Receiving like children

26th Week OT (M): Readings
Fr Philip Neri Powell, OP
Holy Rosary Priory, Houston

What do you see, who do you see when you think of God? At prayer, in times of crisis, with the ones you love, what picture of God develops in your mind? Reading scripture, enjoying the bright day, at work on your computer, who comes to mind when thoughts of God rise up? Pagans and atheists have it easy. Either their gods manifest as animals, trees, or monsters; or they think of God only to refute His existence. When your god can be anything at all or nothing at all, your imagination is challenged hardly at all to see beyond what stands around you, or past the nothingness of obstinate denial. Where pagans worship creation's evidence for God, atheists deny creation itself. No creator, no creation—just accidentally mixed-up stuff that moves. Do you think of everything when you think of God? Or nothing at all? Do you think of everyone or no one?

The God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob says to Zechariah, “I am intensely jealous for Zion, stirred to jealous wrath for her. . .I will bring [my people] back to dwell within Jerusalem. They shall be my people, and I will be their God, with faithfulness and justice.” The Lord says “I am” and “I will.” Notice: “I” cannot be everyone, nor can “I” be no one. “I” is personal, first person, singular. One and first. As a person, with faithfulness and justice, He will be our God and we will be His people. Animals, trees, mountains do not grow jealous. Forces of nature—storms, fires, rain—do not love. Even when laying waste to coast lands and hills, hurricanes and floods do not destroy out of wrath. What does not exist cannot be faithful or just. How can nothingness trust? How can no-thing set relationships right? Do you think of everything when you think of God? Or nothing at all? Do you think of everyone or no one?

On Mt. Sinai, God instructed Moses not to carve any image of Him. There can be no statute or painting or icon that depicts I AM. How can we chisel a verb? How do you draw and color Being? And even as I AM forbids images of His countenance, He reveals Himself to be our Father, our Maker, the One Who gathered dust from creation and breathed His spirit into us. Even as He instructs Moses to stand against the pagan love of idols, He reveals Himself as Flood, Fire, and Cloud. He speaks. He walks among us. He teaches and preaches and heals. And yet, no painting of His face exists. No statue captures His body. For us, He is, at once, Everything and Nothing. He is All yet No-thing.

Caught as we are between the reality of I AM and our natural human need to use language and image, we fight our own devices to find or invent a way of speaking, a way of imagining Him that is both true but not limited, full yet still-to-be filled. In times of desperate crisis, we cry out “Lord!” When we are joyful and content, we cry “Lord!” as well. First, personal, and singular—we address a person, one God, another like us but well beyond us. Jesus reminds the disciples of their limits and ours when we places a child on his lap and says, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” The lesson? We have a true and faithful God. We do not need static images, limited words, or even beautiful concepts. Receive a child in Christ's name and receive the One Who came to us in the flesh; the One Who comes to us still, body and blood.

Do you think of everything when you think of God? Or nothing at all? Do you think of everyone or no one? If you think of both Everything and Nothing, Everyone and No One, you are still thinking in darkness. “Even if this should seem impossible in the eyes of the remnant of this people,” the Lord delivers His promises. Ours is a God jealous of our love. Always faithful, always just, He is with us. We are His people. And He is our God.

Academic freedom found in the authority of truth

I believe we have a theme for today!

From the Holy Father's address to the Academic Community in Prague:

The proper autonomy of a university, or indeed any educational institution, finds meaning in its accountability to the authority of truth. Nevertheless, that autonomy can be thwarted in a variety of ways. The great formative tradition, open to the transcendent, which stands at the base of universities across Europe, was in this land, and others, systematically subverted by the reductive ideology of materialism, the repression of religion and the suppression of the human spirit. In 1989, however, the world witnessed in dramatic ways the overthrow of a failed totalitarian ideology and the triumph of the human spirit. The yearning for freedom and truth is inalienably part of our common humanity. It can never be eliminated; and, as history has shown, it is denied at humanity’s own peril. It is to this yearning that religious faith, the various arts, philosophy, theology and other scientific disciplines, each with its own method, seek to respond, both on the level of disciplined reflection and on the level of a sound praxis.

