We gonna need a bigger boat!

3^rd Sunday of Easter

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Judas sells Christ to his enemies for thirty pieces of silver. Peter, the Rock, denies belonging to Christ three times that same night. In the ensuing chaos after Christ dies on the Cross, Judas commits suicide. Tellingly, he hangs himself on a tree. The disciples flee to the Upper Room in despair. Everything they'd hoped for, planned for, dreamt about is in ruins and nothing makes sense. Then, Jesus starts appearing to them in the flesh, his resurrected flesh. He proves who he is with his wounds. He eats with them. He teaches them. Even Doubting Thomas is convinced! Now, they are together in Galilee where Jesus promised to meet them. Peter decides to go fishing, but the fish are too busy to be caught. Jesus appears to the disciples with some helpful advice. And they land a net full of fish. Finally! All the chaos, despair, grief, and fear begin to fade and a mission starts to take shape. With one question, Jesus sets this band of sorry students on their apostolic path, “Peter,” he asks, “do you love me more than these?” Peter, you denied me in the Garden as I said you would. But now, do you love me? This is also Christ's daily, hourly question to you and to me.

Why does Jesus need to hear the answer to this question? Surely, he knows Peter's heart. Surely, he knows that Peter denied him in the Garden out of panic and fear. Of course, Jesus knows this. But does Peter? Does Peter know why he denied Christ? It would appear that he doesn't. Just look at his luck with the fish. Twice we read that Peter goes fishing and catches nothing; that is, not until Christ appears and re-teaches him how to fish. Peter fails to provide...twice. Peter fails to see the Lord for who he is...twice. And twice Peter is confused by the Lord's instructions, nearly drowning himself in a panic. This time he is distressed b/c the Lord keeps asking him, “Peter, do you love me?” He answers, “Yes, Lord, I love you.” Three times he hears the question and three times he answers yes. And each time he answers, Jesus, orders him to feed his sheep. To feed the Lord's sheep, Peter must love the Lord. Fear, panic, despair, crippling doubt, anxiety, distress...none of these put fish in the boat. None of these put sustenance on the table. Peter the Rock, the foundation of the Church, must himself be grounded on the bedrock of loving Christ. Love me first, Jesus says, then feed my sheep.

When Jesus is finished teaching Peter that loving him is the bedrock of feeding his sheep, he turns to you and me and asks, “Do you love me?” We might wonder why Jesus needs us to love him. He sounds like a too-needy friend who pesters us for constant attention. Or maybe a spouse who doesn't trust the weekly “I love you” and needs more. Of course, Jesus isn't asking us this question for his benefit. He knows the answer already. The question is for our benefit. Hearing the question and answering it requires us to pause and survey our thoughts, words, and deeds. We have to take stock, a quick inventory of how we actually feel about the Lord. Do I love him? Or do I love the idea of him? Do I love my image of him? Maybe I love my version of him, my personalized concept of who and what he is to me. Maybe I love the Good Shepherd and the Teacher but not the angry guy flipping tables in the temple yard, the one talking about unrepentant sinners going to hell. Maybe I love the Just Judge who rigorously enforces the moral standards I approve of but not the one who forgives with the Father's mercy. You'll notice that Jesus doesn't ask Peter, “Do you love your version of me?” You'll notice that he doesn't ask you or me if we love what we like about him.

The Lord asks, “Do you love me?” Does all of you love all of me? Do you love the Good Shepherd, the Just Judge, the one who feeds the five thousand; who whipped the money changers; who shamed the ones who accused the adulterous woman; who threatens divine torture for those who refuse to forgive; who called the little child to him and taught us that we must love him and hate mother, father, son, and daughter? Do you love Him? Jesus the Social Worker and Jesus the Great High Priest? Jesus the 1^st century rabbi and Jesus the Incarnate Son of God? Peter fails as a fisherman b/c he loved his fear, his panic, and his doubt more than he loved his Savior. When Peter obeys the Lord, his net is full and so is his love. And out of this love, Peter will feed the Lord's sheep. When the Lord's sheep are fed in love, they mature in love and love in turn. The net gets bigger. The catch grows. More and more are fed. More and more come to love the Lord. And we welcome more and more fishermen. Jesus looks down from heaven, smiling, and says, “I think we're gonna need a bigger boat!”

