But madness is the mission

3^rd Week of Lent (F)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA

Francis Tarwater finally sees his chance to baptize the “idiot-boy,” and he takes it. Throwing the boy into the lake, he does the deed and in the process drowns him. As with most of Flannery O'Connor's “preachers of nihilism,” Tarwater is compelled by a prophetic mission, and ruinously haunted by the Devil. This tension explodes when Tarwater tries to fulfill a promise he made to his uncle to baptize the boy. When he tries, the Devil tempts him with disobedience, saying, “If you baptize once, you'll be doing it the rest of your life.” What the Devil knows about Tarwater that Tarwater doesn't know about himself is that he loves. He loves his uncle. He loves the “idiot-boy.” He loves the idea of being a baptizing prophet. And so the Devil says the only thing he can to pull Tarwater away from his promise, “You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.” When Jesus commands us to love as God loves, to love neighbor and self with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, I think, “Madness!” We can't survive in this world if our mission is to love as God Himself loves. If we're to survive, we must stop confusing our mission with the madness of divine love. But that's the Devil talking, telling me what I want to hear.

Hearing God's word of love and receiving His love as a gift is not easy. Israel, so often on the receiving end of both God's love and His wrath, knows this better than anyone. The Lord sends Hosea to His people with a message, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt.” Sounds simple enough. Repent, turn around, and go back to righteousness. But repentance requires more than a muttered “sorry 'bout that.” Repentance requires a fundamental transformation of heart, mind, soul, and strength. It requires a new creation, starting over on the right path in mercy. This doesn't sound so bad until I realize that true repentance is made manifest by an act of mercy: I forgive those who have sinned against me. If my repentance doesn't culminate in an extravagant outpouring of forgiveness from me, then my repentance is incomplete. How can I say that I love as God loves if I cannot or will not forgive my enemies? Thus, the Devil calls Tarwater's mission of love “madness.” And urges him to stop confusing this madness for a mission. To forgive those who have sinned against you is a sure sign of repentance, and a measure of one's distance from the Devil. So, of course, the Devil wants you to nurse your wounds, to glory in your victimhood, to wallow around in self-pity and hurt. He wants us to forget that the madness of love is our mission.

As difficult as it might be for us to love as God loves, to forgive as we have been forgiven, we cannot forget that He promises us His assistance. He says to Hosea, “I will heal their defection. . .I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel.” We also have the comfort of knowing that Christ's command to love is a command. Not a suggestion, a hint, or just one option among many. A command. Lord, give what you command, and command what you will. But be careful with this prayer. Before you offer the sacrifice of your will to God's will, know that there is a madness in His love, a madness that will become your mission, a mission that will attract the voices of the Enemy to pull you away from your anointed task. These dis-easing voices have names: Excuse, Entitlement, Vengeance, Petulance, Stubbornness. But God's healing graces have names too: Responsibility, Generosity, Mercy, Patience, Obedience. And His names – received in absolute gratitude with abundant praise – will turn the madness of our sin into the divine madness of love, a love let loose to bring the world to kneel.

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Quaestio: Is being a Dominican awesome?

Videtur quod being a Dominican is not awesome.

Respondio: WRONG!

14 Totally Awesome Things About the Order of Preachers!

Only 14?

I can think of at least one more: Not being able to sneak up on your students b/c you sound like a tinker wagon on a dirt road.

Oh, and one more: You have incredibly generous benefactors who send you books and coffee and rosaries and. . .most importantly. . .Prayers!

h/t: MFT

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Coffee Cup Broswing

Holy Father discusses Lord of the World in his daily homily.

Why are feminists obsessed with abortion and birth control? Easy. . .like all things totalitarian, it's about power. 

CA Dem and gun control supporter arrested for trafficking. . .guns!

The FBI finally wises up to the antics of the Southern Poverty Law Center.   

World Vision U.S. reverses its decision to support same-sex "marriage."

The Holy Father meets B.O. Prepare yourself for The Spin. . .and don't overreact. 

". . .the anti-Catholic prejudice today wears a mantle of utter reasonableness and courtesy." Well, I'm sure the anti-Catholic bigot thinks he's being reasonable and courteous.

