Nothing to fear but faith safely guarded (revised)

2^nd Sunday of Easter: Acts 5.12-16; Rev 1.9-13, 17-19; and John 20.19-31
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Safety comes first! Our doors are locked b/c we are afraid! A new security system on all entrances. Four or five cleverly hidden but readily accessible guns. Guard dogs. Threatening yard signs. A panic room with enough food and water for a month. Cameras covering every inch of the property. Two personal bodyguards on duty 24/7: Rocky and Twinkie. Yes, we’re afraid. So afraid, in fact, that we are now prisoners in our own home and hostages to our obsessive need for security and control. Safety comes first!

And Jesus comes and stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.” The locks fall away. The guns melt. The security system starts playing remixes of “Ave Maria” by P Diddy and Shaina Twain. The guard dogs morph into kittens. The yard signs now read “WELCOME!” We use cameras now to catch funny moments for Youtube. Rocky and Twinkie serve margaritas by the pool and give foot massages. We are no longer afraid. Christ, our Lord Jesus, commanded that we be at peace. And so we are. If you aren’t, I wonder why?

Let’s say that our tightly wound and locked down house is your soul. Or maybe your heart and mind. As a Christian—baptized, confirmed, and in full communion with the Body—you have nothing to fear from anything or anyone. But how many of us here will clamp down on our spirit like a nervous dictator after student dissidents when someone threatens the security of our trust in God? Or challenges the veracity of our faith in the public square? Where is our apostolic spirit, that breath of Christ?

Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up. The disciples are locked up tight in a room for fear of the Jews, meaning they were hiding from the partisan Jews who arranged for Jesus’ phony trial and illegal execution. The disciples, despite their cowardly betrayal of Jesus in the garden, were probably right to worry that they were being hunted. It’s one thing to remove a tumor. Quite another to pick out all the infected cells. Fail in this and the cells might become tumors themselves. Jesus’ followers were a threat to the hegemony of the temple and the Romans. And so, they locked the doors for fear of their persecutors. Very understandable.

But is this what Thomas the Twin does when he denies, despite credible testimony, that Jesus visited his brother disciples after his death? Does Thomas lock up the doors of his spirit, his heart and mind, b/c he fears persecution for his belief? No. Obviously not. He doesn’t believe, so how would installing invincible security protect his faith? He has none. Thomas’ denial of Christ in the face of the apostolic witness of his brothers is scandalous. Note: he doesn’t doubt. He denies: “I WILL not believe…” And then he demands evidence no one else needs or wants. Thomas is not threaten by persecution for his faith. Thomas is threatened by the faithful witness of those who have seen Christ in the flesh. And what exactly is it of Thomas’ that is threatened by this faithful witness? Let’s pause here and turn the question back to us.

When we, when you detect some alleged threat to your faith and slam the security doors of your soul, your heart and mind, and call the ecclesial police and demand absolute safety for your faith, what is it of yours that is threatened? Please don’t say, “My faith is threatened”! How exactly could faith ever need or use the safety that anyone on Earth could provide? Your faith in God, the trust God has given you as His child, cannot be seriously threatened by anyone or anything outside your own intellect and will. Let me suggest that it is our Spiritual Comfort that gets threatened. Our comfortable, settled, cushy ways of being faithful, of “being spiritual” that get threatened by challenges from our worldly persecutors. And it is the Devil who convinces us that when our Spiritual Comfort is threatened it is actually our Faith in God that is threatened. Nonsense. Utter twaddle.

The disciples went around with Jesus listening to him teach and preach, watching him argue and heal, sweating with him to serve the poor, the wrecks, those abandoned. They saw him day in and day out, heard him every time he spoke, and accompanied him nearly everywhere he went. And yet! At crunch time, at the hour of his crucible, when he needed them most, they ran like weasels set on fire, denying him as they ran. OK. Would we have done any better? Probably not. I dunno. Maybe. But my point is this: with Christ their faith was comforted and defended and they had no need to fear. Without him they fled their persecutors behind locked doors. Christ came to them to console their anxieties. And Thomas, who was absent for Christ’s visit, denies that any such thing had happened. His comfortable ways of being spiritual were threatened by the disciples’ outrageous testimony and he slammed the security doors of his soul, his heart and mind, and called the police. He decided that his best way to defend his comfortable way of understanding Christ was to demand of Christ irrefutable empirical evidence: “Unless I see the mark of the nails of his hands…I will not believe.”

