Yes, No, never Maybe

10 Week OT (Sat): 1 Kings 19.19-21 and Matthew 5.33-37
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

Say yes and mean yes. Say no and mean no. What could be easier? Not much. Yet doing so seems to challenge most of us at some fundamental level, at some deeply seated place where humility rarely goes, where vanity rules in all it ugliness. Jesus is not asking his students to avoid cussing. He’s not asking them to swear on something a little less holy, a little less spiritual. He is teaching them not to swear oaths at all because their Yes must mean Yes and their No must mean No. To swear an oath as a witness to the value of one’s word is itself an admission that one’s word is worthless. There is nothing that an oath can add to one’s word that makes that word more believable, more valuable, any truer. Swearing by heaven, earth, the throne of God, the city of the ancestors, your mama’s grave, your daddy’s favorite whiskey, none of these can change a false word from a false heart into a true word from a holy heart. Saying Yes and meaning Yes, saying No and meaning No is a matter of humility, of knowing and loving your most basic relationship to God: total dependence, complete contingency.

Not “taking the Lord’s name in vain” is an old, old prohibition that reaches all the way back to Moses on the mountain and the stone tablets he brought down to the valley. At the top of the list of Thou-Shalt-Not’s is the Lord’s commandment ordering us not to use His name frivolously, vainly, not to invoke lightly His witness in our favor. Like most of the Top Ten, this commandment sets up a relationship between the human and the divine, a means of being in touch with God that reminds us that we are made beings—limited, contingent, and therefore completely dependent on He Who Is. Jesus shows his friends what it means for a Law to be fulfilled and teaches them what it means to be a creature of the Creator. Knowing one’s dependence is not meant to be humiliating but rather humbling, not at all fearful but rather awe-inspiring! Surely it is better for us to be dependent creatures of a loving Creator than independent monsters of an accidental cosmos.

To be contingent creatures of a loving Creator means that we find ourselves at once imperfect in His glory but gifted with everything we need to become perfect with His glory. The first vital step we must take is to recognize the truth of our Being-Here, that is, we must come to understand our purpose in light of our existence, the fact that we exist at all. Jesus teaches his disciples that heaven, earth, Jerusalem, even the hair on our head belongs to God, so calling on any of these to witness to the truth of our word is the same as calling upon God to vouch for us. But God Himself is Truth, so all we need do is say Yes and mean Yes, say No and mean No…and God is there to witness. When we speak the Truth, we are allied with our creator, and His purpose for us is perfected in us. In other words, the purpose of our dependent existence is to come back to God through Christ, looking, sounding, behaving, and loving as much as like Christ as we possibly can. We cannot accomplish this goal by simply “doing good” and avoiding evil. Jesus has said again and again that the intent of the heart feeds the act—committing adultery, murder, blasphemy are all horrible sins; but we sin as well when we intend adultery, murder, blasphemy; when we lust, nurse anger, believe ourselves worthy of God’s testimony on our behalf.

Let your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No: anything less betrays your created purpose, poisons the way to your gifted end.

A surpassinig righteousness

10^th Week OT (R): 1 Kings 18.41-46 and Matthew 5.20-26
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

We believe that hard work should result in great rewards. We tend to think that striving toward a goal with almost single-minded determination is a virtue. Also, when we are promoted, well-paid, congratulated, or in some way praised for our work, we see this adulation as well-earned and deserved. How often were you told as a child that good grades in school are the result of “hitting the books” and studying hard? We might even go so far as to say that academic failure is a kind of intellectual laziness, a mental lounging-about that inevitability results in a lackluster education. Who would argue that Americans bind hard work with good fruits? Competition for success is what made this country great, right? However, can we say that competition in the life of the Spirit makes us great? Well, Jesus certainly seems to think so.

After proclaiming to his disciples that he came to fulfill the Law and not to abolish it, Jesus makes a rather startling statement: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” There it is. Jesus himself teaching us that our entrance into heaven is a matter of winning a moral competition, a race toward being “more in right relationship” with God than the next guy. This race won’t be easy to win. The scribes and Pharisees know the Law better than we do. They have had more practice following the minutiae of the rules. They are naturally inclined and socially conditioned to step around both large and small violations of the regulations. And they have a long-established and morally vigilant community to call them to task when they fail. Fortunately for us, as good American entrepreneurs and sports nuts, we are game for a hard race! But unfortunately for both the scribes and Pharisees and for us, Jesus is not a moral referee nor is he our coach in the sport of righteousness.

Immediately after teaching his disciples that they must surpass the righteousness of those who follow the Law, Jesus tells his friends that being righteous is not a matter of external observance of the rules but rather an internal disposition toward the good of the Other. In other words, using Jesus' example, it is more righteous to avoid being angry with your brother than it is to simply avoid killing him. Does this mean that it is possible to kill your brother in charity and advance in righteousness? Of course not. What it means is that what judges us as either righteous or unrighteous goes well beyond how we behave. We cannot believe that a brother is foolish, that is, bereft of moral sense, and at the same time claim a right relationship with God. The new commandment, the most perfect moral order is love not behavioral correctness judged by law.

Let’s put this in terms with which we are more familiar. Despite decades of social engineering and the rule of political correctness, we are still diseased with racism, sexism, and any number of other “-ism’s” that tempt us to violate the dignity of God’s rational creatures. As Christians, we would never use racial slurs, sexual smears, or any other sort of language that degrades or insults our fellow man. Do these imposed restraints produce good will? No. P.C. terms hide contempt, foster resentment, and encourage ridicule of those we ought to respect as children of the Father. In other words, following the law of political correctness is a sure fire way of avoiding true conversion, honest righteousness. How so? Just as the scribes and Pharisees believed that they were “being righteous” by dotting every “i” and crossing every “t,” we too are inclined to believe that by merely avoiding insulting labels we come to love those who differ. But loving those who differ is much more difficult than expunging our vocabularies of obnoxious words.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law. If we will come to love one another we must do so as a matter of our faith in Christ, that is, we must do so as a consequence of having suffered and died with Christ and risen again with him to a newer life, a fresher way of moving and being with one another. That way is the way of obedience and sacrifice for the other, being Christ not only for family and friends but being Christ most especially for those we find to be the most contemptible, the most unworthy of our love. This is what Christ did. This is what we have vowed to do.