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Six media lies about the contraception mandate. Clear. Concise. Devastating.

Some guy tells the Church that we need to change ourselves into Something Else. . .or else.  Somebody send this guy this article, "End of the Mainline."

The Walking Dead has become nothing more than a bad soap opera, starring really smelly people with bad skin. Haven't watched it in weeks.

Why do fantasy/sci-fi TV shows often fail? Easy: they stop being fantasy/sci-fi and become mushy, character-driven soap operas. Spending weeks on a character romance with all the sentimental trimmings is a death-sentence.

"Years ago, the Europeans made a conscious decision to inhabit an imaginary world where everyone is just as emasculated and effete as they, where everyone wants to anesthetize themselves from the pain of responsibility with social spending and moral posturing."  

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Coffee Cup Browsing

God's Not Dead breaks into the Top 5 movies over the weekend. Haven't seen it. Anyone? 

Here's a trailer. . .love how the philosophy professor -- committed to argument and evidence -- begins by concluding that God is dead. I believe that's called begging the question.

Here's why B.O. Care is failing and will always be a failure. . .

That No Christians Need Apply clause in a school contract just somehow, mysterious floated into the help wanted ad all by itself. Sure it did.

Pope Francis: Don't clericalize the laity!

Secularism is really just the re-paganization of the West.

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God always makes the first move

3^rd Sunday of Lent

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Indeed: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. . .” The hour is here and here we are, worshiping the Father in Spirit and in truth. How else can we worship the Father but through His Spirit and in His truth? “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Hasn't “the love of God been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”? Of course! “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” While we were still sinners. Not b/c we did something deserving. Not b/c we had achieved holiness w/o Christ. But even while we were sinning, Christ died for us. Moses, Paul, and Jesus himself testify to the Father's unbounded love for us. Despite their kvetching in the desert, He provides water for His wandering people. Despite our sin, He provides the Christ for our salvation. Despite our frequent infidelity, He sends His Holy Spirit so that we might worship Him and come back to Him in holiness. In every instance of our disobedience, God makes the first move to restore us. He takes the initiative and gives us everything we need to find our way home. He loves first, so that we might begin to love. 

 

What does love have to do with Lent? Well, if Lent is about finding and eliminating the sources of our disobedience, then the Sundays of Lent are all about paying attention to God's mercy. The Psalmist sings this evening, “Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord. . .Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us.” And we might rightly wonder why we should bother with all this singing and rejoicing and kneeling. We're two weeks into our Lenten desert and if we are doing it right, we know all too well how far we are from God. But if we wallow in that distance, if we cling to the length and depth of our sin, we will miss the Good News that Christ came to deliver. He says to the woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst. . .” And then we would miss our chance to say to Christ, “Lord, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty. . .” Yes, Lent is about identifying and tackling our sins. But while we are identifying and tackling our sins, Christ stands with us, pouring out for us the Waters of Eternal Life. This is why we pause during Lent – to pay attention when he says, “I am your Savior.” 

 

The Sundays of Lent all about hearing the GOOD News of Lent. So, here’s what we are supposed to hear from the gospel: the preaching of the Good News is to go out to everyone, excluding no one not even those with whom we have significant religious differences. The Living Water of God’s grace is immeasurably deep and awesomely wide. We receive this Water as a gift, given without price or debt, liberally handed-over in love, and dipped from the well of Christ Jesus himself. 

 

The Living Water of God’s saving grace flows easily and freely over the dirtiest feet, into the foulest mouths, through the most unclean hands, and washes away any and all afflictions. 

 

The Living Water of God’s grace waters the cruelest heart, softens the hardest head, and tames the most passionate stomach. No dam or pipe or bucket or cloud is strong enough, high enough, deep enough or empty enough to hold the gifts that our Father has to give us. 

 

The Living Water of God’s grace is the Bridge between blood enemies; the Way across all anger and pride; the Means of health and beauty; the only Gate to truth and goodness. Built on the confession of Peter and guarded against Hell itself, the Church floats on its ocean, unsinkable, unshakable, His Ark. 

