Know him, hear him, follow him (Revised)

4^th Sunday of Easter: Acts 13.14, 43-52; Rev 7.9, 14-17; John 10.27-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Who belongs to Christ? Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” Who are these sheep he’s on about? What does a flock belonging to Christ look like? Meanwhile over in the Book of Revelation, John is having visions of a great multitude of people from nation, race, people and tongue crowding the throne of God. These are all the saints who have survived the Great Distress. They certainly belong! Paul and Barnabas in Acts tell the Jews who have not converted and who are hounding the apostles in fits of jealousy that they have rejected the Good News and now it’s time for them—the apostles—to turn their evangelical efforts to the Gentiles. Apparently, some of the Jews do not want to belong—an unhappy situation—but the Gentiles now have a shot at belonging and they are delighted. Who belongs? Who can enter this house? Who is worthy? Better: who can be made worthy? What does it take to be made a member of the Body of Christ? And how is it done? And once done, what does a member look like?

These are vital questions on the fourth Sunday of Easter because we are rapidly approaching the birthday of the Church at Pentecost. Some fifty days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit sweeps down on the desolate and deserted disciples to swiftly kick them in their collective behind, motivating them to step up to the challenge of giving their lives to the infectious spreading of the Good News. This is the Church. This is what the Church does: spread the Good News. Infectiously. This is what Paul and Barnabas are doing in Antioch. This is what the great multitude crowding the throne in heaven did before they died. This is what those given to Jesus by the Father are grateful to do. Belonging to Christ then is not about the possession of a genetic trait or a political history or an attitude. Belonging to Christ is not about the mere intellectual assent to a theological formula or a philosophical worldview or knowledge of a wisdom tradition. Belonging to Christ means following Christ. Those who belong to him, know him, hear him, and follow him. And that can be anyone. Anyone at all. Any nation, any race, any people, any tongue. Anyone. Anyone given to Christ by the Father…

Wait. Anyone given to Christ by the Father? You mean we have to be given to Christ in order to belong to Christ? Yep. We are gifts to Christ from the Father, given to him for our salvation and the Father’s glorification. God the Father created each of us to desire Him before all things. And for our exclusive benefit we are made to worship Him. Our God has no need of our praise. The longing we enjoy to praise Him is His gift to us for in praising Him we are perfected in His love. We know the itching need to praise God only because He has graced us to do so. Our creation is a grace. Our desire to belong is a grace. Our need to worship is a grace. Our enduring existence is a grace. Our ability to say YES to God is a grace. Our capacity to obey, to be holy is a grace. And we ourselves—created, fallen, loved—are a grace to Christ, a gift to the Son from the Father in the Spirit. And all we need do is know him, hear him, and follow him. When we refuse to do these things, when we contradict the Word, disobey the Body, we do violence to ourselves as gifts, and we do not belong.

To be clear: sin does not hurt God. Sin ravages the sinner. Abuses the Church. Hates friendship. And defies every baptismal promise. Sin is the enemy of belonging, the adversary of a graced communion.

When we sin, the longing we feel for God turns to loneliness. When we sin, the emptying-of-self that imitates Christ turns to abandonment. When we sin, the humility we rightly feel at our brokenness turns to shame and guilt. In sin, our longing for God becomes a rejection of Him and we end up living lonely, empty, and restless lives—not just imperfect but broken and lost. When we disobey—fail to listen to the Shepherd—the creative desire for holiness that seduces us to turn to Christ becomes a destructive appetite for material satisfaction that tempts us away from Christ. We cannot belong to Christ while rebelling against his Word; while rejecting the life of the Spirit he offers us; while mucking around with alien gods and strange wisdoms.

Beloved Sheep, the wolves will do worse than eat you; they will make you into a wolf and give you sheep to eat.

Who can belong to Christ? Anyone, anyone at all. Who belongs to Christ? Those given to him by the Father who know him, hear him, and follow him. Why would anyone want to know, hear, and follow the Son as a gift from the Father? So that they might be perfected in their vocation to become Christ for others. Why would anyone abuse themselves as gifts to Christ by rejecting his saving Word? This is an ancient desire, one whispered by the Serpent in the Garden, the desire to become god without God, to be perfected through unaided efforts, to be made holy by pious works alone; and this inordinate desire is best named Disobedience b/c it is the willful refusal to listen to Christ in his Body, the magisterial witness of the Church, a refusal to listen to the Good News that your life is a gift, your progress in holiness is a gift, your life eternal is a gift. All just given to you freely, without charge or interest, handed over to you, an open-handed donation from God through Christ in the Spirit.

