First, believe. . .then work!

3rd Week of Easter (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Catholics love to do stuff. We love activity. Dinners, parish meetings, service projects, prayer groups, pilgrimages, collections, anything and everything that might bring about some Good in the world. We are repeatedly urge on by our bishops and priests to engage the world with acts of charity so that the work of God might be a witness to His freely given mercy. During Lent, we're exhorted from the pulpit to find a little quiet time, settle down from all our busyness, and spend some time alone with the Lord. Such exhortations wouldn't be necessary if we were a lazy lot given to lounging about. Doing good stuff is encoded in our Catholic genes. And with good reason: for us to be perfected in Christ, we must be fully committed to God's work—intellect and will; body, mind, heart, soul; all of our strength, all of our energy. So, when the people chasing Jesus and the disciples around the countryside find them and ask, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?," Catholics sit up and pay attention. Jesus' answer, however, seems somewhat incomplete: "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent." Our work is to believe?

 In the early fourth century, an insidious tendency slipped into the Church's spirituality from our Greek philosophical ancestry. Crudely put, the dominant wisdom in Greek culture urged folks to set aside their physical needs and focus on pursuing higher, purely intellectual goals. The body's demands on our time and energy were seen as not only unfortunate distractions but potentially deadly traps as well. The truly enlightened will transcend the physical world and dwell wholly in the realm of Ideas. When this bit of Greek wisdom entered the Church, it was given the name “Quietism” and its defenders taught that only by passively surrendering the self to the divine could we be saved. Like most heresies, Quietism contains a grain of truth. Surrendering one's will to God in the pursuit of holiness is an excellent first step. But it is just the first step. When Jesus tells the crowd that believing in him is what they must do to accomplish the work of God, he's teaching them the first step to take in the life-long task of working with God's love to bring about both individual and communal holiness. Believing in the Christ goes hand-in-hand with accomplishing Christ's work. 

Jesus always seems to bob and weave around straightforward questions and then answers the unasked yet more fundamental question. Today is no exception. The people in the crowd want to know what it is they must do in order to do God's work. They are wanting Jesus to say something like, “Feed the hungry, give alms, fast and pray, and go on pilgrimages.” But Jesus knows that if he gives them a Holy To-Do List, they will run off, do those jobs, and wait for holiness to find them. The more fundamental (and unasked) question he eventually answers is: who must I become in order to accomplish God's work? His answer: you must become a believer in the One sent by God to atone for your sins. In other words, before you begin the work of God, you must belong to God, otherwise your work will be in vain. So, yes, our first job is to believe in the Christ; then, once we have given ourselves wholly to the Father, our work in His Name will both nurture us in holiness and spread the Good News of His abundant mercy. Believing and sitting quietly is at best preparation for tackling God's To-Do List. But tackling that list without surrendering to God is work too easily frustrated by all-too-human vanity. To do God's work, we must first be God's people!

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Do not be troubled. . .

3rd Sunday of Easter (2012)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Let's set the scene: the Eleven are huddled together with some of the other disciples discussing Peter's encounter with the Risen Christ. In the middle of this excited discussion in walks the two disciples who had been on the way to Emmaus. They tell their astonishing story of meeting Christ on the road and how he revealed himself in the breaking of bread. So, we have a large group of people who knew Jesus, loved him, followed him all over the country, and were very much aware of what happened to him in Jerusalem. They knew of his death and that his tomb had been found empty. The reported sightings of Jesus after his death were not only exciting but terrifying as well. Could he really still be alive? And what if he were still alive? What do we do? Search for him? If he's still alive, the temple guards and Roman soldiers will be looking for him. Do we wait around 'til he shows? If the authorities find us with him, we'll be executed as rebels! Their excitement is poisoned by terror. Their love for Christ is tainted by confusion. Do they embrace excitement and love? Or terror and confusion? They believe but they are disbelieving. Why are they (we) troubled? 

