Catechism: can you pass the test?

Take the Catechism test! Below you will find a practice exam that I gave my pre-theology Catechism class. Catholics will often express ideas about the faith that are ambiguous; that is, they have a grip on some small part of the truth but let the whole truth fly away. This test challenges you to use the Tried and True Method of Thomas Aquinas to ferret out the ambiguities and clarify each statement. NB. these statements cover roughly paragraphs 1-141 of the CCC.

Can you pass the test?

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All of the statements below are ambiguous. As a theologian, your task is parse each statement in such a way that it unambiguously expresses a truth about the faith. Refer to the CCC for the appropriate language.

REMEMBER: never deny; rarely affirm; always distinguish!

1. God created man out of necessity.

2. God sent His Son as our Redeemer to save us from sin. . .whether we want to be saved or not.

3. The human desire for God is something that we cultivate over time.

4. We can find truth and happiness most anywhere.

5. Natural reason tells us about God.

6. Our language about God is limited, so we really can't say anything true about Him.

7. The CCC says, “We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect. . .” (42). This means that we shouldn't use male pronouns and images to depict God.

8. The CCC says that God “creates and sustains” all of creation. This means that God and creation are basically the same.

9. God is constantly revealing Himself to us through scripture, Christ, and created things.

10. The apostolic tradition gave us scripture; therefore, our bishops can decide what's true and false in the Bible.

11. All truths of the faith are equally important to our salvation.

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Pics of New Faculty Installation at Notre Dame Seminary

Two pics of me signing the Oath of Fidelity on the altar of Notre Dame Seminary's chapel during Solemn Vespers, August 26, 2013.

That's Fr. James Wehner, seminary rector, to my left.

More pics here.
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Revitalizing the Church

10 Ways to Revitalize the Catholic Church. . .from a Jesuit, no less!  ;-)

2. A priest in France has attracted people to packed Masses largely by spending six hours every night in the confessional. (He also wears priestly garb on the street so that those who want a priest know where to find one.) Clergy here need to recommit themselves to the sacrament of confession. They must be available at convenient times for more than a perfunctory half-hour before Saturday evening Mass. Frequenting the sacrament themselves, priests can awaken in their parishioners the need for repentance and conversion.

3. A pope once said that one good catechist is worth a hundred outstanding preachers. Yet there are wealthy parishes that expect directors of religious education to work as unpaid volunteers! Catechism needs to be taken more seriously as a ministry [AMEN! And not that goofy Feelings-Are-All-That-Matter nonsense from 1973. But real, substantial, Total Catechsis.]. In many parts of the world, the minister whom Catholics see the most is their catechist, not their pastor. Parents must be willing to be trained and work as catechists. More adult Catholics must also take responsibility for handing on the faith. This also includes shouldering ministries that care for the least, such as visiting the sick.

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Thanks!

Mendicant Thanks to the Kind & Generous Soul who sent me The Company of Preachers and A Farewell to Truth from the WISH LIST.  (No name/address on the invoice.)

Both will make their way into the classroom at NDS next semester!

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Love Christ first, last, always

23rd Sunday OT 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA 

I always think of this Gospel reading as “the one that makes me squirm.” I'm sorry, but you don't just tell a southern boy that he must hate his mama in order to love Jesus. That sets up a cognitive dissonance that might just explode his head! So for years I did what most good church folks probably do when this reading came along at Mass: I let the sharpness of it, the bluntness of it slide right off and chose to hear it all as more of Jesus' famous hyperbole. He's just being dramatic so that people will listen to him. He really doesn't mean that I have to go home and tell mama that I hate her, but it's OK b/c I love Jesus. (I'm not sure I'd survive that conversation!) This Gospel reading is difficult. It's difficult b/c it cuts right across what we think being a Christian is all about, and to take it seriously, literally would mean having to radically rethink what it means to follow Christ. Well, what's so bad about rethinking what it means to follow Christ? What's so bad about letting Christ shine a little light on how we've come to follow him? Sure, it might cause some squirming but it might also bring us closer to the holiness we all desire to achieve. 

