Come on, Spirit, light my fire!

20th Sunday in OT: Jer 38.4-10; Heb 12.1-4; Luke 12.49-53
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP

St Ann’s Church, CORE Retreat, Coppell, TX & St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX


Listen Here!

Surrounded as I am by so great a cloud of witnesses, I must ask: have you come to help our Lord to set the earth on fire?! Have you come here to help him destroy the family, to divide the nation, and to conquer the church? Do you understand that the water of your baptism did not extinguish the holy fire set ablaze in you, but rather those blessed waters feed and spread the fire of the Holy Spirit like gasoline, consuming you, burning you to perfection? And your job, my job, our job together is to run shouting like lunatics—holy priests and prophets—to run shouting through the dry-tinder kindling of this world, setting everything cold and hard and brittle on fire with the Holy Spirit! If you will follow Christ, walk his Way, carrying his Cross as yours, then you will become a Holy Pyromaniac.

The author of Hebrews writes, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that cling to us…” Fire burns its fuel first. The fire of the Holy Spirit burns away every burden and sin, releasing the grip of anxiety and freeing body and soul from the sickening weight of disobedience. Essentially, we are lightened for the race before us, unencumbered for navigating the Way and finding our Morningstar. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, “the leader and perfecter of faith,” every burden, every obstacle, every failure is lifted, surmounted, rectified, and we are propelled into the same joy that Christ saw before him through the Cross. Through the Cross. Not around it or under it or above it but through it, only through the Cross did he and do we come to the long anticipated joy in the presence of the throne of God.

But what does “only through the Cross can we find joy” mean day-to-day, minute-to-minute? First, be warned: the race to the Cross is heart-wearying! It’s not a test b/c a test is too easy. You have the help of the Holy Spirit! What’s a test when the H.S. is your cheat sheet? There is no obstacle course, something like a heroic passage from Greek myth—no giants to behead, no mutant spiders to outwit. You don’t even have to memorize any arcane languages or master multiple sets of occult symbols or chase down any wizardly objects. No. What you have to do is actually much, much worse than all these; much more difficult and painful: you must release your pride, unclench your self-satisfaction and arrogance, your misplaced sense of duty and control, and you must be weak before the Lord, praying, “I too wish the world were already ablaze for you, Lord! Enkindle in me the fire of your righteousness, burn away my burdens and sins, and make me a torch for your purifying love.” To joy through the Cross…

Going to the Cross for us, for our example and our benefit, Christ poured himself out, emptied himself in total subjection to the Father, becoming for us our sin. His kenosis, his abandonment to the worst of human depravity and his freely accepted death for our sake, is the spark for a holy fire, the match that pops and flares and sets all creation blazing in sacrifice. Every thing, every person and place, every relationship and bond, every right and wrong, all of it, our peace, our achievements, our grand plans and projects, our deeply held convictions and logical conclusions, our allegiances and sworn wars, our science, theology, philosophy, art, all of it, everything is transfigured, transformed in the perfecting conflagration of the Cross, the Empty Tomb, and our Lord’s ascension to the right hand of his Father. I tell you, Jesus says, I did not come to bring peace but division…and to leave everything in ash and smoke.

We have not yet resisted sin to the point of shedding blood. Our brothers and sisters in the Middle East have. Those of us in the Sudan have bled and bled. In China, we bleed for the state’s fear of an all-consuming fire. In Texas? Probably not today or tomorrow. But it’s not impossible that one of us here or all of us together could be called to resist sin to the point of shedding blood. Is that frightening? Of course. Our faith, or rather our religion, is a comfort to us. We find settled patterns and rhythms here. Familiarity and peace. Should our faith be comforting? I mean, should the fact that we trust a man who willing died on a cross for us be a source of comfort to us? You have vowed to do the same for me, ya know? To die for me. And I for you. That promise of witness is greater than family or friends or neighbors. That promise to stand up and speak up and give witness to a mighty God is greater than the comfort of religion or the temporary excitement of spirituality. For the sake of your joy beg to be emptied of every burden, every sin, and then fix your eyes on Jesus. He is the only leader, the only perfecter of our faith.

Again: surrounded as I am by so great a cloud of witnesses, I must ask: have you come to help our Lord to set the earth on fire?!

First adore. . .

Homily for Exposition & Adoration
St. Ann’s Church Retreat
August 18, 2007

from Pope Benedict XVI's Sacramentum caritatis (66): During the early phases of the reform [of Vatican Two], the inherent relationship between Mass and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was not always perceived with sufficient clarity. For example, an objection that was widespread at the time argued that the eucharistic bread was given to us not to be looked at, but to be eaten. In the light of the Church's experience of prayer, however, this was seen to be a false dichotomy. As Saint Augustine put it: "nemo autem illam carnem manducat, nisi prius adoraverit; peccemus non adorando – no one eats that flesh without first adoring it; we should sin were we not to adore it." (191) In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration. (192) Receiving the Eucharist means adoring him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself. Indeed, "only in adoration can a profound and genuine reception mature. And it is precisely this personal encounter with the Lord that then strengthens the social mission contained in the Eucharist, which seeks to break down not only the walls that separate the Lord and ourselves, but also and especially the walls that separate us from one another."

Our adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is not something we just do b/c we have time to kill in the retreat schedule, or b/c it’s now the trendy thing to do! As our Holy Father makes plain in this exhortation: (reread underlined section). Precisely, precisely…at that point where you and I encounter Christ in our adoration and communion, precisely at that moment we are offered a grace: the chance to serve Christ, to honor his work and Word, to lift him up in praise and thanksgiving, a chance to be of godly use to someone else. Rather than taking us away from the messy work of Christian service, our adoration of the Blessed Sacrament pokes and prods, and pushes us out, out there to get sweaty in taking care of the needs of others. Think about it: does Christ need our adoration? No. God has no need of our praise, but our desire to praise Him is His gift to us. And our desire to praise him together in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is His gift to us and then we are held responsible for becoming gifts to others. Ask yourself: how will I take this time in the presence of the Lord and then give it away?

