The just face of God

14th Week OT (Tues): Gen 32.22-33; Ps 17.1-15; Matt 9.32-38
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

A child of the Lord has been silenced by a demon. Jesus heals this man's tongue and he speaks. Those in the crowd are amazed. The Pharisees are scandalized and accuse Jesus of cavorting with the demons themselves. We might ask ourselves, why does Jesus take the time to heal a man whose voice has been silenced by a demon? As interesting as this question is, there is one even more interesting for those of us vowed to preach the gospel: given all of the evil things a demon could do to this man, why would it silence a child of the Lord?

To answer this question we must remember a fundamental teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the nature of God's Self-revelation. From Dei verbum: “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will...This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words...God, who through the Word creates all things and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities”(DV 2, 3). God wills to reveal Himself to His people. Through Christ and in the Holy Spirit we have access to the Father, so that we might “come to share in the divine nature”(2). The enduring witness, that is, the accessible historical testimony to the power and glory of God, is given in His “created realities,” most especially in that creation that is His image and likeness: the human person. If God's “plan of revelation is realized by [His] deeds and words” in history, and the enduring witness to His revelation is carried by the created reality of the human person, then it follows that the words and deeds of the human person may share in the divine nature and mission and serve to proclaim His gospel. When our words and deed properly align with the just will of the Father, we advance His plan of salvation; we reveal Who He is and what He does. No wonder then the demon muted this man's tongue! No words, no deeds: no witness; no witness to God: no gospel, no truth, no justice or peace.

At 5am CDT, the Holy Father's long-awaited encyclical on socio-economic justice arrived. Entitling his letter “Caritas in veritate,” (Charity in Truth), Pope Benedict shows all those with opened eyes to see and ears to hear that the words and deeds that accomplish God's plan for salvation are done and spoken only when the human work of charity is done in the light of truth. How providential is it that our psalm refrain this morning echoes this fundamental truth: “In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord”? This is not the justice we sometimes hope to find in legal procedure, or the redistribution of wealth, or the social engineering of utopian ideology. All of these human works can be done without God's love. All of these can be done in ways that violate human dignity, that further degrade and destroy God's creation. The peace and justice we long for, the peace and justice we were created and re-created to enjoy and share is found in the our created purpose: “From you, O Lord, let my judgment come; your eyes behold what is right.” From scripture, from God's created realities, from the unique and final revelation of the divine nature, Christ Jesus, from these must we take our judgments and behold what is right.

Demons silence us everyday, every hour. We sell our witness to compromise. We borrow against the value of our witness in order to buy political favor. We pawn our words and deeds in the false hope that one day soon the “signs of the times” will make our witness fashionable. Compromise, political favor, and trendy causes nail the just tongue to a stubborn jaw. It is truth that sets the just tongue free. No truth: no justice, no peace.

I will let the Holy Father end this homily. He writes that each man and woman “finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free. To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, 'rejoices in the truth'. . .In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth” (CV 1).

Are you a memorial stone?

14th Week OT (Mon): Gen 28.10-22; Matt 9-18-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, Ft. Worth, TX


Let no one say I am easily persuaded. It took the Holy Spirit seventeen years to track me down, show me my priestly vocation, listen to all of lame my excuses, and then beat me into submission. Don't get me wrong: I'm delighted the Lord won that fight, painful and protracted as it was—for me, that is. What's that line from the Psalms, “Do not be a stubborn mule, needing bridle and bit...”? Looking back to 1981, standing in the central plaza of the National Cathedral of Mexico, just a few feet from the newly-opened Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Jacob's wondrous outburst from Genesis this morning makes a whole lotta sense to me now: "Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!" Looking back, when was the Lord with you without you knowing it? How did you come to recognize his presence? And did you follow Jacob's example and leave a “memorial stone”?

When I begin a theology class I always quiz the students to find out just how much Platonism they have absorbed from our popular culture. The surest way to figure this out is to ask them about how they understand the relationship between the body and the soul. Almost without exception they see themselves as struggling souls trapped in treacherous bodies. The soul yearns to be free but the ugly needs of the flesh anchor them to a world of temptation and vice. These same students carry rosaries and prayer cards, have statues of saints in their dorm rooms, pray before the Blessed Sacrament, and argue that churches are holier places than gyms, cafeterias, and pubs. Despite this easy acceptance of the basic Catholic notion that God uses His creation to reveal Himself to us, these students resist the obvious next step: their bodies too are part of God's Self-revelation, and as such, they themselves are “memorial stones” marking the presence of the Lord!

Let's ask ourselves again: Looking back, when was the Lord with me without me knowing it? How did I come to recognize his presence? And did I follow Jacob's example and leave a “memorial stone”? From Matthew's gospel we are hear that a woman suffering from hemorrhages touches the tassels of Jesus' cloak. She is healed. The recently deceased daughter of an official is returned to life. How? Her loving father simply asserts that Jesus' touch will revive her. Jesus does nothing. The woman's faith saves her. The father's faith saves his daughter. Jesus comes to each of them as a touchstone, a living revelation and a memory. Just “being there with them” is enough. If we are to be Christs for others, this is our work as well: to be walking, talking revelations of God; memorial stones of His presence. Just as we are and wherever we are, we are living signs of the way, the truth, and the life. But because not one of us is yet perfected in Christ, we come together in the Church to be a collective sign on the Way—a body of believers who despite our warts and scars nonetheless serve anyone who will follow.

Jacob set a memorial stone in the ground and poured oil over it, renaming the stone and founding a new city. When we were baptized and confirmed—washed in water and anointed with oil—we too were renamed and set as stones in the foundations of the Church. Look in the mirror, look into the eyes of a sister here, or a student, or even a stranger, and say with Jacob in his wonder: “This...memorial stone [is] God's abode." And know that Lord is with us. . .always with us.

Thus says the Lord God. . .

