We cannot do this on our own

10th Week OT (Th) 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

Our Holy Father caused a bit of a stir a few days ago when he reportedly told a group of visiting religious that some traditionalist Catholics tend toward the Pelagian heresy, while some progressive Catholics tend toward the heresy of Gnosticism. Just yesterday, we learned that we don't really know what he said, or even if he said anything at all. Regardless, just the report that the Holy Father may have mentioned these two heresies has been enough to reignite interest in both of these ancient yet enduring theological oddities. Very briefly, Gnosticism is the idea that we are saved by the acquisition of specific, secret knowledge—salvation by knowing. Pelagianism is the idea that, despite the Fall, we are still capable of choosing good over evil without God's help—salvation by works. When Jesus tells the disciples that their righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees, he's admitting that the Pharisee are righteous and that some part of being righteousness is about obeying the Law. However, to be a follower of Christ is to be surpassingly righteous, to excel in being something more than just a Law-abiding Christian. What is that Something More that we must master? And how do we begin to acquire it? 

The 5th century British monk, Pelagius, denied that Adam and Eve's disobedience tainted human nature with Original Sin. Beyond setting a bad example, the Fall had no real spiritual consequences, no lasting effect on whether or not we to be choose good or evil. Had Pelagius' views won the day instead of Augustine's, we would all be functional pagans with the Church's blessing. How so? Basically, ancient pagans believed that the gods directly interacted with mortals only rarely and usually by invitation only.* Sacrifices were performed not only to assuage divine anger but also to keep the gods from nosing around in one's business. Pelagius' views on the effects of the Fall leave Christians pretty much among their pagan neighbors as de facto pagans themselves: striving to be good while avoiding the notice of God, calling upon His help only when things become dire. Now, this particular idea—God only needs to make an appearance when I need Him—is indeed both ancient and new. How many of us are functional pagans when it comes to our daily interactions with the Divine? How many of us believe that righteousness is a state we ourselves work for by being Good Boys and Girls? 

Jesus wants the disciples (and us) to be Good Boys and Girls, but he wants our righteousness to surpass the merely Pelagian righteousness of the Law-abiding Pharisees. “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. . .” Jesus seems to saying here that anger is spiritually equivalent to murder. No. He's saying that both anger and murder will see us liable to judgment. Under the Law, only murder gets you in trouble. Under the New Covenant, anger—the motive for murder—can hurt you as well. In other words, contra Pelagius, it's not just our deeds that cause us spiritual damage, or grant us benefit. How we think, feel, and choose our deeds goes into the equation as well. If this is true, then we must look to God's grace constantly. Not just when we think we need Him, but every moment of every day, we must persistent in calling upon the Lord for His divine assistance, asking to receive from Him every good gift He has to give us. We can nothing good without Him, so the only way for us to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees is to turn our heart and minds toward Him; repent our sins, and take in His mercy with thanksgiving. We are not functional pagans. We cannot do this on our own. 

*I realize that the relationship btw ancient pagans and their gods was far more complicated than this, but generally speaking, what I've said here is true.

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No, the Pope didn't say that. . .

Figures. . .

In response to media flurry, the Latin American Confederation of Men and Women Religious (CLAR) released a statement on June 11 claiming that the assertion of a gay lobby at the Vatican “cannot be attributed with certainty to the Holy Father.”

[. . .]

The same source claims that the Pope also said that “the reform of the Roman curia is something that almost all of us cardinals requested during the congregations previous to the conclave. I also did. I cannot personally make that reform, with these managerial issues... I am too unorganized; I have never been good at that. But the Cardinals of the committee will carry it out.”

[. . .]

Regarding the decision of “Reflexión y liberación” [a leftist Chilean paper] to publish the story, CLAR says that “in fact, no authorization was requested.” 

“It is clear that, based on these facts, it cannot be attributed with certainty to the Holy Father, the specific expression contained in the text, but only in its general sense.”

[. . .]

Which means everything else reported about the conversation is probably false too. 

