"A [preacher] who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they are necessarily reflected in his [preaching]." — BXVI
03 December 2007
Sister Soap
Yes, I know! It's Advent. . .and you will not find a more fervent Advent-Nazi than yours truly.
However, shopping for Christmas now is a prudent way to avoid stress and anxiety later on.
Check out the Cloister Gift Shoppe operated by the Dominican Sisters of Summit, NJ.
Buy someone you love (or someone who needs a hygiene hint!) a bar or two of Sister Soap. . .
Fr. Philip, OP
Preach...or die
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory
Let’s quickly review Paul’s description of preaching: there’s nothing about preaching worthy of boasting, he says, rather preaching the Gospel is an imposed obligation; he laments, “Woe to me if I do not preach it!” He is rewarded if he preaches willingly, but not if he does so unwillingly. He preaches for free. (That’s not good.) He has made himself weak, a slave to all; he has become all things to all for nothing more than a share in the Gospel. For all the romanticism of this picture of the preacher, I can’t imagine the vocations brochure drawn from our Pauline description that would attract a single soul to the preaching. But, then again, I could be missing something. After all, the image of the Gospel preacher painted by Christ himself isn’t all that attractive either: driving out demons, speaking weird languages, handling snakes, drinking poison, touching the sick. Yea, um, not a good brochure.
So, both Paul and Jesus himself paint wild and woolly pictures of the Gospel preacher. Nothing we could put on our vocations recruitment material. Why do we choose to become preachers then? All of us, any of us here: why do we heed the Lord’s admonition: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature”? Surely the psalm this morning has something to do with our decision: “For steadfast is His kindness toward us, and the fidelity of the Lord endures forever.” Good reasons, yes, but not quite enough, I think. Surely the life of the preacher is adventurous: snakes, demons, poisons, slaves, preaching Forty Day Novenas to the Infant of Prague! Tempting but not quite. Maybe this is it: we preach b/c those who hear the Gospel and believe “will be saved” but those who hear and do not believe “will be condemned.” We have a moral obligation to preach AND convince. Yes, that’s an excellent Dominican reason to suffer through a novitiate.
But I think the best reason is stated rather quietly in the conclusion of the gospel reading. After Jesus was taken up into heaven to sit at God’s right hand, “…[the disciples] went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them…” While the Lord worked with them. While they preached the Lord worked with them. Because they preached, he was with them. For those of us called to preach (any of us here!), is it too much to say of us that we are preachers b/c we know, somehow truly Know, that we cannot work with the Lord unless we speak his Word of mercy, unless we preach his Gospel? This is not just a matter of saving others from condemnation but finding and claiming our own salvation. We know, in other words, that there is nothing else for us to do but to lend—to give, freely give—our voices to the Word, to become slaves for the Word. Maybe our vocation brochures need to say only this: “If you are called to preach the Gospel: woe to you if you don’t!”
Preach today. Not because you ought to, unwillingly. Not for recompense or recognition. Not to boast or to exercise your rights. Preach, proclaim the Good News, because and only because, if you don’t you will not be you, because you cannot be you if don’t.
02 December 2007
Do nothing special for Advent
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul
Jesus tells his disciples that in Noah’s day, folks were eating and drinking and that “they did not know until the flood came…” And later he says, “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” If the master of the house had known the thief was coming, he would have stayed away. They did not know. You do not know. If only he had known. Strangely, Paul writes to the Romans, “Brothers and sisters, You know the time…” You know! “It is the hour now for you to wake from sleep.” While Christ was with us, we did not know when he would return to us. Now that he has left us to be with his Father, we know when he will return. No? No. Paul and the Romans do not know the time of our Lord’s return. What they know is that the time is right for conversion and repentance. They knew then and we know now that time is now: “For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed…”
We know that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. We know that there is a hour of reckoning; a hour, a day of expectation and judgment. We know that we are not moving in an ever-widening circle but rather processing in a line together toward our conclusion, approaching in brighter and brighter light, in deepening clarity and seamless continuity, our End, The End—the hour we expect, look forward to, pray for. Our end is a time and a place when and where we will be carried away, flooded away with Christ and the ark of his cross. And we know, we know that we must stay awake, be prepared, always ready, humming with tension, pure in motive and drive. . .to…to…to do what? Paul says we must “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” All Jesus says is that we “must be prepared.” Why, Jesus? “For at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” An hour we do not expect! So much for Advent expectation! So, what are we doing then? We are doing nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary. We should be doing absolutely nothing that we would not be doing if this were July or October or some other boring liturgical month. The Lean Green Season is over. Break out the violet vestments! The Advent wreath, the O Antiphons, the too early Christmas hymns and Christmas trees. But if you are prepared, ready, sitting on the edge of true righteousness and apostolic fervor, do nothing special. Nothing special at all…
Nothing special?! It’s the First Sunday of Advent! The new church year! It is and we know that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. We know that the night is advanced and that the day is at hand. And we know that we must put off the works of darkness and don the armor of light. We know this. We know that we must turn from a dark hungry death in sin to a bright shining life in Christ. We know that feeding the appetites of the flesh, those temporary desires of the little gods of our bodies, we know that these are small things grown large—the momentary thrill, the surge of satisfaction that comes before the lack rises again and wants more. These are idols and altars that must come down. We know this. And what’s more: we know these truths everyday, all day, everyday not just Sunday the first day of Advent. And b/c we know these truths, we are ready, fully-prepared, wide-awake; we are locked sitting on loaded and all-set for the Holy Thief to break and enter and steal us away!
