Memorial Day

In honor of our American veterans! 

Pray for those who have served, are serving, and for those who have given their lives.

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I like to eat!

Audio File

Corpus Christi 2016

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

I love to eat! (Big surprise, uh?) And I love to cook. But since I joined the Order in 1999, I haven't had many opportunities to cook. Everywhere I've lived in the Order, we've had someone to cook for us. One exception: during my time at Blackfriars Hall at Oxford U. the brothers took turns cooking. I loved it b/c I got to show off my southern cooking skills – fried chicken, baked pork chops, garlic mashed potatoes, cornbread. The last time I was up to cook for the 23 of us in the house, I chose to go out with an American bang – hamburgers, fries, and cole slaw. I've never seen a bunch of Brits so excited about a meal! To this day, some 12 yrs after that American blow-out, my Blackfriars brothers remember my burgers. And even the friars who joined up recently – have never even met me – know me as the Burger King! That is the power of food. That's the power of good food. . .a truth all the good citizens of New Orleans know from birth. If food this side of heaven can form the foundation of our memories, what can the Food of Heaven do for us? The Food of Heaven – the Body and Blood of Christ – can get us into heaven! But before we are ready for heaven, we have some holy work to do down here.

And helping us with our holy work is part of what the Body and Blood of Christ does. Jesus tells his disciples at one point, “You can do nothing w/o me.” He also promises them (and us), “I will be with you always.” We know that after he ascends to the Father and sends his Holy Spirit among us, Christ remains with us always in the Body of his Church – that's us. And like any hardworking body, we need good food and good drink to stay alive and working. Not just any old hamburger and diet cola will do! If we are to do the holy work we've been given to do, then we need holy food and holy drink. We need the Body and Blood of Christ to keep us alive and working. And so, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I handed on to you what I received from the Lord.” He then recounts what he received from the Lord – the institution of the Eucharist, the bread and the cup, ending with, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” Every time you eat his Body and drink his Blood, you celebrate the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ Jesus, and you do so until he comes again. That celebration, that proclamation of Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension is the source of our strength to do holy work.

When we take into ourselves his Body and Blood, we come closer to being who and what Christ himself is. My job for me is to become as much like Christ as I can this side of heaven. Your job for you is to become as much like Christ as you can this side of heaven. Why do we need to become like Christ? I need to become as much like Christ as I can so I can help you become as much like Christ as you can. I help you as a priest. You help me to become more like Christ as faithful lay men and women. We help one another according to our individual gifts, but we are all working on the same holy work: becoming Christs for one another. To be clear here: we are not just imitating Jesus to be good examples for one another. By worthily receiving his Body and Blood, we are made Christs for one another. Around 350 A.D., St. Cyril of Jerusalem*, addresses a group of people who were just baptized and confirmed. He says to them: “. . .having therefore become partakers of Christ you are properly called Christs. . .because you are images of Christ.” We are partakers of Christ in baptism, confirmation and, most especially, in the Eucharist; therefore, we are images of Christ and properly called Christs. 

 

Now, I mentioned earlier that good food makes for good memories. In my family, no event of any significance goes without a meal. We say, “When two or more Powell's are gathered together, there is a pecan pie.” I remember the big pots of seafood stew I made for my novitiate classmates. I remember the 20 course meal we made to celebrate the turn of the millennium. I remember the Memphis ribs we served at my priestly ordination. And in about three days I gonna remember my mama's fried chicken in Byhalia, MS! Like I said, I like to eat. But I don't eat to remember. Remembering just comes along for the gastronomical ride. Jesus tells us to eat and drink to remember him. Not just to recall him in memory, but to re-member. . .to make us once again a member of his Body. To strengthen our attachment to his Body. To reinforce our belonging to his ministry. There's no magic to this remembrance. He says do it, and so we do. He says that the bread and wine are his Body and Blood, and so they are. He is made present in the sacrament. We eat and we drink. And grow just that much closer to him. We become just that much more like him.

The solemnity of Corpus Christi sharpens our focus on the vitality and necessity of the Eucharist to our growth in holiness. Without it, we can do nothing. Without it, we cannot thrive as followers of Christ. He is our food and drink, our life and our love. For the Eucharist, we need priests. Chicken won't fry itself. And gumbo don't grow on trees. Simply put: no priests, no Eucharist. I will end with a challenge: once a week, once a month find a chapel of perpetual adoration – we have one at St. Dominic's, there's another at St. Catherine of Siena. While in the presence of the sacramental Christ, pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Specifically, pray that the men God has called to priesthood will find the courage to say Yes to that call. Pray that the men and women called to religious life will say Yes to their call. Many bishops and vocation directors in this country have testified to the power of Eucharistic Adoration to send them men for the priesthood, and men and women for religious life. We will have 136 seminarians at NDS next year. Men from about 18 dioceses and 4 religious orders. We need ten times that many for several more decades to meet the needs of Catholics in the South. 

 

Jesus took five fish and two loaves and fed 5,000. Everyday priests all over the world take bread and wine and feed millions the Body and Blood of Christ. The strength of his Body on earth and the doing of our holy work depend on the Eucharistic Christ.

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Thursday)

"Obama lowered the bar and Trump skipped over it." And that's not good for America.

Couric's fake but accurate Dan Rather-esque agitprop film on guns.

Inspector General's report: Hillary broke federal law.

Watching Progs eat their own. . .it ought to be a Reality Show!

"Transgender Bathroom Nihilism" will put an end to Title IX.

The four "hooks" of Pope Francis' thought process. . .I don't really know what numbers one and three mean. 

Eastern Province Dominican ordain largest class since 1971. . .

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Philip Neri: the Apostle of Joy!