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Promise Fulfilled

NB. Here's today's excuse:  went to dinner with a friend last night and sat in the restaurant drinking iced tea for 2.5 hrs. . .so, at around 2.00am I finally drifted off to sleep. Woke up at 4.30am. Thus, the following Borrowed Homily from last year. . .mea culpa.

10th Week OT (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

When first century Christians were first discovered by their pagan neighbors, they were described as Jewish sectarians. In fact, most of the earliest Jewish disciples of the Way understood themselves to be Jews who were following the Law and the Prophets by following Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah. Scattered throughout the Gospel accounts of Christ's public ministry, particularly his teaching, we read sentences like, “He said this/did this so that the scriptures might be fulfilled.” In the Creed, we declare that Jesus' birth, trial, death, and resurrection happened secúndum Scriptúras—“in accordance with the Scriptures,” meaning that he fulfilled the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The intimate and indissoluble relationship between the Old and New Covenants is most clearly seen in the Last Supper. Jesus transforms the thanksgiving bread and wine of Passover into his body and blood for our Eucharist. He teaches us the most perfect means of returning to our Father, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” 

The Catechism presents a concise description of the relationship between the Old and New Testament, “[The OT] prophesies and [foreshadows] the work of liberation from sin which will be fulfilled in Christ: it provides the New Testament with images, 'types,' and symbols for expressing the life according to the Spirit. . .The Law of the Gospel 'fulfills,' refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection. In the Beatitudes, the New Law fulfills the divine promises by elevating and orienting them toward the 'kingdom of heaven'”(nos.1964-6). Yesterday, we read the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus lays out a means for participating in God's beauty through acts of charity. When we embody His love and behave in a loving way toward others, we actively take part in Love Himself and achieve blessedness. The whole purpose of the Mosaic Law was to give God's chosen people a concrete means of acting in the world for their own good and the good of others. The Prophets were sent to preach and prophesy the spirit of the Law: as former slaves who were delivered from bondage by your God, do not think and treat others as slaves; think of and treat everyone as members of your family. 

Jesus fulfills this prophecy by successively transforming us from slaves of sin; to students of holiness; to friends of the Master; to brothers and sisters; and finally, into co-heirs of his Father's Kingdom! If we hope to take advantage of the most perfect means of returning to our Father, we must start by receiving His gift of mercy and throw off the chains of sin. Once freed from sin, we enroll in Christ's school of holiness to study the ways of charity and peace. When we have learned the basics of loving God, self, and neighbor, and how to live with one heart and mind, we begin to explore the love found in a friendship with God through Christ. Friends then become brothers and sisters through adoption into the family of God, and siblings become the inheritors of the treasuries of the heavenly household. This plan for returning to the Father has been the plan since the beginning. And none of it has changed. None of it has been abolished. Christ came not to abolish the plan but to fulfill it, to make it possible for us to start and finish our perfection through him, with him, and in him. Not only do we give God thanks and praise in this morning's Eucharist, we also take part in his sacrificial love for us. He surrenders himself to death so that we might be holy. Rise, then, from the death of sin and go be holy!

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Pelagians and the Pantheists. . .oh my!

from Catholic Culture:

During his conversation with the CLAR representatives, the Pope reportedly said that he was troubled by two different currents within the Church: a Pelagian tendency, which he saw in some traditionalist groups, and Gnostic or pantheist trends that he had seen in some women’s religious communities. He also expressed concern that some religious orders have been unable to attract new vocations—perhaps suggesting that “the Holy Spirit does not want them to keep going.” 

I've encountered both the Pelagian and pantheist tendencies in my short time as a Dominican friar.

While working in Campus Ministry at U.D. I regularly bumped into students who believed that they had to work overtime to earn God's love.  My first few months in the pulpit were aimed directly at this heresy.

I've also met many pantheists among religious. It's a strange combo of progressive fascism, religious syncreticism, pop-psychology, and radical feminism, all neatly wrapped up in the trendy "New Universe Story" mythology.

The difference btw the Pelagians and the Pantheists I've met is this:  the Pelagians were 18, 19, 20 year old college students who didn't know any better. . .the Pantheists were well-seasoned religious who knew exactly what they were doing.

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Your reward will be great. . .