There's comfort in our faith; I mean, there's a aura of certainty, calm, security in the religion we practice. We have rituals, liturgies, prayers, doctrines and dogmas, churches. Sacraments to ensure that we receive the graces we need. We have a long, venerable intellectual tradition, reaching back 2,000 years. We have a heavenful of saints cheering us on. Angels and archangels watching over us. Clear, uncompromising moral guidance. In fact, we have it all, in its fullness; we have everything we need and probably most of what we want when it comes to a religion. Loving God, loving mother, parish family, not to mention we have it all right here in New Orleans! But here's the problem: none of what we have, religiously speaking, is worth much if we are not first and last disciples of Christ; that is, if we love anything or anyone more than we love Christ, no amount of religion is going to bring us to holiness. Now, each sacrament, every prayer, all of our fasting and sacrificing, everything we do as Catholics is meant to help us along the path to holiness, following along behind the Lord. But if we are not learning at the feet of Christ; if we are not his committed students in the school of charity, then nothing can help us until we first choose to move out of the crowd and come into his presence. 

Now, please hear what I'm saying. To put it into theological language: we must be properly disposed by faith, hope, and love before anything the Church has to offer becomes efficacious for our holiness. To put it plainly: if you aren't ready to be holy, nothing the Church can give you is going to make you holy. So, let's ask some uncomfortable questions. What do I love more than God? (My life, my house, my career?) Who do I love more than God? (My spouse, my parents, my kids?) What crosses have been handed to me? (Sickness, poverty, temptation?) Will I pick them up? Do I have the courage to carry them? What possesses me? (A spirit of ambition, anger, vengeance? Addition, debt?) Who owns me? (My friends, colleagues, in-laws?) At whose feet do I sit to learn what I need to know? (Pop-stars, Hollywood actors, politicians, TV preachers?) Am I strong enough and courageous enough to handle my failures w/o help? Am I wise enough to celebrate my successes w/o celebrating them with others? Where else am I going to get the grace I need but in my love for Christ and the ministry of his Church? There is no where else for us to turn if holiness is our goal and this world is the world we must travel through. 

Being a student of Christ in his school of charity has consequences. No per-requisites, no conditions but lots of consequences. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” This may sound like a condition, a per-requisite but it's actually a consequence. We cannot be true disciples and be unprepared for the consequences of following Christ. The hard truth, the truth that the history of Church's martyrs bears out, is that following Christ often means loss. Loss of family, loss of livelihood, even loss of one's life. If we love anyone or anything more than we love Christ, then these losses become unbearable, and we risk losing not only our holiness but our eternal life as well. When Jesus says that we must love him before we love mother, father, children, and self, he means that we can only love them and ourselves, truly love, b/c we have loved him first. Their loss, though devastating, will not destroy our first love. And it is this first love that brings us through to our holiness and our final perfection. Being a diligent, faithful student of Christ in his school of charity has consequences, eternal consequences. 

Being a diligent, faithful disciple of Christ also has temporal consequences, good effects right here on earth. First, the sacraments we celebrate work brilliantly to see us fed with the graces we need. Second, our prayers sharpen our gratitude and we grow in humility. Third, our ability and willingness to show mercy and live in peace is fortified. Fourth, our generosity is rewarded with abundance, and our attachment to the passing things of this world is loosened. Fifth, our struggles with temptation give way to the reality of Christ's victory over sin, and what temptations we have are more easily dismissed as illusions. And lastly, we become more and more like our Teacher: more loving, more sacrificial, more peaceful, and more certain than ever that we walk the path to our death with the Father, hand-in-hand. What comfort and security our religion can bring us is only comfortable and secure b/c we have prepared ourselves to be comforted and secured by first being faithful students of Christ. Love him first, then all others. And nothing we can lose will ever lose us the love that saves us. 

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Have we surrendered our catechesis to the Enlightenment?

Caution: this post is a bit of a Ramble. . .I'm thinking something through.

In a post below I wrote: "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."

The idea expressed in that sentence was prompted by a book I've been reading titled, The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context by Myron B. Penner.

Penner argues that most contemporary Christian apologetics fails in teaching, defending, and living the faith by adopting an Enlightenment understanding of reason, a move which logically requires conceding to modernist epistemological standards of evidence/truth.

What does this mean? Basically, it means that (for the most part) we have surrendered the public presentation and defense of the faith to the 20th/21st century heirs of our 16th/17th century enemies.  We're playing on their home field by their rules.

It means that we've conceded that Christian truth is largely a matter of propositional statements that can and should be vetted by natural reason according to the rules of logic and empirical method.

Penner points out a number of unfavorable consequences of our surrender. Chief among these is the loss of mystery, properly understood. Another loss: the ability to translate biblical teaching into our daily lives. How are we supposed to live the Gospel when it has been reduced to a set of logically defensible propositions? 

