Emily Dickinson: nihilist?

Could it be that Emily Dickinson was a nihilist?

By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing —
"Nothing" is the force
That renovates the World —

(#A 821)
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Pope Francis: "the spirit of adolescent progressivism"

YIKES! I think Francis has been reading HancAquam! 

Pope: God save us from the "hegemonic uniformity” of the "one line of thought" (Slams progressives) Asia News ^ | 11/18/2013

God save us from the "hegemonic uniformity " of the "one line of thought", "fruit of the spirit of the world that negotiates everything", even the faith.  This was Pope Francis' prayer during mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta, commenting on a passage from the Book of Maccabees, in which the leaders of the people do not want Israel to be isolated from other nations , and so abandon their traditions to negotiate with the king.

They go to "negotiate " and are excited about it. It is as if they said "we are progressives; let's follow progress like everyone else does". As reported by Vatican Radio, the Pope noted that this is the "spirit of adolescent progressivism" according to which "any move forward and any choice is better than remaining within the routine of fidelity". These people, therefore, negotiate "loyalty to God who is always faithful" with the king. "This is called apostasy", "adultery." They are, in fact, negotiating their values​​, "negotiating the very essence of being faithful to the Lord."

"And this is a contradiction: we do not negotiate values​​, but faithfulness. And this is the fruit of the devil, the prince of this world, who leads us forward with the spirit of worldliness. And then there are the direct consequences. They accepted the habits of the pagan, then a further step: the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and everyone would abandon their customs. A globalizing conformity of all nations is not beautiful, rather, each with own customs but united, but it is the hegemonic uniformity of globalization, the single line of thought. And this single line of thought is the result of worldliness."

And after "all peoples had adapted themselves to the king's demands, they also accepted his cult, they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath. "Step by step", the moved along this path. And in the end "the king raised an abomination upon the altar of devastation". "But, Father, this also happens today! Yes, because the worldly spirit exists even today, even today it takes us with this desire to be progressive and have one single thought. If someone was found to have the Book of the Covenant and if someone obeyed the law, the king condemned them to death : and this we have read in the newspapers in recent months . These people have negotiated the fidelity to the Lord and this people, moved by the spirit of the world, negotiated their own identity, negotiated belonging to a people, a people that God loves so much that God desires to be like Him. "

The Pope then referred to the 20^th century novel, "Master of the World" that focuses on "the spirit of worldliness that leads to apostasy". Today it is thought that "we have to be like everyone else, we have to be more normal, like everyone else, with this adolescent progressivism." And then "what follows is history": "the death sentences, human sacrifices". "But you think that today there are no human sacrifice s? There are many, many! And there are laws that protect them."

"But what consoles us faced with the progress of this worldly spirit, the prince of this world, the path of infidelity, is that the Lord is always here, that he can not deny Himself, the Faithful One: He is always waiting for us, He loves us so much and He forgives us when we repent for a few steps, for some small steps in this spirit of worldliness, we go to him, the faithful God. With the spirit of the Church's children, we pray to the Lord for His goodness, His faithfulness to save us from this worldly spirit that negotiates all, to protect us and let us move forward, as his people did through the desert, leading them by the hand like a father leads his child. The hand of the Lord is a sure guide".

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God exists : God does not exist

This is for YOU. . .You know who you are!

A case of contradictories which are true.  God exists : God does not exist.  Where is the problem?  I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory.  I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word.  But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion. (Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, Routledge, 114.)

Note the near perfect Thomistic distinction. . .
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Who will I be. . .at the end?

33^rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

The Man and The Boy—father and son—walk through an unnamed country laid waste by greed, hubris, and stupidity. There is nothing now but bitter ash, steel-gray bones, and cold human savagery. When the apocalypse arrived, it arrived with a whisper—no warning: no time to think, to pray, to remember. Those who survive do not gives thanks to luck or God; they do not count themselves among the fittest or the privileged. They are damned to live, damned to living on so little that it could be nothing with the next step, the next breath. The Man and The Boy have fire. And they carry this fire toward somewhere That Way. Anywhere but Here. Since God did not show His face nor did He send His angels to rebuke the stupidity of Man, The Man and The Boy walk. That's their prayer, their itinerant liturgy of starvation and unrelenting fear. What the world is for them now is nothing. There is nothing now but the world abandoned, left to rot as it turns around a star no one will ever see rise again. Jesus warns: “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” Who will you be when everything is thrown down?

