Let's say that you are dead. . .

5^th Sunday of Lent (A): Eze 37.12-14; Rom 8.8-11; John 11.3-45 (revised)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

[NB. My thanks to my regulars who pointed out lots of errors. I’ll do what everyone else is doing today: blame Daylight Savings Time!]

Let’s say that you are dead. Have been for some time now. It’s hard to tell that you are dead b/c you are still up and walking around. Talking, working, eating, sleeping. But you are dead. Though your heart pumps blood, it is empty—holding in a terrifying vacuum. Where your purpose should be, where your animating love should be, where your freedom should be—there is nothing. Dead quiet. Icy stillness. Nothing. . .nothing at all. Your bones dry. Your muscles wither. Your strength drains away. And you either cry in anger at the loss, or you die a little more b/c there is nothing to do. Let’s say that you are dead. Have been for some time now. But it is hard to tell b/c the circus of your life is choreographed to ballet-perfection, and your smile sparkles like a dead winter’s sky. Careful! Be very careful. Does that dead smile mean that you have strangled hope? If so, listen: “O my people, I will open your graves and raise you from them. . .you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from them, O my people!. . .I will put my spirit in you that you may live. . .”

This is who we are, People of God! We are those who live in the spirit of the Lord. We are not made to live with dry bones or poisoned blood; we are not made to rot in the ground or to be scattered like dust to the wind. The grave is a temporary place, a moment’s rest, just a quick stop on the way to a new heaven and a new earth. Our hope rests in the promise of the Lord to breathe into us again the first breath of creation, His Word of over the void, and to re-create us anew; from the drying bones and rotting flesh of death, we are made to rise, to be refreshed, to be brought up again so that we might dwell with Him, body and soul, whole persons with Christ. And this promise of re-creation in the Word is not a promissory note that we must wait on to mature, an account that we sit patiently by waiting to balance: we are raised up now, lifted up now, brought to new life in the resurrection right now!

We have spent four weeks allowing the desert heat of Lent to reveal our temptations. Once uncovered, we know our weakness, we know how we can fall, how our hearts are emptied. But if your heart—that is, the very root of your link with God—if our heart is dead and still, an icy void—no revelation, no divine showing will move you to live again. That link to the Father must remain alive, whole, undefiled, and free. So, what do we do when we feel the spirit in us failing? Think of Mary and Martha and Lazarus—those loved by Jesus. Lazarus is sick and dying. Martha and Mary send word to Jesus that “the one he loves is ill.” Jesus calms their anxiety: “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Jesus waits two days and then tells his friends that they must all go back to Judea. They protest: the Jewish authorities are trying to kill you! He says, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.”

If we walk in the darkness, we are blind. But since we walk in the light, we see: Jesus is going to Judea to lift Lazarus out of his grave, to bring him out of his tomb, and he does so so that his Father’s promise will be kept. Over his friends’ objections and despite their doubts, Jesus goes to the tomb and cries aloud: “Lazarus, come out!” And John reports to us: “The dead man came out. . .” The dead man walked out of his grave and lived. Because of “what he had done [many of the Jews] began to believe in him.” And because we too believe, there is no death for us, no grave to hold us, no tomb to jail us. Our ears are always open to hear the Lord cry: “Come out of your grave and live!”

Even so, how often do you feel the spirit failing you? How often do you feel the disbelief scratching at your heart? What is it that tells you to welcome the void? More often than not our faith in the Lord’s promises is challenged by sickness and loss. The very fact of our mortality, the reality that we will die, stands against His promise of life. There is nothing for us to do but die. And because our eyes are open and because we walk in the light, we see that this stumbling block litters our path. My death, your death is no death at all if we live and move and have our being in the Spirit. Paul writes to the Romans, “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.” Is this a wish? A fantasy? A dangerous gamble? No! It is our most precious hope, His most gracious gift—we live, and we live with Him forever.

Listen again to Ezekiel: “O my people, [you people here, right here, right now] I will open your graves and raise you from them. . .you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from them, O my people!. . .I will put my spirit in you that you may live. . .” That promise is made good here this morning/evening in the Eucharist, right here in this celebration of the Lord’s last supper with his friends. Gathering together in his name, repenting of our disobediences, listening to His word spoken and preached, we are offer on the altar of sacrifice not only our first fruits, our material goods, we offer ourselves; we make of ourselves a true and living sacrifice, an offering made acceptable to the Father by His Son through the Spirit. We are the Body and Blood of Christ offering Christ to Christ through Christ for Christ so that we might be Christ in the world for others! And when we do this, our opened ears hear loud and clear the voice of God say, “Untie them and let them go.”

Though the Enemy throws scandal in our way, we are our own worst enemy. How hard do you work against your own eternal life? How often do you create—from thin air and dust—obstacles for yourself? How many burdens do you pile on your back? On the backs of your family and friends? Do you bind yourself with the minutiae of the Law that Christ himself fulfilled for you? Do you properly credit yourself as freed from the necessity of sin and death? How much do you labor to untie yourself, to find your own way out of the prison of sin? You cannot free yourself. You cannot bring yourself back to life. You cannot lift your tombstone and walk out of the grave. Why not? You cannot do for yourself what the Lord Himself has already done for you. When Jesus tells Martha that he will raise Lazarus from the dead, Martha accuses him of being too late, too slow to arrive to help Lazarus. Jesus says to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha, ever practical, ever sensible, says, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus corrects her saying, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. . .” He says, “I AM the resurrection” not “I will be the resurrection” or “I was the resurrection.” He says, “I AM the resurrection. . .” Present tense. Right now, he is life for believers.

Let’s say that you are dead. Have been for some time now. But it’s hard to tell that you are dead b/c you are still up and walking around. It is time for you to get angry with death, time for you to get angry with your hardened heart; it’s time for you, looking at the Cross and hoping on the resurrection, it’s time for you to join Christ, get angry and cry out: “Take away the stone!” And it is time for you to walk out of your grave, let your bonds be untied, and walk freely in the Spirit of a Father who gave His only Son for you. It is time for you to show the glory of the Lord!

