Choosing not to love

17^th Week OT (R)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Dominic Priory, NOLA

Our contemporary sensibilities about including some and excluding others has taken a beating this week and last. It's clear from our readings that there is such a thing as a goat, a weed, and a bad fish. The “evil and unfaithful generation” is not an abstraction but a populated reality. Believing this to be true may make us uncomfortable b/c it can be a weapon against those among us whom we'd rather not have around. There's just too much temptation there for sinful man to resist. So, we are tempted instead to pretend that eternal failure is a moral myth, or we interpret it away as a culturally bound artifact of more primitive times. Enlightened now, we reassure ourselves that everyone – ultimately – is a sheep, a fruitful plant, and a good fish. But this more contemporary bit of myth-making does violence to a fundamental truth of our redeemed human nature: it robs us of our freedom and makes all of our moral acts pointless. Why be a saint if being an unrepentant sinner is an equally valid means of growing in holiness and gaining heaven? Why feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and seek justice for the oppressed, when not doing any of these things is just as spiritually effective? In fact, starving the hungry, leaving the naked to die, making people sick, and actively oppressing others is “just as good as” spending one's life in faithful service to the least among us. Jesus couldn't be clearer: “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” We can be uncomfortable with this image. We can be embarrassed for Jesus that he said something so primitive. We can even have a Blessed Are The Cheese Makers moment, a sort of soothing “what he really means is” take on the reading. But the reality is: if we are to be truly free, we need to understand the consequences of our choices. Jesus isn't threatening us here. He's warning us. Choosing not to love now is choosing not to spend eternity with Love later.

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Flinging the Word

17^th Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Dominic Priory, NOLA

A mustard seed is tiny. So is a grain of yeast. Both contain a great deal of power. Mustard plants can grow to 9ft tall. And just a pinch of yeast can leaven a lot of flour. Jesus compares his Father's kingdom to these two petite powerhouses of nature, giving us a way to think about our preaching. If we think of our preaching as a means of intervening in the world, as a way of disrupting the spirits of the world, we end up in a fight. How much better would it be to sow the Word like mustard seed and watch the plants flourish where they land. Or dose the flat, unsalted flour of the world with the yeast of the Word and let it all come to life. If our preaching is a kind of sowing, then we aren't all that worried about neat rows, straight lines, or orderly patches. We reach in, grab a handful, and fling! Where the seeds and yeast land may be random or predestined. What matters is the soil. And that the soil is seeded. As preachers of the Word, our job is to give every kind of soil the chance to produce good fruit, to give every bit of flour the opportunity to rise. We do this by diligently and maybe even wildly flinging the Word wherever we go.

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Praying among the weeds

NB. Not preaching today, so here's one from 2017.

 

16^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

In prayer we are “beggars before God.” Having nothing, we ask for everything, and receive what we need. If we cannot quite put words to our needs, “the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” Like the rest of creation, we too long to be raised to perfection, to be made complete again in the presence of God. But until we are given the beatific vision, we live and move in this world – needing, asking, receiving, giving; not knowing perfectly what comes next. Not knowing what comes next can be a source of anxiety or a source of freedom. If we trust in God, fully surrendering ourselves to His providence, not knowing what comes next is freeing. How we pray in this freedom is simple: “Lord, your will be done. I receive all You have to give!” Prayer becomes more complicated when we hold back, when we hide away bits of control, little needs to direct and dominate: “Lord, your will be done (if your will is to allow me to do my will), and I receive all You have to give (if what You have to give is what I want)!” This is not the prayer of a beggar. It IS the prayer of a willful child who falsely believes he/she knows perfectly what comes next. We don't know and acting on that not- knowing can kill us. Both physically and spiritually.

 

Jesus proposes to the crowds a parable about the wisdom of not acting in ignorance. He tells them (and us) to allow the weeds to grow among the wheat. We can't always tell the difference btw the weeds and the wheat. Pulling up the weeds might damage the wheat. Let them both grow and the harvesters will separate them – wheat to the barn, weeds to the fire. Full knowledge of which is which comes at the end not the beginning. The same is true for the differences btw our wants and our needs. If I pray in ignorance for what I need, I may be praying for what I want instead. And when I don't get what I think I need, I begin to doubt God's providence. Maybe I stop praying. Maybe I stop believing. Maybe – even – I turn against God b/c He has failed to meet my “needs.” My ignorance – my “not-knowing” – can cause me to stumble along the Way. . .unless. . .I know that I am ignorant and choose instead to surrender myself to God's providence and receive whatever He sends my way. “Lord, your will be done. I receive all You have to give!” The mature pray-er begins and ends in ignorance, allowing the Harvester to separate his wants from his needs, the wheat from the weeds.

 

What are the weeds in prayer? Jesus says, “While everyone was asleep [the farmer's] enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat. . .” Notice that everyone was asleep. They weren't keeping vigil. No one was on watch. And b/c no one was watching, the farmer's enemy was free to sow weeds. When we are not paying attention to our spiritual lives, when we are living life as if God doesn't exist, the Enemy is free to sow his weeds. His favorite weed to sow is the weed we'll call “Self-Sufficiency,” also known as “I Don't Any Help.” This weed tempts us to believe that we already know what the problem is and how to solve it. It tempts us – in our pride – to turn away from God's providence and rely on our own ingenuity. Or to tell God what the problem is and how He ought to fix it. Given enough time to grow this weed produces fruit called, “I Need a Hole Plugged.” God and His providence become little more than an emergency yelp when things go bad. There's a way to render these weeds powerless over your prayer. Don't pull them! Let them grow. But render them powerless by admitting upfront that you don't know what you need, desire God above all else, and receive all the He sends you with praise and thanksgiving. 

