Here I am?

St. Bonaventure
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Dominic Church, NOLA

Moses finds a bush burning in the desert. The bush is burning, but it is not reduced to ash. Both surprised and curious, Moses wants to know why the bush is not consumed by the fire. As he approaches this “remarkable sight,” a voice calls out, “Moses, Moses.” Hearing his name spoken in fire, Moses stops, screams like a scalded camel, and runs home in terror! When he tells the story of the flaming shrub, no one in his family believes him. After years of therapy, Moses concludes that the whole incident resulted from dehydration, low blood-sugar, and a deeply embedded sub-conscious fear of vegetation. He resumes his work as a shepherd and avoids contact with anything that might be called bramble, hedge, or scrub. He dies a very old man secure in his well-managed anxiety around wilderness foliage. How do you react to God's voice flaming out at you? Do you scream and run in terror? Or do you follow the real Moses' example and answer, “Here I am”?

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recalls the difficult process of writing his second dissertation, a work on St Bonaventure's theology of history.* He writes that one of his readers had rejected his thesis because of its modern research methods and radical theological conclusions regarding the nature of divine revelation. What was so radical about the future Pope Benedict XVI's views on revelation? The young Ratzinger argued that divine revelation is “the act in which God shows himself. . .” Is this a fine distinction that only a German theologian could love? Not at all. From this distinction, Ratzinger concludes that God's Self-revelation must be witnessed by someone in order to be a revelation at all. He writes, “Where there is no one to perceive 'revelation,' no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed.” For our future Pope, the perceiving subject of divine revelation is the Church and the Church's understanding of God's revelation is contained in tradition. Because of this “dangerous modernism,” Joseph the student was sent back to his desk to try again. Despite this setback, he won his doctorate. And he won the argument.*

My fictional Moses, the terrified shepherd, chose to flee God's revelation and rationalize his encounter with the fiery voice of the shrub as a product of physical ills and psychological trauma. Perhaps we can forgive this fantasy version of Moses b/c we might be tempted to follow his example! Fortunately, the real Moses, upon hearing his name called from the fire, approached the bush and said instead, “Here I am.” Moses surrenders his courageous heart to this world's most dangerous message: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lives and He has a job that needs to be done. Because he bravely stepped forward and answered to his name, Moses is sent to free God's people from slavery in Egypt. And like any of us given a similar task, Moses says, “What?! Me!? Who I am to do this work?!” 

 

As the Church, the Body of Christ on earth, we are each called by name and sent out to do the work of freeing God's people from slavery. This might be the literal slavery of child-trafficking or forced prostitution. This might be the slavery of poverty or political and religious oppression. This might be the slavery of individual disobedience and personal vice. Whatever face slavery wears, the chains that bind are held fast by sin and the fear of death. Liberation for slaves begins when they are told that the Pharaoh of Sin is powerless, his armies defeated, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has commanded him to “let My people go.” Liberation for the slaves arrives when they receive this revelation and begin to live lives freed from Pharaoh's rule. Where the dignity of the human person is violated by sin, the message of freedom in Christ must be announced. And when this revelation is received, it must be lived. Not only by the one who hears it but by the one who speaks it as well.

Who am I to do this work? Who are you? If we say to the burning bush—wherever it may appear—“Here I am,” we become ones sent to announce freedom from sin in Christ. First, we are called, then we call. First, we are freed, then we free. We become exactly who God calls us to be. And who is that? Christ dying on his cross for the salvation of the world.

* Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, pg 108.

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Coming out of the coffin: accepting the vampire lifestyle. Ummmm, no.

Who does the Left fear most for 2016? 

Dressing for Church: a few suggestions. The Good Monsignor is braver than I.

Planned Parenthood exec caught on tape talking about selling fetus body parts after partial-birth abortion. Disgusting. 

Spiritual but not religious: no, you're probably neither.

Freaky history of four abortion clinics in London.

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Sin/Death = Prison/Cemetery

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Dominic Church, NOLA

Are there any better symbols of sin and its consequences than the prison and the cemetery? Disobedience and death. In the first few lines from his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne brings his readers to witness a dreary gathering, a scene heavy with sin, punishment, and individual failure: “The founders of a new colony, whatever the Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” Before the prison-door stand “a throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats. . .” This crowd of utopian worthies has “assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.” With the grim certainty of those who believe themselves innocent of sin, the earliest Bostonians wait outside their “ugly edifice” for the village's latest sinner to emerge, to show herself as one chastened by “the black flower of civilized society, a prison.” Hearing Jesus speak so disparagingly of the citizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernuam, we might wonder if Hawthorne is right: despite our deepest desires for holiness, our most strenuous work to do the good, and the constant offer of redemption from the Father through His Son, we are doomed to reject the Holy Spirit's ministry among us and fill our prisons to breaking only to end up stocking our cemeteries for eternity. Is our story, as Hawthorne describes the life of Hester Prynne, “a tale of human frailty and sorrow”?

