Bread & Circuses

from George Will:

[. . .]

Liberals have an inherent but not insuperable advantage: As enthusiasts of government, to which many of them are related as employees or clients, they are more motivated for political activity than are conservatives, who prefer private spaces. Never mind. Conservatives have a commensurate advantage: Americans still find congenial conservatism’s vocabulary of skepticism about statism. And events — ongoing economic anemia; the regulatory state’s metabolic urge to bully — will deepen this vocabulary’s resonance.

[. . .]

I hope Will is right about Americans being skeptical of statist bullying.  However, I worry that he's being entirely too optimistic. Which Americans are skeptical of statist bullying?  Not the 50% who voted for B.O.'s massive governmental take-over our health-care choices.  Not the 50% who voted for B.O.'s massive governmental violation of our constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty.  Not the 50% of who voted for B.O.'s massive expansion of Bush's secretive National Security State.  

It seems to me that at least 50% of Americans voted for four more years of statist bullying and the continuing devolution of our nation's free citizens into dependent wards.

In a world of Bread & Circuses, free stuff beats freedom every time.

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On serving two Masters

St. Leo the Great
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

The multi-millenial history of God's relationship with His people can be reasonably described as a troubled marriage. All through the Old Testament the patriarchs and prophets of God use martial images and terms to approximate how the Creator chooses to relate to His human creatures. When things are going well, we hear all about the blessings of marital bliss: generations of fat, happy kids; lots of livestock, wine, oil, etc. But when things are not going so well, we hear all about the woes of marital distress: generations of barrenness; war, exile, slavery in foreign lands, etc. Unlike bad marriages between men and women, the marital problems btw God and His people are always the bride's fault; that is, God is never unfaithful to Israel, but Israel—the Bride—has both a wandering eye and tendency toward committing adultery with other gods. Baal, Moloch, the Ashtoreth. When the Bride strays from her marriage covenant, blessings turn to curses and the road back to fidelity is paved with years of penance. Thus, Jesus reminds us, his Bride, “No servant can serve two masters. . .You cannot serve God and mammon.” 

Being a practical people and believers in the strength of our innate goodness, we are prone to wondering why we can't serve two masters. What exactly is the problem with giving ourselves to more than one god?Or, to put it in more modern terms, why can't we live by relying on both God's providence and our own native ingenuity? We all know the old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Like most old sayings, there's some truth here. If we just sit on the couch and wait for God to dump all that we need in our laps, we're likely to die and rot on that couch with empty laps. However, if we rely on ourselves to the exclusion of God's help, we risk becoming increasingly entangled in the world, a world ruled by those foreign gods who tempt us into spiritual adultery. The two unacceptable extremes seem to be: do nothing to help ourselves and wait for God to magically provide AND do everything ourselves and call on God's help only when we fail. Neither option places us at the service of God and both lead us away from the covenant. So, why can't we serve two masters? Serving two masters—God and mammon—causes us to reject God's help in favor of helping ourselves, leaving us closed to receiving His blessings and totally reliant on our limited natural gifts. 

Paul sheds some light in his letter to the Philippians, “I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry. . .I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.” The secret of maintaining a happy marriage with God—through the good, the bad, and the ugly—is to serve God first, last, and only. By serving God alone we are given the strength necessary to endure hardship and enjoy abundance. This makes perfect sense when you consider: God never changes; He is always faithful, yet each one of us will change over time; the world changes all the time; even the gods of this world—money, popularity, gov't—are constantly changing. How can you faithfully serve capricious and volatile gods? You end up confused, exhausted, anxious, and none the richer for your service. Therefore, ground your life in service to God. Remove from your living temple—your body and soul—all the idols of other gods. And call upon the strength that God alone can provide to endure scarcity and hardship, to celebrate abundance and good fortune. Our God will fully supply whatever we need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. 

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Have you rented your temple?

Dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

With an angel, Ezekiel watches a temple whose fountains water the desert land. Paul writes that we are temples of God's spirit built on the foundation of Christ. And Jesus visits the temple to flay the moneychangers who defile his Father's house. We have a spiritual temple; a living temple; and a temple made of stone. If what Paul writes is true—“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”—and his warning to us is prescient—you “must be careful how [you build]. . .” b/c there is no foundation other than Christ—then, we must all look long and hard in our spiritual mirror, and examine ever so carefully the conscience reflected there. If Ezekiel and his host-angel are watching the heavenly temple water the deserts of sin and death, bringing them to life; and if Paul is right about each one of us being a temple of God built on the foundation of Christ; then, we can be sure that Jesus is headed toward each one of us with a whip of cords to drive out whatever defiles each one of his Father's living temples. As a temple of God's Spirit, have you rented out the Lord's holy place? If so, who or what needs to be driven out? 

Jesus fashions a whip of cords. He marches into the temple courtyard and watches the merchants selling sacrificial animals, the bankers exchanging secular money for the temple tax. In a burst of righteous anger, he begins whipping the lot of them, yelling, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace.” His disciples watch him and recall a line from Psalm 69: “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” Christ is zealous in defending the dignity of his Father's stone temple. How much more zealous will he be then in defending the dignity of his Father's living temples—each one of us? If he's willing to breach the peace of his nation's temple with violence, how much more eager will he be then to whip the complacency out of our flesh and bone temples, all living temples for which he died on the Cross? Paul says it plainly, “If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” As a living temple of God's Spirit, have you turned your heart and mind into a marketplace? Have you rented out the Lord's holy place? 

To answer this, we need to think long and hard about who the moneychangers are in our lives. Who are the merchants that buy and sell, exchange and borrow in the courtyards of our soul? There are, of course, the real world merchants who sell us ugliness so that we buy beauty; sell us fat so that we buy thin; sell us old so that we buy young. There are the political merchants who sell us illusions of fairness and work-free utopias; the religious merchants who sell us cheap grace*; the cultural merchants who sell us fleeting glamor and celebrity; and then there's the most seductive merchant of all: the spiritual merchant, who hopes to sell us a new foundation for our temples. This new foundation will be dug into the ground of this life, not the one that comes after; it will support all your choices, all your preferences; it's completely pliable, totally malleable; it will never resist your designs, never push back against whatever you think is right to build; it takes whatever spiritual shape you need it to take. Have you rented the Lord's holy place, His living temple, your body and soul, to this merchant, to any of these merchants? Now would be a good time to get your temple in order; now would be a very good time to reflect long and hard on Christ's zealous defense of his Father's living temples. 

*Grace is freely given, not cheaply bought.

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Wincing at easy mercy

31st Week OT (Th)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

We are all familiar with the Prodigal Son, the one lost sheep, that misplaced coin, and johnny-come-lately vineyard workers. They are the stars of Jesus' parables. The ones who got away but came back and found themselves joyfully received and forgiven! The gospel lesson being that no matter how lost, how gravely misplaced, or late to the party a sinner may be, Christ will welcome him back. Well, good for the sinner. What about the Good Son, the other 99 sheep, and the coins that stayed put? Julie Stoner wrote a poem about them: “We ninety-nine obedient sheep;/we workers hired at dawn’s first peep;/we faithful sons who strive to please,/forsaking prodigalities;/we virgins who take pains to keep/our lamps lit, even in our sleep;/we law-abiding Pharisees;//we wince at gospels such as these.” This makes me smile b/c I've seen the Good Son, the Everyready Virgins, the 99 Responsible Sheep wince when preachers ignore their obedience and lavish praise on the reckless sinners who taunt God and then come crawling back whining for a second chance. None of the Good Souls want God to refuse them His mercy, of course; but, you know, maybe He could make them suffer just a little more for being so presumptuous? 