14th Sunday OT: Ez 2.2-5; 2 Cor 12.7-10; Mark 6.1-6
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur, Forth Worth, TX

Prophets are a cheap and abundant source of nonsense these days. Every sort of weirdo has a theory, a revelation, a scheme, or a vision from Beyond. No wonder, really. Can we say that the fabric of our faith is as tightly knitted as it needs to be to keep us cozy in this winter of spiritual chaos? When the foundations of all that we believe start to throw us about, most any voice in the racket sounds like a voice of authority. Persistent sexual scandals, financial malfeasance, abuse of power, dissent and rebellion—and all of these just within the Church!—all of these potholes on the Way jolt our certainties and sometimes they even bump us into despair. In these moments of upheaval there always seems to be a guru, a savior, or a prophet just outside our purview who's all too willing to speak up and promise to lead us back to whatever it is we think we need to be safe—health, wealth, sanity, wholeness, or holiness. Usually, if we succumb to fear or anger or the need for a show of defiance, and we buy the snake-oil, usually we end up defeated and more beat-up than when we begin. Beware self-anointed prophets bearing pricey prophecy! Being “hard of face and obstinate of heart” is easy. Humility, right reason, and holy obedience is difficult—not impossible!—just very, very difficult.

The prophets that speak to us this morning are well-known and reliable: Ezekiel, Paul, and Christ himself. No doubt they look the part of a prophet, like men who have spent too much time in the deserts of foreign lands. They certainly sound like the prophets we are used to hearing. The self-anointed prophets of postmodern Western culture could be wearing lab coats, three-piece suits, habits or clerics, or even casual sportswear; they could be sporting advanced degrees in physics, medicine, genetics, or theology; they could sound like gurus, even reasonable scientists, hawking new cosmologies, novel technologies, fresh political solutions, or global spiritualities. They can all name our worst fears, our deepest angers, our most pressing anxieties. They can speak a word to calm our stormed tossed spirits. What they cannot and will not name is the Love in our souls. What they do not speak is the Word. They do not and will not say, “Thus says the Lord God...” And these differences make a great deal of difference.

Ezekiel is consumed in the voice of God. Paul is struck blind and pierced by a thorn in his flesh. Jesus is spurned in his own hometown, ridiculed as no one other than “the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon.” Ezekiel is sent to the rebellious Israelites to reteach the Good News of an ancient love. Paul is sent to the Gentiles with the Good News of the Father's mercy. Jesus is sent to the whole of creation as the Good News himself, the very Incarnate Word of divine love and mercy. All three prophets are sent to accomplish one mission: to speak the Word to God's people, and in so doing, bringing them all back into a covenant; reminding, renewing, and revealing the foundational promises of the Creator.

Look closely at what the prophets in scripture actually do and do not do. They do not create. They point to the Creator. They do not invent or innovate. They point to the Inventor, the Innovator Himself. They do not preach revolution and rebellion for the sake of novelty. They call us to revolutionize our hard faces and cold hearts. They rouse us to rebel against the slavery of alien philosophies and foreign gods. They do not urge God's people to abandon His promises of liberation in favor of worldly guarantees, the empty pledges that prop us up with domination, wealth, prestige, violence, and oppression. God's anointed prophets give voice to and work for the least against the most, for the worst against the best, for the lowest against the highest. When the most, the best, and the highest are where they are b/c they have stepped on and broken the least, the worst, and the lowest, God's anointed prophet will speak His Word of justice and demand a righteous revolution. Not something as mundane and temporary as a government program or a social action agency. Not something as ultimately useless as a financial entitlement or a paper-weight patch on the justice system. God's anointed prophet will first demand that the hard face and cold heart of injustice be melted in the overwhelming Love that gave His creation life! Then this prophet will say, “Thus says the Lord God: you will not treat my beloved children as things, as slaves; you will not use my children as disposable means to your selfish ends; you will not love simply for worldly gain, pretend faith for public praise, nor spread hope to hide your oppression. You love b/c I loved you first!”

As men and women baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, we have vowed to be faithful to God, just to our neighbors, hopeful in crisis, loving to all, joyful even as we weep, and as eager to show mercy as we are to seek mercy. The key to our lives as prophets is not scientific novelty, theological innovation, philosophical nuance, or even spiritual practice. Our prophetic key is humility—the certain and daily-lived knowledge that we are creatures of a loving God, wholly dependent, utterly reliant on the Love that gave us and gives us life. There is no other source of identity for us. No other means of doing what we have vowed our lives to do. Ezekiel is consumed in the voice of God. Paul is plagued by a thorn in his flesh. Jesus himself is rejected by his hometown folks. Their humility fuels a righteous fire for God's justice not a self-righteous grudge against the status-quo. Self-anointed prophets in lab coats, suits, or vestments might tempt us with a genetic or economic or religious utopia, but we know that any prophet who will not and cannot say, “Thus says the Lord God...,” we know that they are false prophets.

Our Father's gifts are sufficient for us, for our power as His prophets is made perfect in humility.

Book Beggin'

I am finally settled in one place for a while! Woo-hoo!

Now, to get back to work.

I haven't begged for books in a long time. . .and despite this lapse in mendicancy on my part, several of you generous folks continue to fire books my way. As always: you don't know how much your generosity helps to keep my student budget in line. . .especially given the uncertainties in the costs of travel these days.

Though I make good use of any library I can, the amount of travel I have to do this summer to fulfill my commitments makes it hard to use local libraries. Also, to be honest, most public libraries don't exactly stock my kinda books. TCU is right down the street, so I may give them a visit.

Anyway, if you are willing and able, please visit the WISH LIST and consider sending a book my way. The first six or seven on the list are the most directly relevant to my reading this summer and the least likely to be found in the Angelicum's limited philosophy of science holdings. Don't be shy about buying USED books. . .if it's legible, it ain't gotta be pretty.

God bless you all! (Sunday homily is in the works)

P.S. I completely forgot to mention this on Friday. . .July 3rd was the 5th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon. I assisted at a first Mass on the 4th of July. . .in England!