It would grossly irresponsible of us to see only the good in our hearts, ignoring the siren call of sin so that we could pretend innocence like those waiting outside Hester's prison-cell. We would be equally irresponsible if we were to make our lives into a paranoid vigil against every impulse, every natural instinct that comes with knowing the difference between good and evil. We give life to the same pride that brought down our first parents when we dwell obsessively on our failures in a quest for a purity that lies beyond our unaided reach. We can be pure. But not by ourselves. Though our prisons and cemeteries mark the consequences of human sin, Christ is the rose-bush flowering outside our cell-door, along side our tombstones. He is for us “some sweet moral blossom...that relieve[s] the darkening close of [our] tale...” But he is more than that: with us he is our holiest spirit; for us he is the only light in the darkness of our sin.

Jesus rails against the stubborn hearts of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, condemning their blindness to his mighty deeds and offer of salvation. We know that he is rejected as a heretic and demon by the temple, as a rebel by the empire, and possibly as a madman by most of those who hear him. The audacity of his message is too much to hear: the Father and I are one; He has sent me to you as your lamb of sacrifice; believe in me and you will be saved from sin and death. Too easy, too neat, too much for a disobedient heart that has grown muscular on the hard labor of chasing after salvation. There must be more to it than simple trust in God and love of neighbor!

How like the Psalmist we can be when we find ourselves doubting God's mercy: “I am sunk in the abysmal swamp where there is no foothold; I have reached the watery depths; the flood overwhelms me.” We may have escaped the prison, but the cemetery is not far away. Or is it? “But I pray to you, O Lord, for the time of your favor, O God! In your great kindness answer me with your constant help.” And how does the Lord answer us in our mire? “Turn to me in your need, and you will live.” Even as we indulge the folly of believing ourselves innocent, even as we grow more and more foolish in our refusal to turn our hearts to the mighty deeds of God, He says to us, “See, you lowly ones, and be glad; you who seek God, may your hearts revive! For the Lord hears the poor, and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.” This promise is Christ among us. No prison door remains locked. No tombstone stands against our eternal lives.

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We might exist for the praise of his glory

15th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Before God got a hold on him, Amos was a sheepherder and a tree surgeon. Before God found him on the road to Damascus, Paul was a lawyer and a zealous persecutor of Christians. Before Jesus walked past Matthew, he was a tax collector; James, John, Peter were fishermen; Luke was a doctor. What about Mary? She was a teenaged girl betrothed to Joseph. We have a prophet, twelve apostles, and the Mother of God. From who and what they were before hearing their call, all these ordinary people became extraordinary players in even more extraordinary events. Amos is called to chastise a corrupt priest of the royal court. Paul is called to cease his persecution of Jesus' followers and become one of them. The other apostles are all called to leave their ordinary jobs, to become students of the Master, and give their lives to the preaching of the Good News. And Mary, a virgin girl, is called to become the woman who bears Christ into the world. By the Word of our loving God, ordinary people—just plain folks—are pulled out of the tedious minutiae of just getting through another day and fashioned into instruments of the Divine Will and set out to accomplish a divine purpose. If God will use shepherds, fishermen, a doctor, and a virgin girl to complete His work, why wouldn't He use you, use any one of us? 

If called upon to serve a divine purpose most of us would probably react the same way most of the Biblical figures reacted: Who me? Why me? I'm just a bank teller, a cashier, a stay-at-mom, a fast food cook! I'm just a high school graduate; I barely passed my religion classes; I don't like to speak in public; I'm a Big Sinner, probably the Biggest! Given enough time, we could find a thousand and one reasons to avoid being called, a thousand and one excuses not to do whatever ridiculous and potentially embarrassing job God wants us to do. And if we couldn't find the one thousand and second excuse, we'd make one up! Alright, maybe I'm projecting here, maybe I'm telling you more about how I reacted to the call than predicting how you might react. But my point should be clear: when pressed into divine service, quite a few of us truly believe that we are unworthy of the honor, unfit for the job. And we're right to believe it. We are unworthy, unfit to do God's will. . .that is, until He makes us both worthy and fit, until He gifts us with all that we need to accomplish the work He's given us to do. To the shepherd Amos, He gives a prophet's voice. To the Pharisee, Paul, He gives a motivating vision. To Peter, John, James, Andrew, all the apostles, He gives knowledge, wisdom, and authority. And to Mary, He gives a sinless start. What gifts has He given you so that you might complete His work?