Now, the hard question: what does a life that belongs to Christ look like? You belong to Christ, does your life look like a gift from God, a freely given grace, or does it look like an expensive debt that will never be paid off? If you live your life in Christ like an expensive debt, exactly who is it you think you owe? Christ? The Church? Who? Who among the saints, the Blessed Trinity, or the souls in purgatory has sold you something on credit? Is there a Jesus Christ VISA card I don’t know about? And even if you can identify your creditor, how are you paying off this debt? Good works? Prayer? Mass attendance? Donations? All perfectly good things for a Christian to do, of course; but if you are doing these things out of a sense of indebtedness, then you are not answering Christ with an excited and blessed YES but rather with a begrudged and depressing HERE’s THIS MONTH’s PAYMENT. CHOKE ON IT.

This is most certainly not the Spirit that crashes into the disciples, creating the Church at Pentecost! This is not the Spirit that drives Paul and Barnabas to risk their lives for the joy of the Lord. This is not the Spirit that excites the elders around the throne to worship the Most High. And this is not the Spirit that seduces us, pulls us toward the Lord so that we may know him, hear him, and follow him. We owe Christ nothing. He has already paid every spiritual debt we will ever owe. So, your prayers, your Mass attendance, your good works, your donations are not debt payments at all but down payments for the future of the Church, the church that survives the Great Distress and finds herself circling the throne of God forever.

Paul and Barnabas are expelled from Pisidia. They don’t sue or complain at a press conference or start a petition drive for a ballot proposition. They shake the dust from their feet and they are filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Are you truly happy to belong to Christ? Does being here bring you joy? If so, praise God for His goodness! If not, let me ask: do you know Christ? Do you hear him and follow him? Do you really belong? And, most importantly, what is it about his joy that frightens you so?

The fear of being joyful for a Christian is a stake to the heart! Is sin real? Absolutely. Shouldn’t we be contrite? You better believe it! But remember: the only way you know that you have sinned and the only way that you can come to true contrition and the only way you can do your just penance and receive absolution for your sins, the only way ANY of this possible is through the grace of God, His gift of mercy to you, to us for our holiness. Why would anyone fear this joy? So, let me ask you again: does your life in Christ look more like a wrecked funeral barge—with weeping and rending of garments and wailing and creased frowning—, or does your life resemble the life Paul and Barnabas are living: joyful, powerful, elated in the Holy Spirit; a muscular witness to Christ even under serious persecution; a life walking with Love held up by a trust more powerful than any fear.

Fear joy at your peril. No sheep of Christ will live long trembling in the shadow of death. Know him, hear him, follow him, and walk free of every fear, every limit, and belong to the only One on whose name we rely for help: Christ the Good Shepherd!

SHOCKING (Good) News

3^rd Week of Easter (S): Acts 9.31-42 and John 6.60-69
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation and St. Albert the Great Priory

PODCAST!

My flesh is true food. My blood is true drink.

This is a hard saying. Who can accept it? Only those brought to the banquet table by the Father. Does this shock you? It should. And perhaps many of you will walk away from Christ unable to find a way through or a way around. Perhaps some of you will return to your former way of life, abandoning the Way for an easier road, one with little danger of failure and no promise of reward. But why would you do this? Why would anyone who has heard the Word Himself speak the words of Spirit and life turn away and walk apart? Why would anyone who has seen the Word Himself heal the sick, raise the dead, and feed the crowds choose a life without him? Jesus answers, “…there are some of you who do not believe.”

My flesh is true food. My blood is true drink. What’s not to believe? What’s not to believe in Jesus’ claim that his flesh and blood, once consumed, provides eternal life? What’s so bizarre about the notion that eating—literally “gnawing”—on the meat of a man and drinking down his blood will infuse one with life eternal? I can’t imagine why anyone then or now would be shocked by this claim! But some were and some are. And they left Jesus and his believing disciples to their weird rites.