Barking the Gospel

St. Boniface: Acts 26.19-23 and John 10.11-16
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

One of the Vesper’s petitions from the Commons for Martyr’s goes something like this: “Lord, hold us fast to preaching the gospel even in the face of opposition, persecution, and scorn.” One of the greatest temptations for the contemporary Christian preacher is to let go of the Gospel when confronted by entrenched opposition. Like water seeking the fastest and easiest route downhill, preachers too are coaxed toward taking the most direct path to the dilution of Christ’s teaching and, ultimately, a betrayal of the Spirit that animates us. We see and hear this when preachers begin preaching a Prosperity Gospel—Jesus wants you to be rich!—; or when they begin preaching a Zeitgeist Gospel—Jesus wants us to “fit in” with our times so we can witness from within;—or when you hear the Gospel of Identity Politics—being American, Black, Gay, Male or Female, Left or Right is preached to be more important than being faithful to Christ. All of these, of course, are dodges, ways around the oftentimes difficult demands of what Jesus teaches us to be and do. Think of them as convenient filters for the intellect and will that allow us to sift out the hard stuff and celebrate that which most energetically tickles our too often and too easily bored ears. True martyrs (not self-appointed martyrs) present us with an extraordinarily hard reality: they believed the Gospel and died proclaiming it. Could we do the same if called upon to do so?

St. Boniface, an eighth-century English Benedictine bishop and martyr who served as a missionary to Germany, wrote to a friend, “Let us be neither dogs that do not bark nor silent on-lookers nor paid servants who run away before the wolf…Let us preach the whole of God’s plan…in season and out of season.”* Though this sounds benign enough, Boniface died doing it, or rather died because he did it—he barked and refused to be hired as a religious P.R. man for Zeitgeist, Inc. Paul found himself in a similar position. Paul reports in Acts that he was seized by the Jewish leaders in the temple and almost killed because “[he] preached the need to repent and turn to God, and to do works giving evidence of repentance.” Should we be shocked that Paul would find himself the target of the powers-that-be? Not really. Jesus warned his disciples that they would follow him to the cross if they persisted in preaching his word. And it is persistence that most often gets the Gospel preacher into trouble.

Jesus says, “A hired man, who is not a shepherd…sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away…” The wolf attacks the sheep, killing one or two and scattering the rest. Why does the hired man run? Jesus says, “This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.” A preacher hired by Zeitgeist, Inc. will do the same—cut and run when it looks as though the wolves of persecution, opposition, and scorn come bounding down the hill. The good shepherd will stay and fight. And though he will never lose, he may sometimes die.

There’s almost no chance that anyone here this morning will be called upon to die for preaching the Gospel. In the U.S. in the 21^st century, the Zeitgeist has learned more subtle ways of tempting us away from the Good Shepherd. Perhaps the most powerful temptation comes from the devil of freedom, or more accurately named, the devil of liberty. Dangling before us the illusion of unfettered choice in a marketplace of unlimited options, the devil of liberty coaxes to us a powerful sense of entitlement, a sense of being owed our comfort, our liberality. And so, we stand dumbfounded in the Wal-Marts of religious goods and services, the Krogers of spiritual options, and we pick and choose. I will preach mercy but not justice; love but not responsibility; forgiveness but not sin. I will preach heaven but not hell; faith but not obedience. With a shopping cart full of liberty, we check-out and pay with our souls, and then go out preaching a gospel half-bought.

If our souls must be the currency with which we purchase a spiritual good, let that purchase be our eternal lives with Christ. As the Dogs of God, we can nothing less than die while ferociously barking the Gospel just as Jesus taught it.

*from the Office of Readings, St. Boniface

Pic credit: Godzdogz

Do not fear death

St. Peter of Verona, OP: 2 Tim 2.3-13 and Luke 12.4-9
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

What do you think the Church is trying to tell us by giving us three martyrs’ feasts in a row? Marcellinus and Peter, Charles and his Companions, and now the Dominican, Peter of Verona. After all, isn’t this the “lean, mean green season”?! Beside showing us how to make the sacristan’s life a little easier, what is the Church teaching us by parading before us in the Eucharist the sacrificial deaths of so many men and women? Yes, the faith is worth dying for. Yes, we might be called upon to make the ultimate witness for Christ. Yes, our blood, if spilled while proclaiming the Gospel against it detractors will be the seed of a greater Church. But perhaps more subtly, the Church is teaching us the proper relationship between the body and soul, the flesh and the spirit. Perhaps we are being asked to remember that our bodies are not only temples of the Spirit, but they are also essential in understanding ourselves as persons, that is, as deliberative creatures moved by intellect and will. The gift of a body is the gift of time and space, a grace enfleshed that provides us with a way of abiding now in the Spirit so that we might have one opportunity after another—here and now—to will with the will of the Father and to come to Him body and soul on the last day.

So important is the body to our spirituality that Jesus has to remind us that we need not fear the death of the body: “I say to you who are my friends: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and can do no more.” We might read this to mean that the body is unimportant to our spiritual growth; however, the exact opposite is true. Jesus goes on to note that we need not fear those who can kill us because the One Who made us never neglects us: “In very truth, even the hairs on your head are counted.” Though your body may be killed now, you—body and soul—will come to live with God after the resurrection. Not just your soul, not just your body but YOU—body and soul, spirit enfleshed.

The Dominicans were founded by St. Dominic to fight against the Albigensian heresy infesting southern France in the 13^th century. Essentially, the Cathars held and taught that the body is an anchor in the world, a rotting corpse holding the soul captive. By starving themselves and engaging in painful, often torturous acts of asceticism, these folks believed that they were freeing the soul to soar to God! St. Dominic argued forcefully with these heretics and convinced some of them that God’s creation is essentially good, that the body is not only fundamentally good but absolutely necessary in coming to spiritual perfection. An ascetic practice (e.g. fasting) is properly understood as means of achieving rational control of the passions not as a way of punishing the body for sin. After all, isn’t the soul implicated in sin as well? Merely causing oneself bodily pain is not in itself a healthy spiritual practice.

So, what is Jesus worried about in today’s Gospel? At the very least, he is worried that we might flinch in the face of martyrdom, fearing the death of the body and allowing that fear to overwhelm his commandment to love, overwhelming his commandment to us to love others by witnessing to God’s mercy. Instead, he tells us to refocus our fear and fear more the one who can cast us into Gehenna for our unfaithfulness: acknowledge him before men and he will acknowledge us before God, fail to acknowledge him and he will say, “I never knew you.” The martyrs we have celebrated these past three days acknowledged him before men to their deaths, the deaths of their bodies, not a final death but merely a temporary end to their time in this world.

I said earlier that our bodies provide us with our best chance of growing in holiness because the possession of a body grants us the time and space we need to learn how to cooperate with God’s grace, the gifts He gives us to grow in holiness. We are not angels, pure spirit, fixed at creation in the divine perfection. We are men, body and soul, in need of instruction and patience, in need of a holy fear, a sense of wonder and awe at what we have been given. When we turn ourselves—bodies and souls—to the One Who made us to love Him, we see that we are not neglected, never forgotten, always in His presence, even in death, until we come to Him whole and perfected on the last day.