Paul writes to the Church in Ephesus, assuring them that he is absolutely confident that they have received their gifts from God and that they have the will and fervor necessary to use those gifts in God's service. When he writes his letter to the Ephesians, Paul is a prisoner of the Roman Empire and from his prison cell he preaches the gospel of freedom in Christ. He shouts out God's Word across the known world. Amos, a sheep-herder and dresser of sycamores, is sent by God to prophesy to Israel. Angrily confronted by the priest, Amaziah, and ordered to leave the temple, Amos says, “I was sent by God to speak His word.” And Jesus, calling the Twelve together, sends his friends into the world, giving them authority to command unclean spirits, to preach and to teach. A prisoner, a sheep-herder, a tax-collector, a handful of fishermen, a doctor, and a few ambitious corporate climbers—all chosen, all taught, all sent to do one thing: speak the Living Word of God in spirit and in truth so that the heirs of the Father might know that their inheritance is at hand. Not one of these apostles or prophets goes willingly. Not one goes without apprehension. Not one of them leaves to do God's will without believing that he is unprepared, unworthy. But they go b/c they trust that God prepares them and makes them worthy to bring His will to completion. 

As baptized men and women, we have already accepted the call from God to be His apostles, to be those who go out and preach His gospel in word and deed. As the Body of Christ together in this building, we are here to say “Amen, so be it” to God's charge that we become Christs where we are. And though we may believe ourselves unprepared and unworthy, we are nonetheless vowed to do exactly that. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul takes the time to describe to his brothers and sisters the origin and flowering of their work as heirs to the kingdom. His detailed account of their creation in love and their recreation in Christ's sacrifice is not just pretty theological rhetoric. His goal is to open their eyes and ears to the truth of their identity as ones who have been picked out, selected to do the job God has given them to do. Do you feel unprepared? Who doesn't? Nonetheless, you are a daughter of the Father, an heir. Are you unworthy? Who isn't? Nonetheless, you are a son of the Father, an heir. Are you a prisoner? A shepherd? A fisherman? Probably not. Are we without tools? Training? Experience? Maybe. Nonetheless, we are sent. The only important question now is: will we go? Or will we wrack our brains to invent that one thousand and second excuse to leave God's gifts untouched and go on with the tedious business of just another day? Or maybe, we are willing to pick up His gifts and do His will there's something or someone stopping us. Amos is threatened by a priest who invokes both divine and worldly power. Paul is threatened by imperial Rome. The apostles are threatened by temple, empire, and the rulers of this world—priests, soldiers, and demons. Though threatened from every direction by every force available, Amos, Paul, and the apostles go out anyway and do what their Father has commanded them to do. 

Who or what is stopping you? The government? Your spouse? The kids? Your job? If so, listen again to Paul, the prisoner of Rome: “In [Christ] we were. . .chosen, destined. . .so that we might exist for the praise of his glory...In [Christ] you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, [you also] were sealed with the promised holy Spirit, which is the first installment of our inheritance. . .” What worldly power can un-choose you? What relationship do you enjoy that trumps your inheritance as a child of the Father? What deficiency in training, moral purity, motivation, or intelligence can defeat the promise of your baptism? “In accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us,” we are free from every deficiency that limits us, holds us back, or fights to defeat us. His grace, His gifts are lavished upon us and in harmony with these gifts we are forgiven our transgressions and sent out as apostles to give testimony to the freedom we enjoy as God's possessions. So, if we are timid or lax or afraid of doing what we have already promised to do, then it is more than past time to ask for strength, determination, and courage. There's work to be done, God's work. And when we do this work with the Holy Spirit, we are more than merely capable; we are made worthy, fit, and thoroughly prepared. In His truth, we are truly blessed. 

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Sunday)

No. The Pope did not call capitalism "the dung of the devil."  

"Capitalism has always been a revolutionary force and when traditional institutions of various sorts have gotten in its way, they have rarely been spared."  To wit: the Protestant Reformation.

Plain dress, religious habits: the importance of public symbols of faith.

SSM teacher fired from Catholic school. 

A review of Fr. Driscol's mystery novels. . . 

Nothing New Under the Sun: SSM and the early Church. 

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Saturday)

Climate scientists experiencing psych problems. . .unsurprising given that they spent their days spinning wild speculations based on computer models that defy reality. 

Now it's a mini-ice age??? I thought the Science Was Settled!

