Ready for your motives to be made manifest?

22^nd Week OT (F)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Paul isn't worried about being judged by those he serves. He's happy to let the Lord weigh the evidence against him and announce a verdict. While he's confident of his innocence, he's not putting any serious money on the outcome of his heavenly trial. He'll rely – like we all do – on God's mercy. Paul ends this preface with an admonition: “...do not make any judgment before the appointed time.” A familiar reminder – almost routine – about the futility of pretending to be a judge of the law. As familiar and routine as this reminder is, it's telling that Paul thinks a reminder is necessary. And it is. We'll hear tomorrow about the divisions in the Church of Corinth. Divisions drawn along economic lines. Ideological lines. Moral lines. All sorts of lines that mean nothing in the life of Christ. What these lines represent is the intrusion of Pride into the life of the Church. One faction judging another. Pride leading this group to condemn that one. Paul holds himself and Apollos up as examples of how not to worry about judgment from anyone but Christ. He writes, “[Christ] will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts...” Before you judge, ask yourself: am I ready to have the motives of heart made manifest?

Here's the problem with judgment: it is always motivated. That is, any judgment we make – no matter how serious or benign – is moved by our intellect and will, by our assessment of the True and the Good. If your intellect and will are perfectly, purely aligned and you possess all all Truth and Goodness, then your judgment will also be perfect and pure. But we know that no human person can possess perfect Truth and Goodness while remaining a human person. It follows then that any and every judgment we make is going to be flawed. If you judge your roommate or your classmate or your professor or your priest based on an imperfect Truth and a tainted Goodness, then what comes forth most powerfully is your motivation – that which is most deeply moving you to make such a wrecked judgment. That – whatever it is – is what's going to be made manifest. Imagine your unfiltered, unflavored motivations being splashed all over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, talk radio, and the network news. Complete with a pic, a bio, an address, and a map. If you are confident that your motivations can withstand that kind of raw scrutiny, then maybe you should go right ahead and pass judgment on That Sinner Over There. However, if there's the slightest doubt in your mind that you are not yet perfected in Christ, then you might want to hold off and let the One Who is Truth and Goodness do the judging. Surely, it's enough for now that you and I confess our own sins and let the Lord search our hearts. Our mercy can be mean and sour. His mercy endures forever.        

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Does this shock you?

21^st Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jesus says a lot of crazy stuff in three short years. He's not afraid of offending delicate sensibilities. Nor is he all that concerned about disagreement. When faced with offended objections or outright dissent, he replies – more or less – “It is what it is.” He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, so getting all wee-wee'd up about folks grumbling and walking away isn't worth his time. In fact, saying crazy stuff – crazy-true stuff – serves a useful purpose: it sets a standard for believing, for trusting his Word – if you think my mere words are crazy, what will you think when you see those words come to life? If I can't handle true-words, how can he expect me to handle true-deeds? Maybe it's better for me to walk away now. It's better that I don't commit myself to the Way until I'm mature enough to see and hear what must be seen and heard. Last Sunday, we heard a series of true-words about what it takes to be saved. Jesus told his disciples that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood – true bread and true wine – to attain eternal life. This Sunday morning, some of the disciples describe this teaching as a “hard saying.” He asks them and us: “Does this shock you?”

Of all the crazy-true things Jesus has said over his three years among us, this is definitely the craziest. Not the most shocking. That prize goes the time he said, “I AM,” quoting God from Exodus and laying claim to being God Himself. But telling folks that they must become cannibals is right at the top of the most shocking list. We're not shocked by this teaching. We hear it read at least once a year, sometimes twice. We get that he doesn't mean literal cannibalism. We know he's talking about the Eucharist. We have a whole philosophical and theology edifice built around what it means for Christ to be present among when we worship. So, no, we're not shocked. But his original listeners were. So shocked in fact that many of them walked away. Were they disgusted? Confused? Fed up with Jesus' crazy? All of the above? Regardless, they abandoned him. NB. what Jesus doesn't do. He doesn't rush after them with excuses. He doesn't quickly explain himself or change the teaching to keep them happy. He doesn't accommodate the truth to their already established beliefs. He doesn't conform his Way or his Life to the crowd's expectations. He speaks his true-words. Lets them fall on those ears ready to listen. Watches some leave and some stay. And then he asks those who hesitate: “Do you also want to leave?”