That question—who will you be when everything is thrown down?—is the question our apocalyptic literature asks us to ponder. From the Book of Daniel to the Book of Revelation, from The War of the Worlds to World War Z and The Walking Dead, we are confronted again and again with the possibility that everything we know and love will come to an abrupt, explosive end, and we will be left with nothing. In Cormac McCarthy's world-ending novel, The Road, a man and his son walk toward an undefined, undisclosed Somewhere. Mid-way through their pilgrimage, McCarthy gives us a vision: “[The Man] walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” What is the absolute truth of the world? Cold, unrelenting, darkness. And who are we? Hunted animals living on borrowed time. Believe it or not, this post-apocalyptic nightmare is for some among us a dream come true, and serves not only as a vision of things to come but as a philosophy as well, a settled-upon way of thinking about life.

That some of us would celebrate “the crushing black vacuum of the universe” and prefer to see themselves as “hunted animals trembling. . .in their cover” shouldn't surprise us. Given fallen human nature and the excuse of There Is No God So All Is Permitted, why not think of creation as a random cosmic process and humanity as prey-animals. Helmut Thielicke calls this attitude nihilism, writing, “Nihilism literally has only one truth to declare, namely, that ultimately Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless.” Our own cultural turn to nihilism is attributed to the 19^th c. German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, whose anti-Christ prophet, Zarathustra proclaimed the death of God. Nietzsche wrote, “Nihilism is. . .not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys.” Contemporary nihilists continue the tradition. Nothing is true. Nothing is good or beautiful. Nothing matters. There is no point. No hope. No faith. Just destroy it all, release nothingness from its confining order, and let chaos reign.

 

Who will you be when everything is thrown down? Apocalypse fascinates western man b/c he wants to know who he is w/o the confining order of law, family, moral obligation, or God. Who am I really in the absence of tradition, science, the transcendent? If McCarthy's novel can be taken as a partial answer, Western Man is a violent serial rapist just one missed-meal away from becoming a cannibal. Jesus too gives us a glimpse of who we might become. He tells us that we will be “seized and persecuted,” handed over by family members and friends. At the end—the end of everything—even those who love us will abandon us. “You will be hated by all because of my name. . .” Is this a reason to despair? No, “not a hair on your head will be destroyed,” he promises. And yet, even this reassurance may seem shallow in light of the destruction of everything we know and love. So, to put The End in the proper perspective, we have to broaden our view to include the whole of salvation history, the entire prophetic tradition from God's first Word spoken over the nothingness of the void all the way to the last flickering images of Revelation in the mind of St John. What do we see? The long promise of God: be with Me, persevere with Me, and I will not abandon you. 

 

This is the promise that tells us who and what we are right up to The End. We are the recipients of a Divine Promise, a promise that constitutes the foundation of our lives in faith and shapes our lives with the hope of the resurrection. In this hope, that we will go on in the presence of God, nothing here and now, not even the destruction of the world, means the end of who and what we are in Christ. Because who and what we are is Children of the Most High, the redeemed sons and daughters of the Creator. Reaching back from this promise is the Hand of God, anointing those who believe with the blood of the Son and endowing them with more than just existential meaning, more than just a temporal purpose: we are anointed prophets, priests, and kings in the name of Christ and nothing can remove from us the ministry and mission we have received from Him Who made us. If an apocalypse sets fire to the whole world, nothing for us changes. We are still charged with proclaiming the freely offered mercy of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Jesus promises us, “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” 

 

Who will we be when everything is thrown down; when not one stone is left standing on another? With steadfast faith and iron perseverance, we will be who we are made and saved to be: Christs for one another. The temptation to give our praise and thanksgiving to Nothingness, to yield our hearts and minds to the numbing background noise of nihilism—it's constant: yield to the illusion that you are nothing more than thinking animals! Accept that you are accidents of chemistry and radiation! Live like commodities in a stockyard—eating, breeding, dying like cattle. For those who worship Nothing, nothing is sacred; nothing is good, true, beautiful. Yet we know that He Who made us and saves us shows Himself to us through everything He has made. So, even The End—when it comes—will reveal the glory of God. The Good News is that the end is not The End for those who fear His name. “There will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays” for those live in awe of His power, His unyielding love. When everything is bitter ash and steel-gray bones, the Son will shine and those who look to him will see. We will see the coming of his kingdom; his coming to rule with justice.