I said early on we could hear about waiting, anticipation, Advent longing this morning/evening. I said we could hear all about the church’s new year, the reboot of the liturgical year. Hear all of that AND hear the call to repentance. From the prophet Isaiah: “Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in His paths.” Hear Paul’s cry to all believers: “You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep…put on the armor of light…put on the Lord Jesus Christ…” And hear Christ himself plea for our repentance; to turn, to return again and again. To come back and stay: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come…for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Does this make you nervous? Anxious? Good! It should. But don’t leave it there. Turn that nervousness, that anxiety into an electric joy. Turn it into a righteous hope. There is no meaner, darker spiritual buzzkill than despair, and if Advent is about anything at all, it is about HOPE.
Paul is not threatening the Romans. Jesus is not menacing his disciples. And neither of them is trying to put us on some sort of existential edge, a worrisome ledge. Rather, they are both teaching us to hope. Our Holy Father, Benedict, in his encyclical, Spe salvi, released just this weekend writes: “…the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life”(n. 2). How is your life new, different? New in what way? Different from what? From whom? Look around you, outside, at the world. Who are we out there? Who are we to those who will not hope? We are: Lab rats. Cannon fodder. Inconvenient products of conception. Rungs on ladders to power and wealth. Herds of genetic code and meat. We are idiot children, bought and sold. To those who hope, however, we are weapons against despair; tools for cultivating love; bodies for health and spirits for perfection. We are those who know that “the dark door of time” has been thrown open and it is Christ who waits to steal us away.
Pope Benedict concludes his letter on hope: “We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety” (n. 31).
Let the first Sunday of Advent 2007 then be the first Sunday of a year, a lifetime of hoping against the hopeless fables of accidental life. This is not special work for Christians. But the everyday work of all those who will risk hoping against the dark.
30 November 2007
Spe Salvi!
Look for reflections, homiletic references, and other, less formal, gushings about this document coming soon!
Beautiful Word, beautiful feet
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert
They were fishermen, fishing on the
And they follow on feet growing more beautiful with every step. Each step a word. Each word a name. Each name a soul, a mouth to confess, a heart to believe, a tongue to proclaim the Word. Each word a step. Each step a name. And with every step and name and soul, the fishers of men called by Christ net a back-breaking haul, a net ripping load. Having become preachers by hearing the Word and following Christ, these fishermen have also become apostles (ones sent out and away) and they have become prophets (ones who see justice at The End and warn).
Let’s ask with Paul: do we not hear? Certainly we do. Do we not preach? Certainly we do! Do our voices for Christ go forth to all the earth? Our words to the ends of the world? What do preachers do if not speak the word of truth and hunger to see God’s justice done? We leave behind our nets: the teacher’s chalkboard, the architect’s rulers, the social workers files, the chemist’s chemicals, the student’s tests. We leave behind the professor’s committees, the linguist’s books, the businessman’s deals and lawyer’s arguments. We walk away to walk with. We walk away to speak Christ’s word so that his name is known to all peoples in all tongues for all time. We walk behind Jesus, following Christ. We walk with Jesus, becoming Christ. We become Christ to preach his saving Word so that all who hear may believe, all who believe may be justified, and all who are justified may see God’s justice done among the living and the dead.
How beautiful are the feet and hands and tongues and hearts of those who bring the good news! And those who receive him!
29 November 2007
FREE Indulgences (. . .sorta. . .)
must also say a decade of the rosary, go to
confession, buy me a book, and pray for the Holy Father's intentions. . .(whistling....)
HEY! We Dominicans used to get away with it all
the time. . .(sulking). . .I hate modernity. . .
(sulking. . . .)
26 November 2007
"Liberal" Priest & the Extraordinary Form
Hat tip to Fr. Z. for pointing out this excellent piece by Fr. Michael Kerper. If, like me, you are a priest who would rather boil and eat America Magazine than read it, take the time to read this piece. If you are one of those priests who think America Magazine, Commonweal, and NCR(eporter) should be added to the biblical canon, pay attention to the highlighted parts of the article. Fr. Kerper is showing us what it means to serve in humility!