Jesus said to his remaining friends: “Do you also want to leave?” Can you see that moment? Can you just imagine the speedy mental and emotional calculations, the frantic grasping at belief and assent that was going on at that half-heartbeat of decision? Jesus isn’t asking them to stay. He’s not asking them to leave. He’s asking them to take hold of the Father’s grant, the Father’s gift of trust, and to commit themselves in a single act of faith, just one fiat, to the preposterous notion that Jesus is the Holy One of God and that they must eat his body and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. And instead of running, screaming into the desert like a normal person probably would, Simon Peter pipes up and answers, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

To whom shall we go? We’re here. So, let’s ask the question this way: to whom have we come? And why? Have we come to hear the words of a wise rabbi? Are we here to hear what he has to say about how to improve our lives using ancient Jewish wisdom? Have we come to hear the rousing rhetoric of revolution? To see stirring images of tyranny’s overthrow? Jesus as war protester, labor organizer, the people’s revolutionary! Have we come to feel the comforting presence of the Lamb, the consoling numbness of mere piety. Or maybe we are here to be affirmed in our uniqueness, our oddity and weirdness; to be confirmed as freakish countercultural misfits whose devotion to religious aracania will revive a love of the transcendental. Maybe. Perhaps.

My flesh is true food. My blood is true drink. To whom have we come? And why? We are not here this morning to revolutionize the Church or to be soothed in our fuzzy devotions or to be enlightened by secret Jewish wisdom. We’re here to eat. We’re here to say to Jesus in word and deed, plainly and without hesitation: “You not only have the words of eternal life—you are the Word of eternal life. Not only do we not want to leave, we want to live with you forever!” And how do we say all of this? Easy. When you come forward for communion, you will be confronted by an astonishing declaration: “The Body of Christ. The Blood of Christ.” Does this shock you? Do you want to leave? No? Alright. Then answer, “Amen.” And not a puny little “amen”! Say AMEN b/c you have been granted the seed of trust by the Father and you have come to believe and to be convinced that Jesus is the Holy One of God and that you are being offered not bread and wine but the Word Made Flesh—his body and blood—offered and given freely for your salvation!

My flesh is true food. My blood is true drink. These are the words of Spirit and life: take and eat.

Christian Cannibalism Causes Cultural Chaos!

3^rd Week of Easter (F): Acts 9.1-20 and John 6.52-59
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

SECRET DOOMSDAY CULT CANNIBALIZES EXECUTED MESSIAH, CLAIMS IMMORTALITY! The talking-head TV version of this newspaper headline opens with this talking-point: “Religious fanaticism in America today: are your children safe?” Then the talking-heads parade a line of Three-ring Circus Clowns who all demand that the Supreme Court ban religion as a public-safety hazard. The state-owned regulatory nannies and ninnies start squawking like geese frightened on a pond by a gator and before you know it Congress is holding hearings during which otherwise intelligent men and women are asking asinine questions like: “But Bishop, with all due respect, given the recent scandals of the Church, is there a way to tone down your body and blood rhetoric here?”

Maybe we can forgive the routine ignorance of the media and its oftentimes sensationalistic and even hostile portrayal of religious folks, especially Christians in the U.S. Our faith is not easily understood even by those who have been initiated into it and strive with God’s grace to live it day-to-day! And surely we can forgive those in the Church who would have us curb the enthusiasm of Christ’s Eucharistic teaching in today’s gospel. I mean, are we really helping ecumenical efforts at the international and national level by insisting on all this blood and guts imagery? Wouldn’t it be better to focus rather on the more genteel and less violent imagery of bread and wine? These are great symbols of earth and home and harmony and human work. Besides bread and wine helps to keep us focused “down here” on the domestic community rather than “up there” on an inaccessible Big Scary Father-God. Aren’t we here really just to learn to live together and help each other and be at peace with the environment?

No. No, we’re not. We’re here to be saved. We’re here to find the Way and walk it. We’re here to eat the body of Christ, to drink his blood and to share more and more intimately in the workings of the Blessed Trinity in human history. We are here…more literally…”to gnaw” on Christ. Not to nibble daintily or to consume politely but “to gnaw.” That’s the Greek. Gnaw. Now, let me see you gnaw symbolically. For that matter, let me see you gnaw a symbol. Let me see you gnaw on a memory, a memorial, a representation. Let me see you gnaw on an eschatological sign, a prophetic image, a metaphor for “making-present things past.”

