Rejoice, endure, persevere

31st Week OT 

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 

St Dominic Church, NOLA 

“One by one, they all began to excuse themselves.” That is the saddest sentence in scripture. Not the angriest, or the most eloquent. But the saddest. Instead of saying yes to dinner, these would-be guests simply turn away. Given the chance to attend a great feast given by a great host, they just walk away. And what are they walking away from? Good food, good wine, excellent conversation, an evening of entertainment and friendship. Think of the business deals they will miss out on. Not to mention the chance to make friends with a great man of their city. But sadly their excuses leave them outside the feast. The gracious host doesn't exclude them; they exclude themselves in exchange for. . .what? Some alone time? To tend some animals? To catch a Saints' game? Jesus tells this parable of the Ungrateful Guests when a fellow-guest at a party notes, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” Indeed, and better yet: bless is the one who wills to dine in the Kingdom of God. All are invited. You and I are invited. Will we say Yes, or will we send an excuse. . .and exclude ourselves? 

The target of Jesus' parable of the Ungrateful Guests is unmistakable: he's aiming it right at some of his fellow Jews, those among God's people who have heard his Father's invitation to the heavenly feast and yet consistently decline that invitation in order to soothe worldly worries, to run after temporary treasure. Just like the great man of the parable, our Father, upon hearing the wonderfully inventive and self-serving excuses for declining his invitation, our Father accepts the absence of His invited guests and opens His feasting hall to the least of His people—the blind, the lame, the sick. And when these prove too few to fill His hall, He sends His servants out to poke around in the bushes for more guests. They find the Gentiles. And the Gentiles join the feast. Blessed are they who will to dine in the Kingdom of God. For God says, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited [and excused themselves] will taste my dinner.” Indeed, and better yet: none of those men who were invited [and excused themselves] willed to taste my dinner. All are invited. You and I are invited. Will we say Yes, or will we send an excuse. . .and exclude ourselves? 

Do you will to taste the abundant graces our Father invites you to taste? If so, just remember: every feast, every party—in heaven and on earth—has its own rhythm, its own life. Parties in the school gym are not the same as parties in a frat house. A family dinner is very different from a dinner with the Pope. If you accept the Father's invitation to celebrate with Him in heaven, then know that while you live, you will be working your way toward His party through the revelry and mess of this world's celebration of excuses, through the Enemy's riot of pernicious temptation and outright debauchery. Paul knows this bit of truth all too well, so he urges us: “Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection. . .Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.” We might call this advice, Paul's Party Etiquette on the Way to the Father's Big Party in Heaven! Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Rejoice, endure, persevere. Hang on to your invitation from God, and more importantly, hold tight to your Yes to Him. As Christ himself shows us, there is nothing the Enemy can offer us that does not already belong to God, nothing that our Father will not give us out of His love for us, including His only Son for our sins. 

Rejoice, endure, persevere. And do not wallow in ridiculous excuses! Those worries we love to rub? Those anxieties we love to feed? Excuses. Those flashes of anger at being hurt? Those moments we spend desiring vengeance for being hurt? Excuses. Love to point out the hypocrisy of others? Love to savor someone elses failure? Excuses. I don't need to be loved by God or anyone else. Excuse. I don't need to forgive or be forgiven. Excuse. I'm not broken, so I don't need to be healed. Excuse. My sins are not my fault; it's my family's, friends', society's fault. Excuse. Rejoice, endure, persevere. And do not wallow in ridiculous excuses! These excuses may dull some immediate pain or temporarily steer you away from taking responsibility, but ultimately, in the end, they will leave you outside the party—alone, despairing, and wondering what on earth could be more important spending eternity feasting at the table of the Lord? What on earth could be more important? Nothing on earth is more important. Say Yes to that invitation now, will to taste all the gifts that our Lord wants to give you. Then rejoice, endure, persevere. With all the gifts you receive from Him: rejoice, endure, persevere. 

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R.I.P.

One of our Greats has died. . .

Fr. Joseph Konkel, OP, long-time pastor of Holy Rosary Church in Houston, TX. Fr. Joe was also pastor of St. Peter Church in Memphis, TN and the campus minister for the Newman Center at the University of Houston.

