Thanks/On Method (Updated)

NB. A few days ago a deacon posted his response to my question below. I accidentally deleted the comment.  Please, comment again, Rev. Deacon!

Thanks to the Kind Soul who sent me The Art of Preaching by the great Cistercian, Alan of Lille.

And thanks to Gregory P. for Preaching and Homiletical Theory and The Web of Preaching.

Two more to add to my Book Benefactor Prayer List!

Most of the preaching books I've been reading deal with various methods of homily composition, exploring questions about biblical hermeneutics/interpretation and the person of the preacher as a prophetic voice.

I'm not yet entirely convinced that it is necessary for a preacher to adopt a particular method. When I try to think through my own method of composition, I get stuck trying to "fit" what I actually do when I write into one of the available categories. 

With time, I'll likely figure out that what I do is exactly what Method X says ought to be done. Right now though, it just seems like I do whatever the Spirit moves me to do; or, frankly: what gets preached is the content of me and the Spirit fussing and fighting over what needs to be said!

Question/Request for Preachers: do you consciously use a method when composing a homily?  If so, please describe your method. . .

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Authority alone will not re-found the tradition. . .

I want to draw your attention to a post from Mark Shea titled, "I Hate Being Right All the Time."

Mark notes the tendency of cultural revolutionaries to dismiss the possibility that their revolutionary ideals will be either 1) taken to their logical conclusion, or 2) overthrown using the revolutionaries' logic.

Here's an excerpt:

The basic point of the series is that we are living on borrowed capital from the Catholic tradition and burning through it like Paris Hilton spending Daddy's money while creating nothing of value to replace it.  As each phase of history passes by, we keep saying that nobody will ever take the next logical step from the premisses we have just set up as a platform for jettisoning some aspect of the Christian tradition.  Then we are perpetually surprised when somebody does and the new revolutionary attacks the old one by citing the precedent established by the previous revolutionary. 

We can see this logic playing out in the Church.

As the Vatican Two Baby Boomers* slowly cycle out of institutional power, those who follow them will likely adopt the Boomer "logic of revolution" and seek to restore Catholic tradition by a kind of will to power; that is, rather than nurture an organic regrowth of doctrine, liturgy, etc. over time, we will be treated to a piecemeal overthrowing of the aesthetic choices made by our immediate ancestors through the exercise of raw authority. That's how They did it, so that's how We will do it!

We see this sort of thing happening already. And I think it's a bad way to proceed. Yes, we need to restore a sense of reverence in the liturgy; and yes, we need to re-teach the faith after wandering aimlessly in the catechetical desert for 40+ years. . .BUT how we go about restoring the tradition is as important as what we choose to restore. 

Restoring Catholic tradition as an exercise of authority alone will not ground that tradition in the culture of the Church anymore than the liturgical/catechetical revolution of the 70's/80's forever established the dictatorship of sentimentality as our working model for evangelization.

In fact, simply ordering changes in local liturgical practices or banishing bad textbooks from Catholic schools (etc) will likely reproduce the JPII/BXVI generation's reaction against the Boomers. . .in the other direction.

What we need is catechesis, catechesis, catechesis! And not the touchy-feely junk that's passed for teaching these last few decades.  I mean, hard-core, text-based, critical-instruction on the documents of the faith AND inspired preaching on living the faith within the truths of the tradition. Memorizing theological propositions from the Catechism won't do.

All of this means that we need a workable apologetics; that is, a means of teaching, defending, and living the faith that doesn't adopt modernist assumptions about truth, beauty, and goodness; or simply concede to the Enlightenment its definition of reason. 

So, I'm all ears. . .

*I know, I know. . .not ALL Boomers are the same.  I'm using the term as a form of shorthand.