The idea of an integrated education, based on the unity of knowledge grounded in truth, must be regained. It serves to counteract the tendency, so evident in contemporary society, towards a fragmentation of knowledge. With the massive growth in information and technology there comes the temptation to detach reason from the pursuit of truth. Sundered from the fundamental human orientation towards truth, however, reason begins to lose direction: it withers, either under the guise of modesty, resting content with the merely partial or provisional, or under the guise of certainty, insisting on capitulation to the demands of those who indiscriminately give equal value to practically everything. The relativism that ensues provides a dense camouflage behind which new threats to the autonomy of academic institutions can lurk. While the period of interference from political totalitarianism has passed, is it not the case that frequently, across the globe, the exercise of reason and academic research are – subtly and not so subtly – constrained to bow to the pressures of ideological interest groups and the lure of short-term utilitarian or pragmatic goals? What will happen if our culture builds itself only on fashionable arguments, with little reference to a genuine historical intellectual tradition, or on the viewpoints that are most vociferously promoted and most heavily funded? What will happen if in its anxiety to preserve a radical secularism, it detaches itself from its life-giving roots? Our societies will not become more reasonable or tolerant or adaptable but rather more brittle and less inclusive, and they will increasingly struggle to recognize what is true, noble and good.

H/T: Whispers

"We have no other options." (UPDATED)

Jürgen Habermas, one of the world's leading contemporary proponents of philosophical hermeneutics and an atheist, writes about Christianity:

"Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

PoMo chatter, indeed. . .unless, of course, Western civilization and its Christian foundation deems your favorite sin as. . .well. . .a sin.

UPDATE: The quote above is attributed to Habermas. It is a paraphrase. Here's the real deal from Times of Transition (2006):

". . .Christianity not only fulfilled the initial cognitive conditions for modern structures of consciousness; it also fostered a range of motivations that formed the major themes of the economic and ethical research of Max Weber. Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” (150-1)

Be sure to FOLLOW HancAquam! (right side bar) and check out the WISH LIST!

On the definition and proper use of the Cheesy Grin

I've been asked by MightyMom to define "cheesy grin."

Def., "a facial expression used to garner sympathy for a request when said request is known to be improper," or "a facial expression made by one who is shamelessly asking for a favor he/she knows is undeserved"

Examples:

1). Your teenaged daughter is grounded for violating her weekend curfew. Despite your best efforts to show resolve in the face her pleadings, she notes some wavering and decides to bide her time. The next weekend, detecting your weakness, she asks with a Chessy Grin, "Can I go to the mall with Susie?"

2). Your spouse is upset with you for __________. In an attempt to end the deadly silence around this issue, you break out a Cheesy Grin and say, "Wow! How silly were we for arguing over __________?"

3). You are a poor grad student with a criminally small book budget. Needing several specialized yet easily obtainable books, you ask for help on your humble blog. With a Chessy Grin, you write: "Don't forget to browse the Wish List and send a book my way!"

4). Your boss is notoriously grouchy and miserly. You want off work on a Friday. Approaching him with a Cheesy Grin, you say, "Not much going on this Friday, uh boss?"

The key to the effectiveness of the Cheesy Grin is shamelessness.

P.S. Don't forget to FOLLOW HANCAQUAM! (cheesy grin) ------------------------->

The luxury of great books and greater faith

William Chase diagnoses and laments the decline of the English department:

What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.

Replace "English department" with "the Church" or "Catholic theology" and you will have a fairly accurate picture of what is happening in our neck of the ecclesial and academic woods.

What's the cure for the study of literature?

It would be a pleasure to map a way out of this academic dead end. First, several of my colleagues around the country have called for a return to the aesthetic wellsprings of literature, the rock-solid fact, often neglected, that it can indeed amuse, delight, and educate. They urge the teaching of English, or French, or Russian literature, and the like, in terms of the intrinsic value of the works themselves, in all their range and multiplicity, as well-crafted and appealing artifacts of human wisdom. Second, we should redefine our own standards for granting tenure, placing more emphasis on the classroom and less on published research, and we should prepare to contest our decisions with administrators whose science-based model is not an appropriate means of evaluation. Released from the obligation to deliver research results in the form of little-read monographs and articles, humanists could then resolve to spend their time teaching what they love to students glad to learn. If they wanted to publish, they could do so—at almost no cost—on the Internet, and like-minded colleagues could rapidly share the results of such research and speculation. Most important, the luxury of reading could be welcomed back. I want to believe in what they say.

This is exactly what we do at the University of Dallas. Problem solved.

Drudge Report?

Anyone know what happened to The Drudge Report?

It's been down for two days.

I read that some hackers used that site and others to spread viral chaos. My anti-virus caught a couple of attempts at infection last Friday and early Saturday.

Heh. . .

