What tempts a saint?

22nd Sunday OT: Jer 20.7-9; Rom 12.1-2; Matt 16.21-27
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


None of us will blame Peter for his outburst. Jesus has just finished telling his friends how he must suffer and die at the hands of his enemies in Jerusalem. And how, after he has been dead and buried for three days, he will rise again. Peter, the Rock of the messianic faith and keeper of the kingdom keys, pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. Peter rebukes Jesus! Peter denies the truth of Christ’s impending passion, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” For our own love of Christ, none of us will blame Peter for his unfaithful outburst; however, Jesus not only faults Peter for his passionate denial, but returns his rebuke with a curse: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.” Jesus names Peter “Satan.” Adversary. Accuser. He also names Peter “Obstacle.” Scandal. An obstructing stone on the path. Not for the last time does Peter fall for a demonic temptation. If you were asked to pick out the temptation that traps Peter, what name would you give it?

In a prose poem his translator* has titled “[The temptation of the saint],” Rainer Maria Rilke meditates on an unnamed painting of an unnamed saint tormented by lust. Rilke, describing the saint in agony, on the verge of surrendering his battle against temptation, writes, “His prayer is already losing its leaves and stands up out of his mouth like a withered shrub. His heart has fallen over and poured out into the muck. His whip strikes him as weakly as a tail flicking away flies.” Why has this saint fallen? Rilke does not say. His meditation on the painting concludes with a meditation on the contemporary usefulness of paintings such as this. He notes the two extremes of our longing for the divine: “I could imagine that long ago such things happened to saints, those overhasty zealots, who wanted to begin with God, right away, whatever the cost. We no longer make such demands on ourselves. We suspect that he is too difficult for us, that we must postpone him, so that we can slowly do the long work that separates us from him.” Longing for God and zealous, we start with God, unready; or, longing for God but anxious, we defer and break ourselves with work and worry.

Which is Peter’s principle fault? Eager and too quick? Or fearful and delaying? When Jesus rebukes Peter for his unfaithfulness, he says, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter must have stared at his Master with complete incomprehension because Jesus turns to the other disciples and explains, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Is this what Peter fears when Jesus reveals his fate in Jerusalem? Is Peter quailing at the inevitable pain and desolation of not only losing his beloved Master to their enemies, but knowing first hand what it the scourge and the nails feel like? Peter surrenders the Lord’s passion before it has begun. Unlike the saint in Rilke’s painting who surrenders after a great battle, Peter surrenders at the first sign of trouble. Peter’s rebuke is heated but it comes out of a “heart fallen over…”, a heart fatally wounded by created love rather than a heart eternally healed by the Creator’s love. Peter does not think as God does.

What would you name Peter’s temptation? Pride could work. Fear. Yes, fear plays its part. How about ignorance? He is tempted to rebuke Jesus without knowing the Father’s mind? Yes. Could we say that Peter has been inordinately distracted? Remember: Jesus does not say that Peter has been an obstacle for Peter. Nor does Jesus say that Peter has accused Peter. Jesus clearly rebukes Peter for obstructing his path to the passion that the Father has ordained. Peter has accused Jesus of lying. God has ordered the Passion. How then can Peter exclaim: “God forbid, Lord!”? To Jesus, Peter is Satan, accuser, adversary; to Jesus Peter is a scandal, an impediment. Peter is distracted by his created love, his natural affection and loyalty to the man, Jesus; forgetting entirely, even for just that moment, that this man he loves so furiously is also the Son who must suffer and die. Jesus will not be distracted, and so he turns to instruct his friends—with Peter’s anguished denial still ringing in his ears—that to follow him means not only loving him as Master but becoming him as Christs.

We might say that Peter is both eager and too quick AND he is anxious and delaying. In his love for Jesus he is eager to see him triumphant over his enemies. But this is not the triumph that the Son has come to bring. Now, knowing that his Master is fated to suffer and die, Peter, in a fit of anxious terror, elects postponement of the inevitable for his Master and for himself, and he succumbs to the distraction of his all too human love. This is why the Lord must be so fiercely clear with the other disciples in prophesying for them what lies ahead of them as his friends. Make no mistake, brothers and sisters, as Paul will later write to the Romans, we are called in baptism “to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, [our] spiritual worship.” We must love as God does—sacrificially, wholly giving over—and not as man does—possessively, longing for completion.