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We must correct the Apostles' Creed!

Evangelical theologians call for the Apostles' Creed to be amended to exclude the sentence, "He descended into Hell." 

This is the sort of non-sense that passes for scholarship when you have no Tradition and no magisterial authority to enforce said Tradition. 

One good response to this ridiculous argument:

There are potentially a number of errors here. One is that Christ Himself did not have a human soul. Many Protestants, without knowing it, do not believe that Christ has a human soul. They instead believe that Christ has a human body but that His deity serves as the animating principle of His body. Hence, when Christ died, His deity was naturally in Heaven. The conclusion is that He would have skipped Hell entirely.

On the other end of the spectrum is the heretical doctrine of Calvin that states that Christ literally descended into the Gehenna of the damned in order to receive the full punishment of sin. This is contrary to Scripture, contrary to the Fathers, and contrary to orthodox Christology.

 

As I am constantly reminding the seminarians at NDS: get the Incarnation wrong and everything that comes after it is wrong.

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An Exercise in Style

Here's how I'm torturing. . .ermmm. . .teaching my pre-theologians a few in lessons in style. . .

1. Take a reasonably complex sentence:

"From this intimacy with the faithful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, Moses drew strength and determination for his intercession" (CCC, 2577).

2. Then, under each word identify its part of speech. . .  

From   this        intimacy  with    the      faithful  God. . .

Prep    Pronoun Noun       Prep   Article  Adj        Noun

3. Then delete the original sentence, leaving the parts of speech. . .

Prep    Pronoun Noun       Prep   Article  Adj        Noun

4. And rewrite the sentence, using different words that match the parts of speech:

Inside that despair underneath a wasting pain. . .

The idea is to learn how different writers use words to shape their style. A good grasp of grammar -- something woefully missing in our public education these days -- helps a writer/preacher form a recognizable writing signature. The ultimate goal is to help them break out of their Style Ruts so that they can write homilies written "for the ear."

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"All of His children are alive!

32nd Sunday OT 
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA 

The Sadducees pose a difficult theological question to Jesus, hoping to catch him in an intellectual bind. Since they do not accept the novel idea of the resurrection, the Sadducees divide humanity into two categories: the Living and the Dead. Their convoluted scenario about the widow and her seven husbands is designed to refute the idea of a resurrection after death. If resurrection is real, they ask, then to which of her seven dead husbands will she be married after they are all resurrected? It's a set-up. And Jesus knows it. If he answers the question as posed, he will either have to name the dead husband, or deny the reality of the resurrection. So, he does what he always does when his religious opponents try to trap him: he spins the situation around and grabs the opportunity to teach his audience the truth. Calling on the authority of Moses, Jesus says, “. . .the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. . .is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Body and soul, living or deceased, all of His children are alive! Do you live as one alive in the Lord? 

Though none of here this evening have yet to experience the Resurrection of the Dead, we have some small idea of what being alive in the Lord means. We have all sinned. And we have all received God's mercy. We have all fallen flat on our faces. And we have all been raised up. We have all loved and lost. And we have all been found again by Love Himself. Being forgiven, being raised up from failure, and found by Love isn't the same as being resurrected from death—of course not—but we know what it feels like to die in small ways: to welcome sorrow and grief; to entertain despair and despair of hope; to consider the temptations of nothingness—just being no-thing at all. And then, right when sorrow and grief and despair are about to tip us over into an unrecoverable darkness, something breaks, something grabs us by the heart and mind and swings us back from the edge. As we walk away, back toward a light, all that darkness, everything that drew us in, changes, and now it looks like the trap that it is. “Our God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Body and soul, living or deceased, all of His children are alive! Do you live as one alive in the Lord? Do you live in the constant, fervent hope of the resurrection? 