 

Paul lays all this bare for us in his letter to the Romans: “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought. . .” Paul is not suggesting here that we've forgotten the words to our prayers, or that we're praying the wrong prayers. He's telling us that our weakness – our ignorance (for we do not know how to pray as we ought) – is aided by the Spirit. We are strengthened in prayer by the Spirit, guided by the Spirit to struggle with our ignorance and surrender to the providence of God. Prayer is not a matter of overcoming not-knowing or learning all that we ought to know. Prayer is about placing ourselves – freely and generously – in the path of the Spirit so that He may take us up and deliver us – needs and all – into the presence of the One Who loves us. If we are tightly bound by sin, or diverted by disordered passions, or driven away by an ugly pride, we cannot throw ourselves in the path of the Spirit. Nor can we pray. Nor can we receive all that God has to give us. This is why Christ – “the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit” – sits at the right hand of the Father and “intercedes for the holy ones according to God's will.” What we do not know and cannot know about our own needs and about God's will, Christ knows. And he is there to hear us even when all we can do is groan.

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Becoming the soil you need to be

15^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

AUDIO FILE

If the seed is the Word of God – our faith – and the soil is the human person who receives and nurtures the seed, then we can ask ourselves: what kind of soil am I? The essence of this question is fundamental to any examination of conscience. But, let's say, you want to go deeper; you want to explore a way of growing in holiness that goes beyond a quick survey of “how I'm doing.” If that's the case, then the question you want to ask yourself is: how do I become kind of soil I need to be? This question assumes you know what kind of soil you are now, and it prompts you to consider what needs to change in your life and how to make those changes. Keep in mind – the goal here is to become the sort of soil that gives the seed of the Word the best chance of taking root in your life and producing good fruit. What this looks like might not be what the world thinks good soil looks like; or what your family or friends think good soil look like; or even what you think it should look like. That's just part of the surprise and drama of striving for a life of holiness! Sometimes the most disgusting mud grows the most beautiful flowers.

So, you're feeling stuck, thinking that your growth in holiness has stalled. Maybe you are experiencing more anxiety lately. Your prayer life is blah. And God seems farther away everyday. In other words, you are shallow, dry, and thorny soil. It's time to ask yourself: how do I become kind of soil I need to be to nurture the Word and produce good fruit? The first step is a merciless inventory of your sins. Sin is a deliberate act of disobedience; it's a willful, shouted NO! To God that prevents you from receiving His gifts. To be clear: God never stops blessing us. But we can and do stop receiving those blessings. And the principal way we refuse His gifts is through sin. Once that inventory is complete, it's time to head to the confessional and receive His forgiveness through absolution. Think of this step as pulling the weeds from your life, cutting back the thorns, and digging up the stones in your way. If the seed of the Word is going to find a place in your life, it needs space – He needs space. And He's already given you and me everything we need to help us make that space as large and as obstacle-free as we can get it. BUT He's not going to do the work for us. He'll work along with us, but not instead of us. 

 

Once the weeds are pulled and the thorns are burned in the confessional, we can proceed to step two: spreading high-quality fertilizer. What's the best fertilizer for growing in holiness? Small acts of charity, inconspicuous moments where you enact the Good for the Other for no other reason than the Good of the Other. Think of the Widow and her mite. She gives out of her poverty not her surplus. She gives everything she has, not just the little leftover when her bills are paid. These acts of charity don't have to be about money. You can pay attention to someone who's used to being ignored. You can sit with someone who's sick; visit someone who has no one; write letters to prisoners; help out at a homeless shelter or food bank; volunteer with the St. Vincent de Paul Society; tutor kids struggling in school. The object here is to get outside yourself, to move beyond that constantly nagging MeMeMe that demands satisfaction but never seems to be satisfied. It's about coming to see the Christ in yourself by seeing him in others. This is a potent fertilizer for the cultivation of the proper soil of holiness. Every saint in heaven mastered the production and distribution of these small acts of charity, and they are there now, waiting for you and me to call on them for their help.

 

Now that you've cleared your field and fertilized it with charity, it's time to welcome the Sower and his seeds. Two acts best welcome him: gratitude and surrender. Together these two increase your harvest a hundredfold. Gratitude is an expression of humility. You acknowledge that everything you have and are is a gift from God. Nothing you have or are is truly your own. It all comes from Him. This attitude inoculates you against the spiritual disease of entitlement – “I'm owed. I deserve. My life is about Me.” Surrender is a form of gratitude. It sets the heart and mind to receive God's blessings w/o expectation. To receive the seed of the Word as God Himself sows it. Surrender leaves what is God's in God's hands, and it all belongs to God, including you and me. By turning your life to gratitude and surrender, you open yourself to becoming the richest possible soil for growing in holiness. When you close yourself to gratitude and surrender, you cultivate Pride and nothing grows in the sterile dust of Pride but resentment, anger, envy, and violence. What kind of soil do you need to become to produce good fruit? Soil rich in charity, gratitude, surrender, and hope. Nothing less can nurture God's Word.

