Struck Blind to See

Conversion of St Paul: 22.3-16 and Mark 16.15-18
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great and Church of the Incarnation


[NB. This podcast sounds funny b/c I am getting a cold. . .]

I was hit in the head with a brick once. My brother threw it at me right after I threw two bricks at him. Once, while helping dad put up a barbed-wire fence, the tightly wound end unwound and smacked me across my face. I’ve been bitten several times by the emotionally unstable. Various bodily fluids thrown at me and on me. I’ve been in only one serious auto accident and numerous accidents with chainsaws, axes, lawnmowers, my ’69 Pontiac Executive, and a widely swung two x four to the jaw. I had to help physically restraint a police officer once while a psych nurse got a needle full of Haldol in his hip. I’ve watched patients in the trauma ward die. And then come back to life with a little help. I’ve seen beautiful black puppies slaughtered and dressed for food in a Chinese market. And I watched a Japanese family eat a raw fish while it still breathed. I even had to help a nurse suture a self-inflicted wound on a male patient. Let’s just say his “manhood” was telling him to do bad things, so he, well. . .snipsnip. Once, I was within days of dying from a blood-staph infection. Not once during any of these highly dangerous, highly emotional, deeply life-changing events, never did I hear a voice or see a light telling me to preach the Good News to the whole world. Then, again, I’m not (and have never been) Saul the infamous persecutor of the Church; nor Paul, the missionary apostle to the Gentiles. Maybe it is the case that Paul is a little less hard-headed than your average Mississippi farmboy.

Paul, well on his way to Damascus, is knocked to the ground by a flash of light and blinded. In his darkness, he is persecuting the Church—eyes and heart closed—; he arrests, jails, tries, and imprisons members of Christ’s Body. Ananias is told to go look for the blinded persecutor and teach him the faith. Ananias objects, saying that he has heard that Saul is an infamous enemy of the Church. But the Lord says to him, “Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles…” Ananias does as he is ordered, finding the blinded Saul and offering him the baptism of water and spirit. Once his sight is returned to me, his vision of the Church is radically changed. Now, he preaches Christ and him crucified.

All of this serious machination to get Paul on our side has a larger and better purpose than simply winning a hard one for the team. Without the benefit of Jesus’ one-on-one instruction that the other apostles received, Paul must do what the other Eleven were commissioned to do,”Go into the whole world an proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” That’s a good commission. But did it require being bodyslammed by a burst of light and then several days of blindness lived among Jewish strangers? It did. Why? Mark’s gospel is elegant in its simplicity and lack of subtly. Paul, like the other disciples and like ourselves, is charged with preaching the Good News. Whoever believes and is baptized is saved. Whoever refuses to believe or to be baptized is condemned.

At this point in the Christian narrative, this is not a happy-clappy message best delivered by recently scrubbed professors of theology or neatly styled media pastors. The weight of this choice is best delivered—in its stark, uncompromising simplicity—by someone who never believed it before but now, but because of a direct revelation from Christ himself, knows beyond the logic of language and speech that the Gospel message is terrifyingly true. Paul met the Message in the burst of light but he came to believe in Christ in his blindness. Blind, crippled, dependent on strangers for his daily care, and newly commissioned to abandon everything, everything he has ever known to the good, true, and beautiful, Paul sees with new eyes, stronger eyes and he is fortified against the lazy hearts and minds of those who would fall so easily back among their former ways, clouding the truth, burying the tough stuff under bushels of alien philosophies and favorites sin—all the foreign fruit that will rot too soon and soon enough.

All who heard him were astounded because he had been chosen from the world to go out, witness to the saving power of God, and bear through his witness the everlasting fruit of the Father’s Word.

The ONLY Name Given. . .

The Goddess Rosary

I'm willing to bet next month's stipend that if research like this were done on Catholics who practice various syncretistic forms of "Christian"/pagan spirituality (Gaia worship, Ennegram, Native American, ad nau) that we would discover similar kinds of emotional instability. . .

Do-It-Yourself Religions Cause More Harm Than Good

Meditation, crystal therapy, self-help books - think they’re making you happier? Think again. A Brisbane academic has found a strong link between new-age spirituality and poor mental health in young people.

Rosemary Aird examined a possible correlation between new forms of spirituality and mental health as part of her University of Queensland PhD studies.

After surveying more than 3700 Brisbane-based 21-year-olds, she found spirituality and self-focused religions may undermine a person’s mental health.

“I had a look at two different beliefs - one was a belief in God, associated with traditional religions, and the other was the newer belief in a spiritual or higher power other than God,” Dr Aird said.

The research found non-traditional belief was linked with higher rates of anxiety, depression, disturbed and suspicious ways of thinking and anti-social behaviour.

continue reading. . .

Help us supplement suppl(e)mental!

A note on the Postmetaphysical theologies seminar and our seminar's blog, suppl(e)mental. . .

I received a request yesterday from a reader who wants to "tag along" with the seminar using the blog as his "classroom."

This sort of participation is not only welcomed but encouraged! Perhaps the most dramatic feature of contemporary Christian theology is its public nature. We "do theology" these days in public. . .as a public service.

Please read along, comment, argue, etc. as we make our way through these difficult readings.

My only caveat: I will not tolerate unprofessional language from anyone. Blog-style discourse is often rancorous and personal. I should know being guilty of it myself. Suppl(e)mental, however, is not a "red-meat" blog for theological fights. Keep it intelligent, clean, and truly inquisitive, and all will be well.