Done Deal, or Dodging Cannibals

Assumption of the BVM: Rev 11.19; 12.1-6, 10; 1 Cor 15.20-27; Luke 1.39-56
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

“I don’t know” and “I promise” are the two most oft-repeated sentences in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road. A man and his ten-year old son travel a road in a post-apocalyptic world. Everything is burnt to ash and poisoned. Remaining are Good Guys and Bad Guys. Bad Guys hunt other humans for food. And the Good Guys run. And occasionally roast over an open fire. All through the novel, as the man and his son travel along the road, the son questions his father about the the right and wrong of surviving. More often than not the father, in the post-trauma of witnessing his entire world destroyed, simply says, “I don’t know.” Since the father no longer knows what is true, good, or beautiful, he begins to build a two man civilization on the power of another sentence, “I promise.” And the son, hearing this tiny silver of hope over and over again, responds each time with the universal fiat of a near exhausted faith: “OK.”

In a novel or movie or dream, there might be a world where Divine Love does not animate all life; does not lift up and bring forward His children; does not create and re-create in His image and likeness. A world not haunted by the spirit of holiness would be that sort of world where ignorance of living beyond life and death would be fundamental and the only way up and forward would be the promise of other creatures. That is dismal. And no way to live. But how precarious is it for us to live on promise in this real world of ours? Haven’t we all here surrendered our lives—body and soul—to what we hope is a Divine Lover? Haven’t we all here submitted ourselves to His obedience and service after just a promise? Yes, we have. And no, we haven’t. Yes, there is the promise but there is more than a promise. We have been shown the promise in action—twice.

This feast today is a feast of promise, sure; but it is also a feast of transfiguring revelation, of God’s promise to us shown to us in the raising of Mary to heaven, her resurrection to His promise of glory fulfilled. Paul says that “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Christ is the first of those raised. Mary is the second. And the Church will be the third. Follow here: Christ, Mary, the Church. Christ is the Son of the Father. Mary is the mother of the Son. The Church is the body of Christ, his brothers and sister in faith. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of the Church, the body of Christ, and we are children of the Father. We inherited the Father’s promise of resurrection in Christ through Mary. And her assumption into heaven, her resurrection, is our sign of God’s promise done. Like her Son who was transfigured on Mt Tabor, our Blessed Mother’s assumption is a transfiguring revelation, that sort of unveiling of truth that both educates and changes, informs and transforms. We do not celebrate a pious legend today but a divine promise shown to us to have been fulfilled. This is the end of us all!

In her fiat to the archangel’s announcement of her pregnancy, Mary sings out her people’s salvation history, the theodicies of God’s love for us, His interventions and interuptions in our time and place. He shows us His love. And reminds us of His promise of mercy, the promise He made to Abraham and his children forever. Mary is answering with more than a hesitant “OK” or a bored, whispered “whatever.” She is saying yes to it all—everything of the Father’s plan for her, for us. She knows. She knows. And she says yes. So then, how precarious is it for us to live on a promise in this world of ours? Here’s how: if you aren’t living on the promise of the Father, then you are living in the ignorance of the Enemy, traveling a burnt and poisoned road, just waiting for the Bad Guys to hunt you down and spit you like a pig.

Skilled in Love?

Solemnity of St. Dominic, Vespers: Philippians 1.3-8
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

We begin with an innocent question: are you skilled in love? Do you possess the distinguishing talents, the connoisseur’s gifts for hunting, finding, and cultivating love? If so, Paul is writing to you on this evening feast of St. Dominic, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion…” In fact, he is writing to all of us who are skilled in love, promising us the achievement of the Good Work, a sterling finish to the gospel race we have vowed to run. If we are to be graced love-makers, committed craftsman of our Lord’s saving charity—looking to our Dominican brothers and sisters: Jordan, Thomas, Catherine, Rose, Martin, fra. Angelico, Margaret, Lacordaire—if we are to light even the smallest fire among the wet woods of this wearying world, we will imprison our hearts and minds in the gracious, re-creating Word, defending and confirming with every word we speak the Good News of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no joy for us in anything less. Our fiery brother, Savonarola, preached the Lord’s Passion, saying, “Our preaching will be refined and not refined, yet everyone can receive it, particularly those skilled in love. Those who are not skilled will know their distance from Love.” And that distance we must make our own and then travel to those who do not yet know Love. Our sister, Catherine of Siena, preached this ministry, saying, “The soul in love with [the Lord’s] truth never ceases to be of service in a small enough way to all the world…” Surely, it is a small enough way for us to walk, gifted as we are with the work of preaching Christ Jesus and skilled in nothing less than giving voice and volume to the advent of our Father’s Kingdom! We can find those who do not yet know Love even when we ourselves forget to love, forget to be Love. From our long history, we Dominicans know that it is never enough for us merely to preach. We must be the preaching—with all our anxieties, human quirks, tongue-tied failures, and even the occasional cold heart. The sacred preaching is never just an imitation of Dominic. We do not channel Hyacinth or Peter of Verona from the pulpit. Love shapes each voice of the Word given the nature of the tongue that speaks it, so that all the syllables of the Gospel will find their artful expression. And all those skilled in love will hear One Word, One Voice, One Herald of the Good News.

Lord, on this solemn feast of our Holy Father, Dominic, free us from the silent death of fear and worry and jail us in your saving Word. Bring to perfection the Good Work you have begun in us and take us with ready hands and hearts to serve those who are not yet skilled in your Love. Amen.

The Promise of God, All in All

The Transfiguration: Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14; 2 Pet 1.16-19 & Luke 9.28-36
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

Listen here!

We can be transmogrified, transfinalized, transignified, transubstantiated, transferred, transfiliated, transported, and transposed. And we might even know exactly what happens to us when each of these occur. But to be transfigured somehow seems to move us—flesh and bone that we are—into the purely literary, pushing us into metaphor, not that we are speaking metaphorically but that we become that sort of figure that is changed, that sort of shaped-drawing that can be erased or redrawn. To be transfigured then is to be altered as a kind of expression, a “figure of speech” adjusted in use. No, that’s wrong. Thank God, that’s wrong! We might “trans” a “figure” when we re-write a metaphor in a poem or shift around a neat rhetorical phrase, but we do not celebrate this morning a literary event in the life of Christ. We celebrate nothing less than the revelation of the glory of God and the confirmation by Christ himself that his suffering and death would bring his faithful to the his Father’s Kingdom. The Preface of the Mass for the Transfiguration reads, “[Christ] revealed his glory to the disciples to strengthen them for the scandal of the cross. His glory shone from a body like our own, to show that the Church, which is the body of Christ, would one day share his glory.”

Keep in mind: the life, ministry, suffering, and death of Jesus is a living revelation of the Father’s plan for the completion of human history. Christ, therefore, as a person, is the efficacious revelation of the persons of the Trinity in history; he is, in other words, a “divine showing” that accomplishes what he shows.