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The immovable rock of preaching

14^th Week OT (R): Crisis Preaching

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

NDS, NOLA

AUDIO FILE

The Catholic preacher stands on the ancient witness of Scripture; the incarnated revelation of the Father in the divine person of Christ Jesus; and the ordered, intelligible beauty of creation. He stands on God's Self-revelation in the Bible, in Christ, and in creation to accomplish one necessary task: to proclaim the Father's freely offered mercy to sinners. The Catholic preacher gives his voice to the Word of God so that the People of God may know that their Father has forgiven them their sins through Jesus Christ. Knowing that their sins are forgiven, God's people are then exhorted to receive His mercy through the sacraments, thus growing in holiness. And with their growth in holiness, they are charged with going out into the world to bear witness – in word and deed – to the mercy they themselves have received. In season and out, the Catholic preacher preaches one Word, one message, one revelation, one Gospel – Jesus Christ is Lord! From the throne of one's heart, Christ rules. In season and out, in sickness or in health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, the Church is the eternal bride of the bridegroom. The preacher preaches standing on this immovable rock.

Jesus says to his disciples, his apostles: “'As you go, make this proclamation: The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” The kingdom IS at hand. Not used to be at hand, or will be at hand at some point. But IS at hand. Right here, right now. Whether that right here, right now is a hurricane or a beautiful spring day; an economic depression or record economic growth; a bloody civil war or a nation celebrating its unity in peace – right here, right now – the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, and Jesus Christ is Lord. The tides of history in this world will ebb and flow, will come and go, but the Lordship of Christ for those who follow him never wavers. When confronted by a crisis, some disastrous eruption in the ordinary patterns of daily life, the Christian remembers faith, hope, and charity. He/she remembers to trust in God's divine providence; to expect that God's promises will be fulfilled; and to love sacrificially for the good of the Other. The Catholic preacher will be a personal sign, an embodied symbol of this memory among his people. The proclamation of the presence of the Kingdom is ancient, contemporary, and eschatological. Then, now, and to come. If you will serve the Lord as his priest, you will serve him as a voice crying out into whatever wilderness he sends you.

Our Enemy, the spirit of this age, will tempt you to compromise the Word, to make “prudent adjustments,” to skirt around the Hard Stuff and focus on the Easy Stuff. You will come to think that you are being cooperative when you succumb to this temptation. That you are being a “team player.” After all, there are bigger problems to tackle. Larger issues to consider. There's the parish budget. The diocesan tax. The capital campaign. There's the media to think about and how this will be received in the chancery. If you are being an ass in the pulpit, you should worry about these things. But if you are preaching the Good News that the Father has freely forgiven our sins through Jesus Christ, then you have nothing to worry about. Hurricanes? Your sins are forgiven; receive God's mercy. Record unemployment? Your sins are forgiven; receive God's mercy. Civil war? Riots? Pandemic? Your sins are forgiven; receive God's mercy. Every crisis is a chance for both the Church and her greatest Enemy to preach their respective gospels. For our Enemy, that gospel is: fear, anger, paranoia will keep you safe. For the Church, that gospel is and always will be: your sins are forgiven; receive God's mercy.

Just in case I haven't made myself clear: a crisis changes nothing about the Gospel or its preaching. Preach the Gospel before a crisis, and how you preach the Gospel during and after a crisis should look exactly the same. Did the Roman Imperial persecutions change the Gospel? No. Did the Gnostic nonsense of the Patristic period change the Gospel? No. Did four hundred years of the Arian heresy change the Gospel? No. Did the collapse of the Roman Empire; the invasion of the Moors; the nominalist revolution of Luther; the French Revolution; the rise and fall of Napoleon; the 19^th century modernist scourge; the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Maoists, the Sexual Revolution, or the Internet change the Gospel? No. When we preach faith, hope, and charity, and live these virtues well, we participate in the Divine Life. The Divine Life does not change. But we do. We grow in perfection and though the world around us may be falling apart, we endure not b/c we are immune to natural disaster or disease, but b/c our inheritance is the Kingdom. The Catholic preacher preaches standing on this immovable rock.

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Preaching God's Funeral

NB. Spent my day preparing for a formation conference at NDS on Thursday. I ran across this post of mine from 2013. Thought it deserved re-posting.

 

Among the books and articles I'm reading to prepare for the Advanced Preaching Seminar at NDS this spring is an excellent book by Phil Snider, titled, Preaching After God.

The first two chapters of this book lay out what Snider calls "the modern homiletical crisis." Basically, he argues that the liberal/progressive theology of modernist Christianity has left progressive ministers and preachers with little to say about God.

He charts the development of modernist theology through several philosophical veins, including the usual suspects: Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and, of course, Schleiermacher. 

Despite his embrace of progressive theology, Snider laments the "death of God" in liberal Protestant preaching, noting that preaching in the mainline churches has become little more than politically tinged ethical exhortation. 

In theory and practice, Christian progressives have replaced theology with anthropology.*

He writes, "Activism became the rule of the day in modern preaching largely because God was not longer identified as anything other than a projection of the best intentions and ideals of the human spirit, if anything at all, and religion was reduced to activism. . .When one considers the import of Kant and Hegel on liberal theology, it's no coincidence that sermons that fall prey to the modern homiletical crisis (1) place primary emphasis on a Christianity that is boiled down to ethics. . .and (2) lose sight of the infinite qualitative distinction between God (the wholly other) and human beings. When God is just a manifestation or extension of our best selves on our best days, when there is no infinite qualitative distinction between human beings and the 'wholly other,' then God is, for all practical purposes, dead" (66).

