The heart of the other

1st Week of Lent (F): Ez 18.21-28 and Matt 5.20-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation

Aren’t we accustomed to Jesus saying ridiculous things? He always seems to be pulling some kind of joke on his disciples. It’s like that 70’s martial-arts western, “Kung Fu,” where the novice monk, young Cain, is challenged by his blind master to walk on rice paper without tearing it or to catch a fly with his chopsticks or wrestle with a riddle like “what was your face before you were born”? Jesus tells his disciples to abandon family and friends and follow him to a certain death on a cross in Jerusalem. He tells them to walk on water, cast out demons; he tells them that they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. As our Brit brothers and sisters say, “He’s having a laugh.” All the more unusual then is this teaching from Matthew that makes perfect, practical sense: your sacrifice at the altar of God is rendered unacceptable, unclean by a heart darkened with selfish anger toward a brother or sister; with a sin against family or friends; or squeezed by the cold vise of rash judgment. Be reconciled first with the one against whom your heart is set, and then offer your gift at the altar. Very sensible. But Jesus can’t seem to resist just one small twist to keep us vigilant.

What’s the twist? Listen carefully, “…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave the gift there…go first and be reconciled…” Did you catch it? If you recall that your brother has anything against you. Jesus tweaks his otherwise sensible teaching with a characteristically Jesus tweak: we expect him to say, “If you have anything against your brother…” What he actually says is quite different: if you know that your brother has something against you, it is your responsibility to go to him and reconcile. This tweak in the teaching serves to emphasize (in dramatic fashion) how important it is to serve our Lord a clean, a contrite heart—the one and only sacrifice we make for holiness! By making it my job to approach the brother I’ve sinned against, Jesus lifts us the radical nature of God’s love, the divine love that makes it possible for us to love in the first place. He turns us out of our self-pitying navel-gazing to face the one we’ve rashly judged.

The Lord tells the prophet, Ezekiel: “…if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life…” The wicked man “turns away” (i.e., repents) of his sins and lives. But his “turning away” is made good not by the act of turning away (remember: we do not earn forgiveness) but by the mercy of God who has promised (repeatedly promised) to honor our conversions from sin with forgiveness. In other words, we are forgiven NOW and urged to repent in order that that forgiveness might be made productive for us.

Jesus’ tweak—his insistence that I approach the one whom I have sinned against, the one whom I have given reason to be angry with me—this tweak guarantees my obligation to seek reconciliation, holds me directly responsible for helping my brother or sister to approach the altar with a contrite heart. For this difficult requirement we can only be grateful b/c when one member of the Body is reconciled to God, we are all made one soul cleaner! Notice also that this tweak assumes that you know you have sinned against another. Yet again, Jesus makes it difficult for us to say something like, “Well, if she has a problem with what I said or did, she needs to come to me and say so.” That attitude makes you the fool and the one you have sinned against “will hand you over to the judge…”

We march our way across the Lenten desert to Jerusalem and the Cross of Christ. This is the time to cry out from the depths of your heart and seek the Lord’s kindness in repentance. Does your soul wait for the Lord? Do you know that if He held our sins against us, we could not stand at His altar?

Go into all the world and apologize in my name...

Here is the inevitable result, the tragic and entirely predictable end of syncreticism in the Christian church:

LOS ANGELES - The Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles has issued an apology to Hindus worldwide for what he called "centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them" reports India Abroad. The apology was given in a statement read to over 100 Hindu spiritual leaders at a mass from Right Reverend J John Bruno. The ceremony started with a Hindu priestess blowing a conch shell three times and included sacred chants.

OK. Nothing wrong with apologizing for past hurts. . .IF you are the one who did the hurting. . .otherwise it is a form of public self-loathing and false pride.

But what instigated this need to apologize on the part of Mr. Bruno?

This meeting was the result of a dialogue, started three years ago, between Hindu leaders and Rev. Karen MacQueen, who was deeply influenced by Hindu Vedanta philosophy and opposes cultivating conversions.

And the result (i.e., punchline) of this "influence"?

"There are enough Christians in the world," [the Episcopagan priestess] said.

