Where did you get all this?

17^th Week OT(F): Leviticus 23-27, 34-37 and Matthew 13.54-58
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Serra Club Mass)

Listen here!

An obvious question to ask after reading this gospel: do we reject the prophets among us and their prophetic message b/c we know them too well? Do we fail to believe, choose not to believe b/c our familiarity with the messenger somehow taints the message? Notice also that those listening to Jesus the Prophet not only find his message incredible, they also treat him with contempt and then take offense at his audacity. You to have wonder if his reception would have been more serene if he had preached to the congregation something they wanted to hear. No preacher with his head attached in all the important places sets out to offend his listeners. And yet, Jesus manages to hit all the right buttons in these folks and then find himself set in the middle of an unbelieving crowd; their lack of faith strangling their miracles at birth. Do we reject the prophets among us and their prophetic message b/c we know them too well?

Your first objection here might be: “But, Father, I don’t know any prophets. How can I reject familiar prophets if I don’t know any?” But you do know prophets! You’re sitting in a church full of prophets right now. Priests, prophets, and kings baptized into the ministry of Christ as The Priest, The Prophet, The King. Yes, clean, well-dressed, elegantly educated and fragranced prophets but prophets despite their lack of grubbiness and stench. Prophets tell us and show us how to live now as if we were in heaven already. Their job is to constantly point us to our End. To keep us focused on our goal, to thump and jab us along the Way to Christ, reminding us at each step, each breath, each bit forward or backward that God never leaves us alone, never abandons us to our own limited skills and desires; that He never stops lifting us up and urging us to turn to Him, to re-turn to Him. Prophets are nags. Yes. But necessary ones.

Your second objection might be: “But, Father, none of these people have ever said anything remotely prophetic.” Maybe so. But let me ask you this: do you hear/listen prophetically? I mean, we talk constantly in Church about “seeing with the eyes of faith;” about putting on faith-glasses and looking at the world through the gospel first. Are your ears tuned to a prophetic frequency? Could you hear one of these many prophets remind you to drop some piece of petty nonsense in favor of the kingdom? To take on a piece of difficult work for your spiritual satisfaction and the good of the Body? Could you hear a prophet here sing your praises, call you by name, and then give you a prophetic word to preach, a message to spread without prejudice? What stops your ears from hearing? What stops your heart and mind from listening?

When you prophesy, it is perfectly reasonable for one of us to ask you, “Where did you get all this?” This might sound like incredulity but the question is more about authority than disbelief. Who authored that prophecy? Do you speak out of a true sense of our Father’s justice—one consistent with divine revelation and the tradition’s familial understanding of what justice is? Is your voice free of mere secular politics? Do you speak from the Body to the Body, or are you standing outside shouting at us? Are you working with the Church or against it? Is your prophecy true; meaning, do your words to us convey the beauty and goodness of God as we know Him together? Truly, now, are you speaking prophetically from the tradition of prophets or are you babbling eccentrically from your fantasies? Are you speaking out of a need to fix us or control us or to make us into your private image of Church? Where did you get all this? Prayer, fasting, lectio divina, works of mercy? Or do you speak out of self-righteous anger, liberal bourgeois entitlement, or some alien political philosophy?

If you speak the Word powerfully, with a contrite heart and all humility, your tongue will whisper directly to the ears that need that Word most. That Word will remain forever spoken b/c you have given voice to that which will not pass away.

Pic: Noah Buchanan, Surrender

Mama 'n 'em

Blessed Jane Aza: 1 Peter 4.7-11 and Mark 3.31-35
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


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Why is it that every time I hear Jesus say, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”—I hear another, louder, distinctly feminine voice from behind the crowd yell at him, “I’ll tell you who your mother is!” And then I see a large cast iron skillet soaring through the air and pinging Jesus right upside his head! Obviously, Jesus did not consider himself a southern boy. No southern boy in his right mind would 1) leave his mama and brothers standing outside the house and 2) question the identity of his mama where she could hear him! Who knows? Maybe Mark diplomatically skipped over the part of the story where Mary said to Jesus, “Boy, who do you say that I am? I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it!” Perhaps being a Jewish son is more like being a Southern son than I realized. . .regardless, far greater than mere genetics or civil law is the One Who makes us family to one another, making us brothers and sisters in Truth if not DNA.

Our love for one another through the Love of the Father and our obedience to His will for us, binds us indestructibly together into a tribe, a nation, a people, and a priesthood. For the better of our nature this means we are given the glad duty of serving one another in Christ’s name for his greater glory. For the darker pieces of our nature, we are given the law—human and divine—to carve our a place in this world relatively free from violence and violation, free from forced obligation and manipulation, a time and place when and where we can truly be children of the Most High, “generous distributors of [our Father’s] manifold grace[s].” For us to be proper franchises of the gospel’s excellent news for the world, “[our] love for one another must be constant” and all we do and say and leave undone and unsaid must course out of us “with the strength provided by God. Thus, in all of [us] God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ…!”

I was kneeling at the journal rack, reaching for a copy of the latest edition of the American Poetry Review. The guy standing next to me was listening to someone on his cell phone. I heard him say in a lost voice, “Yea, I’m alone.” And then, “At Barnes & Noble. Bored.” I wanted to stand, snap his cell phone in half, and tap him vigorously on the forehead, saying: “You are in a huge, seriously crowded bookstore, stocked with every conceivable kind of knowledge—art, poetry, science, philosophy—and you stand there and admit that you’re alone and bored!?” Exactly, bored and alone. And rather than risk an unregulated conversation with a person in person, he dials an easy voice on his cell and maintains the detachment his lazy spirit requires to feel safe, unviolated by any obligation to risk meeting someone else’s blessing or hurt or loneliness. Bored and alone: empty in the presence of Self and Other.

Christ did not come to us to entertain us and keep us company. It is not the purpose of the Church, his Body, to provide social activities and age-appropriate fun in order to stave off boredom and unwanted solitude. It is the purpose of the Church to make real, to give substance to abstracted love and mercy, to fill up the Body with vigorous service done in His name, to lure in and capture the empty hearts and wandering minds of our increasingly distracted and alienated people, to teach them and preach to them the Word of God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Our focus is here and now AND then and there, “on earth as it is in heaven!” Jesus couldn’t be clearer or more forceful: “Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.” Family in Truth if not in DNA; family bound in obedience to one Father, giving service to one another in His name, for His glory!

Scaring Angels

St. Alphonsus Liguori: Romans 8.1-4 and Matthew 5.13-19
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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What does it mean for us to live according to “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus”? This law—not the old and of the flesh but the fulfilled and of the spirit—this law “has freed [us] from the law of sin and death.” Any law that frees us from sin and death is a law worth knowing well. But do we know it well? Do we know it at all? Could we answer a simple question based on this saving law? If not, how are we to then live?