Penner's solution is problematic for a Catholic. He suggests that we abandon the Enlightenment Project of rational justification and its monstrous offspring, empirical evidence gathering, and choose instead to teach, defend, and live out our faith as a matter of hermeneutics; that is, we approach scripture, doctrine/dogma, etc. as meaning-making narratives that tell Our Christian Story. 

He suggests that we replace the Enlightenment model of truth -- "propositions corresponding with reality" -- with a uniquely Christian model of truth: "existential edification." Rather than defending the Incarnation as a logically consistent description of reality, we live out the Incarnation as way of making sense of our belief that we are human creatures destined for union with God. 

I am sympathetic with Penner's critique of modern apologetics b/c too often we concede to empirical science its standards for evidence and reason; for example, 20th century attempts to defend transubstantiation using scientific methods and tools, which always end with our surrender to the modernist idea that reality is basically physical and only physical. 

In a recent blog post, Msgr Charles Pope reports on his efforts to restore a living catechesis to his parish.  He calls his approach "Whole Family Catechesis." I'm not sure if he knows that he's challenging modernist standards of truth and evidence, but the way he describes what he's doing seems to indicate that he has intuitively grasped that the propositional approach is largely fruitless. 

When leading a Bible study or teaching a scripture class, I tell the students that all facts are true but not all truths are factual. Some truths can be told and understood outside the limits of facts.

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Blessed are the cheese makers!

NB. Here's one from 2010 on this Sunday's readings.  

23rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Blackfriars Hall, Oxford Univ.

Jesus is preaching on the Mount of Olives. The crowd is huge. The wind is high. It's difficult to hear him clearly. He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” A man in the crowd shouts out, “What did he say?” Another man in the crowd responds, “I think it was 'Blessed are the cheese makers.'” A well-appointed woman asks, “Aha, what's so special about the cheese makers?” Her husband  explains, “Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.” Thus do we have—from Monty Python no less—one of the first instances of Jesus' teachings being read through a hermeneutics of inclusion! Of course, this is meant to be funny; it is also meant to point out our very human tendency to take something we've heard and give it the most benign, the least personally demanding interpretation possible. Today's gospel offers us this opportunity as well. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” To add insult to this familial injury, Jesus adds, “. . .anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” So, in order to follow Christ, we're to become homeless, destitute haters of our family. Unless we are willing to “mishear” this difficult teaching, and give it some milquetoast interpretation, we have to deal with it head-on. What are we to make of Jesus' rather unambiguous demand for our radical dispossession?

The first point to be made here is that hating one's family and surrendering all one's possessions are not conditions for discipleship; that is, there are no prerequisites for enrolling in the university of the Lord. There are, however, consequences. And these consequences, Jesus warns, can be and most likely will be dire. To walk willingly into the tomb with him and to rise with him on the last day entails following him on the way of sorrow, carrying one's cross, and dying on that cross when the time comes. Though there will be glories and graces along the Way, a life lived as a disciple is a life lived in self-denial, sacrificial service, and persistent witness. As one who has lost it all, Jesus knows that if we have nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. In more contemporary terms, we might say, “No Pain, No Gain; No Guts, No Glory.” What Jesus is doing here is making it perfectly clear to those who would follow him that his Way is not about growing in self-esteem, or “being One with the universe,” or just being a nice person, or even living a quietly pious life. There is a cost to discipleship, a potentially heavy even deadly cost, a cost beyond convenience, reputations, and friendships. The cost—ultimately—is your life. Be ready to pay that bill.

To prepare us, Jesus asks, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?” There are really two questions here. First, “Have you thought about the costs of discipleship?” and second, “Are you prepared to complete the course given the costs?” The disciples already know that the Lord came not to bring peace but a sword. His life and ministry among them will cleave families apart, setting father against son and mother against daughter. The Way is not a tranquil meditative practice leading to a blissful serenity, but a radical commitment to a tumultuous love that puts Christ first, puts Christ squarely in front of any other attachment, any other promise. To hate one's family and surrender all possessions is to set the sacrificial love of Christ on the cross as one's only frame of reference, as one's singular focus and goal. Everything else—mom, dad, kids, house, job, reputation, wealth, health, politics, religious practice—everything else is to be seen, understood, and lived out relative only to Christ and our vows to follow him. Have you thought about these costs? Are you prepared to pay this bill?