Died and gone to heaven. . .

DAMN! Goldberg beat me to it! I lived this book in grad school in the 1990's.

Topics for Future Occasional Pieces

Honestly, the first thing I would do is drag my habit sleeve across the ink bottle
and spoil the paper!

My gratitude goes out to all of you who responded so generously and provided me with a bushel-basket full of ideas for future occasional pieces of writing. Some of the topics suggested are beyond my competence ("history and use of the Dominican Rite"); others are treated better by more competent writers elsewhere ("location of tabernacle") and still others didn't quite strike the right chord with me ("Dominican bio-ethics"). So, given all of this, here are the three topics I've chosen to write about in the next few months:

1). Contemporary Religious Life (a narrowly construed piece on generational issues in the orders)

2). Theory and Practice of Prayer, or Is God Really Listening? (I've taught this as a senior theology seminar)

3). Some Random, Deconstructive, Postliberal, Hermeneutical Reflections on Postmetaphysical Theologies, or "A Dingo Ate My Nicaean Creed!" 'Nuff said. . .

Those interested in the Dominican Rite of the Mass, click here.

Those interested in Dominican bioethics, click here for a great vid by Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP.

PODCAST! The podcast for the first "The Mass Line by Line" workshop has been edited and is ready to post. I am waiting for the second installment to be edited. My thanks go out to Rudy B. (A.K.A. "El Burro") and Alex P. for their great work in helping this aging Poet/Preacher with the techie stuff).

AND! Last but not least and because I have fallen short of the full glory of the Father and wallow in sin, I note (one again) that the Wish List has been updated. . .

No true prophet...

4^th Week of Lent (F): Wisdom 2.1, 12-22 and John 7.1-2, 10, 25-30
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

Jesus travels to Jerusalem, moving slowly toward the center of his world as a faithful Jew. As those who travel with him, we stand behind him and peer over his shoulder at the steadily rising tide of opposition and violence against his Good Word. His approaching presence exerts a holy pressure against the Wicked of the world, pushing them back against one another, crowding them into one another, condensing them into smaller and smaller but stronger and stronger enclaves of surprisingly creative rebellion. From behind his shoulder, what do you see as Jerusalem comes into focus over the hill? What waits there, who waits there to cheer or jeer our Lord and his motley band of preachers? The Book of Wisdom gives us a prophetic picture, a picture of what waits and a prophecy for those who are waiting. But let’s ask this question: are you tempted to place yourself among the wicked, or do you fancy yourself as the “just one”?

The second chapter of the Book of Wisdom opens with this cheery scene: “The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: ‘Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us…’” Our book on the wisdom of the Lord prominently features the foolishness of the wicked. What are they worried about? The foolish and the wicked are feeling increasingly anxious about a holy man among them who stands as a living rebuke to their folly. The foolish wisely call him “just,” but because of this he is judged to be “obnoxious.” We have to wonder what he is doing to be so obnoxious! According to the wicked, he reproaches them and charges them with violations of the law; he claims to know the Lord and calls himself a child of God; his very presence is felt as a rebuke, censure; the wicked say of him, “…merely to see him is a hardship for us!” And their carefully considered response to this horrible man is predictable: they will test his claims to holiness with “revilement and torture;” they will give him a shameful death to test his claim that God will help him: “For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him…”

We know the wicked aren’t thinking clearly here…St. Thomas says (in more philosophical terms than these): sin makes you stupid. Scripture says, “…they erred; for their wickedness blinded them…” Rightly, the author of Wisdom comes down on the side of the righteous man. But since we are still in our Lenten wilderness, our temptations are especially fresh and vivid. Are you then tempted to place yourself among the wicked, or do you fancy yourself the righteous yet persecuted child of God? If you place yourself among the wicked, you are admitting your foolishness and in so doing you have very likely seen the light. If you fancy yourself the Just Yet Persecuted One, you will likely find yourself wallowing in folly by Easter. Remember: for the devil, temptations are just convenient means to a much bigger end. If he can tempt you to anoint yourself a prophet contra ecclesia or tempt you to die a martyr’s death for nothing more than your vanity, then he has proven the wicked right—more often than not underneath the most highly polished plate of righteousness is a self-righteous heart just waiting, just hoping to be martyred for its favorite cause.

You may object here by pointing out that I’ve set up a false dichotomy with no good result for the earnest seeker and no way out. I’ve pointed out the obvious temptations of both the wicked and the righteous. Here’s the way out; Jesus says to the residents of Jerusalem, “You know me…I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.” No true prophet, priest, or king is self-anointed. No true martyr or saint runs after death for the sake of ego. You are sent out, or you go out on your own. The difference rests in the hand of God.

Suffer Well

4^th Week of Lent (T): Eze 47.1-9, 12; John 5.1-16
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Forgive this old English teacher his need for a moment of grammatical clarity. I promise, it serves our prayerful purpose this morning! Jesus asks the man who has been sick for 38 years, “Do you want to be well?” The man answers Jesus in a way that leads us to conclude that the man understands Jesus to be asking, “Do you want to be healed?” He tells Jesus that he can’t reach the pool “when the water is stirred up” because he has no one to help him. Jesus says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” In other words, Jesus orders him to be well. How are we to understand this healing? What does it mean for us “to be well”? We all know the basic distinction btw Good and Well. “Good” is an adjective, nouns are good. “Well” is an adverb, verbs are done well. Fried chicken, pecan pie, afternoon naps are all good. However, we read well, run well, write well. But what does it mean “to be well,” that is, what does it mean for us to exist well?