In the first paragraph of his prose poem, Rilke surveys the painting of the saint writhing in temptation, noting that works like this one, these “strange pictures,” make the ordinary things of our counted days “stretch out and stroke one another, lewd and curious, quivering in the random lechery of distraction.” Having confessed his own anxieties about the difficulties of surrendering to divine love, preferring instead to postpone with arduous spiritual labor the inevitable union, Rilke acknowledges that delay in work is no relief: “Now,…I know that this work leads to combats just as dangerous as the combats of the saints…” Isn’t this what Jesus prophesies for all of us who will reach down, heft up a cross, and walk behind him to suffering and ignominious death? Our devotion is never simply about zeal or comfort, heated assent or cool contemplation; our devotion, the devotion that grounds us to offer our bodies as spiritual sacrifice—as Christ himself did—that devotion is always the denial of self, resistance to and defeat of the temptation to see oneself and one’s imagined needs as the index of Life’s Book. Peter attempts to distract Jesus with his immature love. He throws before Jesus an undeveloped chunk of affection, a glob of emotion. The point of Peter’s rebuke is to draw attention to his own despair at losing Christ to pain and death. Peter makes Peter the point of reference; he shouts his unwillingness to take up his cross and follow Christ to his.

What “random lecher[ies] of distraction” cause you to withhold your sacrifice? What distractions betray your conformity to this present age? How daily, hourly do you fail to be transformed by God’s love and thus fail to be renewed? Do you pull at Jesus’ cloak, hoping to keep him from pain and death? Or do you push him ahead of you, carrying your own cross as he carries his? How do you postpone following after the Lord? Perhaps, like Peter, you hope to deny the inevitability of having to follow him by denying that he must first lead.

Get behind him, Satan! You cannot obstruct what is.

*from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke; ed and trans. by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage International, 1989, 105.

Never Forsaken

21st Sunday OT: Is 22.19-23; Rom 11.33-36; Matt 16.13-20
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


We say to the Lord this morning: “Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.” We do not say this because we believe that the Lord might forsake us. We do not say this because we doubt that we are the Lord’s handiwork. Nor do we say this because we believe that the Lord’s love is limited by the timepieces of His creation. We say “Lord, your love is eternal” because—though we know that this is true—we must hear it said with our own tongues for only by tasting the words will we come to live the truth that we speak! We beg the Lord, “Lord, do not forsake the work of your hands”—though we know He would never forsake His promise to us—we beg because we must feel the steel of His promise in our mouths, the cold, metallic resolve of the ordering Word, the First Breath, the finality of our Lord’s enduring guarantee. What we know, we pray: “We give thanks to you, O Lord, with all our heart, for you have heard the Words of our mouths”—the Word You Yourself placed on our tongues “because of Your kindness and your truth!” What we know, we pray: “When he opens, no one shall shut; when he shuts, no one shall open.” Peter opens his mouth to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” and when he shuts his mouth, the Lord opens his own to say, “Blessed are you…whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And so, we are loved forever. And so, we are never forsaken.

We should celebrate on this twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time, the teaching office of the Church, embodied in and employed by he who sits in Peter’s Chair. After all, our Lord says to Peter that he is the rock of the Church, the foundation stone of the Body that will grow into history and produce the great saints (and sinners!) of our western civilization. Our Lord is not speaking metaphorically or symbolically when he says that he will be with us always. His promise to abide with us to the end is best understood as a promise to found, concretely and in perpetuity, a living organism; a breathing, growing entity capable of bringing to it constituent members the stuff of everlasting life, all that which nourishes, cherishes, and sustains holiness and hope. At the head of this Mystical Body is Christ himself, drawing all parts and pieces of creation to him, elements known to the Body and some unknown, seducing and attracting any and all who will perk up an ear to hear the gospel of mercy, or blink open a blearied eye to peek at the glory Christ reveals—the invitation to come to the feasting table is a broadcast not a telegraph, made on an open-mic not a secured line, directed to the milling crowds and not just the favored few, to bring all who will come and not only those who fit.