St. Philip Neri: the Virtue of Joy

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA

19 April 2015

“Men are generally the carpenters of their own crosses.” – St Philip Neri

Part I
 

It is early February in the year 1590. Philip Neri – Pippo Buono – is 75 years old and long a saintly figure in the streets and courts of Rome. Confessor and confidant to cardinals, statesmen, thugs, and fishwives, Pippo stands with the entire Oratory community of the Chiesa Nouva and eleven cardinals, waiting for the solemn procession to arrive. Relics of the ancient martyrs, Papias and Maurus, had been discovered in the titular church of Agostino Cardinal Cusano earlier in the year. Cardinal Cusano, a penitent under Pippo's spiritual care, wanted to bestow on his confessor and friend a singular honor. He had ordered the newly discovered relics to be transferred to Pippo's home, the Chiesa Nuova. When the procession arrives, the Papal Swiss Guard comes to attention and forms an aisle for the relics into the church. As the relics pass by Pippo, a familiar buzzing begins in his heart. An old friend, Joy, rises in his soul and Pippo does what he always does when the nearness of holiness threatens him with ecstasy. He does something foolish. Where most of us would drop to our knees in prayer, or shout out praise and thanksgiving to God, Pippo does the unexpected. He walks up to one of the stoically serious Swiss Guards and begins pulling on his beard!¹ For St. Philip Neri, for Pippo Buono, the joy that love demands of us is best expressed in humble acts of apparent foolishness.

And about his apparent foolishness there is much to say. Reading Pippo's biographies is like reading a catalog of schoolboy pranks. Attending vespers at a fashionable parish, he would dress like a beggar and loudly mispronounce the Latin. He would send penitents on public errands with their clothes turned inside-out. He would demand that the young dandies who came to him for advice shave half their beards. He was once seen skipping like a child inside the church of St Peter in Chains. And another time, during Mass at the Chiesa Nuova, he had a barber cut his hair!² Many thought he was simply an addle-minded old man. Others thought he was a saint entirely lost to ecstasy. Pippo saw himself as a sinner tempted by pride to embrace the power and glory that his closeness to God afforded him, a temptation that – on a much larger scale – had corrupted Rome and exiled godly humility. Pippo's antics were not attention-seeking, or foolishness for the sake of foolishness. His ridiculous behavior kept his joy grounded in humility. He feared the lightness of his heart at the merest thought of God would lift him away – literally, allow him to fly – and he feared that his people would come to believe that only those so lifted in flight could be said to be holy. His life, his work, his death all point us toward the truth of joy: Joy is love in action. Human joy, our joy, is divine love, God's love for us, in action.

With Pippo's living-admonition to remain firmly grounded in humility ringing in our ears, we can move – cautiously move – toward a less animated exploration of the virtue of joy and how joy must enliven a priest's ministry. I say “cautiously move” because joy is an effect of love and we do ourselves only a little good by simply pinning joy to a specimen board, splaying open its belly, and dissecting its parts. Examination is good and necessary, but it is also woefully insufficient. Joy is best known in being joyful. Not by knowing the names and functions of all its parts. That said, we turn to the Great Dissector himself, Thomas Aquinas, for the better parts of understanding where we are intellectually with joy.

According to Thomas, strictly speaking, joy is not a virtue.³ It is not an operative habit, nor does it incline us to perform any specified acts. However, the virtues (theological, moral, intellectual) do tend to produce “several ordinate and homogeneous acts,” or effects. In the case of the virtue of charity, joy is one such ordinate and homogeneous act, making joy an effect of charity. Thomas writes, “Hence [charity] inclines us to love and desire the beloved good, and to rejoice in it. But in as much as love is the first of these acts, that virtue takes its name, not from joy, nor from desire, but from love, and is called charity. Hence joy is not a virtue distinct from charity, but an act, or effect, of charity. . .” 

 

How are these scholastic distinctions even remotely pertinent to our exploration of Pippo's apparent foolishness? Philip Neri studied philosophy at the Sapienza in Rome and theology with the Augustinians just short of a decade after Emperor Charles V paid mercenaries to sack the city in 1527. In his biography of Pippo, Paul Turk, notes, “. . .it is well testified that he read St. Thomas Aquinas throughout his life and that later on he was capable of discussing intricate problems with learned men of his day.”⁴ Though Pippo always downplayed his intellectual prowess and education, the influence of Thomas in Pippo's day was pervasive and unavoidable. Pippo often sent young men to the Dominicans and maintained friendships with the friars at San Marco in Florence. The fiery friar-preacher, Savonarola, was a life-long inspiration for Pippo. So, it is a safe assumption that the fine scholastic distinctions found the Angelic Doctor's work made their way into the saint's humble heart and mind, and were given an exaggerated expression in his apparent foolishness. Pippo fully understood that his antics were both a means to humility and a way to be loving. In other words, he wasn't just acting crazy to be seen acting crazy. When the fire of joy overflowed, Pippo – always mindful of the temptation of vanity – let loose in the streets of Rome a circus of God's love and drew to Him Who Is Love crowds of sinners to be welcomed and washed clean. For sinners, foolishness was Pippo's hook. For himself, it was a penance.

If we take Pippo's life as a dramatic reading of Thomas' notion of joy, we can better see not only why Pippo lived as he did, but also how we have so misunderstood joy. Assuming that Thomas is correct concerning joy – and, of course, he is! – then we must admit that we've been “doing joy” wrong for quite some time. Like most of our traditional philosophical and theological vocabulary and grammar, joy has been stripped of its transcendental referent – de-transcendentalized, if you will. The modernizing project of the so-called “Enlightenment” demanded that our language submit itself to the grubby paws of naturalized reason and bow to the harsh judgments of empirical science. Any attempt to reach above human reason and grasp at the transcendent was ruled out of order. Rather than reinvent an entirely new language for the modern project, our Betters took the languages they had on hand – traditional philosophy and theology – and began re-writing the dictionaries to scour them clean of the natty influences of silly supernatural superstitions. The virtues were re-paganized into merely human attributes, laudable behaviors with nothing above them to strive toward and nothing beneath them for support. If the virtues suffered such a barbaric treatment, then their “ordinate and homogeneous acts” and effects suffered as well. Desire and joy as effects of charity – de-transcendentalized – became little more than human longing and momentary delight. Nothing above, nothing below. Nothing to move toward, nothing to stand on. 

