Praying to Yourself

AUDIO FILE

30^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St Anthony/OLR, NOLA

The tax collector prays to God. The Pharisee prays to himself. What difference does this difference make? Self-righteous prayer attempts to change God, while righteous prayer changes the one praying. In our desire to gain and maintain control of our lives – lives that do not belong to us in the first place – we can forget a basic theological truth: Nothing we can do, say, feel, or think changes God. We live and move and have our being in Him. He does not live and move and have His being in us. We are His creatures; He is our Creator. Prayer is one way that we align our will with His. Therefore, Christian prayer is not a form of persuasion; a way of bargaining, or a means of pestering God into giving us what we think we need or want. Christian prayer is not a magic spell, or a spiritual recipe, or a religious formula that can bend God to our will. We cannot trick God with novenas or litanies, nor can we browbeat Him with adoration or processions. None of these forms of prayer are designed to change God's mind or influence Him in the least. Jesus shows us that prayer changes the heart and mind of the one praying. And that righteous prayer is always prayed in genuine humility.

The first step in praying with genuine humility is coming to know and love God as His creature; that is, acknowledging and accepting that we are made beings, beings made in His image and likeness and re-made in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Man was created from dirt with the breath of God – body and soul. Remembering that we are dirt and that we will return to dirt, and living out that memory, is what it means to be humble. Genuine humility makes it possible for us to get out of our own way and receive all that God has to give us. We set aside our wants, our perceived needs. We set aside the need to control our lives and the lives of others. We give up the lie that we know what's best for us and ours. Above all, we accept that our end – our target – is not in this world or of this world. We are here temporarily, and nothing we do, say, think, or feel will last long after we die. So while we are here, our task is bear witness to the mercy of God, giving testimony from our own lives how He has made us His heirs, His children, through Christ Jesus. Our adoption into the Holy Family is a gift not a reward for good behavior or right-thinking. But a freely offered gift that we freely receive or freely reject. Prayer is our means of giving thanks and growing in humility.

The second step in praying in humility is coming to know and love all of God's creation, especially His sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters in Christ. The self-righteous Pharisee fails to love the tax-collector, judging him to be “greedy, dishonest, adulterous.” How does the Pharisee make this judgment? He says, “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” In our self-righteousness, we might say, “I attend daily Mass. Go to confession once a week. Pray the rosary twice a day. And serve on the parish council.” So??? None of this makes you or me righteous. If we attend Mass, go to confession, pray the rosary, and serve on the parish council in order to be seen, to be noticed by the greedy, dishonest, and adulterous sinners who don't deserve God's mercy, then our humility is suffocated by self-righteousness, and we pray to ourselves not to God. To know and love all of God's creation, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, is not about calling sin good. It's about seeing in them and ourselves the desperate need for God's mercy and offering to them (and ourselves) the witness we all need to come out of sin and to surrender ourselves to Divine Love. The humble pray knowing they are sinners.

The last step in praying with humility is coming to know and love ourselves as redeemed sinners; that is, as loved and saved creatures of Love Himself. Genuine humility is never about self-degradation. It's never about torturing ourselves into believing that we are worthless. Remember: we are made from dirt with the breath of God. Genuine humility requires that we remember both elements of our creation: the dirt and the divine breath. When we forget that we are dirt, we end up believing ourselves to be god w/o God. That's pride. That's the lie the Serpent whispered to Eve. But when we forget that we are also of the divine breath, we end up believing ourselves to be just dirt. That is also pride. We leave God out of our lives, living as if He has no part to play in how we came to be or where we need to go. The balance is struck when we genuinely humble ourselves and exalt God. God doesn't need our exaltation, but we need to exalt Him in order to remain humble. This is why Jesus teaches us, “. . .whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Pray like the redeemed sinner you are.

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Be a Bullheaded Pray-er

Audio File

29^th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
OLR, NOLA

Pray always. Pray always without ceasing. Pray always without ceasing, AND do not grow weary. Is there anything we can do always and without ceasing that doesn't make us grow weary? Even those things that we love to do will eventually grind us down, so why should prayer be any different? Why wouldn't a ceaseless conversation with God wear us out? The intense focus required. Memories stoking conscious thought. Fingers counting out beads. Bowing, kneeling, standing, maybe even crawling, only to stand again and genuflect. Why doesn't a ceaseless conversation with God wear us out? Maybe it should. But it doesn't. Perseverance in prayer – always, without ceasing – cannot weary us b/c prayer is our direct line to the source and summit, the center and ground of our being: God who is Love Himself.