Does the U.S. need a national exorcism? No. We need five or six.

What killed the optimism of American progressives? The Cult of Mother Earth.

After the Charleston massacre, B.O. said that it was in our power to stop mass killings, i.e. more gun control. Actually, it was in his power to stop Dylann Roof. And he didn't.

Why hasn't B.O. commented on the murder of Kate Steinle by an illegal alien? Good question.

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Friday)

Fail-to-launch young men and their revenge fantasies. . . 

Pay the fine for UnGood Thoughts or lose your house!

If "sanctuary cities" can defy federal immigration law at will, why can't cities or states defy the Supreme Court decision that invented a right to SSM?

Another data breach. . .21 million federal workers' info now in the hands of China. . .we're in the very best of hands.

Pope Francis trolled by Commie dictator: "That's not right," says the Pope.

15 religious movies to get that Avengers/Minions/Jurassic World taste out of your mouth.

Enjoying Leftist Privilege in college. . .

Oregon allows 15 y.o.'s to get tax-payer funded sex-change surgery w/o parental consent.

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Grazie

A Big Acrylic Thank You to MMF for the paint! And be assured of my prayers for you and your family at Mass.

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Thurs)

Pope Francis in Ecuador to priests:  "You did not buy a ticket to get into the seminary. . .You did nothing to 'deserve' it."  BOOM!

American communism's first failure.

The Everybody Gets a Trophy Generation is failing out in college. Mom, dad, you gotta let Little Timmy and Susy learn to lose.

Is you state, county, or city a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants?

Big Surprise: GOP-run states are solvent. Dem-run states? Not so much.

IRS/DoJ/FBI colluded to prosecute conservative groups. 

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Coffee Cup Browsing

My NDS seminarians can tell you that I harp on clarity, concision, and precision to the point of being obsessive. 

Christ didn't die on the cross to teach us how to be nice.

EU is committing suicide. . .I say, "Kudos!"

70% of Americans think the media are biased. . .only 70%???

Imagine that. . .Hillary is scripting a "grassroots" movement that will "spontaneously" praise her when her media shills show up.

Why are women more likely than men to believe in astrology? 

Jimmy Carter *feels* like Jesus would approve of same-sex "marriage."

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Should the Church stop signing-off on civil marriages? I've thought about it, but the consequences aren't clear.

The New Totalitarianism. . .not really all that new. 

Same-sex "marriage" will lead to polygamy. None of the arguments against polygamy can survive given Kennedy's invention of new civil right to dignity.

Hillary herds her media sheep with a rope. . .literally, with a rope.

SSM is not like divorce. 

Einstein can't be wrong about relativity! The science is settled! 
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When I am weak, then I am strong

14^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

God sends a prophet to His people, “rebels who have rebelled against [Him].” These rebels – “hard of face and obstinate of heart” – have turned away from their Father, shaming themselves in disobedience and bringing upon themselves the inevitable consequences of their sin. Ezekiel, the prophet God sends, knows that he will not be welcomed among his kin. He knows that his proclamation to the nation – “Return to the Lord!” – will not be well-received. This is an old problem. Some six-hundred-plus years after Ezekiel's death, Jesus will say, “A prophet is [honored] except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” Why is a prophet sent by God honored everywhere except in his own native land? For a prophet to speak with authority, for him to be heard by God's people, he must be truly “other than” those to whom he preaches; that is, a prophet must be “set aside” in his family; somehow an alien in his own hometown; an odd sort of animal in the ambling herd. Familiarity breeds contempt. Who listens to and believes a prophet who grew up in the neighborhood just like everyone else? If you and I, the Church, will be prophets/witnesses sent by the Father to invite the world to return to the Father, we must be “set aside,” “other than,” the odd animals in the ambling herd. But being the ones set aside is dangerous business, even a deadly business.

I'll just say it straight out: nobody likes a prophet. Think about what prophets are sent to do. Basically, God looks at His people and sees them being disobedient – they are stealing from the poor, cheating on their spouses, killing one another, ignoring their religious obligations, worshiping foreign gods, and just generally pretending they do not have a covenant with the Lord. Seeing all this, the Lord calls out a prophet, someone who is given a vision of the His plan for humanity and sent to the people to tell them that they are on the wrong path. Every prophet has an amazingly simple mission: go among the sinners, call them sinners, and warn them that the clock on God's wrath is ticking. Repent or face the consequences. Over and over again, we know, that God's people (that us, too) have treated prophets with contempt. When we aren't ignoring them, we kill them. If we don't kill them, we dismiss them as religious-nuts. The reason we do this is obvious. Where the prophet sees sin, we see personal choice. Where he sees disobedience, we see liberty and license. Where he sees injustice, we see opportunity. He says we're wicked; we say we're just doing our own thing. He says we're had better repent or else; we say, “Don't impose your religion on me, buddy!” 

