On Being Tractors for the Lord

15^th Sunday OT: Isa 55.10-11; Rom 8.18-23; Matthew 13.1-9
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled! Do we hear but do not understand? Do we look but do not see? Have we closed our hearts to God’s Word? Do we refuse to understand? Will we be converted? Will we be healed? Jesus says to his disciples, “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. Hear then the parable of the sower…Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

Sitting on a boat in the sea, Jesus teaches the crowd standing on the shore with a parable. A sower of seed sows seed. Some of the seed falls on fertile ground and some on rocks and among thorns. Some of the seed takes root in shallow soil. Some in deeper, richer earth. The seeds that fell on deep, rich soil grew to produce fruit thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. The seeds that fell among the rocks and on shallow ground were easily scorched by the sun, or torn up because their roots were weak. Whoever has ears ought to hear: if your heart is deep and rich, the seed of God’s Word will flourish and produce a great harvest; however, if your heart is made of stone or covered with shallow soil, the seed of God’s Word will not take root. Water the seed of God’s Word planted in your heart or the sun will burn it dry. And come harvest time, you will have nothing to give back to the Lord.

The Lord God says to Isaiah, “…my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” And so Jesus says to his disciples, “…blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.” Do we hear but not listen? Do we look but do not see? Have we closed our hearts to God’s Word? No, we have not. We see and listen and our hearts are open to receive he whom the Lord has sent as seed for our harvest. But do we understand? After Jesus finishes his parable, the disciples approach him and ask, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” The disciples must be thinking: why not just say you mean; plainly, clearly say what you mean? Why not do what the farmer on his tractor does—just give them a straightforward, easy to understand description of what happens when the Word falls on fertile hearts, on dead hearts, on tumultuous hearts? Jesus says, “[I speak to them in parables] because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Not exactly agricultural science or nature’s art! The disciples are privileged to know something more about the mysteries of how we are rescued from sin and granted eternal life. They are more than by-standers on the shore; they possess more than curious ears hearing a story told from a boat. And so do we; as his disciples right now, so do we.

What do we see? Hear? What do we understand? As disciples of the risen Lord, we can see the evil one coming to steal away the seed of the Word from those who refuse to understand his Word. As disciples of the risen Lord, we hear those who receive the Word with praise and thanksgiving, but who never allow the Word to take root in their stony hearts. As disciples of the risen Lord, we see and hear those with thorny hearts, hearts ruled by anxiety and the lure of riches, we see and hear them receive the Word but then choke the seedlings of the Word with compromise, worldly contentment, and sin. How do we see and hear all of this? How do we understand? Because at one time or another we ourselves, the disciples of the risen Lord, till stony, shallow, sun-scorched hearts, soil deadly to the Word that Lord would sow and nurture if only we were better farmers, better disciples.

The farmer plows and plants year to year. Each year as the earth tilts to spring, the fields are tilled and planted. Each year the harvest grows and produces fruits. Some years are better than others. Some years are flooded or burned. Eaten by insects or frozen solid with ice. But each year the farmer plows and plants; each year the farmer sows what he has and waits on the weather. Are we any different? The cycle of plowing and planting and producing good fruit might seem futile, even cynical given the vagaries of weather and time. But we know as the disciples of the risen Lord is that “…creation awaits with eager expectation…in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains…and we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Our faith is not a gamble. Our faith is not two dice thrown on the chance that salvation comes with a pair of sixes. We hope! And the chances of circumstance and time cannot diminish the expected fulfillment of the promises of God. Nothing touches our hope. Nothing dries out our faith.

Of course, we fail. Of course, our hearts grow cold. Sometimes we spread the rich soil of our soul too thin and the Word cannot take root. But one year is not like another. Each year is a new year for plowing and planting. Each day is a new year. And today, this year, the Year of St. Paul, is our day, our year to plow deep and plant recklessly, excessively, expansively; to do what Paul did and go out as apostles to world we live in and the world we have never seen to plow and plant and offer to God the harvest of His Word. The Lord says to Isaiah, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there until they have watered the earth…so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth…” And so Jesus says, “To anyone who has, more will be given…” As disciples of the risen Lord, we have the most we can have and more will be given. We see what the prophets longed to see. We hear what the righteous longed to hear. If we will understand with our hearts converted, we see and hear even more. But if we do not share, if we do not ourselves plow and plant, what we have will wither and die. The harvest of the Word is not ours to keep, stored up in barns and stocks; but rather, His to freely give and ours to distribute.

Paul walked and sailed the known world to plow men’s hearts and plant the seed of God’s Word. He was questioned, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually crucified. And yet, he says to the Romans, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed to us.” As disciples of the risen Lord, we are baptized with that same spirit of revelation, washed clean in the same waters that freed Paul to be the apostolic farmer of the Word that he was. And so we too wait in hope, listening to the groaning of all creation, waiting on the redemption of all the Lord’s work, plowing and planting every seed of the Word we have received, and rightly expecting a harvest to frighten the world!

Farming is hard work. Long days, summer heat, fickle rain, even more fickle markets. There are no guarantees in farming. The worms and locusts may be thick this year. The weeds high and strong. The tractor may be old and often broken. The prices meager. But when farming is all you have, all you do, everything you are, you farm and you farm with the vigor and determination of a zealot. As disciples of the risen Lord, we have vowed to be zealous farmers, passionate plowers of the human heart, and planters of the Lord’s mercy and love. Nothing touches our hope. Nothing diminishes our faith. Not opposition, not scorn, not persecution or trail. Not even death. So, get on that tractor—endure the heat, ignore the markets, suffer the price, and plow the world! Plant the seed!

The Lord waits on His harvest.

Free with Purchase

14^th Week OT (R): Hosea 11.1-4, 8-9 and Matthew10.7-15
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Though I have been an English teacher now for some twenty-two years, I’m not one of those fussy grammarian types who go around correcting “who” for “whom,” nor do I wag my finger at the barbarians who have killed the subjunctive mood of our verbs: “If I were going” not “If I was going…” Maybe I don’t do this sort of thing b/c I am a bad grammarian; regardless, there are two occasions when I get my school-marm bun in a twist. Go to WalMart or Kroger. Find the express lane. Does the sign indicating the express lane read, “Ten items or less” or “Ten items or fewer”? If the sign reads “less,” find the manager and make him write 500 times, “Less in amount, fewer in number.” Apparently, in Wally’s World, less is less prim and proper than fewer. The other annoying grammatical gremlin is the “free gift” offered with purchase. First, if it is truly a gift it is free by definition, so the adjective “free” in “free gift” is redundant. Second, if you have to purchase something to get the free gift, it is not a gift but a bribe. Marketers aren’t stupid; I mean, they aren’t uneducated in the ways that people respond to language, so why do you think that they make this mistake over and over again in their advertising? If “ten items or fewer” sounds prissy to the average American and so the signs read “ten items or less,” then “gifts” must be labeled “free” b/c how many of us really believe that anything anymore comes to us freely?