To any Catholic who's been paying attention to parochial preaching in the last 40 yrs. this diagnosis of liberal Protestant preaching should sound eerily familiar. 

Having misinterpreted and misapplied the Second Vatican Council's invitation to engage modern culture in dialogue, ecclesial elites have so domesticated the Divine that it is almost impossible for them now to understand the Church as anything other than a social service agency.  

The task of Catholic homiletics in the 21st century is to explore ways of returning a sense of the "infinite qualitative distinction" btw Creator and creature to our preaching w/o portraying God as inaccessible. Part of this project then will be to re-establish the event of the Incarnation as a central theme of Catholic preaching.

* Snider sees some hope for progressives in deconstructionism. My sense is that this is a dead-end for Catholic preaching as a solution. There may be uses for deconstruction as a heuristic but ultimately Catholic preaching cannot jettison metaphysics. 

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Healing the imago Dei

14^th Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Priory, NOLA

One of God's gifts to us – just one among many that marks us out from His creatures as rational animals – is our ability to communicate with one another through the spoken and written word. A philosophy professor of mine, a former Jesuit, used to yell us in class: “If you can't write it, you can't think it! And vice-versa.” So indicative of our rationality is the use of language that some ethicists have proposed that its absence renders one fatally non-human, not a person at all. Catholics won't that far, but it doesn't surprise us that the possessed in our Gospel accounts are all painted as insanely violent or mute or blind, or some combination of the three. Attacking the created imago Dei is exactly what we would expect the demonic to do. When Jesus rebukes the demons, sending them out, he restores to the possessed that which makes them most like God – their intellectual faculties, their ability to think and speak. He does this out of compassion, out of an abundance of love for those for whom he will die on the cross. As Dominican friars, we can ask ourselves, “Does my preaching and teaching bring healing to those who have lost their grip on the reality of who and what they were created and re-created to be?” We are sent as laborers among an abundant harvest, and Christ's compassion for God's people goes with us. To the troubled and abandoned, we can bring freedom and healing, and at the same time, witness ourselves freed and healed.

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Finding Rest & Learning Along the Way

NB. Deacon is preaching tonight. . .

14^th Sunday OT (2008)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, TX

If you have spent any time at all splitting cord-wood for the fireplace; or digging a foundation for a new house; or shoveling gravel for a roadbed; or if you have spent most of a Saturday washing and drying laundry, vacuuming the carpets, dusting and polishing the furniture, and cleaning up after a late dinner, then Christ’s invitation to take on his yoke as a lighter burden could be very appealing. Even the day to day grind at the office, the store, the classroom, the bank, wherever it is you grind away a day, the work you do can easily become a burden, not just a difficult job but a tremendous weight, an unbalanced unload that threatens to topple you over into despair. Perched on top of this leaning tower of worries and work, none of us needs a religion that imposes another set of burdens, an additional heavy-bookload of obligations, penalties, policies, and rules. The last thing we need is for our relationship with God to become work, a tedious job, a dutiful burden. And so, Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father…Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” 

 

We might wonder what sort of yoke Christ would use. He says his yoke would be easy and the burden light, but a yoke is a yoke no matter how easy, and being tied to any sort of burden means pulling a weight no matter how light. I start thinking about being yoked to a burden and several questions come to mind: will I be pulling this light burden uphill? Or across sand? Stone? In traffic or out in the wild? Will it be raining or snowing or will I have to pull this burden in the heat and humidity of a July in Texas? Other questions come to mind: what’s in it for me? Is this a paid gig? Insurance, benefits? Is there a Light Burden Haulers union? Vacation time, sick days, opportunities for advancement? Does Jesus offer a tuition credit for further studies? And, by the way, exactly what is it that I will be hauling? Since I’m a peaceful man I really can’t in good conscience haul military equipment. I will haul medical equipment and supplies so long as none of them will be used for abortions or sterilizations. Will I have to haul loads going to churches other than the Catholic Church? Anyway, all good questions, but questions that miss the point entirely. These questions are asked “according to the flesh.” All Jesus is asking us to haul under his easy yoke is the light load of knowing that he is the Christ sent by the Father to free us from sin and grant us eternal life. He says, “…for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.”

 

Find rest of ourselves…is this what we do when we come to believe that Jesus is the Christ? Isn’t it more often the case that we find ingenuous ways of throwing scattered junk and assorted debris on top of our easy burden, weighing down the load with more and more waste, more and more unnecessary rubbish? And as our load grows larger and the burden more difficult to manage, who is it that we blame? Jesus? The Church? Religion in general? Our Lord tells us that his Father has hidden certain truths from the “the wise and the learned,” but that He has revealed these truths to the “little ones.” Are you wise and learned, or are you a little one? The difference between the two has everything to do with whether or not you think your burden is light enough, your path straight enough, and his yoke easy enough.

In one of his many sermons,* St. Augustine has this to say about our gospel passage, "All other burdens oppress and crush you, but Christ's burden actually lightens your load. All other burdens weigh you down, but Christ's burden gives you wings. If you cut away a bird's wings, it might seem as though you are taking off some of its weight, but the more weight you take off [by removing its wings], the more you tie the bird down to the earth. There it is lying on the ground, and you wanted to relieve it of a burden; give it back the weight of its wings, and you will see how it flies." The wise and the learned know that the heavier an object is the more work it takes to make it fly. Lighter objects need less work to fly. But the little ones know that a bird cannot fly without the weight of its wings. Christ’s yoke, his burden on us weighs less than bird bones and feathers.