I lived with Fr. Joe and two of the world's greatest punsters, Fr. Albert and Fr. Boley during my deacon year in Houston. It was a treat watching Fr. Joe moan in pain at some of the puns those two invented!

R.I.P.

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Do you seek to know who Jesus is? (updated)

(An edited version of the 2007 homily I posted earlier. . .)

UPDATE: I ended up ditching this text and preaching off-the-cuff. Don't know why. It went over well. One older gentleman told me that in 60+ yrs of listening to homilies he'd never heard a preacher explain the significance of the sycamore tree! The Egyptians thought of sycamores as the Trees of Life and used the wood for coffins. 

31st Sunday OT(C) 
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP 
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Like Zecchaeus, do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? This could be a good definition of hope. When you hope, you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is. Living in us, redeemed creatures that we are, is a beastly longing for God, a need that roars out for our Lord, reaching for him, yearning for He Who made us and re-makes us. Knowing that He is there and knowing that He makes it possible for us to be with Him only sharpens the aggravated need, hones the fine steel of our wanting. That knowing, that knowledge of His presence and the keenness we feel in moving toward Him, that is what we call Hope. But for how many of us is hoping a kind of gamble? Think how you use the word “hope.” I hope my paycheck has arrived. I hope the children are OK. I hope the doctor’s report is good. Hopefully, the car is fixed. Is this really hope? Or, is it “crossed-fingers-wishing-on-a-star-where’s-my-lucky-charm-so-I-can-rub-it-and-increase-the-odds-in-my-favor” thinking? How often, when you hope, are you actually doing little more than wishing yourself good luck? Christian hope, that is, that sort of hope that Christians experience in Christ and that sort of hope that we live by is never a gamble, never a wish, never a spell for good luck. Hope is our gnawing hunger for God, a hunger we KNOW will be satisfied.

“Zacchaeus…was seeking to see who Jesus was;…so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus…” Christian hope—our longing for Christ—is what pushed Zacchaeus up the tree; hope is what pulled him up into the branches to see who he needed to see. And what’s important for us to remember about Zacchaeus is who he is; that is, not only his name, his short stature, and his need to see Jesus, but his place in the Jewish scheme of things as well. He is “a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man…” Zacchaeus is doubly damned as a sinner by his neighbors because he has betrayed them by working for the enemy, and because he has grown rich in his chosen, traitorous profession. Only lepers and pagan temple prostitutes were considered more sinful! And yet, he seeks to see who Jesus is. Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? 

Who is he? The Book of Wisdom tells us that “before the Lord the whole universe is a grain from a balance…a drop of morning dew…” However, despite our smallness, in spite of our insignificance before Him, “[the Lord has] mercy on all, because [He] can do all things; and [He] overlooks people’s sins that they may repent.” If Zacchaeus knows this, if he knew his scripture, and if he knew and believed that Jesus is his Lord, then climbing that sycamore tree is sure sign of his hope. Zacchaeus knew, and we must learn, that “[The Lord] love[s] all things that are and loathe[s] nothing that [He] has made; for what [He] hate[s], [He] would not have fashioned.” 

Why must we learn this? Simple. If you believe that our Lord hates what He has fashioned, including you and me, then your hope will always be a gamble. Your spiritual life will be full of good luck rituals, charm bracelet prayers, and magical thinking. You will turn every corner tensed, expecting a nasty, divine surprise. You will go to bed every night believing that your hateful god will take the opportunity to punish your laziness, to strike your sinful heart dead. You will look at your family, your friends, your fellow Christians and see nothing but walking, talking occasions of sin, breathing temptations that plague your worried attempts at finding favor, finding love in God. And you live a life that daily, hourly makes a lie out of the truth of our Father’s self-revelation to us: “…you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all thing!” All things! Including your family, your friends, your fellow Christians. 

Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? 