What does Jesus show the apostles on Mt. Tabor and what does this showing accomplish? Christ’s transfiguration occurs a week after the conversation he had with the apostles about who people were saying that he, Jesus, really is. Predictably, Jesus was thought to be any one of the many prophets of the Old Covenant. Peter, however, confesses the true faith of the church, “You are the Christ, the Anointed One.” Christ then predicts his passion and death, warning his friends that they too would follow him in his suffering and glory. Rather omniously, Jesus says, “I tell you truthfully, there are some of those here who will not taste death before they have seen God’s kingdom.” The Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor is the fulfillment of that messianic promise.

Here we are in 2007. What does the Transfiguration mean now? It means exactly what it did 2,000 years ago…and more. Our Holy Father, Benedict, in his recent exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum caritatis, makes an astonishing claim for the power of the Eucharist. He writes, “[In the Eucharist,]…we enter into the very dynamic of [Christ’] self-giving. Jesus ‘draws us into himself.’ The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of ‘nuclear fission,’…which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all”(SacC 11). Pope Benedict is teaching us here that the transfigurative power of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is not limited those present for the Mass or the Church as a whole or even to all Christians or religious believers. The transfigurative power of the Eucharist extends out in fission—radiating, exuding, emanating from the center of the sacrifical offering on the altar out to the “heart of all being,” the cosmic altar of creation itself. God will be all in all.

In his second letter, Peter calls on his transfiguration revelation in support of the authority of his prophetic message: “We ourselves heard [God’s] voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.” This then, this direct revelation, this face-to-face promise of passion, death, and resurrection is no story. He writes: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ…” They were eyewitnesses to the accomplishing revelation, the efficiaous sign of our Father’s re-creating love: Jesus glorified in brilliant light, raised up and dazzling white.

We do not live according to “cleverly devised myths,” but according to the witness of the apostles and the strength of our trust in the promises of a mighty God. Out there, there is no reason to be frightened or silent, instead be “a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts!” Tell everyone what you have seen.

*The figure in the pic above. . .I've been told that Jesus depicted with butterfly wings is a traditional representation of the Transfiguration. Anyone know anything more about this?

An exit graceless and without mystery? [Revised]

18^th Sunday OT: Eccl 1.2, 2.21-23; Col 3.1-5, 9-11; & Luke 12.31-21
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

Listen here!

All things are vanity! Futile, wasted, useless. All things. Everything. Everyone. Looking squint-eyed into an endless summer morning, ruled first thing by asphalt-thawing heat, concrete-sweating humidity, and the knowing-despair that tomorrow and tomorrow in some mildewed future are already hotter and wetter than today will ever be—yes, easily we believe, “all things are vanity,” futile and mean against our best dreams for big tubs of ice, great bursts of dry Yankee air, and the chilly settling mists of October. And the Preacher, Qoheleth, himself as welcomed as a warm, moist blanket of wool in our Texas days of August, asks the question we have asked ourselves many times: “For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?” I work. I worry. I tear my body down, pushing uphill against chance, accident; defending against thieves and swindlers; dodging disaster one day, one day, one day; grieving my losses, celebrating my small wins, hoping for the more and the better that comes to me and mine, shaking, hesitating; and then: I die, abandoning it all to storage, to shiny new barns; fresh, newly anxious faces and smooth, eager hands; supplying the future’s hearts and minds with the fodder for fret and worry. What is the point?

Paul writes to the Colossians: “If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above…For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God…Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.” Do you hear Paul telling you to despise your life now? To turn away from your daily living—sleeping, eating, being friendly, raising kids?—is the great Apostle telling you to hate the body and its dirty but necessary functions? There is no salvation from the vanities of living in the hatred of life, in the despising of nature—all the good nouns and verbs of our Father’s Very Good Creation! We do not win a single race, not one contest against futility when we surrender one of our best means of knowing and loving God: knowing and loving His creatures, His creation.

Living among all the true, good, and beautiful things of our world, Paul warns us against the pride of believing that we rule here; that we hold the earth in its orbit and polish the glitter of the stars; that we breathe out the atmosphere, feed the trees, stoke the heat of summer and spring and make the leaves brown in autumn and the mist white in winter. We are warned against the greed of self-importance, the avarice of carving idols of our needs and wants and then shaping ourselves in the images and likenesses of what we unwisely think we most desire: full bellies, stuffed pockets, muddled minds, tranquilized hearts. Idol worshipers become their idols. And suffer their fate: the fires of the trash heap. This is foolishness! This is vanity!

In fact, it is worse than folly and vanity; it is deceit, lying. Paul writes: “[…]since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed […] in the image of its creator […] Stop lying to one another […].” We say we are reborn in baptism. That we have died with Christ and risen again in new light and in his glory. Do we look reborn? Do we work and love and fight and have kids and battle disease and learn and grow and win and lose and eat and sleep—do you do all of your living and your dying…reborn in Christ? If not, then truly, for you, all things are vanity; all of your days are sorrow and grief. A great misfortune.

The German poet, Rainier Maria Rilke, writing in 1905 in his collection, The Book of Hours, his love-poems to God, talks to God about His people: “Lord, the great cities are lost and rotting./Their time is running out…./The people there live harsh and heavy,/crowded together, weary of their own routines. […] Their dying is long/and hard to finish: hard to surrender/what you never received./Their exit has no grace or mystery./It’s a little death, hanging dry and measly/like a fruit inside them that never ripened.” Lost. Rotting. Harsh. Heavy. Crowded. Long, hard death—a little death. Dry. Measly. Lives like fruit never ripened. Is this the limit of the bounty we are called to in Christ Jesus? Is this the scarce basket of harvest? Is this what we get for our faith in Him, our hope in His promises, our love for Him and one another? Won’t you be glad to die after this misadventure, this funny little tragedy you have lived? Stop lying to yourself! You have taken off your old self and put on Christ, so that “when Christ your life appears, then you will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly”—your defiance of God’s will for you; your double-bound heart (whom do you serve?); your restless obsessions and compulsions; your need for vengeance, dominance, worldly success and admiration—any and every desire that is not a painful longing for God; take an axe to your idols—cultural celebrity, war at any cost, peace at any cost, your love of being owed something; burn the idols you have carved to your public image, to your duty and logic, to your safe loves and your tourist soul: “Jesus Christ” is the ONLY name given under God’s heaven for our salvation.