Perhaps you've thought something like that yourselves at some point: why is repentance and forgiveness made easy for those who have spent their whole lives rebelling against God? Murderous Mafia dons who receive absolution on their deathbeds. Serial killers who discover Jesus before their executions. Given the severity of their sins, shouldn't something else be required? Something more substantial in terms of penance? Maybe a public flogging, or a chance for their victims' families to poke them with sharp sticks. I'm sure that none of us have ever even thought that God should withhold His forgiveness. But it seems only fair to those of us who've been Good Sons and Daughters all our lives that it should be more difficult for especially notorious sinners to repent and receive mercy. That would make them appreciate God's mercy more, right; and it would give us Good Folks reason to keep on being Good. As reasonable as this scenario might sound, there's a big problem with it. As sinners ourselves, we don't get to put obstacles in the way of God's mercy, nor do we get to decide who can repent and how. And for that, we should be thankful. 

It might sound strange to hear but the truth is: it's often easier for a notorious sinner to repent than it is for a casual sinner. The further away a soul gets from loving God, the more acutely it feels sin's emptiness. A sinner's soul can reach the point of despair, a point where there seems to be no way back. The next horrible sin seems easier than the last. The harder that soul pulls away from God's love, the harder God loves. This why when a truly notorious sinner comes back to God, he is usually a zealous witness for the Gospel. A casual sinner creeps away from God, little sin by little sin, never really feeling the distance. As things start to go wrong, it's resentment toward God rather than despair that flairs up. God still loves, always. But the casual sinner doesn't feel love as love, he feels it as an intrusion, suffocating his freedom. The more restricted he feels, the more he rebels until his sins are no longer minor. It's the casual sinner who often looks at the notorious sinner, and says, “He shouldn't be able to repent and receive mercy so easily!” What he's really thinking though is: “I wish I had his courage to repent.” This is why those 99 Sheep and the Good Son wince when they see their lost brothers repent. It hurts when your conscience give you a swift kick in the rear. 

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Discouragement is NOT an option

Between reading for class tomorrow, working on a homily, and napping, I've been browsing around the political blogs reading post-election commentary.  I've been delighted to discover that there seems to be very little anger or outrage at B.O.'s re-election.  Most of the posts I've read have been thoughtful, sober, and given to taking in the Big Picture.  

Here's an excerpt from Matthew Warner's piece on the NCRegister site that fits my own thoughts almost perfectly:

[. . .]

Real change starts in the home. Not in the Whitehouse. In *your* home and the homes around this great nation. That's where it begins. It ends in the election booth. If we're only showing up to fight in the election booth, we've already missed the battle.

And if you are discouraged after the election, Mother Teresa has something to say to you about that, too: “If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that.”

It's as simple as that, folks. Transform discouragement into the motivation that moves you to change things. (And for more inspiration from Mother Teresa, read her 7 steps to a holier life.)

What we need right now is leadership. And if you're waiting for a politician, you're going to be waiting a long time. We need leadership 1) in your home and 2) in the culture. We need cultural leaders. We need individuals and organizations to rise up and provide inspiring, convincing leadership that will lead to conversions of mind and heart.

[. . .]

This makes perfect sense to me and I commend it to you.
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All Dominican Saints

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints of the Order of Preachers!

The universal Church celebrates her feast of all the pure of heart, all those who see God – All Saints Day – on November 1.  Likewise, many of the great religious Orders celebrate a feast for their own saints.  The Dominican Order happens to be one of them (feast day – Nov. 7).  The Dominicans were the second Order (after the Benedictines) to receive this privilege from the Holy See.  In response to the request of Cardinal Vincent Maria Orsini, OP, in 1674, Pope Clement X wrote:

Rightly, my Lord Cardinal, ought your Order to celebrate the solemnity of all its Saints on one appointed day; for, if we wished to assign to each of its holy sons his own special feast, we should have to form a new calendar, and they alone would suffice to fill it.

[. . .]
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Gawker or disciple?