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Praiseworthy self-abasement

22nd Sunday OT (C) 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA 

We know already that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and that those who humble themselves will be exalted. We know already that we are charged with ministering to the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the sick. And we know that our greatest reward for service is not public attention or gratitude but a place among the righteous when Christ comes again. What we might not know, or perhaps we've just forgotten, is that our humility—such as it is—is first a gift from God, a freely given seed that we must nurture. This is why Jesus is so intent upon revealing to us the necessity of what Aquinas calls “praiseworthy self-abasement.” Not humiliation as we commonly understand the term. Not groveling self-disrespect, or pathetic self-shaming. Note that Aquinas qualifies “self-abasement” with “praiseworthy.” That is, we place ourselves—willingly, eagerly—at the service of others b/c there is nothing more honorable, nothing more deserving of praise for us to do than to set aside our pride, our sense of place and importance, and provide for another what they truly need. Our ability and willingness to serve is a gift b/c service brings us closer to the one who serves us with his body and blood. 

Now, I wouldn't be a bona-fide Old English Teacher if I didn't bring up at this point that famous passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost: Satan's Non-serviam speech. God has banished his brightest angel to Hell for rebelling against Heaven. Satan, the Arch-fiend, surveying his fiery kingdom and his fallen kin, boasts to his minion, Beelzebub: “Here at least/We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built/Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:/Here we may reign secure, and in my choice/To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:/Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n” (Book 1). Non serviam. I will not serve. And b/c Satan once and always chose not to serve, he is eternally chained by his bitter pride, “rolling in the fiery gulf,” Milton writes, “Confounded though immortal.” Other than a chance to quote Milton in a homily, why reference this passage about Satan's defiance? As a creature of God, Lucifer, receives from God not only his very being but also every gift that he needs to thrive as a servant of the Almighty. Yet, out of jealously and pride, he rebels, placing himself above the duties and obligations of a creature and settles himself into an immortal existence of bitter and ultimately useless rage against his Father. That is pride's pay-out: bitter, useless rage. 

I doubt very seriously that anyone here this evening has rebelled against God with the intensity or permanence of Lucifer. However, like this fallen angel, any one of us could decide that fidelity, obedience, sacrifice, humility, any one of the cardinal virtues is simply too much to bear up under and take to the hills in rebellion. Any one of us could reach a breaking point and declare, “Non serviam.” I will not serve. If you can't imagine the circumstances under which you might do such a thing, allow me to imagine it for you. I decide that I'm smarter than 2,000 years of Church teaching and start rejecting articles of faith. I decide that serving the poor is simply a way of keeping the poor poor. Visiting the sick isn't my job. My academic credentials or prestigious job or centuries-old family name exempts me from serving anyone. My need for security in excessive abundance doesn't allow for charity. My neighbors are the wrong color or the wrong political party or the wrong religion. And so on. None of these—by itself—is a Satanic rebellion. But one prideful act quickly needs another to secure its legitimacy. And like one blackbird in a magnolia tree, that one heralds the flock to come. 

When Jesus urges his disciples and the Pharisees to cede their pride in favor of service, he's not telling them to fake being modest. He's telling them to consider the eternal consequences of their self-importance. By taking for themselves the places of honor at the banquet table, they are usurping the host's right to choose who will sit at his right-hand. Just so, when we place ourselves above the least of God's children; when we think and act as masters rather than servants, we are attempting to wrestle from God's hands a choice that belongs to Him alone. And what's worse: we do so using our imperfect human judgment, our imperfect human knowledge. In fact, if we're going to be honest in our rebellion against God, we must conclude that God's judgment and knowledge must be flawed. How else could He think that lepers and poor people and cripples and other undesirables deserve my service? Do you see how the beautiful archangel, Lucifer, became the Arch-fiend, Satan? Just one small step was needed: why should I serve a master when I can be the Master and serve no one? I shouldn't have to serve; therefore, I will not serve. After all, it's better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Or: it's better to preserve my pride now than risk losing any of my options later on. 

I noted earlier that our desire to serve is a gift. It's a seed planted in our hearts and minds by God that will grow and bear great fruit. . .if we diligently tend to it. Jesus tells us outright how to tend to this seed: feed it with humility and contrition. Always see yourself as a lovable creature of God. Not just loveable, no, but loved. A creature loved into being, loved into being re-born, and loved into a seat at the heavenly banquet. Always see those around you as loved creatures. With all of their annoying habits, strange smells, odd personalities, extreme political views, and weird religious beliefs. Loving them as loved creatures doesn't mean that we have to approve of or celebrate their choices. Loving them simply means that we see them first and last as brothers and sisters of one Father, our Father. And that we are willing to live with them in sight of eternity, with an eye on the Biggest Possible Picture in Christ. Loving them—all of them, all of us—means trying to do perfectly what the Father created us to do: love Him by loving those whom He created to be loved. 