Fr. Michael Kerper
The old Missal’s rubrical micromanagement made me feel like a mere machine, devoid of personality; but, I wondered, is that really so bad? I actually felt liberated from a persistent need to perform, to engage, to be forever a friendly celebrant. When I saw a photo of the old Latin Mass in our local newspaper, I suddenly recognized the rite’s ingenious ability to shrink the priest. Shot from the choir loft, I was a mere speck of green, dwarfed by the high altar. The focal point was not the priest but the gathering of the people. And isn’t that a valid image of the church, the people of God?
The Mother of All Critiques?
A few posts down from this one, I ask regular readers to give me some serious feedback on my homilies. Since I firmly believe that the preacher preaches to himself first and that I've been feeling that my homilies have been somewhat BLAH lately, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from those of you who listen. Below is an exemplary critique from a former student of mine. This is what I'm looking for, folks!
I think you tend to sound more Protestant in your homilies with respect to delivery and style, or at least what my very narrow experience of Protestant preaching has been. Your content is, obviously, Catholic, but the mannerisms of speech can come across to me as a cross between a Baptist minister and a car salesman and like you're trying to be too clever. Now, a decent amount of the Protestant delivery feeling could be my Bostonian upbringing shining through and really more about northern vs. southern speech, but I think that there is a legitimate issue there as well. You sound every bit the academic that you are when you are speaking, and that's fine in general but sometimes it can result in sounding talked AT versus talked TO/WITH, particularly with the over-reliance on rhetorical devices. Answering your own questions to that degree (case in point: The Resurrection! So What?) can feel exclusive and condescending.
Two mites, two scandals
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory,
Jesus praises the widow in this gospel b/c she does not risk, plan, or weigh proportionate options when she drops her two coins into the collection box. She doesn’t offer a reasonable amount, a prudent portion given her income,. Nor does she weigh benefit against cost. She offers her whole livelihood. Jesus says, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest.” How does Jesus reach this obviously erroneous conclusion? The widow gives freely, completely, without reservation out of her poverty, her lack. The others give of their surplus wealth. She has acquired the virtue—the good habit—of magnanimous sacrifice. The virtue that Jesus himself will practice by dying gratuitously on the cross at
We know the Scandal of the Passion and the Cross: Christ our King is whipped, ridiculed, and executed as a criminal by the Roman and Jewish authorities. This is a scandal because he has claimed again and again to be the Christ, the Anointed One of God, one who possesses divine power to heal, heavenly authority over demons, and the prestige of being the only Son of God. Power never yields to weakness. Authority never abdicates its place of honor, its elevated status.
There is another scandal here as well: the Scandal of Excessive Generosity. For creation to be redeemed, for all of God’s creation to be brought back into right relationship with its Creator, nothing more is strictly required than that the Creator bring us back. A simple act of divine will. SNAP! And we are back right where we were in
Jesus watches a widow drop two coins in the collection box, but in her he sees a kindred soul: one who gives not just a large portion of her wealth, not a calculated percentage of her leftover income but one who gives everything she has, her whole livelihood. And he sees in this widow a vision of his own sacrifice on the cross, his own excessively generous, needlessly gratuitous offering of body and blood for the reconciliation of creation to its Creator. It would have been more practical to leave Christ among us! To have skipped his suffering and death! But then, how would our Father have shown us His abundant love? His exceeding compassion?
Our faith is not an investment in risk-taking, planning, or prudently calculating cost/benefit. Our faith is a wildly generous, open-handed, open-hearted, full-throttled run, a redemptive marathon sprinted behind our Chosen Victim. We cannot give a portion of ourselves, a piece of our surplus wealth. We must give our whole livelihood, everything, all of it. . .nothing less was given for us.
25 November 2007
Can a King rule from a Cross?
Christ the King (C): 2 Sam 5.1-3;
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
We have two starkly opposed images of Christ the King: first born of all creation, head of the body, the Church AND the suffering servant, a ridiculed criminal nailed to a Roman cross. Savior and rebel. Messiah and rabble-rouser. Only Son of God and only a son of Joseph and Mary. He is the image of the invisible God and a convicted insurgent. He is the beginning, preeminent in all things and he is “King of the Jews,” sneered at and executed by the state. We know from Paul that the Son of God “took on the form of a slave, to be human like one of us,” and we know that he reigns in heaven at the right hand of the Father. The political question for us Christians, the leadership question for us is: How does a king rule while nailed to a cross?