We can start a good answer here by looking at why the now-healed man and our Lord think he is ill. Think back to the Man Born Blind. Why does he believe that he is blind? What do others think about the Blind Man and the Man sick for 38 years? They are blind and sick because of sin—an opinion our Lord Jesus shares. Now, we find this difficult to believe. Of course, sin can make us “soul-sick,” but physically ill, physically disabled? That’s stretching a useful analogy between healing the soul and healing the body, don’t you think? I don’t think so. As persons, whole creatures, we are body and soul together. Not a soul poured into a body, or a Ghost Haunting a Machine of Flesh and Blood. As the incarnated Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus understands the intimate relationship between flesh and soul, he says to the healed man later on in the temple: “Look, you are well; do not sin any more…” Think of this admonishment this way, “Look, you are absolved of your sin, you are well. Do not sin any more…”

I asked earlier: what does it mean “to be well”? What does it mean for us “to exist well”? To be and to exist are infinitive verbs: we exist, we be. And to be well is to exist always in the will of the Father for us. I don’t mean to suggest here that disease is somehow a punishment for sin. God does not give us cancer as a punishment for sin. He doesn’t cause us to fall and break a hip or crack our heads open because we disobey Him. The reckless world we live in, this mortal realm of dangerous obstacles and killing sicknesses exists as a consequence of just One Sin, the original sin. And because we live in this physical world as persons, we get sick, we have accidents, we harm one another. To be well (verb + adverb) is to live as creatures in the will of the Creator for us.

We all know about germs and viruses and cancers and other mean-spirited dis-eases that strike us down. Even the most righteous among us get sick! So, “to be well,” must mean more than just “living as persons without disease or injuries.” Being well is about how you will come to understand your dis-ease, your personal uneasiness while sick or injured. And how you choose to understand and live with your disease is called “suffering.” We suffer the infection, the cancer, the emotional imbalance. We suffer, we “allow” that the sickness is with us and we choose how to react to this fact in the world. This is why Jesus asks the sick man, “Do you want to be well?” Do you will to be in right relationship with God? Though the sick man never says outright, “Yes, I want to be well,” his answer to Jesus is an act of contrition, therefore our Lord orders him to wellness; that is, Jesus places him back into the good order of righteousness.

“Do you want to be well” means (in part) “How do you want to suffer your sickness?” If you suffer alone, in self-pity, or with some sense that your sickness is deserved, then you will suffer—“live with”—your malady as a just punishment. The Good News, however, is that we do not need to suffer our maladies as punishments! We are free to give our sickness to Christ, the one who died that we might live. And we are free to be well as we suffer, free to live as men and women—loved persons—to live as creatures already perfectly healed, if not wholly cured. Do you want to be well? Good! Be well.

Unbornperson.org

Fetal Life and Abortion

unbornperson.org

This is the heart's work of Fr. Matt Robinson, OP of St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX. Fr. Matt is a biologist by training and a Thomist by the grace of God. Fr. Matt goes beyond the rhetoric, beyond the politics, and considers the truly fundamental philosophical problems with abortion. Check out his site, link to it, comment on it, and ask him your questions!

Awake, O Sleeper!

4^th Sunday of Lent(A): I Sam 16.1-13; Eph 5.8-14; John 9.1-38
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

“You were once darkness…,” Paul says, once you were of the dark, its son or daughter, once asleep in the dark, in secret, invisible, yourself blind to the light and stumbling, running a curling path along the cliff’s edge, just teetering on the precipice above the yawning void. It is thrilling, isn’t it? Dangerous, yes; a threat to life and limb, of course; but also dizzying, heady, eerily intoxicating—an eternity falling into darkness, touching absolutely nothing; seeing, hearing, feeling absolutely nothing. . .forever. Darkness holds out the promise of annihilation, the beginningless and endless nullity of all things; the dark we know here/now is just a taste, a mere sip from the cup of obliteration we flirt with in our Nights, in our days without the Light. Paul tells the Ephesians, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord!” And so, we must live as children of the light: “Awake, O Sleeper! and arise from the dead…!”

It is difficult for me to read the gospel this morning/evening without thinking about God’s Poet, Dante. We just finished the Paradiso in my freshman class, and as soon as I saw the gospel selection I thought of Dante with Beatrice in heaven: “The glory of the One who moves all things/permeates the universe and glows/in one part more and in another less./I was within the heaven that receives/more of His light; and I saw things that he/who from that height descends, forgets or can/not speak;…/almost/all of that hemisphere was white while ours/was dark when I saw Beatrice turn round/and left, that she might see the sun; no eagle/has ever stared so steadily at it…/The eyes of Beatrice were all intent/on the eternal circles; from the sun,/I turned aside; I set my eyes on her./In watching her, within me I was changed…/Passing beyond the human cannot be/worded…/Whether I only was the part of me/that You created last, You governing/the heavens know: it was Your light that raised me” (I.1-7, 44-48, 64-67, 73-75). Dante confirms for us three truths: 1) that God’s glory permeates, penetrates all things, heaven and earth; 2) that to look directly at His glory, we must be filled with His glory; and 3) that if we ourselves are not entirely prepared to look directly at His face, it is possible to experience His glory in another.

Take the man born blind. Having never seen in the light, the man is incapable of knowing anything but what he finds in the dark. What he knows in his darkness is scorn, abuse, neglect; maybe, occasionally, pity and the begrudging act of kindness. What he knows is sin, being set out, set apart and away, cast aside like garbage. He begs to live, hoping that those who hate him for his sin do not hate their chances of salvation more and by hating him more will give him something, anything to eat.

Jesus passes by and sees him. Others have seen him as well: neighbors, passersby. But Jesus sees him exactly as he is and not as his sin configures him for public display. Jesus sees a shining soul bound in pitch-black chains, a man born blind and in desperate need of sight. Taking dirt and spit, Jesus makes a paste and smears it on the beggar’s darkened eyes. And then sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam—“the pool of one who has been sent.” The beggar comes back able to see, blind no more. How was he healed? Magic dirt? Magic spit? Holy water in the pool? None of these. Jesus says, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam…So [the man born blind] went and washed…” He is healed by the grace of obedience; he listens and does as he is commanded to do, thus making his work righteous and fruitful! Our poet/pilgrim, Dante, in the company of Beatrice, writes as he grows toward God’s glory in heaven: “Passing beyond the human cannot be/worded…” Our healed beggar begs to differ and says, “Lord, I do believe.”