Maybe just once in your life, or maybe nearly every day, you experience something like the resurrection, a rising again from death, from sin, to live in the glory of the Lord. If so, thanks be to God! But we don't want to confuse the Resurrection of the Dead with its useful, psychological metaphor. I mean, yes, we can think of the Resurrection in terms of being spiritually renewed in love, but the Resurrection itself is something altogether different, something altogether more miraculous than feeling God's enduring mercy. The CCC teaches us: “Christ is raised with his own body. . .but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, 'all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear,' but Christ 'will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body,' into a 'spiritual body.' [How this happens] exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith” (nos. 999-1000). The Resurrection of the Dead at the end of this age is not a spiritual metaphor or a psychological transformation or a myth borrowed from our pagan ancestors; it is an historical event yet to be experienced, an event made possible by the only resurrection that we know to have taken place: the resurrection of Christ from the tomb on the third day after his death. 

Allow me another quote from the CCC: “In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God. . .will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection” (no. 997). Because Christ died and rose from death, our bodies, if we are perfectly united with him in life, our bodies will rise from the corruption of death, receive glorification from God, and be reunited with our immortal souls. We will live with God as whole persons—body and soul—incorruptible, forever perfect. Believing this, knowing this, we remain in Christ b/c remaining in Christ is how we will find ourselves raised and renewed in the Father's glory. We remain in Christ not b/c we want a reward or a prize, but b/c we have found in him a life of on-going perfection, a life of constant healing and renewal. A life lived with Christ is a life lived in the divine promise of eternal life, a life lived in hope, in the hope of the resurrection. We remain alive in the Lord by being living signs of God's love and mercy and hope for one another, for the nations, for all of His creation. If we are alive, He is our God, the God of all the living. 

Body and soul, living or deceased, all of God's children are alive! Do we live in the constant, fervent hope of the resurrection? Living in the hope of the resurrection is much more than just living in the expectation of being raised from the dead. That's too intellectual, too abstract. As Catholics, we gather weekly, daily to participate directly in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. We are participating in that divine life right now, right here. When we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we gather as One Body to partake in a sacrificial meal, a meal where Christ is made present in the bread and wine, where we eat and drink his body, blood, soul, and divinity, where we take into ourselves everything he is for us and anticipate our own transfiguration after death. In the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus wrote, “Just as bread is no longer ordinary bread after God's blessing has been invoked upon it, the Eucharist is formed of two things, one earthly, the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection.” Living in the hope of the resurrection is not an intellectual exercise, an abstract hobby—it is living a Eucharistic life, one moment of thanksgiving after another, one instance of praise after another, taking into ourselves all that Christ is for us so that we might become Christs for others. 

Jesus teaches the Sadducees and us: “. . .those who are deemed worthy to attain. . .to the resurrection of the dead. . .They can no longer die. . .they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” We are the children of God b/c we have been adopted into His Holy Family by baptism. We remain His good children so long as we remain in Christ. Yes, we will die. Our bodies will be separated from our souls. We will die. But b/c Christ—in whom we remain—b/c Christ defeated death by rising from the tomb, we will not remain dead forever. And the life we live after death—perfect, whole, incorruptible—that life is the promise that must drive our lives here and now. Not Pie in the Sky By and By complacency but righteous, hopeful, loving service done in the name of Christ for the greater glory of God. We meet our Lord in the Eucharist. And we take him with us when we leave. If we will live in the hope of the resurrection, as the Father's children, we will allow anyone who wants to to meet him through us. Body and soul, living or deceased, all of God's children are alive! May they all meet Him in you and in me. 

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Gratitude

As always. . .I am both grateful for and humbled by the generosity of HA readers.

Recent activity on the Wish List confirms my long-held belief that Catholics want and appreciate well-prepared homilies. This is more than just encouraging. . .it's downright exciting! 

My preaching students at NDS are aware of the need for well-prepared and well-delivered homilies. I always point to HA readers and your generosity as proof that Catholics will respond positively to their hard work in composing and preaching the Well-wrought Homily.

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Medjugorje still not legit

The Papal Nuncio to the U.S. sent a letter last week to our bishops reminding them that Medjugorje as a site of an alleged Marian apparition is not yet a legitimate site for Catholic pilgrimages.

The local Yugoslavian bishops in 1991 ruled that the apparitions were not authenticate. Until the CDF rules on the apparitions, the 1991 ruling is to be followed.

I'm indifferent about Marian apparitions. If the CDF rules that Medjugorje is legit, more power to it! If not, ho-hum.  Apparitions (Marian or otherwise) are completely extraneous to human salvation. All we need for our salvation is revealed in scripture and authentically interpreted by the magisterium.

