The Resurrection! So what?

St Andrew Dung-Lac & Companions: 1 Mac 6.1-13 and Luke 20.27-40
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

Our salvation as members of the Body of Christ is not a rescue operation. We are not like those cruise ship adventurers in the Antarctica who needed to be pulled from the ice flows: in immediate danger of death, helpless to help ourselves, and desperate for someone, anyone to throw us a life-line. Neither is our salvation as member of the Body of Christ a matter of “Me and Jesus,” just me and the Lord tooling around heaven on our private cloud, a VIP life in eternity where my boy Jesus takes care of me. Our salvation as members of the Body of Christ is a matter of the resurrection of the body, both mine and ours. Yours and ours. We are saved corporately. And the dogma of the resurrection of the dead, of the flesh, of the body spells this out for us. Our life here together prefigures or presages our perfected lives together in the Beatific Vision. We have died together in the waters of baptism. We have risen together out of those same waters. We live a new life together now as new creations, and though we will each die, we will rise again. From the dead? Yes. In the flesh? Yes. As a body? Yes. And we will do all of this b/c our God is a God of the living not the dead. Why? For God “all are alive.”

We would need several days and lots of good, strong Starbucks coffee (or several bottles of good bourbon!) to work our way through the biblical, philosophical, theological history of and all the nuances of what it means for us to be raised from the dead as a body in the flesh. Dogmatically, we know this will happen. What will this resurrection look like? I mean, with camcorder in hand and a crystal clear digital mpeg file to review later, what would a person rising from the dead actually look like? We have no idea. Well, that’s not entirely true. It would look like Jesus’ vacating his Good Friday tomb, but do we really know what that looked like? No. We only know that the tomb was empty on Easter morning. Nothing remained of our Lord but his burial garments and the inferno of faith possessed by those who spread the Good News of his departure. We know this: without the resurrection of Christ from the dead as a body in the flesh, there is no resurrection of his Body, the Church. We remain in the grave, dead and decomposing. We thrive then on the hope of our resurrection; that is, we prosper, abundantly flourish on the sure knowledge that just as we have died with Christ, risen with Christ, and lived with him to become Christ for others, our hope is that we will rise again with him on the last day.

So what? Good question. Here’s another good question: do you live right now “as if” you were already resurrected? Are you a glorified person? One who is radiant with the glory of God? Are you an indisputable sign of Christ’s coming, his death, and his rising from the dead? We can argue endlessly about the physics and metaphysics of our resurrection, but the point for us now, this morning, is take seriously, deadly seriously, how we live these gifted-hours as women and men who accept the Lord’s promise of eternal life. Are you living an eternal life now? Dependent on God’s generosity? Loosed from the bonds of rebellious passion? Freed from the death of sin? Are you a child of the living God, the One for Whom “all are alive”? If not, then you will end your gifted-days with King Antiochus, crying on your death-bed, “I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying in a foreign land bitterly grieved.”

Philosophy's Evil Twins

UH? What!

There are a couple of new additions to the Wish List! Mostly continental philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.

One thing is becoming crystal clear to me: I am WAAAAYYYYYYY behind in the reading for this area. Unlike Anglo-American philosophy, continental philosophy is heavily historical and literary. While the analytical tradition that tends to dominate in the US/UK is heavily mathematical and scientific.

This means that it is far easier to "catch up" with the analytical tradition than it is with the continental.

Of course, I chose the more difficult path. . .sigh. . .

Authority as God would have it

St. Pope Clement of Rome: 1 Peter 5.1-4 and Matthew 16.13-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

We could spend the day just listing the legion of challenges and difficulties facing the contemporary church. How the church, universal and local, responses will be calibrated each time either to push back against our bullies or to turn the cheek and accept insult. The universal difficulty that faces the church in these tumultuous times is the crisis of authority, that is, the general, wholesale rejection—inside and outside the family—the rejection of the Church’s ministry in defining and defending, in teaching and preaching the truth of the apostolic faith. We could spend tomorrow listing all the reasons for this rejection. But let’s cut to the chase and talk about the one reason we can directly confront and fix: the failure of ecclesial authority to define, defend, teach and preach as Christ himself did.

Matthew reports that Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” We would expect this question and its subsequent answer to lead Jesus to teach his friends and students the nature of the Son of God and Man. Rather than launching into a lecture on the Messiah, Jesus takes a decidedly different tact when Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus asks his question of ALL the disciples, only Peter answers. Turning to Peter alone, Jesus says to him that only the Father could reveal such wisdom and because of this revelation to Peter, he, Jesus, gives to Peter, the Rock, the keys to the kingdom; that is, the authority and power to “bind and loose” on earth and in heaven. In Jewish terms, Jesus is making Peter his household steward, giving him the keys to the palace pantry, treasury, and troops. “Binding and loosing” refers to the authority of the rabbis to declare doctrine either true or false. With the “keys to the kingdom” and the authority to “bind and loose,” Peter, the Rock, is made vicar of Christ on earth.