Now back to us. When our comfortable ways of being spiritual, our settled means of knowing Christ are threatened, what do we do? Don’t we become Denying Thomases? That is, we deny the power of God’s gift of faith and cast around for empirical evidence that we are right to trust God. Think about that phrase: “evidence that we are right to trust God”! What kind of trust in God needs evidence to warrant fidelity? We look to weeping statues, Blessed Mother tortillas, bleeding Hosts, a dancing Sun, Jesus’ face in a smeared store window, levitating rosaries, apocalyptic dream poems from “visionaries,” and on and on. All of which could be miraculous. But none of which need be for the truly faithful! You may answer me: “But Father! The faith has enemies everywhere! Fundamentalist Muslims. Fundamentalist secularist. Dissident theologians and priests and bishops. Schismatic archbishops and religious orders. Scandal in the seminaries, in the rectories, in the chanceries, in the schools. Perverts in collars and miters preying on our children and our young people. Call to Action! Voice of the Faithful! Women’s Ordination Conference! Catholics for Choice! Error and dissent everywhere, everywhere! And the Holy Father isn’t doing anything about it! Nothing!” And Jesus comes and stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.” And his servant, John Paul II, stands next to him and says, “Be not afraid.”

For us, Christ’s peace is our security. We are secure in his presence. Secure in his love for us. Secure in the knowledge that he has won the last battle against darkness and despair. Secure in the church and her invincible yet always open gates. Thomas sticks in fingers in Christ’s wounds and says, “My Lord and my God!” And Jesus tells him that he has come to believe b/c he has seen. The truly blessed, however, are those who have not seen and still believe.

“Safety comes first” is the motto of the damned. There’s nothing safe or easy or comfortable about following Christ. There is only your life lived in absolute trust. Unlock your doors. Welcome the strange and the stranger. Stand firm in the Word. Celebrate joy in the Sacraments. And there will be nothing comfortable in your faith to threaten. Nothing settled to stir up. Nothing easy to complicate by a challenge from the world. Make trusting Christ the most outrageous thing you do, the most exhausting exercise of your day, the most thrilling adventure of this life. And there will be nothing out there or in here to stand up and demand that you fail your Lord. You must believe that he has won this war. There is nothing for us to fear from our enemies. So, peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit and live freely the life of a Child of the Risen Lord, the life our Lord died on the cross to give you!

[Addition for U.D.’s Church of the Incarnation…]

At the risk of provoking the crowd with a slightly longer homily, I want to address directly the presence of Divine Mercy in God’s plan for the restoration of creation. And I want to do this by noting a strain of piety, or maybe it’s a way of thinking about sin, here at U.D. that seems to deny the power of Divine Mercy. Let me lay these out plainly: 1) the tendency to turn every sin, no matter how small, into a mortal sin; 2) the seemingly unshakeable conviction among some that God just can’t wait to punish us for our sins; 3) that God is gleefully playing “Gotcha Games” with our spiritual lives by burdening us with temptations we can’t handle; 4) the audacious rejection of God’s grace in games of Religious Athleticism—I go to more Masses, kneel longer, sing in Latin, belong to this or that paraecclesial group, etc. and you don’t or can’t, so I’m holier than you!; 5) the bizarre notion that sexual sins are deeply, horribly offensive to God while pride, envy, lack of charity, and judgmentalism are simply unfortunate character flaws by comparison; 6) the perverse belief that my sins are too big for God to forgive or too many for Him to catch all of them in just one confession or too horrible for Him to look upon so I have to use euphemisms, etc.; 7) that mercy is for the weak, that forgiveness is for the impure and the willful, and the perhaps the most damning error of all: despite the freely given sacrifice of Christ on the cross and his glorious resurrection into heaven, I don’t deserve mercy, so I will just wallow in my prideful self-pity, thank you.

Here’s the truth: not every sin is mortal—stop this prideful manipulation of reality and get a grown up’s understanding of sin. God does not want to punish us for our sins. He sent His only Son to save us. If he wanted to punish us, He would’ve skipped the excesses of the Incarnation and the Resurrection and just damned us. God is not waiting under your bed to jump and yell “A-HA! GOTCHA! GO TO HELL!” It’s a paranoid fantasy. Your Religious Athleticism is pointless. It just makes you more and more self-righteous and less and less holy. Stop it. Don’t stop praying, of course, but stop thinking that you’re saved in these exercises of piety. You’re not. Sex is good, true, beautiful, and holy. Pride, envy, lack of charity, all distort everything that is good, true, beautiful, and holy. Sexual sins are not somehow more horrible sins b/c they are sexual. Sexual sins are usually expressions of pride, envy, lack of charity, etc. Nothing about you or me or this world or this universe is too big for God to handle. The Devil is telling you that your sins are special. They aren’t. Mercy and forgiveness are for the weak, the willful, and the impure. And if you think you’re going to be strong, obedient, and pure without God’s grace and mercy—you’re deluded.