31st Week OT (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

It looks like Jesus wants to thin the crowd that's following him around. Surely, only a small portion of that large herd is genuinely attracted by the possibility of becoming a true disciple. Most of them are probably just gawkers or thrill-seekers. If nothing Jesus has said up to this point about the risks of following him has sunk in, this might: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children. . .even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Now that statement gives them something to think about. What's Jesus got to offer that's worth hating your family for? It must be something truly worthwhile. Perhaps sensing that his warning is only causing some in the crowd to become even more curious, Jesus adds, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Now that bit of warning must've given the crowd pause b/c they all know that their Roman masters use crosses to execute criminals. “Carrying your own cross” means “helping in your own brutal, bloody death at the hands of the enemy.” I'm guessing at this point that many of the gawkers wander away from Jesus, and the true disciples love him all the more. 

So, here we are, another crowd, and we hear Jesus say, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Do you want to wander away? Even if you stay in your seat, do you want to wander off? Or, upon hearing that you must assist in your own execution, do you love Christ all the more? Are you a gawker or a disciple? Well, isn't it obvious that we are all disciples? We're at morning Mass everyday. We never miss a Sunday. We give to the parish; pray everyday; participate in church groups. All true. And all of that makes us good Catholics. But the question is: are we disciples? A disciple is a kind of student, a learner; someone under the instruction of a master-teacher. While a student learns an academic subject, a disciple masters a way of life, a way of living. More than learning the content of a subject, the disciple learns both content and method; that is, she takes in and makes her own what is being taught and makes it the means by which she survives as a follower of Christ in the world. A student memorizes the Our Father. A disciple actually lives the Our Father. A student goes to Mass, while a disciple lives the Mass. A student learns the definition of sacrificial love. A disciple loves sacrificially. 

Are you a gawker or a disciple? Here's one way to tell: when Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,” do you think, “Whoa. I'm just here for Mass,” or do you think, “Which of my crosses will I joyfully carry today?” Here's another way: when Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children. . .even his own life, he cannot be my disciple,” do you think, “Whoa. Mom, dad, the kids are more important to me than being a disciple,” or do you think, “I can only love mom, dad, and the kids if I love Christ first”? Loving Christ first is the first step in becoming a disciple. Making that love your means for surviving in the world is the next step. The third step is lifting that love up and carrying it day-by-day until you are called upon to die for it. And the final step comes when you joyfully assist in your own execution for the sake of Christ's love. A gawker will not die for love. A student might die for a cause or an idea. A disciple will die for Christ in love b/c she knows that such a death is last step along the Narrow Way, following behind Christ in sacrifice for the salvation of the world. 

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Four more years. . .

Congrats to B.O. for pulling out a victory. . .

To me this means one thing: the U.S. has reached a tipping point in her decline toward  irreversible Nanny Statism and the social disease of government dependency.  A Romney victory last night would have only stalled the decline.  

Batten down, faithful Catholics!  It's going to be a long four years. 

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An Election Prediction

Anyone wanna make an election prediction?

Might as well. . .everyone else is doing it, right. . .

Here's the thing for me:  I hope Obama loses.  Unfortunately, that means that Romney must win.

The polls have been too heavily weighed with Dems.  The media have stayed away from B.O.'s Libyan disaster, protecting him from tough questions about his incompetence.  Or, if the conspiracy theorists are right, protecting him from his complicity.  Unfortunately, for B.O. and the media, the story is out.

B.O. has no record to run on. His "successes" are almost universally unpopular.

His attacks on the Church have backfired with just about everyone but his most ardent acolytes.

The economy is a wreck. The government response to Hurricane Sandy is a tragic embarrassment to anyone who thinks Big Gov't Solves All Problems. 

His campaign has been a study in petulant entitlement--how dare you peons make me go this election-thing again?  Do you know who I am?!  The 2012 campaign has been a narcissistic wound for B.O. and just about every campaign stop has been a tantrum.

My prediction:  Mitt Romney by a very comfortable margin.  

Caveat:  ultimately, it doesn't matter to me who wins.  My first allegiance is to Christ and his Church. I put no trust in princes except the Prince of Peace.

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An Election Day Prophecy

Thank God this horrible presidential campaign season is almost over.  

Literally, thank you, God.

I've been paying attention to national elections since I was 16 in 1980. 

I was horrified when Ronald Reagan trounced my beloved Jimmy Carter.