Paul, writing to the Romans, teaches us, “You are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you…” As baptized and confirmed members of the Body of Christ, God’s Spirit does dwell within us. And since God’s Spirit abides in us, “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to [our] mortal bodies…” And since our mortal bodies will be given the life of the resurrection of the dead when our Lord returns for us, “brothers and sisters, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh…” And so, we are to live as Little Ones—the poor, the broken, the thrown away, the diseased, those who rush to Jesus for a word of healing, just one touch to see justice done. 

 

Why must be become so little? Because to be filled with the Spirit we must first be emptied out as Christ himself was emptied out for us on the Cross. There is no room for God’s Spirit in a body crowded with fear, worry, anger, a lust for revenge, a desire to punish; there is no room for God in a soul stuffed full with the need to worship alien gods; to kill the innocent; to torture the enemy. Greed, jealousy, rage, promiscuity, dissent, all elbow sharply at our souls for more space for themselves but make no room for God. Paul warns us: “…if you live according to the flesh, you will die…” If we will live, we must “put to death the deeds of the body…”

Nothing that you have heard Jesus or Paul say this morning should surprise you. You know the consequences of sin. Firstly, sin makes you stupid. Disobedience quenches the fire of the intellect, so that you choose evil over good. Do this often enough and you become a fool. Secondly, since sin makes you foolish, you come to believe that you are wise. If you are also learned, that is, well-educated in the world, you might even begin to believe that you better than God Himself what is best for you. Enter all those nervous questions about the nature of Jesus’ burden and the weight of his revelation to you. Finally, since sin makes you a wise and learned fool, you may come to believe that you can do without God altogether, becoming, for all intents and purposes, your own god, worshiping at the altar of Self. At this point, you have excluded yourself from God’s love and the company of the blessed. Welcome to Hell. Maybe the Devil will let you rule a small corner of your favorite level, but don’t count on it. You know the consequences of sin. So empty yourself. Make plenty of room for God’s Spirit.

If we will come among the blessed and thrive in holiness, then we will take on the light and easy yoke of Jesus and let him teach us the one thing we must know above all else: He is the Christ sent by the Father so that we might have eternal life. This is not the end of our spiritual journey; it is just the beginning. Christ’s warnings about the wise and learned are not meant to push a kind of anti-intellectualism, a know-nothing party of prejudice and blindness. In fact, it is because we are first weighted down with the feather-light wisdom of Jesus’ yoke that we must then come to understand our faith, to use our graced minds to explore and comprehend God’s creation—ourselves and everything else. If we are emptied of the deeds of the flesh and infused with the Spirit of God, then our bodies too are graced, and we have nothing to fear from the mind, nothing to worry about in seeking out knowledge and understanding. To know God’s creation better is to know God Himself better, and when we know God better and better, we become smaller and smaller and more and more ready to receive the only revelation we need to come to Him, the only burden from Him we must carry: Jesus is the Christ!

*Sermon 126, my version

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Why do you believe?

St. Thomas the Apostle

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Priory, NOLA

We've given Doubting Thomas the wrong nickname. We should call him “Denying Thomas.” His denial couldn't be clearer: “I will NOT believe.” He doesn't say, “Huh. Well, maybe, but I'll need a little more evidence to be sure.” He says, “I will not believe.” His denial sounds eerily modern, almost scientific in its demand for material proof. This must've shocked his fellow apostles. He's seen and heard everything they've seen and heard. He's been with Jesus almost from the start. Did he give any indication before this that he didn't believe his Teacher's revelations about his own mission? How he would die? Rise? Return and ascend? Maybe Denying Thomas' denial is prompted by grief or despair. Maybe he's distraught and just not thinking clearly. Regardless, he gets his material proof and comes to believe. But Jesus seems less than delighted at this turn of events: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” You can almost hear a disappointed sigh in there somewhere. Denying Thomas' story of conversion gives us an annual opportunity to closely examine the basis of our own assent to the Good News as handed-on by the Apostles. If asked, “Why do you believe?” what would you say? I've seen the wounds of Christ in the flesh? That would be amazing. . .and highly suspicious! Maybe you'd say, “This is the belief instilled in me by my family and reinforced by my social group.” OK. Less amazing, not suspicious. . .but meh. . .not exactly a rousing endorsement of a faith that, if rightly lived, promises persecution and death. Could you say, “I've experienced the life-giving grant of mercy for my sins”? Better. But deeply personal and difficult to translate for those for whom sin is an illusion. Another Thomas tells us that belief is the assent of the intellect to Truth w/o the need for empirical evidence. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” This means that belief is dangerous. It requires commitment, a willingness to throw in w/o any material guarantees for eventual success or reward. It means taking on by witness alone the fullness of God's Self-Revelation and living one's life accordingly. No guide wires, no safety net; nothing but trust and the sure hope that you've bet on the right divine horse. Denying Thomas needed more than trust or hope. He needed proof. But we know that what needs proving, daily testing, is our faith.

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Courage, child!