During my novitiate back in 1999-2000, my novice brothers and I got into a really bad habit. Anytime the novice master announced an upcoming activity or event, we'd ask, “Is this mandatory or optional?” This happened a dozen times before the novice master – fed up and very irritated – yelled, “Brothers, it's all optional! Everything we do here is optional! You don't have to be here. The doors aren't locked from the outside. If you want to be here, then be here! If you don't – God bless and good bye.” We got the message loud and clear. This is who Dominicans are and this is what we do. If you can't or won't be or do this, then don't waste your time. Go. Be and do something else. This is the choice those walking away from Jesus make. And he lets them go. That's the freedom God's infinite love for us provides. We trust, or we don't. We love, or we don't. We listen and obey, or we don't. We believe. Or we don't. The how/why/when/who of it all comes with patience, time, and contemplation. But there is no start to understanding w/o trust. Does this shock you? Do you also want to leave?

No? Well, if you will stay, then hear again what Jesus says, “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. . .I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.” And who has been granted this gift? Anyone who receives the Father's gift of mercy, repents, and comes to love sacrificially as Christ did on the Cross. NB. that nothing here compels compliance. Nothing here forces one's will to bend or break. Nothing here punishes or threatens. The doors are not locked from the outside. There's no one waiting on the other side to cuff you and haul you off to Church prison. You've heard Christ's true-words. And you have witnessed his true-deeds. Now, if you are free, you can confidently say with the Church, “I believe.” And you can do this w/o any mental gymnastics. No silent corrections or euphemisms. You can come forward and eat his flesh and drink his blood. Without hesitation. Without anxiety. Like Simon Peter, you can proclaim: “[Master,] you have the words of eternal life. [I] have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” And if you are free and truly believe, then you can go out there, being and doing and speaking his Word. 

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Choosing what a fool desires

20^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

No one chooses to be a fool. No one gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, “I'm going to be a fool today.” However, it is possible to look into that mirror and say, “I want what I want. Consequences be damned.” What happens next is folly. Aquinas tells us that folly opposes wisdom. Folly occurs when an otherwise rational person “plung[es] his sense into earthly things, where his sense is rendered incapable of perceiving Divine things” (ST II-II.46.2). NB. if your sense is occupied with earthly things, it cannot be occupied with divine things. Another way of saying this is: if you are living day in and day out as if there were no divine things to contemplate, no divine truths to ponder, then you are a fool. Thus, Paul warns the Ephesians: “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise...” Good advice. But how do we live as wise persons? He answers, “...do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” To “continue in ignorance” implies that we are ignorant but that we can not be. “Try to understand” implies that we do not yet understand but that we can. Knowing and understanding then are key to being wise. Knowing and understanding free us from folly.

But there is a catch. Knowing and understanding have to be pursued; that is, knowing and understanding must be sought out and lived out. It's not enough to know a truth and understand that truth. For truth to be fully grasped in all its glory, it must be integrated into every decision, every act, every thought. It must be made manifest in the real world in real time. Otherwise, it's just an interesting proposition. A bunch of words. Consider this bunch of words: “...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Next Sunday, we'll read that upon hearing this bunch of words, several of Jesus' disciples walked away from him. He'll watch them leave and ask those left behind: “Do you also want to leave?” Wisely, they did not and stayed the course. But what were they thinking between his question and their answer? Were they contemplating divine things, or had they fallen to folly? Were they spinning Jesus' words into a metaphor or a parable or a test of faith? If he was speaking truth, then how were they going to make that truth manifest in the real world in real time? They all heard the truth. They all saw wisdom in the flesh. The ignorant and confused stayed. Those plunged into worldly things walked away.