Pray always, without ceasing and do not grow weary. Be persistent, persevering in prayer. That sounds good. It sounds like the sort of advice we want to hear from the pulpit. We want to hear our preachers exhort us to be persistent, to be persevering, but let's be frank with one another. Words like “persistent” and “perseverance” are just the polite substitutes we use to disguise a vulgar truth: a successful prayer-life requires a bull-headedness. I mean something akin to the sort of stubbornness that we expect from a rented mule. If you will live a life in God's blessing, weariness is not an option. Why not? B/c the stakes are too high. B/c the costs of laxity are too great. Consider: prayer does nothing to change the mind of God. Prayer changes the one praying. If we cannot or will not recognize the blessings that God has poured out for us, it's likely b/c we have failed to be stubborn enough in using prayer to open our own eyes to see. His gifts never stop coming; they never cease flowing. If we will to see and receive His gifts, our prayer can never cease. Gratitude must always be on our lips.

Writing to his disciple, Timothy, Paul urges, “Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed. . .I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. . .proclaim the word; be persistent. . .” Remain faithful; be persistent. Why this focus on endurance, tenacity? Aren't we called as Christians to be tolerant and flexible? Aren't we supposed to be willing to compromise in conflict? That's what “love your neighbor” is all about, right? I mean, how do we love others and at the same time remain faithful to what we have learned, if what we have learned conflicts with Christ's command to love? When we love our neighbors, we participate in Love who is God Himself. He is also Truth and Goodness, so we can only love in the presence of the True and the Good. Paul's admonition to remain faithful and to persist in the Truth is a warning to us not to forget that we are vowed to proclaim the Word. We can only fulfill our vow if we stubbornly refuse to surrender our direct line to Love Himself, only if we tenaciously guard against the temptation to compromise what we have learned and believe.

How do we keep the weapon of prayer honed and well-oiled? By using it. What happens when we become distracted in prayer? Those aren't distractions you're experiencing. That's the Holy Spirit showing you who and what needs prayer. What about those dry periods when it appears that God isn't hearing us? He always hears us. Dryness comes when we aren't listening. The surest way of ending a dry-spell is to turn your prayer to gratitude. Gratitude grows humility and humility unplugs the ears. What about finding the time to pray? If you are still breathing, there's time to pray. Talk to God about washing the dishes; driving the kids to school; paying the bills; cooking dinner; mowing the yard. Keep a running conversation going about whatever it is you're doing. What if we grow weary of prayer? Ask yourself: am I tired of being loved? Am I exhausted by being forgiven? If you grow weary of prayer, then tell God that you are weary and give Him thanks for being alive to feel weary! If all you have to say to God is “O Lord! I am so weary!” then say that. Say it until you're no longer weary and then give Him thanks for the gift of being able to tell Him so.

NB: prayer is not a technique or a method. It takes no special training, no weekend seminar, or bookshelf full of How-To guides. You don't need to learn how to pray b/c God taught you to pray the moment you were conceived. He engraved into each one of us an indelible desire to seek Him out and live Him forever. In other words, in the great game of life, God made the first move and He continues to make the first move with every breath we take. If we're to be stubborn in prayer, then all we need to do is make each and every breath an exhalation of thanksgiving and praise. Breath in His gifts, breath out our gratitude. If you grow weary of prayer, then I must ask: have you grown weary of breathing? We live, move, have our being in the enduring presence of Love Himself. Prayer is no more difficult than seeing, hearing, touching, feeling His presence as we live and move. Stubbornly refuse then to be moved from His loving-care and just as stubbornly give Him constant thanks. 

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Tenacious Christian Bulldog

Audio Link

28^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

I grew up in rural Mississippi with more or less tradition-minded Baptist parents. My younger brother and I learned from Day One to say “yessir/no sir,” “please,” “thank you,” “excuse me.” Failure to express proper respect or gratitude earned a swift and terrible rebuke. I still use “Mr.” and “Ms” when addressing adults, and I cringe a little when people call me by my first name w/o asking, or shorten it to “Phil.” It's all very old-fashioned, I know, but there's something about the habits of good manners that makes life easier. In the case of the healed leper, his deeply felt sense of gratitude actually saves him! He discovers – probably to his great surprise – that giving God thanks for his healing is not only the polite thing to do but a way to salvation as well. For us, the baptized, giving God thanks for His blessings is way to persevere, a way to remain in Christ and thus end our earthly pilgrimage reigning with him in the Kingdom. Is it possible that the good manners many of us were taught as children is what remains of this spiritual insight? Saying “thank you,” especially to God, is a path to healing and salvation.