13^th Week OT (R)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Dominic Priory, NOLA

The Great Physician treats his paralyzed patient's paralysis as both a physical and spiritual dis-ease. Our Lord forgives his sins, and his body is freed to move as it should. This treatment is astonishing enough – certainly astonishing enough to infuriate Jesus' religious enemies – but what's more astonishing is what, or rather who, motivated the Lord to heal the paralytic in the first place. The man himself didn't ask to be healed. His friends asked for healing on his behalf. Seeing his friends' faith, the Lord says, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” That this man is healed on the strength of his friends' faith is a great sign of hope for us. Not only are we freed to ask for healing for ourselves but we are also freed to ask for healing for one another, and to receive that healing regardless of who asks for it. This is how the Body, the Church, works – not as atomized individuals, floating around each to his own in a Just Me and Jesus relationship, but as a single, faithful organism pointed irrevocably toward a supernatural end. Are we suitably struck with awe that this healing authority has been given to us?

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Calming the Storm 2.0

13^th Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Priory, NOLA

We used to ask the Lord to protect us from “all anxiety.” Now, we ask to be “safe from all distress.” Both translations come from the Latin, ab omni perturbatione securi, from all perturbations, secure us. The aquatic perturbations scaring the disciples to death demonstrate in dramatic form the point Jesus has been making for some time in his public ministry – fear and faith are not compatible. Faith necessarily entails trusting in divine providence that all will work out as it should. Not necessarily how we want. . .how it should. And that level of letting go can create its own layer of anxiety and fear. Jesus reprimands his seasick students: “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” The clear implication here is that faith overcomes fear. If you have faith, you won't be afraid. Or, better: faith transforms fear into courage. Thanks be to God, faith doesn't require us to abandon reason. Neither does it require us to abandon planning or taking precautions. What it does require is that we surrender control. Be reasonable. Plan accordingly. Take precautions. But at the same time surrender whatever control you think you have. The disciples freaking out didn't calm the storm. Their day-planners and Google calendars didn't calm the storm. All their preparations and precautions didn't calm the storm. Their fear, anxiety, distress – none of those calmed the storm. Jesus did.

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Calming the storm

13^th Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Priory, NOLA

We used to ask the Lord to protect us from “all anxiety” after the Our Father. Now, we ask to be “safe from all distress.” Both translations come from the Latin, ab omni perturbatione securi, from all perturbations, secure us. The aquatic perturbations scaring the disciples to death demonstrate in dramatic form the point Jesus has been making for some time in his public ministry – fear and faith are not compatible. Faith necessarily entails trusting in divine providence that all will work out as it should. Not necessarily how we want. . .how it should. And that level of letting go can create its own layer of anxiety and fear. Jesus reprimands his seasick students: “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” The clear implication here is that faith overcomes fear. If you have faith, you won't be afraid. But is this true? Fr. John told us last week about a woman w/no mask at Mass. When he confronted her, she said, “Where's your faith, Father?” Faith doesn't require us to abandon reason. Neither does it require us to abandon planning and taking precautions. What it does require is that we surrender control. Be reasonable. Plan accordingly. Take precautions. But at the same time surrender whatever control you think you have. The disciples' freakout didn't calm the storm. Their calendars didn't calm the storm. All their preparations and precautions didn't calm the storm. Jesus did.

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Who does Christ say you are?

Peter and Paul

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Dominic Priory, NOLA

I trust that if the Risen Christ walked into this chapel this morning, he would not need to ask a bunch of Dominican friars, “Who do [you] people say that the Son of Man is?” Presumably and most assuredly, we know. The more provocative question for us to ask him would be, “Who does the Son of Man say that I am, that we are?” I hope we would be disappointed and distraught if he said, “You are administrators and professors; religious hobbyists and social workers.” As Pope Francis has said more than once – Jesus did not die on the cross to establish a religiousy NGO. He died, rose, and ascended so that we might become Christs for the salvation of the world. That's a big job. But it's one we've all taken on freely. It is a day-to-day thing for the Body to bear witness and bring the Word to the world. Thanks be to God, we do not have to do the job alone. We have millions of other as yet imperfect Christs to lend a hand. So, if the Risen Christ walks into this chapel, and we ask, “Lord, who do you say we are?” Can he say, in all honesty and sincerity, “You are Christs, Sons of the living God”?

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Loving God is the Cross We Bear

13^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

AUDIO FILE

Scripture tells us that we live and move and have our being in God. Scripture also tells us that God is love. It follows then that we live and move and have our being in love, Divine Love. What this means practically is that our very existence – that we ARE at all – is a loving act of God. So, any person, place, thing, or activity that we say we love, we are able to love only b/c God loved us first. This is the point Jesus is making when he surprises us by saying, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” This surprising bit of apparent egoism from Jesus reveals a larger, more fundamental truth about who we are as creatures and what we are capable of. Because we are made in love and made to love, but are also fallen and often disordered in who and what we love, we can make idols of things; we can love other created things as if they were the sources of Divine Love. Therefore, we are not worthy of Christ; we do not take up our crosses; we fail to receive him when we choose to love things before we first love God. To get our lives properly re-ordered toward our eternal end, we must first love God, and Him above all.

 

When we love God first and above all else, all of our other loves make perfect sense. You love your parents, your spouse, your children. You love your neighbors, your co-workers, even strangers. You love your hobbies; you love your job – maybe? If these loves are properly ordered – that is second to and below your love for God – then loving these things become your way of loving God. Loving the things of this world in order to love God is how we avoid loving God in the abstract. Very few things are more damaging to your spiritual life than “loving God” in theory and then hating your neighbor in practice. In fact, hating your neighbor in practice IS hating God. In theory and in practice. We cannot get away from the necessity of willing the Good for all of God's children. Even trying to do so is spiritually damaging. How? Because you and I were created in God's love and re-created in Christ's sacrificial love, so trying to figure out a way to love God while hating our neighbor is just another version of hating ourselves. . .and God. That path does not lead to the Narrow Gate. 