The old, fleshy law is simple enough to understand. Basically, it was an exchange, a divine-human covenant based on a contract that detailed obligations for both parties involved and carried with it both explicit and implicit duties and compensations—“I will be your God and you will be My people.” One was “faithful to the covenant” so long as one sacrificed at the temple, kept the kosher laws, observe the purity restrictions, etc. Any lapse, any relaxation was taken to be a sign of one’s failure to “keep faith.”

Since this law was “weakened by the flesh,” it was powerless to do what God did when He fulfilled this law in Christ Jesus. What do we mean when we say “the law was fulfilled”? This means that God took the old law, dragged it to its own final end and then made it possible for us to benefit from the work of the old law without the meeting all of the requirements of the law. In other words, God, by sending His Son in the flesh and giving him up to death, fulfilled all the sacrifices that the Old Law required, purified all food and utensils, released us all from the bondage of sin—something the Old Law was designed to do but failed b/c it required our constant faithfulness—and God made us holy (healed & whole) by adopting us as His sons and daughters, heirs to His kingdom.

Now, as sons and daughters of the Most High, we live out the New Covenant, fulfilling the spiritual law of life in Christ Jesus! We are back to the beginning. How do we do this, live out this law? Jesus is clear: “…not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” OK. Maybe not so clear. Do we follow the law or not? Yes, we do. But we follow the law as it is fulfilled in Christ Jesus; that is, we follow the law of love presented in the beatitudes, holding firm to the covenant of freedom in God that the old law expected of us but did not always provide. We follow this perfecting law as it is being perfected in Christ, anticipating its final fulfillment and our own, waiting against hope “until heaven and earth pass away.”

What do we do while we wait? Well, we don’t hide our hope nor do we let our faith in the Lord grow stale. Nor do we claim a secular liberty that is not true freedom in Christ. Nor do we work for others merely to gain favor or fame. Nor do we waste time with purity if we understand purity to be an end in itself. The Beatitudes fulfill the Ten Commandments; that is, the Sermon on the Mount is the miracle of Moses’ tablets from Mt. Sinai: God speaks and the Word streaks out, indelibly etching stone, wood, the flesh of the heart; carving in all creation the Word of re-creation, of return and completion.

Our joy must be so profound, so excessive and wild, that when we storm heaven, we frighten the angels! And here and now, our lives should be no different than our lives in heaven. Why would they be different? By choice? By accident? We do not hide our Christ light or flinch in fear or cringe away from the ugliness of this world, the pain and jeopardy of living. Your life and mine must be bright shining lamps set atop a tall stand. Not to be admired for the clarity of our shine but to be used for directions to divine safety. We are reference points on the way to God. Do we look the part? Act the part? More importantly, if someone were to ask you: how do I live the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? Would you be able to say to them with confidence, “Yes, I do. Just follow me and I will show you”?

Pic: Rebecca Newell

Weeds Among Us

St. Ignatius of Loyola: Exodus 33.7-11, 34.5-9, 28 and Matthew 13.36-43
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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Every gardener, every farmer, every owner of a yard knows that when you till up a patch of ground, fertilize it, water it, sow it carefully with seed, there’s an excellent chance that along with the strong stems and healthy leaves of the desired plants, there will grow choking weeds, undesirable sprouts that steal water, food, and sunlight from the Good Plants you intend to enjoy. Weeds are as inevitable as bugs! No lover of a neat, manicured lawn, however, just leaves the weeds to take root and flourish and flower, seeding all over carefully cultivated ground. Weeds are pulled, poisoned, chopped, hoed out, and cut off. And then these thieves are piled high, allowed to dry, and burned. Jesus tells the disciples that there will be those in his garden who try to steal Life from those who wish to flourish in his Word. These thieves he calls, “The Children of the Evil One” and they are sown by the Devil. What do we do with the weeds among us?

Think back to the parable where Jesus introduces the idea of the weeds among the good plants. The planter’s servants ask their master if they should pull the weeds before the harvest. The master says, “No, let them grow and I will tell the harvesters to cut them, separate them out, and burn them.” Why does he leave the weeds? Why does he let them flourish, potentially damaging the good crop? The master reasons, “Pulling the weeds while the good plants are young might damage the good plants more than the weeds ever could.” So, he lets both the good and the evil mature in his fertile ground, knowing that the evil will be dealt with in the end.

Does this parable need any further explanation? No, I don’t think so. But it does provoke a question for us: for those of us who tend to think of ourselves as Good Plants, how do we deal with the obvious weeds among us? Notice the dangerous assumption in this question: that we know how to identify weeds! Now, there are extreme cases of Weeds Among Us—for example, those who would see us become unitarian-universalists; or, those who would turn us into new-age Buddhists or Mother Goddess worshippers; or those who would the whittle the church into a tiny remnant of apocalyptic survivors. We may also readily point out the self-proclaimed prophets of public dissent and those who mock the sacraments—especially Holy Orders—by play-acting at ordination rites. And there are those who willfully take on the identity of Weeds by throwing themselves in front of any live camera or open mike and denouncing the Church’s centuries old moral tradition in the name of "liberty." Beyond these extremes—few and far between they are!—Good Plants and Weeds can look a lot alike. So, in the end we must humbly submit to the infallible judgment of our Lord in plucking the weeds and leaving the righteous at the time of harvest.

We aren’t helpless against the noxious effects of the weeds right now, however. True, we must be patient in waiting for the weeds to be pulled; but, we can minimize their damage to the garden by carefully tending to that which makes the garden fertile in the first place: God’s gift of growing His love in us. No, this is not some lame deflection or crippled sentimentality put up to serve a faint heart too weak to fight the Weeds! There is nothing faint-hearted or weak or sentimental about God’s love being perfected in us. Jesus says that on the day of harvest, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” No darkness, no shadow, no fleck of sin. Nothing contrary to the brilliance of the Father’s glory. Nothing stands against His end, His means, His perfection. For us then, we need only be living Christs for others in order to show the weeds their fate. While they suck life from the air and poison the ground, the Good Plants must be more deeply rooted, stand taller, produce more and better fruit, and be more beautiful in flower than any weed can.

Being right is not our witness. Being faithful to the end…that’s the testimony that will turn heads and change hearts.

You are a serial killer.

17^th Sunday OT: Genesis 18.20-32; Colossians 2.12-14; Luke 11.1-13

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

[NB. The strangest homily yet. . .]

Listen here!