Do you seek to see Jesus in your neighbors, your roommates, your parents? If not, why not? Is it that your neighbors, roommates, parents are all horribly wrong? Or, is it that they are pro-abortion, or homosexual, or divorced, or adulterers? Or, is it that they do not share your theology? Or pray as you do? Or share your devotional practices, your sense of social justice, your indignation with the anti-Christian Obama administration, or your disdain for the corporate Fat Cat Republicans? Or, is it because we so often fail to see the truth of our creation and our re-creation? Do we not see Christ in ourselves and others b/c we cannot see beyond our own sin? Why would we allow any of these to spoil our hope, to mess with our beautiful God-graced passion for the Lord? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! 

If you are worried that this seeking Christ in self and others will lead to a license to sin, or will lead you to approve of sin, listen to the rest of Wisdom. Our Lord’s imperishable spirit is in all the things He created, “therefore, [He] rebukes offenders little by little, warns them and reminds them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in [Him]…!” Our Lord does not forget His creatures. He does not forget that we are His creatures and that we share His image and likeness. In fact, Paul tells the Thessalonians, that he, Paul, and his ministers will pray for them so “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith…” Does this sound like a God ready, willing, and able to stomp on you at the first sign of disobedience? No! And not only NO! but God is ready to “make you worthy of his calling.” Isn’t it the case that our anxieties about sin, our worries about offending God are really just a disguise for a lack of hope? Aren’t we really worried about the sins of our neighbors, our children, our roommates b/c we are distrusting of our Father’s promise of mercy for ourselves? How ironic would it be if you put yourself in Hell because you spent your life worried about other peoples' sin and failed to hope in Christ!? 

Zacchaeus climbs that sycamore tree because he “was seeking to see who Jesus was.” And because he acts out of his longing for Christ, Jesus calls his name and says, “…come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” Zacchaeus climbs down and “receives [Christ] with joy.” And what do the self-righteous do? What do those whose hope is a gamble, those whose hope is a lucky star, what do they do then? “When they all saw this, they began to grumble…” And rather than run away in shame or hide his face in disgrace, Zacchaeus, confident in his Lord’s word and his own repentance, gives half his wealth to the poor and makes restitution four times over for his extortion. Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house…” 

Do you seek to see (to know) who Jesus is? Do you seek to see Jesus in your neighbors, your roommates, your parents, and friends? If so, then prepare to receive the Lord at your table; prepare to entertain him among those in most need of his mercy. Your hope is working for your perfection and Christ is coming to dinner! If your hope remains a wishing-star or lucky charm, then memorize this prayer from scripture: “Lord, you love all things that are and loathe nothing you have made; for what you hate, you would not have fashioned…But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!” 

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Where Catholic preaching needs to go. . .?

One of my holiday/summer projects is to reconfigure the homiletics program at NDS.

In my hubris, I've concluded that the problem with Catholic preaching is Catholic homiletics. Not the academic study of Catholic preaching as such, but the overall approach that most homiletics texts tend to favor: preaching is a personal performance rooted in the subjective experience of the preacher and relies almost entirely on an affective mood in tone and content. 

To counter this tendency, I want to introduce seminarians to a wider literary understanding of the imagination; that is, I want to give them some literary tools with which they can re-imagine the Gospel and present it to a contemporary Church. This entails reading novels, poetry, and creative non-fiction in a way that prompts the preacher to address real existential issues and questions through Gospel lenses.

Along with a number of other (better qualified and more experienced) preachers, I've also concluded that catechesis must take a backseat to evangelization in Catholic preaching. Preachers can teach all day long, but if their people haven't experienced Christ as a living presence in their lives, teaching is just mental work: memorization, recitation, etc. This doesn't mean that there is no place in Catholic preaching for teaching, it just means that the first focus of the homily needs to be on bringing our people to an encounter with Christ.

I have no idea where any of this will lead. . .St Dominic, pray for us!

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Sunday Dinner for the friars

For the first time since. . .what?. . .2008. . .I'm cooking Sunday dinner for the friars!

We're having:

Chicken Provence (baked chicken thighs with Provence herbs)
Creamed Spinach
Garlic Mash Potatoes
Honeyed Carrots
Orange Marmalade Cake with vanilla ice cream 

Sounds good?

Benedicare! Praedicare! Cenare!
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Nuncio Visits NDS!