The disciples are in a panic. At the peak of their confusion, Jesus appears in their midst and says, “Peace be with you. . .Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” The disciples are “startled and terrified.” That's one way to put it. No doubt there is some screaming, some fainting, a few explosive cusses, maybe even a run the door! There they are, discussing Jesus appearances after his death. . .and he just shows up! The disciples believe they are seeing a ghost. Jesus offers no mystical explanations; no theological or philosophical argument for how and why he's there; instead, he casually tells them to examine him, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see. . .” John reports that the disciples were “incredulous for joy and were amazed.” Incredulous for joy. Disbelieving in their delight. Skeptical in their happiness to see and touch their Lord. They are amazed, astonished, surprised, a little shocked. Jesus does nothing to calm their surprise but he does offer them a remedy for their disbelief. He eats a piece of fish to show them that he is no ghost, to show them that he is indeed with them—body and soul. 

Why are the disciples troubled? They are criminals among their own people, running and hiding from the law. They are known to be followers of a heretic and rebel. Their Master has been convicted of sedition and blasphemy, tortured, and executed. The authorities know that his body is not in its tomb, and they've broadcast a story implicating his followers in stealing it. They sat at Jesus' feet for three years, listening to him teach, and they've heard him say that he intends to destroy the temple and raise it again in three days. Though they said that they believed he was the Messiah, events have unsettled this belief, leaving them with profound doubts and deep regrets. They are troubled b/c they have staked their lives and reputations on the word of an executed criminal who's dead body has disappeared from its grave. Yeah, they're troubled alright! And just to add to their trouble, this executed criminal starts appearing to them off and on. What are they supposed to believe? What are they supposed to do with all this trouble? If they go public, they end up on a cross. If they keep quiet, they risk disobeying the Christ and betraying him once again. In the midst of all this turmoil and spiritual violence, does the Master offer them any comfort at all? He does. Peace be with you. You are witnesses. 

After the disciples see and touch his risen body, Jesus says to them, “. . .everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled. . .These [were] my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.” In other words, the disciples shouldn't be shocked at seeing and touching his risen body. Why? B/c he told them that he would die and rise again. Everything that has happened to him since they first met him was predicted and explained in the scriptures. They are surprised, disbelieving b/c they did not understand his teaching. Now that they have seen and touched him, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” To understand the Scriptures—what we call the Old Testament—is to understand Christ. Jesus says to them, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” In Acts, we read, “God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. . .God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.” What the prophets foretold, the disciples witness. The Christ would suffer and die. He did. The Christ would be raised from his tomb. He was. Christ Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise to send His people a Savior. We are witnesses. 

So, why are we troubled? We are troubled b/c—like the disciples—we believe and at the same time we are disbelieving! What's the difference between belief and believing? Belief is rigid, static, unmoving. Belief is saying Yes to a statement, “Yes, I believe that the Lord rose from the dead.” Belief can be captured in a word or a gesture. It can be automatic, easy, cheap. Anyone can assent to a belief and move on. Believing is something else entirely. Seeing and touching the truth of Christ goes beyond just reading about it or discussing it or being worried about it. Believing is what happens when we combine belief with witness. Believing is what happens when we do more than say Yes to a statement; it's what happens when that statement of belief becomes an act, a behavior, a habit. “Yes, I believe that the Lord rose from the dead. . .and here's why I believe it and how his resurrection has radically changed my life!” Believing is what happens when we embody Christ himself, become the living Word day-to-day; when we not only speak the truth and live it but also when we become essentially identified with it—unshakably attached to Christ that to separate ourselves from him is to die lost and alone. If we are troubled, it is b/c we believe Christ but we are not believing; we assent to his teachings out of convenience or old habits or b/c everyone else does but we do not live and breath as believing witnesses. 

Luke reminds his brothers and sister that they are witnesses to Christ's fulfillment of the prophets. They were there to see and hear and touch the Christ as he gave flesh and bone to the ancient words of God's prophets. We weren't there. Our witness as believing men and women is different. We live with the Holy Spirit of God burning within us and among us, consuming the fuel of our lives and spreading the good news of the Father's mercy everywhere we go. Our witness to Christ is laid bare in how we think, act, speak; how we move among family and friends; how we treat those who have sinned against us. We are vowed to both believe and to be believing. To both assenting to the truth and to giving that truth our hearts, minds, and bodies. The Lord is risen! And he is risen in each of us. Peace be with you. Touch and see the Lord among us and do not be troubled. The Lord is risen indeed!