That question leads us to this one: why would anyone upon hearing the proclamation of the coming of God’s kingdom and the gracious wish of peace upon one’s household, refuse to receive that word and the wish of peace by listening? Jesus tells the disciples that they are to proclaim the kingdom in whatever town or village they find themselves in. Upon entering the house of their host, “wish [the household] peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace be upon it…” If the house is not worthy, Jesus tells his friends, “let your peace return to you…go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.” In other words, let nothing of their disobedience stay with you. They have refused the gift of peace that comes from hearing and doing—that is, listening—to the Word of God. Why would anyone refuse to listen?

Before instructing his friends on how to go out and proclaim the kingdom, Jesus reminds them, “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” How many of those who hear the disciples proclaim the kingdom truly believe that the message is a “free gift”? The cynics will say, “Yea, free, suuure.” The pessimists will say, “Who needs a gift that promises to kill us?” The optimists will say, “I’m happy now; besides happiness can’t be given?” And the truly world-wise will say, “What do I have to buy to get this allegedly ‘free gift’”? Like the modern consumer, these folks do not believe anything is truly free. If they cannot believe that the proclamation of the gospel message is a gift, then how will they ever come to believe that something as infinitely valuable as their rescue from sin and death is a “free gift” from God?

We have to wonder even now if we, the teachers and preachers of that freely given gospel, perpetuate the prejudice against the gospel being truly free. Jesus tries to help us now by telling his friends then not to preach with silver or gold or copper rattling around in our pockets; to go out preaching without a sack for the journey or a change of clothes or an extra pair of shoes. In other words, when we go out proclaiming the kingdom we are to appear as though the message we preach is free. So, the better question here might be: do those who refuse to listen to the freely given message of salvation through Christ see us as messengers who really believe that the message we bring is free? If the medium is the message, then we must look like the gospel we proclaim. Otherwise, those who hear but do not listen can say, “Looks like an expensive Way to go to me.”

This psalmist this morning prays, “Let us see your face, Lord, and will shall be saved.” Looking at His preachers, how much do you reckon folks think they will have to pay just to glimpse His face? What is the price of salvation if we who believe live as if there is a price for all to pay?

"I do..."

14^th Week OT(M): Hos 2.16-18, 21-22; Matthew 9.18-26
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Among Catholic mystics for quite a few centuries, it was almost a requirement for admission into the guild that they produce at least one meditation on the erotic theology of the Song of Songs. For those of us who tend to lean a little more to the creative side of the faith and revel in expressing that faith in gloriously poetic terms, the only text that rivals the Book of Revelation for weirdly vivid imagery and the opportunity for preaching right at the border of the naughty and the nice is the Song of Songs. But for all of its bridal imagery, espousal theology, and near-naked romping on the Judean hillsides, the Song of Songs is not the only book in our paternal scriptures that lays the foundation under the Bride-Bridegroom metaphor for Christ and his Church. We have, for example, the prophet Hosea reporting that after the Lord passes a severe judgment on His people for idolatry, He makes this promise to Israel: “I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. She shall respond there as in the days of her youth…on that day, says the Lord, She shall call me ‘my husband,’ and never again ‘my master.’” Though not as steamy as the proposals from the Song of Songs, Hosea’s prophecy makes the same erotic point: even in our adulterous affairs with other gods, our Lord comes to us as a people, espousing us to Him as His Bride and healing us of all our sin: “I will espouse you to me forever…”

Lest we worry too much that speaking of God in erotic terms borders on the blasphemous, let’s be clear about what an “erotic theology” really is. The Fathers of the Church make extensive use of seduction metaphors to describe how God lures us to Him; how God “wines and dines” us so that we are more willing and able to come to Him in love. If we hold that we come from God as creatures (created beings) and that our ultimate salvation is our return to Him as our source, then to say that God seduces us back to Him is no scandal at all. If this is the pleasant side of our seduction, then we can easily see how our persistent refusal to be espoused to God causes us tremendous stress and dis-ease. In the ancient world, sin and sickness are twined sisters of the devil. To be sick was to be sinful. To be forgiven one’s sins was to be healed of all sickness. Though we may not make this direct physical connection today, we understand all too well that sin sickens the soul. So, when we play “hard-to-get” with God, we are refusing to marry our only source of health. We say “No” to God’s proposal that we live with Him as a bride lives with her bridegroom.

What do the official and the woman suffering from chronic hemorrhages know about Jesus? They know that he can heal. Believing that Christ can bring about the marriage of the Father and His people both submit themselves in faith to the power of Christ to mend death and disease alike. The official kneels and pleads for his dead daughter’s return to the living. The woman touches the tassel of Christ’s cloak without speaking to him. The daughter arises from death. And the woman is saved, her bleeding cured. In their love and humility both are seduced by God, betrothed to His promise, married in His covenant, and the covenant is consummated in their return to health. Perhaps they remembered that the Lord said to Hosea, “I will espouse you to me forever…I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord.”

Well understood in the early days of the Church was the notion that “knowing” a thing is to have an intimate relationship with that thing. To know a truth about a thing was to know its essence, its most basic nature. The known bonded with the knower, so that nothing was left unknown. What can be more intimate than the knowledge that comes from consummating a marriage bond? And to be bonded to the source of our being—the source of all rightness and goodness—is to be made righteous and good in the bonding. Our Blessed Mother says yes to God’s seduction and gives birth to the Word. Jesus himself says yes to God’s seduction and gives birth to our eternal lives. We can do no less if we are to live forever in the divine health that the Lord proposes for us.

“I will espouse you to me forever," says the Lord, “I will espouse you in right and justice, in love and mercy…and you shall know the Lord.”

The Only Burden

14^th Sunday OT: Zech 9.9-10; Rom 8.9, 11-13; Matt 11.25-30
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX

If you have spent any time at all splitting cord-wood for the fireplace; or digging a foundation for a new house; or shoveling gravel for a roadbed; or if you have spent most of a Saturday washing and drying laundry, vacuuming the carpets, dusting and polishing the furniture, and cleaning up after a late dinner, then Christ’s invitation to take on his yoke as a lighter burden could be very appealing. Even the day to day grind at the office, the store, the classroom, the bank, wherever it is you grind away a day, the work you do can easily become a burden, not just a difficult job but a tremendous weight, an unbalanced unload that threatens to topple you over into despair. Perched on top of this leaning tower of worries and work, none of us needs a religion that imposes another set of burdens, an additional heavy-bookload of obligations, penalties, policies, and rules. The last thing we need is for our relationship with God to become work, a tedious job, a dutiful burden. And so, Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father…Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

We might wonder what sort of yoke Christ would use. He says his yoke would be easy and the burden light, but a yoke is a yoke no matter how easy, and being tied to any sort of burden means pulling a weight no matter how light. I start thinking about being yoked to a burden and several questions come to mind: will I be pulling this light burden uphill? Or across sand? Stone? In traffic or out in the wild? Will it be raining or snowing or will I have to pull this burden in the heat and humidity of a July in Texas? Other questions come to mind: what’s in it for me? Is this a paid gig? Insurance, benefits? Is there a Light Burden Haulers union? Vacation time, sick days, opportunities for advancement? Does Jesus offer a tuition credit for further studies? And, by the way, exactly what is it that I will be hauling? Since I’m a peaceful man I really can’t in good conscience haul military equipment. I will haul medical equipment and supplies so long as none of them will be used for abortions or sterilizations. Will I have to haul loads going to churches other than the Catholic Church? Anyway, all good questions, but questions that miss the point entirely. These questions are asked “according to the flesh.” All Jesus is asking us to haul under his easy yoke is the light load of knowing that he is the Christ sent by the Father to free us from sin and grant us eternal life. He says, “…for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.”