NB.  So, I'm sitting here at 5.45am, casually composing a homily for the 8.30am Mass at St. Dom's and then it hits me:  I have the 7.00am at OLR!  Thus, is my excuse for the homily below:

10th Week OT (M) 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA 

Way back when I was a religious skeptic and hipster agnostic, one of the most damning criticisms of the Christianity that I'd ever heard was that belief in an afterlife dangerously focused the hearts and minds of the poor and oppressed on some promised “pie in the sky,” causing them to meekly accept their poverty and oppression in exchange for a better life after death. So, when my Marxist-feminist professors railed against the economic injustices of capitalism and the subjugation of women under western patriarchy, I knew that traditional Christianity was an accomplice to these crimes against humanity. The Church's promise of paradise was nothing more than a means of keeping po'folks and women in their places here on earth. And there was no better explanation of this scheme than the one found in the Sermon on the Mount. The whole thing reeks of Be Meek, Be Humble, and Be Quiet Right Now and Sometime in the Way Distant Future You Will Be Rewarded for Not Demanding Your Rightful Place at the Table Among Your Betters. Nietzsche was absolutely correct. Christianity is a slave's religion, a fable for sheep. 

This line of criticism is not easy to dismiss. After all, Jesus says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. . .” After you have suffered persecution, trial, and death for his name's sake. Why can't our reward in heaven be great for just being who we are, for just being really nice to our neighbors and generous to our friends? It's good to know that the grieving will be comforted and that the clean of heart will see God and that the merciful will be shown mercy. . .but doesn't all that just mean that we'll be treated with the same dignity as everyone else? And, I'm sorry, but knowing that the prophets who came before us were persecuted is not all that reassuring. Misery might love company but given the misery involved, I'd like to request a different sort of company. Given the choice, I'd prefer to hang out with the Beautiful People: the wealthy, the well-educated, the talented; those who understand that being blessed is all about enjoying those blessings while they are still alive to enjoy them. All this talk of being blessed after I'm dead makes me wonder why anyone would buy into this system called “Christianity.” Why can't my reward be great right now? Why do I have to wait until I get to heaven, assuming such a place exists at all? 

Our lives here on earth aren't just about living in the spirit, living for heaven as if we have nothing to do while we're “down here.” If living in ignorance of the spiritual world is dangerous, so is living as if the material world doesn't matter. We are rational animals who thrive in both the spiritual and the material worlds. As a philosophy, only Christianity offers a way of living fully as both material beings and spiritual beings. The Sermon on the Mount isn't a sermon about suffering now so that we might rejoice later on. Jesus is teaching the crowd that suffering is a hard fact of our material lives. Living in the spirit of charity with our eyes firmly focused on the hope of the resurrection isn't an escape from suffering, it's the only way to make sense of an otherwise senseless burden. Our suffering now has a end, a divine purpose. And that purpose is to encourage us—in our suffering—to bring encouragement to others who suffer. Misery loves company, true. But the company of Christ who suffered for us can redeem misery in this life. Redeem it, not end it. B/c suffering is how we choose to experience and use our pain, our grief, our persecution. If we choose to suffer well for others, we are redeemed and those who suffer are comforted. So, yes, blessed are the poor, the grieving, and the merciful. For their reward is great both in heaven and here on earth. 

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Young Atheists: Lessons for the Church?

A fascinating article in The Atlantic. . .the subtitle of the article reads: "When a Christian foundation interviewed college nonbelievers about how and why they left religion, surprising themes emerged." 

Here's one theme that should Shock and Awe Catholic pastors, DRE's, CYO chaplains, campus ministers, and RCIA teachers: 

The mission and message of their churches was vague
 

These students heard plenty of messages encouraging "social justice," community involvement, and "being good," but they seldom saw the relationship between that message, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. Listen to Stephanie, a student at Northwestern: "The connection between Jesus and a person's life was not clear." This is an incisive critique. She seems to have intuitively understood that the church does not exist simply to address social ills, but to proclaim the teachings of its founder, Jesus Christ, and their relevance to the world. Since Stephanie did not see that connection, she saw little incentive to stay. We would hear this again.