A visit from the Papal Nuncio! 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Papal Nuncio to the U.S. celebrated Mass at Notre Dame Seminary on Thursday, Oct 31, 2013.  

(front row L-R: Fr. James Wehner, Rector of NDS; Archbishop Vigano; Archbishop Aymond of New Orleans.)

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Bound to Happen

Well, there's a First Time for Everything, I suppose. . .

Seminarian Brad Doyle goes to a Halloween party dressed up as. . .Me. (sigh) 

I give this costume a "C-". . .note the lack of coffee stains on the habit.
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3,000 a year!

These numbers are a bit unsettling!

The secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life said in an October 29 address that over 3,000 men and women religious leave the consecrated life each year. 

In the address – a portion of which was reprinted in L’Osservatore Romano – Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo said that statistics from his Congregation, as well as the Congregation for the Clergy, indicate that over the past five years, 2,624 religious have left the religious life annually. When one takes into account additional cases handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the number tops 3,000. 

The prelate, who led the Order of Friars Minor from 2003 until his April 2013 curial appointment, said that the majority of cases occur at a “relatively young age.” The causes, he said, include “absence of spiritual life,” “loss of a sense of community,” and a “loss of sense of belonging to the Church” – a loss manifest in dissent from Catholic teaching on “women priests and sexual morality.”

The article goes on to explain the difficulties caused by the cultural shift from modernity to post-modernity in the West, specifically, the current emphasis on radical individuality.

Post-modernity is best described as the cultural manifestation of a prolonged adolescence brought on by the failure of the Baby Boomers to hand on our family's philosophical, spiritual, and theological traditions.

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This is not the pope you are looking for. . .

Wait.

I thought Pope "A New Wind is Blowing" Francis was going to take us back to the Rainbow and Felt Butterfly days of 1973. . .

. . .and yet, he appoints Bishop Leonard Blair to the archbishopric of Hartford, CT.

. . .the archbishop-elect is best known on the wider scene as a linchpin player in the Holy See's controversial doctrinal probe of the LCWR, the principal "umbrella-group" for the superiors of the nation's religious women. In 2009, Blair was tapped by Rome to conduct the initial inquest into LCWR's adherence to certain aspects of church teaching, at whose conclusion he became one of two bishop-assistants to the delegate for the CDF's ordered five-year "reform" process, Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle.

I'm very confused. . .(and so are a lot of other Catholics).
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Made Just By God Alone

30^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

Sirach assures us that the “Lord is a God of justice, who knows no favorites. . .[He] is not deaf to the wail of the orphan, nor to the widow. . .The one who serves God willingly is heard. . .The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds.” Paul assures Timothy that as he, Paul, reaches the end of his life: “. . .the Lord stood by me and gave me strength. . .And I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat. . .” Both Sirach and Paul assure us all that our God is faithful to those who live their days in humility, in humble service to the proclamation of the Word. He hears and answers the prayers of the lowly and rescues those who serve His will. How do we become lowly? How do we bind ourselves to His will and serve out our days in His service? Jesus offers a parable. Two men go to the temple to pray. One is a Pharisee; the other a tax collector. The Pharisee believes himself to be righteous by his deeds. The tax collector knows himself to be a sinner and cries out for God's mercy. Which one leaves the temple justified, made just by God? 

 

The question here is not: which one is a righteous? The Pharisee is self-righteous; the tax collector is made-righteous. The question is: which one leaves the temple justified; that is, which one is made just in his humility before God? My question gives away the answer. You see, we already know that the Pharisee's prayer in the temple is useless. First, to whom does he pray? Jesus says, “The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself. . .” He offers his praise and thanksgiving to himself. He is his own god. Second, how does he pray? He praises himself for not being a sinner; he gives himself thanks for “not being like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous.” And lastly, how does he think that he made himself righteous? “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” Works. He believes that pious works—w/o mercy, humility, or love—makes him righteous. Now, we know that the tax collector leaves the temple justified. Instead of praising himself for not being like other men, the tax collector does the only thing a truly self-aware sinner can do: he throws himself into the hands of God and cries out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner!” Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

