Preach like you mean it!

23^rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Perm. Deacons' Retreat, Lumen Christi Center

Ears and a tongue. Three essential tools of a preacher. Ears to hear the Word of God and a tongue to proclaim His Good News to sinners. If the ears can't hear, then the preacher cannot listen to the Word or to those to whom he preaches or even to himself! And w/o a tongue, how can a preacher speak the truth of God's mercy; how can he encourage or admonish or instruct? Of course, there are many ways to preach beyond words. Exemplary deeds. Living a holy life. But for those who have heard and accepted the call to ordained ministry – well, liturgical preaching is part of the job. So, we need our ears open and our tongues wagging. . .at least for the duration of the homily. While we know that the deaf and mute man that Jesus heals is physically impaired, we can ask ourselves: is my hearing impaired? My speech? Is there something or someone who makes me deaf to God's Word, unable to speak His truth? If we are to preach like we mean it – boldly, clearly, with authenticity – we cannot (by our own choices) make ourselves deaf and mute.

 

Maybe we should explore a bit. What or who could cause us to become deaf to God's Word? There's no denying it: we live in dangerous times. Not physically dangerous. . .yet. But it isn't exactly pleasant being an ordained minister of the Church in 2018. The recent scandals have left many of us disgusted, angry, disappointed, maybe even a little ashamed. Though these reactions are perfectly just, they cannot be allowed to turn us away from God, away from His Word or His Church. It is too simple a thing to ignore the Father's call for justice, to simply shut out the words of His prophets and pretend that this storm – like many others – will pass, leaving you and me and ours untouched. God's Word is the living testimony of men and women long dead, men and women who encountered the Living God and knew His presence sustained them through the worst of all the troubles they had caused for themselves. Scripture is clear: God often allows those He loves to experience the consequences of their sin. Rather than protect us from the results of our disobedience, He allows “nature to take its course.” That's hard. Especially when so many innocents will likely suffer. Even so, we have ears to hear, so listen: “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you.” He is saving the Church. And we must listen!

What about our tongues? What or who could cause them to get stuck? The greatest enemy of the preacher's tongue is fear. Fear of being misunderstood. Fear of being unpopular. Fear of being accused of hypocrisy. Fear has no place in the preacher's life. If the preacher is preaching God's Word and not his own opinions and ideas, then his proclamation of the Good News will be fearless. The truth is often hard to speak. Hard to hear. Even harder to live out. But truth is truth and there is no profit in trying to bury it in softness and sweet. There's no need for any of us to become fire-breathing Baptists! But boldness, clarity, and authenticity in a homily carry are more than capable of carrying the weight of truth. Yes, it would be easier, more polite, less controversial to tell funny stories in the pulpit, to urge people to be kinder to one another, or to pony up a little more in the collection plate for a roof repair. But right now, in September of 2018, in the U.S., God's people need to hear the truth. They need – even want – to be told about human sin, divine mercy, the reality of evil, and the always already accomplished victory of Christ on his Cross. Preach these fearlessly and you will see holiness flourish.

It's strange. Jesus opens the man's ears and unsticks his tongue only to tell him not to tell anyone about the miracle. “But,” Mark writes, “. . .the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.” Why? Why do they disobey the Lord? Mark says, “They were exceedingly astonished. . .” Exceedingly astonished. As preachers and teachers of the Good News of Christ Jesus, we too must be exceedingly astonished by the Father's mercy – His freely offered gift of forgiveness for our sins. When you think about, pray about, and begin to compose your homilies, do you consider yourself exceedingly astonished? That you have been chosen and ordained to embody in word and deed the Living Word of God? Are you exceedingly astonished that the Holy Spirit is a promised presence in your lives? That He is with you, in you, all around you as you prepare to speak His truth from the pulpit? God's people need/want a prophetic word from you. They want it boldly, clearly, authentically. Go home. Preach like you know it. Preach like you love it. Preach like you mean it.

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Sins that kill the soul

NB. Deacon is preaching tonight at OLR. Here's one from 2012. . .right after Hurricane Isaac.

