about the Christ in his dazzling whites. NO! They were silent in the face of being told directly by the Father Himself that Jesus is His Son. Somehow, silence seems like the appropriate response to that revelation! They talked later. And often. And all over the Gentile world. And until they died as martyrs they spoke of the Chosen Son and the power of his fiery Spirit and the necessity of turning from rebellion and disobedience and turning to love and mercy. And because of their awed silence and then their obedient preaching, we can say with them: “Master! It is good that we are here!”

If you are to be transfigured by your time in the desert, you must be fully awake and quiet. Thomas Merton writes, “The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else […] The desert therefore is the logical dwelling place for the man who seeks to be nothing but himself—that is to say, a creature solitary and poor and dependent upon no one but God, with no great project standing between himself and his Creator”(TS, 5). To be asleep, spiritually, is live in a dreamland where you are liberated from all social constraints, all social commitments, all familial ties; to live in a dreamland where you are in control, where you define your truth and your limits, and where you pick and choose how you will moved by those around you. To be asleep spiritually to be foolish about speaking to God as an equal, treating Him like Santa Claus, trying to capture Him with small things like words or pictures or music or science. You are sleeping if you dream that God loves the Good Girl more. That He races to the rescue of the most pious first. That He treasures as indicators of your humility and obedience your obsessiveness, your self-doubt, your dark self-image. What project stands between you and God? What layers of sticky illusion cling to your waking and keep you stupored?

WAKE UP! Sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Listen: stand firm in the Lord. He will bring all things into subjection under him, including you and me. We will all be transfigured. Even now: we are changing. One step in front of the other. Over the sand. Over the dunes. Into the desert of Lent to be tempted. To know your weak spot, the weakness that will call the Devil to the fight that will clean your heart for sacrifice. Stand firm. And walk. And walk and walk and walk to the Cross. Knowing that he waits there. Waits for you, for us, for the nails and our healing.

‘Til then, imitate the stars: shine, wait, and be as still as light.

Stoking the fires of Gehenna

2nd Friday of Lent: Ez 18.21-28 and Matt 5.20-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

The third century martyr, Cyprian, said it best: “God does not receive the sacrifice of a person who is in disagreement, but commands him to go back from the altar and first be reconciled to his brother, that so God also may be appeased by the prayers of a peace-maker. Our peace and brotherly agreement is the greater sacrifice to God…” The sacrifice of the Mass is a sacrifice that makes our peace with God. If that sacrifice is spoiled, in some way tainted or injured, then we are not offering to God our first fruits, our best. And what, exactly, are we offering anyway? Finest wheat? Spring lamb? No. We are offering to God what God Himself has said he truly wants as sacrifice: a contrite heart! A heart burned clean of resentment, vengeance, nursed hurt, anger, pettiness, willful disobedience, murder, self-righteousness, judgment, any sort of rank wickedness. The pure victim of this sacrifice of the altar is your heart laid bare to God, open and free, without the blemish of a foul motive, and cleaned from any contention or disagreement. The fires of Gehenna are stoked with the wooden hearts of those who will to not turn from their childishly nursed hurts and petty resentments. How sad to burn for a lack of a will to love.

Add your broken heart to Christ’s sacrifice! Add your doubtful heart, your mournful heart, your anxious heart…add your joyful, thankful, peaceful heart to the sacrifice and add them for the good of others. But keep your unrepentant heart until you find the will to crack it open and do what is necessary to be reconciled to your brothers and sister in Christ. Jesus cannot be clearer: “…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there you recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Odd, isn’t? Notice that Jesus says, “if you recall that your brother has anything against you…” He didn’t say, “if you recall that you have anything against your brother…” The burden of a faithful man or woman in Christ is to be first in seeking out reconciliation not just waiting for reconciliation to just show up. Jesus is laying on us a righteous obligation beyond being merely open to reconciliation; he is telling us to search for those with whom we have malfunctioning friendships and make them right.