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Satan's teeth never dull

Wednesday of Holy Week

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide stand in awe of Satan frozen in hell. He has three faces. One “fiery red” and the other two – “weirdly wonderful” – a sickly yellow and a pale bronze. “In every mouth [Satan] worked a broken sinner/between his rake-like teeth. Thus he kept three/in eternal pain at his eternal dinner.” Brutus, Cassius, and “[t]hat soul that suffers most” – Judas Iscariot – “he who kicks his legs/on the fiery chin and has his head inside.” Why is Judas eternally chewed in Satan's fiery mouth? Because he asked the Chief Priest, “What are you willing to give me if I hand [Jesus] over to you?” He accepted 30 silver pieces – the price of a murdered slave – to betray his friend and teacher. No doubt we would say that Judas had it coming. No doubt we would say that his betrayal deserves to be immortalized in verse by Italy's greatest poet. And no doubt we would say, if suspicion fell on us, “Surely, not me, Lord!” Before we wag our finger at Judas and his traitorous nature, we should think long and hard about what it takes to betray Christ. Or rather, what we'd take to betray him.

Judas' betrayal is a straight up snitch operation. Coin in exchange for information. Dirty, yes, but also a tidy quid pro quo. And don't forget that he regrets his crime, repents, returns the coin, and, finally, offs himself. The tidy treason turned messy in the end. Can we claim that we would never, have never betrayed Christ? If not, can we say that our betrayals have been so commercial, so obviously mercenary? I doubt it. Judas had three years with Christ. We've had our whole lives. Judas had vague promises of a future kingdom. We've had centuries of a kingdom growing and flourishing. Judas had his instincts, his heritage, and a shallow understanding of sacrificial love. We've had two millennia of Church teaching, philosophy and theology, biblical scholarship, mystical and ascetical experience, and the lives of the saints. Not to mention our own encounters with the Christ in the sacraments. None of this excuses Judas. But it does implicate us. It makes our betrayals – even if infrequent – all the more damning. Judas may have known better. But we know best. He is an anti-example for our lives in holiness. One we can point to and say, “Not me, Lord!” Listen carefully and you'll hear Jesus respond, “If you say so.” Go into this Holy Week with your heart and mind wide open to the ways you've betrayed Christ. Not in fear. Not in shame. But with an eagerness to repent and return the coin you've taken. God's mercy is eternal. And Satan's teeth never dull. 

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Trust needs no evidence

5^th Week of Lent (F)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Ghosts are real. UFO's are actually demons. Bigfoot walks the hills of Montana. All living things are embodied souls. God exists. We can label all of these as statements of belief. And we can assent to each with varying degrees of certainty. What these statements have in common is difficult to see. “Bigfoot exists” and “God exists” seem to be radically different sorts of beliefs! Nonetheless, we name both “beliefs.” Philosophers distinguish “to believe” and “to know.” Knowledge is necessarily true given the available evidence. Belief takes authoritative testimony as evidence. Now, we have a distinction btw evidence and authority. Do I believe Bigfoot is real b/c the available evidence requires I do so? Or do I believe b/c Youtube is packed with videos of people witnessing to an encounter with him? OR, is testimony just a form of evidence? All this is just the beginning of the problem of teasing out the question of what it is to believe that something is true or false. The Gospel tells us that many begin to believe in the Christ b/c they come to believe that what John the Baptist said about him is true. Before they believed in Christ, they believed in John.

If asked, could you explain your own belief in Christ? If so, how would you do it? You could take the route of popular apologetics and demonstrate the truth of your belief using history, archaeology, science, and good ole logic. The problem here is that you concede the standards of evidence to your opponent and open your belief to being treated as a scientific claim. IOW, your belief that Christ rose from the grave becomes equivalent to your knowledge about the atomic structure of hydrogen. Another popular route is to claim that religious belief is immune to rational explanation and simply assert the truth of your beliefs w/o the need for evidence. This approach turns your beliefs into opinions and leaves them easily refuted with opposing opinions. The better way is found in the Gospel. Over time, John's testimony about the Christ is proven true. Bit by bit, everything he says about Jesus is laid bare and found worthy of belief. Testimony is not scientific knowledge, but its weight can tilt the scale toward trust. And it soon becomes apparent that trust needs no evidence. In fact, trust based on evidence is no trust at all. Where does this leave us as believers?