4th of July 2007 Homily (re=post)

Reviewed this homily from the 4th of July 2007. . .in light of the upcoming socio-economic encyclical from the Holy Father, I thought it might make a moderately interesting re-read:

Independence Day USA (4^th of July): Isa 32.15-18 and Luke 12.15-21
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

If we were to look to our country for signs of the Lord’s favor, what would we find? First, would we even recognize signs of the Lord’s favor? Can we tell the difference between what the Lord has given us all as a gift and what we have earned by our ingenuity and hard work? It’s a trick question, of course. For us, that is, for Christians, there is no difference really between what we work to earn and what the Lord gives us. Those skills, those attitudes of industry and creativity, all of those spirits of innovation, commerce, longing for growth, all of it, everything we use to work for our prosperity is first given to us by God. Whatever abundance, whatever excess, whatever generous plenty that we enjoy as a result of sweat, bent backs, calloused hands, or talented minds hurting at the edges of possibility; whatever good or truth or beauty we build; all bounty, all harvest, all of our riches as individuals, as a nation of citizens and immigrants, and as a tribe of priests and prophets baptized in the death and resurrection of Christ, all we call mine, ours, and theirs is first and always the treasure of our God; His abundance first, then His gift to us in grace, and only then do we rightly call this nation’s material and spiritual flourishing “a blessing.”

Isaiah reminds us because we forget: “In those days: the spirit from on high will be poured out on us”. . .then the desert becomes an orchard and the orchard a forest; right and justice will live in the desert and orchard and God’s “people will live in peaceful country…” God says to Isaiah, “My people will live in peaceful country, in secure dwellings and quiet resting places.” When do we forget this peace? When do we forget that our wealth is a gift and not a right?

There is a forgetfulness in wealth that poverty holds at bay. The prophetic witness of scripture testifies to the inherent dangers of possessing too much. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that scripture warns against the dangers of believing that and behaving as if we possess anything at all. The greater the imaginary treasury, the more tightly the acquisitive imagination binds the greedy dreamer to things and their accumulation and security. Bigger barns! More treasure! Bigger barns! More and more treasure…! Better locks, tighter control, limited access. Mine, mine, mine. And the narcotic stupor of acquiring without giving thanks, of possessing without surrendering to generosity, of storing up without abandoning to divine providence, that sedating haze of entitlement clouds the presence of the Spirit and we fail in our avarice—just me, just you, and all of us as one in a nation—we fail in greed to look back at the font of our blessing, to remember, and to put our faith in the only place where it cannot be exhausted: the heart of Christ Jesus!

We can celebrate our independence from the British Empire today. (I have it one good authority that they were more than happy to cut us loose!) We can celebrate political and economic freedom, religious and press freedom; we can even celebrate a certain material prosperity that comes from our long and assertive history as entrepreneurial capitalists and proponents of enlightenment democracy. But if these are godly treasures, harvests gleaned from a divine bounty, then they cannot be stored, cannot be hoarded in barns of privilege, heredity, merit, or in anything as flimsy and accidental as nationality or race. Some will argue that as Americans our claim to be heroes of a progressive manifest destiny ended in Vietnam. That’s a question for historians. Here’s a question for us Christians who would be heroes (American or not!): will you surrender—in absolute trust—all that you have, all that you are; abandon entirely your life and your things, hiding nothing, holding nothing back; sacrificing for the good of others your bountiful harvest to the Source of your life and all your wealth?

If so, you are free already. And today is truly a day to rejoice in the independence of the Lord!

Two Revolutions

Independence Day: Genesis 27.1-5, 15-29; Matthew 9.14-17
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur, Fort Worth, TX

Jesus says to John's disciples, “No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth...People do not put new wine into old wineskins.” What does this bit of homespun wisdom have to do with weddings, fasting, the Pharisees, mourning the death of a bridegroom, and the price of camels in Jerusalem? Better yet: what do any of these have to do with the American Revolution and this country's declaration of independence from the tyranny Old King George? Is Jesus teaching us to party while we can b/c we won't be around forever? Is he arguing that we ought to be better stewards of our antiques—human and otherwise? Or maybe he's saying that the time will come when the older ways can no longer be patched up and something fundamentally new must replace what we have always had, always known. When “the way we have always done it” no longer takes us where we ought to go; when the wineskin, the camel, the cloak no longer holds its wine, hauls its load, or keep us warm, it's time to start thinking about a trip to the market to haggle for something new.

We celebrate two revolutions today: one temporal and one eternal, one local and the other cosmic. The political revolution freed a group of colonies in the New World from the corruption of an old and dying Empire. The spiritual revolution freed all of creation from the chains of sin and death. Today, we give God thanks and praise for the birth of the United States of America by celebrating our 4th of July freedoms. And we give God thanks and praise for the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ by celebrating this Eucharist, the daily revolution that overthrows the regime of sin and spiritual decay.

The revolution of 1776 not only toppled the imperial rule of George III in the American colonies, but it also founded a way of life that celebrates God-gifted, self-evident, and unalienable human rights as the foundation of all civil government and social progress. The revolution that Christ led and leads against the wiles and temptations of the world fulfills the promise of our Father to bring us once again into His Kingdom—not a civil kingdom ruled by laws and fallible hearts, but a heavenly kingdom where we will do His will perfectly and thereby live more freely than we ever could here on earth. In no way do we understand this kingdom as simply some sort of future reward for good behavior. This is no pie in the sky by and by. Though God's kingdom has come with the coming of Christ, we must live as bodies and souls here and now, perfecting that imperfect portion of the kingdom we know and love. No revolution succeeds immediately. No revolution fulfills every promise at the moment of its birth. The women and slaves of the newly minted United States can witness to this hard fact. That we continue to sin, continue to fail, continue to rebel against God's will for us is evidence enough that we do not yet live in fullest days of the Kingdom. But like any ideal, any program for perfecting the human heart and mind, we can live to the limits of our imperfect natures, falling and trying again, knowing that we are loved by Love Himself. With diligence. With trust. With hope. With one another in the bonds of Christ's love, we can do more than live lackluster lives of mediocre compliance. We can work out our salvation in the tough love of repentance and forgiveness, the hard truths of mercy and holiness.