We must be sure to notice that the Man Born Blind obeys Jesus before he is healed. After the Pharisees question him and toss him aside—yet again!—for his alleged audacity in teaching them, Jesus questions him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man replies, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Here’s what we need to pay attention to: this beggar is not asking Jesus for proof that the Son of Man exists or for proof that the Son of Man has come…this beggar is asking Jesus to name the Son of Man so that he might believe on that Name! Who is this Son of Man? Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” These are the same words with which Jesus revealed himself to the Samaritan woman at the well. Her own exclamation of belief—“Lord, give me this water!—revealed a deeply seeded faith in the Messiah; for her, a Messiah not yet given a name. For both the Samaritan Woman and the Man Born Blind, Jesus, with his personal presence to them, reveals the fulfillment of their faith, the culmination of their trust in the word of the prophets that our Lord would come among us and heal every wound.

The Woman fetched water before Jesus revealed himself to her. The Man went to the pool to wash before Jesus revealed himself to him. And because these two exercised the grace of obedience—the gift we are all given to listen and obey—both are healed, both receive the divine light so that they might see the Messiah standing before them. Their darkness is lifted and the glory of God shines through. Paul writes, “…everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light…Therefore…Awake, O sleeper…and Christ will give you light.” First, we believe, and then we shine.

Lent is not a season for us to duck and weave around temptation. Lent is about putting one foot in front of the other, walking across the scorching dunes of withdrawal and unfulfilled desire. That which tempts you coils up and out, coming to a blistering head, living as a cyst on the skin, readily seen. Exposed to the Lenten sun, all the darkness in you worms its way out and proudly preaches its gospel of occult lies. You will know then the name of the Darkness that keeps you bound. If you spend Lent trying to avoid your temptations, racing around them, running from them, you will only succeed in helping them to build muscle, bigger and better muscles with which to conquer you unawares. The Woman at the Well and the Man Born Blind looked directly into the glory of God, straight through their own temptations, right at the source of their salvation—Jesus himself—and they saw in the light a man named The Christ. They were healed.

“Awake, O sleeper. and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” Just two more weeks of this, just two more weeks of our desert trek, and we will with Christ rise from the dead. In the meantime, the time between now and then, find the names of your temptations, expose them to the light, hold them up to the glory of God, and see them for what they truly are: enticements, bribes to live without the Father now so that you might live with the Darkness forever. Open your eyes to see, let the light in and “take no part in the fruitless works of darkness.” You are light in the Lord, therefore, live as children of the light!

Fr. Philip Neri's Three Year Plan for Faith Formation: UPDATED

Pretty much everyone admits that the quality Catholic catechesis in this country has taken a dramatic nose-dive in the last forty years. Replacing the contents of the historic Catholic faith with poorly digested pop-psychobabble, leftist political rhetoric, feminist power-grabs, and Protestantized biblical scholarship, our professional catechesis have left the U.S. church with at least two generations of Catholics incapable of articulating the most basic tenet of what we claim to believe as heirs of the apostles.

These same Catholics can emote canonical emotions on cue; “share” their faith when asked (i.e., give an uneducated opinion on some hot-button topic); and defend to the death the libertarian definition of conscience that they believe allows them, without consequence, to use artificial contraception, obtain abortions, divorce and marry without an annulment, and just generally do whatever they please. What they can’t do is describe, defend, or assent to the Roman Catholic faith as revealed in scripture, defined by the Fathers in the creeds, taught by the magisterium, and lived by the Church. And because they don’t know the faith, their “right to dissent” is wasted on tilting at Ecclesial Strawmen.

That we need a top-to-bottom, radical overhaul of the entire catechetical enterprise in this country is as obvious as a rabid possum in the outhouse and as pressing as finding that possum another home…quickly.

One fairly common solution to the problem of vincible ignorance of the faith is the establishment of diocesan centers for continuing education or adult lay formation programs. Insofar as any of these actually teach the faith, they are wonderful as antidotes to forty years of catechetical neglect. However, these centers and institutes are often recruitment and distribution facilities for dissent and pastoral malpractice. The more notorious of these will actively teach against the faith in the name of “cultural or historical relevancy” and in the name of “adult conscience formation.”

Another, and I would argue more specifically “Vatican Two,” solution to the problem is the parish-based, lay-run adult study group. The Episcopal Church offers what I think is probably one of the best organized lay-run continuing education programs called “Education for Ministry.” This is a four-year program that covers all the major elements of a professional seminary education at the master’s level. No doubt there are orthodox Catholic equivalents out there; however, most of the ones I’ve seen or heard about just can’t seem to get the basics right and refuse to side with the church on controversial issues, opting instead for wienie apologies or outright lies.

Below you will find a list of books that I believe one would need to start and maintain a three-year, once-a-week, lay-lead catechetical group in a parish.

But before we get to the books, let’s browse a few mandatory cautions:

1). No one living is as smart as two-thousand years of Church teaching and tradition. Some have come close (Rahner, von Balthasar) but 99.99999% of us are not yet ready to declare ourselves capable of consuming, digesting, regurgitating, and examining critically the monstrous volume of theology, philosophy, spirituality, history, science, biography, etc. produced in the church for the church. Therefore, a certain humility is required when stepping off into this project. This means leaving undeveloped and uncritical positions behind. The know-it-all has nothing to learn.

2). Do not let process crowd out content. If you have twenty minutes left in your group and you have the choice between looking up the word “consubstantial” in the dictionary or sharing your feelings about the Creed, find the dictionary and learn something. “Sharing” has its place but that place is near the back of the line. It has been the whole “sharing” obsession that has emptied our catechesis of its content.