Lucifer became Satan in a flash of envy and pride. He thought he deserved better; he thought he was entitled to more and better than the Father had given him. Rather than submit to his angelic nature and obediently serve, he chose to rebel. He chose to exclude himself from the company of God and His saints. Satan believes that he is free in his rebellion. He believes that b/c he disobeys God he acts freely. He believes a lie. We are never more free than when we act according to God's will for us; when we serve the least with our most and do so for no other reason than that we desire to give God glory. That's freedom. That's honor. When we come to know and accept the truth that we are creatures loved by a loving God, that's humility. And when we see and accept all others as creatures loved by a loving God and serve them as such, that's love. Not just any love. Love that brings us to the banquet table. Love that brings us honor and a seat at the right-hand of the Father. 

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Preaching & Nihilism

Good news!

Got word on Thursday that the advanced preaching seminar I'd proposed was approved by the academic dean.

We'll be exploring the historical, literary, philosophical, and theological origins of nihilism and how this pernicious infection has shaped our postmodern culture. 

Then we'll discuss ways to address these nihilistic tendencies in our preaching.

Should be fun. . . 

My extra mendicant thanks to all those who contributed to this project from the Wish List.

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Peter quivers in the random lechery of distraction

NB.  Wrote this one in Rome 2008. . .never preached it.  The lectionary readings are from Year A, so I won't be preaching this homily tonight.  Look for a new one later on today.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Seamus Heaney: R.I.P.

The great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, died yesterday.  R.I.P.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, Heaney's first book, The Death of a Naturalist, was published in 1965.

From the Glanmore Sonnets:

VIII

 

Thunderlight on the split logs: big raindrops   

At body heat and lush with omen

Spattering dark on the hatchet iron.

This morning when a magpie with jerky steps   

Inspected a horse asleep beside the wood   

I thought of dew on armour and carrion.

What would I meet, blood-boltered, on the road?   

How deep into the woodpile sat the toad?

What welters through this dark hush on the crops?   

Do you remember that pension in Les Landes   

Where the old one rocked and rocked and rocked   

A mongol in her lap, to little songs?   

Come to me quick, I am upstairs shaking.   

My all of you birchwood in lightning.

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But will they try the haggis?

Those Nashville Dominican Sisters are popping up in the oddest places. . .

SCOTLAND!

Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen has welcomed the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, popularly known as the Nashville Dominicans, to his diocese. 

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Blackfriar Films!

Check out Blackfriar Films!
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We forget the lessons of history. . .to our peril.

German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, visited the Dachau concentration camp and pledged, "Never again."

Glad to hear that. 

What does she have to say about the genocide of Coptic Christians in Egypt?

As Merkel spoke, Copts and other Christians in Egypt were reeling from a wave of attacks more savage than any in modern Egyptian history. Islamist mobs across the country torched scores of churches — some more than 1,000 years old — along with convents, monasteries, and Christian-owned homes and businesses. A Franciscan school near Cairo was looted and burned, said Sister Manal, the principal; then she and other nuns were paraded through the streets “like prisoners of war” to the jeers and abuse of the mob.  

Read the whole thing.
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Dominican Sisters. . .

Another great Dominican story!

This time the sisters get the spotlight. . .specifically, the Mater Eucharistiae Dominican Sisters of Ann Arbor, MI.

Recently, I found myself uncharacteristically glued to a game show because of a group of religious sisters. The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, captured my imagination as they walloped through the American Bible Challenge this spring. I found myself voting every day and reminding my husband that I had a show I wanted to watch.

Now. . .we need a story on the Nuns and the Laity and we'll have a complete picture of Dominican life.

The Shrinking Ample Friar

Some good news. . .

I've lost 12lbs. since the second week of July!

My plan: no carbs at breakfast or lunch. Regular meal w/o desert in the evening. No snacking. Lots of water.