And all those who come in answer to our Lord’s open-handed, open-hearted broadcast of “come-one, come-all” flavor the Body with a distinctive diversity, an exciting assortment of faces, tongues, customs, rhythms, textures, and for this catholicity we are deeply grateful. As we watch the Lord’s face multiply in his Church, we see him come more sharply into focus as he reveals himself through his creatures. Each beautiful face exposes Beauty Himself. So, it is no wonder at all that we are tempted to celebrate this abundant diversity as a good end in itself, to raise up this bounty of variety and make it the point of the Church, the purpose of Christ’s Body in the world. But if we succumb to this temptation—to glorify the human diversity of the Church for the sake of diversity—we overlook entirely that which attracts and binds the diversity of the Church: the emphatic YES of each beautiful face, each rhythmic tongue, each soul, seduced and delivered to the perfecting love of Christ. It is the commitment of our YES to Christ that unites us as a Church, not the variety of our packaging, not the impermanent assortment of skin and hair and speech but our willed participation in the permanent unity of love, Love Himself.

How difficult would it be for us as creatures of body and soul to live together in the unity of Love Himself without a Body to ground our common spirit? In other words, given what we know to be the case about ourselves as sinful persons, how difficult would it be for us to live together without a concrete expression of God’s love for us? Surely, we have the historical events of the Passion and the empty tomb of Easter Sunday. But none of us now were there then. We have the witness of scripture, the eyewitness accounts of what happened at the moment when the Father revealed His enduring love for us on the cross. Yes, of course, and surely scripture lives with us, but it with US that scripture lives. Our committed YES to the love of Christ is certainly given the gravity of history and the excitement of scripture, but concretely how do we live day-to-day with our YES? How do we make history now? How do we make scripture alive now? If our history is to be more than tall-tales and our scripture more than those tall-tales written down, there must be a living tradition, that is, a breathing, growing body of “that which is handed on.” That Body is the Church and the Church is where our committed YES is held in trust, unpacked in its fullness, suited up, put to work, and elaborated to be handed-on to the next set of beautiful faces and rhythmic tongues.

In handing Peter the keys to the kingdom, Christ not only makes Peter and his successors stewards of the heavenly household, he also founds the rock-bottom slab of the Church, the Body to be energized at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Christ establishes, institutes; he plants and provides nourishment and care for his emerging Body. At the proclamation made by Peter that Jesus is the only Son of the Living God, Christ reveals that the Father Himself has made Peter privy to what has until now been a secret. And now that the disciples know, and now that Peter has been confirmed in his office, Jesus assures his friends that “the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against [my church]. Do you hear the psalmist singing, “Lord, your love is eternal”? Do you hear Isaiah prophesying, “When he opens, no one shall shut; when he shuts, no one shall open”?

Christ’s promise to be with us forever is not a symbol or a sign or a metaphor. His promise is a Church. Founded on Peter and the revelation the Father Himself gave to Peter. Binding and loosing, the Church, through the office of Peter, teaches the faith; that is, what it is to believe and what we are to believe. We know our God’s love is everlasting. And so, we are loved forever. And so, we are never forsaken.

Access Denied

20th Sunday OT: Is 56.1, 6-7; Rom 11.13-15, 29-32; Matt 15.21-28
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, ROMA


Foreigners! Gentiles! Annoying, unclean women! Ah, I feel right at home. Throw in busloads of Sweaty Tourists, gaggles of Midget Nuns, schools of Language School Students, and fleets of Highly-Primped Twenty-something Chauffeurs, and you would have much more than the foreign yet fertile fields of St. Paul’s evangelizing —you would have Rome in August! Rome in August always means unbearable heat, odd odors on the streets and alleys, lots of bared skin, and the shouted music of broken Italian spoken with Babel’s accents. Rome in August (perhaps more than any other month) also means beggars. Hundreds of beggars. Everywhere. With bambini and without. Dangerously bent grandmothers. Sweet, newly-minted mothers. Men who would have made John the Baptist look tidy and clean. Beggars everywhere. And why not? I mean, why should souvenir hawkers, gelato scoopers, and tour guides get all the euros available in God’s Town? These beggars—the legit and not-so-legit—raise a question for me that the Canaanite woman in Matthew raises for Jesus. Paul raises the same question by speaking the Word to the Gentiles in Romans. However, it is Isaiah who begins this line of questioning for us with a simple declaration: “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD…all who keep the Sabbath from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountain.” Our Lord’s Word this morning brings us to contemplate access, admission: who gets to hear and see and touch the Lord? Who gets to eat and drink at the Lord’s table? As preachers of His Word, to whom do we preach most readily? And most tellingly, to whom do we refuse to preach?