The current best definition of joy? “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” A feeling. Not an act of love or an effect of charity. But a feeling. A feeling of what? Pleasure and happiness. How defined? No idea. With nothing as a referent, pleasure and happiness are defined by nothing more than the individual expressing joy. Do the ISIS terrorists who are beheading Christians in Iraq feel joy? Sure, why not? If it makes them happy – and they certainly look happy – why not call it joy? Would Thomas and Pippo call it joy? Is beheading another human being in order to instill terror in others a loving act? Hardly. Yet we can rightly describe these terrorists – using our modern dictionaries – as joyful.

My purpose in rehearsing the fall of our traditional language is to bring into focus the depths to which we have fallen in allowing our words to become bastardized by nominalism. That is, by not challenging the underlying assumptions of the modern world's use of language, we immediately surrender the field to nihilism and chaos. When we use words in the way that our Betters demand we use them, we sign away our natural freedom to speak as Christians. Pippo may not have understood the problem of nominalism or even knew that the problem existed; however, he understood all too well the temptations inherent in allowing words and concepts to remain merely marks on a page. Over and over again in his sayings, his letters, his strange antics in the streets of Rome, Pippo acted out the fires of joy. Not simply speaking about joy but acting joyfully; loving sinners; acting as a flesh and bone avatar of joyful repentance. Turk notes that Pippo never gave a penance that he himself failed to complete. He was as demanding of himself as he was of his penitents. And in this way, Pippo embodied the joy that our Lord came to us to complete.

If St. Philip Neri embodies genuine Christian joy, then what does the opposite of Christian joy look like? Thomas tells us that desire and joy are the “ordinate and homogeneous acts” or effects of the virtue of charity. Sorrow is opposed to joy, and sorrow is an effect of the vice sloth. So, what is sloth? Thomas, referring to St John Damascene, writes, “Sloth. . .is an oppressive sorrow, which. . .so weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing. . .Hence sloth implies a certain weariness of work. . .a 'sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good.'”⁵ He goes on to argue that sorrow – as an effect of sloth – is always evil because it is an intentional rejection of joy, or a refusal to experience the effects of love, especially divine love. That's the definition. But what does sloth, oppressive sorrow, look like in a person? We are quick in the 21^st century to point out that sloth sounds an awful lot like clinical depression. And the two probably share some of the same observable traits. But we would miss the point of defining sloth if we simply shoved it into the clinical category of depression and left it there. Perhaps the difference that makes the difference between the two is that sloth – as a vice – is a bad habit. Not a condition or an illness or a psychic wound. But a bad habit. Sloth is the deliberate rejection of joy, the calculated refusal to allow the effects of love, esp. divine love, to touch the soul. This means that the slothful man has been shown divine love, received it as a gift, benefited from its promises, and yet refuses to exhibit any of its effects on him. In this way, sloth is the bad habit of ingratitude and the added sin of failing to bear witness to the generosity of Christ's gifts. What we normally think of as slothfulness arises out of this spiritual laziness: I can't be bothered to participate in the divine life except as it directly benefits me. The slothful man knows that he is obligated by baptism and his gifted share in the divine life to go out and proclaim the Good News of the Father's freely offered mercy to sinners. He himself as experienced this mercy. Yet! He refuses. That refusal, that bad habit of ingratitude and spiritual stinginess, produces an oppressive sorrow that only compounds and amplifies his sloth. 

 

Pippo Buono stands against sloth by living joyfully. He bears witness to divine love by acting, speaking, thinking joyfully – all as the direct result of getting and receiving the Lord's mercy for his sins. And lest he become prideful of his spiritual gifts and take too seriously the accolades that cardinals and fishwives are heaping upon him, he dresses like a clown, dances around the streets of Rome, and tells corny Latin jokes in choir. And not only does he do all these silly things out of love, he demands that his penitents and followers do them as well. Why? Because the joy that love demands of us is best expressed in humble acts of apparent foolishness.

Part II

Joe is the sacristan at St Dominic's parish here in NOLA. He's in his late 60's, a very humble, hardworking man who loves the Church and cherishes his job in the sacristy. Joe is also Barber to the Friars. He buzzes Dominican heads all over the city. And he loves it. Joe also has a gift for making this particular friar (me!) feel just a little self-conscious, and that's OK because he does it in a way that perfectly reflects his charity. Every time I see Joe, he says, “Fr Philip! It's always so good to see you! You have the best smile and you always brighten my day! Just being around you makes me feel better about the world! You're the smartest guy I know and I hope those guys at the seminary know how lucky they are to have you!” And he goes on and on in this vein for quite some time, and then he'll pause and say, “But I don't want you to get a big ego, so I'm gonna stop.” All I can do during these moments of praise is smile, nod, thank him, and wait for the inevitable conclusion. Why do these praise-sessions make me self-conscious? Because I know something about me that Joe doesn't: I am not easily given to being joyful nor am I always ready with a smile. In fact, I can be quite cynical and prone to the temptations of despair. Thanks to Augustine and Calvin I make a natural idealist living in a world that will never meet my standards. Thankfully, that's my dark side, and it doesn't win out very often. But this is the Fr. Philip Show not the Dr. Phil Show, so why I am telling you all this? For one simple reason: I chose “Philip Neri” as my religious name not because I am like him, but because I need to be more like him. 

 

Pippo exuded joy in his silliness. He wore humility like a crown, never taking it off. He was unafraid of being embarrassed; nonplussed by his social and ecclesial Betters. He took formal social events as an opportunity to remind himself and others that we are all going back to dust someday. Pippo understood the need for social order and formality and he respected authority as any good priest would; however, he never allowed any of that to overwhelm his ultimate goal, his final end: union with God. And he never allowed bella figura – good form – to ruin a chance to show sinners God's freely offered mercy. In fact, he wholeheartedly believed that his joyful silliness was the best way to reveal our Lord's mercy to those most in need of it. Pippo's antics made it easier for sinners to approach the throne and receive the gift from his consecrated hands. What he did over and over again is what all priests must be able to do when necessary: he made the Lord directly accessible when he seems to be at the most inaccessible. 