As followers of Christ – as believers in his mission and ministry – we are not charged with demonstrating the scientific truth of our faith. We are charged with bearing witness, with giving testimony. We have moved from being unrepentant sinners to forgiven heirs. How did this move occur? What was it like? How are we different now that we've hidden ourselves in Christ? We point to God's mercy and lay claim to His promise of salvation. What does this look like day-to-day? If I remain the same miserable person I was before Christ, then what difference has Christ made for me? If my joy is dead, where is Christ? If I refuse to love, forgive, rejoice – why bother with Christ? If nonbelievers watch me go through my day and I come across as sour, defeated, morose, and angry – then what will they think belief will do for them? Think about it this way: you need to convince a jury you are not a dangerous criminal. Who do you want to be a witness on your behalf? Someone who lives his/her life with you as though you are innocent? Or someone who says you're innocent but refuses to live with you? The best evidence that Christ is Lord is a Christian who speaks and acts like Christ is Lord. Trust needs no evidence. But faith needs a witness. 

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Hard questions, honest answers

5^th Week of Lent (M)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Humans are really good at creating gods. We are also pretty handy when it comes to find and using sources of light in the darkness. Predictably, it never fails that these gods and sources of light perfectly reflect what we think we need or exactly what we want. We are, after all, expert craftsmen of our own divinity. Even those of us who claim to be followers of Christ can – on occasion – erect an altar to a made-up god and offer a desperate sacrifice. So, our Lord reminds us, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” NB. he doesn't say that he's the light of the Church or the light of those with pure intentions or those with no other light available to them. He says that he is the light of the world. The whole world, the whole of creation. The good, the bad, the ugly, everyone, everywhere. Anyone who follows him – in his light – will never walk in darkness. Yet, even with this promise, we still fall into the vice of running after less lights. Going so far at times to invent some artificial light just for our use. What fake lights have you invented to avoid following the light of the world?

Lent calls for hard questions and honest answers. It's a time for us to burn away the fat and fluff and get down to the raw bones of our relationship with Christ. Maybe you like Christ's ethical teachings but not the supernatural stories. Maybe you like the liturgical elements of the faith but not the juridical. The miracles – old and new – keep you attentive but the philosophical and theological stuff seems excessive. Social justice fires your belly but the ancient moral teachings turn you off. In each case, there is a brighter light for you than the light of Christ. There's another light that outshines his light, leaving him in the shadows. A greater part of the work of Lent is the work of switching off any lights that compete with the light of Christ. Switch off each in turn until you are left with the light of sacrificial love, the light that demands everything of you and everything from you. He emptied himself to die on a cross. That's where his light will take us if we follow him. As scary as that is, it's the path we've chosen. It's the path we've vowed to walk and bear witness to. Only the light of his sacrifice can push back the dark and show us the way.

Sorrow, Suffering, Surrender: Mary at the Foot of the Cross

Lenten Mission

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

Church of the Incarnation, UD

We find ourselves at the foot of the Cross. With John and the three Marys. Looking up from the ground, all we see are the soles of his feet. Bloody. Ruined. A single iron spike driven through both into the wood. The flesh is torn. And bruised. We can hear him breathing. Barely. Mary, his mother, weeps. John and the other Marys weep. Their sorrow like a millstone in the chest. Looking down, he sees his mother and his beloved disciple. He calls, whispers to his mother: “Woman, behold, your son.” Looking at John, he says, “Behold, your mother.” Hearing this, we glance at the two and see that they see how they are now bound together in suffering. If we could start at the beginning, we might see her freed from the burden of Adam's sin in the womb. We might witness Gabriel's visit to the adolescent Mary. We might see her freed determination, her surrender to the divine will. Her Yes. We might see her as a Young Mother – her love, her protection, her maternal care for the baby and the boy, Jesus. We might see her knowing looks at his precocious questions. We might hear her occasional gasp at some boyish stunt. We might see her smile at his filial obedience and her frustration at his apparent willfulness. We would see – as his public ministry drew to a close – her surrender to the sorrow that she knew would be his suffering. At the foot of the Cross, we bear witness to her sorrow, her suffering, and her surrender.

If the BVM is to be our model for taking on the challenges of Lent, we need to make sure we know what Lent is about. We can start with the via negativa – what Lent is NOT about. Lent is not about sin. Lent is not about fasting, praying, or giving alms. Lent is not about making sure that all our family and friends see us doing Lenten things. Our Lord couldn't be clearer in the Gospels that what we do during Lent cannot be about the veneer of repentance – faux religiosity, playing with the deadly serious weapons we are given for growing in holiness. Just last Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus is led/driven into the wilderness by the HS. Why – precisely – is he in that desert? To pray? Yes. To fast? Yes. He does both for 40 days. But he's not there to pray and fast. When he is beyond hunger and exhaustion, the purpose for his time away appears. Luke tells us that Jesus is led into the desert “to be tempted by the devil.” Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah is to be tested. Like newly pressed steel, his strength and endurance must be proven.