Unbelief to belief...

Ss. Marcellinus and Peter: 2 Cor 6.4-10 and John 17.11-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Origen, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, writes, “If passing from unbelief to faith means that we have passed from death to life, we should not be surprised to find that world hates us. Anyone who has not passed from death to life is incapable of loving those who have departed from death’s dark dwelling place…” Generally, we think of martyrdom as the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life in defense of the faith. We think of the apostles, all but one of whom died at the hands of God’s enemies fighting the good fight. We think of Lucy and Agnes and more recently, Friar Kolbe and Edith Stein in Nazi Germany. All witnesses to the faith, all testimonies written in blood. Origen is directing us to a more subtle, bloodless martyrdom, the so-called “white martyrdom” of everyday life, everyday faith. We should note here that Origen is not going soft on us in proposing the possibility of white martyrdom; after all, Origen is the one who, in his zeal, castrated himself in the pagan Greek fashion in order to show his dedication! Origen most definitely still hold a “red martyrdom as a glorious and sometimes necessary act of zeal. What he is doing when he suggests that moving from “unbelief to belief” is the same as moving from “death to life” is emphasizing that when we come to believe we die to the world, that is, we no longer belong to the appetites, princes, systems, philosophies, and gods of a fallen creation. We belong to the Father!

In his priestly prayer before going to the Garden, Jesus prays, “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you gave me, so that they may be one just as we are one.” Just as the Father and Son are one, so we are one with the Father in Christ: “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world,” Jesus says, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” Set aside by the Father for the task of preaching and teaching His mercy, Christ both heralds the truth of the Word and he is the Word made flesh. So, in him, as his brothers and sisters, adopted sons and daughters of the Father, we too are to be His Word made flesh in order to proclaim the truth of the Good News: “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” When we accept this commission—to go into the world, preaching the Gospel—we die a martyr’s death.

As bleak as this might sound—no one would ever accuse Origen of being cheery!—the martyr’s death (then and now) is hardly a lamentable event. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful;…as dying yet behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing…” What the world sees as a waste of life in obedience to the Word, we count as Life itself. What the world sees as prudish excess, we count as virtue and the way to holiness. What the world sees as slavery to poverty and service, we count as freedom to come to His perfection. We have nothing yet possess all things in Christ Jesus!

In his exhortation, Origen pushes us to suffer with Christ, to share in his sufferings, to purify and elevate ourselves by doing what Christ did. Christ did not suffer instead of us; he suffered for us so that we might see where we belong most beautifully: among those who listen to and act on the love our Lord has for us. Being loved by the Father and loving Him in return marks us—even scars us—with the sign of His ownership, the cross. And because we believe, the world hates us. Why? Origen writes, “In Christ and with Christ the martyrs disarm the principalities and powers and share in his triumph over them…” What the powers of this world will not tolerate is our refusal to celebrate its disobedience to God. Desperately in need of our acceptance and approval—think here of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost—the powers of this world see in us a body unwilling to bend to an authority that acts against the will of the Father.

Though tempted to withdraw from the world, though tempted to rebel against the world, instead we stand up and unceasingly proclaim a single truth: Christ is Lord! In the power of the Holy Spirit, “in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness,” we fight the excellent fight until he comes again.

Made by God to believe...

9^th Sunday OT: Deut 11.18, 26-28; Rom 3.21-25, 28; Matthew 7.21-27
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Sunday Mass)

Moses says it first, and I say it now: “I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse.” We are blessed in our obedience to God’s wisdom. And cursed in our folly when we disobey. We are blessed when we see and hear and do the will of the Father. And we are cursed when stand blind, deaf, and lazy in the presence of such wisdom. Fortunately for us, our father in faith, Moses, gives us clear instruction on how to receive God’s blessing everyday, every moment. He teaches us, “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead. I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse: a blessing for obeying the commandments of the Lord…a curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord.” If you place God’s wisdom in your heart and in your soul, then your very being is made wise; that is, merely existing is an act of wisdom, a proclamation of God’s glory to the world. If you bind your hands and your mind with God’s wisdom, then every act, every job, every task and every thought, your very imagination is a sign of God’s presence, a pendant, a flag marking you as His. This is what Jesus teaches us in Matthew’s gospel this morning: it is not enough to think kindly of the Lord; it is not enough to do kind deeds in his name. We must obey: listen and act, one move—hearing the Word/doing the Word, listening to God’s wisdom/doing God’s wisdom. If you will to exist wisely in God, then you must place His wisdom in your heart, your mind and you must bind your hands and bind your mind with His commandments. How do we do that?

Paul writes to the Romans, “Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law [the commandments], though testified to by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” Let me break that down a bit: in the older covenant, God’s righteousness—His rightness: goodness, truth, beauty—were made known to humans primarily through the Law. Obey the Law and God is revealed to you. What Paul is saying here is that the advent, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ now manifests God’s righteousness apart from the Law. He does not say “instead of the Law,” but rather “apart from the Law,” meaning that we have access to the fullness to God’s Self-revelation through Christ. Remember: Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, to make the Law complete, perfected. The Law and the prophets are witnesses to the Law—they are testimonies to His commandments but Christ is God Himself: the Real Deal Himself! So, Paul teaches us that we ourselves come to the righteousness of God Himself when we believe on Christ.

Again, how do we come to believe? Believing is a human act. But believing is not merely human. By the gift of the Father we are made to desire Him, made to want Him, created in His likeness and image to be seduced by His love for us! In other words, we are capable of belief in Christ precisely because God engineered us—genetically programmed us, if you will—to seek Him out. Even when we are misguided, lost, faithless, sinful, we yearn for His perfection. Paul writes, “[All] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus…” We are made just because Christ freely gave his life for us. Fully God, fully Man, Jesus bridged the gap between the human and the divine, and in dying sacrificially, made it possible for us to become God with God through God alone. We believe because it is our deepest need, our most profound urge. Greater than hunger, thirst, the drive to reproduce, greater even than the will to live, the imperative for God’s perfection comes first. The life you live daily, hourly is your answer to this primitive call.

How do you answer? Jesus teaches those who will see and hear: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” Listens to these words/acts on them. Listen and act. To those who will not to listen, those who will not to act, Jesus will say on the last day, “I never knew you. Depart from me, evildoer.” You will say, “But Lord, Lord, did I not do mighty deeds in your name?” He will answer, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but ONLY the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Only the one who obeys, the one who listens and acts. To the ones who have placed God’s commandments in their hearts and souls and bound their hands and minds with His wisdom, our Lord will say on the last day, “I have always known you. Come to me, brothers and sisters.”