Yup. . .that is exactly why Jesus died on the Cross. . .so those who claim to follow him and those who vow to preach his gospel can betray him just one more time. . .

Link to the original article (though the headline makes no sense)

More poetry vids...(edited)

I had to edit these down to two vids b/c the post was so large it was causing download problems for some readers. . .you can find all of the vids I had here on YouTube.com. . .

BAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

1^st Week of Lent (M): Lev 19.1-2, 11-18 and Matt 25.31-46
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

To the sheep on his right our Lord will say on the Last Day, “Come, you who are blessed of by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you…” To the goats on his left our Lord will say on the Last Day, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” As we might expect, the accursed goats object to this judgment and Jesus unambiguously lays out the reasons for his judgment against them. What’s interesting (and unexpected) is that the blessed sheep are surprised by their judgment. After welcoming the sheep into the kingdom, our Lord explains his judgment saying, “…I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…” When the goats object to their sentence our Lord justifies his judgment by pointing out the chief failures of the goats, “…I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink…” What these two groups have in common is their surprise at having served or not served the Lord unawares. Both groups ask, “Lord, when did we see you a stranger and welcome you (or, not welcome you), or naked or thirsty and give you drink (or, not give you drink)?” Jesus’ resounding answer is almost harsh in its clarity: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did (or did not do) for one of these least brothers of mine, you did (or did not do) for me.” Always the good Jew, Jesus is showing his disciples how the Law is worked out with the Messiah in their midst.

Not a few Christians dislike this part of Matthew. I’ve found it to be a particularly sore subject for more traditionalist-minded Catholics who see the emphasis on “social justice/good works” as a possible danger to sound doctrine and proper devotion. They are not wrong to worry about this. I’ve heard many an eager Catholic say, “Oh, all we need to do is feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Leave all that rigid dogma stuff and sappy devotional nonsense aside. Just help the poor!” Unfortunately, both groups of our brothers and sisters have missed the point entirely. This apocalyptic scene of sheep blessing and goat roasting from Matthew is most certainly about the Last Judgment and what counts as a ticket to blessing or roasting. However, this scene is also—and I would bet mostly about—Jesus being a good Jewish teacher and showing his disciples what it means to not only follow the letter of the Law of the Decalogue but to fulfill its spirit for Christ’s sake. For—Christ’s—sake. That phrase is the difference that makes the difference btw an eternal life of bliss or an eternal life of blisters.

Remember now, both the sheep and the goats wonder when they have served (or failed to serve) the Lord. The Lord’s answer is beautiful in its simplicity: when you serve them (or fail to) you serve me (or fail to). When we serve the hungry, the foreigner, the thirsty, when we serve them and not our social justice agenda and not our corporal works of mercy devotionals and not our applications for law school or med school and not our guilty consciences and not our community service hours—when we serve them as brothers and sisters, we serve Christ. This follows the letter of the Law from Leviticus—“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy…[therefore] you shall love your neighbor as yourself”—AND it fulfills the Law in our Messianic age—“…whatever you did for the least of mine, you did for me.”

Our psalm this morning says it perfectly, “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye.” When faced, at last, with our Lord on his judgment seat attended by his throng of angels, let him see your joyful heart, your enlightened eyes. . .and your callused hands and sore back, your body bent from doing NOT the just thing or the pious thing, but all the merciful things that make us just and pious sheep.

What he assumes, he heals...*

1^st Sunday of Lent(A): Gen 2.7-9, 3.1-7; Rom 5.12, 17-19, Matt 4.1-11
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

John baptizes Jesus. Coming up out of the Jordan River, Jesus sees the Spirit as a dove and hears the voice of his Father, “This is my beloved Son…” Stepping onto the bank of the river, Jesus is seized by the Spirit and lead into the desert “to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus fasts for forty days and forty nights. When he is weak from hunger, possibly addled from lack of sleep, and vulnerable to attack, the Tempter comes to offer him what we all would imagine is foremost in his mind right that moment: food! Jesus refuses food. The Tempter then offers him two more enticements: one of pride (to exploit his status as the Son of God) and another of avarice and power (to become the ruler of the world). Jesus deftly turns both away, leaving the Devil to flee in order to make room for the Father’s ministering angels. Though we are no doubt delighted that Jesus won his battle of wills with the Devil, we may wonder why the Son of God, the Word Made Flesh, is “lead by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” in the first place? Does the Father need to test His Son? Does the Spirit suspect a weakness in the resolve of the Lamb to be sacrificed? Why is Jesus tempted in the desert? And how do these temptations lead him and us with him to Jerusalem and the Cross?