Welcome!

Fr. Philip, OP

Nothing beyond abortion...

Day of Penance for Abortion’s Violence Against Human Dignity (GIRM 373)
Isa 32.15-18 and Matt 5.1-12 (Votive Lectionary nos. 887 and 891)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

It doesn’t take long growing up on a farm to figure out the meaning of the gospel adage: you reap what you sow. We planted melon seeds and melons grew. We planted squash seeds and squash grew. Come harvest time we reaped melons and squash. The connection between planting seed and harvesting the fruit of the seed’s plant is almost too obvious to have a name. “Natural consequence” might work. Or perhaps something less philosophical like “biological process.” Regardless of what we decide to name the connection, the connection is significant not only for planning a useful garden—imagine planting spinach seeds and getting corn two months later!—but it is also significant for us as creatures who live and grow in the image and likeness of our Creator. The seed we sow in the private plots of our own hearts and the seed we sow in the public ground of the “Common Good” will grow to fruition for harvest and that harvest will make its way back to our plates. On this day of penance for abortion’s violations of human dignity, we must ask: are we eating our own condemnation?

We could spend most of today talking the coming financial disaster of Baby Boomer retirement and the lack of younger workers to pay into Social Security. We could talk about how the low birth-rate among the Boomers turned Gen-X into Generation-Narcissist, and Gen-Y into Generation-Entitlement. We could point out that the “freedom of choice” to procure legal abortions and the use of contraceptives have “freed” sex from its reproductive end and given us at least three generations of Americans that are at once obsessed with sex and neurotic about sex to the point of needing professional medical treatment. And we could spend some time talking about how legal abortion has functioned in our national moral calculus as an agent of human degradation, one focused tightly on racial minorities and the poor. This is where we are. Where are we going to be?

The Beatitudes teach us that there is a pattern to justice and peace that begins right where we are. Where we are always results in where we will be. Just look at the text. Blessed ARE they who mourn, for they WILL BE comforted. Blessed ARE the clean of heart, for they WILL see God. All the way through the teaching, Jesus makes the practical, moral connection between where we are with where we will be. Blessed are, blessed are, blessed are. . .will inherit, will be shown mercy, will be satisfied. This is the moral parallel to our sown seed/predictable harvest image.

Fortunately, as moral creatures, we are graced with intelligence and good sense. We are free to change where we are and therefore free to alter where we will be. Isaiah says it plainly, “Justice will bring about peace; right will produce calm and security.” So long as we sow the seeds of narcissism, entitlement, self-righteousness, material convenience, and violence against children and the unborn, we can expect to harvest nothing less than an aggressive contempt for life, an aversion to sexual responsibility and care, and a culture so soaked through with death that it stinks up the heavens. So long as we deny the justice of the most basic human right—the right to live—to our future, we have no future. There is Nothing beyond narcissism; Nothing beyond entitlement; Nothing beyond violence but more violence. We will not be shown mercy; we will not be comforted; we will not be called children of God, nor, for that matter, will we see God.

Our ministry today is penance. And preaching. Who out there doesn’t know that Christ’s peace follows God’s justice? No desert will become an orchard and no orchard a forest if we cannot quench the conflagration that consumes our yet to be born future. There is no soil rich enough to produce a harvest without seed.

Among the dead?

Mass for the Dead: V. P.
Wis 3.1-6, 9; Rom 6.3-4, 8-9; John 6.37-40
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Can we count ourselves among the foolish this morning, among those who might believe that our sister, V. is dead; can we count ourselves among those who might believe that her passing was an affliction, or that in going out & away from us she went to her utter destruction? Are we being foolish this morning to believe that dying is the last thing we do? For the just, death is never an affliction; death is never the last step to destruction. The just are in the hands of God—at peace—and for them, death is the final work of trust, their last adventure in faith. What they leave behind is the worming doubt, the nagging to despair, and the longing for rest at last. If we, those of us still here, look at V.’s death and see no more than affliction, destruction, punishment, we fail then to see God’s grace and mercy. How do we hope for more than we are if we are blind and deaf to the grace & mercy promised us after death?

Here is our hope! Listen to Paul teach the Romans: “Brothers and sisters: are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death. . .” The Good News is that we are all dead! To be baptized is to die with Christ. To die with Christ is to be buried with him. To be baptized, to die, and to be buried with Christ tells us just one truth: “…just as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might live in newness of life.” Newness of life. Not a new life. But our lives renewed. Paul writes, “We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.” And because we were baptized with him, died with him, were buried with him, and raised up from the grave with him, death has no final power over us.

Are we among the foolish this morning, believing that our sister, V., is dead? V. has died. Her family and friends feel a painful want for her presence. They mourn; they miss her. But are they foolish in believing that she is dead? Jesus taught the crowds: “…this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. . .” Though we may die, death has no final power over us; no power to hold us in the grave, no power to keep us scattered or entombed. The power that drives us, fills us with reasons to live now and forever is the hope of the resurrection and our lives eternal!

Though always here and ready to shout out its joy, HOPE will be quiet for a while—silent in honor, in sorrow. Taken aback a bit by grief, the work of mourning must be done. And there is no lagging in faith to cry, to want her back, to hear her when she speaks; there is nothing shameful in seeing her where she has always been. God will not flinch if you must know, “Why?” When we trust in Him, we know the truth; we abide with him in love, and His care is always with us.