Always the poet, Jesus gives us a clear image of what it means to live and move and exist in his Father’s wisdom. A house built on rock is unmoved by natural disaster. A house built on sand is swept away. No flood or wind or quake will shake the foundations of house constructed on the rock of the God’s will. No pain or turmoil or doubt can threaten the integrity of a life built on hearing and doing the will of the Father in heaven. However, a house built on sand, a life constructed on the vagaries of human wisdom alone, human intelligence alone, human will alone will collapse and be completely ruined. It is not enough that we cry out “Lord, Lord!” It is not enough to manage an occasional good deed. It is not enough that we live and move through this gifted life as lukewarm but inactive believers, tepid but untrusting doers. The work we do in His name is good because He is Goodness. And we trust in His goodness because He made us to believe.

So, we go back to Moses, our father in faith and listen one more time, “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” Wrap yourself in the saving word and works of Christ so that everything you imagine, everything you do, so that everything you are is first and foremost an image, a deed, a being of the One and in the One Who made you to love Him. None of the other gods—not Stomach, Money, Pride, not Rebellion, Lust, or Death—none of the other gods know you nor can they know you nor can they perfect you nor can they save you. You are, we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus…through faith, by his blood.”

Can there be anything simpler, less complicated, easier and more righteous than being perfectly the creature you were made to be, than doing perfectly what you yearn most to do?

I never knew you...

9^th Sunday OT: Deut 11.18, 26-28; Rom 3.21-25, 28; Matthew 7.21-27
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Vigil Mass)

Jesus says to all those who on the last day list for him all of their mighty deeds, “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.” Terrifying. Jesus names as “evildoers” all of those who worked mighty deeds in his name but failed to bind in their hearts and minds and on their hands and heads the words of his Father: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Therefore, doers of deeds done in his name but not in accord with the will of the Father are evildoers, those whom the Son never knew. Imagine for a moment facing Christ on the last day and hearing him say to you, “I never knew you.” How do we insure then that Christ will know us on the last day?

Moses, using the threat and promise of a curse and a blessing, admonishes his people, “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” With your eyes wide open and your ears finely tuned, what do you see and hear? Moses, knowing the hard hearts and harder heads of his people, exhorts us to make our own the wisdom of our God, placing His words at the very center of our being, making God’s words not only a sign of our faith and obedience but also wrapping them around each of our hands and letting them rest on your foreheads as bonds of blessing so that everything we do and think we do and think for His glory and acclaim. It is not enough merely to think on God’s glory nor is it enough to do good works. Everything we are—heart, soul, hands, and head—must be saturated through with the manifold wisdom of God, so that our obedience—our seeing and hearing and doing—will be directed toward a single end: proclaiming to every opened eye and every finely tuned ear the boundless and eternal glory of God! We believe in God and so we work for God. And we work for Him because we believe in Him.

Hear again what Moses says we do when we fail in this essential task: “…a curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, but turn aside from the way I ordain for you today, to follow other gods, whom you have not known.” When we fail to enthrone the Word of God in our hearts and souls and on your hands and heads, we chase after other gods, gods we do not know, gods that cannot know us. Moses is admonishing us to be obedient to the Lord, the One Whom we know! The God we know! And the God who knows us. Alien gods are not only foreign to our covenant with God but they are alien to our knowing—strange, unfamiliar—and because they are unknowable, they cannot help us, save us.

Let’s be clear: Moses is not exhorting us to pick a team or a party and remain always loyal. He is exhorting us to surrender to reality, to give ourselves wholly to the only God Who Is. To fail in this is to surrender to the imaginary, the fantasy of other gods. And this in itself is a curse. Fortunately for us, our God has made us to desire Him, created us to seek Him out and to be seduced by His love for us. And He has made it possible for us to find Him and to be reconciled to Him. Paul writes to the Romans: “[All] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus…” In other words, because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross we are “set right” with God, made just by Christ, adopted into God’s family so that we might be saved. No work of ours accomplishes this; there is no number of good works that we might do in order to earn the initial gift of our potential salvation. Paul continues: “…we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” When we exercise the gift of trusting in God and in His works, we are prepared then to do what we must in order to be saved. And so, Moses admonishes us to bind our hearts, our souls, our hands and heads with the commandments of God so that we might find in Him enduring blessing and eternal life.

Let’s hear that again just to be sure: our faith—itself a gift from God—makes it possible for us to cooperate with God’s commandments so that we give ourselves, sacrifice ourselves to Him freely, unfettered by sin.

Jesus goes on to teach us, “Everyone who listens [obeys] to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” No rain or wind or quake will shake the foundations of house constructed on the rock of the God’s will. No pain or turmoil or doubt can threaten the integrity of a life built on hearing and doing the will of the Father in heaven. However, a house built on sand, a life constructed on the vagaries of human wisdom, human intelligence, human will will collapse and be completely ruined. It is not enough that we cry out “Lord, Lord!” It is not enough to manage an occasional good deed. It is not enough that we live and move through this gifted life as lukewarm but inactive believers, tepid but untrusting doers. The work we do in His name is good because He is Goodness. And we trust in His goodness because He made us to believe.

So, we go back to Moses, our father in faith and listen again, “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” Wrap yourself in the saving word and works of Christ so that everything you imagine, everything you do, so that everything you are is first and foremost an image, a deed, a being of the One Who made you to love Him. The psalmist sings, “In you, O Lord, I take refuge…in your justice rescue me…Be my rock of refuge…You are my rock and my fortress…Let your face shine upon your servant…Take courage and be stouthearted, all you who hope in the Lord!”

Obedience is the path to freedom...

Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life recently issued a document titled, "The Service of Authority and Obedience" (Faciem tuam).

I found this paragraph particularly inspiring:

Obedience to God is the path of growth and, therefore, of freedom for the person because this obedience allows for the acceptance of a plan or a will different from one's own that not only does not deaden or lessen human dignity but is its basis. At the same time, freedom is also in itself a path of obedience, because it is in obeying the plan of the Father, in a childlike way, that the believer fulfils his or her freedom. It is clear that such obedience requires that persons recognize themselves as sons and daughters and enjoy being such, because only a son or a daughter can freely place him or herself in the hands of his or her Father, exactly like the Son, Jesus, who abandoned himself to the Father. Even if in his passion he gave himself up to Judas, to the high priests, to his torturers, to the hostile crowd, and to his crucifiers, he did so only because he was absolutely certain that everything found its meaning in complete fidelity to the plan of salvation willed by the Father, to whom, as St. Bernard reminds us, “it is not the death which was pleasing, but the will of the One who died of his own accord.”