Scripture reveals that prophets are unpopular b/c they show us what we could be with God while we are busy being nothing more than what we want to be without God. Now, lest any of us here think that being a prophet is optional for Christians, let's set the record straight: it isn't. If you are baptized, you are a priest, a prophet, and a king. You offer sacrifice for others in prayer; you hold yourself and others up to God's plan for humanity; and you work in service for the cause of justice. Being a prophet is not optional for us. It's who we are. And it means being the odd animal out when the herd is heading toward the cliff. It means standing up and yelling, “STOP! We are racing to our deaths! Turn around before it's too late!” The men and women of Nineveh heard Jonah and turned around in time. But Nineveh is the exception to the rule. In every other case of prophetic intervention, the herd stampeded on, ignoring the warning signs, and God allowed them to suffer the consequences of their disobedience. Foreign invasion. Exile. Enslavement. And death. Every time the nation turned its face from God and worshiped its own will in violation of the covenant, God gave them a warning and a way out. And every time – excepting Nineveh – the nation chose to spit in God's face and do its own thing. Decline and destruction followed. 

 

We are prophets. Not b/c we are especially moral. Not b/c we have some special vision from God. Not b/c we are uniquely attuned to hear God speak. We are prophets b/c we have directly experienced the power of the Father's mercy to free us from sin and death. We are prophets b/c we have directly experienced the divine love that binds all of creation in being, and we have sworn to be witnesses to that love in word and deed. We are prophets b/c we strive to be perfect as our Father is perfect, to be righteous not self-righteous, to be bearers of His invitation to the world so that no one is left out of the heavenly party. And as prophets, we will not be particularly popular. In 2015, not many already in the Church and many who are, not many are eager to bend an ear to hear the truth of God's plan for humanity, a plan for our eternal happiness. You don't have to search long or hard to see or hear the depth and perversity of this nation's disobedience. From abortion to Wall St greed; from racism to consumerist waste; from lawless politicians to a scandalous Church; from the desecration of marriage to murder, we are a nation in rebellion against God. And He sends His prophets out into the nation to bear witness. Not to His anger and wrath. But to His abiding love and boundless mercy.

We are prophets. What do we say? What do we do? Many Catholics believe that last week's Supreme Court ruling imposing same-sex “marriage” on the nation is just the first step along a long road of trouble for Christians. That's not true. The Court's decision is actually one of the last steps on that road. That decision was as inevitable as the rising sun and long in coming. We can imagine the last few steps: polygamy, incestuous marriages, and, finally, the elimination of civil marriages altogether. Actually, we don't have to imagine them. All three of these have already been proposed. What do we say? What do we do? As witnesses to God's abiding love and boundless mercy, as prophets, where do we go? We say what we have always said. We do what we have always done. We go where we have always gone. We speak about Christ and his sacrifice for sinners. We do the good work that God has given us to do. We go to work, to school, to church, out in public, anywhere we have ever been before. We are prophets, and prophets bear witness. We cannot bear witness with our lips sealed shut in fear. We cannot show others the miracles of faith while hiding from uncomfortable confrontations. We cannot abandon our works of mercy and at the same time claim to be witnesses to mercy. Nothing has changed for the Church or her prophets. Nothing. Our Lord still reigns. And our work remains unfinished.

There is a dread temptation poking at us right now. I've heard it. I've felt it. The spirit of despair is urging us to just surrender to the inevitable victory of sin, and run off to a mountain somewhere. This is not an option for us. Too many out there need us. Too many out there have yet to experience all that Christ has freely died to give us. Yes, get ready for some hatred, some foul language flung our way. Get ready for some lawsuits and fines. Prepare yourself to lose some friends. I've lost several already, including my two best friends of 25 yrs. We will not see the kind of persecution that our brothers and sister are experiencing in Syria and Nigeria. Americans are too well-armed! Perhaps you believe that none of this affects you. Well, you don't have to join a side in this Culture War. You will be drafted. The spirit of rebellion that pervades our nation will not tolerate fence-sitting. There can be no neutrality. If you don't care, you will be made to care. As a friend of mine says, “Acceptance is no longer enough. You must approve and applaud. Anything less is hatred.” As so many US bishops have made perfectly clear, Catholics cannot and will not approve or applaud this latest step along the road to national destruction.