3). Read. read. read. . .and wonder why! Every text deserves the respect of a critical reading. Ask questions until you are confident you could explain the basics to a tenth-grader. There is nothing about the faith that requires us to just shut up and take it. However, humility requires that we assume that it is our inability to understand that is confusing us about the doctrine rather than the falsity of the doctrine, or the unwillingness of the Church to explain themselves clearly (cf. #1 above, “I’m Not 2,000 Years Smart!”).

4). Don’t shy away from disagreement or argument. At the same time, don’t be a bully. Divine revelation is fixed. Our understanding of that revelation is fairly fluid and requires us to talk to one another for better understanding. This is not to say that everything about the faith is up for grabs. It is to say that particular expressions of the objectively true faith can be questioned and explored for clarity. Example: I’ve tried for some eight years now to understand the Church’s teaching on what happens to us after death. I’ve read just about every official document and still I fail to get it. I do not assume that this is a lack of clarity on the church’s part or a failure on the church’s part to make her case. I assume that I am simply not yet capable of “getting it.”

5). You are not an idiot, so please don’t come into the process thinking the project is above you. Yes, most of the ideas and texts are somewhat difficult. So what? Read the text. Look up the words you don’t know. Check references to scripture and the Catechism. And just get what you can as you can. If you think there’s a quick and easy way to have 2,000 years of the faith jammed into your brain…well, I got a possum farm I can let you have for cheap.

The Plan:

For a three-year, once-a-week, two hour class, I would divide the reading (roughly) this way:

Year One: Scripture & The Fathers

Gospels, Pauline Letters: 3 mos.

Patristic sources: 6 mos.

Secondary Texts listed below: 3 mos.

Year Two: Medieval Period

Early Medieval: primarily Anselm, early scholasticism: 2 mos.

Medieval: Bernard and Aquinas, high scholasticism: 6 mos.

Late Medieval: Mystics (Eckhart, etc.): 4 mos.

Year Three: Trent, Vatican One & Two

Council of Trent: 2 mos.

First Vatican Council: 2 mos.

Second Vatican Council: 8 mos.

The Texts

I. Necessary Texts (all three years)

a. a Bible (in order of preference: NRSV, NJB, NIV, NAB)

b. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994

c. Companion to the CCC (full texts of the footnotes in the CCC)

d. Documents of Vatican Two, Austin Flannery, OP

e. Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation, Wm Placher

f. Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 2: From the Reformation to the Present, W, Placher

g. The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, Bernard McGinn

h. a good theological dictionary

II. Year One: Texts for Patristic Period

a. Robert L. Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God, 2005.

b. Andrew Louth, et al., Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, 1987.

c. John R Willis,. Teachings of the Church Fathers, 2002.

d. Henrry Chadwick, The Early Church, 1993.

e. www.newadvent.org (click under “Fathers”)

1. Ambrose, “On the Mysteries”

2. Augustine, “On Christian Doctrine” (for the brave), “The Enchiridion,” & “Of Faith and the Creed”

3. Clement of Rome, “First Epistle”

4. Ignatius of Antioch, “The Martyrdom of Ignatius”

5. Any other you would like to include…

III. Year Two: Texts for the Medieval Period

a. Carl Volz, The Medieval Church: From the Dawn of the Middle Ages to the Eve of the Reformation, 1997.

b. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 1993

c. Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 2008

d. Selections from the Placher anthology

e. Selections from the McGinn anthology

f. Rule of St Benedict

IV. Texts for Trent, Vatican One & Two

a. document of the Council of Trent (on-line)

b. documents of the First Vatican Council (on-line)

c. documents of the Second Vaticna Council (on-line)

d. Mysterium fidei, Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI

e. Redemptor homine, Redemptoris mater, Veritatis splendor, Fides et ratio, Pope John Paul II

f. Deus caritatis est, Spe et salvi, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI

Exhortations!

Most contemporary Catholic catechesis is based on the notion that you are too stupid, too lazy, or just don’t care enough to read moderately difficult texts about church history or theology. Frankly, this might be true. But even if it is true and despite yourself you truly want to immerse yourself in your faith: READ! Don’t try to understand every sentence, every paragraph. Read the assignment and just keep reading. Every time you want to skimp on the reading, say to yourself, “Ah HA! There’s something on the next page the Devil doesn’t want me to see!”

Keep your heart and mind open to the movement of the Holy Spirit as you read and discuss the texts. We learn in more ways than just the intellectual. Contemporary adult catechesis has one thing right: experience is vital to the process of integrating knowledge; in other words, knowledge has to be lived in order to become wisdom, otherwise it degrades to mere information.

If you have someone who has read some of these texts or knows something about the history of the faith, it might be a good idea to invite them to your group. You might even want to make him/her the group facilitator. This person ought to be able to help the group discuss the texts critically. If you keep your nose in the texts (and away from opinions, preferences, and feelings), there should be no danger of any one person dominating the group. Very often we are told that “sharing our feelings” is the best way to avoid one person from dominating an intellectual exchange; however, I’ve been in many, many groups where one Unstable Emotional Bully shut down most legitimates conversations with, “That offends me…” The proper response to this claim is: “OK. But are you harmed?”

Yes, this is an ambitious plan. Lots of books. Lots of reading. But just think: at the end of a mere three years you will have under your belt, in your head, and on your heart a nice chunk of knowledge about the Catholic faith and the rest of your life to turn that knowledge into wisdom!

If you want a few suggestions for advancing the reading list to the upper-classmen undergraduate level, let me know. If you want to tone it down a bit, that’s easy: keep the anthologies of primary texts and the histories. Put everything else aside. . .for now.

Reading the Texts and Group Discussion

These suggestions should be applicable to most any way your group wants to configure itself.