If not, have you thought about what it might mean to fail, what it might mean to pit yourself against the King of kings? Jesus asks his disciples, “. . .what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?” A king outnumbered 2:1 on the battlefield would be foolish not to consider suing for peace! Jesus' point here is as straightforward as it is frightening: don't play the fool by siding with the Enemy and fighting against your Creator. You will lose and lose catastrophically. Isn't it more prudent, more practicable to ally yourself with the strongest and flourish whatever the costs? Besides, God's terms for our surrender are infinitely gracious and though we must submit our pride to defeat, we gain eternal life. And that bill has already been paid in full.

What will it take for you to complete the course? Jesus tells us what we must be prepared to surrender, surrender everyone we love and everything we own. Nothing and no one we love can be loved apart from or before Love Himself. We might ask the question this way: who or what are you unwilling to sacrifice for Christ's sake? Name it. Name him or her and you will know who and what stands between you and your discipleship. Is this too harsh? Too difficult? We could do our best Monty Python imitation and pretend that Jesus says that we must renounce all our obsessions or all our professions. Or that we must come to him rating or baiting our family members. We could say something like, “Oh, he doesn't mean that literally. . .what he really means is that we shouldn't be greedy; we shouldn't let our parents control us.” What he says is that we must choose him over all those we love now, over all the things we love now. This is the price of tuition on the Way. Why? Because one likely consequence of following him is the loss of all we love. 

Therefore, it is better to surrender to God now than to fall in defeat to the Enemy later on.

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Courage to fish in the deep

22nd Week OT 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA 

Fr. Rector, I'd like to propose a new motto for NDS: “Put out into the deep. Lower your nets. Do not be afraid.” If our ministry to the Church here is forming fishermen for Christ, then what better encouragement can we give to our students than Christ's own words to his most imperfect apostle, Simon Peter? Of course, there's no reason to think that faculty and staff won't be encouraged by this new motto as well. We rely on hearts and minds well-built and maintained by the Holy Spirit's fire as much as our students do! Maybe even more so since we bear the heavier burden of leadership as well as discipleship. After all, it's no accident that it's Simon Peter who complains about the disciples' exhaustion and frustration and at the same time obeys the Lord's command to resume fishing. And note too that it is Simon Peter who confesses his sinfulness when the nets are returned to the boat brimming with fish. Christ says to these fishermen and to us, “Despite your anxieties, your fears, your feelings of being unworthy, put out into the deep and lower your nets. Do not be afraid.” 

Well, it's easy, isn't it, for Jesus to say things like, 'Do not be afraid'”? He knows who and what he is; where he's going; why he's here among us. There can't be much fear hindering you if all the usual unknowns are known. For us, however, the unknowns can worry at the edges of our confidence, fraying our attention, picking at what strength we have to carry on. Why am I here? What possessed me to leave home and train to be a fishermen? To train others to be fishermen? Am I smart enough, holy enough, competent enough to take in the wisdom of the Church and serve selflessly for the rest of my life? Is the sacrifice worth the reward? Just asking the questions is exhausting, let alone searching for the answers. But don't these questions beg the question, the question of faith? What makes any of us here think that we serve the Church out of our native intelligence, holiness, competence, or courage? What we do here is a graced undertaking, a gifted mission of preparation for being Christs in the world sent to complete among the nations the glorious work of the Father. Sure, it's easy for Jesus not to be afraid. But his admonition to us is more than just a rousing pat on the head: it's a promise, a promise of his abiding presence, a promise that our native failings cannot and will not leave God's salvific plan in failure. 

The disciples are exhausted and frustrated. And their exhaustion and frustration could prevent their obedience. Too tired, too worried, too disappointed, they could shrug, let out a huge sigh, and stomp off angry. Instead, they obey; that is, they listen to Christ. They hear and understand his command, trusting in him and believing fully that he will not leave them empty. Nota bene: their obedience is more than mere compliance out of respect for their teacher, or fear of punishment. Peter follows Christ and the disciples follow Peter. That takes courage. And what else is courage but fear transformed by faith? Perhaps more than any other acquired virtue, our ministry here NDS is fed by courage. We're given faith, hope, and charity. But courage arrives when we freely cooperate with these virtues despite our fear, despite our doubts and hesitations. When we listen—truly hear, believe, and act upon the presence of Christ among us—then the deep isn't so deep, nor are our nets too heavy for one more throw. Let me be blunt: if we choose to rely on our native abilities and refuse the graces God freely offers us, the deep will always be too deep and those nets will always too heavy. Therefore, “Put out into the deep. Lower your nets. And do not be afraid.”

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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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