We have all been dead…at one time or another, some time long ago, maybe, or just recently, but nonetheless dead for the hour and day of our surrender. We are dead alright, if not permanently so. Misquoting Paul, “And when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, Christ brought you to life along with him, having forgiven you all of your transgressions; obliterating the bond against you, he removed it from your living, nailing it to the cross.” What binds you so tightly to your transgressions that only nails and the cross can remove the binding from you? Who kills you over and over again?

You hear God answer out of the void, “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .”

You, right there. . .you are a serial killer. And you are your own fresh victim. The voice telling you to kill yourself with the blade of sin is the voice of merciless distance, of isolation and trial, of desolation and pain; it is the voice that will not call for help, will not cry out in grief or remorse, will not sing out one note of kindness or truth or godly praise. That voice can only repeat conspiracies, gossip, lies, suspicions, temptations, delusions of grandeur and meekness; that voice needles you about the scarcity of God’ love, the meager scrapes tossed at you from the Father’s abundant table. And, finally, that voice—as an icy whisper or a breathless flame—that voice repeats the First Lie, the primitive untruth from the garden’s serpent: “You can become a god without God; you don’t need Him to become Him; so, why not just kill Him off and get on with the business of living humanely, living w/o the One Who claims to have created you?”

Why do you listen to this sibilant voice? Do you need the control of being a serial killer? The predictability of being your own victim over and over again? Maybe you take some perverse pleasure in believing that God, our Father, would say something to you like: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” But why? What does believing that your Father in Heaven is bent on starving you or perhaps poisoning you, what does believing this lie buy you, spiritually? Does it make you appear special b/c God picks you out to hate, while loving the rest of us boring sheep? Does believing the lie give you permission to violate the Law of Love, the requirements of charity? Or perhaps you have tried to love God, but it all seemed so pointless—all that passion unrequited, wasted on a dead god?

If any of this is true for you or someone you know and love, let me ask you again: what binds you so tightly to your transgressions that only nails and the cross can remove the binding from you? What or who has that kind of power? I would suggest that it is not the traditional atheism of our modernist milieu—few people cling to a truly consistent atheism; it is not a passionate hatred of God—the Psalms are clear: even hatred of God is a kind of obedience, a form of needful listening. If Christ’s answer to his disciples’ request for instruction in prayer is any indication of how our problem is to be understood, then I would have to say that the voice of distance and pain is louder and more insistent for those of us who do not have an intimate relationship with Christ. Bottom-line: the voice of lies and temptations prays just like a good Christian ought, but the voice prays out into nothingness; but then again, so can the Christian—pray vainly, that is—if he or she has no basic relationship with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The Patristic theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, clears it up for us very neatly, “Prayer is intimacy with God.”

If intimacy with God is lacking in your spiritual life, then how easy is it for you to believe that He would answer your most solemn prayers with: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” Without intimacy every answer sounds like cold silence. Anything you might hear sounds like rejection, abuse in echo. Anything you might receive turns rancid, poisonous. Blessings turn to curses. Prayers to scoldings. Sacrifices begin to look like religious parodies. And your whole spiritual life becomes a self-composed theatrical farce complete with cheap costumes, clichéd dialogue, and a director with his time, talent, and treasure focused on something, someone, ANYONE, much, much better and more deserving than you! If there is no intimacy, that is, no honesty, no frank confession, no confidence or caring, no earnest desire for perfection or the trials that come with being perfected; if there is no craving in your body and soul for God’s presence in your life. . .then, God is dead…for you. You remain transgressive and uncircumcised in your flesh.

However, if you want intimacy with God, look to your baptism. You were buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him through the power of the Father. And what you must come to understand, believe, and act upon is the truth that even when you are dead, Christ brings you along with him to share his life with you; to lift you up above sin, above rebellion and despair, forgiving your transgressions, and taking, oh so firmly seizing, the bond of sin against you and nailing it to the cross! That which opposes your health, attacks your peace, rattles your trust; that which whispers rich temptations in your ears and shows your eyes delightful evils; that which cannot bear the loneliness of Its own pride and wants us as submissive pets and playthings, that which wills our destruction is seized and nailed to the wood of the cross.

We can ask Jesus to teach us to pray b/c we can now pray from our fertile hearts. We can call God “Our Father,” b/c He is the Author of our lives. We can take our place as heirs at His table b/c He has adopted us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We are co-workers in the coming Kingdom, partners in creation; He feeds us, forgives our sins as we forgive others, and protect us from the final test of our trust in His mercy. And more: we already have every blessing we will ever receive from God, every goodie, every prayer answered. You have already received. Now ask from your unbounded heart what you need. The door is already there. Knock and it will open. With God, seeking is finding b/c Who we seek most intimately never hides. In pride and fits of spiritual temper, we close our eyes and ears and then claim that He disappears. That is not His voice saying to you: “The door is already locked. You pray for a fish and an egg, my child. Here, I give you a snake and a scorpion. . .” That’s your voice and your words, my voice and my words, trembling and speaking out of a fear of abandonment. God is love and will not abandon us. That is not prophecy; it is promise. But if it is fear you need to push you toward Love, then fear the timeless vacuum, the tolling emptiness of your own voice, praying like a choked cathedral bell for all eternity: ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME. . . . .

The Good News? Christ is dead for our sins. He gathered our transgressions and died with them. Paul says that he took the bond against us and “removed it from our living.” He rose from the dead and brought us along. He ascended into heaven and opened the Way for us to follow in our time. Why would we fear? Why would we resist? Don’t! We are held sweetly in the palm of Divine Love Himself. Know and do His truth in this world. Pray for what He has already given you—His name, His home, His kingdom, His will for us, His creation—both heaven & earth, His very being day to day, His forgiveness, His power to forgive, His promise of power over temptation, and our final end: He gives us Himself.

Love is a kind of knowing...

16^th Week OT(F): Exodus 20.1-17 and Matthew 13-18-23
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas


Listen here!

I just kept praying that the numbers and letters would start speaking to me, start saying something to me about how they worked or played or lived together…anything, anything at all to help me put a mark in the vast white space next to the algebraic formula: ax² + bx = c. The Muses were quiet that day. The gods of Math were napping. Even St. Baudhāyana, priest-discoverer of geometric solutions to Pythagorean linear equations and father of the demon algebra that tortured me that day in high school, even he was silent in witness to my despair. Finally, having reached the logical conclusion that prayer would not help me understand nor would crying, complaining, appealing to the charity of my teacher, threatening my health, the health of my teacher, nothing, nothing would help me to grasp the truth of the beauty of algebra, nothing; after these flashes of enlightenment, I surrendered to the problem itself, just gave up; I let the equation have its way with my impatience, my stubbornness, my irrational fear of math, and when I did, the numbers slipped into the letters perfectly, the solution just “fell out” of the equation…and I was saved.