That word “proven,” is telling. He is baptized in the Jordan by John. And confirmed in his mission by God Himself – “this is My Beloved Son; listen to him.” But he has yet to be proven b/c he has yet to be tempted. It's the Enemy's job to probe for weakness; to authenticate his identity by showing him everything and anything a man could want or need. And then, to challenge him to love these things of the world more than he loves his own Father. Hungry, exhausted, weak from exposure, Jesus – in his human nature – is dared to abandoned everything he has been sent to accomplish and make the things of the world his god. Despite his hunger, exhaustion, and weakness – or maybe b/c of them? – he refuses. Luke closes the scene: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.” That “for a time” is right now. Right now, the devil is here to probe, test, and dare us. Forty days before Easter, we follow the pattern of Christ's time in the desert to set ourselves against the Enemy and for God. Lent is when we are to be tempted. Fasting, praying, and alms giving are our weapons. Lent is not a time for playing religious games. It's a time to prove ourselves heirs of the Kingdom.

One last thing before we attend to our Marian strategy for proving ourselves. Who is the Enemy? We will likely say, “the Devil!” Yes. But here's the problem: he is already, always defeated. From the moment he was cast into Hell, he has been the loser. Christ won the victory on the Cross and that victory reverberates through eternity – from the first syllable of Creation to the last breath of the age. Christ won, is winning, and will always win. And so do we as heirs to the Kingdom. We've been baptized into his life, death, and resurrection. When we deny ourselves; take our crosses; and follow him, we follow him into an eternal victory that the Enemy cannot deny or undo. He has no power over us. We are in Christ Jesus, hidden in him, waiting to go to the Father. So, yes, the devil is your Enemy, but the only way he wins is for you to succumb to his temptations and permit him to rule you. The true enemy we face during Lent is ourselves. The battle between Eternal Life and Eternal Death is fought in the divided human heart. And our Marian strategy places us in a position to fully cooperate with every grace God the Father has to give us.

Our BMM weeps at the foot of the Cross. From the moment Gabriel speaks to her to her tears at his death, she has known that her son would die for the sins for the world. She carries this sorrow daily. Until her deathless assumption into heaven, she carries the deep loss of her child. Any mother would grieve but the BM shared in her son's suffering, surrendering to his sacrifice and accepting his death as the price to redeem human nature. There is his sacrifice on the Cross. And then there is hers at the foot of the Cross. He learned obedience through suffering. She accepted suffering b/c she was obedient. From the moment of his conception, Mary hears God's Word and follows her freedom to Golgotha. None of this lessens her sorrow. None of this eases her grief. None of this makes her mourning any less painful. She lives with sorrow like it's another child. Always there. Always needing. Her sorrow abides. But she never succumbs to despair. She never gives up on the Father's plan for our redemption. Even as she weeps at his bloodied feet, she is steadfast in her trust that her son's suffering and death will culminate in the transfiguration of the world. Imagine living day in and day out with nearly unbearable sorrow AND the knowledge that your sorrow will be vindicated. Imagine your grief living with near beatific joy!

For us, during our Lenten testing, the BM's sorrow establishes a pattern, a model for approaching the Cross. There's no disputing the truth that sin – the willful, deliberate choice to disobey God – that sin prevents us from participating fully in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. When we sin, we choose to say to God, “No, thank you. I don't want your help. I don't want to be a part of your holy family! I can do this on my own.” In effect, we say, “I can be good w/o God. I can be god w/o God.” This is the First Temptation. The temptation of the serpent in the Garden. Knowing the Father's plan to bring Adam and Eve into the divine family, the Enemy dangles before our first parents the possibility of being divine w/o the help of the Divine. NB. the Enemy does not force or coerce their disobedience. He merely suggests an alternative plan, a plan built on a truth and twisted ever so slightly away from obedience. They bite. And their sorrow begins. But this is the sorrow of regret. Not the sorrow of loving-absence. Mary – sinless from conception – sorrows in love. Her sorrow abides in trust and ends in joy.