 

The path leading to the Narrow Gate is straight and flat. Jesus says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” How do you lose your life? And how do you lose it for the sake of Christ? You lose your life in baptism. You left the Old Man behind in the baptismal waters. Christ re-created you, a New Man, a New Woman, and you are now not only freed from sin and death but you are also gifted with the freedom to never sin again. In other words, you are free to love perfectly as Christ loves you. And that's how you lose your life for the sake of Christ. Loving perfectly. Loving in the proper order: God first, above all; then your brothers and sisters in Christ (“the little ones”) and then the things of this world. And here's where our dreaded crosses come into play. By loving the things of this world in light of God's love, we set ourselves apart. We set ourselves against the world b/c the people and things of this world want to be loved on their terms, by their own rules. And this makes us objects of scorn and abuse. On their terms and by their rules, love often means accepting sin; approving disobedience; and celebrating disordered passions. This we cannot do and live in properly ordered love. And b/c we cannot love as they want us to, we are called haters, bigots, much, much worse.

That's a cross we must bear. The temptation, of course, is to just surrender to the mob and love them as they want to be loved. But that makes us partners in their sin. Worse, it makes us traitors to Christ and the life he won for us by his death. Our witness to the world must come from our individual and corporate participation in Divine Love – not from race, class, gender identity, political party, sexual orientation, or any other ideological label that the worldly spirits use to divide us. It is no easy task to endure genuine rage and acts of violence when we stand with Christ and his re-creating love. But that is what we are called to. That is what we have vowed to do. We have upon us the prophet's task of standing firm in God's love and showing the spirits of this world that there is nothing mightier available to us that the saving mercy of our Father's love. He sets free. He saves. He makes right. And He gives life eternal. Properly ordered, loving God brings each one of us into the fullness of His righteousness and empowers us to go out there and bear witness to His truth and goodness. With Christ along, that cross is lightly carried and swiftly brought to victory.

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Be no wider than Christ

12^th Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Dominic Priory, NOLA

Jesus says that the gate to the Kingdom is narrow. As an Ample Friar, I want to know why. Why can't the gate be deep and wide? For that matter, why is there a gate in the first place? Why not just take down any and all barriers to the Kingdom? If we see the gate – even metaphorically – as an obstacle outside the human heart and mind, we're likely to think that God is being stingy with his entry visas. But that can't be case b/c we know we were created and re-created for heaven. So, what is this gate? It is a measure of how we have or have not received the Father's graces. A measure of how we have or have not put those graces to work for the salvation of souls. The more and better I put on Christ, the less there is of me to squeeze through the gate. It is Christ in me that passes through. For example, the Beatitudes tell us about those who have decreased so that Christ might increase in them. They are called “Blessed” b/c they are small in the world but large with Christ. When we run after applause, prestige, and influence all in the cause of becoming god w/o God, we refuse the graces the Father freely gives us, becoming bloated with pride and envy, displacing Christ with sin. The gate to the Kingdom appears to us to be deep and wide to accommodate our spiritual girth. I mean, why wouldn't God want someone as wonderful as Me in His Kingdom!? Jesus answers, yes, that gate is indeed wide but the broad road leading to it takes you to destruction. The narrow gate is built to fit Christ, so we can be no more than him.

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Careful how you measure!

12^th Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Anthony's, NOLA

You're having a discussion with a friend about abortion or same-sex marriage or some other controversial topic. You note that the behavior under discussion is a sin. And your friend declares with great self-righteousness, “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first!” Now you're wondering if you're guilty of violating Jesus' command to stop judging. What does Jesus mean here by “stop judging”? We need to distinguish btw naming a sin and finding a person guilty of sin. Naming a sin is simply what it sounds like. This behavior X is sinful. Lying is sinful. Killing is sinful. Stealing is sinful. We are saying nothing more than “abstractly considered, X is a sin.” No one has been judged guilty. No one has been condemned as a sinner. What Jesus is commanding us to stop doing is finding a particular person guilty of committing a sin. Sally lied. Bob killed. Becky stole. When we do this, we're saying – in essence – I can read the soul of another person and know /hisher intent and the circumstances of his/her behavior. I know his heart; I know her mind. That's not possible. You can only know your own intent and circumstances. This is why we say in the confessional, “I accuse myself of the following sins. . .”

 

To help us stop judging others as sinful, Jesus gives us a warning, “For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” That should give you chills if you're prone to finding others guilty of sin. The standard you're using to find others guilty will be the standard used to judge you when the time comes. The smart to do is to stop “soul-reading” and start asking yourself daily, “How do I want to be judged on Judgment Day?”