Simply put: God wants His creation—all of it, all of us—restored. That’s His goal for you, for me, for everything He has created. You thwart your own growth in holiness by exaggerating your sins; refusing God’s mercy as a sign of weakness; and believing that there is anything you can do to save yourself. Let God love you, so that you can grow in holiness! What is there to fear in being shown mercy? In being loved?

Asking Jesus: "Who are you?"

Easter Octave (F): Acts 4.1-12 and John 21.1-14
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Because they know that he is the Lord risen from the dead, the disciples do not ask of him, “Who are you?” They’ve seen most of this before: the lesson of abundance fishing by the sea; the sharing of a meal; the cryptic instructions that seem to point to something larger but hidden; and the subtle reminder of their last meal together: the breaking of the bread and the subsequent spiraling into accusation, betrayal, violence, abandonment, self-surrender, and death. Perhaps they do not ask him “Who are you?” b/c they do not want to hear from him, “I am the one you denied in the garden. The one you fled from on the cross.” Can they ask him who he is?! There’s danger in that question.

But here they are now, fishing. The children of our Lord fishing…together fishing and without much luck. Jesus appears on the shore and tells them to throw their nets on the other side of the boat. Success! A catch too large to load into the boat. And all they needed was the Risen Lord to show them how to do.

If you see Christ later today, would you ask him: “Who are you?” I mean, you know it’s him. No doubt. But would you ask? If not, why not? Why wouldn’t you just walk up to him and say, “Excuse me, who are you?” And then what? Wait for him to say, “Here, have some bread and fish”? Or, “Here, poke around in my crucifixion wounds if you like”? Maybe there’s no direct answer to your question b/c Jesus is confident that you will recognize him in his sacramental signs, those moments of grace where he most intimately touches you body and soul and draws out of you the best of your gifts for service. OK. But still, would you ask him the question: “who are you?”

If you did, he might say, “I am the only name given under heaven and on the earth to the human race for its salvation.” He might say, “I’m the stone the builders rejected b/c I was obviously physically weak, politically unstable, too clever by half, obstinate with authority, defiant in the face of death, woefully naïve, hopeful, trusting, loving …” But he could easily add here, “Now, I am the cornerstone. Solid granite. Perfectly cut. Smooth and proudly set up. I mark a place and time for starting out; an ‘X’ you will all touch before you run off and flourish with my blessings. I am the Crucified Healer, the Resurrected Judge. I am the Garden beautifully flowered, the Desert savagely bare. My tomb is empty b/c I want to be here with you.”

Then he turns to look you in the eye. Holds for just a moment. Deep breath. And says, “Who are you?” Will you flutter around with a name, an occupation, a study major, a party affiliation, a philosophical allegiance? Will you be haughty, falsely modest, celebrity seeking, shy? Jesus just looked you in the eye and asked, “Who are you?” Can you say, “I am Christ”? You can. But would you? Would I?! I mean, what if Jesus asked to see my crucifixion wounds, my lash marks, my punctured side? What could I show him but my baptism and my anointing? Maybe he would frown at the lack of bread and fish and wine at my table? What could I show him instead but the meager service I’ve done in his name? What of yours would you show him? What joys would you celebrate again with him? What suffering would ask him to take from you? What anxiety exhausts you? How are you crippled? You said you wanted to follow Christ? Name your cross. But tend the wounds.

This is the third time Jesus reveals himself to the disciples after his resurrection. He is not revealing a philosophy nor a theology; a political agenda nor scientific method; a therapy nor a diet for wellness; a military plan nor insurgent training. Jesus is revealing Jesus. . .as he promised. HE is always with us. HE left the tomb empty to be with us. So, when he comes to look behind the doors of your heart and asks you, “who are you in there,” what will you show him? What will he see? Pray, brothers and sisters, that he sees his own reflection.

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Eyes open, hearts ablaze

Easter Octave (W): Acts 3.1-10 and Luke 24.13-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

How foolish they are! And how slow of heart they are to believe all that the prophets spoke! And all that their fellow disciples have seen. And all that the people of Jerusalem report to be true. And everything that they have hoped for, dreamed of, and longed after. How foolish to be so slow of heart that even on Easter day itself they despair and fail to trust God’s Word! No wonder Jesus himself returns to walk with them; to open his Word for them; do everything for them in fact but sit you down with a My Bible Stories coloring book and help them fill in all the lines! They finally “get it” when he blesses and breaks bread with them: their Christ is with them still; and, so long as they faithfully bless and break bread together, he will never leave them! With this revelation, Christ vanishes and the disciples’ hearts burn within them. Whatever spiritual morass slowed their hearts, it is now consumed in the refueled furnace of faith. Grit and fluttering ash. They reverse course, run back to Jerusalem, find the Eleven, and loudly preach: “The Lord has truly been raised…!”