Peter, in his first letter, writes to his fellow priests, as a “witness of the sufferings of Christ,” that they, his priestly co-workers, must be exemplary shepherds, tending God’s flock “willingly” not by constraint, “not for shameful profit but eagerly” as God Himself desires it. In other words, priestly authority must be wielded FOR the people and not against the people; for the truth and beauty of the faith and not for personal wealth or power, for public celebrity, overblown ego, or career advancement. The scandal of authority raises its ugly, lying head most dangerously in clerical narcissism—the use and abuse of the gifted-keys for MY glory, for MY elevation, for MY Self, bloated and callous, hungering after attention and fame. Priestly authority, used for this purpose, will divide the church, destroy the preaching, deny God’s people the truth of their faith, and ultimately, kill the spirit of both the shepherd and his flock. Our own “crisis of authority” is less about the failure of the Father’s good sheep to obey (the failure to listen) but more about the failure of our shepherds to lead in the way that “God would have it.”

How would God have His priests and bishops lead? Peter’s answer, “You are the Christ…” does not lead Jesus to expound a theology of the Messiah. Peter’s answer, “You are the Son of the living God” leads Jesus to appoint Peter to the office of vicar, steward of the kingdom, Rock for the church! Peter and his co-workers draw the fresh water of ecclesial authority from a deeply seeded trust, a root system of flourishing faith and love, and they branch out, across the church and the world, to speak the Word, to teach and preach The Truth that liberates. It is out of the deep well of abiding love for Christ and his people that any priest, any bishop draws the power to announce the Good News, to admonish and correct error, to set right those wandering away from the beaten path of our ancestors in faith. For a priest or bishop to use that well to slake a thirst for power, for fame or glory, or to puff up a failing ego is to drink his own destruction. And what is more scandalous for legitimate authority, what could throw on the path of the Way a stone larger than one of Christ’s apostles self-destructing before the eyes of the world?

Peter, the Rock, admonishes his priestly co-workers, “Do not lord [your authority] over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.” Show them Christ and they in return will show you redeeming love.

Vocations Crisis, vocations prayer

My Pod-O-Matic account is quickly filling up, so I've been reviewing older podcasts and pondering which can be erased. . .

. . .in my reviewing, I ran across "An Exhortation for Vocations" from a year back. Listening to it again, I am more convinced than ever that my sense of the "crisis" is dead-on.

I work one-on-one with a number of young men here at U.D. who feel the call to ordained ministry but who also feel plagued by doubt, fear, and hesitation. Some of this anxiety is formed in ignorance of the what being priest is all about. Some is formed b/c of family pressures or peer expectations. But for the most part, their anxiety is about not having the Certainty that they think they need to say YES.

Once again, I want to suggest a different way to pray for vocations to the priesthood. We demonstrate a certain lack of faith in our Father's generosity when we ask Him to send us more vocations. He is sending us more than enough men to serve as priests. The crisis is a crisis of courage on the part of those called. So, we need to pray like this:

Father, we know that you give us all that we need
to grow in holiness, to come to Christ whole and pure,
and to live with you forever.

Father, we accept as a blessing for your church
all the young men you have called to serve
as priests; we give you thanks for this
abundance and ask you to encourage
their hearts to say YES to your call.

Send your Holy Spirit among them,
drive away their anxiety, fear, hesitation,
and doubt and show them the work
they have to do among your people.

With all gratitude, Father, we lift up
your call to service and give you thanks
and praise for the ministry of our priests.
Keep them holy, keep them strong.

We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen.

The theological basis for this prayer is the immediate acceptance of our Father's blessings even when those blessings are not immediately evident. A gift cannot be a gift until it is accepted as such. This is why we say "amen" when given the Body and Blood at communion. When the minister says, "The Body of Christ" and we say "Amen," we are accepting as fact and blessing that we are eating the Father's gift of the Body of Christ.

The promise becomes an offering and our acceptance of the offering makes the promise a gift. When we pray for "more vocations," we are in effect saying, "Lord, you are not providing for us. Send us more!" We need to accept that our Father always gives us enough. Accept the blessing He has given us. And offer thanks and praise! I'm convinced that we must see vocations work in this light.

God bless, Fr. Philip, OP

Video for the Angelicum

Check out this video promoting the Angelicum. . .my soon-to-be alma mater and employer. . .

Though I am excited about going to Rome to study and teach at the Angelicum. . .I am worried about the living conditions, meaning, specifically, I am very worried about the lack of A/C! I am VERY hot-natured. Pretty much any day above 65 degrees is too hot for me.

