Knowing Christ-Being Christ

4^th Week of Easter (S): Acts 13.44-52 and John 14.7-14
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

PODCAST!

If I were to ask you whether or not you “know the Lord,” I wonder what you would say. Being good Catholics, I hope you would all say with some enthusiasm and joy, “Yes, of course,” but my naturally suspicious mind nags me with the probability that at least a large few of you would ask me in return, “What do you mean by ‘know the Lord’?” Jesus says, “Remain in my word and I will remain in you.”

Both Thomas yesterday and Philip today join you in your insistence on having a clearer idea of what it means to “know Christ.” Thomas is worried about what it means for Jesus to be our destination. He is also worried about it means for Jesus to be the Way to Jesus the Destination. Philip presses the Lord for a more empirical demonstration of his claim that “if you know me, then you will also know my Father.” Philip says, in essence, “Good to know, Lord…now, show me the Father…” Our Lord’s esoteric response to Thomas—“I am the way, the truth, and the life”—and his pointed rebuke of Philip—“Have I been with you for so long, Philip, and you still don’t know me?’—both of these responses from Jesus to questions about his identity seem to me to glide over his disciples’ central worry: who do you, Lord, want us to be for you?

Now, of course, our Lord is perfectly aware that his disciples are anxious about their identity as his followers. They’ve been worried about this from the beginning and the question reaches critical mass in the garden when they scurry like rats, denying that they know him at all! So, if the Lord knows this worry, why does he seem to be deflecting the real question in favor of answering secondary (or even tertiary!) questions about who he really is? Here’s my best guess: the disciples, like any of us, must come freely to the Father through Christ in response to His invitation to live with Him forever; and they must come in humble trust to accept, like any of us, that following Christ to heaven means following him first through the desert, on to Jerusalem, up the Upper Room, into the Garden, before Pilate, up on the Cross at Golgotha, and down into Tomb; like any of us, the disciples must come to know Jesus as both a Way and as a Truth, in other words, they must come to know him as the only Means to Perfection (the Way) and as the only Eternal Given (the Truth).

Since the disciples must freely respond to the Father’s gift of faith and they must follow Jesus in his passion and death and they must come to know Christ as both Perfection Himself and the Way to That Perfection; then, it is reasonable to posit that Jesus will tell them who he is for them and how to reach him but leave unanswered precisely who it is he wants them to be. Christ needs freed men and women, filled with the Spirit of charity, flooding the cities and nations to do his work. He does not need or want factory produced replicas, assembly line Jesus-Barbies or Preach-It-Elmos, marching lock-step, shouting bumper sticker platitudes at unrepentant sinners. He needs and wants witnesses to the Father’s renovating grace, His superlative love. He wants and needs prophets who lay claim to the power of the Word to shape the human heart into a tabernacle worthy of His Presence.

He wants you, freely given, to know him as the Truth and to seek him on the Way; to believe in him and to do now the works that he did then; he wants you to live in him as he lives in the Father and to ask of him what you need so that he can give it to you. He wants you, freely given, to be a light for the darkness; to be a holy silence for the world’s racket; to be a Word of grace for the fallen; and he wants you to come to know him by becoming him.

What do we mean by “know the Lord”? We mean “know Christ by being Christ right where you are.” Remain in his Word and he will remain in you.

Jesus: Our Heavenly GPS Navigator

4^th Week of Easter (F): Acts 13.26-33 and John 14.1-6
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

My mother has a near pathological fear of getting lost while driving to a strange place. Giving her detailed directions does no good. Starting her out from somewhere familiar and leading her step by step to the unfamiliar does no good. She doesn’t even like to drive with someone in the car who knows where they are going! Once she cannot recognize a place, she panics and the way is lost. This is true for us spiritually as well: when our lives between Right Here/Now and Then/There become alienated from God in sin, our hope of reaching our destination becomes weaker and weaker, less and less sure. Our destination does not change. Nor does the way there. What changes is our certainty that we are getting anywhere, that we are going anywhere. And so, our hearts become troubled; our trust in God’s promises of showing us the way becomes thin. And we panic.

Geographically speaking, there is a way to everywhere, a way to anywhere you want to go and getting lost is not about not knowing your destination but about not knowing your chosen path. The same is not true for us as followers of Christ. There is only one way to our destination. And a failure on our part to know our path is also a failure to know our destination. Why, you ask? Because for us, the Path and the Destination are the same. Jesus is the Way and he is the Truth. Getting to him with him is our Life. For us, to be lost is death.

Thomas, no doubt as confused as the rest of us on hearing Jesus tell us about mansions in heaven and coming back for us and taking us with him, asks a question that any of us would ask: “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Think about it. Your best friend tells you that she is going to go set up cabin for a weekend retreat. She calls you up. Tells you about the cabin and then says, rather cryptically, “Where I am going you know the way.” First question out of your mouth is going to be…? “Um, where are you?” Second question: “how do I get there?” If she said to you in reply: “I am the destination and I am the way here and your trip to me through me is your life,” if she said this, well, you would likely hang up the phone and never, ever talk to this creepy friend again!