The Living Water of God’s grace wets everything it touches, stains anything it falls upon, and indelibly marks for eternal life anyone who will say with the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water.”

We learn from the gospel that we cannot worship I AM THAT I AM on any single mountain; in one church building and not another; nor can we pray in Jerusalem alone, Rome alone, Paris alone, or New Orleans alone. We learn that we are to worship the LORD in Spirit and in Truth, not with spirits and lies, but in His Spirit and His Truth; alone with Him and all together, we pray where we are, when we are, and we ask for one gift: voices eager to praise His glory, voice set afire with the Word of God’s mercy.

Jesus says to the woman, “I am [the Christ], the one who is speaking with you.” When she tells her neighbors this truth, they come to Christ and listen to the Word. For two days they listen. When the time for him to leave comes, the Samaritans say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” If she had held her tongue, quieted her voice and failed to speak the Truth, they would not have heard. Where then would they find hope?

Paul writes to the Romans: “…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If we are not disappointed in the grace we have received, how much more passionate are we then about speaking a simple truth, just one word to our neighbors about the gift of life we have received. There is no hope on the dry land of secular religion or science; no hope in the mouths of politicians or professors; there is no hope in test tubes or books. No hope that lasts. Our hope, our one hope is the depth, the breadth, the width of our Father’s immeasurable mercy – the sky-wide and valley-deep well of His free flowing and ever-living Water. Walking this desert of Lent to the Cross, let Paul remind you: “…only with difficulty [do you] die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person [you] might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners [still sinners!] Christ died for us.”

The first move in Love and Mercy belongs to God alone. The second move is ours alone. Do we drink from the saving well, or not? Do we rejoice with Christ, or grieve without him? Tomorrow you return to the desert. Will you go back thirsty, or filled with the water of Eternal life?

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Here's a fun site: Discover the Networks. David Horowitz brings some sunshine to the nefarious spider-web that is the Left.

Yet another Racist Hoax. 

Fr. Lew, OP! Interviewed by NRO.  Ah, I remember him when. . .

New Vatican commission on sexual abuse. The first thing they need to do is trash the Dallas Charter and come up with something Christian to replace it with. 

Pittsburgh's Bishop Zubik rejects Common Core for his diocesan schools.

The Coat Hanger Mythology of the pro-abortion money-makers.

Medieval Haters of Science. Not. Without Catholic Aristotelianism there would be no modern science.

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Coffee Cup Browsing

A glimpse into the "mind" of a baby-hater: ". . .babies are still time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness." NB. her language is obscene at times. Apparently, being enlightened and liberated by reason limits one's vocabulary.

Like "global warming," fracking has become the Leftie go-to man made disaster that justifies all their totalitarian impulses.

Do federal social programs work? Well, how do you define "work"?  They certainly "work" to provide public employee unions with lots of taxpayer cash, and politicians with lots of opportunities for corruption. Not to mention inventing and reinforcing a dependent client caste that benefits the politicians come election time.

50 Great Documentaries

Why does the MSM ignore/downplay Muslim persecution of Middle Eastern Christians? Short answer: to do otherwise muddles the anti-Israel narrative.

It's sweet that she assumes that the purpose of Common Core is to educate children. 
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Tragically diminished without God

NB. The Times-Picayune published this piece in their Friday newspaper, but they have yet to post it on-line. Not sure why. I had hoped to send some traffic their way. . .oh well.  If they post it tomorrow, I'll add a link.

Tragically diminished without God

 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. – W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919.





Though Christ has not yet been chased completely out of the twenty-first century public square, his presence and influence are quickly fading. And fading by design. While Yeats watched Western Europe tear itself apart in the first two decades of the twentieth-century, members of the intelligentsia were still applauding Nietzsche's 1882 announcement that “God is dead” and speculating on what western culture should look like after His funeral. For the most part, they cheered the idea that we were all better off without God. However, as modern history has shown, western culture is tragically diminished in the absence of God.