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LCWR: this is just embarrassing. . .

Just in case anyone out there is unclear about the reasons for the CDF's assessment of the LCWR's theological sanity, here's an excerpt from their 2012 assembly keynote speaker:

Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis.

Now, here's some commentary and questions:

Although we may never know what really happened [So, "what really happened" is not recorded in the Gospels?], we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person [And how do we know this?  Because you say so?  We should trust you but not the Gospels?]. We are told that he did not die [False.  2,000 years of Christian teaching is crystal clear:  the man Jesus died on the Cross.  No Christian church/denomination denies this fact]. He made his transition [died?], released his animal body [died?], and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality [There are "levels of physicality"?  Has anyone told Dawkins?  What does this mean?] to tell all of us that we would do what he did [Didn't he mention something about following his Way while he was still living; or, was all that just a dream? How did he tell us this?  Through the apparently unreliable Gospels?]. The new person that he became [Person?  But he "released his animal body," so what does "person" mean?"] had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine [Wait.  Has he released his animal body at this point?  I'm confused about the chronology of the releasing of the animal body!  Is the Jesus of the Animal Body a product of the continuity of consciousness, or does that stuff come later?]. Jesus’ life [Which Jesus?  Pre or post-release of the animal body?] stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis [Saying stupid stuff in Latin doesn't make it smart].

I think that Thomas McDonald is being too kind when he describes Ms Hubbard's explanation of "conscious evolution" as ". . .a combination of X-Men comics, techno-fetishizing, narcissism, New Age nonsense, paganism, trite bromides, bad grammar, Gnosticism, and good old heresy."  I would add a few descriptive words myself, but I might die in my sleep unabsolved of serious sin. 

That Catholic religious sisters are even considering paying this charlatan money is truly beyond embarrassing.  I've read a number of self-respecting dissident Catholic theologians and even they would be ashamed to be associated with this sort of bad sci-fi TV writing.  I can imagine a number of Unitarian Universalist pagans who would blush upon reading this junk.

To the Good Sisters who will be tarnished by this silliness, I am sorry.  Speak up!  Let the cadre who pretend to speak for you know that you are serious women, serious Christians, and that you want to be perfected in the Risen Lord and not "continued in consciousness" to become Homo universalis!

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Our God does not ration!

2nd Week of Easter (F)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Here we have the scriptural basis for that great Southern Baptist tradition of Sunday Dinner on the Grounds—well, except there's fish instead of fried chicken. To put it in Catholic terms, we have the first Knights of Columbus Pancake Breakfast. All this eating in a religious setting sets us up to start thinking about the heavenly banquet, that celestial picnic where we will feast and party in the presence of God Himself. Of course, it also draws our attention back to the Eucharist where we eat the Bread of Life and drink from the Chalice of Salvation. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with just two fish and five loaves begs us to notice God's loving-care for us and the abundance with which He loves us. But there is something else going on in this story, something a little more subtle. Jesus asks Philip, “'Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?'” John then adds, “He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.” So, Jesus is testing his student, and like most good test questions, this one isn't asking what it appears to be asking. What does Jesus really want to know? 

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but my namesake, Philip, doesn't answer the question correctly. Rather than pass the test, he opts for the literal answer, “Two hundred days' wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” John doesn't mention it, but I'm sure Jesus rolled his eyes at that answer. Peter's brother, Andrew, at least offers a practical, if inadequate suggestion, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Better but he still fails the test. What is that Philip and Andrew are missing? They aren't answering the question that Jesus is really asking. Just yesterday, Jesus told the disciples that the Father does not ration the gift of His Spirit. Rationing is our response to scarcity. When food, fuel, or medicine become scarce, we restrict their availability in order to stretch supplies. But God does not ration His Spirit, or His blessings, or His grace. Rationing goes against the Divine Nature b/c there can be no scarcity of His love. He is Love. God cannot be deficient or meager by His very nature. Jesus wants to know if his students have learned this lesson. 