With a smudge of ash on the forehead and the solemn greeting on Ash Wednesday, “From dust you were made, to dust you will return,” we begin in earnest another Lenten trek with Christ to Jerusalem and his Cross. What are we marking with these ashes? What does that frightful greeting bring to mind? First, we are beckoned by an undeniable reality: our mortality, our frailty as creatures: the inevitability of death. Ash Wednesday is a crowded day at Church because we know we are dust and breath and that eventually we will die. Those ashes mark us as impermanent things…and they are a blessing on our transience. Second, we are summoned on Ash Wednesday to commit ourselves to the forty day/forty night trek across the Lenten desert with Christ. Nowhere else will our frailty, our weakness be tested so completely. Random chance, freak accident may surprise us with a test of faith and courage, but at no other time in the year do we knowingly step up, stare the Devil in the eye, and dare him to tempt us. Lent is our bravest Christian adventure. Finally, third, we are reminded again that though we are frail creatures subject to devilish temptation and the chaos of nature’s chance, we are Creatures—Made Beings, beings made, created in the image and likeness of a loving Creator! And what’s more, we are Redeemed Creatures—finally, mercifully saved creatures, loved into the Father through His Son by the Spirit. This is who we are as we touch the first tempting grains of Lenten sand.

Now that we are reminded of who we are, let’s go back to my first questions: why is Jesus tempted in the desert? And how do these temptations lead him and us with him to Jerusalem and the Cross? We have already run into the question, or one almost exactly like it: why must Jesus, the sinless Son of God, be baptized? Jesus is tempted for the same reason that he is baptized. For us. Jesus is brought through the desert to Jerusalem and his Cross for us as one of us. Fully human. A man like us in every way but one: he was without his own sin. With needs, passions, hurts, loves, and temptations, the Son of God was made flesh by the Spirit through his mother and ours, the virginal Mary. Why? So that every human wound, every human frailty, every human sin could be healed. His Cross—the tool of his torture and death—is our medicinal tool of salvation. Fully human, fully divine, he was baptized to baptize human flesh. He was tempted to temper human flesh against temptation. And he died so that we might live.

The story of the Fall told to us in Genesis tell us that our first father, Adam, was tempted to become a god in disobedience to God. He failed. Our first mother, Eve, was tempted to become a god in disobedience to God. She failed. Mary, the new Eve, was tempted by the Spirit to give flesh and birth to God, Jesus the new Adam, the Christ. She said YES! And as Paul teaches the Romans, “For if, by the transgression of [ the one Adam], death came to reign in life through [him], how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of [salvation] come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” Through the living and dying of Christ then we come to “reign in life” as Christs, New Adams and New Eves. And because of our baptism into the Body of Christ and because we eat his body and drink his blood at the eucharistic altar, we march through the desert of Lent guarded against the wiles of disobedience, protected against the lie that brings us constantly to the brink of damnation, the lie that we can become gods without God.

We have forty days and forty nights to confront head on the One Sin that all sins call “Father”—the single sin of believing that we are our own gods. Every sin we assent to, every sin we give flesh and blood to gives life to the serpent’s temptation: disobey God so that you might know what it is to be God. There is no thornier path, no road so crooked as the one that starts with disobedience and travels through the arrogance of believing that we save ourselves from ourselves, that we are able to lift ourselves to heaven and accomplish reconciliation with God without God. Such a belief, and the daily habits that result from believing so, are the deadly vices that kill us over and over again, that punch us in the heart and throw us back again and again into the serpent’s company. The stripped bare audacity of the Lenten desert is our training ground, our yearly boot camp for exercising the gifts of love and mercy that always bring us, again and again, brings us back to the Father. A successful Lenten trek will bring us to Jerusalem and the Cross bare and ready to walk the passionate way with our Lord, bare and ready to die among the trash of Golgotha, and rise with him on that Last Day.