Hated for Jesus' Sake

33^rd Sunday OT(C): Malachi 3.19-20; 2 Thes 3.7-12; Luke 21.5-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Monastery of Mary the Queen, Elmira NY

It was a Friday afternoon after school. We were right outside the Ms Shear’s house—she was the one with the indoor pool with that the glass roof. She would open her gates and let us run our bikes down her driveway into the dead-end cove. At the bottom of the driveway that Friday just as I was spinning around to ride back up, my best friend, Teddie asked me, “Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” I stared at him for a second, mildly embarrassed, murmured something unintelligible, and headed back up the hill. He followed and asked me at the top, “Have you ever heard of the Tribulation?” No. “The Second Coming of Jesus.” No. “The Rapture?” No. “The war at Armageddon?” No. He stared at me, open-mouthed. I felt like a circus-freak, an dime-store exhibit, one of those werewolf boys or eight-legged cows you see at the state fair. And just as I was starting to think Teddie was going to slap a sign on me and start selling tickets, he said, “You need to come to Vacation Bible School at Fremeaux Ave. Baptist Church.” I distinctly remember his tone. He pronounced this possibility like a highly-effective cure for a particularly ugly disease, like suggesting radical plastic surgery to the eight-legged cow or laser-hair removal for the werewolf boy. Vacation Bible School will fix ten-year old-Jesus-stupid-Philip.

Jesus knows how to get and hold the attention of a crowd. Pointing to the temple, the very heart of the Jewish people, he says, “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone…” And the people wonder, “Teacher, when will this happen?” Notice how Jesus answers. Typically, Jesus doesn’t answer the question asked of him; rather, he answers the question we would ask if we were less clueless! Rather than tell the crowd who or what destroys the temple, or how the temple is destroyed, or even when it is pulled down, Jesus says, “See that you are not deceived, for many will come in my name, saying ‘I am he’ and ‘The time is come.’ Do not follow them!” This isn’t an answer. And neither is any of the rest of his response. War. Famine. Earthquakes. Awesome sights and mighty signs. Persecutions of the church. These have been going on since the beginning of the Church. Before the Church even. And long after her founding. And not only that, but the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans some seventy years after the resurrection of Christ, making this passage from Luke’s gospel essentially an interesting but ultimately pointless historical curiosity for us in 2007, right? Wrong! Jesus’ response to the crowd is an answer to the ages. To us. He is speaking to us right now.

You see, our faith, done right, is a dangerous thing. It is a worm in the shiny apple of the world. A pest that buzzes ‘round the emperor’s head. Our faith is a still small voice that never stops whispering for the Lord’s justice. Never stops praying for the world’s sick, hungry, lonely, oppressed, sinful. Our faith, our firm trust in the Lord and our sure hope of resurrection, annoys; it burns to clean; it names those who would set themselves on the altar of the temple, and it pulls down the idols of the stomach. Through our faith we see clearly, hear cleanly the chaos and racket of a world infused with the spirit of the Now and the New. Easy salvation. Cheap grace. No-challenge Church. Invent as you go, believe as you wish, do as you please. Please yourself, please me! Here’s a new prophet, a new priest to tickle our ears, to scratch our curiosities. I am he. The time has come. I am he. The time is now. The time is new. I am he who comes in the name of the Lord. I am he whose time is now and I come in the name of a new Lord!

Do not be deceived. Do not follow him. Or her. Or it—a spiritual program, a method, a style or a fashion, a theological trend, or a “new thing in prayer,” the latest thing to demand your allegiance, your time and energy, your soul. Do not be deceived by easy fixes, quick cures, elaborate models of living the faith, or fanciful devotions that take your eyes from Christ. Do not be deceived by the shiny, flickering world of cable-TV commerce or media-born politics or the brain-rotting candy of cultural relativism. Your faith is old. Your trust in the Lord is sparkling new. For us, Christ is the wisdom of the ages. Always fresh, always innovative, always the original.

So, Jesus-stupid-Philip went to Vacation Bible School. A week of verse-memorization, macaroni art, disciple-tag, fevered altar calls in church, intense pressure to “come to Jesus.” On the last day, I caved. I walked the aisle to the rail. In a Baptist version of confession, I muttered a few sins to the preacher. He asked me if I accepted Jesus into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior. I said, “Yes.” But I thought, “Sure. Anything to get outta here!” Later, Teddie asked me if I felt different. I said, “No. Not really.” Again, he stared at me like I had grown a third eye. He said sadly, “Well, you didn’t get saved then. You would feel it.” All I could do was shrug and say, “Maybe next time.” He showed me the Book of Revelation where the blood of those killed in the war against the Beast flowed as high as a horse’s bridle. He pointed to the whore of Babylon and told me that was really the Catholic Church. He read out to me the parts about the angels and the seven seals and the ten-headed dragon and the number 666. And he managed to scare Jesus into me. Or maybe he scared me into Jesus.