Find rest of ourselves…is this what we do when we come to believe that Jesus is the Christ? Isn’t it more often the case that we find ingenuous ways of throwing scattered junk and assorted debris on top of our easy burden, weighing down the load with more and more waste, more and more unnecessary rubbish? And as our load grows larger and the burden more difficult to manage, who is it that we blame? Jesus? The Church? Religion in general? Our Lord tells us that his Father has hidden certain truths from the “the wise and the learned,” but that He has revealed these truths to the “little ones.” Are you wise and learned, or are you a little one? The difference between the two has everything to do with whether or not you think your burden is light enough, your path straight enough, and his yoke easy enough.

In one of his many sermons,* St. Augustine has this to say about our gospel passage, "All other burdens oppress and crush you, but Christ's burden actually lightens your load. All other burdens weigh you down, but Christ's burden gives you wings. If you cut away a bird's wings, it might seem as though you are taking off some of its weight, but the more weight you take off [by removing its wings], the more you tie the bird down to the earth. There it is lying on the ground, and you wanted to relieve it of a burden; give it back the weight of its wings, and you will see how it flies." The wise and the learned know that the heavier an object is the more work it takes to make it fly. Lighter objects need less work to fly. But the little ones know that a bird cannot fly without the weight of its wings. Christ’s yoke, his burden on us weighs less than bird bones and feathers.

Paul, writing to the Romans, teaches us, “You are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you…” As baptized and confirmed members of the Body of Christ, God’s Spirit does dwell within us. And since God’s Spirit abides in us, “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to [our] mortal bodies…” And since our mortal bodies will be given the life of the resurrection of the dead when our Lord returns for us, “brothers and sisters, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh…” And so, we are to live as Little Ones—the poor, the broken, the thrown away, the diseased, those who rush to Jesus for a word of healing, just one touch to see justice done.

Why must be become so little? Because to be filled with the Spirit we must first be emptied out as Christ himself was emptied out for us on the Cross. There is no room for God’s Spirit in a body crowded with fear, worry, anger, a lust for revenge, a desire to punish; there is no room for God in a soul stuffed full with the need to worship alien gods; to kill the innocent; to torture the enemy. Greed, jealousy, rage, promiscuity, dissent, all elbow sharply at our souls for more space for themselves but make no room for God. Paul warns us: “…if you live according to the flesh, you will die…” If we will live, we must “put to death the deeds of the body…”

Nothing that you have heard Jesus or Paul say this morning should surprise you. You know the consequences of sin. Firstly, sin makes you stupid. Disobedience quenches the fire of the intellect, so that you choose evil over good. Do this often enough and you become a fool. Secondly, since sin makes you foolish, you come to believe that you are wise. If you are also learned, that is, well-educated in the world, you might even begin to believe that you better than God Himself what is best for you. Enter all those nervous questions about the nature of Jesus’ burden and the weight of his revelation to you. Finally, since sin makes you a wise and learned fool, you may come to believe that you can do without God altogether, becoming, for all intents and purposes, your own god, worshiping at the altar of Self. At this point, you have excluded yourself from God’s love and the company of the blessed. Welcome to Hell. Maybe the Devil will let you rule a small corner of your favorite level, but don’t count on it. You know the consequences of sin. So empty yourself. Make plenty of room for God’s Spirit.

If we will come among the blessed and thrive in holiness, then we will take on the light and easy yoke of Jesus and let him teach us the one thing we must know above all else: He is the Christ sent by the Father so that we might have eternal life. This is not the end of our spiritual journey; it is just the beginning. Christ’s warnings about the wise and learned are not meant to push a kind of anti-intellectualism, a know-nothing party of prejudice and blindness. In fact, it is because we are first weighted down with the feather-light wisdom of Jesus’ yoke that we must then come to understand our faith, to use our graced minds to explore and comprehend God’s creation—ourselves and everything else. If we are emptied of the deeds of the flesh and infused with the Spirit of God, then our bodies too are graced, and we have nothing to fear from the mind, nothing to worry about in seeking out knowledge and understanding. To know God’s creation better is to know God Himself better, and when we know God better and better, we become smaller and smaller and more and more ready to receive the only revelation we need to come to Him, the only burden from Him we must carry: Jesus is the Christ!

*Sermon 126, my version

Fasting during the Party

13^th Week OT(Sat): Amos 9.11-15 and Matthew 9.14-17
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Holy Family Catholic Church, First Saturday Mass

Even among those who should know better, the temptation to compare and contrast religious practices is great. My Friday fast is more severe than anyone else’s. I go to Mass more often than she does. He goes to confession more than I do. John’s disciples, apparently concerned about their own fasting, approach Jesus and question him about the fasting practices of his disciples. Are they worried that they are fasting unnecessarily? Or, fasting too much or too little? It’s not clear if they are criticizing Jesus’ friends or if they are simply curious about another way of growing in holiness. And though we have no way of knowing how John’s disciples reacted to Jesus’ response, we have to imagine that they were at least a little confused when Jesus answered, “Can the wedding guest mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” You can just see Jesus’ disciples, standing behind him, smiling and snickering at the answer. They themselves have heard this kind of puzzling answer from their Master a number of times! But for the uninitiated, Jesus’ bizarre question comes out of the blue. And his subsequent teaching on shrunken and unshrunken cloth, new wine and new wineskins must sound completely random. So, what is Jesus teaching?

Notice that Jesus links fasting with mourning. He says that the wedding guests, the disciples, do not mourn so long as the groom, he himself, is with them. Then he adds, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast.” Fasting then is a way to mourn those who have been taken away in death. How we can understand the connection between fasting and mourning? Think of the times you have fasted. Do you fast because you are mourning the loss of someone you love? You may stop eating while you grieve, but this is not fasting strictly speaking. Fasting is intentional; it is directed, focused, not done by accident or force. However, Jesus’ point seems to be that the inner meaning of fasting IS mourning; that is, when we fast with the proper intent and focus, we are indeed mourning. In a very subtle way, Jesus is rebuking John’s disciples for misunderstanding the purpose of their religious fast.