I could see. I could hear. But I did not understand. I had knowledge but no wisdom; I knew, but I did not love. And love is that kind of knowing that makes the Word spoken to our ears and shown to our eyes, open—accessible, useful, complete, and nearly irresistible. I came to understand that perplexing algebraic formula by releasing my hatred of math, my determination to control the outcome; by surrendering my impatience and annoyance with the feeling of stupidity the formula imposed on my over inflated sense of myself as a “smart kid.” Literally, I gave up. And my vision cleared so that I could see the solution and my deafness exploded into sound so that I could hear my teacher talk sense to me. I barely touched Love that day. Just lightly brushed against love in coming to understand algebra. Understanding the Word sown, on the other hand, requires that we soak ourselves in love until we are indistinguishable from it. What else will nourish the seed?

Think about it this way: the Word is tossed to you, sown in your heart for nourishment and growth—what will it find there to take root in, to draw food from, to flourish and bloom out of? In other words, what lives in your cardiac tabernacle? Around what or whom does your physical and spiritual life rotate? Will the Word land hard on a stone of anger and resentment? Will it land on the ever-shifting, never faithful sands of compromise and deceit? Will it land on the mushy, rotting glop of sentimentalism, excessive passion, and intellectual indolence? Or will the seed of the Word find itself sown on rich soil but surrounded by the poisonous thorns of envy, pride, disobedience, dissent, and a lust for violence? The Word might grow in any of these, but the fruit it bears would be ugly, bitter, and very likely deadly.

Only Love can feed the seed of the Word in you what it needs. If the seed lands in your tabernacle and finds there: a boundless hope; an unequaled trust; deeds soaked in mercy; a longing for the blinding beauty of God’s face and a thirst for His goodness and truth; an excitement about witnessing Christ to the world; a passion for justice and peace; if the seed lands in the rich soil of your heart and discovers there this brilliant garden, then your yield for the Kingdom will be thirty, sixty, one hundredfold what it would be otherwise.

You can fight the formula, staring at the blank page for hours, waiting for a miracle, willing an easier, more convenient solution. Or, you can surrender now and find all your blank pages filled with the Word. Hear the parable of the sower: you must be richly prepared to be planted with God’s Word. Soak your soil in love then until you are indistinguishable from Love Himself.

Pic Credit: Melissa Hirsch

Fat Hearts Cannot See or Hear

SS. Joachim and Anne: Sirach 44.1, 10-15 and Matthew 13.16-17
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ. of Dallas

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing? If you see and hear what the prophets and the righteous have longed to see and longed to hear but do not, cannot, then you are blessed! But what is it that blessed eyes and blessed ears see and hear that the prophets and the righteous do not? They see Christ and hear the Word; they know Jesus and love his gospel. To both see and hear Christ Jesus is both to know and to love God and His creatures, both to be and to do the truth, both to desire and be given beauty. Though prophets and the righteous could see and hear, they will not see and hear b/c they are prophetic and righteous. The overshadowing of the soul, the possession of the spirit by the Holy Spirit so that Christ Jesus is revealed, this revelation of power and might is a gift. Never earned. Never merited. Never traded for. Given. Gifted. Graced to us by God the Father so that we might take His blessings and then grow as His prophets, as righteous people who see and hear.

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing?

Jesus tells his disciples that he uses parables to teach b/c of the unwillingness of those in the crowd to see and hear with hearts that understand. He reports that this difficulty fulfills a prophecy of Isaiah: “You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes…” Gross is the heart of this people? Gross? Fat. The Hebrew word here means “fat” and implies all the vices the ancient Jews would attach to being “fat”: dullness, sluggishness, laziness, being overindulged, and lethargic.

A spiritually “fat” heart cannot help the eyes see or the ears hear the perfection of the Lord’s teachings. Why? Such a heart is busy eating the junk calories of our info-tainment nation; scarfing down the greasy morsels of celebrity comedies and relishing the coming of their inevitable tragedies; busy shoveling in piles of factory-made, color-coded, Xeroxed and collated political opinion and its performance in the circuses of broadcast theatre; busy swallowing a Panic Culture bred and birthed so that safety can be sold as salvation and suppressed fear repackaged as security; busy wallowing in a brain-stupor, an intellectual mire induced by injections of freedom w/o truth, liberty w/o responsibility, and rights w/o limits. A fat heart so grossly obesed in the antithesis of Christ’s liberating Word cannot help the eye to see or the ear to hear.

Do you see? Do you hear? Are you blessed in your seeing and hearing?

If you look around you and see the face of God in your neighbors; if you look around and see Christ present to his church; if you listen and hear the Word spoken among your neighbors with clarity and strength; if you listen and hear the witness of the saints, those long gone and those among us still; if you see the beauty of the Blessed Trinity working in your life and the lives of those you know and love; if you hear the voice of God calling you to greater and greater charity—THEN you see with the eyes and hear with the ears of a blessed heart. The alternative is for you to sink uncelebrated into the sewage, the ruins of sin and despair. Your heart, your constant focus on Christ, was given to you at baptism and strengthen in the anointing of confirmation and is exercised in the celebration of the Eucharist. Don’t let it get fat snacking on the debris of our exhausted culture. Keep it strong in prayer, strong by works of mercy, and strong pumping the Word of God through your body! Be the disciple you were made to be: ripped, shined to a buff sheen, and busting at the seams to witness for our Lord.

Drinking from Jesus' cup

Feast of St. James: 2 Cor 4.7-15 and Matthew 20.20-28
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving, TX

Listen to this homily here!

Living in a democracy founded on the philosophical principles of Enlightenment Europe, I’m not sure we have much experience in this country with our rulers lording their authority over us. At least none of our experiences, if we’ve had them, measure up much, I bet, to the sort of oppressive suffocation of the human spirit I witnessed in communist China in 1990. Every second guarded against suspicion. Every word crafted to fit ideology. It seemed that nothing escaped the black-hole gravity of the state’s need to master its own people, making them servants by birth, accidental slaves to the political and economic jackboots of leftist Fascism and collectivist poverty. Now, I doubt the mother of the sons of Zebedee is hoping that Jesus will give her sons this kind of absolute power. But, like most of modern citizens of the Enlightened world now, she was probably thinking then, “Given the choice: it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” It is better to be the master than the servant. Jesus has a slightly different idea for his church.