And since we too are students of the Lord, let's take the disciples' test: when confronted with an apparently impossible task—say, feeding five thousand people with two fish and five loaves—what do you do? You don't count what you don't have—money, enough food. And you don't whine about what you do have—a few fish and some bread. You do what Jesus did. You take what you have, bless it, give God thanks for His gifts, and wait for the multiplication to begin! Of all the many options open to Jesus in this potentially disastrous situation—run, cry, throw a fit, laugh out laugh, shrug and walk off, beg for donations—he chooses instead to fall back freely and recklessly on the bounty and providence of his Father. This sounds a bit irresponsible to us good, upstanding, middle-class Americans. Where's the planning? How will he finance this project? Is his ministry to feed these people legal? Does he have the necessary permits? All of these questions are designed to sink us in the mire of scarcity; to plunge us into the deepest pit of worry. The answer to just about every question a disciple can be asked is: take what you have; bless it; give God thanks for it; and share with friends, family, neighbors, and strangers alike. Our God does not ration! 

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LCWR: getting to the truth of the matter

Reactions to the CDF's assessment of the LCWR are flooding the Catholic blogosphere.  

So far, 99% of these reactions have been predictably supportive of either the Left's narrative of Hierarchical Males Oppress the Alternative Spiritualities of Women or the Right's narrative of Holy Mother Church Finally Punishes Naughty Daughters.

There have been a few reactions that hit closer to the truth of the matter.

Tom McDonald makes a point that needs to be repeated like the "Hail Mary":

The LCWR is a toxic organization that has slowly poisoned the church since the 1970s. . .They do not represent the 60,000+ women’s religious of America, but rather a small, elite cadre of left-leaning leaders who openly break with the church. Many orders belong to the LCWR merely out of habit (so to speak), but feel as though they have no voice in the organization. They largely ignore them as a noisy embarrassment.

My own experiences with sisters/nuns in the last 12 yrs. bear this out.  Frequently, I've been told by religious women that the LCWR-types run roughshod over their member congregations and cause  problems with the clergy and donors.  Many lament the decline of their congregations and point directly to the radical feminist agenda of the national leadership as the primary cause.  My sense of things is that most sisters just ignore the nonsense and get on with their ministries. 

The Always Worthy Anchoress runs her horse outside the track:

People wondering what “side” I am on should know that I distrust any story that runs on the cheap and inefficient fuel of emotionalism; they generally become all about sound, fury and heat and once that happens, the realities become victims to the distortions of agenda. My thoughts are not in tune with either “side". . .I know many “sisters in pantsuits with bad haircuts” who have lived out their lives of faith and service, and their vows, like a poured out libation; their gentleness and generosity of spirit would shame some of their most vociferous critics, should they actually meet up. Often they are besmirched, dismissed and ridiculed as “hippie nuns” (and worse) by people for whom the only good nun is a habited nun.

Again, this lines up perfectly with my own experiences as a religious.  Most of the sisters I know are not in habit and most are fiercely dedicated to the Church.  We have a saying in the Order, "The habit does not make the friar."  There's nothing magical about the habit.  Yes, it is a good thing to wear the habit.  I wear mine most of the time.  On the flip side, the uncritical rejection of the habit by some sisters and their nearly demonic revulsion of those who wear one is scandalous. We cannot assume that the presence/absence of a religious habit tells us much of anything about the person.  How many lay people wear crosses and never give a thought to what it represents?  

Just to be clear about all this:  the LCWR needed to be investigated and it needs to be radically reformed if not outright disbanded.  The poison of the LCWR is pervasive and potentially deadly for some in the Church.  They have led many astray and need to face the Church's judgment.  However, none of us can or should assume that all sisters whose congregations belong to the LCWR have been tainted with their New Agey nonsense.  The self-anointed prophetesses of the LCWR are outliers, powerful outliers but nonetheless unrepresentative of the average American religious sister.

Pray for the sisters who labor under the LCWR-types and do NOT add to their burden by loading them up with scorn. 