Christ is with us. The Bridegroom has not abandoned us. His revolution continues so long as one of us is eager to preach his Word, teach his truth, do his good works. Today and everyday, we are free. And even as we celebrate our civil independence from tyranny, we must bow our heads to the Father and give Him thanks for creating us as creatures capable of living freely, wholly in the possibility of His perfection.

Coffee Cup Browsing

Sigh. . .since returning to the New World I've been reduced to drinking my coffee from a cup. It's just not the same. . .

Disobedience is harming the Church (duh)

. . .and speaking of disobedience

That Bearded Menace, Mark Shea now has 163 followers. We can't let him shame us! Become a HancAquam Follower (see right side bar).

The joys of motherhood

I've changed my mind. . .those New Age self-help books are awesome!

The Communist party

A skeptical credo. . .I'd say it's more a cynic's credo

No question, no answer. . .so what?

Transcript of the famous debate btw Bertrand Russell and Fr. Copleston on the existence of God

Someone famous has died

My prayer book's Table of Contents (Updated)

My prayer book is headed to the printers!

Here's the Table of Contents for Treasures Old and New: Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics, Vol. 1. *

Introduction: A Theology of Prayer

Part One: The Novenas

Credo Novena

Novena for Faith

Novena for Hope

Novena for Love

Novena on the Lord’s Prayer

Psalm Novena for Growth in Holiness

Novena of the Four Dominican Pillars

Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Novena for Detachment and Holy Obedience

Novena for Discernment of a Priestly Vocation

Part Two: The Litanies

Litany of God the Father

Litany of Jesus, Priest and Sacrifice

Litany of the Most Holy Trinity

Litany to the Infant Jesus

Litany to Mary, Co-Redemptrix

Litany to the Unsayable God

Part Three: The Way-Truth-Life Rosary

Part Four: Prayers

Prayer for an Examination of Conscience

The ABC Prayer for Conversion

Prayer Before Reconciliation

Prayer After Reconciliation

For a Dark Night of the Soul

Daily Morning Prayer

Daily Evening Prayer

*Vol. 2 will contain the more "mystical" prayers, including three novenas: via Positiva, via Negativa, and via Sophia. Also, this volume will contain the Litany to Mary, Co-redemptrix.

Catholic Charities Blog

One of my former U.D. students and current seminarian for the Diocese of Austin, Sean DeWitt is blogging for Catholic Charities.

Currently, he is writing about the ministry of C.C. in the context of Catholic social teaching.

Check him out! And be sure to leave him some comments.

Back in TX

I have arrived back in Irving. . .

Many thanks for the prayers!

In a few days, I will be moving to Fort Worth for the month of July.

Regular blogging will resume once I am settled into my summer work.

Fr. Philip

P.S.: Thank you as well for all the activity on the WISH LIST! I was able to get a significant amount of reading done while in MS, including Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. If there are any scientists out there who have read this book I'd love to hear your thoughts. As a literary theorist, I am sympathetic to Kuhn's thesis, but I know that many working scientists take exception to it.

"Who, if I cried out. . .?"

12th Sunday OT: Job 38.1, 8-11; 2 Cor 5.14-17; Mark 4.35-41
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Aquinas Institute of Theology, St Louis, MO

However wise his heart, Job stands before the glory of God and pitches one question after another to his creator. Anguish and hope race one another on the battlefield of his confusion and despair, and all his suffering explodes into a single, bellowed question: “Why?!” Why have I lost? Why am I in pain? Why have those I love most been made to suffer? We may ask along with Job, “I stand under the weight of my cross, trusting that it will not break my back so long as Christ is with me, but why must its load fall so heavily on my family, friends, and neighbors?” Surely it is enough that I labor in hope against the inevitable scores of loss and retreat. Surely my eager willingness to play this game, to fight this battle is proof enough that living well with God is worth the effort. And even as we protest against the cosmic injustice of death and desolation, we know that all of our complaints, all our questions, all our doubts are dissolved on the Cross, dispersed by iron nails, and exhausted not by a cry of “Why?” but by a bloodied surrender, by sacrificial forgiveness. Do we as children of the Father suffer well? What does it take to transform the anguish of our losses, our retreats into joy?

In the first elegy of his Dunio Elegies, the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke asks, “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?” Against the background noise of stars giving birth and dying away, against the din of whole galaxies colliding in the void, who “up there” can hear our questions? Who would glance our way? For that matter, who cares enough to bend an ear? Knowing the odds, Rilke notes the smallness of his cry, “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in its overwhelming existence.” In the face of such superabundant Being, do we dare protest our suffering? Do we risk annihilation for the small pleasure of complaint? The risk of asking any question is that the answer itself will be an occasion of suffering. He writes, “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.” Why? Because “every angel is terrifying.”

Let’s risk the questions and pray that the answering angels are not so beautiful: do we as children of the Father suffer well? What does it take to transform the anguish of our losses, our retreats into joy? First, there is suffering and then there is suffering well. That we will know pain and loss is as inevitable as the tides. So long as we live, we will feel the cuts, the bruises, the breaks. We will mourn and count our defeats. We will betray and be betrayed; sell into slavery and be sold. We will grow bent, blind, deaf, and addled. We will hear NO when YES is the only way to flourish, or to survive. And we will endure injustice, refused our rightful due for no other reason than that someone more powerful, more prominent wants what is ours. Despite our protests, despite our righteous cries, that we will suffer is a cosmic given. There is no question about this. The question for the Father’s children is: will we suffer well? And if we long to suffer well, how do we do it? How do we transform our anguish into joy?