I cast my first ballot in 1984 for Walter Mondale.  There were three of us in the whole state of Mississippi who did.

I spent two years of my undergrad career at the VERY Republican Ole Miss writing a weekly column for the school newspaper. . .wherein, I regularly berated Ronnie Raygun and dodged frat boy insults.

In 1988, I was house-sitting for my thesis director and planted Michael Dukakis signs in the yard of the house .

In 1992, I pasted my beat up old car with Bill Clinton stickers and did everything I could in my literature classes to indoctrinate my students into the joys of socialist utopia.

In 1996, I did it again.

Come 2000, I was a Dominican student brother and thought the election had been stolen from Al Gore.

Becoming Catholic and having the time and resources to study the tradition led me away from my fanatical Yellow Dog Democrat tendencies.  It also helped that the Dems had become increasingly fanatical about abortion and were sounding more and more like the Marxists I'd studied in grad school, i.e. totalitarian bigots.

By 2004, I was a weak Republican-leaning classical liberal. So, I held my nose, dosed up on Dramamine, and pulled the lever for a second-term for George W. Bush.

The election of 2008 proved too easy to even think about much. Barak Obama was an over-hyped, empty suit Nanny Statist with the thinnest resume of any candidate we'd seen in decades. John McCain was only slightly more palatable than Obama.

Now, here we are.  Empty Suit Statist vs. Empty Suit Corporatist.  To my mind, the Corporatist is slightly less odious simply b/c he's less likely to be as virulently anti-Catholic as the Statist.

We're discussing the Book of Amos for my OT class this morning. The prophetic history of Israel is replete with warnings about the nation's worship of foreign gods and its love of injustice. These two national sins--idolatry and oppression of the poor--bring Israel under judgment over and over again.

Here's my prophecy for today:  no matter who wins this election, we are a nation teetering on the edge of divine judgment.  I don't mean hellfire, brimstone, earthquakes, and swarms of locusts.  I mean, as we allow ourselves to slide deeper and deeper into worshiping the secular gods of Violence, Money, Prestige, and Power, and the longer we cast aside those who need our help n favor of entitlements, the colder and harder our hearts become.  Cold, hard hearts cannot receive the blessings God sends our way.  

When we can no longer receive God's blessings, we begin to think that we rule the universe and God serves us.

If the Church is to play her proper role as Prophet, we must untangle ourselves from our cultural alliance with the Nanny Statists in the Democrat Party, and we must resist allying ourselves with the National Security Corporatists in the Republican Party.  

Court prophets did not fare well in Israel.   

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Divisiveness is a disease

31st Week OT (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

If the pollsters are telling us the truth about tomorrow's election, we might not know until later this week who will occupy the White House come Jan 2013. The country is so evenly divided politically that no pollster worth his paycheck will confidently predict a winner. Usually, this sort of secular divisiveness doesn't worry me. When hasn't politics been divisive? But it does worry me this time around. It worries me b/c the sharp divisions we see in our national politics have seeped into the Church as well. Catholics are split along ideological, partisan lines. That would fine if those struggles were merely political, that is, simply secular, out there in the world. But they're not. The divisiveness of secular politics has once again infected the Body of Christ and threatens our cherished unity. As the clock ticks toward Election Day, let Paul's words to the Philippians ring in your ears, “If there is any encouragement in Christ. . .any participation in the Spirit. . .complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.” 

Paul is not suggesting—and neither am I—that Catholics ought to be politically homogenous when elections roll around. In fact, Paul isn't talking about secular politics at all. And neither am I. The Christians in Philippi are being admonished to keep their spiritual focus on the eternal; that is, Paul is exhorting them to grab hold of their hearts and minds, their ways of thinking, and drag them all back to the Way of Christ and keep them there. Whatever the Princes of this world were doing back then, whatever the politicians in Washington and Baton Rouge are doing this week, our joy, our peace, our hope is once and always firmly established upon the Word of God made flesh, the rock Christ Jesus; and our singular task is the godly mission of speaking that Word to the world in power and truth. Within the Body, we are of one heart, one mind, one Lord, one baptism, one faith—all moving together toward one end: the consummation of the Father's plan for our salvation at the end of the age, so that He will be all in all. Elections matter. For a little while, they matter. But no election, no politician, no political party, or partisan ideology can limit the mind of Christ or dominate those who have put on the mind of Christ to do his Father's will.