We have the same choice to make. Stay or walk away. Be wise or be a fool. Listen one more time: “...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” What are you thinking? Maybe: he means the Eucharist, obviously. Or maybe: he's speaking symbolically; it's a sign. Or maybe: he's talking about how we come together in one Body to reinforce our communal bonds. Or! Or. . .I have no idea what this means fully, but I'm ready to live my life contemplating its truth and acting on that truth. What if all of these thoughts brush the truth but fail to grasp the Mystery fully? What then? Some walk away in shock, choosing folly. Others hang around edges, lobbing questions/objections but refusing to listen to the answers. And some stay, wasting their lives trying to change both the question and the answer. The wise, they stay, content to see their ignorance worn away through contemplation. They know that they do not know. They understand that they do not understand. But they also know and understand that wisdom comes from pondering divine things. No one chooses to be a fool. But many choose the things a fool desires. The wise, they admit ignorance when confronted with divine things. But they will also choose contemplation of those things rather than running away. If you will live, think and pray on this: “...my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” 

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Cannot unmake what God has made

19^th Week OT (F)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The Pharisees ask a technical, legal question. And they want a technical, legal answer. By asking the question the way they did, they reveal themselves to be religious bureaucrats at heart. They may have been trying to lure Jesus into a sectarian dispute btw rival schools of Jewish bureaucrats. Or they could've been asking the question in a naked attempt to trap him. Or maybe both. Regardless of their motivation, they represent a way of looking at God's Law that enslaves the human person rather than frees it. Jesus jumps over the bureaucratese of the question and goes to the theological center of marriage, reaching all the way back to the moment of creation by quoting Genesis: “...the Creator made them male and female and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” And because the man and the woman are made one flesh, he adds, “...what God has joined together, man must not separate.” Marriage does not result from a policy-decision or a court ruling or any enacted law. It is a creature of the Creator never to be unmade.

Now, being good 21^st c. Americans and Catholics, we are all likely running through our heads right now some of the reasons divorce might a good idea. Adultery. Financial/physical abuse. Abandonment. We can be experts at finding exceptions that give us what we think we want. To this Jesus says, “Moses allowed you to divorce...because of the hardness of your hearts.” IOW, Moses made divorce possible only b/c he knew that the human heart is always prepared to defy God's will. He set in place a procedure for unmaking what God had made. Now, the Pharisees have to argue about the terms of that bureaucratic procedure. And lose themselves in footnotes, definitions, distinctions, and precedents. All this policy minutiae keeps them busy, allowing them to set aside the deeper question: can we as creatures unmake what God has made? We can kill, certainly. Ignore. Redefine and reframe. But we cannot unmake. We cannot take something made and make it as if it were never made. Jesus' answer to the Pharisees on the question of divorce answers a whole host of unasked questions. He's taking us back to the moment of creation and showing us that everything that IS is for a reason, a purpose and nothing we can do can undo that. He's placing front and center the necessity of recognizing and acknowledging that for us there is no denying the Real.

That sounds all groovy and such. The Real. Who in their right mind denies The Real? No one. But we do it everyday, thus revealing that we are not always working with right minds. Think about how often you hear The Real defined away. Killing innocent life in the womb is called “reproductive health care.” Surgically and chemically altering a male body to appear female is called “gender affirming care.” Riots are called “mostly peaceful protests” and foreign wars are called “police actions.” And marriage gets a shiny new definition via judicial fiat. If marriage is just a sentence written in ink on paper, then divorce can be nothing less. Just as easily and arbitrarily re-created. But the question Jesus puts to us remains: can we as creatures unmake what God has made? No. We can make ourselves think we've unmade The Real. We can pretend and behavior accordingly. But the simple truth is The Real doesn't change just b/c we wish it away. Like God Himself and his merciful will, it remains. It remains for us to discover, explore, and obey. That's the way to peace. The only way to salvation.