As our Holy Father, Francis recently preached: No Jesus, no Church.  You can't have the Church w/o Christ, or Christ w/o the Church.

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Miraculously strange, indeed. . .

10th Sunday OT 2013 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
 St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

Writing against the heresies of the Gnostic, Marcion in the second century, Tertullian uses Jesus' miraculous resuscitation of the widow's son to a make a point about Christ's relationship with his Father. On the way to making his point, Tertullian quickly summarizes the scene from Luke and notes, almost offhandedly, “This was not a strange miracle." Not a strange miracle? Did I miss something? Luke is reporting that Jesus returns a dead man back to life, right? Out of compassion for a widow whose only son has died, Jesus touches the dead man's coffin, and says, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” And he does. Tertullian tells us that it is not strange that a dead man rises from his coffin? Nothing unusual about that at all. Tertullian and I have very different definitions of the word “strange.” To be fair to Tertullian, he's making a larger point by using this miracle. His larger point is that the revival of the widow's dead son is not at all strange when viewed in the longer history of miracles. He asks, if God's prophets can perform miracles of such magnitude, why not His Son? Especially when the miracle bears the burden of revelation: “. . .they glorified God, exclaiming. . .'God has visited his people.'” And God still visits His People. 

Just a day or two before reviving the widow's son, Jesus had healed the centurion's servant. In both cases, Jesus showed compassion and exercised great power. In both cases, his interventions gave witness to his ministry and glory to God. And in both cases, news of his words and deeds spread like wildfire over Judea. But there is one interesting difference btw the two events. In the case of the centurion's servant, Jesus acts on a request for healing. No such request is made in the case of the widow's son. What's interesting is that the power and glory of God are revealed in both cases, whether those most directly involved in the miracle ask for God's help or not. Where Christ goes—preaching, teaching, healing—so goes the most exacting revelation of God possible. The truth of that revelation—God's Self-revelation—is not contingent upon the need, the desire, the faith, or the belief of those to whom He reveals Himself. To those with eyes to see and ears to hear, He is uncovered, unveiled, and all there is to do is give thanks and praise! For others, strangeness abounds when a miracle occurs and there is nothing to do but seek a non-miraculous explanation. 

Let's ask a somewhat difficult question: do we need a strange miracle to occur before we can say with the utmost confidence: “God has visited His people!”? Do we need a man several days dead revived? Do we need a sick servant healed from a distance? If so, if you need a strange miracle to believe, ask yourself why. Why do I need such thing? And consider: God visits His people daily in the Eucharist. In the breaking of the bread, a great prophet rises among the people. God's mercy; His healing touch; His cleansing spirit; all the gifts necessary to come to Him in the perfection of His Christ. . .all freely available right here in His Church. Think of them as miracles. . .strange little miracles, if you want. Regardless, strange or not, miracles or not, in the Eucharist, all of the sacraments, Christ touches you and says to you, “Arise!” Arise from death. Arise from sin. Arise from disease, doubt, distress, worry. Arise, speak, bear witness, and be yourself a revelation of God the Most High! What else is there for any of us to do but arise and bear witness; arise and give testimony to the miracle of our salvation; arise and speak out for the glory of God that we are no longer slaves to sin but free men and women burdened by nothing and no one but the surpassing love of God and the inheritance we have received through His Son? 

Is our salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus a strange miracle? Yes and no. Given what little we know about the nature of God—that He is Love—and given what we know about His Christ—that he is fully human and fully divine—and given what we know about the nature of creation—that all of it, us included, participates in the divine life—then, no, it would seem that God's love for us is not miraculous at all. That He would condescend to send His Son among us to save us through sacrificial love seems like the perfectly natural act of a loving Father, not miraculous at all. But then we consider how we look upon creation: how we are tempted to explain the objects and processes of nature w/o reference to our Creator; how we work so hard to acquire things and dominate people outside the laws of charity; how we torture truth, desecrate beauty, and defile goodness, then: Yes! indeed, our salvation is a strange miracle, with emphasis on strange. Through all of the messes we make that we come to accept and receive God's grace and find ourselves lifted up to and adopted into the holy family, yes, that's strange indeed. Miraculously strange. 

“Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sits up and begins to speak. Jesus gives him back to his mother. “Fear seized [the crowd], and they glorified God, exclaiming, 'A great prophet has arisen in our midst,' and 'God has visited his people.'” Through their fear and amazement, the witnesses to this strange miracle recognize the work of the Most High. Through their awestruck fear, they give glory to God, and proclaim the news that God has visited His people. He still visits His people. He still reveals Himself through His Word, His Christ, and His creation. The truths He reveals are not contingent upon the need, the desire, the faith, or the belief of those to whom He reveals Himself. Do we need strange miracles to see His truth? Do you wait for some strange sign to believe? That's not the faith we share. We believe on the witness of Christ's apostles and the witness of his Church. We believe on the evidence of reason rightly revealed as a divine gift. We believe b/c we know who we were before Christ; who we would be w/o Christ, and all that we can be with Christ and him alone. Arise from death. Arise from disobedience. Arise from weakness, uncertainty, pain, and trouble. Arise. Speak. Bear witness. And be yourself a revelation of God the Most High!

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A Mississippi Mystic

Being a Dominican friar and a philosophically-inclined poet-theologian (geez), I am at once intrigued and put-off by those who claim to experience mystical visions. My first thought upon hearing that some peasant child in Ussbackistan is having visions of the Blessed Mother is: Not another one! However, I immediately click over and read all about it. 

Out of the blue, a HancAquam reader and frequent commenter alerted me to a visionary from my own backyard, a Home Grown Mississippi Mystic, and his story is remarkable:

Claude Newman was an African American man who was born on December 1, 1923 to Willie and Floretta (Young) Newman in Stuttgart, Arkansas. In 1928, Claude’s father Willie takes Claude and his older brother away from their mother for unknown reasons, and they are brought to their grandmother, Ellen Newman, of Bovina, Warren County, Mississippi. . .

Read the whole thing!

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Is your heart a Sacred Heart?

Sacred Heart of Jesus 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

Thus says the Lord God, “I myself will look after and tend my sheep. . .I will rescue them. . .I will lead them. . .I will bring them back. The lost I will seek out. . .the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal.” And we are glad to hear the Lord say that He will look for the lost, rescue the endangered, and mend the broken. We are especially glad to hear these promises when we find ourselves among the lost, the sick, and the wounded. Not only does God do all that He promises to do, He does more. Much more. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” To find, to heal, and to mend, you need someone to be lost, sick, and injured. But Christ died for us “while we were still sinners.” Before we repent, before we confess, before we seek his mercy and absolution, he dies for us so that we are able to repent, confess, and seek his mercy. How is this possible? “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. . .” Because he surrenders his sacred heart on the altar of the Cross, our hearts are made sacred in the fires of the Holy Spirit! If your heart will be like Christ's, you too will surrender to the Cross. 

What does “surrender to the Cross” mean? And how is it done? If we think of surrendering as the coward's faint way of avoiding injury and death, or if we think of it as a desperate last resort before total defeat, then surrendering to anyone or anything is a failure. But if we accept in all humility that nothing is ours, that no one is ours; that all, everything belongs to God and we just make use of what He gives us, then surrender is nothing like a defeat or a failure. It's the first and last victory of a war we never have to fight. If nothing and no one truly belongs to us, then what do we have to give up? What is there left for us to sacrifice? Well, our sins are ours; we certainly own those. No. The Son is made flesh so that he becomes sin for us. Even our sins belong to God. Only He can forgive them, and He's done that already. So, what do we surrender? We hand over to God all that we think belongs to us; all that we imagine we own. Jesus said on the Cross, “Not my will but Yours be done.” We surrender to the Cross by freely offering to God what belongs to Him already. He doesn't need our surrender, but we need to surrender so that His will might become our own. 