Jesus says that the great ones among the Gentile rulers make their authority over their people felt. Then he says, “…it shall not be so among you.” Greatness in the Body will be determined by one’s willingness to be a slave in the service of others. Authority will flow from servanthood not heredity or wealth or connections but from following Christ’s destiny as the final servant of all in his sacrifice on the cross. He says, “[I] did not come to be served but to serve and to give [my] life as a ransom for many.” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained;…always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus…so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

To carry the dying of Christ is to carry his last act as a slave sent to serve. To manifest in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus is to take on a life of servitude to others. We are to witness as the apostle did—to death, if necessary. We are to stand up and serve even when perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, b/c though we maybe troubled by enemies, we are not driven to despair; we are not abandoned; we are not destroyed. In fact, we serve, we witnesses against persecution and the darkness of sin, “knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us […] in his presence.”

In Lumen gentium our bishops teach us that the People of God is one, “…sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity…[we] are all 'one' in Christ Jesus…”(n. 32). And one in Christ, we have the same vocation to service in the Body and out, to the Church and to the world, and though the practicalities are different for each according to his or her ministry, the service you render is rendered as Christ for Christ—by you, a member of his body, and in his name.

Sounds good. What’s the catch? No catch, just a question: Jesus asks you, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”

Pic credit: Paul Soupiset

Something Greater Than...

16^th Week OY (M): Exodus 14.5-18 and Matthew 12.38-42

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Listen to this homily here!

All things have been handed over to Christ by his Father, so there is something greater than Solomon here. There is something greater than the Temple here. There are many things to be worried and anxious about, but there is need of only one thing. Mary, Martha’s sister, chooses it as the better part, knowing that whoever does not take up his or her cross and follow after Jesus is not worthy of him. Those least worthy of him, the evil and unfaithful generations that seek after signs, some wizardly proof from Jesus that he is who he says he is, these obstinate hearts claw at him for spectacular verification; despite their desperation, the only sign that these generations will receive is the sign that Nineveh received in Jonah: the death and resurrection of a prophet of God in three days. Truly, there is something greater than Jonah here!

If the Pharisees and scribes were sincere in their desire to see a sign of Jesus’ credentials as the Messiah, we might be a little more sympathetic to their skepticism. I mean, if they were truly, at the heart of doubt, fighting to say YES to God’s self-revelation in Christ Jesus, we might argue, “Come on, Jesus: just one little miracle, one small healing to boost them on over the top of fear.” But Jesus’ own description of these guys—“an evil and unfaithful generation”—pretty much tells us that their motivation for seeking after signs is rotten. They do not seek a sign to doubt-proof a firm faith. They are seeking a logical sign, a political sign, some indication from Christ that it is safe either to join up with him or dangerous even to be seen near him. They are calculating their trust, running their faith through the numbers, trying to weight the odds and waiting for the argument to slant in favor of or against belief.

Seeing these gamblers’ machinations, Jesus says to them, “You had Solomon, the Temple, Jonah and Nineveh. And now, you have something greater than Solomon’s wisdom; greater than the Temple’s access to God; greater than the clarity of Jonah’s sign, and the witness of the Ninevites’ repentance b/c of him, and still you harass me for a sign!” Evil. Unfaithful. If you roll dice to trust God, expect the odds to be against you…always. Why? B/c trusting God is never about probabilities; it is always about possibilities and more than just “what if’s,” it is about His promises—not lab experiments, not geometric proofs or formulas, not even good ole Reason with all of her properly graced power to reveal and to convince. There is something here greater than all of these!

Jesus says that the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s preaching and repented. He says that Queen Sheba traveled “from the ends of the earth” to witness first-hand Solomon’s wisdom. And he says that the “men of Nineveh” and “the queen of the south” will “arise with this generation and condemn it” b/c they are calculating the odds of trusting the only sign they need of God’s promise to save them: Jesus Christ. If we could put words to Jesus’ frustration, he might ask: “How can anyone so misunderstand what faith means to us and requires of us?” I wonder. . .

How do you calculate your faith? Weigh the odds? How do you covertly test God to see if He’s paying attention to you? What conditions have you placed on loving your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you seeking after, waiting around for some greater sign than Christ himself: a weeping statute, a rosary turned to gold, maybe an appearance by Mary on the side of barn? Or maybe you wait for the trendiest philosophers of religion to tell you it is now fashionable again to believe. Fides ex auditu! Believe because you have heard. Heard the witness. Heard the Word spoken and heard the Word speak. Don’t gamble on signs! Invest in mutual affection and trust: when you hear his voice, soften your heart and welcome in his saving wisdom.

Image credit: Probability

Fire all the Martha's!

16^th Sunday OT: Genesis 18.1-10; Colossians 1.24-28; Luke 10.38-42
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX

Listen to this homily here!

I don’t want to point fingers! You all know this already, of course: there are Martha’s among us and Mary’s. You’ve heard this homily a hundred times: in the church there are workers and contemplatives. Those busy about many things and those who sit at the feet of the Lord. Workers in the church get short shifted b/c Jesus holds Mary up as the example of correct attitude and behavior. What does it mean to be a Martha and what does it mean to be a Mary? To be a Martha one must be either industrious and responsible OR anxious and controlling. To be a Mary one must be either humble and dedicated OR lazy and inhospitable. So, we are usually told, we should choose which “model of service” we want to imitate: the Martha model or the Mary model. Here’s a hint about the conclusion of that tried and true homily: we are called upon to be both b/c the Church needs both her Martha’s and her Mary’s to survive and flourish. Everyone is happy that his or her favorite sister is still safe and no one barks at the preacher on the way out the door for picking one sister over the other. Well, sorry, folks but this preacher is taking sides!

When I want to learn something, I first think to teach it to someone else. I really don’t mind the messy work of jumping into an intellectual project w/o a perfectly clear plan of attack. We don’t have to know every text, every authority, every footnote. Living is mostly about introductions, anyway: pieces, snapshots, collections. To make sense of all of our snapshots in the album, we will look to all sorts of larger stories, bigger introductions, trying to fit My Story into The Story, so that My Story doesn’t end up as a knock-knock joke or sidewalk graffiti or a mumbled curse against fate. But if we are smart, we will sit at the feet of the Teacher who is himself the Big Story, the Grand Script, and let him coach us through our ignorance, our rebellion, and pride.

There’s one small gift we must bring to The Teacher in order to be properly taught. We must bring the bright red apple of humility! To be taught is to be changed, converted, turned around and upside down, made new. Can you feel the tingling of anxiety! Change?! Made new?! The dark fingers of worry are closing into a fist. Humility is kept caged by worry and anxious need. You cannot submit yourself to the Teacher for proper instruction if you will not unclench that fretting fist, those busy, busy, busy fingers that seem to believe that hard work earns salvation. Why does Jesus say to Martha that Mary has chosen the better way? B/c Mary is lazy and wants to avoid work? No. B/c Martha is trapped in an oppressive gender role that makes her a servant to men? No. Jesus says to Martha that Mary has chosen the better path b/c she, Martha, is “anxious and worried about many things.” Martha, where is your humility, sister?!