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Medio Ecclesiae: Music for the New Evangelization

Eastern Province Dominican students cut an album!

Recorded in historic St. Dominic’s Church in downtown Washington, D.C., the friars of the Dominican House of Studies, Province of St. Joseph, present In Medio Ecclesiae, the first release from Dominicana Records. Directed by Fr. James Moore, O.P., In Medio Ecclesiae offers some of the finest chant and polyphonic treasures of the Church’s musical tradition as well as two new compositions by Dominican friars. Proceeds from the sale of this album contribute to the educational and other needs of the Dominican students.

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Court rules against B.O.'s contraception mandate

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals hands B.O.'s anti-Catholic power grab another defeat on the legal merits of his contraceptive mandate, i.e. the Violation of Religious Freedom and Conscience Mandate.

The Court ruled that for-profit corporations are "persons" under federal law (Religious Freedom and Restoration Act) and cannot be forced to act in such a way as to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs w/o compelling state interest. 

Other Circuit Courts have ruled otherwise, so this one is headed to the Supreme Court.

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Rejoice, endure, persevere

31st Week OT 

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 

St Dominic Church, NOLA 

“One by one, they all began to excuse themselves.” That is the saddest sentence in scripture. Not the angriest, or the most eloquent. But the saddest. Instead of saying yes to dinner, these would-be guests simply turn away. Given the chance to attend a great feast given by a great host, they just walk away. And what are they walking away from? Good food, good wine, excellent conversation, an evening of entertainment and friendship. Think of the business deals they will miss out on. Not to mention the chance to make friends with a great man of their city. But sadly their excuses leave them outside the feast. The gracious host doesn't exclude them; they exclude themselves in exchange for. . .what? Some alone time? To tend some animals? To catch a Saints' game? Jesus tells this parable of the Ungrateful Guests when a fellow-guest at a party notes, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” Indeed, and better yet: bless is the one who wills to dine in the Kingdom of God. All are invited. You and I are invited. Will we say Yes, or will we send an excuse. . .and exclude ourselves? 

The target of Jesus' parable of the Ungrateful Guests is unmistakable: he's aiming it right at some of his fellow Jews, those among God's people who have heard his Father's invitation to the heavenly feast and yet consistently decline that invitation in order to soothe worldly worries, to run after temporary treasure. Just like the great man of the parable, our Father, upon hearing the wonderfully inventive and self-serving excuses for declining his invitation, our Father accepts the absence of His invited guests and opens His feasting hall to the least of His people—the blind, the lame, the sick. And when these prove too few to fill His hall, He sends His servants out to poke around in the bushes for more guests. They find the Gentiles. And the Gentiles join the feast. Blessed are they who will to dine in the Kingdom of God. For God says, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited [and excused themselves] will taste my dinner.” Indeed, and better yet: none of those men who were invited [and excused themselves] willed to taste my dinner. All are invited. You and I are invited. Will we say Yes, or will we send an excuse. . .and exclude ourselves? 

Do you will to taste the abundant graces our Father invites you to taste? If so, just remember: every feast, every party—in heaven and on earth—has its own rhythm, its own life. Parties in the school gym are not the same as parties in a frat house. A family dinner is very different from a dinner with the Pope. If you accept the Father's invitation to celebrate with Him in heaven, then know that while you live, you will be working your way toward His party through the revelry and mess of this world's celebration of excuses, through the Enemy's riot of pernicious temptation and outright debauchery. Paul knows this bit of truth all too well, so he urges us: “Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection. . .Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.” We might call this advice, Paul's Party Etiquette on the Way to the Father's Big Party in Heaven! Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Rejoice, endure, persevere. Hang on to your invitation from God, and more importantly, hold tight to your Yes to Him. As Christ himself shows us, there is nothing the Enemy can offer us that does not already belong to God, nothing that our Father will not give us out of His love for us, including His only Son for our sins. 