We are able to put one foot in front of the another all the way to Easter morning because Jesus did it first. Along the way we will be shown the glories of power, the majesties of celebrity and infamy, we will be offered all that the Devil has in his kingdom. We do not need to resist temptation, to fight against the black jewels of the devil’s chain, we need only remember that Jesus met the devil first, always before us, and said, “Get away, Satan!” There are no battles left for us to plan, no wars against temptation for us to fight. The last battle was fought and the war won on the Cross in Jerusalem. All that we need do is follow Christ. One foot in front of the other, walking lightly on the sand in the shadow of his healing presence.

"Quod non assumpsit, non redemit." (Gregory Nazianzen, Letter to Cledonius) H/T: Fr. Dominic Holtz, OP

Mourning and weeping and fasting...

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isa 58.1-9 and Matt 9.14-15

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation


Maybe just an innocent question about spiritual practices, or maybe a “gotcha” question to prove Jesus a fraud, the question asked of Jesus by John’s disciple—why do we and the Pharisees fast, Jesus, but your disciples do not fast?—this question gets answered in a rather weird way. Jesus said, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” In other words, as long as Jesus the Bridegroom is with the wedding party, no one need mourn. What is the connection he’s making between fasting and his absence/presence? And what sort of fasting best honors Jesus’ “absence” until the eschaton?

I’ve heard it preached—not seriously, of course—that John’s disciples had grown weary of locust and honey and wanted to make a change to Team Jesus! All that fasting in the desert with God’s Bear was taking its culinary toll on their already unsettled stomachs. The question about why Jesus’ followers weren’t fasting while everyone else was fasting looks suspiciously opportunistic—both for those who might want to jump the Baptist’s strict ship for Jesus’ apparently more relaxed cruise liner, and for those who wanted to trap Jesus and see him taken off the preaching circuit a la execution. But the straightforward answer both groups were expecting to hear wasn’t spoken. Maybe they wanted to hear that the law of fasting had been revoked, or maybe that fasting this year was to be minimal. What they heard is that there is something about mourning the dead and fasting that go hand in hand.

It would be too simple to say that we fast to mourn the dead. We do, of course, but is this the point Jesus is making to John’s inquisitive and strangely hopeful disciple? No. The better question is: what do we do when we mourn; I mean, what is mourning that makes sense of fasting? Mourning is what we call the dulling pain of absence, the emptying out of one’s heart and spirit; mourning is the wail of a swiftly approaching reckoning, a brief, manic moment after a death to collect, solidify, and canonize a memory and then to witness that gathered-up portrait dissolve under the steady rain of consoling tears and begin to collect again in another entirely true (if wholly inadequate) picture of the dead. Mourning is the survivors’ reckoning of a life in friendship and love; it is an unswerving path to both remembering and forgetting. Mourning is what we do when we lose what we have been freely given: the gift of love in another.

If mourning leads us down the doubled path of remembering and forgetting, how does fasting follow so easily? What do we do when we fast? In the simplest terms, fasting is about removal, taking away from, moving out and leaving; fasting is about naming what is routinely Me, constantly Me, and waving to it “goodbye.” If we must “call to mind” and “pour out of mind” a love that can grow no more—a dead love, a departed eros—we fast in order to give our bodies to the public liturgy of remembering what we had in love and forgetting what cannot now be, the future of that love.

Jesus’ disciples cannot fast because they cannot mourn. Jesus is not yet dead. And at his death, they will mourn. Like anyone who has lost love in death, they will mourn, and how will they fast? Isaiah witnesses the Lord saying, “Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!. . .This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”

And there will be mourning no more. . .

Pic: Mourning

No, we can't. . .no, we can't!

When in Rome. . .?

For those who are still insisting that ashes on the forehead is somehow Divinely Ordained Sacramental Tradition and Therefore Ashes MUST Be Worn ON THE FOREHEAD All Day. . .I give you the Roman Tradition on the matter. . .

One of you guys had better let the Pope know that he's doing it wrong!

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!

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