 

Joy – real joy, the effect of divine love and our charity – makes the Lord accessible to others through us. More specifically, your joy makes the Lord accessible to those whom you serve. And they need the Lord more than you will ever need your self-defined dignity. 

 

Our people live in this world, but they are not of it. This world demands constant sacrifice, constant praise. It harangues us to pay attention, spend, consume, waste, hurry up, demand, complain, be outraged, and whine. It demands that we do and say whatever it takes to Get Mine and hang on to it into the grave. Our sacrifices to the gods of this world can never be enough because they – the gods – know that they are finite creatures just pretending to be gods. If they ever get their fill of our misery, they will have to confess their finitude and abdicate their altars. So, to perpetuate their reign, they multiply our miseries and await our offerings. Unfortunately, our people will stand in line to make the proper sacrifices and then turn to us and wonder why their lives are a mess. And when they turn to you, hoping to see the Lord and some way out of their misery, who or what do you show them? (Your answer to that question will define your ministry). What do they see when they turn to you? A way into a life of grace? Or just another obstacle to overcome? Do they see a means of achieving freedom in Christ? Or a man too deeply committed to his clerical role to bend down and help? They could also see you as an easy source of cheap grace, or as a mark upon whom they can perpetuate a spiritual fraud. Maybe you're the one who will eagerly tell them what they want to hear, thus relieving them of a cross they choose to carry. Or maybe you will be the priest who agrees with their dissent and gives them permission to sin. 

 

What will they see when they turn to you? Better yet: what should they see when they turn to you? To answer this question fully would require me to start and finish a lecture series in pastoral theology and practice. I'll leave that burden to Fr. Krafft. Instead, looking over at my patron, Pippo Buono, I'll offer a short answer that requires some unpacking. A priest of Christ – lay or ordained – should always and everywhere appear to those in need as one who embodies and lives out that great Catholic ideal: veritas in caritate. That low groan you just heard came from the seminarians of second theology who are currently enduring my homiletics practicum. Veritas in caritate will populate their nightmares until the Reaper comes for them! Nonetheless, I would argue that this simple phrase – packed as it is with portent – should be engraved and gilded on the doors and walls of every rectory, priory, convent, monastery, and Catholic home on the globe. It contains all things necessary for carrying out one's ministry as a bearer of the Good News. It also has the distinction of being the adage that Pippo Buono lived out in all of his humble silliness. If you want to know why Pippo was so successful as an evangelist in Rome at a time when ecclesial corruption and licentiousness ruled, think: veritas in caritate. 

 

Earlier I noted Pippo's affinity for the Dominicans of his time. He was especially fond of Savonarola, the friar who ruled Florence and ended his life on a pyre as a heretic. Pippo admired the friar for his skillful preaching and zeal for the conversion of sinners. Savonarola went to deadly extremes in carrying out his program of reform, but Pippo nonetheless saw in him a soul burning with a desire for the truth of the faith to prevail., Pippo took to Savonarola's severity and, along with his knowledge and appreciation for Friar Thomas, tempered both with a practical wisdom that pushed him out into the streets to gather in the Lord's sheep. Without wavering from the truth of the faith, he cared for God's people in whatever way they needed. Because he loved, he clung to the truth. And because he clung to the truth, he loved. In Pippo, there wasn't a sliver of difference between preaching on the damning evils of sin and immediately absolving sinners in confession. When he needed to confront sinners on the street, he did so in way that brought them into the confessional – with genuine love for their souls. He was never above begging for others – food, clothes, jobs. Nor did he place himself below any man because of his station. To Pippo, all men and women were equally sinful and equally forgiven. And all of them deserved the attention of his Lord's servant. 

 

Embracing the phrase veritas in caritate as your pastoral motto can only lead to one, glorious effect: joy! Charity, as a virtue, produces both desire and joy. Desire and joy are effects of charity. If you preach, teach, and minister veritas in caritate then you will experience and exude the fires of joy, drawing to yourself those who most need to hear the Good News. But there's a significant danger here, one Pippo himself brushed against more than once. With great joy comes great temptation. After Cardinal Cusano had the relics of Papias and Maurus transferred to the Chiesa Nuova in 1590, Pope Gregory XIV tired to sneak a cardinal's biretta onto Pippo's head. Pippo leaned forward and whispered something in the pope's ear, persuading His Holiness to hold off making him a cardinal.⁶ Pippo endured and resisted many attempts of this kind to elevate him to the episcopate and even popular movements to declare him a living saint. A large part of his antics were meant to dissuade others from seeing him as a man of classical saintliness. The danger here, of course, is pride. At a time in the Church when hierarchy, station, money, and power were the daily currency of Rome, Pippo knew too well how easily it would be for him to be entombed in the layers of silk, brocade, silver, gold, and jewels. He wanted no part of an imperial Church. Whatever work he had left to do would be done as a beggar or a clown. . .not as a Prince of the Church. 

 

The dangers we face as priests and ministers in the 21^st century are not exactly the same, but they rise from the same cardinal sin: pride. Success in ministry – successes like the ones Pippo managed – would draw the attention of the world. And with the world comes applause, prestige, wealth, and even power. How many bishops and priests have we seen in the last fifty years fall because they forgot to embody veritas in caritate? Books, speaking tours, websites, CD's, interviews with the press, requests for comments on current events – all fine in themselves, but also ways for pride to inflate the ego and the ego to become to a god. 

 

Even if you were to become a god only in your own mind, you would still fall into idolatry. How long would it be before your bishop becomes a meddling fool? Your brother priests jealous clerics? Your parishioners whiny know-it-alls? Looking back on your days at NDS, you would see the deep and cavernous flaws in your professors and formators. Safe to discard all that nonsense now. Because before you would be a wide-open road and clear-blue sky just waiting for you to make your next astonishingly brilliant move. And the only thing holding you back would be the drudgery of daily parish ministry and all those whinging sheep who can't seem to wash themselves more than once a month. You have a career to build! Important people to meet! Important meetings to attend! A golf game at 3 and drinks with the mayor at 5. . .OK. OK. You get my point. I hope. Being a successful spiritual father opens you up to the particular temptations of fame and fortune. So, the truly successful spiritual father never allows himself to forget that he is first and foremost a father. And a father cares for his children by telling them the truth in love. And by making sure that he himself is told the truth in love. Even when that truth stings.