Our sister, V., has died. Are we foolish enough to believe that she dead?

Post-Meta-Theo Requirements & Reading LIst

I've posted the Course Requirements for the Postmetaphysical theologies seminar over on suppl(e)mental.

The Reading Syllabus is up now!

The first student posts will be up Tuesday, Jan 29th.

HOW do you know Christ?

2^nd Sunday OT: Isa 49.3-6; 1 Cir 1.1-3; John 1.29-34
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas

[Mea culpa! I deleted this recording before I posted it. . .doh.]

John the Baptist, all the while running up and down the Jordan River baptizing folks for repentance in the name of Christ, freely admits upon seeing Jesus that he himself did not know Jesus! He says though that he does know one thing about Jesus; he says, “…the reason why I came baptizing with water was that [Jesus] might be made known to Israel.” This episode from John’s gospel occurs after John has baptized Jesus, so now John knows exactly who and what Jesus is. More than a herald of the coming of the Lord, John is now a witness to the Lord’s presence among us. He says, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon him. . .he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. . .he is the Son of God.” You may wonder why we are hearing about John the Baptist so soon after Christmas! He is the herald of Advent leading us to Christmas not a witness for Lent who leads us to Easter. We are hearing about the Baptist again so soon after Christmas b/c he makes a single confession of ignorance twice: “I did not know him. . .I did not know him. . .” You might say, here on the verge of Ash Wednesday and Lent, John the Baptist is showing us a way into the Lenten desert: do you know Christ?

There is no shame in confessing that you do not know Christ. You want to know Christ or you wouldn’t be here this morning. It’s likely that you know lots of facts about Christ. His first name: Jesus. His mom’s name: Mary. His dad: Joseph. You may know where he was born; where he lived and preached and taught; when and where he died. You may know all of the prophecies of his coming—Emmanuel, virgin mother, suffering servant, etc. And you may even know people who claim to know him well. But think for a moment about the difference between “knowing facts about Christ” and “knowing Christ.” Even John admits, “I did not know him. . .I did not know him. . .” But what John did know was that he was to baptize Jesus when he saw him so that all of Israel may be exposed to the unveiling of the Christ, the Son of God. How then do you know Christ? Factually or intimately?

I think this question makes Catholics a little nervous. It sounds very evangelical, very Protestant. The question seems to come with a whole bags full of sticky emotions, affective commitments, weepy testimonials, and a certain amount of religious theatre—you know, the preacher running around, shouting, waving his arms, urging people to stand and clap. This is the Protestant version of Catholic calisthenics (stand, bow, sit, kneel, stand, bow, etc). Anyway, let me assure you that our Protestant brothers and sisters have no monopoly on knowing Christ, nor do have they cornered the market on asking whether or we know Christ. This is a universal question for Christians, a catholic question, if you will. John the Baptist comes to the fullest possible knowledge of Christ when the Holy Spirit points him out at the Jordan and says (more or less): “That’s him. Baptize him!” You and I need to hear the question and struggle with an answer because we are packing our things and looking toward the Lenten desert—that time we set aside during the year to face the Devil’s temptations with Christ. Frankly, I want to know who’s with me when I face down the thousands of temptations that peck at me all year!

So, back to the question: do you know Christ? If so, how so? I don’t mean here “by what means do you know Christ;” I mean, what is the quality of your knowledge? Casually, formally, ritually, liturgically, morally, or perhaps, not at all. With regard to the means of knowing Christ, most of what we know we know from scripture, tradition, the magisterium. We are gifted with reason so that we may deduce certain knowledge. We can ask our clergy, our family, our friends. They can tell us some things we may not yet know. Bits and pieces that can be shared with words or gestures, or gifts. We can watch documentaries on A&E or read a library full of books. But finally, ultimately we have to know to what degree of intimacy, to what depth and breadth do we know him? This is a matter of our salvation b/c we were baptized with him in the Jordan. We were with him preaching, healing, feeding, suffering, and dying. We were with him on the cross and in the tomb. He rose up from the grave, leaving us his Holy Spirit, so that—yes absolutely—we will be with him again, rising to the Father! How do you know Christ?

Listen one more time to how Paul addresses the Corinthians in the first letter to them: “…to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” Did you catch that? To you who have been sanctified in Christ and “called to be holy…” The depth and breadth of our knowledge of Christ is best measured in our holiness. Our holiness. Not our piety. Not our morality. Not our adherence to the law. But in our holiness. We have the question “do you know Christ?” before us. Another way to ask the same question is this: are you holy? YIKES! What does that mean? Am I holy? Well, you might say, I love my family and friends. I go to Mass, confession, holy days of obligation. I’m pious. I’m moral. I obey the law. I’m a good person, generally speaking. But holy? Yes, are you holy? Here’s your Lenten job, brothers and sisters: become holy. If you are already holy, then become holier. You are, we all are, as capable of becoming holy as we are of breathing, eating, sleeping. How so?

Listen to what the Lord said to Isaiah, “You are my servant, Israel, through whom I show my glory.” As baptized members of the Body of Christ, we are the people of his Word, the tribe of David, the royal priesthood of his temple, the prophets of his coming again. Listen again, “You are my servant, Bob, Sue, Jill, Charles, Jeff, Fr. Philip, Richard, you are my servants through whom I show my glory.” We know that only the Lord is good and holy. So the only way we may be good and holy is to show our Lord’s glory. The way Christ shows the Father’s glory. The way the Holy Spirit shows the Father’s glory. We must be a light to the nations so that the Lord’s salvation “may reach to the ends of the earth.” And we can do this precisely because we have been made holy in Christ Jesus and called to the life of the apostle in baptism. Please, be moral, pious, obedient, generous, but be and do all these to show the Lord’s glory. And show the Lord’s glory so that all may hear the call to holiness. That’s our job as members of the Body.