Are you having trouble finding the Good News in any of this? I hope not! First rule of the Christian life: Jesus will not require of us anything that he is unwilling to give us the grace to complete. The Good News of today’s gospel is that in the Holy Spirit, carried above the death-dealing sins of hatred and anger, we are gifted with the fiery graces of Christ’s love to burn our hearts clean, wash away the ash, clear the air of smoke, and to see with crystalline clarity all the bonds we must mend in order to offer to God those same hearts as acceptable victims for the altar. There is nothing we must do that we can do without Christ. He is our advocate and guide, our servant and Lord!

If you are impeded in your task of heart-washing, let the Psalm remind you: “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?” If our Lord kept notes on our sins, if He added them up like columns of debits, which of us would long stand under the accumulating bill? We are weak alone. We are strong together. We are invincible with Christ. No, we are more than invincible! We are victors already. Put that victory against iniquity to work: seek out those with whom you have an “against” relationship. Be reconciled. And come back to this altar with your contrite heart, stand open and free before Christ, ready for the sacrifice that will change who you are into Who He Is.

May your righteousness surpass the angels and the saints.

Righteous Verbs for Jesus

1^st Week of Lent (M): Lev 19.1-2, 11-18 and Matthew 25.31-46
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

First, “be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” Being holy has something to do with being just; that is, to be like God—holy—one must also be righteous: in right-relationship with God, neighbor, and self. Being a just person and acting justly means to be and act out of your lived, daily “bumping into” God. What God tells Moses to tell us about righteousness is starkly simple: love your God and your neighbor as you love yourself. And He repeats: “I am the Lord.” Here is a seal on the instruction, a stamp of authority and authentication so that we know that this is an original promise of friendship, the real-deal telling of how our Father’s creation is ordered and how we are to fit into it so that we will prosper in His wisdom. If you will be holy, you will be just. If you will be just, you will love: love God and love neighbor as you love yourself. As you walk among the rocks and bones of Lent, ask yourself: how do I love myself? Is this how I am to love God and neighbor? Pray then: Make me holy as you are holy, Lord!

Second, “your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.” What our Father teaches us about the order of His creation and our right-relationship with Him and what He has made is Life; that is, what we call “life” is an ordered creation—not an accident, not the byproducts of a random confluence of fortuitous events. We are made, crafted and set among the beauty of God’s handiwork. His Word—Wisdom, Christ, pure, refreshing—from nothing, from no-thing-at-all made Everything there is: arrayed, synched, choreographed, scored and meticulously performed. His creation is decreed, precepted, commanded, ordinanced, and enduring; perfect for the animating fire of the Spirit. And that Spirit, pure and refreshing, brings us wisdom, rejoicing, enlightenment, justice, truth. Ask yourself: how do I understand myself as someone made, someone crafted for a purpose? How do I understand myself as a body-soul fashioned by Love Himself to love as He does? Pray then: Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find peace in your order, a home with your Spirit and Life.

Finally, “sheep to my right, goats to my left.” My poet’s mind is reeling from all these nouns—Justice, Holiness, Spirit, Life, Truth—and I’m starting to wonder if perhaps God is really a nineteenth-century German philosopher! Order, Law, Decrees! No, not a German philosopher but a Jewish carpenter and so the words of Life are verbs: give, welcome, clothe, comfort, visit, feed, heal, teach, love. These verbs enact the nouns of creation, giving the stone-names their souls! We do not welcome the stranger just to welcome the stranger. We do not feed the hungry just to feed the hungry. We welcome and feed and visit and teach b/c when we do these for the least of God’s creatures—the poor—, we do them for Christ. To do anything else is to definitively exclude yourself from communion with God and the blessed forever (CCC n. 1033). To do anything else is to place yourself outside the order, the very nature of God’s creation. And you are saying: I hate myself. And God. And everyone else. That is no life at all. No spirit at all. It is Death, freely chosen, and darkness forever. Ask yourself: what are my “righteous verbs”? What am I doing this Lent to act on my Father’s command to love and to be just and to be holy as He is holy? Pray then: “Lord, I want to be among the truly righteous, show me the hungry, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned and give me your Spirit to be for them your Living Word, to serve them as you did.”

Amen.

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What do you want from the Desert?

1^st Sunday of Lent: Deut 26.4-10; Romans 10.8-13; Luke 4.1-13
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Luke Parish, St. Paul Hospital, Church of the Incarnation

[Fair warning: this is a strange one...I dunno...]

PODCAST!