Let’s ask Martha another question: “Martha, does your worrying about many things proclaim the Christ in you? Are you presenting yourself as perfect in Christ when you vibrate around the room throwing off angst like clothes set on fire?” Martha might answer, “I am showing our Lord honor by serving him. And Mary is lazing about his feet doing nothing!” So, maybe the question we need to ask here is: what is it to serve the Lord and how is that service an honor to him? Martha argues that being up and moving, doing something productive, serves the Lord. Manual labor honors the Lord b/c it shows a willingness to work for his sake. Mary seems to be arguing that sitting at the Lord’s feet, listening to him teach, serves him. And he is honored best by allowing him to serve her as her Teacher. The Lord says to all this, “Mary has chosen the better part…” Yes, she has.

Beyond the Martha/Mary contest, do we find this idea of honoring Jesus by allowing him to serve us and then serving others in his name, do we find this idea anywhere else in scripture? Yes, of course. Conveniently enough, right here in today’s reading from Colossians! Paul writes to the Colossians, “Brothers and sisters: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church…” Paul is teaching us here that he is taking on, in his own person, the sufferings of the Church, the pains and trials that Christ’s Body still suffers, and that he makes this sacrifice gladly so that Christ’s Body, the Church, doesn’t have to suffer unduly. Paul eagerly shares in the sufferings of Christ through grace, thus, allowing Christ to serve him personally. This shows Christ great honor. Paul then removes these sufferings from the Church, thus serving the members of the Body, and honoring, once again, the person of Christ. If we, the Church, pay careful attention to Paul’s suffering for us, we see a Great Lesson taught by a Great Teacher: the mystery once hidden from the ages is now revealed to us. How is the Word of God completed for us? That’s the mystery. Paul answers, “…it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.” God’s Word is completed for us as Christ in us!

How do Paul and Mary manage to teach us all of this? Through humility. Paul eagerly accepts the Church’s sufferings into his own body and Mary submits herself to instruction in a subject normally forbidden to Jewish women. Both submit themselves to the Word—to listen to the Word, to be instructed by the Word, and to go out and do the Word once sent. And in submitting to the Word, each takes on the Word and speaks with the power of Truth that is Christ Jesus. Essentially, each becomes the Word they teach and each lives out a life totally dependent on God, acknowledging with breath and hands and feet their absolute reliance on the Father for absolutely everything they need. They can teach us about God with the clarity of one who looks to God for his very existence. This is not the clarity of calculated logic, or computer science, or astrophysics. It is the kind of clarity that sharpens in trust our first commitment to love. And calls us back over and over again to the promise we made to honor God by preaching His Word with vigor and vim.

Paul and Mary have made the better parts of sacrifice for us. Paul suffers. Mary contemplates. Paul evangelizes and Mary exemplifies. Both show us how to make the Big Story of Christ’s life, the smaller story of our own lives; how to take that Grand Script of Jesus and compress it into our own dramas, comedies, and tragedies and find eternal life among the pages remaining.

Martha didn’t choose a bad part when she choose to honor the Lord by serving him a meal. It’s just that Mary chose the better part when she chose to honor him by allowing him to serve her as her teacher! So, this means then the Church doesn’t need workers like Martha? That’s precisely what it means! The Church needs workers but not workers who are “anxious and worried about many things.” Jesus is not criticizing Martha for her work in his honor but for the fretting about that is driving her to despair and jealousy. Who, between the sisters, is being inhospitable? Mary who is seeking wisdom at our Lord’s feet? Or Martha who’s nagging at him about a sisterly fuss? Mary has chosen the better part.

If you will learn from the Teacher of the Ages, you must: unclench your jaw; free your heart and mind from worry; unwring your hands, settle your voice, soothe over the turmoil of second-guessing and what-if’ing; reach deeply for the flower of humility, that small bloom of total dependency on God you hide so well; and, sit down! Sit at the feet of the Word and listen. Listen! B/c what you hear and what you do once you have heard will not be taken from you.

Pic Credit: Matthew Jacobs: PANIC

Mercy OR sacrifice? BOTH!

15^th Week OT(F): Exodus 11.10-12.14 and Matthew 12.1-8
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation (Serra Club), Irving, TX

If the Devil can quote the Bible as a means for his ends, then we can be properly warned, without fear of impiety, “Be careful: read scripture and be tempted!” That we even think that reading the Bible might tempt us to disobedience seems not just odd but downright freaky, if not plainly blasphemous. But we all know that the thrill of the Word, the rush of the unveiling will strike a passionate note and quickly, swiftly swirl us away, dropping us carelessly at the foot of the first fool thought that floats too close to escape our curious eye. And we can start believing utter nonsense as if it were wholesome logic in a breath and two heartbeats. Jesus, always the clarion cure for foolishness, says to the Pharisees who have accused his disciples of impious labor on the Sabbath, “I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men.”

Ah ha! Jesus is admonishing the Pharisees for following the rules; he’s berating them for being concerned about the Law, about procedure and process; therefore, we, as followers of the Way of Christ, are under no obligation to follow the Law or any law, and all of those puritanical restrictions against our favorite, former sins are now abrogated! We are free indeed! God desires mercy from us, not our empty, choreographed sacrifices inside an over decorated, incense-choked building! Thanks be to God we are free. . .!

As I said, in a breath and two heartbeats utter nonsense starts to sound like wholesome logic. This is our temptation here: to take what is a profoundly subtle ethical teaching from Christ, ignore the subtleties in favor of what we want to hear, and make Christ’s teaching into an excuse for sin. The Devil’s means for the Devil’s ends indeed. Where do we go wrong with this teaching? We go wrong with this teaching when we place mercy and sacrifice against one another, in conflict with one another, and we come out believing that we are to do one and not the other. The truth that Jesus is trying to push into the legalistic brains of the Pharisees is that showing mercy to a sinner is a sacrifice; to be merciful is sacrificial.

The logic of mercy requires you to forgive an offense against you w/o asking for what you are justly owed in compensation for the offense. You “sacrifice” what is rightfully yours in exchange for nothing, for nothing at all. In effect, there never was any offense. We can say that this or that bad act was committed—Jesus doesn’t deny that his disciples are picking grain on the Sabbath—but once sacrificial mercy is shown to the actors, we cannot say that any offense was given by the act. Jesus calls David and the priests and his disciples “innocent men.” No offense, no sin.

Divine mercy then is that kind of love that sees clearly into the heart of the sinner and rightly discerns what drives him to offend. However, only God has such clarity, the clarity to know perfectly a heart’s intent; you and I are called to a far more difficult task: to show mercy as a sacrificial habit; as a virtue faithfully, daily practiced without the benefit of a divine mind to see inside another person’s motive!