And why should that be the case? Why are the humble exalted and the self-exalted humbled? Is God so paranoid about His status as Lord of the Universe that He can't take a little human competition for exaltation? Is He so worried about not getting His due that He has to rub our faces in how dependent we are on Him? I mean, come on, getting holy is no joy ride; it's not easy or quick. Getting to holiness takes a lot of determination, dedication, and plain ole hard work. Why shouldn't we be allowed to pay ourselves on the back when we achieve righteousness? Seems only fair! Fair or not, we can do nothing good w/o God. Every good thing we achieve, every good word we utter is motivated and sustained by the goodness of God, sustained by Him for our benefit. He gets nothing out of our good works. Nothing. All the benefits of mercy, love, forgiveness; all the profits from our holy labors, all of it accrues to us, enriches us, and brings us closer to His perfection. And all this happens—the goodness of our works and the benefits they accrue—b/c we are created to be made perfect in divine love. God wills that we use the gifts He gives so that His love might be perfected in each one of us. Accepting this truth is the beginning of humility. 

 

So what then obstructs our growth in humility? We know the vice that opposes the virtue of humility is pride. What is pride? Pride isn't about taking pleasure on one's achievements, or claiming that one's nation, state, or team is particularly wonderful. Being proud of your children for academic and athletic awards isn't the sort of pride that thwarts humility. True Pride—the sort our ancestors put in first place on the list of Deadly Sins—is the erroneous belief that we do not need God; that we do not require His help b/c we are perfectly capable of saving ourselves from sin and death; that we are not only capable of saving ourselves but that we prefer to save ourselves. Pride leads us to believe that working for social justice and equality will save us; that holding the right beliefs and attitudes will save us; that saying the right prayers in the right order the right number of times will save us; that giving money to the Church, to charity will save us. Pride insists that we are each self-sufficient, independent, and absolutely alone. And that with these superlative qualities, we can become god w/o God. The serpent says to Eve, “when you eat [the forbidden fruit] your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods. . .” That serpent's name is Hubris, Pride. 

 

Pride leads us away from God, so how do we overcome it? Like the tax collector at prayer in the temple, there's only one way to triumph over the self-righteousness that pride instills in us: throw yourself on God's mercy! Why is this the only way? B/c only God Himself can make you righteous; only God Himself can bring you out of sin and death and restore you to your rightful place in His Holy Family. He gives us His only Son, Christ Jesus, as the only means, the only Way, back to Him. And with the Holy Spirit pushing us toward perfection, pouring out for us and into us gift after gift after gift, we accomplish all that God commands us to accomplish for His greater glory. The Pharisee's good works are just that: his good works. Yes, tithing and fasting and praying are all perfectly wonderful spiritual exercises. But before a spiritual exercise can be efficacious, there must be a relationship of love established btw the human heart and Love Himself. Fortunately for us, God Himself initiated this relationship at the instant of creation, installing into every human heart and mind the gnawing need to seek Him out and live with Him forever. To think that I can satisfy this need for myself is Pride distilled into the darkest, deadliest poison. 

 

Luke tells us that Jesus addresses his parable to a very specific audience: “. . .to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.” We can't help but make the connection btw self-righteousness and hatred. Self-righteousness—born, bred, and nurtured in pride—rejects the necessity of loving others; it leads us to deny the need for mercy, forgiveness, trust in others. If I can make myself righteous, why do I need you? Or God? Or the Church? If my social justice causes and good works and charitable donations are enough, why bother with humility? Why bother with all that “love your neighbor” nonsense? Why bother? Sirach answers: “The one who serves God willingly is heard. . .The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds.” Paul answers: “I am already being poured out like a libation. . .I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” How do we answer? We throw ourselves on the mercy of God, confessing our sins, knowing that the Lord hears the cries of the poor—the poor in spirit, the truly humble, those most in need of His care, and those most willing to take into the world His re-creating love.

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Are We Fools?

NB. A little Vintage Fr. Philip ca. 2008 for your Sunday. . .