We hear Paul say to Timothy: “If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him.” That persevering part is what most of us find difficult. Dying with him in the waters of baptism was easy. Living with him has its challenges, but we manage it with the sacraments. Persevering with him however is on another level entirely. Persevering here means staying close to Christ. Hanging on to him through the best and the worst. Living with him whether we “feel” his presence or not. Perseverance is the good habit of being tenacious in faith when every fiber of your being is screaming at you: “Compromise! Just fit in! Surrender! This is too hard!” Have you seen that video of a bull dog swinging himself around a tree, teeth clamped on the end of a rope? The rope will break, or the tree will fall before that dog lets go. That's tenacity. That's perseverance. Now, I wouldn't trust my teeth to hang on like a bull dog's. But I do trust that gratitude is the key to staying close to Christ. The leper proves this. Christ teaches this. And I can bear personal witness that giving God thanks for His blessings is essential in our long trek to holiness.

 

As a priest in an academic ministry, I don't have my own parish to run, so I spend a lot of time going out to parishes to hear confessions, give missions or talks, and basically just visiting with people over all the archdiocese. Every time I go out, I hear a lot of anxiety about the Church. I get confused questions about the faith. Angry comments about the news coming out of Rome. Questions and doubts about the future. Just generally an overwhelming sense that things aren't well with the Body of Christ. Something is wrong, something is upsetting the peace we've come to expect from following Christ. In response, I have to sharply suppress my professorial instincts and avoid giving a lecture on the history of the Church. No one wants to hear how good we have it compared to, say, the Church in communist China. Then I have to swallow the need to remind folks that the “peace of Christ” comes with a promise of persecution. What I usually end up saying is that difficult times require a bull dog's tenacity. It might be too much to say that we're being tested. But – we're being tested. Not tested in the sense that God is deliberately trying to scare us or trip us up. But tested in the sense that steel is tested under pressure to measure its purity and strength. Our test is measuring the purity and strength of our gratitude. If you will to endure with Christ, you will be grateful to God for His blessings.

You might ask here: why does God need our gratitude? The answer is: He doesn't. Giving God thanks does nothing for God b/c He needs nothing from us. Our desire to give Him thanks is itself a gift that benefits us alone. In other words, we are doing ourselves a favor by returning thanks for all that God gives us. Failing to give thanks breeds entitlement – I am owed. And entitlement is the rich soil of pride. If we nurture pride by failing in gratitude, we end up denying Christ – the ultimate gift from God. We end up being among the nine lepers who were healed but not saved. Ungrateful wretches living lives of resentment and anger b/c they believe that God owes them a debt. As followers of Christ, our best means of staying close to Christ is to be a tenacious Christian bull dog, refusing to let go of gratitude.

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We've been warned

Audio File

26^th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

All rich people go to hell when they die; and all poor people are whisked off to heaven by angels at death. Right? Rich people go to hell b/c they are rich, and poor people to heaven b/c they are poor. God hates the rich, and loves the poor, so this must be the case. . .just as our story this morning shows us. BUT our story this morning shows us no such thing. So, why does the rich man end up in hell and Lazarus in heaven? Abraham tells the rich man to remember that he – the rich man – received what was good in his lifetime and Lazarus received what was bad. Again, this doesn't seem quite right. Are we punished or rewarded for what life gives us (good or bad), or for what we have done or failed to do? The key to this parable is to start with the ending. The rich man begs Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers about hell. Abraham says that that have Moses and the Prophets to warn them. The rich man says that if someone they know is dead would appear and warn them, they would listen. Abraham, giving us the meaning of the parable says, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” Why is the rich man in hell? He did not listen to Moses and the Prophets.

And since he did not listen to Moses and the Prophets, he failed to do all that God had asked him to do as a man abundantly blessed. Now, the obvious question: what did Moses and the Prophets tell the rich man – and everyone else in the Jewish world – to do? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, free the oppressed, tend the widow and orphan; and honor and obey the Lord your God. In other words, those who have been most blessed by the Lord are obligated in turn to bless those who have not been so blessed. St Paul adds a few additional elements to these commands, writing, “you, man of God, pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. . .I charge you before God, who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus. . .to keep the commandment without stain or reproach. . .” Which commandment? To love God and neighbor as Christ loves us. God abundantly gifted the rich man and he failed to abundantly gift those who had nothing. This principle applies to material blessings as well as spiritual blessings. If you have been blessed with material and/or spiritual gifts, you are obligated – in the name of Christ – to share those blessings.