So, does God want mercy from us rather than sacrifice? Yes, if by “sacrifice” we mean “merely following the Law jot and tittle.” Does God want mercy from us rather than sacrifice? No, if by “sacrifice” we mean “offering to God what we are owed in order to make it holy.” God wants us to be merciful as a sacrifice. Why is this difficult for us? My guess: being offended makes us the creditor, we are owed. And being owed a debt gives us power. This is the Devil’s means to another one of his favorite ends: you in Hell with all the foolish. Poke him in the eye by giving up what is owed you—sacrifice in mercy and live among the wise.

Knowing the Truth to do the Truth

15^th Week OT (W): Exodus 3.1-6, 9-12 and Matthew 11.25-27
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX


Listen to this homily here*

They were here long before we came along. The spirits of rivers, trees, rocks, and animals tell them about mysteries only they can reveal. Even the stars speak to them about celestial influences and memories. They have gods; we have God. They have sacrifices; we have the one sacrifice. They have priests; we have the priesthood of Christ. They have altars, candles, incense, water, wine, bread, blood, flesh. And so do we. They have heroes, heroic stories, miracles, sacred texts and places, taboos and totems, moral systems. And so do we. How, then, do we distinguish between the so-called “pagan” religions—the Greek and Roman Mystery cults, for example—and the Way of Christ Jesus?

The Greek Orthodox theologian and bishop, John Zizioulas puts it best when he writes, “Unlike the pagan religions […] which sought salvation in escape from time and history through myths leading to extratemporal experiences, Christian spirituality, under the influence of the scriptural mentality […] focus[es] on history…the church’s outlook [is] not cosmological but historical.” He goes on to note that the Christian’s relationship with God “[does] not pass through nature but through obedience to the will of God,” giving Christianity its “ethical character,” its charge to “do the truth,” and it is “through personal relationships that the human person’s union with God [is] realized.” In all the ways that we relate to God, two differences mark us off from the pagans: 1) a “scriptural mentality” and 2) a personalist revelation of God.

In scripture we read, “[On the mountain of Horeb] an angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in fire flaming out of a bush…God called out to him from the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ He answered, ‘Here I am.’” And then God reveals Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and charges Moses to go to Pharaoh and “to do truth:” lead my people out of Egypt! We also read in scripture: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” Jesus wishes to reveal the Father to us, and we know the Father first and best through the person of His Christ—Jesus our Teacher and Lord. Jesus, as a person like us in all things but sin, shows us, reveals to us, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In his person—both human and divine—he reveals. In his Sonship, his Lordship, in his teaching and preaching, in every word spoken and every deed done, Jesus unveils his Father’s face to us. This is not myth; it is history. This is not “once upon a time in a land far, far away.” God’s revelation of Himself to us, his creatures, took a place, a time, and a person and spoke to us: “Here I AM!”

And why does any of this matter to us now? Simple: if you will do the Truth, you must know the Truth. The Truth that is Love Himself is beyond measure, beyond words, beyond image or imagination or space-time, beyond any human art or science to know—fully, perfectly. To glimpse God, we must be shown God. And only God can show us God. Jesus shows us God the Father and so we know God as Father, Source of our being and Author of our freedom. If you will do His Truth, you must know His Truth. Knowing and doing His Truth will not only set you free, but it will make you into a means of freedom for others. What do we call a person who is a means of true freedom for others? We call him, we call her “Christ.”

In the record of our family’s faithful struggle with God, we find human histories—of hope, despair, obedience, betrayal, fidelity, sacrifice, greediness, any and everything imaginable. And we find Christ, the ancient promise of God given flesh and blood, and given up for us. Why does any of this matter? It matters b/c it is true. To do the truth, we must know the truth.

And God said to Moses, “Here I AM. I will be with you always.”

*My little digit recored crapped on me this morning at Mass, so I had to re-record this homily in my room...thus the poorer sound quality.

Pic credit: The Burning Bush

Jesus Must've Known

15^th Week OT(M): Exodus 1.8-14, 22 and Matthew 10.34-11.1
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory


Listen to this homily here

Jesus teaches his apostles that he comes to us wielding a belligerent sword, a great blade of division and strife, setting man against father, daughter against mother. And we must not think that he brings peace! We must not think that the Word of his Good News, spoken from start to finish and through all creation, tranquilizes our discordant human hearts or smooths all the coarse ways we grind up and pit with sin. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth,” he warns us. Instead, know that I have come to dare you to receive a prophetic charge, a commission to lose your life for my sake, and in so doing, to find your life made worthy of Christ. Refusing this messianic dare is unthinkable, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” Our cross—the one cross we all share—is the graced burden of stepping into the world as prophets of a Truth whose light is blinding and razor sword-sharp.

Jesus must have known that at some point in the history of his church, even his most devoted members would no longer be scandalized by his more outlandish teachings. At some point, someone would read the synoptic accounts and John’s gospel and realize what a master rhetorician Jesus was, what a masterful storyteller, a man gifted with the ability to speak memorably. He must have known that at some point, someone would deconstruct the texts of these evangelical memories and untie all the bound pairings—peace/sword, enemies/household, righteous/lost—and once done report back to us that his metaphors of power are really just grabs at establishing a totalitarian religious state or something equally ridiculous. He must have known that our weak human hearts would flail about, grasping at any tool to loosen his grip on our integrity, to pry away our vow of obedience, freeing our souls from his prophetic commission. He must have known, otherwise he would not have spoken the Truth with such blinding clarity, with such slicing strength: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Here’s the kicker, folks: we chose this life! The life described here in Matthew’s memories of his time as an Apostle. We chose this life. Jesus dared us to pick up his prophetic cross—of speaking the Truth of his Good News to the world—he dared us! and we jumped at the chance to die following after him. But we have to ask one another: have we left mom and dad behind? Have we given over every attachment, every clinging bit of need and want? The yearning after a half-lived life of stupored munching, rutting, sleeping, and polluting? We are his disciples if we can receive a single cup of cold water in his name. A single cup! And the one who gives us this water is truly blessed.

He must have known we would come to the point where very few stones littered our paths, where almost nothing stood in the way of carrying our crosses into the world…and yet we flinch at a clear path to our goal? Do we? I do. And often. Saying this life in Christ is not easy doesn’t make it difficult. Nor does it excuse the lack of blisters or bloody feet. Follow after me he says. Pick up that cross…you said you wanted it!...pick it up and follow after me. And make following him the first thing you do. The last thing you do. And everything you do in between. Then mom and dad and child and household and job—all that you have forsaken for his sake—all of it will make the best sense b/c the Good News that you bring to the world (bright as the sun and sharp as a sword) is that God’s mercy, though free, ain’t cheap. And the choice to pick up his cross as your own is a dare worth eternal life. Our reward then is a life—even a life of persecution—a life suffused with enduring glory, a Divine Love that makes all love possible and wholly prophetic.