The quarreling Jews may have understood better then than we do sometimes now: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” This question actually belies substantial understanding! They understood Jesus to say “flesh.” Meat. Body. And blood. True food and true drink. Not mere symbols. Not just memorial signs. Not mere representational action in history. Not just an “absence of forgetting.” Real food, real drink for eternal life. And this is why they are shocked to hear Jesus teaching what can only be called cannibalism. I don’t think Jesus eases their fears any in the explanation of his baffling claim: “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him…the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” This is astonishingly clear and simple. And outrageously scandalous!

From the beginning we have had immediate access to Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. His real flesh and real blood. We will not eat the bread of our ancestors this morning. We will eat the bread of life from the banquet table of the Father. We will eat…we will gnaw!...as children, heirs, as a people loved, we will feast on immortality so that we may become him whom we eat. There is no other reason for us to be here this morning than this: our transubstantiation into Christ. Just ask Paul: we will not all die, but we will all be changed!

Dominicans 43 Years Ago: a short film

The friars of the Eastern Dominican Province have posted this great VIDEO from 1964. The film shows portions of a solemn profession liturgy and scenes from the daily life of the studium in D.C. and priory life. The friars wearing habits with black pieces are cooperator brothers. Their unique habit was suppressed in 1968. Lay brothers now wear the same habit as the clerical friars.

Thanks to the EDP friars for posting this! Great history...

Fr. Philip, OP

Jesus at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

3^rd Week of Easter (M): Acts 6.8-15 and John 6.22-29
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

I don’t think it would surprise anyone here if I were to confess to a certain dedication to the culinary arts, especially the culinary art of eating! I grew up in a family of farmers where nothing went uncelebrated without a meal—usually some sort of deep-fried animal, a large portion of buttered starch, fresh garden veggies, lots of pies and cakes, and huge variety of casseroles made from condensed soups, canned onion rings, and something green or yellow. Obviously, my family’s dinner table is rarely allowed to rest. Likewise, the banquet table of the Lord is always heavily laden, never empty; His altar is always prepped to receive our sacrifice. How like the culinary arts is the art of loving and being loved by God!

Jesus tells those who find him across the sea that they are looking for him not b/c of any miracle he has done but b/c he fed them with loaves of bread. Perfectly understandable: why not follow the guy who can produce from practically nothing food for five thousand with some left over? But Jesus is not complimenting them here on their tenacity or wisdom. In fact, he’s using the occasion to make a point about the heavenly dinner table. He tells them that they have worked hard to find him and the daily loaves he gives them, but the Real Meal, the food that they truly seek will never perish; it will endure and endure for eternal life. Our daily bread fills our bellies, but it will grow stale and moldy over time. The Bread of Life fills our souls, and He is always fresh—freshly eternal, enduring Life!

Thinking back on my family’s dinner table, I have to think all the way back to the gardens we grew. We tilled the ground. Fertilized the soil. Planted the seed. Tended the rows to prevent life-draining weeds. We waited for rain. Harvested what we grew. And ate! Isn’t loving God and being loved by Him exactly like this? Given life as a gift, your ground, you carefully till what you have been given by God with fortitude and patience, so that you are free to receive mulch and water, fertilizer and seed; you are solidly grounded but loose enough to grow. You fertilize your life with powerful nutrients: spiritual reading, study and prayer, a solid life of fellowship and service, and regular sacrifice. God gives you the seeds of faith, hope, and love, planting them with an intense desire that you cultivate them and spread them again as seed in the gardens, the lives around you. Weeds grow even in good soil! You tend to them with regular “weeding,” answering the push of the Holy Spirit and going to confession when the weeds threaten to choke off your growth. You wait for rain, the blessings and graces of God, sent sometimes in torrents, sometimes in sprinkles, sometimes in fits of storms. But always sent. Waiting is the true art of the farmer. Now, it is time to harvest and celebrate, time to collect the benefits of God’s graces and your hard work, time to give thanks and, yes, time to eat!