The basic idea is to read the texts and then have an intelligent conversation about what you have read. A caution: you will be tempted, as we all are in this postmodern age, to let the conversation drift into “sharing feelings” or “sharing experiences.” Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with this. However—and this is a Big However—, merely giving words to a memory or an emotion or a fantasy provoked by the text is not what intelligent conversation is about.

Yes, we must contemplate, and contemplation is much more than just “reasoning through” propositions and syllogisms. Contemplation is reading to pray, reading to understand, reading to grow in holiness and wisdom. Therefore, it is important that you actually know what the text says before you start sharing. Otherwise, what is it exactly are you experiencing?

Try these:

. . .have each member of the group select a passage before the group meets that he/she is ready to read aloud and summarize for the group.

. . .read the passage out loud and offer a summary of the basic argument or claim being made. . .

. . .as a group discuss any unfamiliar terminology or concepts; grab the dictionary if necessary.

. . .now, begin a “close reading” of the text; that is, take the passage apart one or two phrases or sentences at a time, parsing each one in relation to the next. One way to do this is to grab a thesaurus and look up key words to see what their synonyms might be.

. . .as you go along reading a phrase or sentence, back up and repeat the whole sentence or series of sentences until it makes some kind of sense for you.

. . .once you have the basic sense of the idea/argument/claim, discuss it until the group has exhausted all of its questions.

. . .questions can take the form of “What does he/she mean by X?” or “How are X and Y related here?” or, more critically, “Since X is ________, then why can’t we say Y?” or “Is X true?”

. . .the idea here is to avoid at all costs the Death Phrase: “I feel that________.” Feelings are fine and wonderful gifts from God, but if you are going to grasp content, you must hold off on feelings and experiences until you have something to feel about or have an experience of. Very often we use “I feel” to mean “I think” and the former becomes a way for us to express an opinion that appears to be immune from critical assessment.

. . .to say, “I feel that Augustine’s idea of Original Sin isn’t very helpful” or “I feel that Ambrose is being negative” is pointless. How I feel about an idea says nothing about whether or not that idea is true, good, or beautiful.

. . .make your feelings into a claim about the truth, goodness, and/or beauty of the idea being presented: “I think that Augustine’s idea of Original Sin is dangerous.” Now we have a discussion! Tell the group why you think that this true.

. . .stick to the text; stick to making “I think” statements; avoid “I feel” statements and grow in your knowledge of the faith!

Axioms:

It is better to spend two hours thinking through one sentence than it is to spend two hours emoting over an entire book.

Just like feeling, thinking is something we all do, and we all have the right and responsibility to express our thoughts.

Do yourselves a favor and think with the Church! Assume our 2,000 year old Church has something to teach you and let yourself be taught. Disagreeing with a Church teaching is almost always about a failure to understand the teaching properly.

If you disagree with a Church teaching, make sure you understand it fully. Put the teaching “in suspension” and see what develops over the course of time. Please note: just because you’ve put a teaching “in suspension” doesn’t mean that you are free to dissent from the substance of the teaching. For example, let’s say that I put the Church’s teaching on adultery “in suspension.” I cannot then say, “Well, since I don’t agree with this teaching, and I’ve suspended my assent to the teaching, it is morally acceptable for me to have an adulterous affair until I decide that the teaching is correct.”

You can’t learn anything new if you come to the text with your mind made up with regard to the truth of the teaching.

Anyone in the group who bullies the others to accept or reject a teaching should be shown the door. This is faith formation. The assumption from the very beginning has to be: we are here as faithful Christians to learn our faith as it has been given to us. This is not a project of theological innovation nor is it a project designed to help you memorize the Catechism.

A note on conscience: “Conscience” is not a magical word that allows us to believe anything we want to believe about the faith. Your conscience is a divine gift that allows you to recognize the truth when you see it. Conscience does not invent the truth; conscience discovers the truth. Conscience does not make a belief true; conscience makes sure we only believe true things. Be careful, therefore, how you wield the gift of conscience!

Please leave comments and ask questions!

And if you really like this plan of study, buy me a book!

(WOW! Thanks for the swift business on the Wish List. . .)

How not to be a Catholic Zombie

3^rd Week of Lent: Hosea 14.2-10 and Mark 12.28-34
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

No doubt each of us here could write a book exploring the tragic spiritual consequences of a divided heart and a fogged mind, not to mention the resulting exhaustion from draining away one’s strength in dissipation and the hard work of entertaining anxiety. How quickly do we become ragged, stumbling spiritual zombies, more or less careening haplessly through a day, a week, a month until we hit wall or fall into a ditch, twitching and moaning, unable even to ask for help! But maybe, while we’re still clear-headed enough to wonder, somewhere in the increasing mushiness of our zombie brains, we ask, “How did this happen? How did I become a spiritual tourist? An accidental Christian? When did I become a Catholic Zombie?” When it happens, it happens for all of us at exactly the moment we love one thing more than we love God. It happens the moment my soul, my mind, my strength targets something other than God to love and then loves that target as if it were God. Jesus repeats the ancient prayer of Israel to the friendly scribe: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord your God is Lord alone!” He does so just for this reason: there is One we are commanded to love; One we are to worship; One we are to contemplate; just One upon whom we are to expend our strength to know and love: the Lord our God. No other, no-thing else; just One and Him alone.

Here Jesus teaches the friendly scribe the meaning of the Law; he does more than merely condense the Law into a pithy saying or two; and he does more than simply edit the Law to highlight his favorite parts. What Jesus does is unveil the foundation stones; he uncovers the roots at their deepest, the very ground of Who God is for us. Since our Lord is One, our love for Him must be one, singular, exclusively focused. But it is precisely because our Lord is One and that our love for Him must be singular that we are then capable of loving more than Him alone. In fact, loving God as Lord exclusively entails loving His creation, His creatures, and honoring their gifted-ends. We cannot, in other words, say that we love God and hate our neighbor.