God said to the fool: “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Who gets the house, the safety deposit box, the cars, the jewelry, the bonds and the stock; who gets the property, the art collection, the dogs; who gets the silver, the furs, the cash? Who gets the grain and those shiny new barns? Who gets the anxiety, the vanity, the worry and fret? Better yet: who wants to hope, to love, to trust? To live free in the spirit of re-creating life? Who wants the treasure of a perfect vision of God? Who wants to store up riches in Christ Jesus? To spend the merits of heaven on mercy for the world? Who wants to run after God while He chases after you?

“Christ is all and in all” and you must find your life in Christ. Otherwise, what is the point? Let me be more direct: otherwise, what is your point? What is the point of You? If you have been raised with Christ, then run after what true knowledge, true success, true treasure. You can stand in your yard and curse the heat, the humidity, the sweat and tears of dogging your days in vain labor. You can. Or, you can change that vanity into a Christ-purpose, a godly goal of making yourself into a preacher of the gospel right where God has put you. You can die and leave the world your heart—small and measly, an unripened fruit—and we can forget you in your stored-up miserliness—your name on all those barns becomes an address. Or, you can leave us your life, generously lived as Christ among us, an image of the Son worthy of his Father!

You and I, we are called to a glory greater than creation and it is unworthy of our baptismal vows, our love for God and one another, to carve idols, to wallow in despair, to shout vainly at vanity, and to store-up against God’s generosity. So, stop lying! You have put off the old self and put on the new. Therefore, tell the truth: show us Christ!

Where did you get all this?

17^th Week OT(F): Leviticus 23-27, 34-37 and Matthew 13.54-58
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Serra Club Mass)

Listen here!

An obvious question to ask after reading this gospel: do we reject the prophets among us and their prophetic message b/c we know them too well? Do we fail to believe, choose not to believe b/c our familiarity with the messenger somehow taints the message? Notice also that those listening to Jesus the Prophet not only find his message incredible, they also treat him with contempt and then take offense at his audacity. You to have wonder if his reception would have been more serene if he had preached to the congregation something they wanted to hear. No preacher with his head attached in all the important places sets out to offend his listeners. And yet, Jesus manages to hit all the right buttons in these folks and then find himself set in the middle of an unbelieving crowd; their lack of faith strangling their miracles at birth. Do we reject the prophets among us and their prophetic message b/c we know them too well?

Your first objection here might be: “But, Father, I don’t know any prophets. How can I reject familiar prophets if I don’t know any?” But you do know prophets! You’re sitting in a church full of prophets right now. Priests, prophets, and kings baptized into the ministry of Christ as The Priest, The Prophet, The King. Yes, clean, well-dressed, elegantly educated and fragranced prophets but prophets despite their lack of grubbiness and stench. Prophets tell us and show us how to live now as if we were in heaven already. Their job is to constantly point us to our End. To keep us focused on our goal, to thump and jab us along the Way to Christ, reminding us at each step, each breath, each bit forward or backward that God never leaves us alone, never abandons us to our own limited skills and desires; that He never stops lifting us up and urging us to turn to Him, to re-turn to Him. Prophets are nags. Yes. But necessary ones.

Your second objection might be: “But, Father, none of these people have ever said anything remotely prophetic.” Maybe so. But let me ask you this: do you hear/listen prophetically? I mean, we talk constantly in Church about “seeing with the eyes of faith;” about putting on faith-glasses and looking at the world through the gospel first. Are your ears tuned to a prophetic frequency? Could you hear one of these many prophets remind you to drop some piece of petty nonsense in favor of the kingdom? To take on a piece of difficult work for your spiritual satisfaction and the good of the Body? Could you hear a prophet here sing your praises, call you by name, and then give you a prophetic word to preach, a message to spread without prejudice? What stops your ears from hearing? What stops your heart and mind from listening?

When you prophesy, it is perfectly reasonable for one of us to ask you, “Where did you get all this?” This might sound like incredulity but the question is more about authority than disbelief. Who authored that prophecy? Do you speak out of a true sense of our Father’s justice—one consistent with divine revelation and the tradition’s familial understanding of what justice is? Is your voice free of mere secular politics? Do you speak from the Body to the Body, or are you standing outside shouting at us? Are you working with the Church or against it? Is your prophecy true; meaning, do your words to us convey the beauty and goodness of God as we know Him together? Truly, now, are you speaking prophetically from the tradition of prophets or are you babbling eccentrically from your fantasies? Are you speaking out of a need to fix us or control us or to make us into your private image of Church? Where did you get all this? Prayer, fasting, lectio divina, works of mercy? Or do you speak out of self-righteous anger, liberal bourgeois entitlement, or some alien political philosophy?

If you speak the Word powerfully, with a contrite heart and all humility, your tongue will whisper directly to the ears that need that Word most. That Word will remain forever spoken b/c you have given voice to that which will not pass away.

Pic: Noah Buchanan, Surrender

Mama 'n 'em

Blessed Jane Aza: 1 Peter 4.7-11 and Mark 3.31-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Listen here!

Why is it that every time I hear Jesus say, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”—I hear another, louder, distinctly feminine voice from behind the crowd yell at him, “I’ll tell you who your mother is!” And then I see a large cast iron skillet soaring through the air and pinging Jesus right upside his head! Obviously, Jesus did not consider himself a southern boy. No southern boy in his right mind would 1) leave his mama and brothers standing outside the house and 2) question the identity of his mama where she could hear him! Who knows? Maybe Mark diplomatically skipped over the part of the story where Mary said to Jesus, “Boy, who do you say that I am? I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it!” Perhaps being a Jewish son is more like being a Southern son than I realized. . .regardless, far greater than mere genetics or civil law is the One Who makes us family to one another, making us brothers and sisters in Truth if not DNA.

Our love for one another through the Love of the Father and our obedience to His will for us, binds us indestructibly together into a tribe, a nation, a people, and a priesthood. For the better of our nature this means we are given the glad duty of serving one another in Christ’s name for his greater glory. For the darker pieces of our nature, we are given the law—human and divine—to carve our a place in this world relatively free from violence and violation, free from forced obligation and manipulation, a time and place when and where we can truly be children of the Most High, “generous distributors of [our Father’s] manifold grace[s].” For us to be proper franchises of the gospel’s excellent news for the world, “[our] love for one another must be constant” and all we do and say and leave undone and unsaid must course out of us “with the strength provided by God. Thus, in all of [us] God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ…!”