Jesus warns us that we will be persecuted. Arrested and executed for our faith. This was made clear to me by Teddie when he showed me the chaos of the apocalypse. The energy, the fervor of his belief propelled me to seek out, to question, to look more deeply into the faith. I didn’t stop at the fundamentalist vision of the end times. I kept reading, praying, asking questions. And I found the Church…eventually. Before that though I let every alien philosophy out there, every puny little god with a creed and a priest tell me how to live. We are the Church, the Body of Christ. We are his Body and Blood. The blood of the martyrs’ faith. The faith of our ancestors in covenant with the Father. And a Father who has not abandoned us to novelty, to trendy religious nonsense. We are given the word of wisdom against whom no adversary can stand. We are given the trust of the Creator and His recreating Love. On these, we endure. With these, we persevere. And what promise we do have? This one: “You will be hated b/c of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” Nothing cheap or easy about that!

Pic credit: John B. Wright

Miscellany, etc. & etc.

Miscellany & Commentary. . .as I browse around the Net catching up. . .

Transformed. Citing a story in the UK Telegraph on the "failure" of women in the Anglican priesthood, Uncle Di does his usual excellent job of dissecting the issues:

"It's true that women have made an immense and invaluable contribution to Christian churchmanship in recent years, but this contribution has nothing whatsoever to do with ordination. It is a consequence of the Internet, which has brought readers together with part-time and non-professional writers -- many of whom write nonsense, but many of whom on the contrary are women of deep piety, insight, and wisdom, and whose thoughts had little chance for expression fifteen years ago.

But women's ordained ministry, even on its own terms, has been an undeniable flop. Putting aside the fact, enunciated by Catholic doctrine, that sacramental priesthood is void for women, one might still expect that the opportunities provided by non-sacramental ministries would have thrown up someone of substance -- or at least lasting influence -- over the past couple decades. Yet we find no Margaret Thatchers and no Hannah Arendts and no Jeanne Kirkpatricks among the clergy but, in their place, a inordinately high number of women who are just plain daft.

[. . .]

The flakiness of women ministers is a flakiness with a characteristic edge to it. It flirts with paganism and expresses itself with a facetious worldliness. I suspect this is partly due to the fact that the churches that ordain women are pro-abortion, which means the whole spiritual dimension of maternity must be amputated. The glint of the new-sharpened knife is never far from their feminism. And as if by compensation for this ideologically obedient cruelty, the same persons often display a quasi-pagan sentimentalism about nature. Katharine Jefferts Schori, we're told, dresses like a sunrise, and many other priestesses cultivate a rapturous 'wind in the face' emotivism that takes the place orthodox Christian liturgy gives to the worship of God."

Margaret Sanger. A telling pic of the foundress of Planned Parenthood drawing inspiration from her philosophical and political roots.

Humility and Hospitality. Tom K. has up a nice little reflection on the gospel from the 32nd Sunday OT. We should all write to Tom and encourage him to produce homily helps for preachers. . .he's a Dominican after all!

Ratzinger, Scripture and the development of doctrine. Mike L. has a great post up about our Holy Father's take on the interpretation of scripture. In fact, most everything I read on Mike's site is great. You need to add him to your blogroll if you haven't already!

With theologians like these. . . Gerald has up a post on Elizabeth Johnson's receipt of an award from Barry University's theology department. Just google E.J.'s name for all the reasons you will need for why this was a bad idea. Should anyone think that E.J.'s "theology" is out of the ordinary in contemporary academic theology circles these days, I got news for you: she's tame. Downright old-fashioned even. E.J. represents the Feminist Academic Establishment-- mainline 70's political feminism, "work within the system to change it," language=reality, so change the language and you change reality. Pretty boring stuff, actually. If you want the really, REALLY cutting edge theology, you need to be reading Richard Kearney's work, or Robert Barron's. Both of these guys are very well-read in literature and use novels, poems, films, etc. in their theological and philosophical work. Just darned good reads.

Fr. Z links to a pastoral letter written by Bishop Arthur Serratelli (Paterson, NJ) to his priests, exhorting them to be faithful to the rubrics of the liturgy. I think the Good Bishop has it all exactly right. . .well, except for that stuff about religious priests needing to wear an alb over their shiny white habits. . .

Dutch Dominicans. Fr. Ed Ruane, OP, Vicar for the Master of the Order of Preachers, has written a response to that brochure our Dutch brothers published earlier this year. If you will recall, the Dutch OP's were arguing that the Catholic Mass should become a Protestant memorial service, complete with lay presider (even in the presence of a priest) who is rotated out on a weekly basis. Fr. Ruane is a great Dominican and excellent theologian. . .but I have to say that the statement is a bit anemic. Of course, politics being what they are. . .

Also, I've added a few items to the PHIL & THEO Wish List. My mom bought me my Christmas gift back in May, so now I have to hit Pop up for a book or two before I jet off to my wonderful new Roman life. Check it out!