To prepare yourself as a witness to God's abiding love and boundless mercy, remember Paul writing to Corinthians, “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

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Strength Made Perfect in Weakness

From 2009. . .a new homily will be posted by 5pm today.

14th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur, Forth Worth, TX

Prophets are a cheap and abundant source of nonsense these days. Every sort of weirdo has a theory, a revelation, a scheme, or a vision from Beyond. No wonder, really. Can we say that the fabric of our faith is as tightly knitted as it needs to be to keep us cozy in this winter of spiritual chaos? When the foundations of all that we believe start to throw us about, most any voice in the racket sounds like a voice of authority. Persistent sexual scandals, financial malfeasance, abuse of power, dissent and rebellion—and all of these just within the Church!—all of these potholes on the Way jolt our certainties and sometimes they even bump us into despair. In these moments of upheaval there always seems to be a guru, a savior, or a prophet just outside our purview who's all too willing to speak up and promise to lead us back to whatever it is we think we need to be safe—health, wealth, sanity, wholeness, or holiness. Usually, if we succumb to fear or anger or the need for a show of defiance, and we buy the snake-oil, usually we end up defeated and more beat-up than when we begin. Beware self-anointed prophets bearing pricey prophecy! Being “hard of face and obstinate of heart” is easy. Humility, right reason, and holy obedience is difficult—not impossible!—just very, very difficult.

The prophets that speak to us this morning are well-known and reliable: Ezekiel, Paul, and Christ himself. No doubt they look the part of a prophet, like men who have spent too much time in the deserts of foreign lands. They certainly sound like the prophets we are used to hearing. The self-anointed prophets of postmodern Western culture could be wearing lab coats, three-piece suits, habits or clerics, or even casual sportswear; they could be sporting advanced degrees in physics, medicine, genetics, or theology; they could sound like gurus, even reasonable scientists, hawking new cosmologies, novel technologies, fresh political solutions, or global spiritualities. They can all name our worst fears, our deepest angers, our most pressing anxieties. They can speak a word to calm our stormed tossed spirits. What they cannot and will not name is the Love in our souls. What they do not speak is the Word. They do not and will not say, “Thus says the Lord God...” And these differences make a great deal of difference.

Ezekiel is consumed in the voice of God. Paul is struck blind and pierced by a thorn in his flesh. Jesus is spurned in his own hometown, ridiculed as no one other than “the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon.” Ezekiel is sent to the rebellious Israelites to reteach the Good News of an ancient love. Paul is sent to the Gentiles with the Good News of the Father's mercy. Jesus is sent to the whole of creation as the Good News himself, the very Incarnate Word of divine love and mercy. All three prophets are sent to accomplish one mission: to speak the Word to God's people, and in so doing, bringing them all back into a covenant; reminding, renewing, and revealing the foundational promises of the Creator.

Look closely at what the prophets in scripture actually do and do not do. They do not create. They point to the Creator. They do not invent or innovate. They point to the Inventor, the Innovator Himself. They do not preach revolution and rebellion for the sake of novelty. They call us to revolutionize our hard faces and cold hearts. They rouse us to rebel against the slavery of alien philosophies and foreign gods. They do not urge God's people to abandon His promises of liberation in favor of worldly guarantees, the empty pledges that prop us up with domination, wealth, prestige, violence, and oppression. God's anointed prophets give voice to and work for the least against the most, for the worst against the best, for the lowest against the highest. When the most, the best, and the highest are where they are b/c they have stepped on and broken the least, the worst, and the lowest, God's anointed prophet will speak His Word of justice and demand a righteous revolution. Not something as mundane and temporary as a government program or a social action agency. Not something as ultimately useless as a financial entitlement or a paper-weight patch on the justice system. God's anointed prophet will first demand that the hard face and cold heart of injustice be melted in the overwhelming Love that gave His creation life! Then this prophet will say, “Thus says the Lord God: you will not treat my beloved children as things, as slaves; you will not use my children as disposable means to your selfish ends; you will not love simply for worldly gain, pretend faith for public praise, nor spread hope to hide your oppression. You love b/c I loved you first!”

As men and women baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, we have vowed to be faithful to God, just to our neighbors, hopeful in crisis, loving to all, joyful even as we weep, and as eager to show mercy as we are to seek mercy. The key to our lives as prophets is not scientific novelty, theological innovation, philosophical nuance, or even spiritual practice. Our prophetic key is humility—the certain and daily-lived knowledge that we are creatures of a loving God, wholly dependent, utterly reliant on the Love that gave us and gives us life. There is no other source of identity for us. No other means of doing what we have vowed our lives to do. Ezekiel is consumed in the voice of God. Paul is plagued by a thorn in his flesh. Jesus himself is rejected by his hometown folks. Their humility fuels a righteous fire for God's justice not a self-righteous grudge against the status-quo. Self-anointed prophets in lab coats, suits, or vestments might tempt us with a genetic or economic or religious utopia, but we know that any prophet who will not and cannot say, “Thus says the Lord God...,” we know that they are false prophets.