Out of the storm God answers Job: “Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb […]?” Who made the sea? Who fashioned the tides? Who said to the raging waters, “Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!” At the beginning of everything, who was it that took nothing, and with a word, made it all? Including you. Job dared his questions and his answering angel terrified him with the beauty of this truth: you are a creature, a being fashioned from dust and breathed into life. That you exist at all is a gift. Especially loved though you are, before you ever existed there was light and darkness. There was birth and death. There were stars and planets and animals on the land and in the sea and birds in the air and plants by the billions in uncountable varieties. Especially loved though you are, you have come late to this creation, be humble and know your place in the order of things, trusting always that I AM is with you.

In the midst of a violent storm all their own, and like Job, fearful of chance and accident, the disciples cry out to the Lord for rescue: "’Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’" Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Quiet! Be still!" The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, "’Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?’" Jesus is not telling them that their faith alone could calm a violent storm. He is not rebuking them for their failure to wield a magical power. Rather he’s telling them that their lack of faith is the source of their terror. The violent storm they have failed to calm is the tempest found in every faithless heart. With the storm calmed “they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "’Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?’" He is the one who breathed a word over nothing at all and brought everything into being. He is the one who is with us always.

When the violent storms of sickness and mourning crash against our vulnerable bodies, we cannot be faulted for wondering why we are being made to suffer so. As rational creatures gifted with compassion, we naturally question the accidental nature of creation and wonder why it could not have been made differently. When we ask “why?” we want to know the cause of, the reason for. And even though we know that our bodies randomly break down, that our machines often fail, that our loves sometimes go unreturned, we desire purpose; we desire a rationale. To say that this or that disaster was accidental is not enough. It is too much to believe that we suffer by probability, by random chance. It is too much to have our doubts dismissed as wishful thinking. So, we ask why, and we expect an answer. And while we wait, we hope that our answering angel is not too beautiful to bear.

Paul does not answer us. Instead, he teaches us a awesome truth: “[…] whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” As creatures of dust and divine love destined to be dust again, we live and move and have our being in a newer creation, a newer cosmic order that sets chance and suffering and death against our Father’s promise of eternal life. In the order of things we sit above the angels as sons and daughters of the King, heirs to His dominion. We are wholly loved by Love Himself, created and re-created in His Divine Word, Christ Jesus. When we suffer, we suffer best when we faithfully set our pain and loss among the promises already fulfilled by the dying and rising again of our Lord.

God answered Job by showing him the whirling universe in all its created glory, the material expression of His divine majesty. What pain or loss would not be blinded by His light? As creatures remade in Christ, can we experience a loss that was not offered in sacrifice on the altar of the Cross? Is there a way for us to suffer that Christ himself has not redeemed into joy? Our faith in the Father’s promises is not a talisman that protects us from the vagaries of daily living. Our faith gives suffering a purpose beyond the aches and hurts that come with being embodied souls. With Christ we have died already. And with Christ we will rise again. No loss, no pain, no retreat can stand against a ever living joy. In all humility, suffer. But suffer well, knowing that you are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Corpus Christi 2007 (repost)

Since I am traveling today, a repost seems in order. . .

11 June 2007

Deep fired Sacramentum Caritatis with pork gravy

Corpus Christi: Gen 14.18-20; 1 Cor 11.23-26; Luke 9.11-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

These are a few of my favorite things: Buttermilk dripped and deep-fried chicken. Butter beans with bacon and onions. Garlic mashed potatoes and chicken gravy. Greens with fatback and vinegar. Squash casserole, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole with pecans and brown sugar crust. Deviled eggs. Warm biscuits with honey butter. Homemade, cast-iron skillet cornbread with real butter. Fresh yeast rolls. Pecan pie. Chocolate pie. Mississippi Mud Cake. Bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Can you tell I’m a true blood Southerner?!* Each of these and all of them together do more than just expand my waistline and threaten the structural integrity of my belt—each and all of them together make up for me a palette of memories, a buffet (if you will!) of powerful reminders of who I am, where I came from, who I love, who loves me, and where I am going. Second perhaps only to sex, eating is one of the most intimate things we do. Think about it for just a second: when you eat, you take into your body stuff from the world—meat, vegetables, water, tea—you put this stuff in your mouth, you chew, you taste and feel, you smell and swallow, and all of it, every bite, becomes your body. This is extraordinarily intimate! You are made up of, built out of what you eat.

What does it mean then for you, for us to eat the Body of Christ and to drink his Blood?

Thomas Aquinas answers: “Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods.” God became man so that we all might become god. In Christ Jesus, we are made more than holy, more than just, more than righteous; we are made perfect. Wholly joined to Holy Other, divinized as God promised at the moment of creation, we are brought to the divine by the Divine and given our participation in the life of God by God. We are brought and given. Brought to Him by Him and given to Him by Him. We do not go to God uninvited and we do not take from Him what is not first given. Therefore, “take, eat, this is my body, which is given up for you…” And when you take the gift of his body and eat and when you take the gift of his blood and drink, you become what you eat and drink. You become Christ. And together we are Christ for one another—his Body, the church.

Thomas calls the Eucharist the “sacramentum caritatis,” the sacrament of love. The Eucharist is not a family picnic or Sunday dinner. We’re not talking about a community meal or a neighborhood buffet. All of these can and do express genuine love for God, self, and neighbor. But Thomas is teaching us something far more radical about the Eucharist here than the pedestrian notion that eating together makes us better people and a stronger community! The sacramentum caritatis is an efficacious sign of God’s gift of Himself to us for our perfection. In other words, the Eucharist we celebrate this morning is not just a memorial, just a symbol, just a community prayer service, just a familial gathering, just a ritual. In Christ, with him and through him, we effect—make real and produce—the redeeming graces of Calvary and the Empty Tomb: Christ on the cross and Christ risen from the grave. Again, we are not merely being reminded of an important bible story nor are we being taught a lesson about sharing and caring nor are we simply “feeling” Christ’s presence among us. We are doing exactly what Christ tells us to do: we are eating his body and drinking his blood for our perfection, for our eternal lives. And while we wait for his coming again, we walk this earth as Christs! Imperfect now, to be perfected eventually; but right now, radically loved by Love Himself and loved so that we may be changed, converted from our disobedience, brought to repentance and forgiveness, and absolved of all violence against God’s will for us.

