Wash Your Face!

WASH YOUR FACE!!!

Here's the deal: the gospel for Mass this morning reports that Jesus unambiguously condemned as hypocritical the Jewish practice of marking oneself while fasting or doing penance, including rending garments, wailing, ringing bells, and (drumroll, please) wearing ashes on one's head. Please, please, please spare me the litanies of excuses: it's a public witness; it shows Catholic strength; its Tradition, ad nau. Your daily life in Christ is your public witness. Catholic strength is best shown in humility and love not numbers. If wearing the ashes all day is a ecclesial tradition, then why does the church put such an explicitly "do not wear ashes on your forehead" gospel reading on Ash Wednesday?

OK! Now, here's the second deal: buy me a book from my Wish List and I won't nag you about your smudge. COME on! I can't spend my Lenten season reading postmetaphysical theologies as my spiritual reading. . .I'm feeling the need to think/pray through how the Cross conquers nihilism. . .

H/T to Jeff Miller at CurtJester for the cool pic. . .

Carrying death...

Due to the Zombiesque effects of several days without sleep I had to bail on celebrating this morning's conventual Mass at the last minute. . .here's the homily I prepared:

St. Agatha: 1 Cor 1.26-31 and Luke 9.23-26
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

Paul writes to the Corinthians, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise…” and so here we are, the Foolish, to hear Jesus say to us just one day before the start of Lent: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Fools, indeed. But Happy Fools if foolish in the wisdom of the Cross, what it means to haul such a thing onto one’s back and carry it about. One’s Cross is no daily burden, simple or large; it is death, the always shutting closed of one’s life. To carry your Cross daily is to daily carry the cross of your transience, your impermanence; your cross serves double duty as a sign of surrender to mortal being and as spit in the face of despair—on final foolish loogie spat in the Devil’s eye! Just think: at what point in Jesus’ life is he both Suffering Victim and Conquering King?

Carrying your cross is not a task like washing the car or doing the laundry. It is not a burden like taxes or visiting in-laws. Nor is the cross meant to be a sign of pride or shame, something we find a way to excuse or explain or something to brag about. A properly carried cross rests on the shoulder and pinches the skin just enough, rubs the bone just enough to keep vivid in our hearts and minds the ministry we do as we trudge along behind our Lord. We follow. That’s what we do: we follow. Doing as he does, preaching as he preaches, teaching as he teaches, healing as he heals. . .dying when he dies. This is not a job. It is a love. Paul reminds us, “Consider your calling, brothers and sisters. . .It is due to [God] that you are in Christ Jesus…” It is because we asked to carry our cross with Christ that we are allowed to do so.

What do we carry when we carry our Cross with Christ? Variously, “the cross” has been described as sin or physical disabilities or a bad marriage or some sort of addiction, something that unavoidably weighs on us, makes it difficult for us to walk a straightened path. This is too small. How will shouldering the “burden” of an addiction or a mental illness save my life for eternal life? How do I lose my life to save it if my cross is an inordinate love of Krispy Kreme Chocolate Filled Chocolate Covered doughnuts!? Our inordinate desires, illnesses, sins, disabilities—all of that and more attach to the Cross when we lift it to our shoulder. They will all die with us. None, however, will survive our transformation into the Christ—perfect God, perfect Man.

Jesus reveals four steps or movements in joining oneself to the Saving Cross. He says, first, “If anyone wishes to come after me;” second, “he must deny himself;” third, “and take up his cross daily;” and, fourth, “follow me.” Knowing what you know about the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, do you wish to go after him? If you do, then you deny yourself, renounce yourself; that is, surrender to an inevitable, mortal death; cease flirting with the temptation to become God without God. Now, pick up your death as a Cross like Christ’s and live daily with no fear of dying alone or without purpose. Freed from the suffocating burden of dreading death and what comes after, follow Christ! You have lost your life by embracing death. And whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will save it.

Fr. Philip's Ten Commandments of Confession

Fr. Philip Neri’s Ten Commandments for a Good Lenten Confession:

1. Thou shall know that thy presence in the confessional is the wondrous work of the Holy Spirit. That’s right. If you find yourself in the Box with Father, you are there first because the Holy Spirit prompted you to go. You agreed to follow that prompt, but like all forms of prayer and charitable work, the human person requires a little graced nudge. So, go into your confession confident that you are there by the grace of God to be reconcile to Him!