Jesus goes into Tyre and Sidon for a little rest and like an American tourist snapping pics of the Trevi Fountain, he is hounded by a woman screeching at him, “Have pity on me…have pity on me…” Rather than listing off all the ailments and physical afflictions of her many, many bambini, this woman yells at Jesus, “My daughter is tormented by a demon.” And like most of the American tourists visiting the Trevi, Jesus ignores the woman; “[he] does not say a word in answer to her.” No doubt Jesus too has discovered that if you speak to the beggars they will follow you, demanding a bounty for your daring. The disciples, sick of this demanding woman, her screeching and carrying on about demons, go to Jesus frustrated and say to him, “Send her away…”

Now, this is the moment in the story where the question of access/admission is carefully balanced. Jesus says to the disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Imagine Jesus carefully watching to make sure his students are listening. The woman comes forward and pays Jesus homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” Jesus, still watching his less-than-generous disciples, repeats for the woman what he had said to the disciples, only this time he uses much harsher language: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” If the disciples were scandalized by this, Matthew doesn’t note it. But we should note: the house of Israel is composed of the children of God, the Jews; everyone else, especially Canaanite women, are dogs. Beloved children have access to the Lord’s table, unclean dogs do not.

Let’s dispense immediately with the ridiculous claim that this story is about a “marginalized woman of color teaching Jesus a lesson about radical inclusively.” Creatures teach the Creator nothing. Jesus and the woman, however, do manage to teach the disciples that access to the Lord’s table is about trusting in the Living Word and not about one’s lineage, nationality, or relative status according to the Law. The Canaanite woman is made a child of God by her faith! In her humility, she asks for help and then testifies that any help she receives will be a gift and not an entitlement. Jesus rewards her faith by giving her her greatest desire: “…the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.”

Let’s admit up front that more often than not we are the disciples in this story. We’re the ones wanting to protect Jesus from harm, to prevent others from defiling him or abusing his name. We will set ourselves outside the tent as guards against the unworthy, as gatekeepers against the annoying and the merely curious. With stout arms crossed across our proud chests we are vigilant against the unclean dogs sniffing around for hand-outs; those who have not earned an audience by showing loyalty; those who would waste the Lord’s time with trivialities; obviously, as his only loyal disciples, we are best selected as his secretaries, his guards, his watchers. Occasionally, we may even have to protect him from himself. Imagine if he wanted to do something stupid like sacrifice his life in order to save everyone! Everyone! Not just the deserving, the observant, the righteous, and the clean, but just anyone who might accept his invitation to join his eternal table. Oy! What a mess. Sometimes we might have to protect Jesus from Jesus. Sad but true.

And other times we might have to protect friends and family from the truth of the Word. Of course, what we are really protecting is our comfortable relationships, our prized friendships. Just as we sometimes do not preach the whole gospel of Christ’s saving grace in order to protect Jesus from Jesus, so sometimes we skip over the hard parts of the gospel because they tell us what we do not want to hear, demand from us what we do not want to give. Maybe we fail to preach the whole Word because those to whom we are preaching share with us an ideological agenda that we know is nothing like what the Lord has spoken to His prophets or to His Church. Our timidity in the face of possible aggressive opposition in effect denies access to those who need to hear the Word preached in its entirety. Or perhaps we leave out what we know our audience does not want to hear so that the applause at the end will be louder, longer, and more appreciative of our talents. Regardless, we might as well tell the Canaanite woman, “Yea, dogs do get scraps from the table but dogs also get kicked out the back door! Now get outta here!”