What's wrong with us!

Most Sacred Heart: Isa 49.13-15; Eph 3.8-12; Matt 11.25-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

St. Paul was a Dominican. You don’t believe me? Listen again to his letter to the Ephesians: “To me…this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church to principalities and authorities in the heavens.” Paul, the Dominican, is graced to preach Christ, the one who uniquely and finally reveals to us the Triune God, so that all of heaven and earth might come to know the wisdoms of our God “who created all things.” If there is a mission statement that we as preachers might swear to, a letterhead statement of purpose and will that we as preachers might memorize and recite, this is it! We preach Christ so that every creature might come to know the wisdom of God! It is perfectly reasonable to ask why such a thing—preaching Christ—might be something men and women of the 21^st century would find necessary to do. We have therapists, philosophers, critics, scientists, academics, theologians, advice columnists, TV psychologists, radio personalities, actors, policy wonks, presidential candidates, mamas and sisters, brothers and first cousins, wikiepedia, Google, libraries, billboards, bumper stickers, facebook, workshop facilitators, professors, wingnuts on the street, protestors, activists, lobbyists, blogsites, tee-shirts, benefactors, billionaires, musicians, astrologers, soap opera stars, CNN, FoxNews, the Drudge Report, Znet, and every tongue capable of speech offering us wisdom, knowledge, information, and counsel. And yet, we insist on being preachers of Christ in the 21^st century. What’s wrong with us?

Are we simply arrogant? Perhaps we are just too thick to read the signs of the times and in our gross stupidity too stubborn to submit to being possessed by the zeitgeist. Perhaps we are just too proud to allow the spirit of this age a place of honor in our hearts, a respected position in our minds. Why would it ever occur to us—the preachers that we are—that this age would need men and women ready, willing, and able to preach Christ so that the wisdoms of God might be known? Though the hearts and minds of this age would never confess their deeply rooted sense of abandonment, we hear daily, hourly Isaiah’s lament: “We have been forsaken, we have been forgotten!” With Isaiah we must say—without shame, guile, hesitation, or humor: No! No, we have not been forsaken. No, we have not been forgotten.

Is this age burdened by confusion, anxiety, isolation? Yes. Is this age weighed down by fruitless labor, reckless disobedience? Yes. Is this age careening toward self-destruction and chaos? Yes, but perhaps no more than any other. And so what if it is? With the armies of well-trained professionals and dedicated ministers of care, why should preachers of Christ be bothered? It is true that we share a bench on this sinking Boat. It is true that we live and breath next to those who despair even as they furiously row toward a safe shore. It is true that we must love…yes, even those who punch holes in the Boat and then cry for rescue. Why not then surrender them to the consequences of their reckless behavior and ours?

Because we are Dominicans—men and women graced to preach Christ so that the wisdoms of God might be known! Jesus proclaims, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” And Jesus—in his death and resurrection—has handed all these things over to his Church. It is our responsibility (though not ours exclusively!) to preach and teach what Christ himself preached and taught; namely, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him;” therefore, no one comes to the Father except through the Son by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

This age has not been forsaken. Or forgotten. However, this age is inexplicably prone to forsake and forget Christ’s own mission statement: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Dominicans—preachers of Christ for the salvation of the world—must stand up against the willful ease with which our age forsakes and forgets its Creator. How? Paul the Dominican is clear: “…we have boldness of speech and confidence of access [to God’s wisdom] through faith in [Christ].” And. . .Christ alone!

May 26th: St Philip Neri

Today is the feast day of my patron saint, Philip Neri. Known as the "Second Apostle of Rome," he lived from 1515 to 1595. He was canonized in 1622 along with St. Therese of Avila and St. Ignatius of Loyola. Philip was notorious for assigning unusual penances to his somewhat haughty crowd of penitents. He was also a notorious prankster and funny-man, one to never tolerate pompous or self-righteous behavior from anyone--most especially clerics! Philip is also called "The Joyful Saint!" The cause of Philip's death was a heart grown too large for his chest.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Philip Neri:

In this catacomb, a few days before Pentecost in 1544, the well-known miracle of his heart took place. Bacci describes it thus: "While he was with the greatest earnestness asking of the Holy Ghost His gifts, there appeared to him a globe of fire, which entered into his mouth and lodged in his breast; and thereupon he was suddenly surprised with such a fire of love, that, unable to bear it, he threw himself on the ground, and, like one trying to cool himself, bared his breast to temper in some measure the flame which he felt. When he had remained so for sometime, and was a little recovered, he rose up full of unwonted joy, and immediately all his body began to shake with a violent tremour; and putting his hand to his bosom, he felt by the side of his heart, a swelling about as big as a man's fist, but neither then nor afterwards was it attended with the slightest pain or wound." The cause of this swelling was discovered by the doctors who examined his body after death. The saint's heart had been dilated under the sudden impulse of love, and in order that it might have sufficient room to move, two ribs had been broken, and curved in the form of an arch. From the time of the miracle till his death, his heart would palpitate violently whenever he performed any spiritual action.

Please pray for Philip's brothers, the Oratorians. And please pray for me that I might be more like Philip and less like me!

A video in honor of St Philip Neri:

"...O Lord, do come along..."

Most Holy Trinity: Exo 34.4-6, 8-9; 2 Cor 13.11-13; John 3.16-18
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation & St Paul Hospital

Imagine my delight this morning to discover that Moses was a southern gentleman! Having climbed Mt Sinai as God had commanded him, Moses hears the Lord say, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Moses does the only thing he could do with such an announcement from the Lord Himself: he bows down in worship! But then he does the perfect southern thing; he says, “O Lord, do come along in our company.” God knocks and Moses invites Him in for a visit—a visit that will take Moses and his people on a forty-year trek across the desert, leading them to the land promised by God. Forty-years visiting! That’s a whole lotta iced tea and pecan pie. But that’s what God does: He promises, He abides, and He makes all things right. For His people then and for us now, our Lord is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and rich in kindness and fidelity. And what’s more: He loves us despite our stiff-necks, our wickedness, and our sins. He receives us as His own, loving us so much “that He gave [us] His only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” That’s not a friendly visit. That’s family moving in for good!

We might expect on this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity that the gospel would be something more philosophical, something a little more esoteric than John 3.16—“For God so loved the world…” Maybe one of the traditional Easter readings from John would be more appropriate, something like “I am in You and You in me and they in me and so also in You”—you know, one of those passages you need to diagram in order to follow, all pronouns and prepositions. But what we have is this elegantly simple teaching on the nature of God’s love for us and the consequences of believing or disbelieving “in the name of the only Son of God.” Three verses that state in unambiguous language why God sent the Son to us and what happens to us when we believe or fail to believe. What does this straightforward, plain-spoken passage have to do with the intricacies of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity? Absolutely everything!