And so we are here at the banquet table to eat the good fruits of Christ’s work for us. We have little more to do here than believe. That is our work while we are here. Having eaten, we take this enduring food, the Bread of Life, into the world and show everyone what it means to grow fat in Christ! Spiritually skinny Christians aren’t the best spokesmodels for Jesus. We need big, fat models, overweight saints and prophets, men and women grown obese on the Word and ready to preach!

Ours is not a dainty table of delicate snack food or greasy fast food or tasteless frozen food. Ours is the twenty-four hour/seven days a week, all-you-can-eat, ninety-nine cent seafood buffet that we eat with gratitude and in humility and we discover at the end of the night that Christ has already taken care of the bill. Tip included.

On Neckties and a Vocation to Preaching

My Dominican brother and friend, fra. Bruno Clifton, OP of Blackfriars, Oxford has posted an excellent article on his vocation to the Order of Preachers. Check it out! And spend a bit of time browsing the other excellent reflections on the site. These English Dominicans are a thoughtful bunch. Good singers too.

The English Dominican Studentate website can be found at GODZDOGS. Tell them Philip Neri, OP sent you!

NB. They have to buy me a pint for every hit they get from this site! (They don't know this yet, of course...so, sssshhhhhhh...)

Obey. Worship. Love. Follow.

3^rd Sunday of Easter: Acts 5.27-32, 40-41; Rev 5.11-14; John 21.1-19
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

The Four Basics. Absolutely basic to the life of the Christian is this defiant declaration made by Peter to the Sanhedrin: “We must obey God rather than men.” Absolutely basic to the life of the Christian is the blessed working of the Holy Spirit in all creation, gifted to those who obey God rather men. And absolutely basic to the life of the Christian is the triple salvific confession of Peter to Christ: “You know that I love you, Lord.” (Is this Peter’s tripled anguish over a regretful, tripled doubt?—“No, I do not know him!”) It is basic that we obey God, receive the Holy Spirit, love Christ, and follow him. Four Basics.

These Four Basics correspond to Four Outcries that shout back at despair, disbelief, nihilism, and death. The disciple whom Jesus loves says to Peter, “It is the Lord!” The four living creatures answer, “Amen,” and the elders fall down and worship. Then Jesus asks Peter a third time, “Do you love me?” and Peter says to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And the apostles rejoice at being found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name of Jesus. It is the Lord! Amen! I love you, Lord! We are worthy to suffer for Christ’s name! Then, and only then, can we follow him.

Obeying God rather than men is fundamental to Christian holiness. The elders of the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, had previously ordered the apostles to stop preaching and teaching in Christ’s name. They are afraid of the Romans. Peter tells the Sanhedrin that they, the apostles, have been ordered by Christ to spread the Good News in his name. They can do nothing less than obey the one who died for all of creation. The Jewish elders order them again to be silent. But the Holy Spirit has moved the apostles to speak the Word to the world and they do. They disobey man and obey God. Here we have the Way of Recognition, the means by which the apostles come to understand that the true ruler of creation is God not man. With the beloved disciple they can declare, “It is the Lord!” Preaching the power and glory of the Risen Christ is possible only when we hear and obey God, recognizing his providence by naming Him Lord.

Obeying our Lord rather than men means hearing Him first, listening to Him first and understanding everything else in terms of Who and what we hear. Peter tells the Jewish elders that the Spirit is a witness to the life, death, resurrection of Jesus and that our obedience to God, our “holy listening,” brings to us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Who is this Spirit? The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. This mutual loving, this exchanging of boundless creating power, ancient wisdom, and Revealing Breath is the Spirit; a holy spirit overflowing into and flooding creation, giving life and growth, purpose and cause. The Holy Spirit witnesses, strengthens, inspires, builds up, intercedes, guides, sets ablaze in zeal, purifies, glorifies, and most essentially, loves. And for this gift of Trinitarian passion, we say everything when we shout, “Amen!” So be it! Yes, it is! “Amen” is the Spirit talking to the Spirit out of our mouths. Your “amen” then must show the passion of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. Your “amen” must strengthen and inspire, glorify and praise, set fire to hearts grown cold and guide the lost in obedience to God. A weak, mumbled, half-hearted and distracted “amen” is worse than a curse! At least a curse never claims to invoke the Spirit, while a mewly “amen” is stingy praise from an ungrateful heart. So, when you say “amen” say, “AMEN!” Amen?!