It’s three days past Easter day for us. Where is your heart? How’s it running? Luke warm, burning hot, cold as winter stone? For answers, none of these are surprising, are they? So difficult is the struggle to remain faithful that admitting even now—just three days into the octave!—admitting that our hearts have grown cold or colder wouldn’t take us by surprise. Why is it so difficult for us to believe? We can blame our secularist culture. Easy. Lax parents. Even easier. Fallen human nature. Easiest of all. And none of these is false for being easy, of course, but I wonder if they are by now stale cliché? Our disciples on the road to Emmaus are slow of heart to believe. Why? They admit to the stranger with them: “…we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel…” They were disciples, students and friends, of Jesus b/c they expected him to redeem Israel. Their disappointment is contagious—it spreads from their hard heads to their warmish hearts, gumming up the trusting works and turning Jesus suffering, death, and resurrection into a disheartening execution of yet another disappointing messianic figure. Though they call him “a prophet mighty in word and deed,” it appears that they skipped class on those days when Jesus all but strings a sign around his neck, reading: “I AM THE PROMISED MESSIAH!”

So, why do we find believing so difficult sometimes? One small answer from the gospel: God tends to act in ways that disappoint our expectations. How do we trust someone who often acts contrary to expectation? Someone who frequently surprises us? Or shocks us? Trusting someone else to do things correctly is exhausting work. Besides, bending all of creation to my will takes time and energy! How dare God spring little moments of random joy on me! How dare He thwart my plans for me! What does He expect from me: surrender? Abandonment of my will for His? How do I trust that the fire He has ignited in my heart won’t burn me alive? What can I hold back just for me? Nothing. Nothing at all.

At the Beautiful Gate, Peter said to the man crippled from birth: “…in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.” All who saw him stand up and leap about were amazed and astonished at what had happened to him. Will all those see you today be amazed and astonished at the power of the fire that burns in your heart? Will they see in you a person once lame, walk…and run and leap about? Will they see in you the Risen Christ? Let them hear you and see you preach in word and deed our Easter shout: “The Lord has truly been raised!”

Alleluia! Do you know what is happening?

Easter Sunday 2007: Acts 10.34, 37-42; Col 3.1-4; John 20.1-9
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad!

[Alleluia!]

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, his mercy endure forever!

[Alleluia!]

We shall not die, but live, to preach the Good News of the Lord!

[Alleluia!]

Lift your hands and give God thanks: We thank you, Father! For your Son, Christ Jesus. For his preaching and teaching. For his ministry and mission. For his life and suffering. For his ignoble death and glorious resurrection. For the Cross and the Tomb. Both empty this morning! For his Body and Blood. And for his Church. We celebrate this feast in spirit and in truth: hearts bursting with joy! minds soaring with faith! souls ringing with love! Thank You, Father. Thank You. Today, we witness to your fidelity. You have fulfilled your promise. Our Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

People of the Most High, you know what has happened! Our Lord, given to the crowd three days ago by Pilate; beaten bloody and spat upon; nailed to the cross and killed with a Roman lance; buried by his secret disciples, Joseph and Nicodemus, in an stone-hewn tomb and left to rot…well, you know what has happened! Amen? But do you know what’s happening now? Do you know what the Spirit is working among us?

Luke reports in Acts that Peter reminds the gathered disciples that Jesus charged them all with preaching his gospel of mercy, testifying to the good works and words of Christ, and bearing witness to the promise “that everyone who believe in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.” Amen? Paul writes to the Colossians: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above […] Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Peter reminds us of our Christian duty to witness. Paul teaches us how we are to carry out that duty. And God has given us the gift we need to fulfill our baptismal promises to Him. He has given to us and for us Christ, our paschal sacrifice! So, let us celebrate the feast! Amen?

In this Easter feast, the Spirit moves to collect us, to pull us together, and bind us closer still; to fix us as parts to a Body, to wake us up to the gifts we have been given and to shock our hearts and minds with the wonder of what God is doing among us. If your eyes cannot see the paschal fire and your ears cannot hear the roaring of the Spirit, this feast, this celebration is meant to clear your vision, unstop your ears, and open your soul to receive the graces of Christ’s resurrection. You live with him. You die with him. You rise with him. And now you live with him again in a glory brighter than the sun. Do you know what is happening now? Life touches death and death is now dead. All that remains is life…and that most abundantly! Amen?

Christ took on human flesh and bone, became one of us to move among us as a man, and to die as one of us. He took on flesh and bone so that in his suffering, death, and resurrection, he could heal all flesh, all bone. He suffered b/c we suffer. He was tempted b/c we are tempted. He was persecuted and mocked b/c we are often persecuted and mocked. He took the cup and drank from it knowing what it meant, knowing that he drank the cup of the suffering servant, the one who is wounded for us, and dies horribly for our sins. And for his sacrifice for us we offer him…what? Gratitude? Yes, of course. Regret? Maybe. Denial? Let’s hope not! Rejection? All the time.