Here’s how. In all of the passages this morning—Exodus, 2 Corinthians, John—we read how God reveals Himself to His people. First, He reveals Himself to Moses before giving Moses His Ten Commandments as a voice declaring His divine nature (mercy, fidelity, kindness). Then He reveals Himself to the Corinthians as a family both human and divine, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, admonishing them to mend their ways and live in peace with one another. And then He reveals His final plan to whole world as the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, His Son sent for our eternal lives. In each case, what is revealed is the nature of the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In each case, who is revealed is God Himself—persons, actions, intentions, and goals. And in each case, why He reveals Himself is made clear—to receive us as His own. Despite our sins, He makes us His.

Moses says to God, “…O Lord, do come along in our company.” Walk with us. Talk with us. Eat and drink with us. Be with us everyday and always. Teach us. Admonish us. Show us the Way. Die for us. And then, despite our sins, bring us to You to live with You forever. Moses could have said something entirely different. He could have said, “…O Lord, until we are pure, until we are worthy, leave us alone, walk apart and away so that we might earn your love.” He could have said, “…O Lord, we are filthy sinners, punish us severely!” He could have said, “…O Lord, we know best, we know what is good for us, You go your way and we will go ours. Oh, and thanks for that whole Red Sea thing; oh, and the manna.” In other words, Moses could have said what we are tempted to say everyday in word and deed: “O Lord, thanks but no thanks for the offer of Your love…ya know, I’m good as is.” And what does God take this to mean? John writes, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned…” Therefore, we say, along with Moses the Southern Gentleman, “…O Lord, do come along in our company!”

I noted earlier that all of our readings this morning reveal something to us about the nature of God and His purposes. Of course, we are eager to have God along with us. Our presence here this morning is the surest indication that we hunger for God, that we thirst for His love. But do we love the The Blessed Trinity, The Hypostatic Union of Three Divine Persons? Yes and no. Yes, we love God; but no, we rarely think to love this cumbersome notion of Divine-Threeness-in-Divine-Oneness. Too abstract, too distant, too intellectual. So, who is this Love that we desire to love? Who is this Love that loves the world so much that He sacrifices His only Son for it? We are tempted in this age of pop-psycho-prattle to limit love to the human affection of “being nice” or “being kind.” We are tempted to understand and to practice love as a sort of “live and let live.” The peace that love brings is the peace and quiet of being left alone to do as I will. But here’s the real kicker about Divine Love: divine love is not a passive flood of God’s sweet affection for us; no, divine love is the active working of the Trinity in His creation, in His creatures. God loves us to change us, to re-form us, to shape us again into the perfect creatures He made us to be.

We say “God is Love.” True enough. But we also say “God became Man so that Man might become God.” Think about the implications of this notion! Are we saying here that God sacrificed his only Son on the cross so that we might be nice to one another, merely kind to one another? Hardly. Are we saying that Christ suffered a bloody death, an ignoble public execution so that we might come to understand that we need to be sweet to one another? Again, hardly. Divine Love is our rescue and our anchor, our reach and our goal. We are made in the likeness and image of Love Himself so that we might be perfected as Love. Stiff-necked, wicked, and sinful, we are made perfect in Love so that we can love. And there is nothing sweet or kind about being reshaped, about being twisted back into the creatures we are made to be. It hurts! We know that this process works through medicinal pain. And yet, we are tempted to make Divine Love into a grandmotherly affection, into a cute and cuddly infatuation. What a loss for us when we do.

Now that we know Who Love Is, let’s remind ourselves of what Love does. Love is always the True and Good. Love seduces us to charity, seduces us to always speak the truth and do the good merely for the sake of Truth and Goodness. Love never worships at the altar of Man, of creation, making that which is made into a god. Love does not lie, cheat, steal, murder, or abuse its divine gifts. When we love in Love Himself, we love rightly, even if imperfectly now, we love in righteousness and fidelity. Our love for one another forgives offenses as God forgives us and though Love makes us want to forgive sin, Love does not blind us to sin, ours or anyone else’s. Rather Love sharpens our sight so that we might see more clearly His work ahead of us. Finally, and most importantly, Love perfects in us He Who Loves us most.

So, yes, of course, imitate our Father in father, Moses, and be the good Southern Lady or Gentleman and invite God to keep company with you. But know that the Blessed Trinity is no benign houseguest. He comes as family. He comes to re-create the world, and He will start with you.

Deny, Take Up, & Follow

6^th Week OT (F): James 2.14-24, 26; Mark 8.34-9.1
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass, Church of the Incarnation

Is it possible to desire to follow Christ but fail to take up Christ’s cross? Is it possible to want to be a Christian but fail to follow after Christ? Jesus tells the disciples and the crowd, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” How do we deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him? Good questions. The better question, for now, is: what does it mean “to wish to follow Christ”? And what does it mean to wish such a thing and fail to do what is required in order to see this wish come to fruition? James, in his oh-so-pointed manner clarifies this murky problem for us: “…faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” In other words, you cannot wish to be a Christian and refuse to trust God; likewise, your refusal to trust God is all the evidence we need to conclude that you do not, in fact, wish to be a Christian.

Jesus is a genius. What he understands better than we do is that it is impossible for us to desire what we lack and at the same time fail to do what is lacking. In our very desire to be Christ, we do what Christ did. To have faith in Christ is to do Christ’s faithful work. Think of the alternatives: faith without works, works without faith. Faith is the good habit of trusting God. How does one possess a habit without actually doing the habit? If I say that I have the bad habit of lying, you rightly assume that I lie. What if I then say, “No, I never lie.” You can justly accuse me of being very confused about what it mean “to have a habit.” If I say that I have the good habit of loving others, you rightly assume that I am a loving person. What if I then say, “No, I pretty much hate everyone.” Again, I am showing that I am very confused about the nature of habit. The same sort of confusion flows from the notion that I can do truly good works without faith. Let’s say that you catch me feeding the poor on a regular basis. You can justly say that I love the poor. If I say, “No, I really hate the poor, so I feed them on a regular basis,” you are again right to point out my confusion.