In Yeats' time and in ours, things fall apart and the center does not hold. Those who believe that things should fall apart and that the center should never hold promote the “death of God” as the greatest event in the history of human liberation. Without God to inform and enforce objective standards of truth, goodness, and beauty, we are free agents in the design and construction of our fate. Ultimately responsible for every choice, each one of us is left utterly alone in our freedom. Secularists argue that this is a good thing. However, such freedom, understood as license, comes with a high cultural and personal price: anxiety, desperation, and grief. All too often our survivalist's instincts lead us toward nihilism and, eventually, self-destruction.

And how can we look back on the twentieth-century and fail to see ourselves committing cultural suicide in the absence of God? World War I killed 37 million. WWII killed more than 60 million. Stalin murdered 20 million; Mao between 45-72 million. Add the death toll from other secularist regimes and the total verges on the incomprehensible. But it's not just wholly secularist nations that contribute to the butcher's bill. In the U.S., since 1973, secularist ideology has provided the legal framework for domestic genocide: 53 million abortions and that number grows every year by 1.7 million. It's no accident that 65% of these abortions occur outside the marriage bond. Without the transcendent, without God, all we have left is our belief in nothing and everything is permitted.

Over the decades many secular thinkers have tried to replace God with a useful, all-too-human idol. Nietzsche gave us the Übermensch, the Super Man. Marx gave us The Worker in Class Struggle. And Freud gave us the Neurotic, drowning in his sexually repressed unconscious. None of these idols brought the human person to the fullness of true freedom, nor can any of them bring us closer to the truth, goodness, and beauty offered by classical western theism. What they did bequeath to us is a severely diminished culture crippled by the secularist myth that believers are little more than superstitious primitives who are best ignored, if not outright eliminated. Why? Because left alone to influence the shape and direction of a nation, believers will inevitably turn a democracy into a theocratic gulag. Or so the myth goes.

To better understand why we need God, we need to think about why secularism wants Him out of the cultural picture. Catholic philosopher, Charles Taylor, defines culture in terms of the “social imaginary,” that is, culture is more than just how we do things, it's how we imaginatively arrange both our internal and social lives as the two interact. For the Christian West, the social imaginary has always been rooted in the reality and availability of the transcendent God who became flesh to dwell among us. If the incarnation of Christ tells us how to think about our ultimate end and we use this knowledge to organize our social lives, then those virtues given to us by God (faith, hope, love) become real, enforceable social norms. In other words, morality is objective, knowable, and actionable. If the secularists are right and God is dead, then so are the virtues He infuses into the human person.

So, where does that leave us? Exactly where we've been left time and again by secularist ideology: the one with the most money and guns wins. And there's no appeal to a higher authority if you are among the losers. Fortunately, we don't have to stay here. Lent is that time of year when Christians confront the difficult difference between living in the world but not being of the world. Our graced task is to stand among the ruins and reconstructions of our diminished culture and show our neighbors – through word and deed – how the world can be both a sign of God's love and a tool of devilish temptation. We do this by digging into the hard work of charity, the seriously earthy work of feeding the poor, clothing the naked, praying for our enemies, and fasting in sacrificial love, all the while keeping our hearts and minds stubbornly turned toward God's promise of final rescue. If secularism has again unleashed “mere anarchy” upon the world, then we who follow Christ must give our lives upon the cross to show the world again that Christ is King.

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Dominican appt'd Archbishop (UPDATED 2.0)

NB. This post has gotten over 1,000 hits! I have no idea why. Where are all you people coming from? Welcome! 

Update 2.0: Now this post has over 2,000 hits. Please, let me know where you are all coming from. . .

Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Malcolm McMahon, OP as Archbishop of Liverpool, UK. I don't know much about the Good Friar's ecclesial politics or theological bent, but I imagine that he falls well within the norm for Baby Boomer English Dominicans -- to the left but within the tradition.

fra. Malcolm ordained me to the diaconate on July 3, 2004 at Blackfriars, Oxford.

As usual, Rocco has the scoop. . .
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Four Items -- quickly. . .

First: HUGE mendicant thanks to Gregorio M. for sending me Guardini's The Lord from the Wish List. If I had a dime for every time this book has been recommended to me I wouldn't need to beg for books on the internet. 