Thomas teaches us that God gave us the Eucharist in order “to impress the vastness of [His] love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful…” How vast is His love for us? He gifted us with His Son. He gave His only child up to death so that we might live. And He gave us the means of our most intimate communion with Him. We take his body into our bodies. His blood into ours. We are made heirs, brothers and sisters, prophets and priests; we are made holy, just, and clean; we are made Christ and being made Christ, we are given his ministries, his holy tasks: teaching, preaching, healing, feeding. This Eucharist tells you who you are, where you came from, where you are going. It tells you why you are here and what you must do. And most importantly, this celebration of thanksgiving, tells you and me who it is that loves us and what being loved by Love Himself means for our sin, our repentance, our conversion, our ministries, our progress in holiness…

Do not fail to hand on what you yourself have received: the gift of the Christ. Walk out those doors this morning and present yourself to the world as a sacramentum caritatis. Walk out of here a sacrament of love—a sign, a witness, a cipher, an icon—walk out of here stamped with the Holy Spirit. Preach, teach, bless, feed, eat, drink, pray, and spread the infectious joy of the children of God!

A Southern blessing: as your waist expands to fill the limits of your belt, so may your spirit grow to hold the limitless love of Him Who loves us always.

*NB. To answer a question asked after Mass about my menu, "Yes, I can cook every dish listed here!" Oh, and I forgot "grits."

Liturgical Abuse: what to do about it

OK, so your pastor, Fr. Hollywood, has decided to co-opt your parish's Sunday Masses as his time to show all of your pew-sitting mouth-breathers what a hip guy he is. He changes the wording of the prayers to fit his political agenda. He writes the prayer intentions to reflect his pet-peeves and social projects. He uses the homily to berate you for not recycling, for opposing illegal immigration, and for standing outside the abortion clinic praying the rosary. Then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, he ends each Mass with the exclamation, "Go be Church!"

Had enough?

Any sensible Catholic would have exploded by now. Unfortunately, most Catholics are either shell-shocked by the inanity of these DIY liturgies or comfortably numb with the monotonous hum of Father's self-serving political haranguing.

Let's say you decide "to do something about it." What do you do?

First, here's what NOT to do: do not fire off an angry letter to the bishop demanding that this heretic be removed from the parish or else. Unless Father is doing something horribly illegal (molesting children, stealing money, selling drugs out of the rectory, etc.), there's almost no chance he's going to be replaced. There's simply not enough priests to go around. Also, firing off an angry letter to the pastor himself will likely end with him filing the letter for further reference in the trash can.* Angry doesn't work.

The next thing to do is to honestly examine your conscience about your motivations for wanting these abuses to stop. Do these abuses cause me serious spiritual problems? Am I wanting to be a cultural warrior and take sides in the battle? Am I being scrupulous about rule-following, or wantonly careless about following the rubrics? Do the abuses seriously damage my understanding of the faith? Am I just being a liturgy Nazi just b/c I can be? Am I pushing my personal political agenda? Am I thinking with the Church on these issues? Keep in mind: you cannot speak for anyone but yourself. You cannot complain that the inclusive pronouns or the exclusive pronouns are hurting other people's faith. It might be true that Father's liturgical goofiness is hurting other people, but you can't know that; therefore, you can't report it. And even if half the parish tells you it's hurting them, you can't speak for them. You can speak for you alone. I am not trying to discourage you from talking to Father about these issues. I'm encouraging you to know your motivations for wanting to do so. Be clear about those motivations lest you are tempted to pride.

Here's what you need to know before you speak up. . .everyday (probably several times a day), Father is besieged by parishioners who know how to run the parish better than he does. They are all self-appointed experts in liturgy, finance, personnel, scripture, theology, canon law, and politics. And all of them together are pulling the pastor in a hundred different directions, all making contradictory or contrasting demands for action. While you loathe the use of inclusive pronouns that reduce God to a Platonic Parent, there are three people in the parish complaining b/c he doesn't throw out the USCCB-approved lectionary for being sexist. While you're outraged that he uses homily time to bark at you about the evils of carbon emissions, five people are complaining b/c his last homily canonizing Al Gore forgot to elevate The One to sainthood as well. If he makes you happy, he adds eight more complaints to his calendar. Also, keep in mind that Father might actually have justifibly good reasons for what he is doing. I have very bad knees from working for five years in a violent adolescent mental hospital. It is very difficult for me to genuflect. A U.D. student respectfully asked me why I didn't genuflect at the consecration. I explained my weird situation, and she was satisfied. Case closed.

Now, if Father thinks it's his job to make everyone happy, well, that's his problem. He's taken on an impossible task and caused himself nothing but misery. If he choses to bow before the loudest voices in the parish and do as he is told, again, his problem. My hope would be that the pastor would lead. Stand up front and follow the Church with his parish supporting him along the way. That happens quite frequently but nearly often enough. Regardless, we are all responsible to one another in this Body, so if you are clear on your motives and well-aware that you might be the lone oppositional voice. . .speak up!

Having persuaded you that Father is haggarded with competing demands and unlikely to be moved by an angry letter, what do you do to persuade him to change his goofy liturgical ways?

Talk to him. Make an appointment and charitably express your concerns. Tell him why his goofiness upsets you. Do so respectfully with every fiber of humility you can muster. Approach him with what you see as abuses by asking open-ended questions. For example, "Father, I've noticed you avoid using male pronouns when speaking about God. Can you tell me why this is important for you to do?" Listen to his answer without judgment. Actually hear his answer over the clamour of your need to correct his interpretation of canon law. When he finishes, see if you can repeat to him what he has said. Then, move on to the next question. Save your objections for a later appointment. If he asks you what you think, tell him that you just want to know why he does the things he does b/c you are unsure of his reasons for making the changes. You will be tempted here to launch into a broadside against liturgical innovation. Resist it!