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Grumblegrumblegrumble. . .

Posting has been a little light lately b/c Blogger has changed its administrator interface.   Being somewhat tech-stupid, it's taken me a day or two to get used to the new-fangled controls.  

You kids don't know blogging!  Back in My Day we had to enter HTML code by hand and draw the pics with a mouse.

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Thanks. . .

Thanks to Chloe for the Gilson book. . .and an anonymous soul who sent me a Kindle Book!

Many blessings upon you both. . .Fr. Philip Neri, OP
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Naming my Master?

At the behest of a Fellow Fat Traveler, I've named my bath scales Scylla and Charybdis.
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God loves, so He gives. . .

2nd Week of Easter (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Let's engage a little creative editing this evening, “God so loves the world that he gives his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Did you catch the changes? Loved becomes loves and gave becomes gives. God loves the world, so He gives us His only Son. Granted, it's a subtle change but one that make a big difference in how we understand exactly what it is that God did for us, is doing for us, and will do for us in Christ. Using the past tense of love and give might tempt us into believing that Christ's sacrifice for us on the Cross is a done deal. That happened 2,000 years ago. It's like the barbarians sacking Rome or WWI or the War of Northern Aggression. And in one sense we can say that Christ's death has happened, did happen long, long ago. But in another sense it is wrong to think of his death and resurrection as simply an historical event, a one time deal that we memorialize but never witness. Would we say, “God loved the world back then, so He gave those people back then His only Son?” No. What about the world in the last 2,000 years? God loves the world; therefore, He gives us His only Son so that we can have eternal life.

One of the beauties of the Catholic faith is the honor we give to God's creation. As a product of His goodness and wisdom, the world and its creatures share intimately in the divine goodness and wisdom that created us all. The Catechism teaches us that “. . .God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final purpose” (no. 301). So, God makes us, sustains us, enables us to act, and brings us to our final goal: the Beatific Vision. When John writes that “God so loved the world,” he doesn't simply mean that God created the world and then loved it. He means that because God is Love, the world was created; and because God is Love, the world is sustained; and because God is Love, we are able to act; and because God is Love, we are brought to our perfection as creatures intimately loved. The embodiment, the flesh and bone body of God's love is the divine person of Jesus Christ—the one He gave to us, gives to us, and will keep on giving to us for our perfection.

If everything I've just said is true, then why did we need, why do we need the Cross at all? Why isn't God's creating and sustaining love enough to bring us to the Beatific Vision? The easy answer is: the Fall. With the Fall, humanity stepped away from God's creating and sustaining love; in a misguided exercise of freedom, humanity walked away and set itself against God's love, and ultimately, against its own final purpose. Violating the Law and ignoring the Prophets, we came to believe that obedience to the Word and the natural law enslaved us to a foreign power, an alien will. And so, for the love He had and has and will always have for us, God gave the Word flesh and bone and sent him among us to live and die as one of us so that we might return to Love and live perfectly as partakers in the divine nature. John writes, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” When we believe in His Word and do His will, we are transformed into flesh and bone tabernacles, mobile temples of His presence in the world. And it is our duty—as carriers of the Body and Blood—to see to it that God's love for His world is given a human face, a human voice. God gives us His Son so that we too might become His sons and daughters, His divine Word given human flesh.

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CDF to LCWR: "serious doctrinal problems" (Updated)

The doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has produced some interesting fruit. . .

Frankly, I'm a little shocked that the report was made public and even more shocked that the CDF is actually Doing Something about the LCWR.  I figured the whole thing would end up being the curial equivalent of a severe finger-wagging.

But. . .the assessment and recommendations actually have some teeth. 

I can't imagine that this document is being well-received among the LCWR glitterati.  Expect much gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and throwing of ashes.

UPDATE:  Meet the keynote speaker at this year's LCWR assembly.   If you can stomach it, check out "conscious evolution."  Yes, this is the stuff the leaders of our women religious are learning. 

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Wednesday Fat Report: "Ponderis me, Domine!"

The new scales have been properly installed. . .blessed, sprinkled, incensed, and decorated with flowers.