People of God! Where are you this morning/evening? Where are you? We stepped into this desert three/four days ago, looked up at the sun, put the first foot in front of the other, said a prayer of thanksgiving to God, and set our hearts and our feet on Jerusalem. The cross is there, somewhere. And Jesus. No. No, he’s here with us…somewhere, isn’t he? Yes. Yes, he is…somewhere. The sand is scratchy and hot. The wind is brittle dry and stinging loud. The first fast of this “going into the desert” was good, wasn’t it? The plan and promise was there; the spilling-over-wonder at our blessings, the nearly painful longing to please God with our small sacrifices, just one day’s offerings. Even the desert is bright and daring watching it from home, from settled comfort, and abundance.

You watched the desert, expecting this Lenten trek and you wanted…you wanted…something. Someone? What? Think back! Go back and see it! Ash Wednesday is like a barge on the church calendar, plowing through ordinary time to arrive like a liturgical bully at the dock of the altar. No sweet hymns. No decorative treats or cute secular totems. Just ash and a reminder: you are made from ash and to ash you will return. From dust to dust. At that moment, with that memory: what did you want? Now, what do you want? You need to know this. The desert knows. I mean, the time you spend these next 35 days or so wandering the desert of the spiritual life, what you most desire, that which we need most will come to you. And not necessarily in a form or fashion that you will recognize. Lent is not about avoiding temptations. Lent is not about fasting or prayer or being good. Lent is about wandering into the emptiness, the vanity, the wreckage we have made of our spiritual lives and finding one more time the stalwart presence of God, the inexhaustible workings of the Holy Spirit. Seeking and finding the face of Christ.

These forty days are a countdown for detachment, for unplugging. Lent is a time for us to detach from all the teats of our poisoned culture and to stop sucking at the breasts of market-tested nihilism and brand-name conformity; to stop the sewer-flood of Hollywood-funded debauchery and sadism into our homes; to speak the gospel Truth to the dark powers of “might makes right” moralities; to witness against the suicidal, all-you-can-eat buffet of liberal religious candy our children are fed daily...even in our Catholic schools. Lent is a time for you to remove your lips from the honeyed breasts of genetic science and its Faustian promise of near-immortality. You will live forever but not by murdering a child; you can be beautiful forever but not at the price of harvesting our children like melons.

Lent is a time for you to calculate with cold reason and a clean heart your commitments in this world. Where are you bound? To whom do you owe your money, your livelihood, your dignity…your soul? Who owns you? What ideas possess your mind? What passions fuel your heart? What images cloud your vision? What do you worry about and why? Here’s the question with which to examine your conscience before confession: exactly how would anyone know Jesus owns me body and soul?

Know the answers! You must. Because the desert knows and the desert will tell. The desert will tell the Devil and he will color in those drab images, season those dull fumes, stoke the fires of weak passion. He’ll parade your desires, sharpened and concentrated, parade them before you, lying to you, pampering you, telling you how much you deserve what you cannot possibly need and only vaguely want. When those ashes were traced on your forehead…at that moment, what did you want? Mercy? Forgiveness? Love? To be seen as pious? You will find it in the Lenten desert. But will your desires look like gifts among all that scarcity?

Pay careful attention to the gospel. Jesus went into the desert to pray, right? No. He went into the desert to fast, right? No. He went into the desert to start his new diet? No. Of course, he prayed and fasted. But he didn’t go into the desert to do those things. Rather he “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.” He went to the desert so that he could be tempted. The devil tempted him with food, power, and worship. Jesus refuses each in turn. He quotes scripture and dismisses each temptation as a mere shadow of what His Father offers. The devil offers Jesus illusion, impermanence. And he will offer you the same. And you will accept his offer unless you understand with near perfect clarity and will what you want, what you desire as a faithful follower of Christ.

Lent is not about avoiding temptation. Lent is about walking the hot sand of deprivation so that what tempts you worms its way to the surface. Discomforted, what tempts you selfishly proclaims its own praise, shouts it own name. Not yours. And then you know the truth: you are not your sin; you aren’t even the sum total of all your sins! Yes, you’ve fallen, given in, even welcomed Rebellion and Disobedience into your life. Praise God then that Lent is about clearing the wreck of your worldly life so that He Who moves you at your core, rises, speaks His name with authority, claims your soul, and makes your life among the things of this world a tireless prayer, a breathless hymn, and an inexhaustible fiat! This is more than a mere reminder of who’s in charge of your Christian life; it is a renewal of the bond of affection between Father and child, the rediscovery of an unshakable peace and infallible grace.