In the Church, in Philippi and Washington, DC and Baton Rouge and New Orleans, there is courage from Christ; there is solace from love; there is participation in the Spirit; and an abundance of compassion and mercy. And because courage, love, compassion, mercy, and the healing power of the Holy Spirit abound in the Church, we, as members of the Body, are ready to heed Paul's admonition, if we will: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory, rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves. . .” This is not what secular political theory tells us to do. We're instructed by pundits, politicians, professors to consider our “enlightened self-interest.” OK. Out there, in the world, consider self-interest. Then remember: you have put on the mind of Christ, so your self-interest is first and foremost the interest of the Gospel. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, giving to the world for its salvation and ours, One Body in Christ. One Body. Divisions mutilate the Body, tear at our unity of heart and mind. They have no place here. We are part of this world, but we are children of it. Our goal is not winning the White House for four years. Our goal is seeing the consummation of Christ's victory over sin and death. That's when we will find our peace.

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Hear it!

Audio File for my homily:  31st Sunday OT

Preached at Our Lady Star of the Sea
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Coffee Bowl Browsing

NB. CBB has suffered from my Political Fast. . .there's not much out there that isn't political these days.

For some reason, looters bring out my Inner Redneck:  "Shoot 'em on sight."  Then I remember. . .

Speaking of shooting looters. . .

Bow & arrows?  Yeah, when your mayor won't allow the Nat'l Guard in b/c they carry guns.

Thus another indication of moral collapse in our culture. . .what's the goal here?  Cui bono?

Silly theologians, infallibility is for the Vicar of Christ.

A couple of days late. . .a good post on the biblical sources of purgatory.
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Sorry, kids, we ate your Halloween candy

Parents! Watch this vid with your kids and ask them how they would react:




The twins at 1:30 are amazing. . .and the kids right at the end. . .Wow.
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Heart, mind, strength

31st Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our Lady, Star of the Sea

Audio File

With All Saints and All Souls, the Church has heard much about love of late. If you think we've heard too much about love, remember: God is Love; so, when we speak of love, we speak of God. Can the Church hear too much about God? Can we be reminded too often that we live, move, and have our being in Love? Preaching to the assembled people of God, just before they cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, Moses enjoins the people: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Not only are we reminded that we live, move, and have our being in God; we are enjoined—commanded—to return His love with every act, every thought, every word, with every breath we take. Knowing that we are loved is not enough. Believing that we are loved is not enough. What is enough? That each one of us becomes God's love in flesh and bone; that each one of us rises and sleeps, eats and works, prays and plays soaked through with the spirit of God. Take these words to heart: “The Lord our God is Lord alone!” And the Lord our God is love. 

Moses commands, and Jesus agrees: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. . .” Resting at the center of our being, the heart holds all our passions. Every emotion we feel—sorrow, joy, fear, anger—starts in the heart and moves us to action. Sorrow moves us to mourn. Joy moves us to give thanks and praise. Fear moves us to run. Anger moves us to fight. By themselves, our passions are neither good nor evil; they are what they are and no more. Sorrow can move us to mourn or move us to violence. Fear can move us to run or move us to laugh. By themselves, our passions can tell us nothing about what is right or wrong, about what we ought to do or not to do. When Moses commands, and Jesus agrees, that we must love our God with all our heart, they are commanding us put love at the center of our being. Love must rule sorrow. Love must rule fear, anger, and joy. Without exception, love must rule the heart, control the passions, and advise the will. When we fail to love God will our whole heart, we allow passion to eat away at our reason; we invite evil into our lives; and all the mortal sins that damn us—murder, adultery, fornication—all those acts of disobedience that leave us separated from God, they all become too easy. And then, living apart from God seems normal. There is nothing normal about living in rebellion against the Lord God! 