2. Thou shall not waste your time or Father’s time with obsessive-compulsive sacramental trivia such as, “OK, Father…so I was still a little drunk but I had to pee so I got up and I wasn’t all the way awake yet and I did it but is that a sin still?” Or, “Father, canon 1765.4 forbids X and I heard recently that Blessed Mary spoke to a woman in Mobile, AL and she said that X is OK and she has the bishop imprimatur!” Hint: if you find yourself discussing the distinction between a valid sacrament and a merely licit sacrament, you must RUN to the nearest park and lay in the sun.

3. Thou shall simply and clearly state your sins without excuse, explanation, or decoration. It is rather pointless to confess your sins with flourish or verbal decoration. Also, the priest really doesn’t need to know why you committed a particular sin. He’ll ask you if more info is needed.

4. Thou shall not use weasel words, dodges, or euphemisms when confessing individual sins. “Impure with self” is not a sin. Masturbation is a sin. “I watched inappropriate images on the computer and abused myself.” Do we confess inappropriate behaviors or sin? In other words, you watched porn and masturbated. Just say so.

5. Thou shall keep Penitent Drama to a minimum. Confessions can be quiet dramatic and even confusing. But confession time is not the right time to show everyone in line outside what a horrible sinner you have been and what a wonderful saint you are now. Also, Father doesn’t need to hear twenty-minutes of highly detailed narrative building up to the actual sin. This is attention-seeking behavior and a waste of precious time.

6. Thou shall not use the “face to face” option as an excuse to chit-chat with Father. Confession is not about story time nor is this option a chance to ask Father for advise on a complicated spiritual issue. Make an appointment with him for that. You have a whole lotta people waiting to see their confessor in the Box.

7. Thou shall confess thine own sins and no one else’s. This seems to be a particular problem among mothers and grandmothers of wayward children and grandchildren. Having failed to persuade said wayward child into the Box, mother or grandmother try to sneak the child’s sin past the priest. There is no vicarious confession in the church.

8. Thou shall not request of Father a confession only a few minutes before Mass begin. The time right before Mass is usually very chaotic in the sacristy and in the church. Father is preoccupied with setting up the sacramentary, placing his homily on the ambo; adjusting the speed of his fav fan, and just generally trying his best to prepare for Mass.

9. Thou shall ask questions about your assigned penance if you do not understand it. Do not leave the Box wondering what it is you are supposed to do for your penance. Just ask Father to clarify quickly his assignment. He will welcome this because it shows you are serious about the sacrament.

10. Thou shall not make a false confession in order to test Father’s orthodoxy nor record the sacrament without Father’s express approval. Yes, this has happened to me and it is a violation of just about everything we believe is holy in the Church, and I believe it constitutes a mortal sin.

Next time: Fr. Philip’s Top Ten Most Offered Pieces of Confessional Advice

UPDATE: I've added several books to the Wish List for my Lenten reading and reflection. . .this year I will focus my Lenten homilies on a "theology of the Cross."

Beatitudes vs. Diabolicals

4^th Sunday OT: Zeph 2.3, 3.12-13; 1 Cor 1.26-31; Matt 5.1-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital & Church of the Incarnation

In all fairness, we must equal time to the loyal opposition. Therefore, a reading from the Diabolical Litanies of St. Malefactor: “When our Infernal Lord saw the mewling crowds, he went up the mountain to get away from them, and after he had sat down and had drunk his fill of unwatered wine, his dark priests came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the vulgar in passion, for theirs is the kingdom of pleasure and vice. Cursed are they who mourn, for they will die wallowing in their own weakness. Blessed are the aggressive, for they will inherit the land. Cursed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be constantly disappointed in the fruits of slavery to morality. Blessed are the ruthless, for they will never be caught unawares. Blessed are those with cynical hearts, for they will never see entertain betrayal. Cursed are the peacemakers, for they will disrupt the business and fun of war. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for they provide the ruthless with violent amusement. Blessed are you when they insult you and look down on you and utter every kind of vile lie against you. Celebrate and be bawdy, for they have joined us and their reward will be great in Hell.”