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Fear nothing

 

12^th Sunday (OT)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Diocese of Alexandria

Fear protects us. Fear makes us sensible animals when we are in danger. Our bodies are threatened by injury, disease, and death with every breath we draw, with every step we take. Being afraid—being cautious, careful—is one way God gives us to defend ourselves against recklessness, attack, disease, and accident. When faced with the probability of bodily harm, we run or we fight. Either way, we hope to survive. And if we survive, we count ourselves extraordinarily skilled, or maybe just plain lucky. Regardless, we’re alive to confront the next possibility of injury or death. Fear protects us. Fear makes us sensible animals. But we’re not here to be sensible animals. At least, we’re not here only to be sensible animals. We have to consider as well that gift from God which makes us most like Him: our being as it was created and is recreated in His likeness and image. Given the divine end programmed into us at our creation, we are much, much more than sacks of flesh and blood and bone. We are enfleshed souls with a purpose, rational animals with a single goal. Fear blocks our best efforts at achieving that goal. Fear makes us weak in light of our mission. Ultimately, fear is spiritual death. It kills our best chance—our only chance!—of coming to God. Therefore, Jesus says to the Twelve: “Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known…Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.” He adds rather ominously: “…whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” Fear tempts us to deny Christ; fear pushes us to reject God’s providence.

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, preaches on the origins of death, arguing that sin and death entered into creation with the disobedience of our first father and mother, Adam and Eve. Believing that they could achieve heaven on their own, our first parents took on an awareness of good and evil that our heavenly Father wished to deny them. In other words, by disobeying God they chose death as their immediate goal, throwing away the original justice they enjoyed from God in Eden. Paul writes, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men…death reigned from Adam to Moses…after the pattern of the trespass of Adam.” 

 

What is this pattern of trespass? Patterns repeat. Like houses built from the same blueprint, our trespasses against God look the same. Over and over—like our first father—we run after that which we think, we feel is best for us. And over and over again—like all of our ancestors in faith—we fall on our faces, suffering the consequences and wondering what went wrong. Most of the time, we act because we fear inaction; we makes decisions because we fear indecision. In deciding and acting outside the will of the Father for us, we deny His rule and both the natural and supernatural results are always disastrous. This is why Jesus tells the Twelve: “…do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” 

 

Because we are loved by Love Himself, we have been given a gift to use against death. Adam lost our original justice in disobedience, but our Father has restored that justice in Christ. Paul writes: “For if by the transgression of [Adam] the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” Knowing this truth and his mission to save us from sin and death, Jesus says, “Fear no one.” What is there to fear? In every instance that we might find ourselves confronted by injury, disease, or death, God is with us; His Christ reigns. Jesus, using an absurd example, teaches the Twelve: “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without our Father’s knowledge…So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” And yet, we fear. We worry. We wring our hands and nurse our ulcers with dread. For the spiritual animal, fear is death.

But surely we must worry! We have responsibilities. We’ve made promises. Signed contracts. Sworn allegiances. Besides, Australia is burning. Food is becoming more expensive. Marriage and the family are under attack. Christians are being arrested for teaching the faith. Children are suing parents. Disease is rampant. Whole continents are starving. There are civil wars, invasions, terrorist attacks, looting and rioting. All sorts of creatures – including humans – are being born deformed because of global environment pollution. We continue to believe that killing our children is the answer is overpopulation and the best way to remove inconvenient human obstacles to middle-class prosperity. We have to worry! We do? Really, we have to be worried? Has worry increased food production? Cleaned up our water supply? Stopped the killing of millions of babies? No. No amount of anxiety or fear will bring to light that which is concealed in darkness. We can wring our hands and cry until the Second Coming and nothing will change for the better. Does this sound defeatist? Quietist? Maybe. But that’s hardly the point.

Paul writes, “…the gift is not like the transgression,” meaning the gift of Christ’s life for our eternal salvation is not like the deadly transgression of Adam. Adam sinned and we all die. Christ died and we all live. Does this mean that we will be spared hunger, thirst, disease, war, natural disaster? No, it doesn’t. Does this mean that we can live comfortably in our gated communities out of harm’s reach, quietly consuming, blissfully ignorant? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that we are focused on a goal beyond the contingencies of this life, a goal that from the other end of history provides us with the meaning of our creation and charges us with acting boldly now to do what we can to right the wrongs of our sins. We will not end hunger. But we must feed the hungry. We will not end war. But we must make peace. We will not cure every disease. But we must care for those who suffer. Our job now is to face the tasks of righteous living without fear, to do everything we can in charity to speak the truth, shed His light, proclaim the healing Word, and to die knowing that we every word we have spoken, every decision we have made, everything we have done has been an acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord. Our gift to a tragically sinful world is Christ’s gift to his tragically sinful Church: words and deed that speak to the love of a Father well-beyond our worries and fear, the mercy of a God who will bring all things into His kingdom, and make right every wrong. So, do not be afraid, each one of us is worth more to our Father than the whole of creation itself.

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Asking is receiving

11^th Week OT (R)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Dominic Priory, NOLA

When you water a garden – the hose gets wet before the plants do. So it is with prayer: the first beneficiary of prayer is the one praying. Surely this is why we pray. Not to change God's mind on a specific issue. Not to magically wrangle Him into granting a wish list. But to better tune ourselves to receive the graces He has given us from all eternity. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” These graces roll out over time, showing up when we need them not just when we want them. So, it's best to be prepared daily to receive the bread He sends; to be open to hearing and doing His will daily; to forgive and be forgiven daily. We do this in our ordinary way through petition – by asking for what we need. But asking for what we need could lead us to believe that we are being deprived or ignored when what we ask for doesn't arrive. Jesus reminds us that asking is receiving, receiving whatever it is the Father is sending our way. So, we ask and we receive. And we benefit in the asking. How do we benefit? Over time, we become His will on earth as it is in Heaven.

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