How does God find us when we are lost? Heal us when we are sick? Lead us when we wander off? All trick questions! There is never a second of our lives when He isn't finding, healing, and leading us. The question is whether or not we are free enough from our attachments to Self and Things to be found, healed, and led. Whether or not we have given over all the weights and burdens and trials that work so hard to snuff the fire of His Spirit in us. Why do we insist on carrying our junk when He has already taken from us? Why do we demand to be punished for sins that were forgiven 2,000 yrs ago? Why do we invite tests and temptations when the war against both ended with a victory on the Cross? Christ's sacred heart split and bled out so that we might have access to the Father through His Holy Spirit. That access—our way in—remains open, has never closed, and will never close. But we cannot fit through if we are stuffed to the gills with pride in Self and bent over clinging to tons of stuff. Are you free to be found, healed, led, mended, rescued, and loved into the presence of the Most High? God knows where you are, but He will not find you unless you will to be found? He will not lead you or heal you unless you freely choose to be lead and healed. Unlike the dumb sheep of the gospel, we can choose to be livestock. And unlike the sheep of the gospel, we can choose to be freed by the Sacred Heart of Christ. 

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as terrible as an army with banners

I confess: I'm not a big fan of Chesterton. (GASP!) I know, I know. . .50 lashes and no dessert for a week.  

I find his style just a tad. . .what?. . .contrived? The rapid-fire parallelisms, the easy rotations of adjectives to make a cute point: "It's not that X is Y, but Y is X."

I dunno. Whatever IT is, it isn't found in the quotation below, a quotation from his famous book, Orthodoxy: 

Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. 

Here he's offering a critique of Stoicism, a philosophy that could seduce me so easily. . .being an Introvert and all.  He urges Modern Man to worship anything but his Inner Light b/c worshiping the Inner Light too quickly becomes Self worship. If you can't/won't worship the Lord your God, then worship cats or crocodiles. . .anything but one's Inner Light.

Oh. Why am I posting this quotation?  It will very likely appear in this Sunday's homily.

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Doctrinal Homily Outlines

The USCCB's new document on preaching, Preaching the Mystery of Faith, teaches:

". . .the homilist of today must realize that he is addressing a congregation that is more culturally diverse than previously, one that is profoundly affected by the surrounding secular agenda and, in many instances, inadequately catechized. The Church’s rich theological, doctrinal, and catechetical tradition must therefore properly inform the preaching task in its liturgical setting. . ."

To help with this seemingly daunting task, Kevin Aldrich runs a blog called Doctrinal Homily Outlines. 

Check it out and use with abandon!

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Loving Neighbors = Loving God

9th Week OT (Th) 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

The scribe who asks Jesus for the first commandment gets a two-fer. He not only recites the first commandment, he teaches its meaning for us mere mortals. To answer the man's question, Jesus quotes the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!” This familiar proclamation of God's sovereignty is enforced by the admonition, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,” soul, mind, and strength. If the God of Israel is Israel's lord alone—that is, Israel has no other gods—then the hearts, minds, souls, and strength of Israel's people cannot be divided among various and sundry deities. Everything we've got goes into the love and honor we give to God alone. If Jesus had stopped here, no one listening to him would've been all that impressed. He's simply reciting what every child in the nation learned as a matter of course. What Jesus does next is unusual. He recites a verse from nineteenth chapter of Leviticus as a corollary to the first commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What does loving God alone have to do with loving our neighbors? 

Lest we think that Jesus just added that verse from Leviticus as an afterthought, listen again to how he ties the first commandment to the second, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” Both commandments are great, no other commandments are greater. I said earlier that adding the quotation from Leviticus in the context of the scribe's question is unusual. The first commandment Jesus quotes is from a lengthy commentary on the 10 Commandments found in Deuteronomy. The second law is a quote from Leviticus, found in a list of various rules for good conduct. Immediately after the rule about loving your neighbor as yourself, Leviticus admonishes against interbreeding different species of animals and against planting fields with different kinds of seeds. Obviously, there's a big difference in the OT btw two laws that Jesus quotes. One is the first commandment of the 10 Commandments, the other is just one of many various rules of conduct. By bringing the two together and dubbing them the Greatest Commandments, Jesus gives practical, real-life force to both. Loving God means loving our neighbors; loving our neighbors is how we show that we love God. There can be no merely abstract or conceptual love for God. If you don't love your neighbors, you do not love God. 