30th Sunday OT: Ex 22.20-26; 1 Thes 1.5-10; Matt 22.34-40
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

St. Paul, ever the romantic(!), writing in his first letter to the Corinthians, insists that “love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, is not pompous; it is not inflated; it is not rude; it does not seek its own interest [. . .] but rather rejoices with the truth”(1 Cor 13). He goes on to write that love bears, believes, hopes and endures all things; and finally, he declares, as if he has never grieved a betrayal or lost his heart to passion: “Love never fails.” The romantic whispers, “Yes!” The cynic scoffs, “Bull.” The pragmatist asks, “Really? Never?” The Catholic exclaims, “Deo gratias! Thanks be to God!” Who needs for love to never fail more than he for whom Love is God? This is why Jesus teaches the Pharisees that the spiritual heart of the Law is: “You shall love the Lord, your God, will all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind [. . .] You shall your neighbor as yourself.” Listen to Paul again, “Our Lord is patient, He is kind. He is not jealous, is not pompous; He is not inflated; He is not rude; He does not seek His own interest [. . .] but rather Our Lord rejoices with the truth.” Though Paul is writing to the Corinthians to show them how we must love one another—patiently, kindly, selflessly—we cannot, cannot love at all except that Love Himself loves us first. Therefore, with the Lord and because of the Lord, we love Him, one another; and we rejoice with His truth.

Now, that we must be commanded to love says everything that needs to be said about the weaknesses of the human heart, soul, and mind. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not eagerly enthrone love in the center of our being, making all we do the children of charity. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not love as a way of giving thanks for our very existence, for the gift of being alive. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not reason with the grace of God’s wisdom, with the deliberative power granted to us as creatures created in His divine image. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we are not God but rather creatures imperfect without God, longing for God, grieving our loss yet yearning for the peace and truth of His Being-with-us.

Think for a moment of the ways we have struggled in our past to find some small portion of peace and truth. Moses returns from Mt. Sinai to find his people giving themselves over to the idols of their former masters in slavery. Paul admonishes the Corinthians for turning to “worldly philosophies” for their much-needed wisdom. He lashes them for rutting indiscriminately in the flesh, surrendering body and soul to disordered passion and vice. Jesus teaches against the legalistic blindness of the Pharisees; he calls them “white washed tombs,” beautifully, lawfully clean on the outside but stuffed with rotted meat on the inside. In our long past we have turned to idols, pagan philosophies, debauchery and license, and taken an easy refuge in the dots and tittles of the law. Each of these reach for the peace and truth we long for, but none grasp the love we need.

Think for a moment of the ways you yourself have struggled in your past and struggle even now to find some small portion of peace and truth. Do you look to the idols of power, wealth, possessions, or Self to find your purpose? Do you scratch your itchy ears with the wisdom of the world? With the profound systems of material science, the occult mysteries of New Age gurus, the glittering gospels of prosperity and celebrity? Perhaps you search for and hope to find some peace in your body, your flesh and bones. Do you worship at Gold’s Gym, Kroger and Target, Blockbuster, or CVS, searching for peace in a perfectly sculpted body, a full belly, a house full of things, a visual distraction, or over-the-counter cures for the nausea and headache of a life that will not love God? Or, perhaps in this election season, you look to parties and politicians to give you hope and security. Do you look to the Democrats to give you the ease of a well-funded government entitlement? Or perhaps you look to the Republicans to secure your place near the top of the economic food-chain? Do you think Obama will give you hope? Or that McCain will give you security? When we reach down for higher things, we grasp the lowest of the low and in our disappointment we name the Lowest the Highest, and then, in our pride, we pretend to be at peace. To do otherwise is to confess that we are fools fooled by foolish hearts, that we are stubborn mules needing the bridle and bit.

And perhaps we are fools. Perhaps this is why Jesus finds it necessary to command us to love God and one another. Why command what we would and could do willingly? In Exodus our Lord must command that we not molest the foreigners among us. That we must care for the women who have lost their husbands and children who have no family. He must command us not to extort money from the poor or strip them of their modest possessions for our profit. We must be commanded not to kill one another, not to steal, not to violate our solemn oaths, not to worship alien gods. Why doesn’t it occur to us naturally to care for the weakest, the least among us? To help those who have little or nothing? Why must we be commanded not to destroy the gift of life, not to lie or extort, not to surrender our souls to the demonic and the dead? We must be commanded to love God, to hope in His promises, to trust in His providential care because in our foolish hearts we believe that we are God and that we have no other gods but ourselves.