John did his job—baptizing with water for repentance—until the Holy Spirit called him to holiness in Christ. Then he baptized with Christ, showing everyone who came to him the sign of their calling: “Behold! Look there! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Is this what we are doing? This is how we grow in the holiness that Christ died to give us. As you get closer to Lent, that deserted trek across our temptations to disobedience, freely confess, “I do not know Christ.” Take it as a temptation if you want to confess, “I do know Christ!” Why a temptation? Because we are growing in holiness. A confession of ignorance is the humble means of knowing him better, more deeply; it is the surer means of coming to the surer knowledge that you are all at once planted, nurtured, pruned, cultivated, but not yet harvested. All of the possibilities for our growth in holiness lie in this one confession: “Here am I, Lord! I come to do your will!”

Sleep, books, Japanese metaphysics

The sleep study was a bust! The sensors wouldn't stay on for some reason. The poor tech had to come into the room several times in the night to reattach sensors and replace broken connectors and wires. I told her it was my Dominican Brain Power (DBP) that was shorting the wires.

I've updated the Phil/Theo Wish List to include several books on the evangelical movement called "Open Theology." I don't know much about it, but it looks like an interesting read of scripture and historical theology. . . not to mention it's use of process philosophy. I think the more orthodox evangelicals have more or less trounced the movement institutionally, but it may prove useful as an example to Catholic liberals who want to rely too heavily on "correlationist" philosophies in theological work.

I ended up using two of my B&N gift cards from Christmas to buy the Japanese metaphysics books. Several faithful readers wrote to express some anxiety about my reading direction: Buddhist metaphysics!!! In my defense: I'm a Dominican. Dominicans read everything with a critical eye. I'm as orthodox now as I have ever been. So, no worries, people!

God bless, Fr. Philip, OP

Can we be astounded?

1^st Week OT (F): 1 Sam 8.4-7, 10-22 and Mark 2.1-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass, Church of the Incarnation

The video tape was out there, passing from hand to hand, showing up in one room and then the next, speeding away in another book bag just before I reached it. As a Resident Advisor in the freshmen dorm in the late ‘80’s, my guys were telling me all about this highly sought after video tape. It was the guest of honor at many-a-late-night party; and it was said that those who watched the tape breathlessly concluded, “We have never seen anything like this.” I finally had my chance to see this movie one late night shift in the dorm office. The subject of the movie? Something racy and X-rated? No, on the tape was a documentary called, “Faces of Death”—a collection of real footage from police, fire, emergency departments depicting real people meeting their deaths in a variety of horrible ways: a crocodile, a failed parachute, a police shoot out, an execution in a state prison. No one in 1986 could watch that and not come away astounded and saying, “I have never seen anything like that!” What astonishes us, what changes us, what draws us in to hold us still is very different now.

To show the scribes that he has the authority to forgive sins on earth, Jesus simply looks at the paralyzed man and says, “….rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” And he did. He walked “away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’” What exactly had they never seen before? A miraculous healing? A miraculous healing done by merely forgiving the sin of the sick? Or a miraculous healing done in defiance of traditional Jewish theology? Or, all three! Would we be astounded? Would we think that this healing through the forgiveness of sins was miraculous?

Maybe. More than likely we would set aside a judgment until we had more and better evidence. Where’s the doctor’s report, before and after? Are there any X-rays? Let’s see the tape again. Do we have expert testimony from a professionally trained, crime-lab certified videographer that the tape hasn’t been Photo-Shopped? Do we have an unambiguous statement from Jesus’ ministry office that the video isn’t fake? Is there a rebuttal statement from the scribes’ office? And so on. What can astound us in 2008? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything.

Truly, what’s astounding about this gospel tale is that Jesus claims to be the Son of God and the Son of Man with the authority “to forgive sins on earth.” Essentially, he is claiming to possess the license that God alone enjoys to wipe away those offenses against God that bring us to illness, to paralysis, to demonic possession. By speaking, merely speaking, he picks up the paralyzed man and undoes his life of sin, repairing him, reconciling him to the Father. The witnesses at his home see and hear Jesus do that which the scribes argue that God alone can do—bring a creature to health by speaking a word to his disease. And! And, he does so not because of the paralyzed man’s faith, but because of the faith shown by the man’s friends. Another marvel! One more miracle to astound them. Are we astounded? Can we be astounded?

A weary cynicism worries this age. Miraculous healings are simply inadequately explained medical anomalies. Witnesses to miracles are duped pawns, gullible, easily impressed morons. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is an oppressive tactic to maintain institutional power. That which can astound us becomes more and more rare as we eagerly replace our Christian moral imaginations with the mechanical insights of science and the demands of political ideology.
It is impossible for a Christian to live this way. Why? We start with the premise that creation itself is a gift; Christ is a gift; our lives lived with Christ are all gifts. And when we give these gifted lives back to God, we are doubly gifted with their return to us! After this, nothing is beyond our astonishment, everything is a source of amazement! The Good News is that our Father whispers to us daily and all day, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” What malady, what cynicism can worm its way into that gift and spoil our party?