The breakfast/lunch portion of this plan is very easy. The seminary cafeteria provides lots of options, including an excellent salad bar with fresh mixed greens and fruit. They usually put out cold, sliced chicken or beef.

The problem days are Saturday and Sunday when I'm "on my own" at the priory. Oy.

So, by Christmas I hope to be under 250. 

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Dominicans at Work: the Western Province

A few weeks ago, Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture posted a good article on the Dominican friars of the Eastern Province (USA). 

He follows that nice piece with one on the Western Province!

One interesting bit that I didn't know:  "The Western House of Studies is the only one in the United States where the brothers can learn not only the reverent celebration of the liturgies of the post-Conciliar period but also the old Dominican rite. To me, this recalls that saying of Our Lord’s, 'Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old' (Mt 13:52)."

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Participation in the Apostolic Witness

A reminder to all the Preaching Clergy in the Church out there from the U.S. bishops:

 

Preaching is nothing less than a participation in the dynamic power of the apostolic witness to the very Word that created the world, the Word that was given to the prophets and teachers of Israel, and the Word that became flesh.

This amazing bit of homiletic theology comes from the bishops' new document on preaching, Preaching the Mystery of Faith.

We discussed it briefly in my homiletics class this morning.  

Preaching is not about the Cult of the Preacher. . .or about Father's personal agenda. . .or about saying as little as possible in order to avoid offending the Big Donors. . .or a report on Father's latest visit to the shrink. . .or a platform for spouting New Age nonsense and heresy.

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Mendicant Gratitude

A big Mendicant Thanks to the generous soul who sent me copies of Paul Helm's books, Faith with Reason and Faith & Reason.  These two were lost by Poste Italiane when I moved back to the U.S. from Rome.

Also, my thanks for Making Sense of Nietzsche and Experiments Against Reality. Both will be helpful in my upcoming seminar.

There was no packing invoice with these books, so I can't thank y'all by name; however, like all my Book Benefactors, you will go on my daily prayer list!

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That gate ain't gettin' any wider. . .

NB. Mass with the seminary community tomorrow morning, so here's a Vintage Fr. Philip Homily from 2007. The podcast link still works, so give a listen and leave me some feedback!

21^st Sunday OT: Isa 66.18-21; Heb 12.5-7, 11-13; Luke 13.22-30
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

Listen here!

That narrow gate ain’t getting any wider, and the wider I get the more I worry! There are times when I make a run for the gate, hoping to hit it hard enough to squeeze most of me through. You know, just hope that momentum pushes me on through. And there are other times that I think I might be able to slowly twist and turn, wiggle and jiggle in the right angles and pop on through. It’s a matter of finesse and know-how. And there are still other times that I just fall on the ground in front of the gate, kicking my feet and squalling like a baby needing his diaper changed! Let me through! Let me through! But fits and tempers don’t widen the gate either. Here’s my theory about that Narrow Gate: the gate is inversely proportionate to the size of the Pride trying to get through. The bigger the Pride, the narrower the gate. Humility—that lived-knowing that we are totally dependent on God for everything—my humility, your humility widens the gate and our Lord will say to us on the other side, “Hey! I know y’all! Come, recline at my table.” Momentum will not propel you through. Spiritual fervor, religious athleticism won’t help either. Nor will finesse or knowledge or good family connections wave you through ahead of the line. Infantile belly-aching about fairness and justice won’t reward you eternal life. Nor will whining about what you think you are entitled to / help you force your way through.

Someone asked Jesus, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Notice, please, that Jesus doesn’t answer the question directly. Instead he instructs, then warns, then prophesies. First, the instruction: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate…” Then the warning: “…many, I tell you, will attempt to enter [the narrow gate]...” And finally the prophecy: “...but [they] will not be strong enough [to enter].” Unlike most of what we hear preached in our Catholic parishes these days and taught in our Catholic seminaries, this teaching is unambiguously exclusive, clearly it is not the all-inclusive, gates-wide-open-garden-banquet that we’ve been taught to believe represents salvation through Christ. Jesus couldn’t be more straightforward, more plain spoken: after the master of the house has locked the door, those standing outside will knock and plead, “Lord, open the door for us.” And the master will say, “I do not know where you are from.” And those outside will remind him that they ate and drank with him, listening to his teachings. The master will respond, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!” Much wailing and gnashing of teeth follows. Now, is this the nonjudgmental, all-inclusive, diversity and difference welcoming Jesus we’ve come to know and ignore? I don’t think so.