So, Moses commands, and Jesus agrees: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind. . .” If your passions play about in your heart, then your intellect works away in your mind. Every thought, every moment of thinking is done by the mind using reason. Like the passions, the intellect is a gift from God—a gift we are to use in deliberating on the moral choices before us, the intellectual choices presented to us. And just like the passions of our heart, the intellect working in our mind can become disordered, unfocused, confused. When Moses and Jesus command us to love God with our whole mind, they are commanding us to focus all of our intellectual power, all of our mental faculties on the task of making sure that no one and nothing controls how we think, how we deliberate, how we reason before we first give our minds in love to God. If love must rule sorrow, anger, fear, and joy, then love must also rule reason as it works in the mind. Otherwise, we will choose to believe a lie; we'll be taken in by the Liar himself; and find ourselves thinking along with the princes of this world instead of the Prince of Peace. With love ruling both the heart and the mind, we are souls closer to God and closer to His perfection. 

But what about strength? Both Moses and Jesus tell us to love God with our whole strength. Heart, mind, strength. Strength is a physical, mental, or psychological power that we wield to accomplish a task. Think: a strong mind, a strong heart, a strong back. Strength is also the power we use to resist physical, mental, or psychological pressure. Think: strength of character, strength of purpose, moral strength. When we put our strength—all of our strength—into loving God, His love becomes our strength, and nothing that nature, man, or the Devil himself can throw at us that will break us. This spiritual strength is our firm, steadfast conviction that God abides by His promises; that He has never failed His people and He never will; that the God Who freed Moses and His people from Egypt and pulled them through the desert to the Promised Land will even now—5,000 yrs later—stand by His covenant and see us blessed, protected, and flourishing under His care. With all your strength—mind, heart, soul—love God. The Lord Who will stand you up and nothing will knock you down. 

Let me—for a moment—play spiritual director, confessor. When I search my own heart and mind, and when God's people come to me as their pastor, I see a lot of failure; a whole lot of weakness; and even more outright disobedience. I recognize in these souls all my own failures and weaknesses. All brought and paid for by my disobedience. Whether the sin is lack of charity or impatience or infidelity, whatever the sin is, the gnarled root of the sin is always the same: failure to love God. I hear Jesus say to scribe in this evening's gospel, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And I think to myself, “You know all that stuff too, Philip. How far are you from the kingdom of God?” What does this scribe know that I don't? What is he doing that I'm not doing? Mark tells us that Jesus saw that the scribe “answered with understanding.” But surely understanding the commandment to love is not enough to get closer to God! When we understand, we “stand under,” meaning we place ourselves underneath, in submission to. This is an act of both the heart and the mind, an act of strength that defies pride and arrogance. When we fail to love God, we fail to understand—to place ourselves in submission to—His will for us. There is nothing for us to do but fail without the power of God's love moving us to love Him.

Think for a moment about your trials and your temptations. I bet you that you—like me—can trace every single trial you've suffered, every single temptation you've fought to a moment when you allowed passion to rule, or your reason to get confused, or your strength to waver. And every one of those times can be traced even further back to a moment when God was not front and center in your life; when your love was given to something or someone less than God Himself. Our worst failures to hear God and listen to Him come when we decide that we no longer need His love, or when we decide that something or someone else is more deserving of our love—the bottle, the dollar, the job, the neighbor's spouse, my reputation. What are the chances that a dollar will get me into heaven? Or a well-padded resume? Or a long list of sexual partners? These aren't love. None of these will love me into the kingdom. Christ and him alone is the key to the kingdom. He is love given flesh and bone; love nailed to a cross and risen again from the grave; and now he sits at the right hand of the Father and calls to our hearts and our minds and our souls to join him at the heavenly banquet. When you hear that call, your heart will leap, your mind will clear, and your soul will rejoice b/c love calls to love, deep to deep, and, if you will to be strong in His presence, you will answer back: I love you, Lord, my heart, my strength. 

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