But what we must offer him now is the sacrifice most pleasing to God: our hearts and minds turned to Him in heaven; your life—body and soul—changed, converted, turned around into a life lived swallowed in the blessings of Christ and lived to give Him thanks and praise. You died with him. You will rise with him. So now, live with him and do as he charges: preach, testify, witness. Attached as one part to his Body, use your gifts in service to others and His love will be perfected in you, made whole and holy for you. Deny your gifts. Waste them selfishly. And you exercise that which will not be raised: your shadowed desires, your dark longings, your attachments to earth.

You know what has happened? Amen? But do you know what the Spirit is working among us? By the resurrection of Christ from the tomb, our Father lifts us up, brings us along into a newness of life, a fresh beginning to living, and a clarity of vision and task. Whatever despair haunts your days and nights—order it gone in the name of the Risen Lord! Whatever poverty of trust depletes your gratitude—order it gone in the name of the Risen Lord! Whatever grief, despondency, deprivation, illusion, or gluttony; whatever lust for control, greed for attention, jealousy of others’ gifts, or hunger for revenge; whatever is dark, clouded, murky, muddied, or weak in your life with Christ—remember: He is Risen! And you with him! This is your new being, your new life, your new hope for perfect freedom in God’s service.

For forty days we slogged through a Lenten desert, dropping bad habits like snakes along the way. Look behind you. What do you see roasting in the sand? What do you drop? What fell off? What did you pick up again? This trip through death and new life requires that we travel light. Grasping beyond our reach leaves us empty-handed and hungry for more. Contemplating the things of this world clouds your hopeful mind with images and ideas too fleeting to purchase with your everliving soul. If you have died in Christ, you must live in this world still but it must not still live in you. What shines like gold to eyes focused on compromise with the world should burn through your lids and terrify you. Jesus did not suffer and die on the cross as a criminal so that his brothers and sisters might turn again to the culture of death that executed him and party with his betrayers. He did not suffer and die on the cross and empty his tomb so we who profess his faith and preach his Word might prostitute ourselves again in the temples along the idolatrous way—the temples of materialist science, realpolitick, media fantasy, intoxicating violence, consumer power, and the terrorism of false messiahs: megalomaniac politicians and preachers, perverse actors and activists, and perhaps worst of all—a logic of social inclusivity so inclusive that it demands we make love to fascism and give birth to the concentration camp…again.

Think of what is above! And move your resurrected hearts and minds away from the practice of compromising the faith so that you may be included among the compromisers; move away from the practice to “framing” your faith with the fickle demands of culture, politics, identity, desire, novelty, and good manners; move away from the sorry practice of saying sorry for believing in the Word Made Flesh and Resurrected. Think of what is above! And thank God for His goodness in bringing you to Him through Christ.

You know what has happened. Amen? And now you know what is happening? Amen? Run then from the Empty Tomb screaming your head off: He is Risen! The tomb is empty! He is Risen! He was dead but now he lives.

(Stand)

This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad!

[Alleluia!]

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, his mercy endure forever!

[Alleluia!]

We shall not die, but live, to preach the Good News of the Lord!

[Alleluia!]

Today Death dies...

Good Friday 2007: Isa 52.13-52.12; Heb 4.14-16, 5.7-9; John 18.1-19.42
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

Our Savior is dead! Why do we mourn? He has bled for us. Been broken for us. Betrayed by a friend, denied by his students, falsely accused by his own people, mocked by the Romans, whipped into a bloody mess, traded for a murderer to be executed, marched to the city dump, and nailed to a cross, he is lifted up above Jerusalem to be seen—then, right then, and now, right now—to be seen by every eye that will turn to him and look. Look and truly see: who is that hanging on the Cross? Our Savior is dead! Why do we mourn? He had bled for us. Been broken for us. Who? Who has bled, been broken for us? Who hangs there on the Cross that matters? A rabbi? An innovative teacher of a peaceful Way? A rebel against Rome? A Jewish heretic? An annoying prophet out of Nazareth? Yes. And no. Pilate says he is the King of the Jews. The Jews say that he is revolutionary. His own friends do not know him. Hanging there, nailed hands and feet to the wood of the cross, bleeding out through hundreds of cuts and gashes, who do you say that he is? Point at him and name him! Will you name him: King? Teacher? Rebel? Friend? Savior? Do you bow and do honor to any king on earth? To a rebellious rabbi? To a friend you have betrayed? Not five days ago we stood in the crowd waving palms to welcome him here. Then we shouted for his blood, yelling up to Pilate: Crucify him! Crucify him! And here he is. Given to us as we asked. Our Savior is dead. Why do we mourn? He is pierced for our offenses and crushed for our sins. It is better that we rejoice! Breathe in relief! It is better that we laugh and praise God and sing and dance! But black mourning? No. Regret? Absolutely not. How about a kiss of humble gratitude? To touch the cross not with sorrow but with thanksgiving? Our Savior is dead. But we do not mourn. He freely suffered and died for us. So with confidence come to the throne of grace, God’s seat of every gift, every good, and receive His mercy, find His favor—a sacrifice, a blessing, a healing word—whatever you need when you need it. Death dies today, leaving only life—abundant, joyous, vigorous! The cross scatters the seed today that the tomb tomorrow will nurture. And on the day we have traveled so far to see, Christ will rise and flower—the Tree of Life!—and open the way for our lives with him forever. If today is dark, tomorrow is darker still. Hope then and do not mourn. Trust and do not be anxious. Love and do not fear. And give thanks! Our Savior is dead. For us, he is dead.