Stepping up and waiting the appropriate amount of time, I read:  320lbs.  Good enough.

And so. . .it begins. . .again.

A Prayer Before Weighing Oneself (Ponderis me, Domine!)

Weigh me, O Lord;
in your kindness,
burn away my excessive fat;
blot out all my cellulite,
and bring me to my perfect waist size.

Amen.

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Shots fired! Shots fired! (from the pulpit)

Buckle your seatbelts, brothers and sisters. . .I give you, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, IL. . .speaking God's truth to the powers of this world:

[. . .]

You know, it has never been easy to be a Christian and it’s not supposed to be easy! The world, the flesh, and the devil will always love their own, and will always hate us. As Jesus once predicted, they hated me, they will certainly hate you.  [Hey, nobody ever promised you a rose garden. . .a Gethsemane Garden, yes.]

But our Faith, when it is fully lived, is a fighting faith and a fearless faith. Grounded in the power of the resurrection, there is nothing in this world, and nothing in hell, that can ultimately defeat God’s one, true, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  [Preach it, Bishop!]

For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire. [And we have not only survived the imperial Romans but have taken over their capital city as well!]

The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. [And she will survive whatever idiocy the DemoRepubiTeaPartyBlackPanthers foists on the nation in the coming years]

And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry. [And the self-loathing, suicidal screechers on the Catholic Left. . .and the self-righteous, triumphalists on the Catholic Right. . .and the parochial embezzlers and the pervert clergy and the hippie-dippy bishops and . . .]

[. . .]

May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil. [B.O.O.M.!!!]

As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith. The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction. 

[. . .]

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Read the whole thing. . .wow, just wow.

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Gratitude. . .

My thanks to Wendee for the Kindle Book!  

And more thanks to the anonymous benefactor who sent me the Ratzinger and Bouyer books!

I've already started the Holy Father's book on dogma and preaching. . .a forbidden topic among Dominican preachers.

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Monday Fat Report (Not)

Weighed four times this morning. . .and got four different numbers, ranging from 339 to 320.

I've decided that my scale is possessed.  Time for a new one and time to start over.

See ya Wednesday with another Fat Report.
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Christ’s peace is our security. . .

NB.  Preached this adapted homily from 2007 and it worked much better than yesterday's.

2nd Sunday of Easter (2012)
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Dominic Church, NOLA

Our safety comes first! Lock the doors b/c we are afraid! Install a new security system. We need four or five guns. Guard dogs. Threatening yard signs. A panic room with enough food and water for a month. Cameras covering every inch of the property. A couple of bodyguards. Yes, we’re afraid. So afraid, in fact, that we are now prisoners in our own home and hostages to our obsessive need for security and control. Why? B/c our safety comes first! And Jesus comes and stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.” The locks fall away. The guns melt. The security system starts playing “Ave Maria.” The guard dogs morph into kittens. The yard signs now read “WELCOME!” The bodyguards serve Hurricanes by the pool. We are no longer afraid. Christ, our Lord Jesus, commanded that we be at peace. And so we are. If you aren’t, I wonder why?

Let’s imagine that that tightly wound and locked down house is your soul. Or maybe your heart and mind. As a Christian you have nothing to fear from anything or anyone. But how many of us here will clamp down on our spirit like a nervous dictator during a riot when someone threatens the security of our trust in God? Or challenges the truth of our faith in the public square? Where is that apostolic spirit that Christ breathed on us? 

Let’s back up. The disciples are locked up tight in a room for fear of the Jews, meaning they were hiding from the partisan Jews who arranged for Jesus’ phony trial and illegal execution. The disciples, despite their cowardly betrayal of Jesus in the garden, were probably right to worry that they were being hunted. The partisan Jews and Romans know that they must capture all of the traitors. Jesus’ followers are a threat to the power of the temple and the empire. And so, they locked the doors for fear of their persecutors. Very understandable.