I was kneeling at the journal rack, reaching for a copy of the latest edition of the American Poetry Review. The guy standing next to me was listening to someone on his cell phone. I heard him say in a lost voice, “Yea, I’m alone.” And then, “At Barnes & Noble. Bored.” I wanted to stand, snap his cell phone in half, and tap him vigorously on the forehead, saying: “You are in a huge, seriously crowded bookstore, stocked with every conceivable kind of knowledge—art, poetry, science, philosophy—and you stand there and admit that you’re alone and bored!?” Exactly, bored and alone. And rather than risk an unregulated conversation with a person in person, he dials an easy voice on his cell and maintains the detachment his lazy spirit requires to feel safe, unviolated by any obligation to risk meeting someone else’s blessing or hurt or loneliness. Bored and alone: empty in the presence of Self and Other.

Christ did not come to us to entertain us and keep us company. It is not the purpose of the Church, his Body, to provide social activities and age-appropriate fun in order to stave off boredom and unwanted solitude. It is the purpose of the Church to make real, to give substance to abstracted love and mercy, to fill up the Body with vigorous service done in His name, to lure in and capture the empty hearts and wandering minds of our increasingly distracted and alienated people, to teach them and preach to them the Word of God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Our focus is here and now AND then and there, “on earth as it is in heaven!” Jesus couldn’t be clearer or more forceful: “Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.” Family in Truth if not in DNA; family bound in obedience to one Father, giving service to one another in His name, for His glory!

Scaring Angels

St. Alphonsus Liguori: Romans 8.1-4 and Matthew 5.13-19
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

Listen here!

What does it mean for us to live according to “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus”? This law—not the old and of the flesh but the fulfilled and of the spirit—this law “has freed [us] from the law of sin and death.” Any law that frees us from sin and death is a law worth knowing well. But do we know it well? Do we know it at all? Could we answer a simple question based on this saving law? If not, how are we to then live?

The old, fleshy law is simple enough to understand. Basically, it was an exchange, a divine-human covenant based on a contract that detailed obligations for both parties involved and carried with it both explicit and implicit duties and compensations—“I will be your God and you will be My people.” One was “faithful to the covenant” so long as one sacrificed at the temple, kept the kosher laws, observe the purity restrictions, etc. Any lapse, any relaxation was taken to be a sign of one’s failure to “keep faith.”

Since this law was “weakened by the flesh,” it was powerless to do what God did when He fulfilled this law in Christ Jesus. What do we mean when we say “the law was fulfilled”? This means that God took the old law, dragged it to its own final end and then made it possible for us to benefit from the work of the old law without the meeting all of the requirements of the law. In other words, God, by sending His Son in the flesh and giving him up to death, fulfilled all the sacrifices that the Old Law required, purified all food and utensils, released us all from the bondage of sin—something the Old Law was designed to do but failed b/c it required our constant faithfulness—and God made us holy (healed & whole) by adopting us as His sons and daughters, heirs to His kingdom.

Now, as sons and daughters of the Most High, we live out the New Covenant, fulfilling the spiritual law of life in Christ Jesus! We are back to the beginning. How do we do this, live out this law? Jesus is clear: “…not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” OK. Maybe not so clear. Do we follow the law or not? Yes, we do. But we follow the law as it is fulfilled in Christ Jesus; that is, we follow the law of love presented in the beatitudes, holding firm to the covenant of freedom in God that the old law expected of us but did not always provide. We follow this perfecting law as it is being perfected in Christ, anticipating its final fulfillment and our own, waiting against hope “until heaven and earth pass away.”

What do we do while we wait? Well, we don’t hide our hope nor do we let our faith in the Lord grow stale. Nor do we claim a secular liberty that is not true freedom in Christ. Nor do we work for others merely to gain favor or fame. Nor do we waste time with purity if we understand purity to be an end in itself. The Beatitudes fulfill the Ten Commandments; that is, the Sermon on the Mount is the miracle of Moses’ tablets from Mt. Sinai: God speaks and the Word streaks out, indelibly etching stone, wood, the flesh of the heart; carving in all creation the Word of re-creation, of return and completion.

Our joy must be so profound, so excessive and wild, that when we storm heaven, we frighten the angels! And here and now, our lives should be no different than our lives in heaven. Why would they be different? By choice? By accident? We do not hide our Christ light or flinch in fear or cringe away from the ugliness of this world, the pain and jeopardy of living. Your life and mine must be bright shining lamps set atop a tall stand. Not to be admired for the clarity of our shine but to be used for directions to divine safety. We are reference points on the way to God. Do we look the part? Act the part? More importantly, if someone were to ask you: how do I live the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? Would you be able to say to them with confidence, “Yes, I do. Just follow me and I will show you”?

Pic: Rebecca Newell

Weeds Among Us

St. Ignatius of Loyola: Exodus 33.7-11, 34.5-9, 28 and Matthew 13.36-43
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

Listen here!

Every gardener, every farmer, every owner of a yard knows that when you till up a patch of ground, fertilize it, water it, sow it carefully with seed, there’s an excellent chance that along with the strong stems and healthy leaves of the desired plants, there will grow choking weeds, undesirable sprouts that steal water, food, and sunlight from the Good Plants you intend to enjoy. Weeds are as inevitable as bugs! No lover of a neat, manicured lawn, however, just leaves the weeds to take root and flourish and flower, seeding all over carefully cultivated ground. Weeds are pulled, poisoned, chopped, hoed out, and cut off. And then these thieves are piled high, allowed to dry, and burned. Jesus tells the disciples that there will be those in his garden who try to steal Life from those who wish to flourish in his Word. These thieves he calls, “The Children of the Evil One” and they are sown by the Devil. What do we do with the weeds among us?

Think back to the parable where Jesus introduces the idea of the weeds among the good plants. The planter’s servants ask their master if they should pull the weeds before the harvest. The master says, “No, let them grow and I will tell the harvesters to cut them, separate them out, and burn them.” Why does he leave the weeds? Why does he let them flourish, potentially damaging the good crop? The master reasons, “Pulling the weeds while the good plants are young might damage the good plants more than the weeds ever could.” So, he lets both the good and the evil mature in his fertile ground, knowing that the evil will be dealt with in the end.