Normally, we ask questions about access/admission to resources in terms of who has the resources and who doesn’t; who distributes and who receives; and who gets what and why. Our questions this morning—to whom do we preach and to whom do we refuse to preach?—can be understood in these terms as well. But let’s frame these questions in terms of our commission from the Lord, vowed to in our own baptisms, to preach his Word to all nations, teaching everything that he taught, and baptizing all the willing in his name. As baptized Christians and preachers of the Word, we are not little McJesus franchises marketing and selling McGrace and McSalvation. We are not Christ-Marts or Jesus.com’s or Messiah, Inc. We do not own God’s grace. We do not market God’s grace. We do not buy or sell God’s grace on the NASDAQ or the NYSE. In no shape, no form, no fashion, have we ever, do we ever, or will we ever control the distribution of God’s grace to His people. Our vowed task is much more difficult: by our daily obedience to the Word and our faith in God manifested in the world, to all who will see and hear we are to bear witness to the abiding effects of God’s grace in our lives, living lives of deep charity, quick mercy, and enduring hope. Whoever sees your faithful witness, hears your faithful witness will have access to the Lord’s Word precisely because as you witness—as you bear out testimony—you manifest the Spirit of the Lord. He is there. Right there. With you. Shining out and drawing in any who will see, any who will hear.

Isaiah reports that the Lord said to him for us to hear: “Observe what is right, do what is just; for my salvation is about to come, my justice about to be revealed.” As you walk out of your house each morning, ask yourself: today, who will see and hear the Lord’s salvation because of my witness? To whom will I reveal the Lord’s justice?

Toothbrushes and Whales, oh my!

16^th Week OT(M): Micah 6.1-4, 6-8 and Matthew 12.38-42
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

[NB. This is my Last American Homily. . .]

Up for the second time last night and headed to the bathroom in that staggering daze just after waking, I was shown a truth about my world I had never thought to question. There just about three feet from the floor, hovering in mid-air, is a small glowing object. I stare for a moment, without my glasses, in the dark, and think for just a second or two that perhaps the Lord has sent an angel to tell me something amazing. As I contemplate this greenish-yellow glow, thinking about revelations, dreams, visions, and prophecies, I am suddenly struck by the truth of what I am seeing, nearly felled by a revelation about my world I had never thought to question; but there it is, as plain as the shine of a full moon in October, there it is in plain view, and I realize with a nearly blinding clarity: my toothbrush glows in the dark! Then, just being me, the question arises: why would anyone think to make toothbrushes glow in the dark? Stumbling back to bed, I chuckle myself to sleep wondering what we would all look like if our teeth glowed in the dark.

Strictly speaking, my “vision” of the glowing toothbrush was a discovery not a revelation. Its discovery was accidental and has no mean meaning beyond what I can give it in a homily about seeking after signs of God’s presence. As a divine sign my glowing toothbrush fails what we can call here the “From Test;” that is, my toothbrush shining in the darkness on the sink cannot be said to be “from” God. And though we can rightly say that anything made is made by a creature who in turn is created by the Creator and reveals his/her Creator as a creature, we cannot say that a glowing toothbrush made by a creature reveals much about God. Signs point the way and make present that which they signify. Divine signs point the way to God and make His presence knowable to those who desire to know Him.

The scribes and Pharisees are understandably both curious and worried about Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God. They approach him and make a reasonable request, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” Traditionally, those claiming to be “sent from God” provide signs that point to God’s presence and make Him knowable. These men are educated, pious, intellectually curious, and therefore rightly seek some indication from this rabble-rousing preacher that he is who he claims to be. Show us a sign. Jesus’ response is unexpected and harsh: “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it…” We have to wonder why Jesus is being so stubborn. We know he is capable of miraculous deeds. Why not show these men what they need to see?

Jesus says that no sign will be given to them “except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and nights, so the Son of Man will be “in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” Jonah is expelled from the whale and goes on to preach repentance to the decadent citizens of Nineveh. They repent and return to God’s favor. So Jesus too, expelled from the grave and risen from the dead, will be a sign to the scribes and Pharisees and a sign to us that Jesus is indeed who he claims to be. Jesus goes on to add that on the day of judgment, “the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, b/c they repented at the preaching of Jonah…” Needing no other sign than the earnest preaching of an honest prophet, the citizens of Nineveh return to God.