The temptation to skip Good Friday

Wednesday of Holy Week: Isa 50.4-9 and Matthew 26.14-25
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

PODCAST!

Only a friend can truly offer you up to your enemies. Only someone who knows you intimately can deliver you over to those who would harm you. The difference then between snitching and betrayal is friendship. Anyone can snitch and get you caught. Only a friend can betray you, offer you up for sacrifice.

Though we generally look at the forty days in the desert as the test of Jesus’ resolve to die on the cross, we can also understand his odd friendship with Judas as a source of on-going temptation for him as well. Judas is the face of those to whom the Father has sent the Son. Sinners. The weak, the wild and weary, those who would kill, cheat, betray, rob; anyone who stands in habitual disobedience to the Word: the prostitutes, the hoarding rich, the greedy tax collectors. Judas, a real person, of course, is also a temptation for Jesus to let the cup pass, to stall and find another way to get the job of universal salvation accomplished. Though Jesus came to save sinners, must he die for the likes of Judas—for those who stink of the idolatry of self worship and vicious backstabbing? Why not just die for the smaller sinners? The ones who don’t really mean it? The ones who slip up occasionally? But really now, why would anyone need to die for them? Such meager sins need no sacrifice. Do you see the temptation?

Jesus exposes his betrayal at the Passover meal. Why? Consider: what hasn’t gone right for him up ‘til now? He rides into Jerusalem as a beggar and is greeted as a king. The accolades and adulation are fierce. His ideological enemies dog him, but they repeatedly fail to stump him in several contests on the Law. They fail again and again to arrest him for blasphemy. All those who oppose him in their hearts and minds fail to find a better way of catching him. They are helpless before the Word. The crowd that gather to hear him preach grow larger and more eager for his touch. Strategically speaking, Jesus is winning this battle and looking very much like the Father-sent prophet he is reported to be! Do you see the temptation?

And then there is Judas. Greedy, obstinate, fawning, self-righteous, falsely pious, and two-faced: “Surely it is not I who will betray you, Rabbi?” Jesus answers Judas in exactly the same way he will answer Pilate later this week: “You have said so.” This must have hit Judas in the stomach like a fist! He knows! He knows I will give him over to his enemies. Of course, he knows. And he has known along, hasn’t he? Judas is a temptation, a vile little reminder to Jesus that his death will offer the vilest of the vile a chance at eternal life. A reminder that he dies on the cross for every greedy, obstinate, fawning, self-righteous, falsely pious, and two-faced friend out there; any and everyone who would stab a friend in the back and collect a fee for the deed. These people are the ones the Son of God must suffer for?! The reigning champ of Father-sent prophets must die so that useless scum might live? Do you see the temptation?

Indeed Judas is the devil as our tradition says. He tempted Jesus in the desert but failed to move him to sin. So he returns with Judas’ face to try again. Perhaps unwittingly, he shows Christ the truth of his sacrifice on the cross. He will die for Judas and those like Judas who suffer from all the maladies of rebellion against the Word. He will die to free the liar, the caged, the fanatical, the obsessive, the narcissist, the melancholic, and the manic. And he will free them into a divine passion, a Fatherly love that burns away every speck of dark longing the iron bite of sin’s chains and for the cool flow of oblivion. He will love us all into a spectacular judgment, a weighing of joy and hope against despair and with Christ we will tip the scale into White Hot Beauty.

But not yet. Not yet. Do you see the temptation? Will you, like Judas, betray Christ? Of course you will. And you will do so happily. Or else.

No Shame! Proclaim the Death of Jesus!