Our Father's gifts are sufficient for us, for our power as His prophets is made perfect in humility. 

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Gambling on mercy

NB. A catechetical homily from 2012. . .

12th Week OT (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Let's get to the nitty-gritty of Jesus' admonition against being judgmental by making an essential distinction: there is a difference btw “judging an act to be immoral” and “judging to person to be immoral.” For example, the Church has always believed that the direct killing of innocent life is an intrinsically morally evil act; therefore, regardless of intent or circumstance, abortion may never be called good. Now, let's say a Catholic female friend of yours procures an abortion and tells you about it. You respond, “Abortion is a mortal sin.” She yells at you, “Get the splinters out of your own eye before you judge me!” How do you answer her? You can take the easy way out and back off immediately, allowing her judgment of you to shut you up. Or, if you're feeling the Spirit's courage, you might say, “I'm not judging you. I'm judging the act of procuring an abortion.” If you want to violate the Lord's admonition not to judge, you could respond, “You are guilty of murder and need to go to confession immediately!” Just know: “. . .as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” 

Now that we've made the distinction between judging an act and judging a person, let's look carefully at what Jesus teaches about making judgments. First, as Christians, are we forbidden from judging acts? No, we're not. In fact, we are often required to judge the morality of an act before we do it. Is it moral for me to deceive this person under these circumstances? The cashier gave me too much change: is it moral for me to keep it? Is smacking this person up side the head moral? I'm late for work: may I speed? We are free to deliberate on the morality of acts b/c we are obligated as Christians to behave morally. Are we forbidden from judging persons? No, we're not. But there's a catch. A big catch. Jesus says to remove the splinter from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from mine. If your eye is free of splinters, then start removing splinters from mine! Here's the catch: you will be judged as you judge, and the measure you use to measure me will be used to measure you. So, make sure that the standard you use to judge me is one that you yourself can live up to. Hypocrisy is the art of applying one standard to yourself and a completely different standard to others. And we all know what Jesus thinks of hypocrites! 

Why do we so consistently ignore or twist Jesus' teaching on hypocrisy? He asks, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” Well, it's certainly easier for me to worry about your faults than my own. If I pay too much attention to my sins, I might actually have to think about confessing them, and that's no fun. It's also easier for me to accuse you falsely of being judgmental if I don't want to repent of my favorite sin. Judge not lest ye be judged! That's part of the teaching. . .the part that supposedly lets me off the hook for sinning when you bring the sin to my attention. You might have several yards of lumber in your eye when you point out the toothpick in mine. The fact that you're a sinner too doesn't mean I'm a saint. It just means that we are both sinners. So, what's a good Christian to do when a friend is sinning? Take a careful inventory of your own moral life. Pay very, very careful attention to your motivations for wanting to point out a friend's sin. And then decide if you are willing to be judged by the standard you think proper for your friend. No one is perfect. But no one is purely evil either. Gamble on mercy—that's the measure Christ uses, whether we deserve it or not.

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Faith needs courage

11th Sunday OT (2015)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Are you courageous? Do you possess the strength of heart necessary to speak the truth, to walk by faith, and to live in hope; to do always and in every circumstance the right thing? Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We are always courageous, brothers and sisters, although. . .we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yet we are courageous. . .” Do we walk by faith? Live in hope? Do we aspire to please the Lord? Why should we aspire to please the Lord? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense,” correction, and repair. Christ will sit in judgment of our actions, whether good or evil, and so it is Christ we must work to please. But b/c “we are away from the Lord” and caught in the world of men, the temptation to work for man's approval is nearly overwhelming. And so, we desperately need courage: the strength of heart necessary to speak the truth, to walk by faith, and to live in hope; the righteous spirit required to turn the temptation of disastrous compromise and to seed the world with the Good News so that the Lord's harvest may yield abundant and excellent fruit. 