Are we fools? Probably not entirely. But we are often foolish, often believing and behaving in ways that give lie to Paul’s declaration, “Love never fails.” God never fails, but we often do. When we make the creature the Creator, giving thanks and praise to the bounty of our own wisdom, we reach down for the higher things and convince ourselves that we have grasped truth. We do this when we believe that it is not only sometimes necessary but also good to murder the innocent; when we believe that it is right to murder the inconveniently expensive, those whom the Nazis called “useless eaters,” the sick, the elderly, the disabled. We reach down for higher truths when we create markets for housing in order to exploit for profit the homelessness of the poor. We are foolish when we raise impregnable borders around the gifts we have been given , gifts given to us so that we might witness freely to God’s abundance. We do foolish things because we believe we are God, and so, we must be commanded by Love Himself to love. But surely this is no hardship. Difficult, yes. But not impossible. With Love all things are possible.

What must we do? To love well we must first come to know and give thanks to Love Himself. He loved us first, so He must be our First Love. Second, we must hold as inviolable the truth that we cannot love Love Himself if we fail to love one another. Third, love must be the first filter through which we see, hear, think, feel, speak, and act. No other philosophy or ideology comes before Love Himself. This mean obeying (listening to and complying with) His commandments and doing now all the things that Christ did then. Fourth, after placing God as our first filter, we must surrender to Love’s providential care, meaning we must sacrifice (make holy by giving over) our prideful need to control, direct, order our lives according to the world’s priorities. Wealth and power do not mark success. Celebrity does not mark prestige. “Having everything my way” does not mark freedom. Last, we must grow in holiness by becoming Christ—frequent attention to the sacraments, private prayer and fasting, lectio divina, strengthening our hearts with charitable works, sharpening our minds with beauty and truth in art, music, poetry, and while being painfully, painfully aware of how far we can fall from the perfection of Christ, knowing that we are absolutely free to try again and again and again.

Though we often fail love, Love never fails us. Remember: who needs for love to never fail more than he for whom Love is God?
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Miscellany

Blogging's been light this week, I know.

Several seminary-related duties converged simultaneously this week: individual preaching tutorials; formation advisee meetings; homilist at NDS Mass; helping out at St Dominic's. . .

AND I choose this week to get a cold. Over it now.

Today is more or less a Free Day: run to WalMart; lunch with fra. David (if he's awake before noon!); and the rest of the day reading: got some nifty books in the mail yesterday and Friday. Thank God for kind and generous Book Benefactors. . .who are always on my personal intention prayer list, btw.  :-)

Speaking of books. . .I'd like to hear what HA Readers think of Amazon Prime and Amazon VISA.

Are they worth the price of admission? 

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Catholic Theological Society confesses leftist bias

NB. I am pleasantly surprised (really surprised!) to see this report. The Catholic Theological Society of America is publicly confessing to its anti-conservative bias.  My long experience with academic bodies like the CTSA tells me that ideological blindness is a permanent condition. Somewhere along the line, someone at the CTSA must've been healed of this particular malady.
 

II. Observations/Problems

A. Many CTSA sessions, both plenary and concurrent, include jokes and snide remarks about, or disrespectful references to, bishops, the Vatican, the magisterium, etc. These predictably elicit derisive laughter from a part of the audience.

B. Many CTSA members employ demeaning references. For example, the phrase “thinking Catholics” is sometimes used to mean liberals. The phrase “people who would take us backwards” is sometimes used to mean conservatives.

C. Resolutions are a significant problem because an individual member can bring to the floor of the business meeting a divisive issue that not only consumes important time and energy but exacerbates the ideological differences that exist among theologians, typically leaving conservatives feeling not only marginalized but unwelcome. (CTSA members who have trouble understanding this as a problem might ask how they would feel if they were part of a professional society that passed resolutions criticizing a theologian they hold in high regard or endorsing views they reject.)