Much like the Beatitudes that these Diabolicals so obviously mimic, it is less than satisfactory to simply quote them and let them speak for themselves. It seems that commentary is necessary. Therefore, let me point out just a few features of this dark text. First, we have to note that the Diabolicals contain both blessings and curses. One might be tempted to conclude that the “blessing” statements are “good.” Not so. When evil blesses evil only evil results. Here “blessing” is the functional equivalent of “cursing” for those taken by evil. Also, you will note that many of these Diabolicals sound very familiar. In one form or another, our secular, materialist culture has adopted almost all of the Diabolicals as foundational to liberal democracy and capitalist freedom. You can, no doubt, find several books at Borders in the business section that seriously entertain and argue for 99% of the what the Diabolicals are teaching.

Sad though this may be, it is predictable for a society that sees its children as cut/gain investments; sees the elderly as bothersome and expensive and unwanted children as disposable; lauds aggressive competition even when it so obviously bruises our best relationships; adopts in the name of “fighting back” the inhumane tactics of war used by our worse enemies, especially torture; demands that the allegedly servile media show us only that which outrages us from Their Side; and, finally, the Diabolicals speak directly to our secular sense of justice and fairness: me and mine, first…then, you and yours…and then, maybe, just maybe, them and theirs. We always seem to think that justice is about equality. For those of us who have died with Christ and risen with him again, our Father’s justice is about the excessive overflowing of Love. In this case, keep your justice! And give me mercy!

Here is the single job of the Beatitudes as preached by Christ…Paul writes to the Corinthians: “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong…[He choose] those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something…” Why would we think to boast about this task? Why brag? Or why hold this task up as something to be envied? We do not boast before God. We not brag to God. Paul reminds us, “It is due to [God] that you are in Christ Jesus…”, so what could we possibly have to get all puffed up about? What righteousness we have, what sanctification we have, what redemption we have, we have because they were given to us, simply handed over to us and released by God. We have two jobs: 1) gives thanks to God and 2) share the wealth!

I noted in an earlier homily on the Beatitudes that there is a particularly powerful grammar at work in these sayings. The Beatitudes teach us that there is a pattern to justice and peace, a grammar, if you will, 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. How easy for us to see that if we ARE NOT where we ought to be, or that if we ARE NOT who we ought to be, how easy is it to see that we WILL NOT receive the supernatural gift that comes with being where we ought to be and being who we ought to be. Let’s say this just a little more clearly. There are two pillars to Christian morality: The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. Together…together!...these two constitute the Thou Shall Not and the Thou Sall Be of our moral lives. Together, followed with a graced faith and earnest desire for holiness, together these two make up one gifted person. You. Me. And you and me together to make the One Body of Christ.

Remember what Paul wrote the always troubling Corinthians: “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth…God choose the foolish of the world to shame the wise…to reduce to nothing those who are something…” The poor in spirit are poor b/c they know that they need God. Those who mourn are grieving b/c they know that only God can comfort them fully. The meek will inherit the land b/c they will rely on the Hand of the Father to inherit and not on their own craft and wiles. And those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be satisfied b/c in their long hunger and thirst they have come to know that there is nothing that will squash their hunger and slake their thirst but God and Him alone.

We can be learned and wise and beautiful and rich by the world’s standards, but if we are not learned and wise and beautiful and rich in the Father’s gifts, then we are simply ugly and stupid. We are ignorant and poor. We are doing little more than hanging out waiting to be reduced to nothing by the fools of God. And, yes, we should be worried if the Diabolicals sound more useful to us, more practical and philosophically sound. The author of that litany will give us all we want. But his gifts vanish at the first sign of fire, flaming up into smoke and ash the moment it is too late to turn around. Then we will choke on our boasts.

This coming Wednesday fires the starting pistol for our forty-day race to Holy Thursday. At the sound of that doleful crack with the smell of ash still fresh in our noses, we will jump the starting line and run like cows with our tails on fire! Lent is something To Be Done and done quickly. This is what the world-wise believe anyway. For the poor in spirit, the meek, the mournful, and the hunger, the race is not against the clock or the calendar but against all of our collected temptations, against all those desires and vices and empty promises that long to drag us to Hell. If you will be Beautiful come Easter morning, spend your race-time in thanksgiving to God, spend your time being joyful, being glad, because if you do “your reward will be great in heaven.”