Shifting gears a bit. Jesus says to his disciples, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” What is this? What did Jesus say to his disciples so that his joy may be in them and their joy may be complete? Right before this statement, Jesus was giving his disciples a metaphor for how he sees his relationship with them: the vine and the branches. He is the vine; we are the branches. As long as we remain with him, we will grow and thrive, producing much good fruit. Then he says, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” How is his joy given to us and our joy made complete? By bearing much fruit and becoming his disciples. More than that, actually, he adds, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” Then he promises to complete our joy. But what does “complete our joy” mean here? We do all these things and then we find our joy complete. If joy is an effect of divine love, then our completed joy is an effect of completed divine love; that is, perfect divine love. In other words, if we remain in Christ, loving as we ought, bearing much fruit, and following the Father's commands, we will receive the effect of perfect love called perfect joy. We will find ourselves gazing upon the Beatific Vision. 

Pippo knew this well, so he lived his life as if he were always, already in sight of the Beatific Vision. What we might call his silliness was a means to an end: humility. Others saw his humble silliness and rightly identified its source: his joy. And Pippo knew the source and summit of his joy: his love for God and his Christ. In every way that matters, Pippo's ministry to sinners was an expression of his love for Christ and Christ's love for him. Without guile or boasting or weariness, he gave himself – sacrificed himself – to the holy cause of making known to sinners the Father's freely offered mercy. He died May 25, 1595 firmly attached to the vine of Christ.

1 Turks, Paul. Philip Neri: The Fire of Joy. Alba House, 1995, 99.

2 Ibid, 99.

3 ST.II-II.28.4

4 Turks, 13.

5 ST.II-II.35.1

6 Turks, 99.

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Wednesday)

Cost of Target's surrender to the Culture of Death: $9.2 billion. . .so far.

CA targets Christian colleges: Bow to the LGBTXYZ agenda, or lose your funding.

Watch fascists shut down speech they disagree with. . .

Protestantism fails England and Wales: "Nones" now outnumber the faithful.

This video is changing hearts and minds about abortion. . .

31 flavors. . .errrrr. . .genders available in NYC!

Repeat after me: "Voter fraud is a myth."

A brief history of "deaconesses". . .no, they were not ordained.

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Audio: Trinity Sunday homily

Here's the promised link to my Trinity Sunday homily. . .

Trinity Sunday 2016

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Guiding us to All Truth

Audio Link

Most Holy Trinity

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Jesus says to his disciples: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” You mean, there's more?! Given everything that Jesus taught his disciples in the three short years he spent among them, I'm not surprised that the poor souls couldn't bear it. I'm not sure I can. What more can there be to tell? He's told us about the Law of Love; the necessity of forgiving one another; he gave us a commission to make disciples and baptize them; to remember him in the Eucharist; and he warned us that remaining in his word would lead to some nasty consequences for us in the world. All this he told his disciples back then, and we know it now b/c his apostles wrote it all down. The promises, the warnings, the teachings, the sermons, the miracles. . .all of it. All of it except that which the disciples could not bear right then. What couldn't the disciples bear? Jesus says, “. . .when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. . .and [he] will declare to you the things that are coming.” Apparently, the disciples could not – right then – bear the weight of all truth nor endure the news of the things to come.

Just last week we celebrated the promised coming of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth. We celebrated the birth of the Church, the birth of our mission as witnesses to God's freely offered mercy to sinners. At the First Pentecost, the disciples were given the fullness of the Holy Spirit's power to preach and teach the Gospel to every nation. They were set on fire with a passion for giving testimony to God's goodness. The Holy Spirit swept through their anger and bitterness and disappointment and fear, burning away every trace of doubt, and set them all squarely on the path to becoming missionaries of Christ's peace. We could've come away from our Pentecost Sunday celebration last week believing that that was then and this is now, believing that the Holy Spirit blew through those people way back then, but now the Holy Spirit must surely rest in heaven with the Father and the Son. His work is done. No! In fact, Trinity Sunday is our celebration of the Holy Spirit's on-going work among us, his work in guiding us to all truth, his persistent enlightenment of the Church as we confront the things that are to come. Left without the enduring ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Church would fall into fundamentalism and fractious denominationalism. The Trinity abides among us in the mission of the Holy Spirit to the Church. 

 

The Church long ago accepted that the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, the central mystery of the faith. Being a mystery means that fully understanding the truth of the Trinity will have to wait until we stand before God face-to-face. Being a mystery does not mean that we can know nothing about the truth of the Trinity, only that what we can know is always partial, imperfect. We know that the Trinity is not three different gods. Nor is He one god with three working modes. Nor is He one god with two minor gods working for Him. The Church teaches that God is three Divine Persons in a unity of Divine Substance. One God, three Persons – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. What this unity is absolutely is beyond the finite mind. How these Persons relate within the unity is beyond us. We could say that it is too much for us to bear. . .right now. What we need to know and believe is that at the moment of creation, God the Father breathed the Holy Spirit and spoke His Son the Word over the void and everything that is came to be. The Blessed Trinity is inextricably infused into the very fabric of creation – transcending creation, of course! – but still abiding in the stuff of the universe. The Holy Spirit's continuing mission to the Church is to guide us toward the truth and strengthen us for what is to come. 

 

Where the Holy Spirit is so too is the Father and the Son. The Catechism teaches: “[God's plan of loving kindness] unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church”(257). Did you catch that? The missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are continued in the mission of the Church. The Son's mission is to preach the Good News of the Father's mercy to sinners and to die for those sinners so that they could return to the Father made perfect. The Spirit's mission is to reveal all truth and strengthen the Church for the things to come. If their missions are continued in the Church, then the Church's missions are the same: preach the Good News; make sacrifices to bring sinners to the Father; reveal and teach the truth; and strengthen one another for the things to come. Inasmuch as our creation is trinitarian, and our re-creation from the Cross is trinitarian, so too is our mission as new men and women in the Church trinitarian. Can we bear this truth right now? Can we hear it and obey?