Like their Master, John’s disciples subject themselves to an austerity that disciplines the mind and body. The goal, of course, is spiritual purity in the pursuit of holiness. But how often do our spiritual disciplines become the measure of our holiness. In other words, we are often sorely tempted to believe that a severe discipline (fasting, prayer, etc.) mark us as spiritually superior to our neighbors, or perhaps somehow closer to God, our perfection. It is entirely possible, for example, that we have fallen away to the degree that all of our strictly observed disciplines simply bring us on par with our holier neighbor! Regardless, fasting itself is not a measure of our love for God nor is it a means of determining our purity. Fasting is mourning; fasting is one way we have to miss our Lord, one way to experience his absence from the wedding feast.

Jesus’ question to John’s disciples—“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”—is his way of telling them (and us) that we are to be joyful while he is among us! No one mourns during a wedding party, no one grieves while celebrating a marriage. In fact, Jesus notes, it is foolish to pour a brand new wine into an old and battered wineskin. It will break open and waste the wine. Those who rejoice at the wedding of Christ and his Church pour new wine into new skins. We are a new people filled with a new spirit. Mourning comes when we must remember Christ’s death for our salvation; however, even as we fast and mourn, we remember the feast. If your fasting is intended to keep you occupied with our loss of Jesus, then you fast for the wrong reasons. If your fasting is intended to measure your holiness against your neighbors, then you fast for the wrong reasons. Fasting prepares us for feasting. Mourning prepares us for the outpouring of the Spirit. We empty ourselves out so that our Lord may fill us up.

There is no other reason for us to remember Christ’s death than to prepare us for celebrating his resurrection and our eternal life with him. Therefore, do not give Christ a miserable spirit and expect him to pour out his joy. You will burst and be ruined.

Suffering well...

Recently, I conducted a one-day retreat for the local lay Dominican chapter. I was asked to give three talks on the theme, “Preaching Truth in a Lying Age.” During one of the talks I mentioned the notion of suffering and gave a very brief ferverino on what suffering means for Christians. That little piece of the much bigger retreat is still sitting with me this morning.

When I am asked to recount my vocation story, I often tell the story of how I came to a better understanding of humility. In 1998, I had injured my back at work. For about two months my doctor thought I had merely sprained a lower back muscle and he treated me as such—mild muscle relaxers, milder pain meds, and physical therapy. I was in excruciating pain, often fainting and completely unable to bathe or walk. Only after I had lost about 50lbs. and nearly lapsed into a coma with a 106 degree temperature did he finally decide to send me for an MRI.

After the MRI and during one of my physical therapy sessions I was called to the phone to hear my doctor’s nurse order me to cease therapy immediately and return to the office. Her voice was insistent and slightly frightened. Obviously, I was terrified. They had found something. Once in the office, the doctor informed me that I had a large mass growing between my two lower vertebrae. He showed me the MRI films and ordered me back to the clinic for another MRI. This time they shot me full of contrast fluid. The mass shone like a mountain. My doctor, nearly in tears because he had ignored my pleas for better pain meds, told me that he was pretty sure I had cancer. Only a biopsy could confirm this.

The biopsy indicated that the mass was a staph abscess. They rushed me to the hospital where I was told that my heart had likely been severely weakened by the infection. Tests showed that this was not the case. However, the staph had infected my blood, sending my sed rate to deadly levels. My infectious disease doc confided to me that he couldn’t explain that why after almost three months of an internal staph infection I wasn’t dead. He ordered a PIC line inserted into my heart and I was fed two IV anti-biotics for seven weeks. During those seven weeks I was at home with my parents recovering.

I was unable to keep food down. Couldn’t bathe or sleep. And I was dependent on my parents for everything. I was 35 years old and once again a child. The day humility came to smack me around I had a doctor’s appointment. Since I could barely walk, my mom had to dress me. The absurdity of my situation hit me hard when it came time to put on my socks. Sitting on a low bench in my underwear with my mom kneeling in front of me, struggling through a stream of tears to get my socks on for me, I started crying in frustration, anger, gratitude, and a sense of helplessness. It was all so absurd, so surreal, and yet also weirdly peaceful.

My point? I had been in constant pain for almost four months, and I grieved my loss of independence. But I had yet to suffer. Pain is not suffering. Grief is not suffering. Since I was merely experiencing pain and not giving that pain purpose, I had refused to suffer. There was no grace for me in simply being in pain. Once I decided to allow the pain to have a purpose (i.e., “to suffer the pain”) as a gift of humility, my recovery quickened, and I was able to go back to work in month or so. Now, when my oh-so-ready pride pokes its head into my business, I remember the scene of my mom struggling to get my socks on without hurting me—the two of us crying like babies at the absurdity of the whole thing.

The question is not “do you suffer?” but “do you suffer well?” Or, rather “do you allow your pain/grief to have a purpose?”

So, suffer well.

Stranger than God?

St Thomas the Apostle: Eph 2.19-22 and John 20.24-29
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Think for a moment about how you come to believe that some claim about the natural world is true. Could you, if asked, chart out the flow of your thinking, the steps you have taken in assenting to this or that truth? Could you provide sufficient and convincing evidence for the truth of each step, each twist and turn in the flow? On a scale of 1 to 100, how difficult do you think it would be to produce this detailed evidence for a claim about the supernatural world? About your belief that God is real? That Jesus is the Son of God? That heaven and hell exist—somehow—as real possibilities for us? It seems that my belief that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west is a vastly different sort of belief than my belief that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ for no other reason than that I invoke the Holy Spirit to make it so. The former is a kind of verifiable knowledge, a fact; while the latter can seem to be something akin to voodoo.

Thomas the Twin must have felt that his fellow disciples had gone bonkers. Returning to their hideout, Thomas is told by the others (and we have to imagine that he was told breathlessly) that they had seen the Lord. This is the same Lord that the Romans had only just recently convicted, tortured and then executed as a traitor and heretic. Thomas must have sighed, looked at his frazzled friends with pity—“The stress has finally cracked their good sense! When would the lunacy end?” But being a good friend and probably desirous of setting them all straight with a simple test, he says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my hand into his side…I will not believe.” Good for him! Show me! Let me see the evidence and draw my own conclusion. What right-thinking mind wouldn’t demand solid proof of this alleged truth?

We don’t know how the other disciples reacted to Thomas’ sensible disbelief in their ridiculous claim that their dead Master had appeared to them while he was gone. Were they outraged? Hurt? Were they sad for him? Maybe amused? All we know is that one week later Jesus appeared again. And Thomas was there. They must have all panicked, or erupted with questions and requests, because Jesus enters, saying, “Peace be with you.” He goes to Thomas and gives his disbelieving friend a chance to rest his disbelief, “Put your finger here and see my hands…do not be disbelieving, but believe.” At this Thomas exclaims, “But I could be dreaming, or perhaps this is all just an illusion; or more likely, you are the product of a mass hallucination brought on by stress, hunger, my need to believe in something larger than myself.” And Jesus wept. His friend Thomas had become a stranger to him.