Die to live...

The Presentation of the Lord: Mal 3.1-4; Heb 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-32
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Simeon—a righteous man, very devout—is the only prophet of the Old Covenant to live to see the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to send His people a savior. We can easily imagine that finding his savior in the temple radically changes Simeon’s ministry. From prophet who tells of the coming of the Lord to prophet who proclaims that the Messiah has come, Simeon becomes the first preacher of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Having received a promise from God that he would not die before he saw the Christ, Simeon goes to the temple “in the Spirit” and there he meets the Lord on his Presentation Day. Taking the Christ Child into his arms, Simeon announces for all the world to hear that this Child is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” Now, he prays, let me die “according to your word.” I have seen he whom I have lived so long to see; now, Lord, “let your servant go in peace.” Wisely, Simeon, weary and worn from years of waiting, wants a way out. Why? Sure, he’s exhausted as a prophet. He has been waiting for a long time. Or, perhaps he is calling upon the Lord to let him die in peace b/c he knows what the prophet Malachi has seen: “Yes, he is coming…But who will endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire…”

What is it about spiritual refinement and purification that might make us want to rush into an earlier, promised death? As we fall head-long into an unreasonably early Lent, the problem of refinement and purification takes a front seat in our Lenten-Mobile. The sifting, separating, parsing out, the cleaning, the fasting and prayer, the “desert-time” alone with Christ our Rock, all those mental, physical, spiritual moments Away From the Ordinary, all of these “set asides” and sacrifices, all of them are mere mummery unless you are willing to die. And, yes, I mean “Die” not just “die to self” or “die to sin” but literally, Die; drop dead where you stand. This is not a matter of showing God how serious you are about your faith. He knows how serious you are or aren’t. This willingness to die—to say nothing of your eagerness to die—is about recognizing the inevitability of your end, about taking hold of your unavoidable death, and hurling yourself eyes and arms wide open into the Light that blinds with Love, that refines and purifies with holy fire.

Am I suggesting we become quietists? No. Maybe some sort of weird Catholic-Quaker combo? No. This all sounds like trendy Zen Catholicism with a dash of postmodern nihilism thrown in! No, again, no. I am suggesting that we do nothing less than what our Lord did for us. Live and breath and move about our lives conscious of the fact that as followers of the Way, “to die” means to be refined, to be purified in this life while we still live. There is nothing to fear in death if death itself is defeated, defeated in the splendor of hope we share in virtue of Christ’s suffering. The letter to the Hebrews is our assurance: “Jesus likewise shared [in the blood and flesh of God’s children], that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death…the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.”

As we giddy-up to Lent—recovering from the shock of its rude arrival so soon after Christmas!—as we ride headlong into our forty-day desert, remember that we, all of us, have seen the Lord’s salvation, His light of revelation for the Gentiles, and there is nothing left for us to do but die. . .and then live—exceedingly, joyfully, abundantly live!—as if death never mattered at all.

Ignorance is the beginning of knowing

3^rd Week OT (F): 2 Sam 11.1-17 and Mark 4.26-34
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass and Church of the Incarnation

The Kingdom begins as a scattering of seed on the land. The seed sprouts and grows. Mark writes, “Of its own accord the land yields fruit…” And the one who tossed the seed does not know how the “the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” grew. It just did. . .of its own accord; “…he knows not how.” He does know how to harvest the ripe grain. He wields the sickle expertly. The Kingdom begins with a scattering of seed and ripens for the harvest. Jesus uses this parable to instruct the crowd on the power of the well-broadcast Word to turn unseeded land into a bumper crop! He then goes on to offer another parable—the parable of the mustard seed—to demonstrate the power of the Word sown, even the smallest whisper of the Word thrown out there and planted in rich soil. Sprouts. Big plants. Large branches. Lots of dwelling birds. Lots of shade. Fair enough. But then we have this strange ending to the reading. Mark steps out of the story and tells us how Jesus is telling the story, “With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it…” Why are parables the preferred means of revealing divine truth?