22nd Sun OT 

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP 

St. Dominic Church, NOLA

When our power went out last Tuesday around five o'clock, I gave a mighty sigh and prepared myself for a day or two of no A/C, no hot water, no lights. Like any good Dominican would, I went to my bookshelf and asked, “What does one read while a hurricane rages outside?” I rejected poetry—too ethereal for a storm. I rejected current events—what can I do about Iran's nuclear build-up or the collapse of the Eurozone during a hurricane? I rejected theology—that's too much like work for a priest. That left philosophy. It took me about two minutes to find William Barrett's classic 1958 study of European existentialism. Given that Isaac was slowing reducing New Orleans to a Stone Age village, the title of his book seemed more than appropriate, Irrational Man. (After four days w/o A/C and a hot shower, “irrational man” pretty much describes me to a tee)! Barrett argues that as a philosophy outside the mainstream western obsession with science and technology, existentialism challenges the human soul to face the deeply abiding problems of what it means to exist, to simply Be. He writes, “A single atmosphere pervades [all truly human problems] like a chilly wind: the radical feeling of human finitude”(36). At the root of being human is the gnawing truth that we are limited, impermanent. The Psalmist rebuts, “One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” 

Living in the presence of the Lord is the Father's promise to His children; it is the one hope that keeps crippling despair at bay. If we cannot and do not live with one another in the hope of the resurrection, then the oppressive weight of our mortality, the various spiritual diseases of our finitude can and will crush us, leaving us broken and dying. Barrett notes that as modern men and women we are confronted by a curious problem: as citizens of an increasingly secular culture we have come face-to-face with this “radical feeling of human finitude” at a time when our science and technology promise us nearly limitless knowledge, nearly limitless control. IOW, as our culture abandons the possibility of life beyond death (abandons God) and falls into mortal despair, we find some glimmer of hope in the power we possess to manipulate our physical world through the tools of material science. Our hope is not in the name of the Lord; our hope is in the name of Genetics, Physics, Chemistry, Nanotechnology—a pantheon for 21st century man, these are the gods who will save our bodies but cannot save our souls. The Psalmist patiently reminds us, “One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” 

So, you must be wondering: what does the fragility of human life and our deeply seated fear of nothingness have to do with this morning's gospel? Where's the Good News among the bad? The Good News is that even as we lament the death of our innocence in the face of war, terrorism, and natural disaster; even as we mourn the loss of reason's rule in our politics, our universities, and our media; even as we cry over the impoverishment of our collective imagination to exclude God, the saints, angels, demons, miracles, and the promise of eternal life after death; even as we surrender—as a culture—to the idolatrous practice of depending on science and technology to grant us hope for the future, the Good News remains constant, steadfast: we are creatures, crafted beings, drawn from the dust of the earth and given life by a God Who loved us at our creation, loves us now, and will always love us. This truth is not “worn over” creation like a garment but woven into everything and everyone that exists. God spoke the Word “Love” and we are. And nothing—not economic crises, not princes nor presidents; not wars, terrorist bombs, plagues; not science, technology, genetics; not even hurricanes can change the fundamental constitution of God's creation: we live, move, and have our being in Love. 

That's the Good News. Now that we know the Good News, what do we do about it? Barrett argues that modern man's confrontation with the “radical feeling of human finitude” has hobbled us with indecision and angst—a deadly moral impotence that allows violence and power to thrive in the vacuum abandoned by Christian virtue. Once upon a time, no one in the West denied the existence of God. They argued over His nature, His attributes, His will; but no one argued for atheism. Flowing naturally from a belief in the reality of God came a belief in the natural law—that all things were created to become perfect in themselves. From revelation and the natural law we derived the virtues, those good human habits that define us as loving creatures living in community. And from the virtues we derived natural human rights and legislated through our kings, parliaments, and congresses laws to uphold justice and peace. When a human law violated the natural law, we rebelled and overthrew the human law. There is no moral obligation to obey an unjust law. In fact, there is a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law. Justice always trumps the merely legal. 