One foot, then another. The sand swirls. The desert is liquid hot, waving fumes above the dunes. We’re just four days in. Where are you? Where is your eager fast, that laughing prayer of praise? Evaporated already? No worries. Jesus is here with us. Not just somewhere but here. He’s with us here and now, and he waits for us at the cross. We choose to follow him. We picked up his cup. Shared his blessing. Ate his flesh and drank his blood. We’re more than his now, more than students or friends. We are his flesh and blood. The desert knows this. It will collect its tempting spirits and whisper to us of power, hunger, self-righteousness, revenge, violence, the many poisons we seem so eager to swallow. Listen carefully with the ears of Christ to the bargains and deals, the attempts to haggle and posture. And then what? Fight? Resist? No. Why? Why would you fight? Don’t fight the Devil! Why would you fight a defeated foe? Do what Christ does during his Lenten fast: call on the Word, confident in a victory already won, and teach this fallen angel who you are!

Don’t waste your forty days dieting. Spend this time in the desert ruthlessly paring away your allegiances, brutally assessing how you contribute to the preaching of the Word, to the spreading of the Gospel. What do you want, child of God? When you received your ashes and were told that you are mortal, what did you want to find in this Lenten desert?

How eager are you--exactly--to find the cross?

Fasting vs. dieting (Round One)

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isa 58.1-9 and Matthew 9.14-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

[NB. The preacher preaches to himself first…]

More on fasting, uh? Well, it’s only right since it is Lent and all. But you’d think that we would have the whole fasting/contrite heart thing down by now, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s not a difficult concept. It’s not like trying to grasp double predestination or the state of the soul before the general resurrection or the mystery of the theological Trinity. It’s just fasting. Don’t eat as much as you usually do and do this because it helps you to stay focused on what’s important in your growth in holiness: your total, undiluted, raw dependence on God for absolutely everything. Of course, we also fast to show honor, obedience, the strength of a beggar’s heart, humility in need, gratitude in abundance, sorrow and grief, solidarity with the suffering, a heart turned from sin and rushing to the Lord in tears.

Brothers and sisters, fasting w/o true contrition and true repentance is called Dieting. And the Lord wants us to understand the difference between the prophetic act of fasting and the often-times vain act of dieting. The Lord tells the prophet Isaiah to say to us: “Would that today—Friday, February 23, 2007—would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!” You bow your head like a reed and slob around all day in sackcloth and ashes! “Is this the manner of fasting I wish […] Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” So how do you fast today so as to make your voice heard on high? Isaiah cries out full-throated and unsparingly, like a trumpet blast: release those who have been imprisoned unjustly! Untie their yokes. Set free the oppressed. Share your bread with the hungry. Shelter the homeless. Clothe the naked. Help your own. Fast as the Lord wants you to fast! And your innocent verdict will go before you and God’s glory will come behind you and when you call on His name for help, He will say, “Here I am!”

So, will you fast or will you diet? Jesus says that we cannot fast so long as the Bridegroom is with us. Is he with us? Well, no. He departed for the throne and sent us his Holy Spirit. So, we can fast and mourn his absence. However, he’s with us now. Present because we are more than two and gathered in his name. He’s fully present in the Eucharist. So, we cannot fast or mourn. The Bridegroom has not been taken from us! Isn’t this the Christian life exactly? We are called to be prophetic witnesses, to stand up and shout out the truth of the gospel victory of sin and death. Yes, Christ is gone from us. And no, he is here. The battle is won and it is not yet fought. This is what it means to live in the meantime of God’s plan for us: we free the unjustly imprisoned now b/c they have all been freed by Christ in his victory. Their imprisonment is doubly unjust.