Paul says that we are always courageous, that our hearts are always strong in the faith. But we might rightly suspect that he's flattering us, so that we will hear and obey his call to faithfulness. You and I both know that fighting the temptation to please the world with the weapons of Christian courage is a day-to-day battle. Some days we barely hold our own. Once and a while, we eek out a small win. One, maybe two days in a lifetime, we are truly pressed against a wall, and through sheer, muscular courage face down the temptation and declare victory. But most days, most weeks and years, the fight seems hardly worth the blood and sweat of a win. Hardly worth the time it would take to muster a defense. C'mon, it's just a tiny compromise in principle to keep the peace. We will gain so much in exchange for something so small. How do I know that this is the right thing to do? We all have different ideas of what's right. I don't want to lose my job, my friends; anger my neighbors, my spouse, my kids. Everyone else thinks this is OK; who am I to say otherwise? I feel like this is right, so it must be right. We have the right to do this, so doing it must be right, right? These are the small, daily challenges to your courage that probe your heart, poking and prodding for weaknesses so that the grand challenge to come might see you defeated. The smallest seed—of cowardice, of bravery—can produce abundant fruit, whether for good or for evil.

Jesus grasps for a parable, an image that will help him to explain the Kingdom of God. He settles on the image of a tiny mustard seed that grows into an enormous tree. In his parable, the Kingdom of God is “the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” This enormous tree, deeply rooted and supporting many large branches, springs up from a single, flyspeck of a seed. All those leaves, all those branches, the weight of its trunk, the depth of its roots, its resting shade, all of it comes out of the smallest of seeds. The smallest act of faith, the tiniest word of hope, no matter how small, how apparently insignificant the seed, properly sown and nurtured can spring up and grow into a heart courageous enough to withstand the most savage temptations wrought by the world of men. Jesus says that a farmer sows his seed-wheat and overnight his harvest is ripe, ready for reaping. When we sow the seeds of faith, hope, and love, the Kingdom of God sprouts in our hearts—growing and growing and growing—just waiting for the final reaping, waiting for the Christ to come so that we might go before his judgment seat and have him weigh our harvest, our words and deeds, whether good or evil. But before the harvest, before our judgment, we are tested; probed, prodded, and poked, in small ways and large, so that our courage might be measured. 

Writing to the Church in Thibaris in northeast Africa, in the first century, St. Cyprian of Carthage warns the faithful there: “. . .the day of affliction has begun to hang over our heads. . .so we must all stand prepared for the battle.” Like most of his contemporaries, Cyprian believed that the Anti-Christ roamed the world in his day and that the Last Days were only weeks or months away; thus, he warns his brothers and sisters in Christ that their martyrdom for the faith was imminent. So, he exhorts them, “. . .a fiercer fight is now threatening, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare themselves with uncorrupted faith and robust courage. . .” Our own battles threaten, so we too are rightly exhorted to prepare ourselves with an uncorrupted faith and a robust courage! It is unlikely that our battles will end in violence and bloodshed, but this actually makes the fight more dangerous for us. Threatened with a gun or a knife, we would fight with all our physical strength and all our determination to survive and win. But what if the faith is threatened by a piece of legislation, an executive order, a court decision, or the possibility of being ostracized for following Christ? What are our weapons then? 

Cyprian tells the Christians in Thibaris, “Let us be armed, beloved brethren, with our whole strength, and let us be prepared for the struggle with an uncorrupted mind, with a sound faith, with a devoted courage.” When we are tempted to please the world of men, to compromise in the smallest way against the faith, we are to arm ourselves with all the strength given to the children of God: a mind uncorrupted by inordinate desires, base passions, and irrational prejudices; a sound faith solidly rooted in the apostolic tradition, guided by the Church's authentic teachers, and lived with wholehearted charity; and a devoted courage, a heart strengthened by a true love for God and an eagerness to see God loved by all. When threatened, are we courageous? Do we reach up to Christ and down into our spirit for the strength of heart necessary to speak the truth, walk by faith, and live in hope; to speak, walk, and live righteously with our God; to do always and in every circumstance the right thing? Even when the right thing will take us to court, to jail, to the unemployment line, the hospital, away from family and friends? 

Every act of faith, every word of hope sows a tiny seed, a minuscule germ of love from which the mighty tree of God's kingdom can take root and grow. But the sower of these seeds must be courageous, stout-hearted, and bravely immune to any temptation to worry about the approval and applause of the world of men. It is Christ himself who will sit in judgment of our words and deeds, whether good or evil; it is Christ himself who will weigh our hearts, measure our trust, and sift from us the wheat from the chafe. If you are courageous, go out and sow the seeds that will bring about the Kingdom. If you live with a spirit of cowardice, pray for strength and then go be strong anyway. The battle against corruption in our faith is has always been with us, is with us now, and will be with us until judgment day dawns. Arm yourselves with the best weapons Christ and his Church have to offer, and prepare to repel—with faith, reason, and love—the darker spirits of this corrupting age.

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