A parable resembles a metaphor that has been stretched with lively details to form a short, logical piece of instructive fiction. Generally, a parable's parallel significance is left unspoken, unwritten; it is merely implied. For the hearer with ears to hear and eyes to see, the implicit meaning is obvious and clear. The parable then becomes a vehicle not only for teaching the crowds but also for finding out who is called to the Way, who has the graced faculties to identify the seed of the Word and scatter it again.

Probably the most important element of the parable form in preaching is that what is left “unsaid”—the implicit meaning. What is unsaid and unsayable is vastly larger and more complex than what is heard initially; it is certainly wilder and more dangerous than anything explicitly revealed in the fiction, and, according to Mark, Jesus did not speak to the crowds unless he spoke to them in parables. Meaning, I think, that Jesus wanted to impart both an explicit and an implicit meaning. The first to grasp now. The second to grow on. If this is the case, then we can deduce that divine revelation is best imparted to us by the parable form b/c parables make it possible for us to hear what we can hear now and benefit from what we hear now AND parables plant a seed—an implicit seed—in our mental fields, a seed to sprout later and flourish as our own fertile soil grows more and more ready to be planted.

Mark writes: “Without parables [Jesus] did not speak to [the crowds], but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.” As his hand-picked students, the disciples are prepared to see and hear the raw truth, the purest Word. And where the great curious crowds required wordy, highly detailed parables in order to understand even a little, our Lord no doubt refused to lecture his students in this way. Why? They could see and hear the gospel b/c they had accepted his invitation to follow him. That act of obedience (of listening) cleared their ears and opened their eyes. And while the crowd milled around like vipers waiting for signs, the disciples struggled with their Master’s teaching precisely because they understood that they did not understand. In other words, they had perfect knowledge of their ignorance; and were, therefore, finally ready to be taught.

When you hear a parable and while you are struggling with its parallel meanings (implicit and explicit), ask yourself: am I ignorant enough to receive this Word? If not, pray for humility and listen!

NB. Don't forget to check out student ESSAYS. . .leave them comments and questions, please!

Check out the New Essays. . .

The First Splash with Dummy

Excellent crop of First Essays on suppl(e)mental!

Please leave comments for the students. . .they are prepared for questions/critiques. . .

Poem-Videos: Billy Collins (edited)

I needed to edit these down to one to conserve space and speed up the d/l process for some readers!

Only fools call themselves Wise...

WISDOM

St Thomas Aquinas: Wis 7.7-10, 15-16 and Matt 23.8-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

The Book of Wisdom wisely teaches us: “…both we and our words are in [God’s]* hands…” It is wise that the Book of Wisdom teach us this b/c as a book this book would not want—if a book could want—to be left in the hands of a fool to be read by foolish eyes and taught by foolish tongues. The wisdom imparted here also reminds the potential fool that he or she does not read, teach, write, or research alone. Prior to any desire for knowledge, any longing to know, is the primal hunger for God, our preferred state of perfected union. Our intellectual and academic pursuits are marked from the beginning with the presence of God, Wisdom: “…I chose to have [wisdom] rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.” So even before the light is shone in the darkness, wisdom abides and seduces us to the humility proper before our Father in heaven.

What is wisdom? Aquinas writes, “According to [Aristotle] (Metaph. i: 2), it belongs to wisdom to consider the highest cause. By means of that cause we are able to form a most certain judgment about other causes, and according thereto all things should be set in order…[and in the second article] Accordingly it belongs to the wisdom that is an intellectual virtue to pronounce right judgment about Divine things after reason has made its inquiry…”(ST II-II.45.1-2). Slightly more simply put, wisdom is that habit of mind that seeks to discover and study the final causes of all things and put these things in their proper order given their final cause. Wisdom is not some goofy, spooky secret that floats around waiting for the right moment to possess someone. Nor is wisdom to be found among the sticky tomes of Retail Gnosticism that haunt Borders and Barnes & Noble. These “wisdoms”—usually some form of esoteric paganism muscled-up with pseudo-scientific jargon—these wisdoms tend to provide the weak ego with a boost of faux confidence and leads the newly self-minted guru to exalt him or herself. But here’s what we know from the wisest teacher of them all: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