Jesus hangs on the cross, nailed hands and feet to the wood. Pilate has placed a sign above Jesus’ head. It reads, “This is the King of the Jews.” The Roman soldiers, reading the sign, shout up at him, mocking him, “Hey, if you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Without waiting for an answer, the soldiers give him vinegar to drink. More mocking, more scorn. For a Roman there is nothing more ignoble, more inhuman than to die a rebel, executed on a cross. It is the punishment reserved for lowest of the low. Their mocking of Christ is not only morally acceptable; it is required. It is part of the punishment. Stripping Jesus of his human dignity, stripping him of his identity, his vocation is just part of the price they make him pay for allegedly defying Roman rule. Nothing about Jesus’ teaching rises to the nobility and art of Roman philosophy. Nothing he did—heal the sick, forgive the sinner, feed the hungry—nothing about his ministry strikes the Romans as particularly religious or moral. Why save the weak from disease? Why rescue the poor from their fate? Why look with favor on slaves, foreigners, atheists, and cowards? Honor the gods, your family and ancestors, your country, and show no mercy to your enemies. The soldiers’ taunt—“Save yourself if you are King!”—is a spiteful but nonetheless predictable display of Roman disdain for weakness.
Given all of this, how does Christ rule from his cross? One thief, hanging next to our Lord on a cross of his own, says to Jesus, reviling him, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other thief, hanging on his cross on the other side, says, “Have you no fear of God. . .we are guilty of our crimes and we have received a just punishment but this man has done nothing criminal.” This thief admits his guilt and asks Christ for mercy. He receives it. Jesus says to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in
Let’s ask our question one more time: how does a king rule while nailed to a cross? The weakest answer we could muster is: he rules by example. So did the Romans. We could say that he rules by moral force. Well, so did the Romans. They ruled by what they thought of as a moral order, an imperial imperative to bring the Pax Romana to the world. We could answer: he rules by invoking in us a kind of patriotic fervor for the Church. How dare the Romans and the Jews kill Christ! They must pay for their blasphemy! Is hatred and revenge our destiny as Christians? If not by example or moral imperative or an incitement of righteous vengeance, how then does Christ the King rule while nailed to a cross? How does he rule even now? We cannot forget that our suffering servant, our broken and bleeding Jesus is the one who delivered us from the power of darkness; gave us to his Father’s kingdom as sons and daughters, heirs to the wealth of eternity; in him we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. He is more than merciful; he is Mercy. He is more than loving, he is Love.
Paul reminds us and we cannot forget: “…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christ the Crucified rules from his cross because in him “all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…” Christ for us is everything. There can for us be no appeal to economic efficiency, political expediency, popular demand, or incremental progress. Christ rules by transforming cold hearts, by turning hard heads, by overthrowing obstinate wills; he rules in virtue, in strength, by being for us weak in condemnation and mighty in compassion. And we, as his body, his members can be nothing less, nothing weaker. We are subjects of a Crucified King.
Here we are, Lord, your bone and your flesh. Make of us mighty slaves, strong servants; make of us virtuous rebels, holy insurgents. Make of us a compassionate nation, a merciful tribe; make us a sacred people, a church bought by the blood of the cross and given away, freely given as a gift to the world.
Help make me a better preacher. . .
What do you think? I'm not fishing for compliments here. I really need some feedback. Some constructive criticism. Even if you think nothing is awry here, please tell me how to improve.
What would you like to hear more about/less about in these homilies?
Are these homilies too "moral"? Do they need to be more doctrinal?
More on social justice/peace issues?
Am I being too "preachy" or "finger-wagging"?
Am I getting too professorial, too didactic?
Am I just saying the same things over and over again?
Should I concentrate more on practical spirituality?
Or more on biblical interpretation?
Do you connect with a more or less literary style?
Maybe something less rhetorical and more straightforward?
Do I need to be more/less "aggressive" in taking on issues?
Right now, I think of myself as a fairly competent exhortatory preacher, meaning I want my homilies to fire folks up or arouse in you an urge to do something. Scripture is vital, of course, and tradition and magisterium.
But is there more that I need to consider? Leave me comments! And remember, please: I need criticism not compliments!
Thanks and God bless, Fr. Philip, OP
24 November 2007
The U.N. and its silence on the mutilation of women
There is, of course, a familiar feminist bias here: violence against women is based on discrimination and inequality? Hardly. It's rooted in human evil and sin. But quite apart from this boringly predictable politically correct bumper-sticker sound bite, do you notice anything missing from the litany of evils that social and economic inequality and discrimination foist on women?
Let's edit Ms Arbour's comment to make sense from a Catholic perspective: "Every day, in all corners of the world, countless women and girls are killed, mutilated, beaten, raped, sold into sexual slavery or tortured [or shot full of saline by their doctor, sliced up with a pair of forceps, vacuumed out of their mother's womb, and tossed into the dumpster]."
Hmmmmm. . .I wonder why Ms Arbour leaves off this particular form of mutilation, torture, and murder? Maybe she's a fan of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals and sees this procedure as a morally acceptable means of accomplishing the MDG's other goals?
Back on the air
The Resurrection! So what?
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory,
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.”