The genius of Jesus’ teaching lies in the way he moves the abstracted notion of “loving God” into the natural world of real things: loving self, loving neighbor. By directly binding the commandment to love God alone to the commandment to love neighbor as self, Jesus makes it possible for us to “reverse engineer” a revelation of Who God Is for us as Love; that is, since there is just one Love, the one divine love we share in as members of the Body, we are shown—imperfectly—the divine face when we will for ourselves and one another what God wills in love for us all. God’s will, my will, your will, our wills, One Will together in love! When this happens, we can say of ourselves what Jesus said of the scribe, “[We] are not far from the kingdom of God.”

What stands in the way of this grand union of wills in love? The divided soul, the fogged mind, and a dissipated strength; that is, a scattered sense of your purpose as loved creature; a mushy brain confused by error and folly; and your potential as an eternal companion of God squandered on living passionately “just right now for right now.” Think about it: zombies are the walking dead! And you can’t get deader than when you turn everything you are toward a stingy life of Me-Me-Me. Look at Jesus’ temptations in the desert: personal wealth, personal power, personal aggrandizement. The Devil offers our Lord the only thing the Devil can offer any of us, The Temptation that we face in our Lenten desert: the chance to be our own god; to love self without Love Himself. Do this and you throw yourself into a vacuum, a permanent place of Nothingness, a terrible emptiness.

Christ does not urge us to love or exhort us to love or persuade us to love. He commands us to love. And as strange as that might be, the stakes are too high—even in the face of doubts and fears— the stakes are too high for us to do anything else but love as He loves us. Just look at the Cross and ask yourself: why would anyone do that for, why would anyone die for me?

The Mass workshop

The Mass Line by Line: The Liturgy of the Word

Fr Philip Neri Powell, OP, PhD

University of Dallas, Gorman Lecture Hall E
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
7.30pm-9.30pm

A workshop/lecture on the theology and celebration of the Mass using the text of the sacramentary. Please come and go as you need to but get there early!

The...workshop...will...be...podcasted!

NB. Next Wednesday, March 5th: "The Mass Line by Line: Liturgy of the Eucharist," same time/place.

Entertaining Prophets Unawares

Yup. . .

3^rd Week of Lent (M): 2 Kings 5.1-15 and Luke 4.24-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

At their best, prophets are shady characters, dodgy types hanging out on the edges of decent society, always yelling about something, or telling people off, or threatening folks with the “End of the World” or God’s judgment. Apparently, it doesn’t take much to be a prophet these days. You need a loud mouth; a scary-slash-hopeful message about looming changes; a crowd of ego-massaging cultists to follow you around, mooning over you, fainting; and a friendly press corps with questionable ethics…oh wait…that’s a politician in an election year. Sorry. A prophet, a real prophet, on the other hand, is an anointed voice, a national conscience, a heart and mind given to God to see and hear where we as God’s people must go and how far we have strayed from our path. Consistently in scripture, prophets do not tell us what our ears itch to hear, and so we tend to draw them in vivid colors with wild hair, crazy eyes, disheveled clothing. They always seem to be spouting gibberish on the street. We prefer the prophets we listen to be well-dressed, clean-shaven, articulate, and liberal—that way they are easy to ignore, easier to manipulate, and easier still to get rid of when their usefulness is done. Let me ask you: when was the last time you listened to one of God’s prophets?

Prophets present us with a very difficult problem. Back in the day, it was simple enough to determine the divine-creds of someone claiming to be a prophet. The Lord was inclined to provide dramatic evidence of the prophet’s credentials. Fire from heaven. Water from rocks. Quick lift in a flying saucer. A general’s leprosy cured in the Jordan. Even Jesus pulled out the gasp-giving miracle or two to bolster his resume for the crowds. But now, since we are all accounted priests, prophets, and kings in virtue of our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, it seems that the much-applauded miraculous proof of prophet status has gone the way of dinosaurs and humble politicians. Do we entertain prophets unawares? Better yet, given our suspicion of prophecy in our times, if a prophet told us to do something extraordinary, would we do it? For that matter, would we do something perfectly ordinary if asked?

At first, Naaman ignored the prophet Elisha b/c Elisha told him to do something very ordinary to cure his leprosy. Naaman’s expectations for the extraordinary got in the way of his cure. Likewise, the people of Nazareth, having grown up over the years with Jesus, ignored his prophetic preaching b/c they knew him too well. Prideful expectation and contempt for our own often blind us to the power of God’s anointing, deafen us to His Word spoken for our eternal benefit. We want spectacle as proof of prophetic legitimacy. We want to hear sunshine, bunny rabbits, and cotton candy from our McWorld/McChurch prophets. And our self-appointed prophets comply b/c they need the cash for upkeep on their fleet of Caddies.

We have to look carefully at what Jesus says about the power and purpose of a prophet. There were many widows in the land of Sidon due to famine. But Elijah was sent to just one widow. There were many lepers in Israel. But Elisha was sent to just one leper. There were many sinners in the world. But Jesus was sent to the Jews. Does this mean that all the other starving widows, suffering lepers, and desperate sinners were out of luck? No. It means that a true prophet goes where he is sent, does what he is told to do, and very often the benefits of his work go to the stranger, the foreigner, the one we least expect to draw our Lord’s attention. It means that if we want to benefit from the prophet’s ministry among us, we must learn to expect nothing, be prepared for the extraordinary, and give thanks when nothing more than the perfectly ordinary happens.

Naaman is healed because he listens to his slaves. We are saved because we listen to a carpenter’s son. We believe on the testimony of fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, and thieves. Let me ask you again, how often have you entertained a prophet unawares?

Cartoon credit

Ideas, anyone?

Though I enjoy writing and preaching these homilies (I hope that's obvious!), I've found myself thoroughly enjoying the challenge of writing the occasional pieces I've written as well (confession advice, vocations, etc).

So, it occurred to me to ask: is there topic or a question or a problem you would like to see me write about for this blog?