On receiving a gift, we say “thank you” to the giver, thus humbling ourselves before the giver as a sign of our dependence on him or her for that gift. We say grace over our food, giving thanks for our benefactors and our cook. Perhaps you woke up this morning and gave God thanks for one more day to serve Him. We are all here now offering the ultimate thanksgiving of the Mass. But do you thank God for your Reason, your ability to deliberate on moral problems, your sense of right and wrong given the limits of right reason, your ability to experience creation and deduce godly truths? Do you thank God daily for His wisdom? If not, I wonder who it is you call “Master”? I wonder what it is that moves you to think about anything at all. . .

To help his disciples maintain the humility necessary to grow in wisdom, Jesus tells them: “Do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.” He also says not to call anyone “father” or “Master” b/c they have one Father and Master. The essential point here is that there is a single source of Wisdom for us, just one origin for the understanding of all things made. This warning isn’t about titles or honorifics but about foolishly identifying someone created as the source of Creation. It is not difficult to see how quickly such folly grows into madness. And that madness into the exaltation of one who was created from dust. What is there in the human mind that precedes the wisdom of the mind’s Creator? Nothing. Thomas called it “straw.” Straw has its proper uses, for sure, and it is a good thing, but it is straw not enduring truth. Enduring truth starts for us when we come to understand that “…both we and our words are in [God’s]* hand…”

*I’m not avoiding the male pronoun here in deference to the so-called rules of “inclusive language.” Context requires that the pronoun be specified.

Fill the Cross with Repentance

3^rd Sunday of OT: Isa 8.23-9.3; 1 Cor 1.10-13, 17; Matt 4.12-17
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation

If you walk into your local franchised bookstore and head over toward the “religion” section, especially the sub-section labeled “Christianity,” you will begin to experience what the early fathers called a “spiritual wasteland.” Rows and rows and rows of brightly colored books line the shelves, each shiny with promise and polished with market research, perfectly molded to a demographic, knitted together out of wood pulp, plastic, thread, and the fulsome yet oh-so-mysterious absence of anything remotely intelligent or interesting or even Christian to say. As you approach the piles of hair-sprayed volumes, that swift rushing breeze in your ears is not the fire of the Holy Spirit leading you to wisdom and truth, but the sound of your genuine life in Christ being sucked out of you—chapter by chapter—by the vicious and vacuous soul-hungry platitudes that pollute the “religion” books of the NYT’s bestseller list. Mary Magdalene’s Olive Oil Diet! Seven Stepping Stones to Gospel Wealth! I’m a Good Catholic and Everything the Church Teaches is Wrong! Chicken Soup for the Illegal-Immigrant Oppressed by American Global Consumerism and Persecuted by The Racist Man for Wanting a Piece of the Big Apple Pie Soul. . . . .eighth edition. Sorry. I was wrong earlier. That rushing sound you hear isn’t your spiritual life being sucked out of you. That sound is the sound of the Cross being emptied of its meaning. And it would seem that the only remedy to this desecration is repentance.

We know that the cookie-cutter-seven-steps-to-happiness-without-any-effort-or-money-down trash dominates the shelves and flipping through these tree-wasters, no one would blame you for wondering why Jesus bothered to suffer and die on the cross for us. Apparently, all we need for earthly bliss and heavenly union is a positive attitude, an imagination for seeing dreams come true, a willingness to cut loose “negative” friends and family members, a good job, a stuffed savings account, lots and lots of liquid capital, and the megalomaniacal delusion that God cares one tiny iota about your net worth or your car or your wardrobe. Somewhere, probably, among all the glossy covers of plasticized, dry-gelled Rev. Ken dolls is Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, wherein we read Paul writing of himself: “…Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,…so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.” How is he going to accomplish this oh-so-small feat? Paul writes, “…not with the wisdom of human eloquence…” But what’s wrong with the wisdom of human eloquence that prevents it from being used to stop those who would empty the cross of its meaning? Human wisdom, human eloquence had nothing to do with giving the Cross its meaning in the first place. Why assume that either or even both together can prevent its desolation?