God Bless, Fr. Philip, OP

P.S. I should add: if you have a Facebook account, look me up and add me as a friend!

Reading List for THEO5317: Post-metaphysical theologies

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida and their band, "The Categorical Imperatives"

For U.D. students who are thinking about registering for my senior/grad seminar in the Spring 2008 (THEO5317), here's a partial reading list :

J.L. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

G. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine

J.-L. Marion, God Without Being

J. Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy

M. Wrathall, Religion After Metaphysics

There will be many other articles and book chapters assigned, including work from Caputo, Vattimo, Derrida, Heidegger, and many others. There will also be a few on-line articles to read such as this one.

Please contact me if you have any questions about written assignments or presentations. Leave a comment here or email me: ppowell(at)udallas(dot)edu.

Nuns, resurrection, metaphysics, and Tom

The Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of Mary the Queen in Elmira, NY have invited me to give a series of lectures this coming weekend. (I will also endeavor to teach them to fry chicken and bake biscuits.)

They are sponsoring several lectures on the Nicene Creed for broader distribution to other OP monasteries.

I am lecturing on ". . .the resurrection of the dead. . ." This is going to be a wonderful trip! Please pray for me and the sisters as we plumb the depths of Mystery this weekend.

Speaking of Mystery. . .I could use the four books on my Wish List that deal with Thomas' metaphysics. Not only to help me get a better grasp for the sake of better grasping but also to be of more use to my students.

I have to beg at least once a week, or Tom will revoke my license.

Fr. Philip, OP

On not being sinned against

St. Josaphat: Wis 1.1-7 and Luke 17.1-6
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Aside from the crucifixion itself, there is perhaps no other moment in the gospels that shows our Lord’s ridiculous excess of love for us that this teaching on forgiveness. Only his love for us as he hangs on the cross surpasses the sheer magnitude of excessive love that we must muster in order to follow his teaching on daily forgiveness. If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. Repeat as often as necessary. We know this, of course! Doing it is something else. But if you think mustering the love required to forgive the same offense seven times a day is difficult, let me suggest an even more difficult way: strive to become that sort of person who cannot be sinned against, that sort of person against whom there is no offense. If charity requires that we forgive an offense, it seems only reasonable that the demands of excessive love would also push us toward becoming “inoffensible.” But then again maybe reason has nothing to do with it and what we’re really getting at here is a question about the limits of that good habit of trusting in God’s promises: the limits of faith.

The Apostles say to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” I’m sure Jesus smiles a little at this and probably thinks to himself, “Oh really? Increase your faith? Are you really asking me to expand your capacity for trusting in our Father’s promises? Really, now? Think about this for a moment: the larger your capacity for faith—the more faith I give you—the more faith you will be required to cooperate with. More faith, more work. More faith, more trust! More letting go, more just letting be.” Instead of all that, Jesus tells his apostles this: “If your faith is just the size of a mustard seed, you can uproot the mulberry tree with a word and replant it in the sea. Knowing that, do you really want more faith? Remember what I said about faith and moving mountains? You guys are having trouble with simple stuff like not putting stumbling blocks in front of one another and forgiving one another’s offenses. You want to uproot mulberry trees and replant them in the sea? And move mountains too? Tell ya what! You find a better way to put the faith I’ve given you to good use and then we’ll talk about more faith. Deal?”

Deal! Without becoming too much the cultural theorist/critic here, let me suggest a way of taking the faith we have and sharpening it like a fine-edged sword for forgiveness. Our culture, our American milieu, and we Americans thrive with a kind of Extended Wounded Ego—a sore psyche that pokes out there like a delicate nose, sniffing out offense…like French pigs rooting for truffles! How easily we are offended. How simple it is for us to be sinned against. Our eccentricities, weirdnesses, preferences, odd-ball opinions and fantasies—everything I think is essential to my ME-ness becomes an overripe fruit, too sweet, too tender, so soft and ready to be bruised by the slightest chiding touch, the most subtle word of the kind reprove that I spiral into sputtering indignation and collapse into a weeping heap. Am I exaggerating? Yea, just a little to make a point. And here’s my point: if faith requires you to tell me that I have sinned and then requires me to repent and then requires you to forgive me no matter how many times I sin…how much sharper will your faith become if you willed NOT to be offended, willed not to be sinned against? In other words, your daily work with the trust God has already given you becomes the work of building that sort of spiritual life where the sore, offensible, easily bruised ME-ness of You is emptied out, poured out like a libation (Paul says) and all that emptied space in your heart is made ready for a Larger Christ, a Bigger Jesus! How difficult is that? Very difficult. But also very necessary. Love requires it of us. . .and makes it possible.

Struggle with this: the grasp of your love is limited only by the reach of your trust in God’s promise of mercy to you. How far will His promise reach to grasp you? All the way to the cross…and back.