I'm open to hearing all-comers. . .but I'm not promising to write something on every idea shot my way. If an idea strikes me as particularly interesting or ripe for discussion, I will pick it up and run.

Either send me an email (address on the left) or--better yet--leave a comment.

God bless...Fr. Philip, OP

Christ, Our Well-Water

3^rd Sunday of Lent: Ex 17.3-7; Rom 5.1-8; John 4.5-42
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

[NB. This is a revision of the homily immediately below this post...]

Is the Lord in our midst or not?

Jesus went into the desert after his baptism “to be tempted by the Devil.” For this reason alone did he step into the arid wasteland of temptation. He did not go to fast or pray or to do penance. He went so that he might be tempted. Though we sometimes embrace temptation as a welcomed break from the apparent tedium of holiness, I doubt that many of us work up a sweat running into the Devil’s theater to beg the dark angel to entice us to act deliberately against our Father’s will for us. Most of us prefer to skirt the edges of temptation, only peeking through the doors and catching glimpses of perdition as our more foolish brothers and sisters push past us and on into their spiritual demise. This is indeed foolish, reckless even, considering the long-term effects of disobedience on one’s soul. However, if the folks who braved the desert with Moses are any sign to us of our own frustration with the hiddeness of God, we too can find ourselves at Massah and Meribah, crying out to heaven, “Is the Lord in our midst or not!” How you answer that question will determine whether you arrive at the Cross in Jerusalem on Good Friday as a living sacrifice or a cheering spectator.

What’s the difference between these two? Answering a question with a question: how pliable is your heart and head? A hard heart and a harder head make for useless spiritual tools. Neither will seek out water to kill a thirst. Neither will seek food to kill a hunger. Neither will ask for help to relieve distress. However, both will faithfully rely on a dull will, a lazy intellect, and a careless concern for little beyond the moment. Moses’ people cannot look beyond their discomfort and so they cannot see their desert trek as anything other than a mistake, or an unmerited punishment. And so they whine incessantly, “Why did you make us leave [our slavery] in Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst…?” In answer to Moses’ worried prayer, the Lord gives them water, but He names the place of their infidelity, Massah and Meribah, that is, “testing” and “quarreling”—the two things a hard heart and harder head do best.

So, here we are. . .in the desert of Lent, slowly winding our way to Jerusalem and the Cross. Are you thirsty yet? Hungry? Are you tired of the journey? Lent is noon-high, half-way finished but the most difficult leg of our trip is still ahead. The betrayal. The Garden. The trial. The beatings and the Way of Sorrow. We’re not there yet, but we’ve been there before. Will you arrive to ride on the donkey? Or, will you cheer the riders on? Will you stand before the crowd for its judgment? Or, will you join the crowd to judge? Between now and then, hold firmly in your heart and mind the Well of Living Water. Not the flow of Massah and Meribah where the infidelity of the ungrateful poisons even the rocks. But the Well of Christ Jesus and remember, remember the water changed to wine; the water poured over Jesus’ head; the water that held him up as we walked the sea to save his friends. Let that water soften your heart and open your head! See and hear the waters of this gospel. . .

This gospel teaches us that: the Good News of God’s mercy is to be preached to everyone, excluding no one not even those with whom we have significant religious differences. The Living Water of God’s grace is immeasurably deep and sunrise to sunset wide. We receive this Water as a gift, given to us without a price or a debt, liberally handed-over in for no other reason than love, and this Water is dipped from the well of Christ Jesus himself.

The Living Water of God’s saving grace flows easily and freely over the dirtiest feet, into the foulest mouths, through the most unclean hands, and it washes away any and all afflictions.

The Living Water of God’s grace waters the cruelest heart, softens the hardest head, and tames the most passionate stomach. No dam or pipe or bucket or cloud is high enough, long enough, deep enough or empty enough to hold the gifts that our Father has to give us.

The Living Water of God’s grace is the Bridge between blood enemies; the Way across all anger and pride; the Means of health and beauty; the only Gate to truth and goodness. Built on the confession of Peter and guarded against Hell itself, the Church floats on its ocean, unsinkable, unshakable, His Ark.

The Living Water of God’s grace wets everything it touches, stains anything it falls upon, and indelibly marks for eternal life anyone who will say with the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water.”

We learn from this gospel reading that we cannot worship I AM THAT I AM on any single mountain; in one church and not another; nor can we pray in Jerusalem only, Rome only, or Dallas only. We learn that we are to worship the LORD in Spirit and in Truth, not with spirits and lies, but in His Spirit and His Truth; alone with Him and all together, we pray where we are, when we are, and we ask for one gift: voices eager to praise His glory, voice set afire to preach the Word of God’s mercy.

Jesus says to the woman, “I am [the Christ], the one who is speaking with you.” When she tells her neighbors this truth, they come to Christ and listen to the Word. For two days they listen. When the time for him to leave comes, the Samaritans say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” If she had held her tongue, quieted her voice and failed to speak the Truth, they would not have heard. Where then would they find hope?

Paul writes to the Romans: “…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If we are not disappointed in the grace we have received, how much more passionate are we then about speaking a simple truth, just one word to our neighbors about the gift of life we have received. There is no hope on the dry land promises of secular religion or science; no hope in the dry mouths of politicians or professors; there is no hope in the small spaces of test tubes or books. No hope that lasts. Our hope, our one hope is the depth, the breadth, the width of our Father’s immeasurable mercy—the sky-wide and valley-deep well of His free flowing and ever-living Water.

Walking this desert of Lent to the Cross, let Paul remind you: “…only with difficulty [do you] die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person [you] might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners [still sinners!] Christ died for us.” Our Lord gave Moses’ people the water they needed to quench their thirsty tongues. But their infidelity, their testing and quarreling, poisoned even the rocks. Now, Christ comes as the Living Water of our Father’s final grace, and all we need to do to gulp our fill is shout out like the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water!”

Is the Lord in our midst or not? Bring your biggest bucket and taste for yourself!