This whole Sharing the Blessings Thing is part of God's plan for salvation. This isn't about social justice or political equality or economic fairness. It's about your salvation and your growth in holiness. God the Father breathed over the void. He breathed the Holy Spirit, speaking one Word: Christ. The creation of the universe in Christ and its recreation in his sacrifice tells us that the diffusion, the sharing of goodness, truth, and beauty is fundamental to how God made us and intends to bring us back to Him made perfect. The rich man is given much so that he might effect his salvation in giving more. Lazarus is given heaven b/c he suffers now from having so little. Both men have the same chance to attend the wedding feast, but only one perfects his gifts on earth – Lazarus. You and I have been given the greatest gift possible: forgiveness of our sins, freedom from sin and death. Do you share this gift? Do you bear witness – out loud – to the fact that you have been reborn in water and spirit to life everlasting? I could ask as well: do you freely share the material wealth you have been given? Make no mistake. Nothing we have or are belongs to us. All of it, everything belongs to Christ. And he is telling us: give it away. Spread it around.

We are at best temporary keepers of what we have and who we are. To believe otherwise is to believe that there is something or someone more fundamental than our commitment to Christ. And if there is someone or something more fundamental to you than your commitment to Christ, then that is who or what you will become at death. The rich man withheld his riches from Lazarus and died to eternal torment. He hoarded all that God had given him, and found himself deprived of the wedding feast. By his choice. It may sound like a threat now or a punishment later, but it is actually a consequence of how he chose to live. Had he listened – truly obeyed – the words and deeds of Moses and Prophets, he and Lazarus would have shared a feast at the table of the Lord. Our job as followers of Christ is to spread the Father's blessings far and wide. Whether those blessings are material or spiritual, we are charged with the sacred duty of making sure that no one goes physically or spiritually hungry. That everyone with ears to hear and eyes to see meets Christ in our person. We are here this morning to receive the gifts of Christ and then leave here, sowing those gifts like seeds.

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Do not be lost in confusion

25^th Week OT (R)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

Why would the king who murdered John the Baptist be confused by Christ's words and deeds? Why would he be curious about who and what Christ is? Despite his horrible sins, or b/c of them,* Herod is experiencing what all men and women feel – the desire to know and love God. Each human person – from Adam and Eve to infants born just this morning – is created with a longing for union with their Creator. Given his life of sin, Herod experiences this longing as confusion and curiosity. He is both attracted to and repulsed by John's rebuke of his adultery. Now, he hears rumors about a man preaching repentance, and salvation from sin and death. That part of him created to long for union with God is provoked, and he has a decision to make. Like each one of us, he has a choice: repent and turn to Christ, or continue to live in confusion and mere curiosity. For those of us given a supernatural faith at baptism, repentance and turning to Christ is as natural as breathing. So, when you are unsettled, stressed, exhausted, or despairing – turn again to Christ. Repent and embrace your Savior. Or live with Herod, lost and perplexed. 

*Trying to say something too complex here. Decided to omit it.  

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Listen to "Can you be trusted with the faith?"

 Audio link for "Can you be trusted with the faith?"

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Can you be trusted with the faith?

Audio Link

25^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

As a seminary formator I sometimes have to sit one of my guys down and tell him that he needs to get a haircut, or to lose the handle-bar mustache, or to quit smoking, or even – ironically enough – to lose weight. Most of the times these guys nod solemnly and say, “Yes, Father.” Some grumble a bit but comply. And one or two resist and argue that whatever it is that I am asking them to do doesn't make sense or violates some unwritten Bill of Seminarian Rights. I always respond, “Brother, if we can't trust you to obey a simple request to get a hair cut, how can we trust you to keep your ordination promises?” The principle here is universally applicable: “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones.” Replace trustworthy with faithful. The person who is faithful in very small matters is also faithful in great ones. Replace faithful with loving. The person who is loving in very small matters is also loving in great ones. You get the picture. Being virtuous in small matters indicates an ability to be virtuous in larger ones. To be virtuous/faithful/loving in one area of your life but not in another is what it means to serve Two Masters. And what does Jesus say about serving two masters? “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” 

 

Well, why not? Who you to choose to serve defines who you are. In Jesus' day, servants were members of the family, part of the household. They weren't just hired help. If a servant said or did something shameful in public, the family he served would be publicly shamed. The idea here is that the servant holds his family's honor in his hands. He represents the integrity of the family as surely as the oldest son does. This familial set-up is partly why the early Church spread so quickly. If the father of the family was baptized, the whole family, the whole household was baptized, including the servants. A newly baptized servant could not serve his Christian family and, at the same time, continue attending pagan religious rites. If his family served God, and he served his family, then he served God. In other words, he was trusted with the family's faith and honor – in small things and large. And so are we. As members of the Father's household, heirs to His kingdom, we are held to account for the integrity of the faith we profess. We are responsible for upholding the truth, goodness, and beauty of our Father's faith in all things – great and small alike.