Second: The return of Coffee Cup Browsing has been a stat success. Oddly, Mon, Wed, and Thurs' editions got an average of 100 hits, while Tues' edition got over 520!  I have no idea why. 

Third: Several of my Internet Mothers have written to ask about my health. I'm still old and fat and my knee is wobbly/achy. Other than that, I'm fine. I have a doc appt on April 3rd for a cardiac check-up and a bone-doc referral.  Thanks for the prayers! 

Fourth: My Lenten article for the Times-Picayune has been submitted. They will post it on-line tomorrow. Watch for links.  Maybe if we spike their stats they will ask me to write something regularly!  :-)

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Coffee Cup Browsing

"Christians Need Not Apply." When non-discrimination requires discrimination. 

NASA -- ya know, the federal agency that deals the Space Stuff -- spends tax money to tell us that we must redistribute wealth or risk social collapse. UH?

That Women's Studies prof in CA who attacked a 16yo Pro-Life activist spends some time telling us why her feelings are more important than our rights. 

The Above Mentioned Prof drops a feminist code-word in her police interview: triggering. This is just a fancier version of the heckler's veto. Who knew that academic feminists were such delicate flowers in need of protection.

Rape Culture: reminds me of the time back in the late 80's when I served on a county jury in an aggravated rape case. One of my feminist grad school colleagues demanded that I convict the guy b/c "men have been raping women for centuries." Damn the evidence! Let ideology rule!

To all my brother friars who laughed at me in the Studium when I told you that carbs are the dietary enemy not fat: "Toldya."

Lightening Fall: A Novel of Disaster. If anyone reads this one, please let me know. Reminds me of Lucifer's Hammer.

"When how we vote is how our souls are saved." Secularism is a postmodern religion. 

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Global Warming Heretics must be jailed. All for the cause of tolerance and science, of course!

White House quietly rewrites FOIA. . .in 2009. Lawlessness.

We were relentlessly pushed into "collaboration" with religious sisters in seminary. This meant that we did exactly what the sisters wanted to do. Lack of collaboration with their agenda was seen as a "formation issue," and threatened a black bean come voting time.

Asian politicians (D) in CA halt effort to enshrine racial preferences. Good. NB: no one called them "racist." Wonder why?

Don't Harsh the Narrative: "Pedophile priest" given the boot by the Vatican. NB: his victim was a 14 yo male teen. That's not pedophilia.

MSM struggles with reporting on recent Big Bang discovery. Apparently, the universe "transformed itself" from Nothing to Something. 

On Pride: suffering for something worse.

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Coffee Cup Browsing

No 1stA rights for our Christian FlyBoys and Girls? Here's where to help.  

Here's another source of help for Christians being bullying by Secularist Fundies: Thomas More Law Center.

On the upcoming 2014 Synod on Marriage: "I no longer fear the charlatans behind the media curtains. Sure, they can still produce plenty of smoke. But most of their Catholic mirrors are gone." Your mouth to God's ears.

Grav waves from Big Bang discovered. No doubt the Inquisition is collecting kindling in St Peter's Square.

Speaking of anti-science propaganda: Cosmos' ratings drop dramatically. Good. Here's to a season's worth of cricket-chirping. . .and cancellation.

 

Cosmos: Revisionist History Posing as Science

The Extraordinary Form of the Mass celebrated at Harvard!

Vietnamese Catholicism. . .several of my formation advisees are Vietnamese, specifically religious brothers of the Congregation of the Mother, Co-Redemptrix (CMC).

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Coffee Cup Browsing: The Return!

Shocked! Shocked, I say! Anti-religious bias in the newsroom. 

Media Project 2014: Fictionalize Francis.

The moral genius of the Church is her ability to hold to the truth of the ideal even when (especially when!) we fail repeatedly to achieve the ideal.

Hillary: "You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development, without safeguarding women’s reproductive health and rights." Sure. 'Cause killing babies is healthcare, ya know. 

Taking liberties with Son of God? Haven't seen it. Probably won't. 

B.O. surrenders the internet to. . .the UN. Great. That's gonna work just swell for liberty worldwide.  Maybe China, N.Korea, and Egypt can sit on the panel that governs access.

LOL. Good one.

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