Monday of Holy Week: Isaiah 42.1-7 and John 12.1-11
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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Honored Lazarus reclines at table with Jesus. Martha serves them. Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive perfumed oil, drying them with her hair. And Judas, the thieving betrayer, counts the cost of her devotion and objects: “Why not sell the oil and give the money to the poor?” Surely, Judas is right. He is a thief and he will ultimately betray our Lord to his executioners, but the good sense of his objection is clear: that oil was worth three hundred days’ wages! That’s a lot of bread and cooking oil for the poor. Jesus, however, being one to promote the excessive over the frugal, the wasteful over the efficient, tells Judas to leave Mary alone. He says, “Let her keep this [oil] for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” His point? It is better to waste expensive oil burying one man than it is to feed three hundred of the poor? No. He’s going to die and soon. His death is the price for our lives.

Look again at who’s gathered in the house with Jesus: Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Judas. Jesus has with him the man whom he raised from the dead. A woman who serves him with her working hands. A woman who serves him extravagantly with her adoration and care. And a disciple who despises Jesus’ excess and hides his contempt for him with pious platitudes about the poor. Here Jesus has with him a living miracle, a selfless good work, an indulgent act of devotion, and a heart hardened by avarice and scorn. A week or so before his death he has with him the Church—the Church in all her supernatural life after death; her hard labor at love in service; her genuine, though sometimes wildly generous, piety; and all her dark practicality, worldly worry, and survivalist self-preservation. Jesus says to this Body assembled for dinner: my death is coming; I die for you. Nothing, then, is to be counted excessive or wasteful when held up against the Cross!

This is a difficult time of year for thinking Christians. What do we make of this gruesome exchange of one life for the lives of us all? An Anglican bishop in the U.K. has said that our traditional understanding of Christ’s death on the cross as a vicarious sacrifice turns God into a psychopathic murderer. Others have said that his death is merely exemplary—an example of how to die for one’s friends—not at all a death “for us” as in “instead of us.” And still others have taken his death to be a defiant act of revolution against imperialism and the fascist state. Judas, were he a theologian today, could invent no better diversionary fantasies! Augustine preaches that “[t]he death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory.” Do not be embarrassed by Christ’s death for us. Do not be worried about ridicule or scorn. Do not be anxious about the laughter of the world. Thinking Christians think with the Church and serve and pray with the Church and live daily the miracle of conversion to holiness.

One last question from Augustine: “Why does our human frailty hesitate to believe that mankind will one day live with God?” And I would add: why do we hesitate to believe that we will live with God b/c of the death of His Son on the cross? An answer in a question: what is more excessive, more extravagant than the death of the Son of God in exchange for our lives? The price is scandalous, the cost beyond counting. This is why the Cross must be greatest hope and our greatest glory!

Without fear, without hesitation or shame: confess that Christ died for us so that we might live!

Will you follow Christ to the Cross?

The Procession
Palm Sunday 2007: Luke 19.28-40
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Luke Church, St Paul Hospital, and Church of the Incarnation

“Who is that on the donkey?” Most of us are cheering. Most of us are waving palm branches and some few of us call out his name, naming him blessed. But some of us are unsettled by his celebrity and the praise he is receiving from the crowd. Is he truly the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of the coming of the Messiah? “Who is this who rides into Jerusalem like a slave but is cheered like a king?”

He is the one given to Mary the Virgin by the Spirit of God. He is the one proclaimed by Simeon in the temple. He was baptized by the prophet John and was often found in the company of whores, lepers, tax collectors, and Gentiles. He healed a few, fed a few, and taught a few more the meaning of the Law. He confounded the Pharisees and scribes. He blasphemed by calling himself “Son of God.” His feet were perfumed by the woman in Bethany to prepare him for death. He is the one betrayed by his student and friend, sold for the price of a murdered slave—thirty pieces of silver. His blood is the new covenant, the new wine shed for the forgiveness of our sins. He is the one double-crossed, arrested, falsely accused, questioned by Pilate, and, finally, given to his executioners by the same crowd that had cheered him on the donkey earlier. Scourged, mocked, spat upon, and stripped naked, he is the One nailed to the cross, pierced by a spear, the one who dies so that we might live.

Who is this? We know now what the Roman soldier shouted aloud then: “Truly, this is the Son of God!”

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The Mass
Palm Sunday: Phil 2.6-11 and Luke 22.14-23.56
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Luke Church, St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

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Paul says that Jesus, emptying himself, took on the form of a slave and became one of us to die as one of us for all of us. We can cheer all we want. Wave palms all we want. No one here will ask Jesus to let his cup pass. No one here will volunteer to hang on that cross and let Jesus go free. Are we cowards? No. We know that Jesus must die so that we might live. The certainty of his death is the only possibility of our eternal life. Only he is Son of God, Son of Man; fully human, fully divine. His death pulls us down into the grave and his rising again draws us up with him. Everything that needs to be healed will be healed. All repairs will be made. Nothing will be left broken or hurt.