Rejoice, endure, persevere. And do not wallow in ridiculous excuses! Those worries we love to rub? Those anxieties we love to feed? Excuses. Those flashes of anger at being hurt? Those moments we spend desiring vengeance for being hurt? Excuses. Love to point out the hypocrisy of others? Love to savor someone elses failure? Excuses. I don't need to be loved by God or anyone else. Excuse. I don't need to forgive or be forgiven. Excuse. I'm not broken, so I don't need to be healed. Excuse. My sins are not my fault; it's my family's, friends', society's fault. Excuse. Rejoice, endure, persevere. And do not wallow in ridiculous excuses! These excuses may dull some immediate pain or temporarily steer you away from taking responsibility, but ultimately, in the end, they will leave you outside the party—alone, despairing, and wondering what on earth could be more important spending eternity feasting at the table of the Lord? What on earth could be more important? Nothing on earth is more important. Say Yes to that invitation now, will to taste all the gifts that our Lord wants to give you. Then rejoice, endure, persevere. With all the gifts you receive from Him: rejoice, endure, persevere. 

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R.I.P.

One of our Greats has died. . .

Fr. Joseph Konkel, OP, long-time pastor of Holy Rosary Church in Houston, TX. Fr. Joe was also pastor of St. Peter Church in Memphis, TN and the campus minister for the Newman Center at the University of Houston.

I lived with Fr. Joe and two of the world's greatest punsters, Fr. Albert and Fr. Boley during my deacon year in Houston. It was a treat watching Fr. Joe moan in pain at some of the puns those two invented!

R.I.P.

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Do you seek to know who Jesus is? (updated)

(An edited version of the 2007 homily I posted earlier. . .)

UPDATE: I ended up ditching this text and preaching off-the-cuff. Don't know why. It went over well. One older gentleman told me that in 60+ yrs of listening to homilies he'd never heard a preacher explain the significance of the sycamore tree! The Egyptians thought of sycamores as the Trees of Life and used the wood for coffins. 

31st Sunday OT(C) 
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Like Zecchaeus, do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? This could be a good definition of hope. When you hope, you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is. Living in us, redeemed creatures that we are, is a beastly longing for God, a need that roars out for our Lord, reaching for him, yearning for He Who made us and re-makes us. Knowing that He is there and knowing that He makes it possible for us to be with Him only sharpens the aggravated need, hones the fine steel of our wanting. That knowing, that knowledge of His presence and the keenness we feel in moving toward Him, that is what we call Hope. But for how many of us is hoping a kind of gamble? Think how you use the word “hope.” I hope my paycheck has arrived. I hope the children are OK. I hope the doctor’s report is good. Hopefully, the car is fixed. Is this really hope? Or, is it “crossed-fingers-wishing-on-a-star-where’s-my-lucky-charm-so-I-can-rub-it-and-increase-the-odds-in-my-favor” thinking? How often, when you hope, are you actually doing little more than wishing yourself good luck? Christian hope, that is, that sort of hope that Christians experience in Christ and that sort of hope that we live by is never a gamble, never a wish, never a spell for good luck. Hope is our gnawing hunger for God, a hunger we KNOW will be satisfied.

“Zacchaeus…was seeking to see who Jesus was;…so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus…” Christian hope—our longing for Christ—is what pushed Zacchaeus up the tree; hope is what pulled him up into the branches to see who he needed to see. And what’s important for us to remember about Zacchaeus is who he is; that is, not only his name, his short stature, and his need to see Jesus, but his place in the Jewish scheme of things as well. He is “a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man…” Zacchaeus is doubly damned as a sinner by his neighbors because he has betrayed them by working for the enemy, and because he has grown rich in his chosen, traitorous profession. Only lepers and pagan temple prostitutes were considered more sinful! And yet, he seeks to see who Jesus is. Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? 

Who is he? The Book of Wisdom tells us that “before the Lord the whole universe is a grain from a balance…a drop of morning dew…” However, despite our smallness, in spite of our insignificance before Him, “[the Lord has] mercy on all, because [He] can do all things; and [He] overlooks people’s sins that they may repent.” If Zacchaeus knows this, if he knew his scripture, and if he knew and believed that Jesus is his Lord, then climbing that sycamore tree is sure sign of his hope. Zacchaeus knew, and we must learn, that “[The Lord] love[s] all things that are and loathe[s] nothing that [He] has made; for what [He] hate[s], [He] would not have fashioned.” 