When you go to Mass next take notice of his "abuses." Is he still doing them? Are you still upset? If so, ask for another appointment. This time go back through your questions and tell him how each abuse upsets you. Again, do so respectfully and without accusation. Just report your feelings and thoughts, leaving canon law and papal documents out of it for now. If he's a good pastor he will pull more out of you than you would imagine there is to pull.

Go back to Mass and take note. The abuses are still happening. Ask for another appointment. This time note your disappointment that the abuses are still going on and ask him what you should do about it. Remind him of your objections and how he responded to them. But honestly ask, "I understand now why you think your changes are necessary, but they are disrupting my prayer in Mass. I find them very distracting. What do I do?" Listen carefully to how he answers and ask appropriate questions. He may tell you to get over it. He may apologize and keep on doing what he's doing. He may suggest some reading to "enlighten" you. Or, he may shrug and say, "I dunno. What do you want to do?" Tell him.

Tell him whatever it is you think you need to do. But don't think for a moment that threatening to leave or withhold donations is going to change his mind. He's got three folks in the outer office waiting to push him even further along the road of liturgical experimentation. Or maybe, you are expressing what dozens have express to him already and the pressure to change is mounting. The one thing that will dissipate all that pressure most effectively is anger. If you get mad and spout off, you're credibility is gone. No one wants to listen to a madman, so the ravings of a madman are ignored. Don't threaten. Don't quote canon law. Or liturgical documents. Don't wave Ratziner's Spirit of the Liturgy in his face. Chances are he knows that what he is doing goes against prevailing law and custom. I've never seen the legalistic approach work. Never. There's simply no way to tell someone that they are violating the rules without sounding like you are accusing them of a crime. In fact, that's exactly what you would be doing. "Father, here are the 37 canonical crimes you have commited in a month of Masses. . ."

At this point, sit down and write a very charitable letter detailing what you see as abuse in the Mass. Whatever you do: NOT NOT QUOTE canon law or papal documents. Pastors who tend to be goofy in the liturgy are constitutionally allergic to rules, so quoting rules to them only reinforces their sense of being "hip" and "edgy." They will simply respond my invoking "pastoral considerations" and keep on truckin'. What these guys will respond to favorably is an honest, personal assessment of what you believe their abuses are doing to your prayer life. If you are sincerely adversely affected by the abuses, say so. And be specific about it. For all their calavier attitude about The Rules, most pastors loathe the idea that anything they would do could hurt someone. You could be the first, the tenth, or the one-hundredth person to tell him that his goofiness is detrimental to your fruitful experience of the Mass.

Tell him in this letter that you feel compelled to write a similar letter to the bishop. As the Pastor of the Diocese, your spiritual health is his responsibility. You are not tattling or going over Father's head. If your letter is motivated by genuine angst, written from a personal experience, and doesn't pretend to teach the bishop his business, you will be heard.

Last but not least, prepare for nothing to be done. Prepare for the fact that no changes will occur. Prepare for hearing nothing back from the bishop. Why? Becasue if Father has 800 people pulling at him about this and that, the bishop has 80,000. Not hearing back from the bishop doesn't mean that nothing was done. All it means is that no one told you that something was done. If your pastor has a history of liturgical abuse, the bishop has a file. Your letter will join others and eventually the weight will tilt the bishop into action. But don't expect the bishop to drop everything he's doing, drive to your parish, and blast the pastor in front of the congregation before Sunday Mass. If that's what you want to happen, then you need to do some seriously soul-searching.

So, let's say that you have done all that I have suggested and you arrive at Mass on Sunday morning confident that Fr. Hollywood has been straightened out. He processes in and begins, "In the Name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifer. . ." What do you do?

Like the shampoo bottle says, "Rinse, lather, repeat." If you tell me that you don't have time for this sort of protracted conversation, I am tempted to say that you aren't serious about the abuses hurting your spiritual life. If Father's goofiness is damaging you spiritually, nothing should stop you from addressing the abuse. It might take years to convince him to change. How important is it to you to have the Mass celebrated with the universal Church?

*When I was a deacon at Holy Rosary Church in Houston, I was unexpectedly recruited by one of my elderly brothers to help him distribute communion. Unfortunately, I was dressed to go on a work project with my U.H. students. We were there for the Mass b/c our project supervisor was running late. I was wearing shorts, a tee-shirts, and sandals. When I objected to the priest that I was not properly dressed, he insisted I help him with the unusually large crowd. He didn't even give me a chance to put on an alb! So, there I was at the very traditional Holy Rosary Church giving communion in shorts and a tee-shirt. A few weeks later the pastor got a thick envelope that he passed on to me. Inside were about thirty pages of copies of canon law, papal and conciliar documents going back to the ninth century! All yellow highlighted and decorated with exclamation points and underlines. The point of the letter: clergy should not participate in the liturgy dressed in anything but proper vestments. Duh? Really? I didn't know that. The author of the package was furious with me for my disrespect, etc. and demanded that I be fired. Had he taken 30 seconds after Mass to talk to me personally, he would have discovered that I agreed with him! Instead, he chose to go home fuming and spend hours collecting and copying documents that fit rather nicely in my trash can.

Error, Heresy, & You

My Dominican service for the day: making distinctions and telling lies. . .

All too often these days we hear that This or That theologian or priest is teaching/preaching heresy. It's been a problem from the beginning (cf Paul's letters) and it will be with us until The End.

Most of time those teaching/preaching heresy draw a heavy line between Evangelization and Doctrine, meaning they separate the Work of the Church from Word of the Church. This separation allows them to do all the "feel-good" Work without being too terribly bothered with the Word. For example, "What does the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception have to do with feeding the hungry, making peace, and helping the poor find affordable health care?" The underlying assumption here is that they can do the Work of the Church without reference to the Word of the Church. This is false.