If we obey God rather than men, we receive the Holy Spirit, who is the Love btw Father and Son, and we proclaim our gratitude for His Love by lending our voices to the one word that commits our hearts and minds to the love that amazes all creation: amen! And when we shout our amen with passion and conviction, with trust in the promises of God, we step closer to the living ideal of love that is the Father’s Son, Christ Jesus. In other words, we come closer and closer to the kind of death that will glorify God, the death of sacrificial love that Christ died for us. Given this, how do we not say, “I love you, Lord”? Like Peter, no doubt, we said in the garden, “Jesus who? Don’t know him. Sorry.” Like Peter, no doubt, we have denied him and heard the rooster crow at sunrise. No doubt, like Peter, we sit here now in anguished regret about each time we have said “no,” each time we said “later,” each time we said “Jesus who?” But Jesus shows us the power of mercy, the strength to be found in forgiveness, by asking Peter three times, “Simon Peter, do you love me?” Three times for each denial in the garden. Three times to confess and repair his fear, his betrayal, his cowardice. Like Peter, no doubt!, we too are given one time to repent for each time we have sinned against God’s love for us. Where is there room for anguish in a life stuffed full of trust in God’s mercy? Where is there room for distress in a life where Christ himself looks you in the eye and asks, “Do you love me?” What else do you say but, “It is the Lord. Amen! I do love you, Lord.”

And surely you know by now, having been through Lent, Holy Week, the Triduum, and Easter morning, you must know by now that loving Christ and being loved by him is a gift, a freely given passion for your life, your holiness, your final end. But what sort of gift is this love? The apostles rejoice at being found worthy to suffer dishonor for his name’s sake. What does it mean to suffer for Christ’s name? Pain is not suffering. Pain is pain. Suffering is how we choose to understand pain. Suffering is how we come to define, to make us of, to “stand under” physical hurt and give it meaning. The apostles here are coming to “stand under” their injuries, the injustices done to them, in the spirit of Christ’s redemptive suffering for all of us. They are not simply being persecuted by political/religious enemies. They are walking the Sorrowful Way to the Cross as Christ did. And freely accepting Christ’s love IS freely accepting his death. We are not called to love alone but to follow as well. It is not enough to praise, to preach, to heal, to love in his name; we must die too…in his name. “Follow me,” he says, and then he walks closer to the Cross. Can you suffer this well? Can you “stand under” his love for you and rejoice on the way to your Cross? Will you be found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of his name?

Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. So, Peter feeds us his trust, his honor, his repentance and contrition. He also feeds us his life in love when he is martyred in Rome. We are constantly fed by the Body and Blood of our Living Christ, fed in and through his Church with and through his apostles and priests; we are fed at the altar of sacrifice, the banquet table of God’s infinite bounty. He shows us His love at this altar and demands our repentance at our family’s table. It is not enough to praise, to bless, to preach, to work in mercy; we must love, we must repent of our disobedience, and we must follow him freely to a death, to a life that glorifies God in all things. Every word, every movement, every thought—given wholly, freely, thankfully to God.

Worthy is He to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing! Amen!

Serving the crumbs...

2^nd Week of Easter (F): Acts 5.34-42 and John 6.1-15
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Here Jesus turns the disciples doubt around and shows them how a little faith can manifest God’s abundance. It’s a miracle. They share a stingy meal with a vast crowd and even have leftovers that need collecting. Variously, this gospel story is repeated as either a “divine-miracle” or as a “social-miracle.” That is, the story is interpreted either in terms of BAM! fishes and loaves appear out of thin air at Christ’s blessing—a miracle defying natural law; or in terms of the willingness of the little boy to share his meager lunch and thereby inspiring others to bring our their lunches and feed themselves—a miracle of charity and generosity. Now, we can spend a lot of time arguing about which interpretation is more faithful to the gospel text. I don’t think it much matters to be honest. The much most intriguing moment in this story isn’t a miracle of any kind. When lunch was done, Jesus said to the disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted. And so they collected them…”

Is he talking about bread here? Yes. And no. Ever practical, Jesus didn’t want to waste any good food. There were many more crowds to feed down the road. But we also know that any time Jesus speaks to the disciples directly, he is teaching them. What’s the lesson here? We know this is a lesson b/c the gospel says that Jesus framed this event as a “test” for his students. The problem? How to feed 5,000 people on almost nothing? No. The problem is: how to feed all of creation for all time on one man’s Body and Blood? The whole event of feeding the 5,000 is the answer Jesus seeks. This lesson isn’t about Jesus’ “magical powers” nor is it about his “ethical affect” on others. This lesson is about showing the disciples the path to suffering and death and eternal life. And showing them all those welcomed to follow him.