Why must we learn this? Simple. If you believe that our Lord hates what He has fashioned, including you and me, then your hope will always be a gamble. Your spiritual life will be full of good luck rituals, charm bracelet prayers, and magical thinking. You will turn every corner tensed, expecting a nasty, divine surprise. You will go to bed every night believing that your hateful god will take the opportunity to punish your laziness, to strike your sinful heart dead. You will look at your family, your friends, your fellow Christians and see nothing but walking, talking occasions of sin, breathing temptations that plague your worried attempts at finding favor, finding love in God. And you live a life that daily, hourly makes a lie out of the truth of our Father’s self-revelation to us: “…you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all thing!” All things! Including your family, your friends, your fellow Christians. 

Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? 

Do you seek to see Jesus in your neighbors, your roommates, your parents? If not, why not? Is it that your neighbors, roommates, parents are all horribly wrong? Or, is it that they are pro-abortion, or homosexual, or divorced, or adulterers? Or, is it that they do not share your theology? Or pray as you do? Or share your devotional practices, your sense of social justice, your indignation with the anti-Christian Obama administration, or your disdain for the corporate Fat Cat Republicans? Or, is it because we so often fail to see the truth of our creation and our re-creation? Do we not see Christ in ourselves and others b/c we cannot see beyond our own sin? Why would we allow any of these to spoil our hope, to mess with our beautiful God-graced passion for the Lord? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! 

If you are worried that this seeking Christ in self and others will lead to a license to sin, or will lead you to approve of sin, listen to the rest of Wisdom. Our Lord’s imperishable spirit is in all the things He created, “therefore, [He] rebukes offenders little by little, warns them and reminds them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in [Him]…!” Our Lord does not forget His creatures. He does not forget that we are His creatures and that we share His image and likeness. In fact, Paul tells the Thessalonians, that he, Paul, and his ministers will pray for them so “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith…” Does this sound like a God ready, willing, and able to stomp on you at the first sign of disobedience? No! And not only NO! but God is ready to “make you worthy of his calling.” Isn’t it the case that our anxieties about sin, our worries about offending God are really just a disguise for a lack of hope? Aren’t we really worried about the sins of our neighbors, our children, our roommates b/c we are distrusting of our Father’s promise of mercy for ourselves? How ironic would it be if you put yourself in Hell because you spent your life worried about other peoples' sin and failed to hope in Christ!? 

Zacchaeus climbs that sycamore tree because he “was seeking to see who Jesus was.” And because he acts out of his longing for Christ, Jesus calls his name and says, “…come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” Zacchaeus climbs down and “receives [Christ] with joy.” And what do the self-righteous do? What do those whose hope is a gamble, those whose hope is a lucky star, what do they do then? “When they all saw this, they began to grumble…” And rather than run away in shame or hide his face in disgrace, Zacchaeus, confident in his Lord’s word and his own repentance, gives half his wealth to the poor and makes restitution four times over for his extortion. Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house…” 

Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? Do you seek to see Jesus in your neighbors, your roommates, your parents, and friends? If so, then prepare to receive the Lord at your table; prepare to entertain him among those in most need of his mercy. Your hope is working for your perfection and Christ is coming to dinner! If your hope remains a wishing-star or lucky charm, then memorize this prayer from scripture: “Lord, you love all things that are and loathe nothing you have made; for what you hate, you would not have fashioned…But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!” 

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Where Catholic preaching needs to go. . .?

One of my holiday/summer projects is to reconfigure the homiletics program at NDS.

In my hubris, I've concluded that the problem with Catholic preaching is Catholic homiletics. Not the academic study of Catholic preaching as such, but the overall approach that most homiletics texts tend to favor: preaching is a personal performance rooted in the subjective experience of the preacher and relies almost entirely on an affective mood in tone and content. 

To counter this tendency, I want to introduce seminarians to a wider literary understanding of the imagination; that is, I want to give them some literary tools with which they can re-imagine the Gospel and present it to a contemporary Church. This entails reading novels, poetry, and creative non-fiction in a way that prompts the preacher to address real existential issues and questions through Gospel lenses.

Along with a number of other (better qualified and more experienced) preachers, I've also concluded that catechesis must take a backseat to evangelization in Catholic preaching. Preachers can teach all day long, but if their people haven't experienced Christ as a living presence in their lives, teaching is just mental work: memorization, recitation, etc. This doesn't mean that there is no place in Catholic preaching for teaching, it just means that the first focus of the homily needs to be on bringing our people to an encounter with Christ.

I have no idea where any of this will lead. . .St Dominic, pray for us!

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