Living here on the edge of the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, can we be counted an “evil and unfaithful generation” seeking after signs? What signs could we seek? Crying statues? Marian apparitions? Bleeding Hosts? Yes, all of these and many more. But do we need these signs? We do not. We have a magisterial Church, her Eucharist, a divine guarantee against defeat, and pews packed with priests, prophets, and kings. All of these speak with one voice to say what is good and what the Lord requires: “Only to do the right and love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Cutting Both Ways

Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha: Isa 1.10-17 and Matthew 10.34-11.1
Fr. Philip Neri Powell
St Albert the Great Priory

Think twice before opening your door to a prophet wielding a sword. That could be a fortune-cookie fortune, or a Jewish proverb, or even a bumper sticker for your Volvo. Wherever you might read it, it is sound advice. Prophets by nature are dangerous people. Often they not only tell us secrets we do not want to hear but they perform in ways we do not want to see. They expose our sins; speak in weird parables; interpret dreams and nature wonders; they are almost always dirty, unnecessarily hairy, and not well-dressed. They rave and gesticulate wildly, sometimes cursing and calling down destruction on our lives. Prophets are indeed dangerous b/c like their more modern counterpart, the poet, they are mad. It comes with spending too much time in the desert listening to God. So, imagine if you will one of these guys showing up at your door late one night, wielding a sword and shouting your repentance. What do you do? The smart ones among us, call the police. The brave sneak around back and turn the water hose on him. The truly foolish open the door and invite him in. Being ourselves fools for Christ, we glory when he hear Jesus say to his Apostles: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” Do you reach for the doorknob, the phone, or the hose?

We have been reading scripture long enough to know that Jesus is prone to these outrageous declarations, shocking pronouncements designed to smack us in the face with the hard reality he is preaching. If nothing else, Jesus refuses to dilute the strong wine of his gospel, to mix his wild message of divine mercy into a sweet pabulum. Almost nothing he teaches is easy for us to swallow whole. His lesson to the Apostles this morning is no exception: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me…whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” That sound you hear is the pounding of a prophet’s sword hacking away at our easy complacency. There is no peace, no worldly peace to be enjoyed once you have opened the door to this sword wielding prophet from the mountain. Get out the Glade air-freshener and draw a hot bath. He’s here to stay.

Though Christ’s message is freely given and hard to hear—a gift of eternal life to all who receive it—there is a price to pay. Not a price to pay before enjoying his peace, but a consequence to choosing to let him into your home. What could be divisive, violent, or seditious about a message of mercy, love, and forgiveness? Whether your heart is set on violent vengeance, or simply nursing petty wounds; or, whether you enjoy others being indebted to you, or live like a leech on someone else’s fortune, Christ’s presence in your home means choosing another way, another path to walk. Old habits of accounting grievances or racking up scores to settle must be abandoned in favor of choosing the good for your friends and enemies alike. Old habits of living with the privileges of rank and wealth, living on the harvest of those you see as less than worthy to live with you, these habits have to be turned toward service. The consequence is a home destroyed, a home turned outward and upside-down. Swords cut along both edges.

Jesus tells his Apostles that when one receives a prophet because he is a prophet, one receives a prophet’s reward. John the Baptist’s head was served to Herod on a platter. Peter and Paul received their reward nailed to a cross. Other prophets waste away in prison, or find their reward at the barrel-end of a gun. Maybe a prophet’s reward is not worldly peace but martyrdom. No one likes a prophet. They tell us things that we do not want to hear. Of course, Jesus also tells his Apostles that when one receives a righteous man because he is righteous, one receives a righteous man’s reward. Is this any better than a prophet’s reward? Not really. Rarely do the truly righteous find a comfortable reward in this world. The righteous are no less annoying than prophets and they are often persecuted for their stubborn refusal to compromise.

Where does that leave us? Do we reach for the doorknob, the phone, or the hose? Whichever you choose, reach with fear and trembling. The sword cuts both ways. And it always cuts.

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?]