Notice: the people gather to hear the Word proclaimed and preached. To see Jesus heal the sick. When he sees the crowd, he wants to feed them. He turns to his disciples and asks a perfectly reasonable question: can we afford to feed this many with what we have? Philip, avoiding the question, anxiously notes that even if they spent the wages earned over 200 days, they wouldn’t have enough food. Andrew, hearing at least one of the questions, pushes forward a boy with food, but gloomily notes that his food won’t be enough for the crowd. Can’t you hear and see Jesus give a Simon Cowel sigh and a roll of the eyes!? At this late date, they still don’t get it!

We have in Philip one who can only see scarcity in possibility. In Andrew, we have one who sees scarcity in manifest abundance. Jesus doesn’t berate them. He teaches them: “Have the people recline.” In other words, have the people prepare to feast. And they do. And afterward Jesus tells his disciples to pay attention to the excesses of the feast, what’s leftover, the abundant remainder of what they could only see as scarcity. Of course, Jesus is pointing them to the Church—the hungry, the welcomed, the blessed, the fed, and everything leftover; nothing, no one to be wasted but rather gathered into the Twelve Baskets—gathered in the Father’s covenant with His people.

When you look at the Church gathered in a crowd, standing before Jesus—hungry, cold, desperate for a teacher and preacher of Truth—do you see: Abundance? Scarcity? Leftovers worth keeping? Fragments best left scattered? Do you see in front of you work, blessing, joy, frustration, maybe exhaustion? Do you see a broken miracle? Or a well-made wreck? Do you see Christ staring back at Christ?

Nevermind. There’s work to be done. Start collecting crumbs and scraps, bits of fish and cups of wine. Whatever belongs in the basket, put it there. This party’s just getting’ started!

Virginia Tech: Office of the Dead

Office of the Dead: Vespers for the Living and the Dead of Virginia Tech
Reading: 1 Corinthians 15.50-58
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX

PODCAST!

We the living here pray this Office of the Dead for the living and the dead of Virginia Tech. May the splendid light of our Risen Lord shine through your loss and bring you all to his peace.

Just barely two weeks beyond our celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord, we are confronted with the heart-rending news that a young man, lost to all reason and swallowed by despair, has killed thirty-three men and women at his university. What seems at first a distant act of criminal insanity quickly becomes a tragedy played against the joyous drama of Easter, and we cannot help but think that each shot fired, each plea for help, each cry for a reason why betrays our trust, turns us opposed to the emptied tomb, and begs us to wade—just a toe! just to the ankles!—begs us to wade angrily into the same despair that dragged this young man to murder. It has happened again. Evil wears a face and dares us to answer in kind! And what do we say? How do we answer this horror?

We know that our Lord is risen from the tomb! Fewer than two weeks ago, in this church, we raised our alleluias in praise of Christ who defeated death in the grave and joined his Father in heaven. We renewed our baptismal vows, welcomed new brothers and sisters into the Body, and heard over and over again in prayer and song that nothing binds us to death; nothing holds us against despair; nothing, no one defeats us—not sin, not the grave, nothing of this world has the authority to catch and hold the hearts of those who blind the darkness with God’s joy and silences the voices of despair with hope—hope sung or shouted or even whispered! Our answer to death then was: alleluia! Amen! He is risen!

But now, right now: do those alleluias sound weak? Do they echo back from Virginia—alone and vain? Paul asks, “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Death’s victory is in the hallways and dorm rooms and labs and courtyards of Virginia Tech. Death’s sting sits proudly on the cheeks of mothers and fathers who stare into a future once full of graduations and weddings and grandchildren. Death has stung husbands and wives. Professors, cafeteria and facilities workers, students and cops. Death stung Cho-Seung Hui long before he surrendered his life to the bullet that killed him. Is this Death’s victory? In this mourning hour, watching the misery and grief pour out of Virginia, aren’t we sorely tempted to answer, “Yes. Yes, this time, death has won.”