Our Lord is not a way to God among various but equally valid ways to God. Our Lord is not a truth among numerous but perfectly legitimate truths. Our Lord is not a life among different but equivalently honorable lives. Jesus says, “I am THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life, and no one come to the Father, except through me. Christ is the Narrow Gate of salvation; he is the door to perfect freedom, perfect joy, perfect life, and that door opens for anyone, anyone at all—no one is excluded by Christ from the invitation to eternal life through Christ Jesus. Every human person, everyone, all of us are invited to knock on the gate in humility, to show him that we have been of service to the least of God’s children, and that we have put ourselves last in the kingdom by training our hearts and minds, by teaching our hands and feet through the daily exercise of righteousness—our workout routine in God’s Gym!

You might be confused now. Didn’t I say earlier that the teaching in this gospel is unambiguously exclusive? And didn’t I just say that Christ invitation to the gate and the party beyond it is all—inclusive! No one is left out. Exactly right. Christ leaves no one out of his invitation to follow him. No one. Jesus says, “And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.” No race, no sex, no color, no religious creed, no nationality, no sexual proclivity, no nothing is excluded from the call to holiness in Christ Jesus. Aight. So, who are those people on the condemned side of the locked door? Who are the evildoers that the master is cussing at? The ones who couldn’t squeeze through the narrow gate? Those are the ones who hear the call but do not answer it. The ones who come to the gate swollen with pride, envy, greed, self-righteousness. The ones who work hard to get themselves through the gate but never love. The ones who think that their mama and daddy’s money or family name or political connections would get them through ahead of the trash in line. The ones who plan on forcing their way in, bullying God with witchcraft and theologies of liberation. The ones who will not be disciplined by any authority, any instruction, any law. The ones who consistently and finally chose to use their freedom as license and squander their heavenly inheritance on a gamble against the house, God’s house. Those who stand on the other side of the gate, wailing and grinding their teeth, are there b/c they choose to be there: unambiguously excluded.

I said earlier that the Gate’s size is inversely proportionate to the size of the pride/humility of the person seeking to get through. How do we shrink our pride and swell our humility? The letter to the Hebrews tell us that the discipline of the Lord brings “the peaceful fruits of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” OK. What is this discipline? “Discipline” is an ordered form of learning, an organized means of attaining knowledge and/or enlightenment. Most anything can be a discipline: exercising, dieting, reading/writing, study, prayer. The key to discipline is that it is done in an orderly way under some authority—a teacher, a coach, a supervisor, a spiritual director. We are not to disdain the “discipline of the Lord,” meaning we are not to deride or disrespect the orderly authority of Christ in teaching us his truth. From Hebrews we learn that his discipline is our faithful way of enduring trial, our obedient means of suffering well under testing. This endurance, this suffering is a witness; this is testimony under duress and evidence for the Kingdom!

To repeat: Hebrews tell us that the discipline of the Lord brings “the peaceful fruits of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Here’s your question for today: are you trained by the Lord’s discipline? Do you find yourself scourged by the love of the Father? He acknowledges you, so he treats you like a son; yes, even the women he treats like sons—as ones who will inherit His kingdom! Do you find pain or joy in your trials? Do you find peace or turmoil in obeying Christ? Do your hands droop and your knees grow weak thinking about the gospel-task in front of you? Do you give God thanks for your difficulties or do you complain? If you are made lame in your trials, it is better to make straight paths for your feet so that they may be healed and not disjointed. IOW, clear the path ahead of you by blasting it with gratitude to God! Yes, give God thanks for your diseases, your failures, your trials and persecutions, your disjointed bones and tired flesh. Thank Him and be disciplined. Be disciplined by the love that calls you to holiness, always calls to you to come to Him, and to pass through the narrow gate; you, shrunken in pride but swollen with humility; you, son of God, you, last of the least.

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