Alright, so that’s not the way it goes in the gospel, but my version shows up the basic mistake we often make when dealing with belief. In the real gospel Thomas refuses to believe without hardcore empirical evidence. He sets another gospel above the witness of his friends—the gospel of believing only those claims that can be verified through empirial investigation. Jesus’ miraculous appearance shocks Thomas into the gospel that Jesus actually preached: with faith comes understanding. First, we must trust, then we know. But wouldn’t a contemporary Thomas reply, “Well sure, if you require that I believe before I believe, then believing is merely a prejudice. The case has been settled before it has been investigated.” This would be a reasonable objection if we were investigating the rising and setting of the sun, but we are not. We are investigating a personal encounter with God.

Because of his weak faith—that is, his mistrust—Thomas is allowed his empirical evidence. Only then does he come to trust. Jesus says, “Have you come to believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Jesus is not telling the disciples that they must accept unverifiable claims. What he is telling them is that they will know him best in faith. In other words, he is teaching them that their belief in him is matter of love and not evidence, of hope and not chance. No mother or father loves a child because the empirical evidence requires it. We love, then we believe and understanding grows from trust. We are not strangers to God. Even when what we sometimes believe about God is very strange indeed…

Separation Anxiety

1^st Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church: Rom 8.31-39 and Matt 24.4-13
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Are we comforted by Paul when he writes to the Romans: “…in all things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us,” or does the idea scares us just a little bit? Conquer overwhelmingly? All things we conquer overwhelmingly? Maybe I’m overwhelmed by the idea that our conquest will be overwhelming. Like you, I am pretty much happy just to win one here and there. As long as the win column stays a bit higher than the lose column, I thinking: hey, not bad for a sinner. Then I have to remember that those are all Christ’s wins not mine. The losses…well, the losses go to my side of the table. After all, Paul writes that our overwhelming conquest is accomplished “through him who loved us” and not through my good nature or my iron will or straight-shooting determination. Since Christ’s love never fails, it follows that all the failures must be mine alone. But even here—right in the center of my failures—I find Christ, abiding, faithful, always eager to forgive. How much more then must I guard against letting my love grow cold?

Jesus says to the disciples, “See that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will deceive many.” Exactly how important is it for us not to be deceived by false Christs? If Paul is right when he writes to the Romans that our overwhelming conquest of persecution and trial comes through the love God has from us, then it is vitally important that we not let ourselves be deceived by wolves dressed as shepherds. How then are we deceived? Jesus and Paul both hint at an answer. Jesus says that as deceitful gospels are offered by the false prophets, evil-doing increases and “the love of many will grow cold.” But Paul notes that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—not anguish, distress, persecution, peril, or the sword. Who is right? Will our love grow cold in deception or will we never be separated in Christ’s love? Both.

Cold love is still love. Weak, easily lead astray, prone to evil though it is. This is the love we have for Christ when things get scary for us as lovers of Christ. However, it is Christ’s love for us that never grows cold, never waivers, or blinks. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” So, Paul is telling us that in our worst moments, Christ is always with us. While Jesus is telling us that when we are most tempted to fail by following false prophets, we know our love for him has gone cold.

But what can a false prophet preach that will turn our fervor into stone? He can preach that our salvation is our own work and not Christ’s. He can preach that our worries are God’s punishments for sin, or that we are hungry, sick, imperiled because God is bringing judgment against us. He can preach that there is someone else who intercedes for us before the throne of God rather than Christ alone. He can preach that God’s kingdom is present in some political system or religious organization, or that our faith must be invested in human justice, or the good works of a few. He can preach that the Church born at Pentecost is not the Body of Christ but an institution, a man-made association made for man. Most viciously, he can preach that death was not conquered on the Cross and lead us to believe that all we have is the moment, this day, and nothing more.

How do we persevere? Remember: “if God is for us, who can be against us?...It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ?” No one, no thing. Nothing, nothing at all.

What is a homily?

I was in my campus office this evening packing things up and getting all of my personal files off the company computer, and I ran across this blog post of mine from Dec. 31, 2005. I read it and wondered if things have changed all that much in three years!

Mechanics of a Homily

Several readers have written asking me to explain what a “homily” is, meaning, I think, that they want to know what a homily is supposed to do in the liturgy. I’ve directed them to relevant church documents, etc. but I think the question deserves a more direct answer. In the comment boxes on Jimmy Akin's site I listed off a few things that parishioners could look/listen for in a homily so that they could give Father constructive feedback. I made a dramatic plea for the Catholic faithful to hold priests to high standards of preaching. The bottom-line is quite simple: if you don’t care about the quality of the homily, Father isn’t going to spend much of his rapidly dwindling time on quality preparation. He needs to know that you think it’s a priority!

Q: What is a homily?

A: Let’s start with what it ISN'T…

* several stories of dubious humor strung together with a “moral” tacked on

* a pep talk, an appeal for money, an update on parish construction, or a book review

* a report on Father’s last visit to his shrink/therapist/spiritual director

* a stump speech, a rousing call to political arms, a psychology/sociology lecture

* an academic essay on Things Theological-Philosophical-Scriptural

* a love-letter to big money donors

* 8-15 unscripted minutes of the Mass where Father gets to show the crowd what a great guy he is by blowing off the homily!

…so, what IS a homily?

* a liturgical device of Speaking the Word, giving the Word of God voice for today

* authentic, authoritative instruction in the living faith of the Church

* an exhortation to communal and personal holiness, encouragement in the face of despair

* an “unpacking” of the readings in a way that addresses real problems of faith

* a liturgical device for raising questions, suggesting answers, stirring up trouble, getting into fights

Q: How is a homily prepared/written?

A: Every preacher is different, of course. I can give you a brief outline of how I do it:

I read the lectionary readings about a week ahead of time to see what strikes me. I usually mumble to myself about how dull the reading is or how I’ll never squeeze anything out of THAT text or how we just had that reading two weeks ago, etc. Then I will read it again a few days later—having forgotten it by then—and something will strike me as odd/weird/brilliant/curious. I will grab a commentary to check on any cultural references or historical oddities, and then I will begin to pose a question or a problem to tackle. I will locate the readings in a Bible (I own five different English translations!) and look at “where” the readings are in the larger narrative. This almost always gives me something to work with in the homily. All this time, I am praying for inspiration, for insight. I don’t write a word of my homily until the morning of the day it is to be preached. I am a morning person, so I’m up at 4:30am, coffee in hand, ready to roll! Weekday homilies are 550-650 words, Sunday homilies are twice that.

What’s basic, I think, to any good homily is an application of the readings to real, contemporary problems. I don’t mean to suggest that the homily needs to be a “fix-it” talk where the priest gives the assembly quick and easy DIY solutions to complex problems; however, the homily can be a great way for the preacher to raise issues, questions, problems that are common to his parish/ministry and show how the readings and the tradition might help to address them. This means, of course, that a good preacher is listening, listening, listening to what’s troubling God’s faithful.