Does this parable need any further explanation? No, I don’t think so. But it does provoke a question for us: for those of us who tend to think of ourselves as Good Plants, how do we deal with the obvious weeds among us? Notice the dangerous assumption in this question: that we know how to identify weeds! Now, there are extreme cases of Weeds Among Us—for example, those who would see us become unitarian-universalists; or, those who would turn us into new-age Buddhists or Mother Goddess worshippers; or those who would the whittle the church into a tiny remnant of apocalyptic survivors. We may also readily point out the self-proclaimed prophets of public dissent and those who mock the sacraments—especially Holy Orders—by play-acting at ordination rites. And there are those who willfully take on the identity of Weeds by throwing themselves in front of any live camera or open mike and denouncing the Church’s centuries old moral tradition in the name of "liberty." Beyond these extremes—few and far between they are!—Good Plants and Weeds can look a lot alike. So, in the end we must humbly submit to the infallible judgment of our Lord in plucking the weeds and leaving the righteous at the time of harvest.

We aren’t helpless against the noxious effects of the weeds right now, however. True, we must be patient in waiting for the weeds to be pulled; but, we can minimize their damage to the garden by carefully tending to that which makes the garden fertile in the first place: God’s gift of growing His love in us. No, this is not some lame deflection or crippled sentimentality put up to serve a faint heart too weak to fight the Weeds! There is nothing faint-hearted or weak or sentimental about God’s love being perfected in us. Jesus says that on the day of harvest, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” No darkness, no shadow, no fleck of sin. Nothing contrary to the brilliance of the Father’s glory. Nothing stands against His end, His means, His perfection. For us then, we need only be living Christs for others in order to show the weeds their fate. While they suck life from the air and poison the ground, the Good Plants must be more deeply rooted, stand taller, produce more and better fruit, and be more beautiful in flower than any weed can.

Being right is not our witness. Being faithful to the end…that’s the testimony that will turn heads and change hearts.

You are a serial killer.

17^th Sunday OT: Genesis 18.20-32; Colossians 2.12-14; Luke 11.1-13

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

[NB. The strangest homily yet. . .]

Listen here!

We have all been dead…at one time or another, some time long ago, maybe, or just recently, but nonetheless dead for the hour and day of our surrender. We are dead alright, if not permanently so. Misquoting Paul, “And when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, Christ brought you to life along with him, having forgiven you all of your transgressions; obliterating the bond against you, he removed it from your living, nailing it to the cross.” What binds you so tightly to your transgressions that only nails and the cross can remove the binding from you? Who kills you over and over again?

You hear God answer out of the void, “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .”

You, right there. . .you are a serial killer. And you are your own fresh victim. The voice telling you to kill yourself with the blade of sin is the voice of merciless distance, of isolation and trial, of desolation and pain; it is the voice that will not call for help, will not cry out in grief or remorse, will not sing out one note of kindness or truth or godly praise. That voice can only repeat conspiracies, gossip, lies, suspicions, temptations, delusions of grandeur and meekness; that voice needles you about the scarcity of God’ love, the meager scrapes tossed at you from the Father’s abundant table. And, finally, that voice—as an icy whisper or a breathless flame—that voice repeats the First Lie, the primitive untruth from the garden’s serpent: “You can become a god without God; you don’t need Him to become Him; so, why not just kill Him off and get on with the business of living humanely, living w/o the One Who claims to have created you?”

Why do you listen to this sibilant voice? Do you need the control of being a serial killer? The predictability of being your own victim over and over again? Maybe you take some perverse pleasure in believing that God, our Father, would say something to you like: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” But why? What does believing that your Father in Heaven is bent on starving you or perhaps poisoning you, what does believing this lie buy you, spiritually? Does it make you appear special b/c God picks you out to hate, while loving the rest of us boring sheep? Does believing the lie give you permission to violate the Law of Love, the requirements of charity? Or perhaps you have tried to love God, but it all seemed so pointless—all that passion unrequited, wasted on a dead god?

If any of this is true for you or someone you know and love, let me ask you again: what binds you so tightly to your transgressions that only nails and the cross can remove the binding from you? What or who has that kind of power? I would suggest that it is not the traditional atheism of our modernist milieu—few people cling to a truly consistent atheism; it is not a passionate hatred of God—the Psalms are clear: even hatred of God is a kind of obedience, a form of needful listening. If Christ’s answer to his disciples’ request for instruction in prayer is any indication of how our problem is to be understood, then I would have to say that the voice of distance and pain is louder and more insistent for those of us who do not have an intimate relationship with Christ. Bottom-line: the voice of lies and temptations prays just like a good Christian ought, but the voice prays out into nothingness; but then again, so can the Christian—pray vainly, that is—if he or she has no basic relationship with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The Patristic theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, clears it up for us very neatly, “Prayer is intimacy with God.”

If intimacy with God is lacking in your spiritual life, then how easy is it for you to believe that He would answer your most solemn prayers with: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” Without intimacy every answer sounds like cold silence. Anything you might hear sounds like rejection, abuse in echo. Anything you might receive turns rancid, poisonous. Blessings turn to curses. Prayers to scoldings. Sacrifices begin to look like religious parodies. And your whole spiritual life becomes a self-composed theatrical farce complete with cheap costumes, clichéd dialogue, and a director with his time, talent, and treasure focused on something, someone, ANYONE, much, much better and more deserving than you! If there is no intimacy, that is, no honesty, no frank confession, no confidence or caring, no earnest desire for perfection or the trials that come with being perfected; if there is no craving in your body and soul for God’s presence in your life. . .then, God is dead…for you. You remain transgressive and uncircumcised in your flesh.

However, if you want intimacy with God, look to your baptism. You were buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him through the power of the Father. And what you must come to understand, believe, and act upon is the truth that even when you are dead, Christ brings you along with him to share his life with you; to lift you up above sin, above rebellion and despair, forgiving your transgressions, and taking, oh so firmly seizing, the bond of sin against you and nailing it to the cross! That which opposes your health, attacks your peace, rattles your trust; that which whispers rich temptations in your ears and shows your eyes delightful evils; that which cannot bear the loneliness of Its own pride and wants us as submissive pets and playthings, that which wills our destruction is seized and nailed to the wood of the cross.

We can ask Jesus to teach us to pray b/c we can now pray from our fertile hearts. We can call God “Our Father,” b/c He is the Author of our lives. We can take our place as heirs at His table b/c He has adopted us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We are co-workers in the coming Kingdom, partners in creation; He feeds us, forgives our sins as we forgive others, and protect us from the final test of our trust in His mercy. And more: we already have every blessing we will ever receive from God, every goodie, every prayer answered. You have already received. Now ask from your unbounded heart what you need. The door is already there. Knock and it will open. With God, seeking is finding b/c Who we seek most intimately never hides. In pride and fits of spiritual temper, we close our eyes and ears and then claim that He disappears. That is not His voice saying to you: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” That’s your voice and your words, my voice and my words, trembling and speaking out of a fear of abandonment. God is love and will not abandon us. That is not prophecy; it is promise. But if it is fear you need to push you toward Love, then fear the timeless vacuum, the tolling emptiness of your own voice, praying like a choked cathedral bell for all eternity: ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. . . . .