What does the Good News tell us to do? Jesus shames the Pharisees for imposing unjust rules and regulations on their people. He quotes Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” Then he adds, “You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition.” Why is their worship vain? The honor they pay to God is from their lips not their hearts. The Pharisees have abandoned hope and embraced regulation; they've surrendered to the lazy spirituality of following rules, thus giving up on the hard work of actually loving one another. Jesus goes to the root of the problem, saying, “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” A hardened heart, a heart that has willed itself closed to love will produce “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” These are the sins that kill a soul, that murder charity and turn us away from God. James reminds us of our origins, “[The Father] willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” We are born of truth and from truth justice flows. We are the firstfruits, the first born from His justice. And it is God's justice that stands with us when human finitude threatens us with despair. 

The Psalmist sings, “One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” The Goods New of Jesus Christ does not urge us to do justice. We are not encouraged or hectored to do justice. We are given a simple, elegant choice: do justice and live in the presence of the Lord, or don't. If we love the Lord and love him in service to one another, then justice abides where love prevails. The despair that might dawn on us when we come to realize our mortality, our finitude is nothing when set side-by-side with the promise of eternal life. Barrett is right: modern western men and women are besieged by the problems of that arise when they rapidly and recklessly abandon of God. As lovers of God and followers of His Christ, we are gathered and sent to be missionaries, living reminders that though human beings are finite creatures, we are not yet perfect, not yet made perfect. When we love and act lovingly; when we hope and live hopefully; when we trust God and demonstrate that trust, our creaturely limits are defeated, and God receives the glory. So, “humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you,” and in justice, see God's will done.

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This is War

21^st Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

Jesus tells the truth. And b/c they find truth shocking, “many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” What is this shocking truth? That to attain eternal life we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Watching those who could not accept this hard saying walk away, Jesus asks the Twelve (and us), “Do you also want to leave?” After 2,000 years of Church teaching on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist maybe this saying doesn't sound all that hard anymore. We understand what those who walk away did not. The bread and the wine of the Passover Feast become the Body and Blood of Christ, truly present in the sacrament. Not many of us these days are prepared to walk away from Christ b/c we find the idea of transubstantiation shocking. However, some might be tempted to walk away and return to their former way of life b/c they find the moral corruption eating away at the Church all too shocking and unacceptable. To these disciples Paul says, “. . .no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.” We are members of Christ's body. Do not walk away from this hard truth.

As we continue to reel from revelation after revelation that Catholic clergy violated children, teens, and seminarians, and that bishops and cardinals conspired to cover-up these violations, we are tempted to look for causes and quick fixes. Mandatory celibacy is the problem! No, it's homosexuality in the clergy. Wrong. It's feminism or clericalism or communism or some other “–ism” that I find offensive. Whatever the immediate cause of this current crisis may be, the remote cause is quite easy to identify. It's been part and parcel of the human condition since Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden: that devilish desire to become god w/o God, a.k.a. pride. Pride is the cardinal sin that drives all the others. And it remains the chief strategist and overall commander of how we betray God and our restored human nature. We cannot fight pride with self-righteousness or  unrighteous anger or calls for vengeance. Why? B/c these are the favored weapons of Pride. We fight with humility and mercy, undercutting the power of Pride to tempt us to betray Christ and his Church. We also fight using fidelity, following Christ faithfully, who alone has the words of eternal life.

Make no mistake about what's going on in the Church right now: this is a war, a spiritual war. And it's nothing new. It's the same war we have been fighting since the serpent tempted Eve. The principal combatants are the same. The weapons are the same. The causalities are the same. This war is fought cosmically, terrestrially, nationally; within each diocese and parish of the Church; within every family, every marriage, and within each and every one of us. And it's a war over a choice: to whom do you, do we belong? Whom do you serve? When Jesus asks the Twelve – “Do you also want to leave?” – he's asking them to choose. He's asking them to surrender themselves to the Father's living Word, or to walk away and resume their former way of life. He's asking us that same question, and the spiritual war we are fighting is about how we will answer. How we will answer as a Church, as a diocese, as a parish, and as individual members of his Body.

 

Jesus tells us the truth. The truth about how we are saved from our sins. How we are fed with his Body and Blood. How we are to be witnesses to the Father's mercy. He tells us the truth about how we are to live with one another so that we might grow in holiness. He himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and he asks us to choose: follow or walk away. Can you say: “Master, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life. I have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God”? If so, then your path is clear – follow Christ. Use his weapons to fight the battle: Repent. Forgive. Seek justice. Grow in holiness.

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