Dieting will not help them. Dieting will break no yokes, cancel no debts, fill no empty stomachs, nor will dieting free anyone from Satan. In fact, Satan counts on us spending this Lenten season dieting. It’s his best time of year for ripe self-righteousness and hypocrisy. John’s disciples and the Pharisees are worried about Jesus’ liberal band of party animals—why aren’t they fasting like we do?! Jesus says, in effect, “Don’t worry. They are my disciples and they will fast when I am gone.” We know what that means; what it means for his friends to drink his cup, to carry his cross, to die preaching and teaching the Good News of God’s mercy. Our Father wants a humble and contrite heart. Not a diet plan. He wants obedience and service. Not mumbled prayers and luke-warm sentiments. He wants laborers for his Lenten and His Easter fields. Not religious dilettantes and mystic wannabes.

Take your diet. Turn your heart and mind to the service of God in humility. And change that diet into a fast worthy of your soul! Thirty-eight days and counting...and the cup is yours is bear...

"WASH YOUR FACE!" --Jesus

Ash Wednesday: Joel 2.12-18; 2 Cor 5.20-6.2; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

What does the Lord want from us? He wants now what He has always wanted: the sacrifice of our contrite hearts. Keep the burnt offerings, the bulls and rams, the incense and flowers. He wants your heart, split open, artfully arranged, freshly washed and anointed; your heart repentant, rueful, intensely sorry, and wounded by love. He wants your clean heart and mind placed on the altar, freely given, offered up in praise, turned forever to His will for you. God wants your fasting, your weeping, your mourning; He also wants your feasting, your laughter, your joy. He wants a heart rent top to bottom in true sorrow for your sins, so rend your garments if you must, but know that torn garments, smudgy foreheads, and dour faces, though signs of a proper contrition, are not contrition in themselves. It is better to be truly contrite and happy about it than to be faking contrition and hiding behind public displays of piety!

Playing at religion is a very dangerous thing, brothers and sisters. God wants our hearts and minds; He wants us to return to Him whole and entire. Do you think He can’t see through the layers of religiousy junk we sometimes slathered over our miserly souls? Do you think He can’t smell the failure of our public piety, or the rank odor of desperation in that good work we did to curry favor before Lent? Jesus himself could not be clearer than he is this morning: give alms in secret so that only the Father knows you give; pray in secret so that the Father may properly repay your trust; fast privately without being gloomy, without neglecting your appearance; anoint your head and WASH YOUR FACE! Do you think the Lord is going to smile on your grand sacrifice of walking around with ashes smudged on your forehead today? Tell me what a great witness that is and I’ll tell you to do it everyday!

Here’s your proper public Catholic witness on Ash Wednesday: first, wash your face in all humility and resist the Devil’s temptation to strut around as a “Proud Catholic.” Then look to the Lord in the desert. He goes out from the crowds. Away and into the desert. He withdraws to be with His Father. And finds himself confronted by the Devil and his lies. With what would you confront the Devil in the desert? How would you repel his seductions and deflect his temptations? Jesus is God. You aren’t. Would you fight Satan with false piety? Theatrical religiosity? Would you ward him off with some sort of amulet or spell? Let me suggest that there is no fight with the Devil when one’s heart is truly contrite, filled with grace, given over wholly to the Father as a sacrifice of praise, and lifted up on the altar.

Why am I being so hard on the public witness of piety? I know from personal experience the seduction of believing that I am accomplishing something good for God by playing at being religious. Jesus is also worried about us and how easy it is for us to confuse show and substance. This is an acceptable time for us to be truly reconciled with God, but that reconciliation is done through a heart and soul converted to God’s law of love not a smudge of ashes or a much-discussed fast or a grand gesture of almsgiving. If your day to day life at work or school or the office fails to give a faithful witness to God, then a dot of dust or an unusual bag of carrot sticks for lunch won’t change minds. In fact, more than anything, without a daily witness of true service that dot of dust says, “I’ve decided to trot out my religion today for your consumption. Isn’t it cool?”

Yea. That’s what Jesus died for. Cool. Fortunately, we have forty days to figure this out. Forty days to live intensely in the presence of the Lord. Forty days to sit at his feet and learn humility. Forty days to learn to be happy and purged, joyful and emptied. Forty days to cleave our contrite hearts, stoke the fires of sacrifice and offer our very selves to him. So, wash your face and clean your heart.