This last Trinity Sunday, we read in Matthew's gospel Jesus' charge to his disciples to go out into the world and "teach all that I have taught you." Christ irrevocably binds together evangelization, works of mercy, and truth-telling in our teaching and preaching. Strictly speaking, a priest who teaches heresy cannot evangelize the world by doing good works. His works may indeed be good, but an atheist or a Muslim or a Wiccan priestess could do the same work and do so in the absence of Catholic doctrine. The point of helping the poor is to honor God by honoring the creatures whom He made in His image and likeness and remade in Christ. In other words, we help the poor in order to worship the Triune God.

Now, we must draw a sharp distinction between error and heresy. The temptation to charge a fellow Catholic teaching error with the crime of heresy is nearly irresistible. We want it made perfectly clear that this guy is not teaching with the mind of the Church. Though all heresy is erroneous not all error is heresy.

"Error" is exactly that: a mistake, "getting it wrong," flubbing a statement of the truth. You forget to carry the "1" when subtracting. You switch letters when spelling out a word. Error, by definition, is unintentional and therefore blameless. Error can be corrected and instantly forgiven.

"Heresy" is something else entirely. Heresy is error stubbornly taught as truth; it is a mistake one holds as a truth. It's the banking equivalent of forgetting to carry the "1" and then obstinately refusing to admit the mistake, demanding that your calculation be accepted despite having been shown your error. Heresy is insisting that your spelling of a word is correct even after your reader uses several dictionaries to show you your error. Heresy is intentional, obstinate, and arrogant.

Let's say your pastor on Christ the King Sunday preaches a homily in which he says, "Christ our Lord was created by the Father to give us eternal life." The idea that the Son is a creation of the Father is part of the heresy called "Arianism." The Son was not created but rather eternally begotten. The Three Persons of the Trinity are co-eternal; there is no temporal or ontological priority within the Trinity. You point this out to your pastor: "Father, you were teaching heresy this morning!" Strictly speaking, this is true. He did indeed teach the heresy of Arianism. But is Father a heretic? It depends on how he responds.

He responds to you, "I know! I realized it later in the Mass, and I should have corrected myself. I'll put a note in the bulletin. How embarrassing." Though he has taught heresy, he is not a heretic. Let's say he responses, "Oh yes, I know. Basically, I think the idea of the Son as begotten of the Father is baloney. Jesus is one of us, a creature. We shouldn't think of him as God." You, a bit shocked, remind him that the Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism in the Nicene Creed. Again, he says, "I know, I know. But that council was one big political mess. Besides, all that Greek philosophy should have never been allowed into the Church" and so on. Is Father a heretic? Not yet.

So far, no one with magisterial authority has attempted to correct Father. If you contact the bishop and the bishop contacts Father and corrects him and he refuses to budge on the issue, then he compels the bishop to determine his orthodoxy. Maybe Father simply misunderstands what the Creed teaches. Maybe he has a mistaken notion of what "begotten" means. Maybe he is somehow intellectually impaired or in a fit of misplaced compassion, he has given one doctrine (Jesus' humanity) priority over another (his divinity) in a false move to make Christ accessible. The bishop corrects all of these errors. And Father still refuses to budge.

At some point in the exchange it becomes clear that Father is a formal heretic; that is, he actually believes his error to be the truth. By refusing to be corrected by a competent ecclesial authority, Father places himself outside the communion of the Church and remains there until he recants. Even if he faithfully teaches every other doctrine of the Church correctly, he is teaching heresy on this issue. Of course, it's simply impossible to teach just one heresy. Like the game of Jenga, when you remove one support from the structure, the whole thing starts to wobble and eventually it collapses. A heretic who wants to be wrong on one doctrine faces the daunting prospect of either abandoning the faith altogether in an effort to be theologically consistent with his heresy, or figuring out a way to teach his heresy as consistent with all other doctrinal truths. I do not believe the latter is possible. Heresy corrodes one's faith by compelling you to reject one truth after another in order to remain consistent with the initial heresy.

So, feeding the poor as an act of Christian mercy while believing that Jesus is simply a creature just like one of us is not possible. Though the act can be merciful, it is not Christian. We do good works AS Christians. An atheist can do good works, but he does not do them in order to evangelize. A Buddhist can do good works, but she does not do them to honor the poor in their dignity as creatures made and remade in the likeness and image of God. Everything we do as Christians is principally about giving glory to God. Any material good that comes from this spiritual duty is welcomed and wonderful, but it's hardly the point of being a Christian.

Do not let anyone tell you that orthodox belief is irrelevant to orthodox practice. One cannot exist without the other.

Coffee Bowl Browsing time!

Sad but necessary: Australia's adolescent attention-seeking Fr. Hollywood suspended

Don't mess with R.N.'s (Real Nuns)!

HA! And the Catholic Lite Left accuses us of "keeping God in a box"

Lefty media meltdown. . .couldn't happen to a better bunch

Newsweek editor deifies Obama. . .but the MSM has no idea why it is dying. Duh.

Good analysis of last week's center-right victories in E.U. elections

Sticking it to the ACLU's soft-fascism

The inevitable and entirely predictable slippery-slope of same-sex "marriage"

For the grammatically challenged!

Podcasting the Church's saints

What's the Church teaching on the theory of evolution? You might be surprised!

Can we ever say that a particular war is just?

Har-har. . .B.O. meets the Saudi King (a cartoon)

Lots of excellent articles on Catholic theology and science

American postmodern malaise: wanting, getting, and still having nothing

How dead philosophers died (warning: a philosopher attempts humor. . .OY!)

I have met many priests of Dudeism. . .some of them claim to be Catholic priests!

Albert Einstein's "Credo"

I believe that people who talk during movies should be summarily executed.

Answers to all those questions that nag you at 3am

Platonic kiss? Other kinds of philosophical kisses (NB. his definition of an Aristotelian kiss is flat wrong)

"Shut up, brain, or I'll stab you with a Q-tip!" The wisdom of Homer Simpson

Her Majesty and B.O.'s iPod (B.O. gave the Queen of England an iPod a few months ago)

David Mamet (playwright), "Why I am no longer a 'brain dead liberal" (language warning)