Let’s say that the Cross is our symbol of suffering and death. Yes, it represents sacrifice and salvation as well; but for now, let’s say that the Cross emptied of its meaning is little more than a randomly drawn figure used by billions as a Sunday decoration or a bobble for the neck or ear. The Cross is a brand. A recognized product complete with packaging, logo, trademarks, marketing, and a faithful customer base. Emptied of its meaning through neglect—faithless catechesis, sorry preaching, and disobedient liturgy—the Cross is a small thing in the lives of some Christians, a mere survivor of centuries of human aversion to sacrifice, suffering, pain, and the reality of sin. Paul is charged with the arduous task of preaching the gospel of repentance so that the Cross is never emptied of its meaning entirely…there must always be some flicker of hope, some glimmer of expectation that the Cross remains a gateway, a thoroughfare, a passage.

But if the cross of Christ is not to be emptied of its meaning and the wisdom of human eloquence cannot be used to prevent such a disaster, to whom or what do we turn for help? Matthew says that Jesus “left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea…From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!’” To whom or what do we turn for help? We turn to Christ; we convert to Christ; we switch ourselves around toward Christ and walk a very, very different road behind Jesus to our salvation. There may be seven steps, or four hundred and eight steps, or a lifetime of running, or maybe no movement at all, nothing but the tautly pulled bow-string silence of waiting. Regardless, when we walk with Christ, follow along with him, our first stop is the Cross b/c without the Cross. . .well, in other words, with an emptied Cross, we are get-saved-quick-coupon-junkies with no more possibility of eternal life than a freshly cut stump in the rain. Both Jesus and Paul are clear: repentance is the key.

Jesus moves to a new part of his country. He does so to preach the good news of his Father’s two-part message, “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.” What do we do when we repent? Let’s repeat an experiment we’ve done before. “Stand up!” “Sit down!” “Clap” Now, “repent!” You see? “Repent” is an imperative, an order, a command. It is done. Not just thought about or written about or contemplated. But done. Similar to “Love God, love your neighbors and love yourselves,” this command is best carried out daily, but the clock ticks faster and the calendar seems to flip more quickly. Time may be running out to figure out what repentance requires of us. At the most basic level, repentance requires us to embrace without hesitation the life of Christ—the life of mercy, care, forgiveness, service, and everlasting joy. It means for us to turn our backs on sin; to convert our lives to love God’s Word; to turn and face a future in graced obedience, a future without division, without factions in the Body. “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” Here, in front of a loving Father, the Cross—for all its violence and death, suffering and pain, for all of its scandalous politics and sketchy Roman history, here, in front of a loving Father, the Cross is a visible call to holiness, a welcome mat to heaven; it is The Way to say “I am Christ’s!”

The Cross’ lust for the broken body and abandoned soul is insatiable. The false crosses of mass-marketed DIY “win friends and influence people” philosophies will not lead us to the terrible Beauty of heaven’s throne. We do not navigate around the Cross. We cannot fly over it. There is no speech, no prayer, no devotional practice that will seduce its hunger. There is no theology or philosophy or occult science that opens its saving doors.* We must climb on—with Christ the Chief Thief—and let ourselves be stolen for the Kingdom! You do not belong to Paul. Or the Traditional Latin Mass. You do not belong to Peter. Or the “Spirit of Vatican Two” liberals. You do not belong to Apollos. Or John Paul II or Benedict XVI or Mother Angelica or Hans Kung. You do not belong to a piece of the Body; nor do you belong to just one breezy wisp of the Spirit.

We turn to God through Christ—a repentance that takes hold and brings us inevitably to the hunger of Cross. Therefore, with Peter and Andrew and James and John and all the saints, follow Christ, making of yourselves a magnificent feast!

*This needs clarification lest someone come to think that I am a Catholic feidist. My point here is that our initial contact with redemption is made possible through the Cross of Christ. We do not come to the point of being redeemed by reasoning our way through to a philosophical conclusion. Nor are we brought to heaven by assenting to theological propositions. Once we have est'ed a firm relationship with Christ, all of the --ologies mentioned are invaluable in helping us to understand our faith more deeply.

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?