Pic credit

We are Christians NOT Platonists

32^nd Sunday OT(C): 2 Macc 7.1-2, 9-14; 2 Thess 2.16-3.5; Luke 20.27-38
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

We affirm it every week at Mass. We claim to believe it as a fundamental tenet of our faith. Without it everything we hold to be true about Christ, our lives with him now and for eternity makes no sense whatsoever. In fact, this event, and the promise of its eventual repetition for us all, gave the apostles what little courage they had to hang on after Jesus’ death, the steadfastness they needed until the Holy Spirit swept through them like a brushfire and gave birth to the Church! In answer to the Sadducees’ attempt to confound his faith, Jesus teaches them and us a rock bottom basic truth of our ancestors’ faith: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is “not a God of the dead, but a God of the living. . .to Him all are alive!” As the killer of Death, Jesus announces to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see that the God and Father of all is Himself alive, a living and loving God; and for those for whom He is Lord and King, He is creator and ruler of the living, source and end of all life everlasting. We will say it again this morning/evening, so let me quote it to you now: “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

Without knowing it most of you are religious Platonists when it comes to what you believe about your death and your life after death. I am willing to bet that most of you believe that you are your soul; that is, who you are as a person is best described as “my soul.” My soul is who I am. And I bet that most of you believe that when you die your soul is separated from your body and your body goes into the ground and your soul travels to heaven (or to purgatory or hell). Most of you believe that eternal life is a life lived for a really long time as a spiritual entity, some sort of indestructible ghost. Immortality then is the promise of living forever as a spirit, a soul without a body, a ghost without its machine.

This false notion is the root of our sometimes obsessive disdain for the body while we are alive here on earth. Religious Platonists believe we must temper the body in order to exalt the soul. The body is a trap, a cave, an anchor holding the pure spirit down, weighing down our mournful souls who want nothing more than to be free of the flesh and soaring unimpeded back to God who is pure spirit, pure soul. How often do you lament the weaknesses of your body? How often you do attribute your sinfulness to a tempted body, your flesh enticed and conquered by the flashy but ultimately empty promises of passing disobedience? Wouldn’t we all be better Christians, more pure, just better people in general, if we did not have to contend with the appetites of these smelly, disease-prone, slowly dying and decaying bodies?

If you think this Platonism is limited to Christians, think again. Our materialist culture holds to a rather perverse version of this heresy. Being happy is about controlling the body. Diets. Exercise. Plastic surgeries. Props, potions, pills, powders, ointments, lotions, gels, needles, patches—a whole pharmacology of chemical mixtures designed to give us control of the body b/c we believe that absolute control of the body is the key to our happiness. If you think the religious zealot is hateful to the spiritually indifferent or to those who actively reject his belief, just try to talk to a true Gym Bunny or a Gym Jock. Their utter distain for your physical weakness, your lack of motivation, your ill-defined abs and flabby butt, their venomous contempt for your high calorie, high fat diet and your ignorance of proper supplementation—all of these combine in a heart so spiritually pure in its hatred for the body that these Gym Bunnies and Jocks would scare the dungeon masters of the Spanish Inquisition with their zealotry! Make no mistake: their torturous routines on those robotic machines are not about loving the flesh…no, no, the flesh must be denied, tamed, shaped, and beaten into submission. And who or what is it that must conquer these mushy muscles? The will. The wanting. The desire. Yes, yes. It is the soul. Thank God we are Christians and not Religious Platonists!

Jesus is confronted by a party of Jewish philosophers and theologians known as the Sadducees. This group of highly educated men reject the recent developments of Jewish religious thought and argue vehemently against the resurrection of the body after death. Jesus and the Pharisees, appealing more to the common people and accepting recent theological progress, preach and teach the resurrection of the dead. The question posed to Jesus about the woman with multiple marriages is designed to expose the trendy teaching on the resurrection of the dead as scripturally unsound. Think of the question as a sort of “what if” problem. The Sadducees think that Jesus is going to have to answer them in one of two ways: 1) either deny the resurrection and say that the woman is not married to all those men simultaneously or 2) affirm the resurrection and say that she is married to them all at the same time. Either way the Sadducees are proven correct in their rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Jesus, being Jesus and no one’s fool, does the unexpected. He affirms the resurrection and denies that the woman is married to seven men at the same time. How? Death marks the end of this life. The resurrection is the sure sign of new life. Those who are resurrected no longer marry nor do they die. In other words, a marriage is ended at death. Once we are dead and come to see the Lord face-to-face, we no longer need sacraments as external signs of His presence and grace. We are His presence and grace!