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Getting started on humility

19^th Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We spend the first 18 to 21 years of our lives rushing to grow up. All that “adult freedom” looks great on the childhood/adolescent side of aging. It takes about five years or so after reaching adulthood to realize that the grass is not only not greener but a lot more expensive and stress-inducing. After a mortgage, a full-time job, kids, monthly bills, a failing body, and all the social expectations around “adult behavior,” who wouldn't opt to return to childhood and just stay there? Well, we can't un-age ourselves, but we can return to the glories that make childhood spiritually rewarding. We can surrender to God's providence; give thanks for His gifts; and set ourselves on a path of obedience and humility. Jesus pulls a child into the middle of his disciples and says, “...unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.” I hope the disciples blushed at hearing this. They were worried about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom. Anyone worried about being great in the Kingdom has a ways to go in humility. So, how do they get started?

First, understand that being in the Kingdom and serving the King is never about you. That is, service is not about your preferences, your agenda, or your ego; nor is service your mission or your ministry. Our gifts are on loan to the Church from our rightful owner, Christ. Second, there is no place in service for ambition. If your heart and mind are locked on climbing the next step up the ladder, or landing a more powerful role, then your heart and mind belong to the world and its ruler. Third, you and I are owed nothing for our service. I don't mean we shouldn't be paid for our work. I mean, if “getting paid” is our primary reason for providing a service to the Kingdom, then we've missed the whole child-like obedience/humility point of being a child of God. Fourth, given all of that, we have to turn. We have to turn away from worldly notions of success and achievement. Ideas like “more and bigger is better.” More staff. Bigger buildings. More programs. Bigger salaries. More parishioners. Bigger budgets. The Kingdom is not WalMart. And our holiness is not measurable on the NASDAC.

Finally, we have to turn away from worldly attitudes. The death of innocence is not decadence but cynicism. No child or truly humble adult lives day to day in a fog of jaded negativity, mistrusting the motives of others and assuming the worst is inevitable. Why would a deeply cynical soul even want to serve another? Along with cynicism comes entitlement, wrath, victimhood, suspicion, and ultimately, pride. Pride, of course, is the demonic twin of humility, the delusional conviction that I can save myself from myself. Praise and thanks to God that our return to innocence is freely offered by Christ. Freely accept that offer and set yourself to making that save-living turn toward humility. We've been given everything necessary to head in the right direction. Jesus says, “It is not the will of my Father that even one of these children be lost.” Hit the brakes and make the turn.

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Deus providebit!

19^th Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Deus providebit! God will provide. That God will provide is as sure as the sun rising and setting. As sure as 2 + 2 always equaling 4. There can be no doubt. Why? Because it is the nature of God to order all created things toward their created end. That is, God created All and gave every created thing – in its creation – a final end, a telos. To create a thing and deny it an end is sadistic. Worse still is to create a thing, give it an end, and then deny it the means of achieving that end. Imagine God creating a human person, giving that person the telos of achieving perfection only by following the divine law, and then refusing to provide access to that law! He would be intentionally creating a rational animal who's unable to satisfy his/her deepest desire. Now imagine millions, billions of these permanently hopeless persons living together for 70+ years each over hundreds of generations. You'd have a planet populated by nothing but psychotics and sociopaths. But what would happen if all these persons were provided with the means to achieve their created ends and these means were imposed on them rather than merely offered? IOW, they had no choice in accepting and using the means provided. The result? They would be nothing more than animals. Squirrels, elephants, and cats have no choice in the fulfillment of their purpose. They are perfect as they are. No reason, no moral faculties. No moral faculties, no chance of refusing to pursue their purpose. No freedom to refuse their purpose, no chance of them failing to be perfect. Since we are created in the imago Dei – divine love – and re-created in the imago Christi, we are free. Free to pursue our telos and use the means God has provided. But we must do freed-part. Jesus could've simply produced that coin and handed it to Simon Peter. Instead, he sends Simon Peter fishing. Simon Peter could've balked and taken a nap. Or pitched a hysterical fit at having to work for the coin. Or laughed and called Jesus crazy. If he had done any of these things, he would not have the coin. Jesus provides the coin. But Simon Peter has to freely choose to go get the coin. So, Deus providebit. God will provide. He provides the end. The means to achieve that end. The freedom to accept and use the provided means. But He will not compel us to cooperate. Why? Because He loves us. And because He loves us, we are free.