We might not be all that impressed by the originality of this combination—we've heard it before—but the scribe is very impressed by Jesus' teaching. He's so impressed that he praises the Lord, noting that loving God and neighbor is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus sees that the scribe understands the connection btw the two laws and says to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” Do we truly understand how loving God and neighbor is worth more than all of our sacrifices, all of our prayers? What is sacrifice and prayer but an expression of our love for and faith in God? We are only able to love b/c God loves us first. When we love one another, we participate in the divine love that God Himself gives us. In effect, we are the rational, flesh and bone means of God loving His creation. A failure to love is more than just a personal flaw, it's a failure to take part in the divine life we have vowed to live. We call it by the innocuous name “lack of charity,” but lacking in charity can cause the death of the soul; it's a mortal sin, a mortal wound to our relationship with God. This is why Jesus calls these two laws the greatest commandments. Violate them and risk an eternity excluded from God; obey them and see yourself ever closer to the Kingdom of God.

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Dogs of God Bark the Gospel!

NB. Adapted from 2008.

St. Boniface (Readings for the Memorial) 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St Dominic Church, NOLA 

One of the Vesper’s petitions from the Commons for Martyr’s goes something like this: “Lord, hold us fast to preaching the gospel even in the face of opposition, persecution, and scorn.” Christian preachers are often tempted to let go of the Gospel when confronted by entrenched opposition. Like water seeking the fastest and easiest route downhill, preachers are coaxed toward taking the most direct path to the dilution of Christ’s teaching and, ultimately, a betrayal of the Spirit that animates us. We see and hear this when preachers begin preaching a Prosperity Gospel—Jesus wants you to be rich!—; or when they begin preaching a Zeitgeist Gospel—Jesus wants us to “fit in” with our times so we can witness from within;—or when you hear the Gospel of Identity Politics—being American, Black, Gay, Male or Female, Left or Right is preached to be more important than being faithful to Christ. All of these, of course, are dodges, ways around the difficult demands of what Jesus teaches us to be and do. They allow us to sift out the hard stuff and celebrate that which most tickles our bored ears. True martyrs (not self-appointed martyrs) present us with an extraordinarily hard reality: they believe the Gospel and die proclaiming it. Could we do the same if called upon to do so? 

St. Boniface, an eighth-century English Benedictine bishop and martyr who served as a missionary to Germany, wrote to a friend, “Let us be neither dogs that do not bark nor silent on-lookers nor paid servants who run away before the wolf…Let us preach the whole of God’s plan…in season and out of season.”* Though this sounds benign enough, Boniface died doing it, or rather died because he did it—he barked and refused to be hired as a religious P.R. man for Zeitgeist, Inc. Paul found himself in a similar position. Paul reports in Acts that he was seized by the Jewish leaders in the temple and almost killed because “[he] preached the need to repent and turn to God, and to do works giving evidence of repentance.” Should we be shocked that Paul would find himself the target of the powers-that-be? Not really. Jesus warned his disciples that they would follow him to the cross if they persisted in preaching his word. And it is persistence that most often gets the Gospel preacher and believer into trouble. 

Jesus says, “A hired man, who is not a shepherd…sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away…” The wolf attacks the sheep, killing one or two and scattering the rest. Why does the hired man run? Jesus says, “This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.” A preacher hired by Zeitgeist, Inc. will do the same—cut and run when it looks as though the wolves of persecution, opposition, and scorn come bounding down the hill. The good shepherd will stay and fight. And though he will never lose, he may sometimes die. 

There’s almost no chance that anyone here this evening will be called upon to die for preaching the Gospel.** In the U.S. in the 21st century, the Zeitgeist has learned more subtle ways of tempting us away from the Good Shepherd. Perhaps the most powerful temptation comes from the devil of freedom, or more accurately named, the devil of choice. Dangling before us the illusion of unfettered choice in a marketplace of unlimited options, the devil of liberty coaxes us with a powerful sense of entitlement, a sense of being owed our comfort, our liberty. And so, we stand dumbfounded in the Wal-Marts of religious goods and services, the Winn-Dixies of spiritual options, and we pick and choose. I will preach mercy but not justice; love but not responsibility; forgiveness but not sin. I will preach heaven but not hell; faith but not obedience. With a shopping cart full of our hodge-podge choices, we check-out and pay with our souls, and then go out preaching a gospel half-bought. If our souls must be the currency with which we purchase a spiritual good, let that purchase be our eternal lives with Christ. As the Dogs of God, we can do nothing less than die while ferociously barking the Gospel just as Jesus taught it.