Daily Homilies: 9/27-10/4

Starting today (9/27) and through next Sunday (10-4), I will be posting a daily homily.

Good, bad, incomplete, rambling. . .no matter: daily homily.

My preaching muscle has gotten flabby. . .time for a little exercise!

"Hey, prof! You get my global warming homework?"

OK...this sort of thing really gets me in touch with my Inner-Conspiracy Theorist:

"The Dog Ate Global Warming," Patrick J. Michaels

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

Read the whole thing at NRO.

Coffe Cup Browsing (Website Edition)

Religion Clause: news and analysis about legal cases involving the Establish Clause of the 1st Amendment

The Center for Theology and Natural Science: great resource for those interested in the intersection of science and theology

Powerline: conservative political commentary

What's Wrong with the World: philosophy, politics, theology, etc.

Stand Firm: chronicling the sad decline of Anglicanism into neo-pagan irrelevance

RevKnowItAll: no, this is not one of my blogs. . .Q&A for inquiring Catholics

Preces Latinae: lots of Latin prayers

thisibelieve: a project of PBS--some good, some bad, some just dumb

Logical Paradoxes: the fastest route to a headache on the internet

SurLaLune FairyTales: traditional tales with annotations

Project Gutenberg: over 30,000 e-books

American Museum of Natural History: frogs, trees, bears, etc.

Book-a-Minute: "Some woman puts Dante through Hell." (Inferno)

Lagoon Creature Talking Smack

That Papist Sasquatch of Seattle gloats:

"236 Followers! Ha! Take that, Fr. Philip! Five new mumbling ciphers in a single day! Five new playthings for me to, to... *do* things to! Mine is the superior pointless and idle tyranny!"

Can we let him get away with talking such outrageous blogsphere smack?

I think NOT!

Go to the right side bar and FOLLOW HANCAQUAM! -------------->

Let's teach that Shambling He-Cow a thing or two about who's the Bigger Dog. . .

Chessy Grin

The WISH LIST was updated this morning!

Coffee Cup Browsing (Bizarro Edition)

The Gashlycrumb Tinies: "N is for NEVILLE who died of ennui"

Google search suggestions: "I like to. . ."

Bizarro law-suits. . .can you say "tort reform"?

Can you watch this for one minute and not go crazy?

How to create Russian Haired Sausage

Nashville! Here they come!

Pimp my bug. . .

Extraordinary, weird, and just plain ugly churches

Memorable (and weird) weddings

Ice Cream flavors not even I would eat!

Singing for Dear Leader (UPDATED)

Oh, no. . .no Cult of Personality here. . .move along, move along:



And here's the pop quiz that makes sure the kiddies were properly indoctrinated.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has dug up the back-story on this creepy piece of propaganda.

Coffee Cup Browsing

Globalist hypocrites gather to preach to the Unwashed Masses about "climate change"

You aren't disappointed if you never thought he was the Messiah

The Catholic Medical Association speaks out on B.O. Care.

Big trouble for Mahony in L.A. Former vicar for clergy is telling tales at trial.

Continuing toil and trouble over New Age oogie-boogie nonsense in Catholic hospitals

A feline with too much time on his hands. . .er. . .paws

Unicorns of the Apocalypse! (they look scared)

A lot of VERY cool photographs

How you are going to die. . .or, the chances that you will be consumed by a fleshing-eating bacteria during a domestic terrorist attack; that is if cancer and heart disease don't get you first

No amount of money would get me in this thing. . .very large doses of Xanax might

25th Sunday OT 2005: Redux

[from 25th Sunday OT 2005. . .by way of comparison]

25th Sunday OT: Is 55.6-9; Phil 1.20-24, 27; Matt 20.1-16
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Irving, TX

Sounding very much like Mary saying YES to the Lord’s angel at the Annunciation, Paul proclaims without pride: “Christ will be magnified in my body…” Christ will be made larger, brighter, sharper, denser, louder, and more skilled in Paul’s body. Paul adds without fear, “…whether by life or by death.” Christ will be magnified in his body, whether by life or by death. Like Mary at the feet of the angel, Paul turns his life and his death over the Lord—and the work of the Lord—and confesses to his brothers and sisters that his life as a worker for the Lord will be larger, brighter, sharper, and more skilled precisely b/c the work he does will be done for the greater glory of the Lord. And this is just the work of his life! Death is no obstacle for Paul b/c “life is Christ, and death is gain.” So choose! Live in Christ and magnify His work on earth. Die in Christ, be with Him eternally, and still magnify His work in His presence. Now that’s commitment.