The Good News? Christ is dead for our sins. He gathered our transgressions and died with them. Paul says that he took the bond against us and “removed it from our living.” He rose from the dead and brought us along. He ascended into heaven and opened the Way for us to follow in our time. Why would we fear? Why would we resist? Don’t! We are held sweetly in the palm of Divine Love Himself. Know and do His truth in this world. Pray for what He has already given you—His name, His home, His kingdom, His will for us, His creation—both heaven & earth, His very being day to day, His forgiveness, His power to forgive, His promise of power over temptation, and our final end: He gives us Himself.

Love is a kind of knowing...

16^th Week OT(F): Exodus 20.1-17 and Matthew 13-18-23
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas


Listen here!

I just kept praying that the numbers and letters would start speaking to me, start saying something to me about how they worked or played or lived together…anything, anything at all to help me put a mark in the vast white space next to the algebraic formula: ax² + bx = c. The Muses were quiet that day. The gods of Math were napping. Even St. Baudhāyana, priest-discoverer of geometric solutions to Pythagorean linear equations and father of the demon algebra that tortured me that day in high school, even he was silent in witness to my despair. Finally, having reached the logical conclusion that prayer would not help me understand nor would crying, complaining, appealing to the charity of my teacher, threatening my health, the health of my teacher, nothing, nothing would help me to grasp the truth of the beauty of algebra, nothing; after these flashes of enlightenment, I surrendered to the problem itself, just gave up; I let the equation have its way with my impatience, my stubbornness, my irrational fear of math, and when I did, the numbers slipped into the letters perfectly, the solution just “fell out” of the equation…and I was saved.

I could see. I could hear. But I did not understand. I had knowledge but no wisdom; I knew, but I did not love. And love is that kind of knowing that makes the Word spoken to our ears and shown to our eyes, open—accessible, useful, complete, and nearly irresistible. I came to understand that perplexing algebraic formula by releasing my hatred of math, my determination to control the outcome; by surrendering my impatience and annoyance with the feeling of stupidity the formula imposed on my over inflated sense of myself as a “smart kid.” Literally, I gave up. And my vision cleared so that I could see the solution and my deafness exploded into sound so that I could hear my teacher talk sense to me. I barely touched Love that day. Just lightly brushed against love in coming to understand algebra. Understanding the Word sown, on the other hand, requires that we soak ourselves in love until we are indistinguishable from it. What else will nourish the seed?

Think about it this way: the Word is tossed to you, sown in your heart for nourishment and growth—what will it find there to take root in, to draw food from, to flourish and bloom out of? In other words, what lives in your cardiac tabernacle? Around what or whom does your physical and spiritual life rotate? Will the Word land hard on a stone of anger and resentment? Will it land on the ever-shifting, never faithful sands of compromise and deceit? Will it land on the mushy, rotting glop of sentimentalism, excessive passion, and intellectual indolence? Or will the seed of the Word find itself sown on rich soil but surrounded by the poisonous thorns of envy, pride, disobedience, dissent, and a lust for violence? The Word might grow in any of these, but the fruit it bears would be ugly, bitter, and very likely deadly.

Only Love can feed the seed of the Word in you what it needs. If the seed lands in your tabernacle and finds there: a boundless hope; an unequaled trust; deeds soaked in mercy; a longing for the blinding beauty of God’s face and a thirst for His goodness and truth; an excitement about witnessing Christ to the world; a passion for justice and peace; if the seed lands in the rich soil of your heart and discovers there this brilliant garden, then your yield for the Kingdom will be thirty, sixty, one hundredfold what it would be otherwise.

You can fight the formula, staring at the blank page for hours, waiting for a miracle, willing an easier, more convenient solution. Or, you can surrender now and find all your blank pages filled with the Word. Hear the parable of the sower: you must be richly prepared to be planted with God’s Word. Soak your soil in love then until you are indistinguishable from Love Himself.

Pic Credit: Melissa Hirsch

Fat Hearts Cannot See or Hear

SS. Joachim and Anne: Sirach 44.1, 10-15 and Matthew 13.16-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing? If you see and hear what the prophets and the righteous have longed to see and longed to hear but do not, cannot, then you are blessed! But what is it that blessed eyes and blessed ears see and hear that the prophets and the righteous do not? They see Christ and hear the Word; they know Jesus and love his gospel. To both see and hear Christ Jesus is both to know and to love God and His creatures, both to be and to do the truth, both to desire and be given beauty. Though prophets and the righteous could see and hear, they will not see and hear b/c they are prophetic and righteous. The overshadowing of the soul, the possession of the spirit by the Holy Spirit so that Christ Jesus is revealed, this revelation of power and might is a gift. Never earned. Never merited. Never traded for. Given. Gifted. Graced to us by God the Father so that we might take His blessings and then grow as His prophets, as righteous people who see and hear.

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing?

Jesus tells his disciples that he uses parables to teach b/c of the unwillingness of those in the crowd to see and hear with hearts that understand. He reports that this difficulty fulfills a prophecy of Isaiah: “You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes…” Gross is the heart of this people? Gross? Fat. The Hebrew word here means “fat” and implies all the vices the ancient Jews would attach to being “fat”: dullness, sluggishness, laziness, being overindulged, and lethargic.

A spiritually “fat” heart cannot help the eyes see or the ears hear the perfection of the Lord’s teachings. Why? Such a heart is busy eating the junk calories of our info-tainment nation; scarfing down the greasy morsels of celebrity comedies and relishing the coming of their inevitable tragedies; busy shoveling in piles of factory-made, color-coded, Xeroxed and collated political opinion and its performance in the circuses of broadcast theatre; busy swallowing a Panic Culture bred and birthed so that safety can be sold as salvation and suppressed fear repackaged as security; busy wallowing in a brain-stupor, an intellectual mire induced by injections of freedom w/o truth, liberty w/o responsibility, and rights w/o limits. A fat heart so grossly obesed in the antithesis of Christ’s liberating Word cannot help the eye to see or the ear to hear.

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing?