Thomas’ asks his anxious question about not knowing the destination or the way and Jesus replies, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” we think this is profound; enlightening even. And it is. But how is this enlightening and why should knowing this calm our troubled hearts? Geographically speaking, again, we can panic when we do not know the way to our destination, or when we do not know our destination well enough to get there via many ways. For us, there is only one destination and only one path to that destination. Jesus. He is where we are going (God the Father) and he is how we are going to get there (God the Son) and getting to him with him is our life in him (God the Holy Spirit). And no one comes to the Father except through him. This means that Jesus is more than a good model of ethical behavior; he is exemplary, but he is also that which is exemplified: the best, the truest, and the most beautiful.

Do not panic! Jesus promises: “I will come back and take you to myself, so that where I am going you may also be.” What is there for us to fear then? Jesus is the car, the driver, the road, the GPS Navigator; he is the street signs, the signal lights, and he is our destination. Riding with him is our Life. All we need to do is roll down our window and yell to those we see passing by, “Alleluia! He is risen! And there’s room for a few more in the back!”

What will God always say YES to?

I just want to draw everyone's attention to a new release from Doubleday. Anthony Destefano has written a wonderfully accessible and timely book titled, Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To: Divine Answers to Life's Most Difficult Problems. What impresses me most about this book is way Destefano tackles some of our most tangled human problems in a fashion that is both immediately accessible to a non-theologian/philosopher and at the same time faithful to the real complexities of our available choices and reactions. In other words, this isn't one of those dumb "fix-it-easy-with-just-one-prayer" books, but a real attempt at thinking through--in an inviting way--those common human predicaments that we bring most frequently to God in prayer.

Recommended for high school and young adult study groups; parochial catechesis on prayer and daily spirituality; or as a gift for someone who's feeling a bit persecuted by Life!

Fr. Philip, OP

O, the Suspense!

4^th Week of Easter (T): Acts 11.19-26 and John 10.22-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation

PODCAST!

Had I been in the temple area that day I would have been one of those nagging Jesus about his identity: “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Amen! Just say so, so we can make our choices and move on. How hard can it be to just say, “I am the Christ”? Not hard at all apparently b/c when confronted with the frustrated demands of his listeners, Jesus answers, “I told you [who I am] and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me […] The Father and I are one.” Does this dissipate the suspense for you? Let’s hope not! Well, I mean, let’s hope that you come to believe the testimony of Jesus’ works, or especially his own witness to his identity—of course! But let’s not be too hurried about suspending suspense. The fire of the Holy Spirit is gathering heat. Even here—in the early chapters of John—we can hear the Voice of the Shepherd, his Word and Spirit, roaring and commanding, boisterously reassuring: my sheep hear my voice. They know me and follow me. No one takes my sheep from me or the Father! This isn’t about the possession of property. We aren’t cattle. Nor is this about personal loyalty. Jesus is not our gang leader. The Voice of the Word, the Spirit is our guarantee of the Father’s radical love, a divine passion for us, a love that sprints along our skin; pulls and pushes our muscles; pumps our blood; sparks memory, mind, heart and will. And relentlessly spools us to Him like lazy catfish stuck on a river bottom. It is not enough to know that you’re hooked! Testimony. Witness. Evidence. Fine. All perfectly wonderful. But do you hear his voice? Do you know him as your shepherd and friend? Do you follow where he leads? Do not suspend suspense entirely! If you believe that being caught by the Divine Fisherman ends your questioning, your need for insight, your longing for wisdom; or stops the hard work of daily holiness, then you need to know that the Holy Spirit will settle for nothing less from you than everything you are made to be in Christ. So, tell me, with Christ, where is it exactly in your life that you want to wreck, surrender, and fade away?

Dominican Poetry and a poem

I have been derelict in my duty not only to the Poetry World but to Dominican Poetry as well! Check out The OP Poetry Prize and lend your support to this worthwhile ministry of verse. I don't have enough poems collected to submit for the prize, but I will include one here just for a taste:

Jesus, Thief (Craigie Aitchison’s Crucifixion IV, 1988)

The whole of it could be the cross

And yellow again.

Pilate’s INRI held behind his back

In the last Messanic secret, now

An eight twinkle star, etched in snow.

It draws the one lamb left that will ask,

“Lord, what star marks your cross?

Who do you say that You are?”

The Lord, speaking to the burnt orange ground, says,

“I am He who stands on this pillar of wood, hiding

my name, and choosing my last seven words.”

“I am meant to be upset, Lord,” says the Lamb,

“but I am not. You will die like a thief.”¹

Now, his mouth gone, the Lord says to the Lamb

with his eyes:

“Yes, I will steal death for you.”

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Douai Abbey, Feast SS. Peter and Paul, 2004

¹ In an interview with Andrew Lambeth, Craigie Aitchison comments on the animals in his depictions of the crucifixion: “The animals are meant to be upset, concerned.” The Journey: A Search for the Role of Contemporary Art on the Religious and Spiritual Life, Usher Gallery, Redcliffe Press, 1990, 70.

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

PODCAST!

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.