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To the point of excess

18^th Week OT (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

Pre-novitiate Retreat, GP, TX

You can't start a project by counting what you don't have. I can't sit down and start composing a homily by listing out all things I don't have on hand. The list would be too long to contemplate! I start with what I actually need and inventory my supplies. Something to write with; something to write on – preferable something portable; lectionary texts; some quiet time to pray, then all the rational and physical faculties necessary to write in the language I know well. What I don't have could fill several stadiums. Worrying about that list will paralyze me, and the homily never gets written. Think about those hungry people waiting on Jesus and the disciples. They hear the disciples tell Jesus, “ALL we have is five loaves and two fish.” ALL we have. IOW, we don't have 5,000 loaves and 5,000 fish. Stomachs start to rumble. Jesus, knowing what happens when a little is blessed, says, “Bring me what ya got.” What happens? A little becomes a lot. Everyone is fed. And there are 12 baskets of leftovers. When we start with what we have, add praise and thanksgiving to the gift, God multiplies in abundance. Even to the point of excess.

Traditionally, we've read this miracle as a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. And it is that. But the Eucharist itself is “a pledge of future glory,” a foreshadowing of our eternity in the presence of the Beatific Vision. You and I are just what we have. No more, no less. If we start our life in Christ by listing off what we don't have, we spend that life in scarcity. Religious life is just one way God gives us to add together all we have and all we are to build abundance. With that abundance, we give Him thanks and praise for our gifts and watch them multiply. What I don't have is given by another. What I have is given to someone who lacks. And that exchange of gifts is basis for the Eucharist. But none of this is possible w/o the abiding presence of God and our eagerness to receive Him into our lives through surrender and thanksgiving. The hungry crowd takes and eats the blessed fish and loaves. Their hunger, their willingness to receive and bear witness to the miracle feeds Christ's mission. The Word spreads. More follow. And there are so many gifts given that there're leftovers. Contemplate on what you have. What you have been given. Give it all away to make room for God's abundance.     

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Lying is never pastoral

St. Alphonsus Liguori

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Wheat and weeds. Sheep and goats. Good fish, bad fish. Parables like this one can make moderns – esp. Western moderns – squirm a bit. They just sound so primitive, so absolute and potentially dangerous. They require us to think about what makes weeds, goats, and bad fish bad. Who sets the standards for good and bad? Who makes the judgment between the two? Can we really say that the goats deserve to be thrown into the fiery pit and the weeds burned at the edge of the field? The bad fish are thrown away. Do they have no value at all? What about love and forgiveness? Surely, Jesus expects us to love and forgive those who are headed toward the flames! He does. He absolutely does. He also expects us to recognize and respect the principal property of love: freedom. He does. The Father does. The Spirit does. Love – true, liberating love – cannot be coerced. It cannot be imposed. It must be chosen. Freely given and freely received. So, when Jesus says that the weeds and goats are tossed into the fire and the bad fish are thrown away, he's saying that he loves them in their freedom to be what they've chosen to be.

Now, of course, real goats and weeds and bad fish don't choose to be what they are. But human beings – rational animals – do choose to turn themselves into those sorts of beings who resolutely reject divine love. IOW, they choose the fiery pit. And putting them there honors their choice. As wildly irrational as that choice seems to us, it is their choice. Our discomfort (?) with that choice in no way allows us to tell them that their choices have no consequences. Doing so may make us feel better about their choice and their destination, but we have to remember that lying is never pastoral. Telling the goats and weeds among us that no one ever goes into the fire, or that the fire is a primitive myth; or that b/c God loves everyone, He would never allow them to be burned – telling them any of this is lying. It's lying to soothe our discomfort with a truth Christ himself clearly teaches. Whatever squeamishness we may have about the reality of eternal damnation should be settled by the knowledge that such a fate is freely chosen. And freely honored. Our mission is live lives wholly given to Christ the Good Shepherd, bearing witness to his mercy and showing – in word and deed – that choosing divine love is the only sane choice. 

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