But is this what Thomas the Twin does when he denies that Jesus visited his brother disciples after his death? Does Thomas lock up the doors of his spirit b/c he fears persecution for his belief? No. Obviously not. He doesn’t believe, so how would installing security protect his faith? He has no faith to protect. Thomas’ denial of Christ in the face of the apostolic witness of his brothers is scandalous. Note: he doesn’t doubt. He denies: “I WILL not believe…” And then he demands evidence. Thomas is not threaten by persecution for his faith. Thomas is threatened by the faithful witness of those who have seen Christ in the flesh. And what exactly is it of Thomas’ that is threatened by this faithful witness? Let’s pause here and turn the question back to us.

When you, when we detect some alleged threat to our faith and slam the security doors of our soul and call the Church police, demanding absolute safety for our faith, what is it of ours that is threatened? Please don’t say, “My faith is threatened”! How exactly could faith ever need or use the safety that anyone on Earth could provide? Our faith in God, the trust God has given us as His children, cannot be seriously threatened by anyone or anything outside our own intellect and will. Let me suggest that it is our Spiritual Comfort that's threatened. Our comfortable, settled ways of “being spiritual,” that's what gets threatened by our worldly persecutors. And it is the Devil who convinces us that when our Spiritual Comfort is threatened it is actually our Faith in God that is threatened. Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

The disciples go around with Jesus listening to him teach and preach, watching him argue and heal, sweating with him to serve the poor, the wrecks, the abandoned. They see him day in and day out, hear him every time he speaks. And yet! At crunch time, at the hour of his crucible, they run like weasels set on fire, denying him as they run. Would we have done any better? I dunno. Maybe. But my point is this: while with Christ their faith is comforted and defended and they are not afraid. Without him they flee their persecutors behind locked doors. The Risen Christ comes to them to console their anxieties. And Thomas, who is absent for Christ’s visit, denies that any such thing had happened. His comfortable ways of being spiritual are threatened by the disciples’ outrageous testimony, and he slams the security doors of his soul and calls the police. He decides that the best way to defend his comfortable way of understanding Christ is to demand from Christ irrefutable empirical evidence: “Unless I see the mark of the nails of his hands…I will not believe.” 

Now back to us. When our comfortable ways of being spiritual, our settled means of knowing Christ are threatened, what do we do? Don’t we become Denying Thomases? That is, we deny the power of God’s gift of faith and cast around for empirical evidence that we are right to trust God. Think about that phrase: “evidence that we are right to trust God”! What kind of faith needs evidence? We look to weeping statues, Blessed Mother tortillas, bleeding Hosts, a dancing Sun, and on and on. All of which could be miraculous. But none which are necessary for us to be truly faithful! You may say to me: “But Father! The faith has enemies everywhere! Radical Muslims. Secularist humanists. Dissident theologians, religious, and clergy. Scandal in the seminaries, in the chanceries, in the universities. Rebellious lay groups like the Women’s Ordination Conference and Catholics for Choice! There's error and dissent everywhere! And the Holy Father isn’t doing anything about it! Nothing!” And Jesus stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.” And his servant, John Paul II, stands next to him and says, “Be not afraid.” 

For us, Christ’s peace is our security. We are secure in his presence. Secure in his love for us. Secure in the knowledge that he has won the last battle against darkness and despair. Secure in the church and her invincible yet always open gates. Thomas sticks in fingers in Christ’s wounds and says, “My Lord and my God!” And Jesus tells him that he has come to believe b/c he has seen. The truly blessed, however, are those who have not seen and yet still believe. 

“Our safety comes first” is the motto of the damned. There’s nothing safe or easy or comfortable about following Christ. There is only your life lived in absolute trust. Therefore, unlock your doors. Welcome the strange and the stranger. Stand firm in the Word. Celebrate Christ's joy in the Sacraments. And there will be nothing comfortable in your faith to threaten. Nothing easy to complicate by a challenge from the powers of this world. Make trusting Christ the most outrageous thing you do, the most thrilling adventure of this life. And there will be nothing out there or in here to stand up and demand that you betray the Lord. We must believe that he has won this war. There is nothing for us to fear from our enemies. Receive the Holy Spirit and freely live life as a Child of the Risen Lord, the life our Lord died on the cross to give you! And he appears among us to say, “Peace be with you.”
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