We can. . .if we will. Our celebration of Trinity Sunday is not simply a Mass to remind us that there's this really obscure dogma that theologians believe is really important. Trinity Sunday follows Pentecost because with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we have the full revelation of the Trinity to contemplate. And we have the missionary work of the Spirit to assist us in living out our trinitarian ministry. When we love and forgive and seek forgiveness and share the faith and live in hope, when we do all these things we so along with the Blessed Trinity as imperfect agents of Perfect Love. Our imperfect work with the Blessed Trinity sharpens our love for God, make His love in us more perfect, and brings us to more gratefully receive His gifts. Can we bear all the truth? We can. . .if we will. We can if we will give ourselves over to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in all things. We can if we will give ourselves over to the freedom bought and paid for by Christ on his Cross. We can if we will give ourselves over to the mercy that the Father Himself guarantees is ours for the asking. We can bear all truth and be strong for the things to come if we will make our own the sacrificial ministry of the Blessed Trinity.

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Coffee Cup Browsing (Thursday)

Turning the table on the ProgLeft's pro-trans rhetoric.

B.O.'s destruction of bathroom privacy is all about State Power.

Who cares what SJW's think or say? Trump surely doesn't.

The Panama Papers, the Kremlin, and Hillary. . .

Nuns rap B.O. power-grabby knuckles. Harder, please.

The Future Church that never was. . .thank you, Lord.

YES! Biblical preaching. . .


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Come, Holy Spirit!

Pentecost Sunday

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Back when Jesus was still traveling around the countryside with his disciples, he promised them that he would one day go to Jerusalem and there he would be betrayed, put on trial, tortured, and killed. He kept that promise. He promised that after he was killed, he would go into the ground for three days and then on the third day rise again. He kept that promise. After he had risen from the tomb, he spent several weeks appearing to the disciples, and during these visits he promised that he would ascend to the Father. He kept that promise, ascending to sit at the Father's right hand right in front of his friends. But before he ascended, he promised that as soon as he arrived at his Father's right hand, he would send to his friends a consoler, a teacher, an advocate – the Holy Spirit. His fulfillment of that promise is recorded in our reading from Acts this evening. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon that frightened group of men and women in the Upper Room had a purpose and an consequence, an eternal purpose and a lasting consequence. The Holy Spirit comes us to still to strengthen our purpose and to renew the consequence of His arrival that first Pentecost. 

 

Why does the Lord send his Holy Spirit upon us? The Lord's reason for sending the Holy Spirit now is the same as it was on that First Pentecost – to imbue His people with the Law of Love, a law that requires no stone tablets, no wild man prophets, no animal sacrifices. He sent and sends His Holy Spirit upon His people to create out of those people a holy nation of priests, prophets, and kings; priests, prophets, and kings who need no temples, no hereditary priesthood, no special license to gain access through prayer to the Father. He sent and sends His Holy Spirit upon His people so that the truth and goodness and beauty of the living God might abide with them always, live in and with them always. Not in a single building in just one town in some foreign country. But always, everywhere, whenever His people call upon His name and invoke the memory of His great deeds. The Lord sends His Holy Spirit upon us now – in 2016 – for all these reasons and to strengthen us for the mission we have been given, the mission we have vowed to carry out – to go into all the world and bear witness to the mercy of God, the mercy He offers to every sinner. 

 

That's why He sends His Holy Spirit upon. So, what is the consequence, the result of the Spirit's arrival? We can see what effect the Spirit's arrival had on the scared witless disciples. They run into the streets, preaching in every known language, shouting out the Good News of Jesus Christ. We know from Acts that the Spirit-filled disciples continued to preach and teach in Jerusalem, drawing to themselves thousands of men and women who received the Father's freely offered mercy and joined the body of the Church. We know that the apostles were arrested, jailed, beaten, and eventually martyred for carrying out the mission they had received. But with them at every moment, with every word and gesture, with them stood the Holy Spirit, filling them with the Truth, the Truth who's name is Christ Jesus. They endured persecution and torture b/c the Law of Love was indelibly written on their hearts. They could not NOT preach and teach the Truth they so intimately knew. The consequence of that First Pentecost and the living-out of the apostolic mission those first few decades was the establishment of the Church – the living, breathing Body of Christ that thrives to this day and will continue to thrive until Christ comes again.

For you and me, right now, the result of the Spirit's presence in us and among us is the same as it was back then. We are strengthen and emboldened to carry out the mission we have received. This world's opposition to the Good News has not ceased. It hasn't let up even a little since that first day. I could rattle off examples, but you know all too well what that opposition looks like. The names have changed. The faces have changed. But the spirit that motivates that ancient hatred of God and His love for us never changes. His tactics never change. His temptations never change. He is a one-note loser who knows he's lost, and that makes him angry. Watch when a follower of Christ speaks the truth to those who will not hear it. Anger. Bitter, all-consuming anger. Our mission is not to fight anger with anger. We don't go out and proclaim God's mercy and then confront opposition with threats and violence. We confront opposition with the words of Christ himself, “Peace be with you.” Our moment of anger, bitterness, disappointment, and fear ended in the Upper Room on that First Pentecost. The Spirit that animates our mission is the Holy Spirit of God Himself – the very essence of promises-kept. If we are to be faithful missionaries of the Good News, then we must first be missionaries of Christ's peace. 

 

Notice the condition of the apostles. Scared to death, abandoned, cornered in a single room, waiting for the authorities to come kill them. And into all of that heated anxiety steps Christ, and he says to them all, “Peace be with you.” And he breaths the Holy Spirit upon them. He gives them Peace. That peace is not simply a calm, relaxing feeling. We're not talking about the tranquility that a sturdy rocking-chair offers. Or the mere absence of conflict or violence. Christ's peace is an assurance of strength, a guarantee of support. Christ is doing more here than just calming these worry-warts down. He's investing them with the power bind and loose from sin, the power to set men and women free from the snares of that ancient hatred that has dogged mankind for centuries. What worldly power can stand up to that?! None! So, be at peace with the Holy Spirit. Be at peace with your mission. Be at peace with the opposition to your mission. Go out and bear witness to the freely offered mercy of God to sinners. Meet anger, bitterness, disappointment, and fear with the abiding Spirit of Christ. Pray: “Peace be with you!”