Christ denies himself, takes up his cross, and leads to Calvary anyone who wants follow. So, if you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ, you are a Christian. You do what Christ did. Faith is a good work. Good works are always faithful works. However, we can neither trust God nor do trusting work without God Himself. Our desire to follow Christ and the works we do that mark us as followers of Christ are themselves gifts given to us by God. We do not want God until God Himself shows us what we lack without Him. And when we are shown what we lack, or more precisely “who we lack,” we are moved to desire Him and His perfection. This is not an Armchair Desire, a merely abstract wanting that we can safely rope off and hold at bay with appeals to practicality or common sense. Nor can we simply intellectualize this gnawing hunger as a delightful puzzle or amusing concept. Once the starving man is shown the feast, he must eat or die. And so it is with us: once we are shown the perfection of following Christ, we must follow or die…or rather, follow and die: for what good is it for us to be given the riches of the whole world and refuse to love the one, the only one, who gives us a life to live richly?

We cannot desire to be Christ without doing what Christ did. We cannot do what Christ did without desiring to be who Christ is. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow. There is no wanting without working, no desiring without doing. To quote Master Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Here's your sign...

6^th Week OT (M): James 1.1-11 and Mark 8.11-13
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Church

Can’t you just imagine how weary Jesus must be at this point, tired of being doubted, tested, wrung through the wringer of having to prove again and again who he really is. His word alone is not enough for most. For some, even his miracles lack the umph that pushes the incredulous over their disbelieving hump. This is not to say that there aren’t perfectly good reasons for believing that Jesus is not who he says he is. His claims are fairly ridiculous, not just odd but downright bizarre. It would take a massive exertion of will to move oneself from disbelieving to believing w/o some sort of external assistance. The Pharisees are again clamoring for signs, bugging Jesus for more and better evidence. They are harassing him not b/c they are committed to the pursuit of truth and seek the truth of his nature; they are testing him in order to find fault so that they might then charge him, arrest him, and execute him. His teachings are too dangerous. Even so, they risk their incredulity by asking for more signs. They risk their critical distance, their practiced cynicism by approaching him and asking him to do that which might confirm their worse fears about him. What if he did something, something spectacular, miraculous, something so bold and beautiful that even the hardest Pharisaical heart is torn open and the truth of his identity and mission pour in? That’s what they risk by asking for a sign. Does any of this sound familiar? How often do we ourselves hold Jesus at arm’s length on the pretense that we don’t really understand fully who he is, but at the same time we’re willing to mull over the possibility that he is who he says he is, but then we recognize what such a revelation would mean for our daily lives, so we demand further proof, more signs, knowing (hoping!) that such proof will be denied us, and then we can rest comfortably in our polite but practicing Christian agnosticism defended against the extremes of charity and not at all roused from the routine of stopping Christ at the threshold of our hearts and gently inviting him to take a seat and wait on our need for more information. There will be no further signs. The Church herself, born yesterday at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the sign of Christ’s presence. If we are not enough, there will never be enough, and Jesus will sit in the waiting room of our soul, while you, the suspicious Pharisee, poke at his arguments and ponder his words and sift his motives and slowly but ever so surely waste the body and soul you have been given, picking apart ever syllogism, every piece of evidence. But you won’t do this, will you? The Holy Spirit has you gripped by the heart and mind, otherwise you wouldn’t be here this morning. Jesus got in a boat and went across the sea to get away from the nagging doubters. Put yourself in that boat with him, go across the sea with him and ask him the only question that finally matters: Lord, how do I serve you?

Receive the Holy Spirit!

Pentecost Sunday: Acts 2.1-11; 1 Cor 12.3-7, 12-13; John 20.19-23
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

We start in fear, shaking in darkness. The doors locked against our enemies.

On the evening of the first day of the week, while we huddle together, fearful and dreading the noises of the dark, Jesus comes and stands in our midst. He says, “Peace be with you.” To show us his peace, he shows us the violence done to him on the cross; he shows us his hands—pierced, bloodstained—and he shows us his side—cut open, leaking water and blood. There is a small, quiet pause in our fear, just a whisper of doubt, of hesitation; we just barely slow our racing hearts, just long enough for hope to possess us again, and then: we rejoice! The Lord is with us…as he promised. He is with us always, even to the end of the age! He calmed the raging sea with a word; he calmed our dark-terror with a word; now he asks that we calm ourselves again and listen: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” The Father sent Christ. Now Christ sends us; breathing on us, he says: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And we are sent.

Indeed, we ARE sent! But sent where? To whom? Why? What are we sent to do? These questions assume that we understand Who it is we are receiving! Jesus says to us, “Receive the Holy Spirit” and so we are prepared to receive. But it is one thing to hear the command to receive and quite another to obey. If we obey, if we receive the Holy Spirit at Christ’s command, Who or what is it that we are receiving? We could say that we are receiving the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. We could say that we are receiving the Word of Creation, the Wisdom of the Father, the Fire of Divine Love. We could say that we are receiving the Pure Mercy of God, Divinity Himself, Perfect Beauty. What if we say that when we receive the Holy Spirit we receive the Gift of God Himself from Himself? God gives Himself to us, freely hands Himself over to us. Not a divine power, an ability, a function. Nor are we given a divine title, an energy, or a name. We are given—gifted with—God Himself, as such, Himself: Father, Son, Holy Spirit!

Now that we know that the gift is God Himself, and we receive this gift rejoicing, we may ask: where are we sent? To whom are we sent? Why are we sent? And what are we sent to do? All of these questions are answered in a single command: “Peace be with you”—our Lord’s simple imperative, his singular order to rest serenely, without fear, without any anxiety; to rest in the all-consuming fire of his love for us, for all his creation. Peace be with you. We are sent to every nation, every continent, the four corners of the world. Peace be with you. We are sent to every soul—the poor, the oppressed, the slave to sin—every living thing. Peace be with you. We are sent to be the peace—the quiet, the stillness, the certainty—of everyone and everything he rules. Peace be with you. We are sent to be Christ for the world. Baptizing in his name, teaching what he taught, preaching what he preached, and accomplishing everything that he commanded us to do. Therefore, peace be with you and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, God Himself freely given to us by God Himself.

All of the disciples are in one place together. As a Body they come together, hearing the Word, receiving the grace of baptism, giving everything they have and everything they are to the Body. Together they are in one place at the one time of Pentecost, fifty-days after our Lord’s resurrection from the dead. And together they hear “from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind…Then there appear[s] to them tongues as of fire, which [divide] and [come] to rest on each of them.” And because they have received the gift of sanctifying water and because they have received the gifts of charity and faith and because they have received the gift of unity together as one Body, “they [are] all filled with the Holy Spirit…” And the Church is born. And here we are: the Church, born of the Spirit, the gift of God Himself given to us by God Himself to be Christ for the world. We too are gifts for the world, given to the world by God Himself.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” The fire of the Holy Spirit arrives in the locked room as a single flame, then divides to rest on each disciple. One flame, many fires—the same Spirit setting diverse souls on fire, each soul receiving as he and she can the gifts of the Spirit. Paul writes, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” The first benefit for each soul is the peace of a mission, a purpose, a designated task written by the Word in the flesh and the spirit. Each will walk away—Jew, Greek, slave, freed slave, man, woman—each will walk away full to the brim with the gift of God Himself. Paul writes, “…we [are] all given to drink of one Spirit.” One Spirit, one drink, one Body, one mission.