Your name is "Servant"

1^st Week OT (M): 1 Sam 1.1-18 and Mark 1.14-20
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

There you are. . .sitting in the library reading. There you are standing all by yourself in Kroger shopping. There you are strolling down a mellow neighborhood street enjoying the breeze. And completely surprised! You hear your name! John. David. Aaron. No other sound. No other voice. Bill. Jackie. Anne. Like a pistol shot out of the blinding dark. Marty. Michael. Christopher. Eddy. You jump. Maybe your heart quickens. You might want to run. And then there is that suspended moment in time between hearing your name and turning to the name-caller, just a single, lonely half sweep of the second hand between recognizing your name and recognizing the voice of the caller; it is just an infinitesimally small dot of not-knowing-who-calls. . .but you turn anyway. And you say, “Yes.” Now, imagine that the voice that calls your name out of a depthless silence, imagine that that voice could belong to anyone, just anyone at all. . .

The sun is high but the wind is cool enough. The fish are almost leaping into the nets. Voices carry over the lazy water. It was almost time to sit down for a small meal. And just as they pull the next net of fish from the Galilee Sea, they hear: Simon. Andrew. James. John. They are fishermen. And when he calls them by name, “they [leave] their nets and [follow] him.” What did these men hear when Christ called to them? Did they hear their names spoken aloud? The gospel just says that Jesus called out his invitation: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Does this sound like “Simon” or “Andrew” or “James” or “John”? If not, why do these sensible working men just leave their nets, their family, their hired help, and follow Jesus? Imagine yourself at work today. A stranger walks into the office, the classroom, the bank, the store, and says to you: “Follow me.” And then walks away. No name. No indication that the person knows you. Just, “Follow me.” Do you leave your desk, your calculator, your books, and follow? In that infinitesimally small dot of not-knowing-who-calls-you, don’t you wonder who calls? Of course you do!

How strange is it that Simon, Andrew, James, and John—not hearing their names from Jesus and apparently not knowing who he is—leave their livelihood and follow him? It is exceedingly strange. . .well, unless, of course, we will say that when Christ calls us to follow him, he simultaneously re-names us with our mission. In other words, what we hear when he calls is not an old name, an “unturned name,” but the name he gives us to turn us to him. Perhaps you will be startled to recognize in this new name of yours an old mission. Or you might find comfort in hearing again why you were made. There could fear or anxiety or abiding pleasure. However you might feel about being renamed when called to your mission, turn and say “Yes, Lord!” Remember: at baptism we took on the life of Christ, adopting his name for our mission. . .there is no moment, no place when we are without the name of Christ; no moment, no place when we are without his prophetic and priestly ministry. Our lives are lives of constant conversion, turning-always back to Christ, turning back to follow him.

Here’s your assignment. When someone calls your name today, turn to them, and say to yourself: “What can I leave behind today to make Christ better known to you?” Or perhaps you can say to yourself: “Yes, Lord! How may I serve?” We prayed the responsorial to the Psalm 116 this morning: “To you, Lord, I will offer a sacrifice of praise.” Will you? When you hear your name called today, offer a sacrifice of praise to God by saying, “O Lord, I am your servant…you have loosed my bonds.”

Smaller heroes

Baptism of the Lord (A): Isa 42.1-4, 6-7; Acts 10.34-38; Matthew 3.13-17
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

In almost all of my high school literature classes we were taught that good literature is always about conflict and revelation. Man vs. Man. Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Machine. In these conflicts, the protagonist becomes the main character of a revelatory drama, something-up-until-now-hidden is finally unveiled in the conflict and the now public secret, though immediately applicable to our hero in the drama, is really a revelation for the reader. We as readers learn something about ourselves and thereby grow in our humanity—deepening our communal connections and preparing ourselves more fully for the next conflict. In this way, we are the beneficiaries of an epiphany; we are the smaller heroes of a drama that unveils the veiled, unlocks the locked, and in doing so, moves us into the way of a newer, more profound conflict that itself resolves eventually into another revelation and so on and so on. And the spiral spirals and we spiral with it to our end. That’s what we were taught about how to read literature in high school.

John the Baptist is busy at the Jordan River dunking prostitutes, tax-collectors, lepers, all the unwashed and unwanted of Galilee, baptizing them for repentance and preaching the coming of the Lord—the one who will baptize with fire and righteousness! In mid-dunk, John sees Jesus walk up, get in line, and when his turn comes, insists on being baptized like everyone else. John protests! And tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized. An altogether sensible move given that Jesus is the Son of God and moves among his Father’s people without sin. Why baptize someone for repentance when they have no sin to repent of? John says in protest, “I need to be baptized by you, Lord, and yet you are coming to me?” This must be similar to your CPA coming to you for tax advice. Or, perhaps your doctor asking you for a second opinion about one of her cancer patients. Does the ignorant amateur safely advise the professional about his or her own profession? John stands conflicted and confused.

Jesus eases the conflict and clears the confusion when he says to John, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus, so as not to be in conflict with his Jewish tradition, presents himself to John for baptism because it is the right thing to do according to the law. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that his baptism is necessary or prudent or a good PR stunt. He says that his baptism is one part of a larger fulfillment of his Father’s expectations for human righteousness. Jesus has done all that is required of an observant Jew in his day: naming day, circumcision, Passover feasts, etc. His baptism is the last ritual obligation he has to complete before starting his public ministry as the Christ. John, either convinced by Jesus’ argument or simply cowed by his authority, “allows” Jesus to be baptized. And here we have the revelation!