* from the Office of Readings, St. Boniface

** I wrote that sentence in 2008.  Five years later. . .I'm not so sure anymore.

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10 Homilies for Audio Download

Per a reader's request. . .10 homilies recorded in 2012/2013 here at St Dominic Church:

The Spirit of the Lord 

Most Holy Trinity Sunday

First & Last

Get Some Beautiful Feet

Are you prepared for radical transfiguration?

Where's Your Courage?

Go Out into the Deep

Give From Your Poverty

Tribulation & the Second Advent

A Time to Measure
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We don't live rent-free in God's head

Charles Lwanga and Companions 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
St. Dominic Church, NOLA 

Jesus uses the parable of the wicked tenants to retell the story of Israel's turbulent history with God. In a tidy paragraph or so Jesus manages to summarize: 1) the essential relationship btw God and Israel (owner to renter); 2) the repeated failure of Israel to live up to the terms of the lease agreement (refusing to turn over God's share of the harvest); 3) their abuse of God's agents sent to procure His share (rejection of the prophets); and 4) their abuse and murder of the God's son in an failed attempt to steal his inheritance (the Passion and death of Christ). Sad but true: the tenants' behavior probably doesn't shock us. We're all too used to hearing about this sort thing from our fellow human beings. What should shock us, what I hope shocks us, or at least baffles us a little, is God's apparently relentless drive to get His people to hold up their end of the Covenant. Given their repeated fall from His grace and their stubborn refusal to accept His Word, why does God—over and over again—lift them back up, set them back on track, and bless them abundantly despite their disobedience? Why does He do this for us? For you? 

The one word answer here could be: love. He loves us. True. God is love, so it is His nature to forgive and bless. And His patience with our disobedience is surely a by-product of His loving nature. But if forgiveness were just about His love for us, then why do we care if we've sinned against Him? I mean, if we know that He will forgive us everything we do, why does sin bother us? A big part of the answer here is that we love God, so disobeying Him can be painful, spiritually harmful and we feel it. But there's another element at play here that we might not readily call to mind. God's patience with our sin presupposes that we are rational animals; that is, He's patient with us b/c He knows that we are capable of responding to His love rationally, deliberately. Given time with His divine gift of love, we can reason our way out of the habit of disobedience; we are capable of learning not to sin, learning to receive His grace, and working with those received graces to come closer to His perfect Love. Over time, we come to see that sin is not only a violation of divine love, it is also an irrational reaction to the divine word, the Law of Love that Christ himself gives us. The wicked tenants are wicked b/c of their greed, but their greed—given the generosity of the vineyard owner—is irrational, not just illogical, but unreasoning. 

We have long since lost any sense at all that irrational thinking or behavior is a sin. In fact, in our postmodern culture, right reason is considered oppressively patriarchal. “Logic” is not longer logical and “reason” is just an evil way to suppress the glories of emotions. But as followers of Christ the Logos, we are partakers in the divine life, the life of the Blessed Trinity that provides Rightness, Order, Reason, and Truth to the whole of creation. If the wicked tenants had exercised their minds rather than their passions, they might've come to their perfection w/o the threat of death hanging over their heads. Can we say the same? Why do we wait for that nagging sense of guilt to drag us into the confessional? Why do we persist in habitual sin, knowing what it does to our growth in holiness? Why do we refuse to bend our necks to most reasonable rules and treat our freedom in Christ as a license to sin? We can blame passion. But let's put the blame where it belongs: we are being irrational. Not only are we not “feeling right,” we're not thinking right, preferring to indulge the animal part of our nature and letting the rational part wither. Fortunately, God's love for us entails being patient with our thick heads. So, while we enjoy His mercy, let's work on our right reason and make the deliberate choice to live in His love rationally. 

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