If you look around you and see the face of God in your neighbors; if you look around and see Christ present to his church; if you listen and hear the Word spoken among your neighbors with clarity and strength; if you listen and hear the witness of the saints, those long gone and those among us still; if you see the beauty of the Blessed Trinity working in your life and the lives of those you know and love; if you hear the voice of God calling you to greater and greater charity—THEN you see with the eyes and hear with the ears of a blessed heart. The alternative is for you to sink uncelebrated into the sewage, the ruins of sin and despair. Your heart, your constant focus on Christ, was given to you at baptism and strengthen in the anointing of confirmation and is exercised in the celebration of the Eucharist. Don’t let it get fat snacking on the debris of our exhausted culture. Keep it strong in prayer, strong by works of mercy, and strong pumping the Word of God through your body! Be the disciple you were made to be: ripped, shined to a buff sheen, and busting at the seams to witness for our Lord.

Drinking from Jesus' cup

Feast of St. James: 2 Cor 4.7-15 and Matthew 20.20-28
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving, TX

Listen to this homily here!

Living in a democracy founded on the philosophical principles of Enlightenment Europe, I’m not sure we have much experience in this country with our rulers lording their authority over us. At least none of our experiences, if we’ve had them, measure up much, I bet, to the sort of oppressive suffocation of the human spirit I witnessed in communist China in 1990. Every second guarded against suspicion. Every word crafted to fit ideology. It seemed that nothing escaped the black-hole gravity of the state’s need to master its own people, making them servants by birth, accidental slaves to the political and economic jackboots of leftist Fascism and collectivist poverty. Now, I doubt the mother of the sons of Zebedee is hoping that Jesus will give her sons this kind of absolute power. But, like most of modern citizens of the Enlightened world now, she was probably thinking then, “Given the choice: it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” It is better to be the master than the servant. Jesus has a slightly different idea for his church.

Jesus says that the great ones among the Gentile rulers make their authority over their people felt. Then he says, “…it shall not be so among you.” Greatness in the Body will be determined by one’s willingness to be a slave in the service of others. Authority will flow from servanthood not heredity or wealth or connections but from following Christ’s destiny as the final servant of all in his sacrifice on the cross. He says, “[I] did not come to be served but to serve and to give [my] life as a ransom for many.” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained;…always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus…so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

To carry the dying of Christ is to carry his last act as a slave sent to serve. To manifest in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus is to take on a life of servitude to others. We are to witness as the apostle did—to death, if necessary. We are to stand up and serve even when perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, b/c though we maybe troubled by enemies, we are not driven to despair; we are not abandoned; we are not destroyed. In fact, we serve, we witnesses against persecution and the darkness of sin, “knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us […] in his presence.”

In Lumen gentium our bishops teach us that the People of God is one, “…sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity…[we] are all 'one' in Christ Jesus…”(n. 32). And one in Christ, we have the same vocation to service in the Body and out, to the Church and to the world, and though the practicalities are different for each according to his or her ministry, the service you render is rendered as Christ for Christ—by you, a member of his body, and in his name.

Sounds good. What’s the catch? No catch, just a question: Jesus asks you, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”

Pic credit: Paul Soupiset

Something Greater Than...

16^th Week OY (M): Exodus 14.5-18 and Matthew 12.38-42

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Listen to this homily here!

All things have been handed over to Christ by his Father, so there is something greater than Solomon here. There is something greater than the Temple here. There are many things to be worried and anxious about, but there is need of only one thing. Mary, Martha’s sister, chooses it as the better part, knowing that whoever does not take up his or her cross and follow after Jesus is not worthy of him. Those least worthy of him, the evil and unfaithful generations that seek after signs, some wizardly proof from Jesus that he is who he says he is, these obstinate hearts claw at him for spectacular verification; despite their desperation, the only sign that these generations will receive is the sign that Nineveh received in Jonah: the death and resurrection of a prophet of God in three days. Truly, there is something greater than Jonah here!

If the Pharisees and scribes were sincere in their desire to see a sign of Jesus’ credentials as the Messiah, we might be a little more sympathetic to their skepticism. I mean, if they were truly, at the heart of doubt, fighting to say YES to God’s self-revelation in Christ Jesus, we might argue, “Come on, Jesus: just one little miracle, one small healing to boost them on over the top of fear.” But Jesus’ own description of these guys—“an evil and unfaithful generation”—pretty much tells us that their motivation for seeking after signs is rotten. They do not seek a sign to doubt-proof a firm faith. They are seeking a logical sign, a political sign, some indication from Christ that it is safe either to join up with him or dangerous even to be seen near him. They are calculating their trust, running their faith through the numbers, trying to weight the odds and waiting for the argument to slant in favor of or against belief.

Seeing these gamblers’ machinations, Jesus says to them, “You had Solomon, the Temple, Jonah and Nineveh. And now, you have something greater than Solomon’s wisdom; greater than the Temple’s access to God; greater than the clarity of Jonah’s sign, and the witness of the Ninevites’ repentance b/c of him, and still you harass me for a sign!” Evil. Unfaithful. If you roll dice to trust God, expect the odds to be against you…always. Why? B/c trusting God is never about probabilities; it is always about possibilities and more than just “what if’s,” it is about His promises—not lab experiments, not geometric proofs or formulas, not even good ole Reason with all of her properly graced power to reveal and to convince. There is something here greater than all of these!

Jesus says that the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s preaching and repented. He says that Queen Sheba traveled “from the ends of the earth” to witness first-hand Solomon’s wisdom. And he says that the “men of Nineveh” and “the queen of the south” will “arise with this generation and condemn it” b/c they are calculating the odds of trusting the only sign they need of God’s promise to save them: Jesus Christ. If we could put words to Jesus’ frustration, he might ask: “How can anyone so misunderstand what faith means to us and requires of us?” I wonder. . .

How do you calculate your faith? Weigh the odds? How do you covertly test God to see if He’s paying attention to you? What conditions have you placed on loving your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you seeking after, waiting around for some greater sign than Christ himself: a weeping statute, a rosary turned to gold, maybe an appearance by Mary on the side of barn? Or maybe you wait for the trendiest philosophers of religion to tell you it is now fashionable again to believe. Fides ex auditu! Believe because you have heard. Heard the witness. Heard the Word spoken and heard the Word speak. Don’t gamble on signs! Invest in mutual affection and trust: when you hear his voice, soften your heart and welcome in his saving wisdom.

Image credit: Probability