So, what is the resurrection of the dead? Or, as the Apostles’ Creed puts it “the resurrection of the body”? If you are not just your soul but your body AND your soul, then for You to share in the divine life, for You to partake of the divine nature in heaven, You must be You, that is, your soul AND your body, whole and entire, the complete person, the completed You. Our God is the God of the living not the dead “because to Him all are alive.” With the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, we too are made worthy to suffer, die, and rise with him. Just as he was given a body glorified and transfigured, so will we. Just as he was lifted into heaven, so will we. Just as Moses called “Lord” and just as Christ cried out “Lord,” so we too shout out “Lord!” Knowing that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Lord of Lord, and King of Kings is the God of the living—those who live always under His dominion!

If any of this is true for us, then we have to think carefully about how we live now. What is the moral theology of living now as dead folks who will live in transfigured glory? In other words, what does it mean for you right now to be a man or woman or child who has died with Christ in baptism, risen again to his eat and drink at his altar, and now live renewed until your natural death to rise again with him body and soul? It means we wait in joyful hope for the coming of the Lord—praying, fasting, believing, daily, hourly; working, sleeping, eating, daily, hourly; dressing, loving, feeding the hungry, daily, hourly; healing, forgiving, listening to the Word; daily, hourly waiting, waiting, waiting on the coming of the Lord; doing daily, hourly what Christ has given us to do as if we were with him now because we ARE with him now. We are with his Body now doing what we the Body of Christ does: offering to our Father thanks and praise for the gift He made of Himself to us. Our God is the God of the living not the dead because for Him we are all, always living, always alive in the Spirit that is life everlasting!

BREAKING NEWS!

The Angelicum

BREAKING NEWS!!!

I heard from my provincial tonight about my assignment for next year. . .

I will be moving to Rome to study philosophy at the Pontifical University of St Thomas (Angelicum). Upon completion of the required degrees, I will join the faculty and teach philosophy until assigned otherwise.

My thanks for all the prayers and please continue to pray for me and the Order as we preach the Good News!

Help me celebrate this good news by adding to my philosophy library! Click over to the PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Wish List and send me a book to take to Rome! (cheesy grin) Trust me: these books will get a tremendous workout in Rome. . .

Fr. Philip, OP

Catholic Dollars for Anti-Catholic Activities???

My education about the involvement of the Church in various nefarious "social justice" activities continues on unabated! Recently, I ran across several articles on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). These articles noted that several agencies that receive the hard-earned dollars of believing Catholics are in fact often not only anti-Catholic but anti-Christian!

This weekend Catholics all over the country will be asked to contribute to the CCHD. Do your homework first!

You don't have to believe me or anyone else. . .just do a google.com search and you will find more than enough evidence to withhold your dimes and quarters. . .here's a short piece from my fav Catholic magazine, First Things:

Time for a Step Further

The criticism of CCHD is fine so far as it goes, says an old hand at inner-city community organizing here in New York, but it doesn’t go far enough. CCHD is, of course, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. In response to critics, the word Catholic was recently added to the name in order to indicate that it is, well, Catholic. The aforementioned old hand doesn’t think it means very much. He criticizes the critics of CCHD for concentrating on those cases where funding is given to organizations that directly violate the Church’s teaching, notably on abortion. The problem with that, says our old hand, is that it segregates the "life questions" from the fullness of the Church’s social teaching, giving the impression that abortion and a few other things are no more than Catholic "hang-ups" to which those receiving Catholic money need to be sensitive.

In an earlier life long ago, before he was converted to the gospel of life, our old hand was an executive with Planned Parenthood. That organization, he notes, would never dream of giving support to a group that did not back its entire agenda, and it is assumed that when a major lobbying effort is needed PP will call in its chits. Not so with Catholics. Through CCHD many millions of dollars are given each year to organizations that, while avoiding the hang-up questions, are indifferent and frequently hostile to the Church’s mission. In inner-city community organizing, Catholics provide, in addition to the funding, the great majority of the people and the bulk of parish-based institutional support.

Our old hand thinks part of the problem is with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), an effort launched more than thirty years ago by the late Saul Alinsky of Chicago, who made no secret of his strategy of hijacking the resources of the Catholic Church for his self-declared revolution. IAF is, under various names, still very much a force in community organizing around the country. But why are Catholic dioceses and CCHD so hesitant to insist that assisted programs be commensurate with Catholic support and teaching? Part of the answer is a good ecumenical impulse gone awry. In many urban areas, liberal Protestant churches are a small minority in community coalitions but exercise a large influence, often because Catholics don’t want to offend them by pressing issues such as support for crisis pregnancy centers or opposition to partial-birth abortion. Another part of the answer is that it is naively assumed that more "inclusive" groups will more impartially serve "the common good," when, in fact, any viable organization has its particular goals-a.k.a. "interests"-for good or ill.