D. In recent decades, conservative theologians have only rarely been invited to be plenary speakers and respondents.

E. In CTSA elections, there is a general unwillingness of many members to vote for a conservative theologian. Scholarly credentials seem often outweighed by voters’ partisan commitments.

F. Some conservative theologians have experienced the feeling that a number of other members “wish I wouldn’t come back” to the CTSA.

G. In sum, the self-conception of many members that the CTSA is open to all Catholic theologians is faulty and self-deceptive. As one of our members put it,the CTSA is a group of liberal theologians and “this permeates virtually everything.” Because the CTSA does not aspire to be a partisan group, both attitudes and practices will have to shift if the CTSA is to become the place where all perspectives within Catholic theology in North America are welcome.

The whole report is available here.
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Living a Life of Departure

Blessed John Paul II

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA

Two weeks before petitions for solemn vows were due and two months before my class was scheduled to take solemn vows, I find myself sitting in the student master's office for yet another Come to Jesus talk. These talks had become a regular feature of my three years of studium formation; and this time, Fr. Michael, the Student Master, was really not happy with me. After six semesters, three summers, and countless dinner table conversations, you'd think that by now he would've been used to my peculiar sense of humor. But looking across at his pinched face and gritted teeth, I could tell that his training as a tax attorney and Patristics scholar had done nothing to prepare him to deal the weirdnesses of an over-educated 38 year old redneck-convert from Episcopaganism. I knew before he spoke a word what the topic of this exhortation would be: my complete lack of docility. I was unprepared to embrace the life of departure that every Dominican friar must be willing to live. In other words, I would not gird my loins nor would I light my lamp. The master would return from the wedding and find me sound asleep, snoring loudly.

What is a life of departure*? What does it have to do with remaining ready for the master's return? A life of departure is a life lived in constant readiness to move, a sort of perpetual vigilance against getting too settled in, too snug and comfy with who we are and where we are serving. As itinerant friars, Dominicans live lives of departure quite literally. I've been professed for 13 yrs and I've lived in five provinces, three countries, and nine or ten cities here and abroad. In one academic year, I logged almost 60,000 miles of air travel! That's Dominican life. But what would a life of departure look like for the laity, or for diocesan clergy? Notice the tension in our gospel story. The servants are girded. Lamps are lit. They wait for the knock on the door. Even though they aren't doing much, they are wound up to spring into action when called. Just being ready, always ready to answer God's call is holy work. Being ready to snap into sweat-inducing labor at a moment's notice means that we cannot rest too long or too soundly; we cannot dig down our roots too deep; we cannot let yesterday's work haunt us nor tomorrow's work worry us. Whatever comes next when God calls is what we are charged with doing. A life of departure is a life lived right at the edge of expectation, right at the brink of just letting go of everything for the love of Christ.

In fact, a life of departure is a life lived by just letting go of everything—everyTHING—for the love of Christ. For the sake of his name, and in his name, to be constantly ready to jump at his Word, we let go of our long-range plans; our packed schedules; our assessments of failure and success; our competitive comparisons with peers. We cannot properly gird ourselves or light the lamps if our hands are busy with the work we think is vital. Now, of course, we need plans, schedules, assessments, etc., but they cannot be allowed to become the measure of our availability to serve. Patience, perseverance, docility—all of these are not only better measures of service, they are also better tools for serving the Master. A life of departure, a life of constant service is a life lived in the eternal shade of God's wisdom. Who can honestly say, “I know it all already”? Or even worse, “I know enough to get the job done.” Knowing is not serving. And knowing just enough and no more rewards ignorance. To serve—in Christ's name—means letting go of what we think we know, and being ready—always ready—to be moved by divine wisdom from the comfy pretense of Knowing All to the hard reality of Loving Others. 

 

As servants, we wait upon the return of our master. Loins girded. Lamps lit. When he returns, he will serve us. And from his service, we will learn what it is to die. . .to die for love of him.

*I borrowed this phrase from Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

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Catholic Priesthood ca. 1964 (ft. Dominicans!)

One of my preaching students at NDS brought this vid to my attention. . .

1964! Ah, a good year. . .
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