But here’s what I want you to notice: Paul does not donate his time, talent, and treasure out of his excess. He doesn’t give over to the work of the Lord the overflow of his riches. The leftovers. Paul does not say “Christ will be magnified in my checkbook.” “Christ will be magnified in my volunteer hours.” “Christ will be magnified in my talent.” He says that Christ will be magnified in his BODY. His very flesh. And whether he lives or dies the work he does for the Lord will bear abundant fruit for others. Paul does not parcel his life (or his death!) into neat packages addressed to different and equally worthy recipients: his family, his career, his friends, and, oh, one for the Lord too here on the bottom somewhere. Paul’s whole life—the first fruits, the abundant works, the failures and misgivings, and, finally, his last breath—all, his whole life is given to Christ for the enlargement of Christ.

What does it mean for Christ to be magnified in the body? The idea, I think, is to pull us out of the very human habit of abstraction, the very human temptation to loft our religious obligations to one another into the heavens where we can keep them safe from our duty to perform them on earth. So long as the obligation to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned remain abstracted moral imperatives far, far away, we are tempted to honor them in the abstract, neglect to perform them, and remain confident that the work of the Lord is getting done. Paul’s insistence that Christ will be magnified in his body is the clearest indication we have that the work of the Lord is to be DONE. Not just thought about. Not just written about. Not just preached about. And certainly not abstracted and lofted onto some kind of spiritualized “to do” list. The work is to be done. And done first for God’s greater glory.

Now. I know what you’re thinking! “Wow, Father is wound up tonight. He must think we’re all lazy bums laying around thinking about the good works of mercy, but watching Wheel of Fortune instead!” Not quite. I’ve seen the generosity of this community, and I know what motivates this community to be tools of the Lord in the world. There is a hunger here for others to see and hear what the Lord has done in your lives. There is an eagerness here, a tangible need to draw others to the Lord and to witness to them the power of Christ’s mercy—to forgive, to heal, to bless. I’m not wagging my finger at you tonight, but merely reminding you where you came from, where you are, and where you are going. You came from Christ. You are with Christ. And you will be with Christ.

But there is a temptation waiting for us. An eager little devil waiting to pounce on our witness to the Lord. It is an opportunity for us to sin and delight the Liar. What is this temptation? It is the temptation to believe that we work for the Lord out of our own generosity, out of our own time, out of our own resources, and we are therefore entitled to a greater reward when we outwork our neighbors.

This is exactly the parable of the whiny workers from Matthew, a parable about our salvation and our sanctification.

The whiny workers begrudge the landowner’s generosity in paying full wages to the latecomer laborers. Why? For some reason they feel that their own labor and their own wages are diminished by the largess of the vineyard owner. Somehow their day’s labor is dirtied. Their dollar is devalued. They worked harder and longer under the fiery sun, so they deserve more than those who sauntered in at the last hour and barely broke a sweat!

These guys are upset b/c they are working out of a very human notion of justice, a temptation, I think, to believe that compensation is earned; to get what is owed you, what you deserve. But remember, this is a parable about salvation and holiness not a lesson on capitalist economics.

Is it a human notion of justice you want applied to your eternal life? Do you want forever what you deserve? What you’ve earned in this life? Do you want the Father to give you a just compensation for your life’s work? The whole point of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we won’t be given what we deserve; we won’t receive from the Father what is owed to us. As I have said to you many times: we don’t want God’s justice! We want His mercy! And Christ has bought that mercy for us.

Our Final Wage was offered on the Altar of the Cross once for all. Unearned. Free. Whether you came to your salvation as an infant sixty years ago or as a teenager ten years ago or as an adult three hours ago, your Final Wage comes from the bottomless cache of the Father’s generosity. Salvation is free. Holiness—the living out of that salvation morning, afternoon, and night—is work. But even that labor is graced by a loving God Who would see us with Him for eternity. That grace is sufficient to help us magnify the Lord.

Make Christ larger, brighter, louder, sharper, sweeter, stronger, kinder, truer, better, more beautiful, more loving, more faithful, more humble, more generous, and make Christ bigger, and bigger, and bigger in your life. Magnify the Lord til your knees buckle. Magnify the Lord til your back hurts. Magnify the Lord in your body til there is no room for sin. And when the Lord asks, “Are you envious b/c I am generous?” Be able to say, “No, Lord! I am grateful in life and death, and I live and die to magnify you.”