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Young Priest Thumps Stereotyping

Can I get an "AMEN!"

As one of the many cassock-wearing, Communion-on-the-tongue-receiving, Latin-loving, Extraordinary-Form-Mass-saying young priests that have passed through the halls of Theological College, allow me to say plainly to anyone who would agree with the tone and sentiment of this article that you have deliberately and painfully pigeon-holed men who love the Church and cast us to be pompous little monsters simply because we have a different theological/liturgical outlook than you.  

Read the whole thing!

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General Update

It has been brought to my attention that I have been somewhat remiss in my blogging duties of late.

True.

End of Semester Madness quickly overwhelmed me and my laptop got some kind of intestinal flu and starting randomly crashing.  Thus the absence of an Ascension homily.

New laptop is on the way and the semester is over. . .

SO. . .

Back to blog business.

Once the new laptop is up and running, I'll revive Coffee Cup Browsing.

The only foreseeable problem is The Knee. At some point in the very near future, I will need to get it fixed.

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Our Aboriginal Vicar

6^th Sunday of Easter

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

Maybe it's just me, but I get nervous when Jesus starts making promises. Of course, most of the time he's promising Good Things. Like forgiveness of sin and eternal life. But on occasion he promises things that cause me give him a squinty-eyed glare. Things like persecution, torture, and death. Then there are the promises that seem – I dunno – odd. Maybe. . .unclear. Like the promise he makes this morning: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” This promise seems straightforward enough, but what does it mean exactly? I mean, he'll send the Holy Spirit to teach us and remind us. OK. But how will the Holy Spirit teach us and remind us? Do we each get a tutorial with the Holy Spirit when we need to be taught and reminded? Is there a class somewhere? Or a maybe a C-SPAN call-in show where we can ask the Holy Spirit questions? No, nothing so complicated as all that. Jesus promises, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”

What Jesus is telling us here is how the Holy Spirit will teach and remind us. It's rather straightforward process: 1) love Christ the Son and keep his word; 2) the Father loves those who love Christ and keep his word; 3) the Father comes to dwell with those whom He loves; 4) Christ the Son comes to dwell with those whom the Father loves; and 5) where the Father and Christ the Son dwell, so too dwells the Holy Spirit! So, the Holy Spirit teaches and reminds those who love Christ and keep his word. As I said, this is a straightforward process; however, we might wonder why we need the on-going presence of the Holy Spirit. After all, we have Scripture and Tradition, why do we need the ever-present Spirit to teach us and remind us? Scripture and Tradition are invaluable history, priceless records of how our ancestor's in faith lived out God's Self-revelation. However, neither Scripture nor Tradition can address every moral decision each of us must make on a daily basis. We need a way to access the wisdom of God when we are confronted by those difficult situations that the inspired authors of Scripture and Tradition could never imagine. We need a mechanism that allows us to participate in Christ's living love and word so that his wisdom can guide our moral choices toward holiness. We call this mechanism: conscience.

Many of our centuries-old Christian concepts have been beaten and abused in the last 50 years or so. None more so that the nature and purpose of moral conscience. For example, every Disney movie produced in the last 30 yrs pushes the notion that any moral difficulty is solved by “just following your heart.” For decades, faithful Catholics have been told by bishops, priests, religious, and theologians that conscience simply means “doing whatever you want,” so long as you claim you're doing it in “good conscience.” Conscience has come to means something like “the inalienable right to invent my own invincible truth.” To put it bluntly: this is the Devil's definition of conscience. The Church teaches us that “moral conscience. . .enjoins [us]. . .to do good and to avoid evil” (CCC 1777). Good and evil here describe objectively knowable standards of behavior not just subjective beliefs or wishes. Conscience does not invent the truth; it discovers the truth and urges us to do what is right. “[Conscience]. . .bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking”(CCC 1777). The prudent person knows and loves the teaching and reminding presence of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed John Cardinal Newman writes: “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.” While Pope Francis is the current Vicar of Christ on Earth, your conscience is the primordial vicar, the first representative of Christ appointed to you by your Creator at your creation. This means that we are all gifted with the divinely assisted ability and moral duty to seek out and obey the truth. Not to invent the truth as we wish it to be. Not to claim authority over the truth b/c we find the truth unpleasant or inconvenient. But to uncover the truth, and use it to do the good. To accomplish this task, your conscience must be well-formed in right reason; grounded in the moral law revealed in Scripture and in nature; and docile to the legitimate authority of the Church to interpret both Scripture and Tradition. Our “aboriginal vicar” is first, but it is not last, and without the proper formation, it cannot be final. Christ comes to live with those who love him and keep his word. And with him comes the Holy Spirit. . .to teach us, to remind us, to strengthen and confirm us in the faith. Our Lord promises us both great rewards and difficult futures. But with the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and among us, nothing merely difficult or troublesome or even terrifying can move us from our Father's love and His promise of mercy.

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Lord, I'm tired!

St. Catherine of Siena

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA

Our Lord doesn't ask much of us. Love one another. Trust one another. Believe in one another. Correct one another. Remain in his love. Write our papers. Keep his commandments. Receive his peace. Take our final exams. Teach and preach all that he has taught us. Baptize in his name. Remember him. Forgive. Show mercy. Serve. Write evaluations. Keep his word. Feed the hungry. Visit the sick and imprisoned. Mourn the dead. Bless the poor. Grade exams and papers and turn in the grades. Drive out unclean spirits. Heal the blind and crippled. Complete faculty evaluations. Deny ourselves. Pick up our crosses. Finish up paperwork for accreditation. Compose syllabi and book orders for fall of 2016. Follow him. Oh, and, at last. . .die for the love we have for him.
 