But wait! The conflict between John and Jesus in the gospel is resolved in a revelation, but what about all the conflicts out here, outside the text, out here in the real world? Jesus is baptized. The Father reveals Jesus to be His beloved Son. God is pleased with His son. Great revelation, wonderful epiphany. But just today we hear from Peter in Acts that the Jesus went about “healing all those oppressed by the devil…” And this was after his baptism! The devil is still oppressing God’s children even after Jesus’ baptism. How did his baptism in the Jordan by John resolve conflicts with the devil, with ourselves, and with one another? We still have problems.

First, pay attention to the epiphany itself. The Spirit of God came upon him. The voice proclaimed Jesus to be the “beloved Son.” Second, look again at the text from Acts. Peter says in Acts, “You know the word…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.” And third, look again at the text from Isaiah, the Lord says, “Here is my servant…my chosen one with whom I am well pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit…” The Lord tells Isaiah that His anointed will not cry out or shout in the streets, not a single blade of grass will he bruise “until he establishes justice on the earth…” We know that the Spirit of the Lord is upon His anointed. We know that His anointed will establish justice—the Lord’s rule on earth. What else do we know about this Christ? We know that he must suffer and die. We know that he must come again.

In the meantime—all the time and times in between then and now, there and here—we, you and I, have promised to follow him. We have promised to make it our lives to follow, our livelihoods to follow, all of our conflicts and all of our revelations are about following him. Jesus was baptized in order “to fulfill all righteousness.” We were baptized to join his righteousness, to cling onto his ministry, his miracles, his teaching and preaching, his betrayals, his sufferings, and his death. We were baptized to graft ourselves onto the branch of David and Jesse, to share in the promised kingdom, the sacrificial priesthood, and the revealing mission of the prophet. We were baptized to transplant ourselves into the Body of Christ and work with him to bring justice to the nations. We were baptized so that we are able to shout with Mary, she who gave birth to the Word, “Let it be done to me according to your Word!”

Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John because, if we will become the beloved children of a loving Father, we too must be baptized and the Spirit of God must come upon us and the voice from heaven will say of you and me and our promise to be Christ for others, “I am well pleased.” What happens then? Wars end. Hunger is eliminated. Disease cured. No. Our conflicts with God do not magically cease. My conflicts with myself do not disappear like soap bubbles. Your conflicts with yourself and your neighbors do not vanish into the cold air. What is revealed to us in every conflict, each sign of trouble is power of the Spirit to bring us a patient peace, a constant hope, the love we need to throw off the oppression of hatred and inordinate desire; to unbuckle the leash of sin and to throw ourselves out there as living sacrifices to the justice that we know is coming. We are baptized to follow Christ not to wallow in self-pity; to cry out in the streets and shout the Word in the markets. In short, what is hidden is revealed, what is locked is unlocked b/c we ourselves are revelations of the Spirit!

Will the tax-collectors and prostitutes and Pharisees watch us and say, “Ahhhhh…so that’s who Christ is…that’s exactly, he is exactly who I want to be”?

Looking for a What, or a Who?

January 4^th (A): I John 3.7-10 and Luke 1.35-42
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass, Church of the Incarnation

Exhausted though we may be of anticipating and now celebrating the birth of our Lord, we find ourselves still in need of remembering exactly why the second Person of the Blessed Trinity became Man. Why did the Son of God take on human flesh? John, writing in his first letter, argues that “…the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil.” No doubt Macy’s, the wrapping paper industry, the candy makers, and the reindeers’ union are disappointed to hear that this joyful season is not about them! Sorry to disappoint. But this little chunk of the church calendar is set aside to help us answer a question so fundamental to our human nature that our scientists may one day find its gene and name it “Telos,” or “Purpose.” So, time to store the glazed ham recipes, the shopping lists, the gift receipts, that torn plastic bag of worn discount bows and ribbon, and pick up a nice clean sheet of paper and write across the top in permanent Magic Marker: “What am I looking for?” Like Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem, like the shepherds obeying the angel, like the Three Kings coming from the east, and like billions of souls since Jesus lay in his manger, we are all looking for something, and that something is, in fact, a Someone.

So, John the Baptist is standing around with a couple of his disciples and Jesus walks by. John says for all to hear, “Look! The Lamb of God!” John’s disciples start following Jesus around. After awhile, Jesus stops and turns to them. He asks, “What are you looking for?” The disciples’ strange answer comes in two parts: 1) they address Jesus as “Teacher,” and 2) they answer Jesus’ question with a question—“where are you staying?” This question is not a request for a street address or an apartment number. They want to know where Jesus abides; basically, in what truth or peace or justice does this Teacher rest? Jesus answers them, “Come, and you will see.” The invitation, “come and see,” is gospel-speak for “there is no explanation I can give you that surpasses the excellence of simply experiencing the Christ first-hand, so come on!” And they do.