I always try to do the following in every homily…

* preach the gospel in front of me, not the gospel I think the congregation wants to hear, or the gospel that will get me the fewest complaints, or the gospel that will get me the most compliments!

* include a humorous story if there’s one that’s truly relevant (I’m a Southerner born and bred, so I exaggerate like I breath—loudly and on a regular basis.)

* use an image, a phrase, or a line from ALL four readings; the Psalms, sadly, often get shortchanged

* preaching is an oral form, so I write for oral presentation: lots repetition, alliteration, “unpacking,” and frequent use of language from the readings, the liturgy of the day, and the tradition

* say something truly challenging and maybe even unnerving! (I’m a Dominican, so I am not particularly inclined to spoon feed folks religious pabulum or feel-good psychobabble just to keep things sweet.)

* I am downright tenacious about preaching the following: a) the universal call to holiness; b). our salvation understood as our divinization; c) our salvation as an undeserved, unmerited, totally FREE gimme from God; d) our responsibilities to the Body of Christ as members of the Body of the Christ; e) the need for true humility before the authority of the Church to teach the authentic faith; f) the absolutely indispensable necessity of a powerful private and common prayer life (cf. CCC Part IV), and g) our responsibilities in revealing Truth, Goodness, and Beauty to one another!

Q: What needs work?

A: I read my homilies from prepared texts. This will never change. It can’t. I am tied to language as a writer, a poet, an English teacher, etc. I just can’t let go of the text and preach “off the cuff.” I will ramble, jabber on for an hour, wander around until someone chunks a hymnal at me. I need to practice more so I can be more engaging with the assembly and not so glued to the paper. I’ve been told that I talk too fast—and I’m a Southerner! And that my homilies are too complex for just listening, thus the blog site for those who want to read them. I’m always wrong about my homilies too—just about every time I think I’ve preached a real dud, I get lots of great feedback. And when I think I’ve preached a real winner—nothing, nada, crickets chirping. Oh well.

Comments? Comments from other preachers particularly welcomed!!

[So, whatta think? Am I following my own rules?]

Downright 'ornery

SS. Peter and Paul: Acts 12.1-11; 2 Tim 4.6-8, 17-18; Matt 16.13-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Peter, inspired by God, given a revelation, a view of God’s face, answers Jesus when he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” You are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God. Peter alone among the gathered disciples answers. Peter alone is given this revelation. Peter alone is blessed as the son of Jonah, the only one of flesh and blood to see clearly the truth of the Word of Made Flesh. He is the first to preach the name and face of our salvation. And in virtue of this unique privilege, Jesus the Christ says to him, “You are Peter, upon this rock I will build my Church…I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven…” Born of the Spirit at Pentecost, safeguarded against the assaults of the netherworld, and anointed as a prophetic body, the Church lives with Peter even now as a thriving witness, as a testimony to the love our Father has for us. Because of Peter’s faith, we are the Body of Christ alive and well in the 21^st century; and alive and well well-into 21^st we will remain. Despite our fundamental health and the promise of the Spirit to abide with us always, we are faced daily with attacks from the netherworld, both small and great, assaults on our foundation and our frame. How do we survive? How do we thrive?

The martyrdoms of Peter and Paul in Rome are perhaps the most egregious examples we have of how our enemy uses its secular political power to attack the Church. King Herod sees the pleasure James’ execution brings to the Jewish leadership, and so he plots to arrest Peter. Paul, despite his vigor and determination, and despite his Roman citizenship and deep connections to the Jewish community, is persecuted by both the State and the Temple. He speaks the Word plainly and without flinching and dies for his mission. Why would the King, the Emperor, the Chief Priest be threatened by these men? Why would those who wield the power of the throne, the empire, and the temple see these men as threats to their way of life, their power and prestige? Peter and Paul did little more than travel the known-world preaching a simple gospel of repentance and Godly love. Without armies, money, or influence, what power could either man bring against the rulers of their world?

What the enemy knows and we often forget is that the Church is the living Body of Christ, the breathing Body of the Son of the living God. We are not an institution. We are not a community of allegiance. We are not a convenient organization for charitable work. Nor are we a social club, a religious market, or a school for moral instruction. And though we are certainly a society of vowed believers, we are more than a gathered family, praying together during a communal meal. In fact, if we restrict the Church to her function and utility, we become nothing more than an terribly inefficient means of redistributing our members’ wealth, time, and talent for the meager good of others. Would you die eagerly for a social service club? How about dying for a largely wasteful and embarrassingly messy neighborhood association? Would you die for your family, your living faith?

Peter and Paul stand at the beginning of our history as both a promise of growth and a warning of death. Their lives of service to the preaching of the gospel records tremendous successes and abject failures. In their day to day struggle against the onslaught of the netherworld, they called upon the help of the Lord, fully expecting, though not always without some doubt, that the Lord would give them whatever they needed to accomplish his commission to them. The prayer of their brothers and sisters sustained them in the most horrible of persecutions. They knew that the Body of Christ lived and that that Body lifted them up, stood them up, before the Lord as great men of faith and endurance. Luke, in his Acts, tells us: “Peter was being kept in prison, but prayer by the church was fervently being made to God on his behalf.” Paul writes to Timothy, “The Lord stood by me and gave me strength…And I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.” That the Lord was with these men in their suffering was not only enough for their immediate survival and rescue but also sufficient for their perfection in heroic virtue. They live because Christ lives in them.

What did these men preach that threatened the powers of this world? What did they do to merit execution? Earlier we noted that they did nothing more than preach and teach a gospel of repentance and Godly love. Hardly sedition or treason. Why would a message of repentance and Godly love shake the Roman Empire and the Temple? Like their master these men brought down on the heads of those who ruled them in this world a condemnation, a declaration against their disobedience to the Word of God. Preaching and teaching a message of divine mercy threatened the state’s power by urging those who would listen to forgive offenses, to eschew vengeance, and seek forgiveness rather than redress. Preaching and teaching a message of divine love threatened the temple’s power by urging those who would listen to forego temple sacrifice, to ignore hypocritical clergy, to seek out the Father’s love in one’s neighbor. What judge in a court of law or priest in the temple wants to hear that his fundamental purpose is obsolete, completed in the coming, dying, and rising of one man? These two, Peter and Paul, and those who followed them, shook the foundations of their world with a Word: “Christ.”