"Define: 'live.'"

15^th Sunday OT: Deut 30.10-14; Col 1.15-20; Luke 10.25-37
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX

Listen to this homily here!

Guy comes up to Jesus and asks, “How do I get to heaven?” Jesus says, “What does the Law say?” Guy repeats the Law, ending on the now infamous line, “…and love neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “Yea. That’s it. Do this and you’ll go to heaven.” But the Guy couldn’t let it go at that. He just had to ask, “And who is my neighbor?” You’ve had the same question, right? Don’t deny it! We’ve all asked, usually in a lazy effort to avoid something we don’t want to do, we’ve all asked the Define Your Terms question. Daughter asks Mom, “Mom, can I go to the mall?” Mom, always suspicious of her offspring’s motives, uses a classic Mom delaying tactic, “Is your room clean?” Daughter, exasperated with Mom’s maternal machinations demands of her mother a little more precision. She says, “Define ‘clean’.” Teacher, assigning research papers to his freshmen, notes that the papers must be no fewer than five pages long. Freshmen, probably the Daughter from the Mall, asks, “What counts as a ‘page’?” You’ve done it too! But do we ask the DYT questions for the same reasons that the scholar of the law asked his? Yes, we do. Like the scholar, we want to justify ourselves in our diluted love.

And who is my neighbor? I’ve come to admire the classical theological approach to definition, the via negativa, a technique by which a term or concept is defined by what it is not. So, who isn’t my neighbor? Mostly anyone who disagrees with me. Anyone who doesn’t “fit” in my social circle. Anyone I don’t like the look of. Those who annoy me. Anyone with more money than me, or a better car, or a bigger book budget…that’s most everyone. Anyone who lives next door to me—come on, how cliché is it to call your neighbors “your neighbors”?! Anyone who might embarrass me in public. Anyone who doesn’t look like me, talk like me, think like me; anyone who doesn’t share my love of British comedy. Basically, “my neighbors” are only those people with whom I feel perfectly comfortable, completely unthreatened by, or possibly benefit from. In other words, I do not love. Not with my heart, not my being, not my strength nor my mind. I “love” God—abstractly, in principle anyway, the way one might love a long-dead rock star—but loving my neighbor? Well, again, who’s left? Who’s left to be my neighbor? And am I even absolutely sure that I truly love myself? If I am supposed to love my neighbor as my myself, and I don’t love my neighbor…well, it’s too important to worry about!

What is the scholar of the law dodging in his DYT question? My guess: as a lawyer, this guy like definitions, limits, solid distinctions and clear ideas. The dodge? The same one we make when we ask the DYT question: Lord, you can’t be serious about this limitless love thing, this unbounded mercy thing! That’s too difficult. Not practical. Simply not doable. You can’t really mean that I have to love my neighbors exactly like I love myself. I have to pour my heart, soul, being, strength, and mind into willing (doing!) the ultimate Good for anyone who is considered “my neighbor”? Fine then. Who is my neighbor? See the dodge? Unwilling to love as you ought—freely and w/o frontiers—you rush to narrow the scope, to shallow-out the depth and shorten the reach of God’s love working through you, and then you discover that the first victim of your penny-pinching love is your salvation, your most basic friendship with Christ, with He Who Is Love for you.

Paul teaches the Colossians that Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” Therefore, Christ is “the firstborn of all creation [and] all things were created through him and for him.” Himself uncreated, Christ comes before creation, and in him the fullness of divinity, all that God Is, was pleased to dwell, and so, “ in him all things hold together…” and through him all things are reconciled for him. We were created through Christ and for Christ. We were redeemed through Christ and for Christ. We are being perfected in our creatureliness through Christ and for Christ. And we will come to thrive in the fullness of God through Christ and for Christ. But we must love! This is not a matter of mushy sentiment or weepy affection. All things are held together in Christ, and Christ is love for us. Without the passionate divine willing of the Good for us, we simply cease to exist. Blink, blink. Gone.

Quoting the Law, the scholar argues that God is telling you to love wholeheartedly, with all your being, all your strength, all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This teaching is a plea for us to prepare ourselves to inherit lives lived in beatific eternity—love and be loved imperfectly here and now so that we will love and be loved perfectly there and then. We are not simply being warned, “Be morally good people.” We are being prepared, “You will not all die, but you will all be changed.” Follow the logic…we were created and redeemed (re-created!) through Christ and for Christ. To the degree that we love, we are being perfected through and for Christ to become Christ perfectly. And we will be brought to God through Christ and for Christ. Let’s translate just one sentence to make the point: to the degree that we are Christ, we are being perfected through love and for love to become love perfectly.

And this is what the Samaritan traveler does for the robbery victim. He loves him like a neighbor. Yes, of course, he bandages his wounds, provided for his care, and promised even more if needed, but it is not so much what he does that makes the hated Samaritan the man’s neighbor; it’s why he does it. Noting to the scholar that a priest and a Levite see the wounded man but do not stop to help him, Jesus tells the lawyer of the Samaritan’s compassion and asks him, “Who is the neighbor to the wounded man?” The scholar, who has been paying careful attention, says, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Exactly! Note: treated with mercy. Not just “treated” and not just “mercy.” The Samaritan could have treated him out of a sense of duty or fear. And he could have felt mercy, experienced compassion standing near the wounded man, done nothing, and moved on.

Here’s a another scene: Jesus tells the lawyer about a Samaritan traveler who comes upon a robbery victim, half-dead from his wounds. The traveler is moved to compassion at the sight of his injuries. He approaches the victim and asks, “Are you my neighbor?” Pondering what this might entail, the traveler rests near the wounded man and contemplates what it might mean to be neighbor to someone: How would one act toward a neighbor? Are there reasonable limits on what one can and cannot do for a neighbor? Does my love for myself translate directly into a love for neighbor, or is it somehow mitigated? While the traveler contemplates these vital questions, the wounded man bleeds to death. Jesus asks the stunned lawyer, “Did the traveler treat the man as a neighbor?” The lawyer, clearly upset, says, “No.” Jesus nods, “What should he have done instead?” The lawyer, eager now to show he has learned says, “The traveler should have loved the wounded man and cared for him.” Jesus asked, “But why?” The lawyer, near tears says, “So that he might know you, Lord.” Jesus smiles and touching the lawyer’s face says, “Go and do likewise.”