But today, just today, knowing what we know about his journey from here to the tomb, even still we must cheer and whistle. And wave palms. And shout “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” And we want so much to grab the tail end of his departing scene and pull it back, just yank it back to the garden or the roaring sea or the mountaintop or the desert or to any of the dozens of place where we sat with him to listen to God’s wisdom, to see the radiant glory of his love for us.

We want him anywhere but here in Jerusalem. He rides to the cross, ya know? And we must cheer. We must cheer because later we will shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What did we forget between our cheering him into the city and our heckling him to the cross, between our exuberant welcome and our jeering blood lust? To be Christ we must follow Christ. Who wants to follow Christ to the cross? Who wants their flesh torn and bleeding? Who wants the thorns of a mocking crown piercing their scalp? I deny him. I do not know him. No, I’m not his disciple. Never heard of him, never met him. Who? Who? No, sorry, doesn’t ring a bell.

We’ve come too far for that now, brothers and sisters! That desert was forty days long. Along the way we dropped coffee and tea, booze and cigarettes, TV and shopping, email and chocolate. We dropped gossiping, nagging, sex, meat, cussing. We picked up extra hours of prayer, daily Mass, weekly confession, spiritual reading, volunteer hours, being nice to little brother and sister, obeying mom and dad, obeying husband or wife, extra money in the plate on Sunday. The devil bought out his best temptations to show us our weaknesses and sometimes he won and sometimes we won. But he knows and you need to know if you don’t already: God wins all the time, every time, for all time! And He has given us Easter to prove it. But now…if you will be Christ you must follow Christ. Walk right behind him. Feel the stones. Wipe the spit. Hear the curses and jeers. Taste the salty iron of blood. See the cross on his shoulder. And know that he carries for you the only means of your salvation. The sacrificial victim carries his own altar to the church of the skulls.

How far will you follow?

Eaten Alive or Freed in Truth?

5^th Week of Lent (W): Dan 3.14-20, 91-92, 95 and John 8.31-42
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

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The drug and alcohol rehab vets I worked with years ago used to confront the dissembling obstinance of new members to the group with this pithy saying: “The truth will set you free…and sometimes really tick you off!” They knew first hand the empty promises, the false joys of slavery to sin. Not that their addictions per se were sinful, of course, but the lives they were required to construct around their dependencies were often ramshackled shanties shot full of holes, rotted and crumbling foundations, painted over obscenities, and there was always the lurking threat of collapse, the desperate gamble against discovery and disaster. More than anything their substance-slavery shackled them to lying, to illusion, and dumped them all alone in a world of recycling hopelessness and despair. When they would tell the newbie in the group that the truth would set him free, they meant that his life had to change radically. When they told him that the truth would tick him off, they meant that it would REALLY tick him off. Our chosen illusions comfort us even as they eat us alive. How often do we prefer to be eaten alive than awakened from fantasy?

Notice carefully who Jesus is teaching. Not the crowds. Not the scribes and Pharisees. But “those Jews who believed in him.” He’s teaching those who already confess his lordship, those who already know who he is and bow to his word. Beyond this initial profession of faith, Jesus is telling them that there is a state of true discipleship, an enduring friendship of obedience and love that rests on a simple progression of knowledge: remain in my word—know the truth—the truth will set you free. He says, “Everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.” Each act of disobedience then, each willful failure to hear and heed the Word is a link in a chain around your neck. This is not a punishment for a crime so much as it is a consequence of pride. We choose to depend on our own will rather than the will of the Father for us. Sin is surrender: to our passions, our logic, our prejudices and preferences; giving in to our delusions of perfection and the need for control.

You do not own your life. You are a slave to Christ!

So, when Jesus tells the believing Jews to remain in his word, to know the truth, and that the truth will set them free, what exactly is he teaching them? Our Holy Father answers in Sacramentum caritatis: “In the sacrament of the altar[…]the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for truth and freedom. Since only the truth can make us free, Christ becomes for us the food of truth[…]Jesus Christ is the Truth in person, drawing the world to himself” (SC 2). To remain in Christ’s word then is to meet him daily. To know his truth is to know him intimately as Lord. To be set free by truth is to be enslaved to Christ…daily. Our Holy Father goes on to teach: “Jesus is the lodestar of human freedom: without him, freedom loses its focus, for without the knowledge of truth, freedom becomes debased, alienated and reduced to empty caprice. With him, freedom finds itself” (SC 2). There is no freedom without truth. We cannot act freely as creatures without the frame and goal of truth. Without truth we merely act, creating illusion, building a powerful resistance to obedience, and preparing ourselves for the final scene of a terrible drama: slavery to our finite whims, our fixed choices. And hell.

Would you prefer being eaten alive by sin to being awakened from the fantasy that you can act freely without acting truthfully? Christ is our freedom. He is our truth. Remain in him and come with us to die with him in Jerusalem.

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?