The Catholic interest, one might suggest, is to serve the common good, as that is richly and amply defined in the Church’s social doctrine. But to insist on that requires a measure of confidence in that doctrine, and such confidence is in short supply. The World Council of Churches had the slogan "The world sets the agenda for the Church." There is an analogue in the Catholic understanding that grace perfects nature and, by extension, the Church’s mission is to support the good things already happening under other auspices. There is important truth in these claims, of course. But they are truths too easily subverted and turned to alien purposes when the Church’s people and resources are placed at the disposal of those who define the good in ways that are frequently unsympathetic to or at odds with the Church’s teaching. So what our old hand is suggesting is that the criticism of some of the more egregious abuses in CCHD funding is having its effect, and that’s good. But now it’s time to go further and make the case that the "Catholic" in the Catholic Campaign for Human Development should indicate more than the source of the monies and other resources employed. It should be an honest indicator of all the ends to which they are employed.

"Going green" = "dying on the vine"?

Bow before your new goddess!

Sean Cardinal O'Malley, cardinal archbishop of Boston, addresses a disturbing trend in his own Capuchin wing of the Franciscans. Noting that the next big chapter of the order is slated to amend its consititutions to be more "social justice, ecology friendly," he writes:

I have not seen the recommendations for the new Constitutions. I am told that there is a desire to introduce more Peace and Justice and Ecology into the Constitutions. I believe the Capuchins should be very much embodied in promoting the social Gospel of the Church. I would like to express two caveats. First of all there is the danger of a false sense of security. In other words by talking a lot about the social justice themes we might think that we are living a radical form of the Gospel Life. I see many religious communities in my country produce documents worthy of the Green Party, but they are dying on the vine themselves. Was it Saint Francis who said the saints did all the work and we get the credit by talking about them?

I have to think that group-think projects like the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, the Earth Charter, all that gobbly-goo about "the New Universe Story," and the Gaia movement among women religious is the death-knell of 70's religious life. Let's pray that we younger religious will not be fooled into worshiping at the altars of all these alien god/desses and lift up instead Christ the Lord as our unique source of life and goal in death.

We've been warned!

via Rocco

We are temples NOT flea markets

The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
Eze 47.1-12; 1 Cor 3.9-11, 16-17; John 2.13.22
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. When he went to the temple are he found a thriving flea market, a bazaar for selling sacrificial animals and bankers to change common money into temple cash. Seeing all of this, he whipped them all out, crying after them: “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” John notes that the disciples immediately recall Psalm 69.9: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” And the Jews, they ask for a sign. Jesus tells them to destroy “this temple” and he will raise it again in three days. Many years later, Paul, by way of questioning the alleged ignorance of the Corinthian church, teaches us that we are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells within us. He says, “Brothers and sisters, you are God’s building…If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” How do we, the holy temples of God, turn our temples into marketplaces, into buildings that serve commerce rather than God? And, how do we drive out the unclean merchants and restore our temples to their proper purpose?

In the angelic vision, Ezekiel is shown that the temple is the center of life-giving water and fruit, the heart of the nation to which and from which the waters of the world flow, “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live” and there will be God’s abundance. For our ancestors in faith, the temple was more than a church, more than a place to gather. The temple was the dwelling place of the Most Holy, the physical site of Heaven touching Earth. No wonder then Ezekiel is shown the temple as a source of life and abundance! And no wonder Jesus is furious with the mercantile desecration of its holy purpose.

It is not great leap to the 21^st century and our own contemporary desecrations of God’s holy temples: how do we profane the person in name of commercial gain? How do we collaborate with those who would set up shop in our temples? Think about the ways our culture commercializes the body. Think about our ever-failing social norms for sex, eating, drinking, dressing. Think about how we lend our temples to these marketplaces, sell our finest bodies to the highest bidder at the auction of fashion and convenience. Think about artificial contraception as “family planning,” abortion as “optional pregnancy,” person as “product of conception.” Every merchant knows that marketing is all about perception, illusion, finding common ground for working together, the lowest common denominator.

For cash and the bottom-line, we are meat. For the culture of death—ruled by Mammon—we are cattle and lab rats, control groups and experiments. Those temples among us who are blind or lame or crippled or poor, they are all “targets for development goals” or “the means of measurable outcomes given variables.” What we cannot be and still be temples of the Most High is a means to anything else but ourselves. Make me a means and I quickly become an obstacle needing to be removed. Make you a means to an end and you become a tool for manipulation. Turn the human person into a product, a site of commercialization, and the body becomes a snack, a tiny morsel to be gobbled up, a temple for little more than the empty calories of our consumerist liturgies of self-destruction and denigration.

Hear Paul again: “Do you know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person…” Why? “…for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” You are, we are temples, where Heaven touches Earth, sites of God’s abundance, moments of God’s gracious outpouring of spirit and life; we are both the source and goal of all that water, flowing in and out to feed life inside and outside our walls. Let nothing defile the holiest of God’s dwelling places: you, consumed by zeal for the presence of the Lord!