In our own time, we are challenged as the Body of Christ with the difficult commission of living in a world diseased with relativism, subjectivism, narcissism, neglect of the young and old, the sick and dying, the poor and the oppressed. In our own time, we are presented by our rulers with the options of either living our lives of faith in private, or seeing the Church legally excluded from the public arena. In our own time, we are betrayed from within by those who would see us play fair with the enemy by preaching and teaching a gospel fraught with compromise and falsehood. In our own time, we are faced with the choice of either keeping our baptismal vows to serve the Lord without flinching, or to serve the enemy by retreating back into disobedience and cowardly concession. Knowing this, we can fall into a paralyzing despair, or we can give God thanks for placing us in a world in desperate need of His love. Regardless, the work of Christ’s Body, the Church, is the same now as it was 2,000 years ago: preach the gospel as Christ himself preached it. We can preach the Good News. Or we can play the devil’s game by his rules. We cannot do both. It was this stubbornness in holding up the truth that accompanied Peter and Paul to deaths.

I do not intend to sound like a blaring car alarm this morning, wailing insistently that some thug is breaking into the Church to steal our goodies. There is a time and place for subtly in our preaching, in our daily witness; in fact, the subtle witness of quietly loving God by serving our neighbor is perhaps the best way to show Christ’s face to those who need see God’s mercy. However, when confronted as we are with a world increasingly hostile to the gift of life and the possibility of eternal salvation, we cannot break the essential bond between our baptism into Christ and our witness inside and outside the Church. And so, we need to be reminded that we do not preach a theology, a philosophy, a therapeutic method, a political platform, or even a religious practice. We preach Christ—his life among us, his death for us, and his rising again to bring us to the Father. There is nothing else for the Church to say to the world and to herself than this: repent of your disobedience and come to Christ.

Though none of us here will likely see martyrdom preaching the Good News, our brothers and sisters all over the world are dying for Christ, suffering for the sake of his gospel. The empire of this world will not tolerate a black and white message of repentance and forgiveness. It will tolerate nothing less than the Church’s total unconditional assimilation into its chaotic celebration of choice, utility, and death. This we cannot do and remain the Body of Christ. Therefore, like Paul, we must keep the faith, run the race, and come to God perfected in His love alone.

Be made clean

12^th Week OT (F): 2 Kings 25.1-12 and Matthew 8.1-4
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

In dramatic contrast to his later admonitions to his disciples to “go to all nations” with his Good News of salvation, our Lord tells the now-cured leper: “See that you tell no one [about your healing]…” We might think that given the physical condition of some of those following Christ and the condition of the spiritual lives of others and the condition of the religious leadership that Jesus would leap at the chance to demonstrate his healing power as a testimony to his sonship in the Father. Instead, he chooses silence over proclamation, stealth over transparency. Perhaps looking out over the masses of pitiful people following him that day and considering the incendiary message he embodied, he thought it better to be cautious with his power until his moment had arrived. Or, perhaps he fully intended to heal all those present in one gesture of divine mercy but decided—for whatever reason—that just one cured leper sent to the temple priest might make a better witness. His exact motives are a mystery. However, we might remember that just before this scene Matthew reports that the crowd was astonished at Jesus’ teaching, remarking, “…he taught as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” In effect, Jesus has just claimed the mantle of the Father and in so doing he has broken the Law. Now he insists that the cured leper follow the Law exactly by reporting to the priest and offering the required sacrifice. Jesus breaks the Law but requires the now-cured leper to follow it. Is Jesus being hypocritical—one Law for me, another for the rest of you?

The Law is the Law, and Jesus is most certainly violating that Law by laying claiming to his Sonship; however, he has been steadfast to this point in teaching a message of prophetic authenticity, that is, he has been very careful to warn against false prophets, phony messiahs, and philosophies destructive to the spiritual lives of those who follow him. He says of these wolves in sheep’s clothing, “By their fruits you will know them…A good tree cannot bear bad fruit…So by their fruits you will know [my true prophets].” Jesus cures the leper to demonstrate to the crowd—by his good fruits of healing—that he is their true shepherd and not a wolf set loose among them. The witness given by the physical healing of leprosy is secondary to the witness that the leper himself will give in the temple. Not only is the leper healed of a deadly disease, he is also obedient to the Law fulfilled in Christ Jesus, giving thanks and praise to God in the manner ordained by God Himself.

But why the secrecy? Why not embrace the new-found virtue of transparency? This is not the first time that we have read that Jesus insisted on keeping his healing works a secret. Nor is it the last. Though of his motivations for ordering the leper to silence are ultimately a mystery, we can begin to understand the need for secrecy if we think in terms of humility rather than conspiracy. Remember the poor widow quietly giving her last few coins in the temple. Remember Jesus’ admonition to fast and pray in a way that refuses public attention. Remember Jesus’ frequent need for solitude and quiet in order to be with his Father. If the primary witness to the Good News in this case is the quiet gratitude of the healed leper at the temple, then the very thing that will destroy that witness is a triumphant parade and proclamation of Christ’s healing power. In other words, the message that Jesus wants to send—humble faith in the name of the shepherd heals all wounds—this message would be lost in spectacle, and his opponents would accuse him of self-aggrandizement. We have here a clear case of Jesus witnessing to the fact that he is the fulfillment of the Law by pointing up the need for basic humility when dealing with God in the Law. Many will say, “Lord, Lord, we followed the Law,” and he will say, “I never knew you.”

Christ’s teaching for us is simple: if we do not possess a humble spirit, that is, a relationship with God deeply planted in our full understanding of how absolutely dependent we are on His mercy, we cannot be healed. The leper does not demand healing as his right. He says, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” That naked faith and his plea for mercy buys the leper his health. To our humility and faith Jesus says to us even now, “Be made clean.” And we are.

Jesus needs a PR man?

Nativity of John the Baptist: Isa 49.1-6; Acts 13.22-26; Luke 1.57-66, 80
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Zechariah’s tongue is freed to speak. Once he has agreed to name his son “John,” which means “God shows Himself to be gracious,” his tongue is unstuck, and he no longer needs a wax tablet to communicate. Having been punished with silence for failing to believe that God could give him and his wife, Elizabeth, a son so late in his life, Zechariah sees his son for the miracle that he is and blesses God with his first words! But how quickly his words of blessing become words of worry among the people of Judea when it becomes clear that this son is no ordinary child. Luke reports, “All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, ‘What, then, will this child be?’ For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.” What will the child be? Who did he become? John the Baptist is the desert raging for our repentance before the coming of the Lord!

Most of us would think it a matter of common sense to say that we receive information about the world based on our natural abilities to receive physical sensations; that is, we see, hear, feel, taste, smell because we have eyes, ears, skin, tongues, and noses. Our first contact with creation is sensual; we are made in a way that makes it possible for us to live and thrive, in a manner that prepares us for living day to day in a world of things and processes. But are we naturally prepared to received the Word Made Flesh? Are we made to see and hear and taste the arrival of the Messiah? Of course, this isn’t a question about our physical readiness to greet the Lord but one about our capacity to think and feel and live with the reality of his coming in the flesh and his staying among us in the Spirit. Here’s the question I’m getting at: why does the Messiah need a herald?