O Lord! I am tired. My knees are swollen! My back aches! I have calluses on both my typing fingers! My eyes itch. I haven't slept well in four days. And I'm breaking out like a high school freshman. My room looks like a FEMA camp after Katrina. And I've not done laundry since the third Sunday of Lent. . .2014. I've forgotten how to read and I can no longer do basic addition or long division. I'm tired, Lord. I'm tired. What do you have to say, Lord? “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” Well, thank you, Lord. One thing: can you unchose me?

The answer, of course, is no. He can't. Or, he won't. He knows our limits. And the limits beyond those limits. And he knows all that we give and all that we hold back. When we've given everything we have, all that we've held back. . .he gives us a new limit and the strength to reach it. The strength he gives is not some sort of magical grace-dust or a boost of sanctifying merits. He gives us himself. He's the limit. Not as an example, or a model, or a roadmap. He is the Limit. The Omega of all our striving. Think about it. Our end, our goal – Christ himself – comes to us in our soreness and sleepiness and crabbiness and hands himself over to us so that we might be made perfect as he is perfect. The Perfection we seek surrenders himself to us, the Imperfect, and dares us to surrender ourselves to him in return. How do we accomplish this astonishing task of surrender? “This I command you: love one another.” And forgive, show mercy, preach and teach, deny yourself, and follow him. 

 

Looking for answers, or maybe just some small consolation, I've searched the ancient libraries of the world – Oxford, Cambridge, Rome, London, Beijing, Ole Miss. . .and I've read hundreds of books and manuscripts. Talked to masters, professors, mystics, seers, soon-to-be saints, and quite a few sinners. How do I surrender? How do I hand over my life, everything that I am to God? I found the answer. My guide: a diminutive mystic of the Thomistic kind, a fellow renowned for his wisdom, patience, and kindness. I asked him my desperate question. He hefted his walking stick. Climbed a chair. And locked his eyes with mine and said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Expecting further distinctions or a citation from the Summa, I hesitated for a moment before breaking into tears. Love, or do not love. Forgive, or do not forgive. Believe, or do not believe. There is no try. Surrender, or do not. There is no try. There is no limit to surrender in love. Love one another as Christ loves you. He will not unchose you to complete the work he has given you to do. Therefore, with sore knees, cramping fingers, grouchy disposition, blurry eyes charge head long and recklessly into the work you have to do. . .knowing, knowing that Christ is your end, and he is always with you.

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Our most difficult task

5^th Sunday of Easter

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Of all the difficult tasks our Lord leaves us to accomplish in his name, one stands out as the most difficult. He says to his disciples, “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our Lord commands us to love one another in his name. Given that he also commands us to forgive those who offend us; to show mercy to and pray for our persecutors; to stand ready to give public witness to the faith; and to give our lives as a sacrifice for another – how is his command to love another the most difficult task he leaves us to accomplish? Loving one another is not a discreet act, a one-time deal where we rouse ourselves into action and obey his command start to finish in a single movement. Forgiving a sinner can be done in a single act. Showing mercy, praying for our enemies can be done in a single act. Dying for love of another is certainly a singular, unrepeatable act. And even if we must repeatedly forgive, show mercy, and pray for our enemies, we do so individually, serially. But loving one another cannot be accomplished so easily. Loving one another is an on-going, life-long, habit of living with your brothers and sisters in the same sort of love that Christ himself shows us. The same sort of love that leads him to the cross. . .for your sake and mine.

And what sort of love is this. . .exactly? Pope Benedict XVI writes, “By dying on the Cross. . .Jesus 'gave up his Spirit', anticipating the gift of the Holy Spirit that he would make after his Resurrection. . .The Spirit. . .is that interior power which harmonizes [believers'] hearts with Christ's heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them, when he bent down to wash the feet of the disciples and above all when he gave his life for us” (DCE 19). To obey our Lord and love as he commands, we must set aside whatever it is that prevents us from washing our brothers' and sisters' feet; whatever forbids us from serving them as the least among the Lord's children; whatever stops us from seeing in them the Christ who died for love of us all. Jesus isn't talking here about the casual acts of charity that we all do everyday. . .a dollar for the homeless guy on West End and Veterans; a bag of shirts to St. Vincent de Paul; or the extra $5 at the register for Habitat for Humanity. He's talking about the extraordinary transformation of our hearts, minds, bodies, souls, and all our strength into a life-long habit of self-sacrifice for the salvation of the world. IOW, to be and do who and what he himself is and does for us. 

 

Without any doubt – this is our most difficult task. One we are well-tempted to avoid. One that I myself am well-practiced at avoiding. For example. My mom is a neat freak. Her house is as organized and as clean as any Swiss museum. When my younger brother and I were in our teens, mom insisted that we make our beds before heading to school. We hated making our beds. An utterly pointless chore! So, what did we do? We half-made the beds – lumpy, crooked, creased. Mom would see the beds, sigh dramatically, and then make them up for us. Worked every time. Because of this laziness, I never learned to make a bed. I never learned to fold a fitted sheet or how to do a sharp hospital corner. To this day, my bed is a more like a pile of laundry than a proper bed. When we avoid loving one another, when we succumb to the temptation to let others love for us, or when we love thoughtlessly, causally, we deprive ourselves of the practice we need to grow in holiness, to mature into truly self-sacrificing witnesses of God's mercy. Our Lord demands of us that we take up his cross and die to self, die to selfishness, and rise again to a new life in perfect charity and peace. Christ gives us all the help we need. However, he will not make our beds for us.

Lest we fall into despair at the difficulty of our task, remember John's vision, “[God] will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. . .The One who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'” We never love alone, forgive alone, show mercy alone, heal, pray, sacrifice, or hope alone. He is always with us. He is always the source of the love and mercy we share among ourselves. His demands on our generosity are his due b/c we can only be generous at all b/c he was first abundantly generous with us, giving us his life on the cross and eternal life through his empty tomb. As we approach the birth of the Church on Pentecost, give thanks and praise to our Father for the gift of His Son, for the gift of His Spirit, and practice-practice-practice the difficult task of loving one another. He will always help us. But He will do it for us. He will not do it without us.

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