Now that you have written “what am I looking for?” in big letters across the top of your page, what will you write in answer? You can be practical and write something like: financial security, lots of friends, a good marriage. You can be spiritual and write: peace, wisdom, mercy. Or maybe you want to be philosophical and write: truth, clarity, goodness. Or psychological and write: integrated, actualized, self-possessed. Or maybe, just maybe, you want to be Christian and write: “I am looking for Christ, the Lamb of God.” All those other things you might write can be had in varying degrees without Christ. You can be practical, spiritual, philosophical, psychological all day, everyday and never once think of Christ. Let me ask you another question then: where are you staying? On whom do you live? From whom do you derive your life, your love, your beauty? If John’s disciples walked past you today and someone said of you: “Look! A follower of Christ” and then the disciples asked you—“where are you staying?”—could you say to them with the confidence and assurance of Jesus himself, “Come, and you will see”? What would you show them of Christ in your life? Could you say with Andrew and the shepherds and the Three Kings, “We have found the Messiah”? Can Jesus look at you and change your name to “The Rock”?

The Son took on human flesh to destroy the works of the Devil. One such work is the filtering edifices of abstractions, -ologies and –ism’s, theories and speculations, all the gunk we set up between our desire for God and the satisfaction of that desire. Jesus said, “Come and see.” Follow and see; do and see; walk with me and see. Dissolve the gunk in hearing Jesus ask you: “what are you looking for”? Then glory in triumph to hear him say, “Here I am.”

Dominican Poetry Prize

For all the Dominican poet-preachers out there!



Submit your work at the Fourth Annual OP Prize for Poetry. . .



I will be submitting one or two myself.

And again & again & again. . .

December 24 (Morning Mass): 2 Sam 7.1-5, 8-16 and Luke 1.67-79
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Zechariah’s tongue, struck mute by the archangel Gabriel as a punishment for his failure to trust God’s plan, is now unstuck at the birth of his son, John, and Zechariah wisely uses his first words to praise the Lord, the God of Israel. And more than praise God he blesses God and recounts as a memorial all that God has done for the people of Israel. And more than praise God and bless God for His mighty deeds, Zechariah prophesies his son’s task and the future-history of his people. This canticle, called the Benedictus, is so much a part of our lives of prayer together—we pray it every morning—that I wonder if we really hear it anymore. In poetry, repetition is used to emphasize the importance of a word or concept or emotion. Repetition in prayer inscribes, writes on the heart and mind of the one praying a Word or Deed, spoken and done, a word or deed that reveals God to us and reminds us each time we pray that we live and move and have our being in the promises of God. John was promised to Zechariah and Elizabeth. John’s coming heralds the coming of the Christ. And so, today, for one more day, we wait—praising, blessing, prophesying, anticipating the arrival of the Christ Child among us. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel!

Repetition is a means of remembering and forgetting. What is written can be read and misread. What is written can be true and false. In repetition, we can know better or forget more. The familiarity of recitation becomes the comfort of knowing-well and knowing-well what we pray can become an inauthentic mumble, the vain repetition of small noises. However, we know that Zechariah’s witness to our salvation history is authentic, and delivered with authority, precisely because his tongue was struck mute by the archangel. His initial seed of doubt is contained. Held in, dammed up, given over to silence and the methodical march of the calendar. Like the infant in his wife’s womb, Zechariah’s doubt gestates for nine months, maturing, distilling, insistently progressing toward its term and its inevitable, exuberant birth! From doubt to praise. From anxiety to blessing. From silence to prophecy. Zechariah’s prayer, like his son and the Christ his son announces, is a dawning, a daybreak, a morning of mornings.

Our God has come to his people—again. He has set us free—again—this time by raising up from the house of David the king, a powerful savior, the Christ. He has saved us—again—from the harm our enemies would do to us. He has—again—made good on His promises to be our God by showing our ancestors an undeserved mercy. He shows us that He has once again remembered the covenant He swore to Abraham, our father in faith. His vow to us to save us from our enemies, to set us free to worship Him, rejoicing and singing, to make us holy and righteous; this vow He has—again—kept in perfect love.

Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s son, John, prepares the way of the Christ by baptizing with water for repentance, a turning from sin with forgiveness that prepares us, leaves us knowing that our salvation is at hand. Praying this prayer, repeating the praise, blessing, and prophecy of Zechariah, brings to our hearts and minds again the coming dawn from on high. And we, those who dwell in the dark and live in the shadow of death, we are guided—again—on the way to peace. Forever we will sing the goodness of the Lord because we will forever sing the canticle of blessing that greets John on his birth as prophet and herald of the Lord, The Lord—Wisdom of God, Lord of Israel, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Radiant Dawn, King of Nations, and again, tomorrow, Emmanuel, “God-is-with-us”!

God is dead. . .now to mourn. . .

4^th Sunday of Advent: Isa 7.10-14; Rom 1.1-7; Matt 1.18-24
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

[Wow...you can really hear my southern accent coming through on this podcast!]

On this chilly December morning in Dallas, TX, this fourth Sunday of Advent 2007, just two days from the solemn celebration of our Lord’s Nativity, with a heart ready to open in prayer, a mind waiting to learn the truth, a stomach eager for some ham and pecan pie, and with my bags packed to head home to Mississippi, on this chilly morning, I greet you with this bit of news: “God is dead.” He passed peacefully while we slept; unexpectedly, He passed while we weren’t paying attention. God is dead. And now, we must mourn. . .even as the birth of Christ approaches, we must mourn the passing of our God. How do we mourn the death of a deity?