The coming of the Messiah is hardly a secret. The prophets of the Old Covenant have made his coming abundantly evident. God Himself promised that a virgin would conceive and bear a child named “Emmanuel,” “God-is-with-us.” This is not occult science but prophetic art, a clarion call to point the way to the eventual presence of God Himself among His people. So, why do we have John the Herald coming before the Messiah? At the very least, John’s conception, birth, life, and public ministry are all meant to prepare us to receive Christ as the gift he is meant to be. It is one thing for the Father to hand us Son to us; it is quite another for us to receive His Son as a gift. Clearly, John’s arrival means that we were not ready to say Yes to God’s gift of salvation through His Son. Luke reports in Acts, “John heralded [Jesus’] coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel…” To be ready, we must turn around and face God head on.

John came out of the desert to preach his gospel of repentance. Out of a barren waste, the dry and weary land of sand and heat, John brings the cool cleansing waters of baptism, the fresh promise of renewal that—once taken in faith—prepares the eyes and ears to see and hear the good news that arrives with the birth of his cousin, Jesus the Christ. With John, our Father shows Himself to be gracious by preparing us for His coming among us; that is, John, God’s sign of grace, precedes God’s act of final mercy, Jesus; and He is with us. That we are to turn around and face this revelation of His gift is perfectly sensible. How, otherwise, would we come to know and love He Who dies for us? How would we reach out and receive what God desires to give us as gift if we were not facing Him, hands out, pristine and thankful?

The people of Judea worried, “What, then, will this child be?” John answers, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not [the Christ]…” No, he isn’t. Instead, he comes out of the desert to prepare us to accept—through our repentance of sin—the gift of God among us, our lasting cure, our final healing, the one who comes after him to die so that we might have eternal life.

McCrory/Parker Wedding

Sacrament of Holy Matrimony: McCrory/Parker
Jer 31.31-34; Rev 19.1, 5-9; and John 15.9-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Cathedral of St. John Berchmans, Shreveport, LA

You are blind if you see no beauty here this morning! Open your eyes and see. You are deaf if you hear no truth here this morning! Open your ears and listen. See God’s beauty, hear God’s Word and wait for the Goodness that comes for the patient heart and mind, the heart and mind that waits on the advent of the Lord. I wonder what you will see and hear. Many of you will leave here believing that you have been to a wedding. Many others of you will leave believing that this man and woman have publicly expressed their love for one another and are now bound together until death. And there are probably some few of you here who will leave believing that we have celebrated a great moment in the lives of this couple, a moment that sets them on a holy path for life. These are all true. But how many of you will leave knowing that what we have actually done here is to help Sean and Anne become sacramental signs of Christ’s love for his Church? That’s right. Ultimately, finally, this day is about Christ and his Church. Of course! We will toast Sean and Ann, shower them with gifts, smother them with congratulations and perhaps whisper a suggestion or two for the honeymoon, but Sean and Ann know that the sacrament they celebrate today is finally about Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. They will walk out those doors and show the rest of us how much the Church is loved by her Lord. Our job—all of you and me—is to say “Amen” and mean it.

Jesus says to the disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Just as God the Father loves His only Son, so that only Son loves his Church…and what must the Church do: remain steadfast in the Love that loves us first and last. “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love…” And his first commandment to us is “Love God.” Everything makes sense! God is love, so He loves by nature. Christ is God, so he too loves by nature. We are the creatures of Love Himself so we too love in the love that created us. So that song is right, “All you need is love!”

But then there’s that other song, “If wishes were horses, we’d all ride for free.” It should not surprise us that Jesus must command us to love one another. And even under direct orders from God Himself to love one another, we manage to wiggle and squirm enough to split the atoms of his intent and figure out ways to avoid the whole messy business of loving others, enemies, self and go on living a more practical and efficient life. All you need is love! Come on, who wrote that fortune cookie?

If love alone solved our problems then we would all get married around age seven. There would be no divorce. No separation. Priests would never have to see couples for marriage counseling. Teenagers would be obedient. And there would be war no more. Look. Let’s get real for a minute. Love starts this business on the right track and stands there open like a limitless trunk of treasure for anyone who would come along and snatch up a handful of mercy, a pocketful of compassion. But that treasure-trove of loving is the first thing forgotten when the VISA bill comes in and Ann has spent $3, 987.13 on shoes. Or Sean has to borrow money from the Library of Congress to pay his Amazon.com book bill. Or when Ann lets a small hurt grow into an open wound, or when Sean refuses to admit ALL of his mistakes, or worse yet, when Ann frowns upon Sean’s cigar-smoking buddies. What’s the first thing to suffer when those bratty kids don’t make the grade in English and history? What’s the last thing called up to assuage a guilty conscience or an angry word? Love. Love is easily forgotten because love sits quietly at the root of a marriage, silently drawing its strength from God and if God is forgotten, well…there is no joy. There can be no joy.

Jesus had to order us to love one another b/c as God he knows the final benefit of doing so, but as a Man he knows all the temptations against love. He knows all about possessiveness, jealousy, selfishness, a lusting eye, gluttony for attention, the sometimes ruinous draw of friends and family, greed for money, the traps at work, and on and on. He knows the dangers of loneliness, despairing for companionship, the craziness of isolation, and all those demons that tear at our holiness when we choose to withdraw from his Father’s other children. He knows that we must love b/c anything less is less than he died to accomplish. And he knows how and how often we fail to do the very thing we were created to do: to love Him above all else. This is why I say we are not here this morning to attend a wedding. We are here to witness Sean and Ann make themselves into sacramental signs of Christ’s love for His Church—a love that cannot die b/c God Himself is Life eternal.

If you thinking right now: geez, better them than me! Think again. I’m only going to warn you once. You will say “Amen” this morning. Several times, you will say “amen.” Say it loud if you mean it, otherwise: just be quiet. “Amen” is not a prayer made lightly. Saying “amen” means that you are committed to that which you have said “amen” to. In other words, “amen” means both “yes, it is” and “yes, I will.” If it is and you will, then, in the presence of God and this man and woman, say so. Amen. If it isn’t and you won’t: be quiet. You will be called upon to make good your promise. Do not make it lightly.

Sean and Ann, the prophet Jeremiah tells the people of Israel that the Lord will make a new covenant with his nation. This won’t be a covenant of animal sacrifice but rather a covenant where He will place His law within us, and write it upon our hearts; He will be our God, and we will be His people. He accomplished this on the Cross and by emptying the Tomb. Today you will stand before His people and bind yourselves together as a outward sign of His love for us. We will look to you to show us how and how much He loves us. This means that when envy tempts, jealousy rises, lust interferes, wrath hungers, you will look first to His love. You will look to one another and see what you promised here: to be his prophets of mercy, his priests of compassion—for each other and for us. There is nothing more essential than this: love one another. Money, sex, kids, in-laws, friends, school, work—all of these will find a place in your life together. But first you must love. So, keep his commandment to you, to all of us: remain in His love and let His joy in you be complete.