Looking at the Church in the 21^st century, it is too easy to point out our differences. We can point to differences in language, politics, morality, health and wealth, ease of witness, difficulties with sin. We can point out how we differ theologically, philosophically, liturgically. We can point out the incredibly wide-ranging differences among those who believe with the Church, those who believe against the Church, and those who believe despite the Church. Some would have us celebrate these differences as Creative Diversities and others would have us mourn our differences as Destructive Divisions. Both of these groups—those who would make an idol of diversity and those who would make an idol of conformity—both would impose on the Body ideological straitjackets, chains that would bind us to a particular era of our history (whether the 1940’s or the 1970’s) or a particular idea of our identity (whether the church as Perfect Society or the church as religious democracy). This is not the peace that Christ gives us when he breathes the Spirit on us. This is not the peace that makes us Christ, sends us to the ends of the earth, gives us the Word to preach and teach, or heals the sins of the world. When we celebrate our diversity at the expense of our unity, we are a broken body divided against itself. When we celebrate our unity at the expense of our differing gifts, we are a broken body held together by a fearful conformity.

You fall to the temptation of schism when you believe that any of what you do as Christ for the world is primarily about you and your wants, your desires, your needs, your choices and preferences. When your spiritual focus is centered in your belly, your appetites, when your spiritual eye is trained on yourself alone, you fail and the rest of us fail along with you. The heart cannot be diseased without the whole body falling ill. The coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the Church, is not an opportunity for us to impose a narrow ideology, a singular means of being Christ for the world. The coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the Church, is not an opportunity for us, each in his or her own special way, to twirl off into the cosmos, celebrating any and every thing as good and holy. The coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the Church, IS the breaking open of human history for the entrance of Truth into our common lives. He comes among us to make us One. And so, we must, if we are to accomplish what we have been given to do, we must, always, always, we must always think with the Church, preach with the Church, teach with the Church, be together in the Church—his One Body given life and purpose by the Spirit. For the Christian, baptized and anointed, there is no life outside the Church, no purpose outside the Church. There is nothing for you, for us, beyond the Church, beyond the Body of Christ. We live and grow together, or you die and rot alone.

If you would return to the locked room, shaking in fear, then make an idol of our past, worship the cold heart of a museum-Church and fall prey to the Devil’s own pride. Likewise, if you love the locked room and its dark fear, make an idol of this age, worship the Zeitgeist, the ebb and flow of human fantasy, and fall prey to every snake that tempts you. However, if you will to do what Christ has ordered you to do, do it all with the Church, do it with us, the body and soul of the Church, the Holy Spirit among us, with us. Do this, and peace be with you “for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” to be Christ, the one Christ, the only Christ, to be the suffering servant of our Father’s needful creation.

Loving Jesus More than We Do

7^th Week of Easter: Acts 25.13-21 and John 21. 15-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation

“________, do you love Jesus more than the rest of us here?”*

How many times in the gospels does Jesus ignore a question asked of him and instead answer the question that should have been asked? Easily, most of the time. The few times he directly addresses the question put to him, he answers in a parable or turns the question around on the questioner and ask his own penetrating question! This shouldn’t surprise or confuse us given who Jesus really is, but it is nonetheless frustrating when we consider the tremendous faith required to believe what Jesus is teaching. Wouldn’t it just be easier if Jesus answered the questions we all have about life, death, heaven, and our salvation? Instead we get stories about mustard seeds, vines and branches, sheep and shepherds, mansions, rocks, houses built on sand, and a wayward son returning home to a grand welcome. This morning/evening, however, we read that Jesus decides to put a question to Peter: “Do you love me more than these [other disciples]?” Peter, thinking that this must a trick question or some sort of weird, last minute test of his faith, replies, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus, unsatisfied with the answer, puts the question to Peter two more times. Why does he do this? One possibility is that Peter, following his Master’s example, doesn’t answer the question!

The classical interpretation of this passage—that Jesus is portending Peter’s three-time denial in the Garden—is very likely the best interpretation of this scene. Jesus knows Peter’s heart but he also knows Peter’s weaknesses. To shore up his faith and his fortitude, Jesus gives Peter the chance to instill in his heart a last moment of intimacy between them, a moment that Peter will remember after the coming of the Spirit and call upon to invigorate his preaching-witness. Nothing wrong with that reading. Another interpretation holds that Jesus is questioning Peter and using Peter’s answer to place him in charge of the other disciples, making him the leader of the group based on his love for Christ. This recalls Jesus’ earlier question about his identity and Peter’s answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus names Peter the Rock. Also, nothing wrong with that reading. However, when we look at how questions and answers are exchanged in the gospels, can we come to another reasonable conclusion?

Notice that Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” “These” being the other disciples. Peter answers, “Yes, you know that I love you.” That doesn’t answer the question directly. Peter doesn’t say, “I love you more than the others do.” Maybe this is nit-picking, but given the earlier disputes about who takes precedence among the disciples, you would think that Peter would jump at the chance to take the more honorable place. He doesn’t. Instead, he gives Jesus a response to an unasked question. Peter says, “Yes, Lord, I love you.” Jesus puts the question to him again and again. Finally, deeply distressed by the questioning, Peter answers, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Satisfied with this answer or perhaps sensing Peter’s anxiety, Jesus goes on to give Peter one of his famous, cryptic stories, concluding with “Follow me.” Even so, Peter never directly answers the question put to him: do you love Jesus more than we do, Peter?

Why does the man named “the Rock” by Jesus himself shy away from this question? What if I asked you now in front of everyone here, “Do you love Jesus more than the rest of us, ______?” What could you say? Yes? Maybe? I don’t know? You would likely shy away from any answer b/c any answer you would give would pick you out as either prideful or ignorant or boastful. You might also shy away from the question b/c any answer you would give would come with a potentially dreadful task, a commission based on that excessive love. If you said, Yes, we might say, “Good! Lead us to our martyrdom preaching the gospel.” If you say, No, we might say, “Where is your faith?” If you say, Maybe, we might say: “You don’t know how much you love Jesus?” Do you see Peter’s dilemma?

Jesus sees that same dilemma, so says in reply to Peter’s anxious answers: “Follow me.”

*I directed this question to members of the congregation.