Before we ask that question again and answer it, let’s ask a question about the God’s death. As long ago as 1965, the American theologian, William Hamilton, asked our question for us: “What does it mean to say that God is dead? Is this any more than a rather romantic way of pointing to the traditional difficulty of speaking about the holy God in human terms? Is it any more than writing against all idols, all divinities fashioned out of human need, human ideologies? Does it perhaps not just mean that ‘existence is not an appropriate word to ascribe to God, that therefore he cannot be said to exist, and he is in that sense dead’”(27-8)? Hamilton argues that the “death of God” means all of these and more besides. But as we fall toward the celebration of our dead God’s Son’s birth on Christmas, this observation, made by Hamilton, hits us with the truth, and hits us squarely in the heart: “God is dead. We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but the experience of the absence of God”(28). In other words, God is dead to us insofar as we experience His absence in our lives. Think about all those times when He failed to “show up” when you most needed and wanted Him. Those dark nights of mourning when His smallest touch or quiet word would have healed your despairing grief. That disappointment is the death of God.

If God is dead, how do we mourn? There are at least two that we mourn the passing of our God. If you find the death of God worrisome, downright anxiety-producing and dangerous, then you might mourn His death by building strong stone monuments of His existence, by writing wordy systems that describe His presence, that inscribe His “being-here-with-us” into our daily language, our everyday living-together-rules. And these monuments of stone and ink slowly, over time, replace the God of the Old and New Covenants, the once thriving God of Abraham and Jesus. If, however, you experience the death of God as liberating event in human history, a freeing of the creaturely spirit from the prison of a jealous deity to explore and evolve, then you might mourn His passing by pulling down His monuments, burning all those pages of ink with their empty words and hollow sentiments. And your revelry of revolutionary destruction will itself become a god to be praised, to be worshiped—the Human, not the merely human, but the Human Freed is set on the altar. I said that you might mourn in either of these two ways. In fact, we have mourned in exactly these two ways. Our stone monuments and our revolutionary fires have become for us idols, mere creatures of creatures toted on the shoulders of the Disappointed and Despairing, and praised precisely b/c each is so easily within our grasp, each so easily controlled. They are idols. And there is no quicker, no more sure way for us to kill God than to make of Him an idol, for us to make God into Man.

This temptation—to make God in our own image and likeness—is overwhelmed in the solemnity of our Lord’s Nativity, in the celebration of the birth of Christ among us. All of this talk about the death of God and how we mourn His passing leads us to the fourth Sunday of Advent where we continue to wait, continue to anticipate, where we hold still and silent for the introduction of God’s Word into human history. Christmas for Christians cannot be Santa Claus, holiday sales, wrapping paper, trees and wreaths, family meals, and getting presents. All of these are happy-enough traditions as they are. But Christmas—the birth of our Lord among us—is God’s sign, God’s wonder-work, God’s promise-fulfilled, His gift of Himself to us: not as a monument, not as a doctrine, not as a holiday or feast, not even as a memorial or a solemnity. Christmas is the Very Gift of God Himself to us. He is born as a child for no other reason than to be our living God in history—yearly, monthly, daily, He is Emmanuel, “God is with us.”

When we create God in the image and likeness of Man, we sculpt an idol and raise a temple around it. That temple can be stone, brick, abstract idea, notion; it can be wooden, golden, paper and ink; our temple can be a belief, an emotion, an intellectual game, or a political ideology. But for this deity, our Man-made god, to be real for us, we must first kill the Living God and mourn His passing. Only then can our disappointment at His absence, or our relief at His demise grow into a full-blown idolatry, a truly man-made, man-centered, man-empowered theology of Man.

So, who will kill Him? Who will step up and slay our divine jailer so that we might be free? Santa Claus? Papa Noel? The Easter Bunny? One of the North Pole elves? Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer? The CEO of Wal-Mart? Target? Macy’s? They needn’t bother. It seems that you and I are all too ready to do the dirty deed. Let me ask you (and myself!): have we waited, truly waited on the coming of the Lord? I mean, have we used our Advent time to prepare for the introduction of the Christ Child into history? Have we prepared for the coming of the Lord, or have we waited on shopping days, half-off sales, post-holiday clearances? Have we helped our ulcers to grow by fretting over family problems? Have we put aside the Joy that is coming in favor of the work to be done? Will the Christ Child arrive to find us eager to greet him, or just ready for it all to be over? I have a flight to catch. Security checks. Lines. Crowded planes. Baggage claim. Car rental. Credit card bills. Expectant family and friends. Deep cuts, old wounds. You might protest here, “But Father, we are only human! This is what happens to us.” Yes, it does. And because it does, we have a living God Who becomes one of us to free us from exactly this kind of dis-ease, this kind of faithlessness. We must live with Him to be free!

Here’s the Good News: our failures are not permanent; our lapses in faith will not endure. Having been “called to belong to Jesus Christ,” we are set up to be free, made to be liberated from the need for idols. Ahaz needs no sign—nothing high nor deep—because he wills not to tempt the Lord. We have no need of a sign from our living God b/c we know what’s coming, who’s coming. Even as we layer the nativity feast with our consumerist anxieties, we rejoice way down deep that the sign we have been given—“a virgin will conceive and bear a son”—we rejoice that this sign has come to pass. And for all our missteps and mistakes in making this feast about our living God, we welcome Him as our gift. Wrapped not in paper and ribbon but in flesh like our own, we welcome and accept the gift of the Christ Child, and beg his Father to show us how to be gifts to one another.

Rejoice! The gods of our idols are dead. Now, “let the Lord enter, He is the king of glory!”

Altizer, Thomas J.J. and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God, 1966.