So, I ask you: are you trustworthy when it comes to keeping faith with Christ? In matters large and small? Or do you try to serve both God and Mammon, both the Lord and the World? As men and women who are consecrated to the service of God the Father but who must also live in the World, this is an extraordinarily difficult question to answer. What counts as serving the World – obeying secular laws? Paying taxes? Working for a gov't agency? Am I serving the World just by owning a house, or sending my kids to public schools? Think about the household servant in Jesus' day. He works for his family – cleaning, shopping, cooking, maybe even teaching the children. BUT. He is part of the family. Who he is is bound up with his family and their faith. In modern terms we might say that his identity as a person is tied to tightly to the family that he is no one without them and their faith. Do you serve the World in the way this man serves his household? Is your identity tied so tightly to worldly things and thoughts that you become no one without the stuff and noise of the World? If so, then you are trying to serve two masters. “[You] will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”

As men and women consecrated to the service of God the Father we are entrusted with a Word that brings salvation to sinners. We are empowered to bear witness to God's mercy. We are charged with offering acceptable spiritual sacrifices and proclaiming the perfections of Christ. We are privileged to celebrate the sacraments of Christ and receive his healing help. We are made children of the Father and heir to His kingdom. Such greatness have we been given! Christ trusts us – each one of us – to complete his mission. To make known the manifold wisdoms of God and show those who will see that sin and death no longer hold the slaver's whip. And that whatever chains they may still wear they wear in ignorance and sloth. Christ trusts us – each one of us – to complete his ministry. To teach and preach the merciful Word to those with ears to hear. To shout out in word and deed that their freedom was not free. . .but to them it is freely given. Are you trustworthy in all things – great and small alike – to spend the faith Christ has given you? To purchase for God men and women hungry for the peace of Christ?

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Don't get lost

24^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

Here's the upshot of our three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son: if you're lost, you can found. As long as someone is looking and you want to be found, you will be found. Jesus isn't talking about being physically lost here like lost in a strange city w/o a working GPS. He's talking about being lost along The Way, lost off the path to holiness and salvation. This kind of being lost is the worse kind b/c it can end in being eternally lost. So, Jesus wants us to know that God the Father never stops looking. He never ceases searching for us. God the Father is always prepared to welcome us back, to take us in, and give us everything we need to become part of His family again. But we have want to be found. We have to will to come back. The wandering sheep is lost but doesn't know its lost. Same goes for the missing coin. The lost sheep doesn't understand the dangers of falling off a cliff or getting eaten by wolves. The coin doesn't know that it's basically worthless while wedged between floorboards. But the son, the lost son, he knows that being lost, being away from his father has caused him no end of grief. He comes back. He comes back to forgiveness, mercy, and a loving home. And so can we.

It's one thing to wander away from the Church out of neglect or just plain old ignorance. It's quite another to be thrown away from the Church, to be run out of the Church by an angry pastor or haughty parishioners. But to simply walk away, to get lost on purpose is in a whole other realm of Getting Lost. Over my years as a priest I've heard dozens of reasons people give for abandoning the Church. I don't get anything out it. Too much emphasis on boring ritual. Too many hypocrites in the parish. The Church won't celebrate my favorite sin. Always talking about money. All the tradition is gone. Father was mean to me. Too much politics. All religions are basically the same anyway. I could go on for another hour. But each of these is like the lost son taking his abundant inheritance and blowing it on wine, women, and song. Blowing all that he inherited from his father on living it up in the world. And for what? To end up working for a pig farmer and eating what the pigs leave behind. Nearly starving to death on the garbage the world feeds him. Desperate and alone he does the only thing left for him to do. He swallows his excuses and goes home. He expects to find his father in a rage. Instead, he finds forgiveness b/c his father was waiting in love.

You and I are the lost son. Every time we sin, we walk away from the Father. Sometimes it takes nearly starving to death to bring us home. Sometimes it takes being humiliated or nearly ruined to bring us back. Whatever it is that turns us again toward the Father, the Father is always waiting to give us his best cloak and roast up his fattest calf. He wants us to know all this so that no matter how far we run away from Him, He is always right where He has always been. The shepherd leaves 99 sheep to search for the lost one. And he rejoices when he returns home with that sheep across his shoulders. The woman sweeps her whole house looking for one lost coin. And she rejoices with her neighbors when she finds it. The father of the prodigal son rejoices when his boy comes home. Why? Because the son wanted to come home. He willed to return to his family. When you and I want to be found, we will be found b/c God the Father is always right where He has always been.

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