And what will we do now? Tighten security. Screen students more carefully. Offer better counseling. Put up more cameras. Pass stronger laws, better enforcement. No doubt, we will do all these things. But will we do the one thing, the only thing that will defy this spirit of Dark Loss, that will deny this horror its despairing power; will we do the one thing, the only thing that will matter to eternity? Will we HOPE more and better, will we LOVE more and better, will we TRUST more and better? Will we do the only thing that will deny evil another face? Will we carry those joyous Easter alleluias with us? Put them on our lips? Wear them on our sleeves? Will we bring them closer to our hearts than our own names? Eveready to shout: He is risen!

We know how to answer despair’s seduction and death’s sting. What do we here in Irving have to say to our brothers and sisters in Virginia? I simply do not know right now. Everything comes out muddled. My chest hurts just imagining the pain and loss, the incredible desecration of it all. The waste. I just don’t know. There is a great silence, however, a stillness that says everything that can be said. Put your heart’s voice there and sit for a while with both loss and abundance.

Speak the Word with all boldness

2^nd Week of Easter (M): Acts 4.23-31 and John 3.1-8
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

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If we must be born again of water and spirit in order to see the Kingdom of God, we have to ask: why isn’t our first birth good enough to get us into the Kingdom? Surely, we want to say that our full entrance into creation, our completed exit from the womb, is sufficient for seeing and enjoying the Kingdom. Isn’t it true that “created things” serve as revelations of God—incomplete and fragile, yes; but nonetheless they are glimpses of divinity? And why would we want to strain the limits of reasonable discourse by suggesting that there is some sort of additional Thing To Be Done or believed or practiced in order to partake in the divine nature? Isn’t just being a creature of the divine enough? Aren’t we just promoting a sort of gatekeeping mentality here? This “born again” gibberish is too easily abused by those wanting to keep the church—what was the phrase? Oh yes!—“small and faithful.” More like “tiny and closed minded!” So, why isn’t just being born one time good enough to participate in the divine nature? Being “born from above” sounds privileged and classist.

New life requires new birth. When you are washed in the waters of baptism and fortified by the Spirit in confirmation, you are indelibly marked as one who belongs to Christ. Permanently branded as one who has consented to being taught the faith and as one willing to step up and onto the arduous trek from slavery to sin to liberation from bondage to the daily exercise of holiness to a natural perfection in this life and eventually a supernatural perfection in the afterlife—a life lived eternally face-to-face with Christ—as God. Yes, your newest and last life as God. Your life in Beauty and the life you must live until you reach the Beatific Life is started, given birth, if you will, by dying with Christ in the waters of baptism and rising with him, freed from the slavery of sin. Jesus says, “What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.” We have our flesh from the womb. Now we need our spirit from the Spirit.

To what end? I mean, why all the trouble here about new birth, new spirit, new this and that? We have Jesus’ teachings, his instructions for good behavior; we have the powerful witness of his exemplary death and the wonderful image of his transformation into New Life. Aren’t we just talking about the need for a more self-reflective way of living, a more conscious effort at living holistically with earth and others? Um, no. Not quite. Good Friday’s Blood and Guts and Easter’s Empty Tomb are not about shrinking our footprint on earth or becoming chummier with our chosen families. We are called to a new life through a new birth so that we can do all the things our Lord has given us to do in his name. If you will be Christ, you must be born again as Christ!

Taking note of their recent persecution, Peter and John lay claim to a prophetic heritage going back to their father, David. They pray, “…Lord, take note of [our persecutors’] threats, and enable your servants to speak your word with all boldness…” The ground shakes. They are filled with the Holy Spirit. And they preach the Word with all the boldness of ones born anew in the Spirit of Christ! Ah, glimpses of Pentecost so soon…

We must be reborn of water and spirit so that we our lives now can be transformed into lives given wholly to Christ and his work. There is no other reason for us to be here this morning. Do others look at your life and see the signs and wonders of the Spirit loosed? Do they see a new creature? If not, pray: “Lord, give me, your servant, a tongue to speak your Word with boldness.” Stand still. And wait for the quake that will rock your soul.

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

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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

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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

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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!]