How does the serpent tempts us in our testing? First, he tempts us to choose to believe that God is merely our occasional rescuer from sin and not our sustaining Father in love. This temptation requires that we adopt a self-sufficient attitude toward growing in holiness: “I can do this on my own. I'll call on God when I get in trouble.” Rather than seeing our lives as fully immersed in the divine life, we see ourselves struggling to achieve some sort of Goodness Goal, a sort of measurable level of Moral Cleanliness. When we fail – and we always do! – we run to God in shame and ask for forgiveness. That's regret. Sure, we're sorry – we sorrow – but it's more of a disappointment in our own strength than it is a sorrow with our failure to love God. The Enemy's next move is to tempt us into believing that our disobedience is inevitable b/c we are fundamentally wicked. If we sin b/c we are weak, then we just have to be stronger! Stronger than what? Stronger than ourselves? Than sin? Stronger than the Enemy? NB. how the devil is keeping us focused on our immediate choices. What about the choices we make to follow Christ? The choice we make daily to live in the divine life? What about the sorrow we feel b/c we have chosen not to love God? Can you live with both your sorrow at sin AND the joy of knowing you are an heir to the Kingdom? A full participant in the victory of the Cross? Do not let the Enemy convince you that you are irredeemably sinful. Our sinless Mother felt sorrow in love daily. She's your weapon against the pride of Eve! Joy in being a child of the Father sends the Enemy packing.

Along with that joy comes suffering. Here we have to be very careful b/c the Enemy knows how to tempt us even when we are being consistently obedient. We cannot doubt that the BM suffers at the foot of the Cross. Hers is not a physical pain due to injury but a spiritual pain, a loss. She grieves. Even knowing all along that the Cross was her son's end, she grieves. And she lets herself grieve. She suffers well. That is, with full knowledge and the consent of her perfectly freed will, she permits/allows herself to mourn the loss of her son. She doesn't try to mitigate her grief. She doesn't beg God to bring him back. To the fullest extent possible, she suffers with our Lord. An arrow piercing her heart as the lance pierced his side. What is this suffering? It is not merely the physical experience of pain or the emotional experience of radical loss. Her suffering is permissive; she allows her pain to be exactly what it is and...still she loves. John is now her son and she his mother. Without diminishing her grief for even a second, BM joyfully receives John as a filial gift, thus receiving all of us as her beloved children.

Here's where the Enemy will tempt us: suffering is to be avoided; it is to be alleviated; or, at best, apathetically endured. Addressing Beelzebub, Satan says, “Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable,/Doing or suffering. . .” The proper demonic response, he argues, is to fight back! Show your resolve not to be pitied! Defy accepting any defeat! Never kneel! No, non serviam. I will not serve. But Christ says, “Deny yourself; take up your cross, and follow me.” If we follow Christ, we follow him to the Cross; and we suffer as he suffered. We permit the pain of sin and death and defeat it in sacrifice. By giving it all to God so that he can remake it holy. The BM does exactly that at the foot of her son's Cross. By saying Yes to His will; by tending to his Word through the years; by her patient permission when he goes to Pilate; by everything she does for 33 years, she suffers – allows – knowing how he will end on Golgotha. For us, the BM show us how to not only endure the burden of mortality but also how to find joy in its limits: sacrifice in love when the sacrifice is everything you love most. This is why Jesus teaches us that we must love him first and most to be his disciples. Our test is no small thing. It is everything, everyday. It's Abraham and Isaac on the mountain. It's Christ on the Cross.

And here is where the BM's surrender enters our arsenal. We can surrender in the face of a superior enemy, or we can surrender before the war. If there is no war, or the war is already won, then there is no shame in surrender. Especially if we are surrendering to divine providence. Remember: Christ has won. Already, always won. The devil is defeated. He is allowed to test us, but he can never win. . .unless we give him our victory through sin. Our principal opponent in our Lenten testing is ourselves, our divided hearts. If we sorrow in love for our disobedience and allow ourselves to mourn the death of the Old Self, always giving over to God so that He can make all we are and have holy, then there is no war to fight. Temptations are only reminders of who we used to be, memories, at best, of how we used to believe that we could be gods w/o God. When the BM gave her fiat to Gabriel, she gave her perfectly freed will to the plan for our salvation. When we were baptized, we gave ourselves to that same plan and for the same reason: we could see the wisdom of providence at work, and we believed in the promises of the Most High! Those promises have not faded. They have been kept. So, what do we surrender when everything we have and are already belongs to Christ? We surrender our need to control. To control outcomes. To control others. To control God. In the face of divine providence, and at the foot of the Cross, we follow Mary's example: we weep for loss and we love sacrificially, giving whatever is in us that we have not already given to Christ. We did not create ourselves. We cannot re-create ourselves. No amount of prayer, fasting, or good works will fix a wounded soul on its own. God does not want our rent garments or ashen heads or checks in the collection plate. He wants our contrite hearts. Split open and burning on the altar. That's the only sacrifice that matters when the time for testing comes. He wants us to turn our lives around, face Him, do His will for our sake, and love to the limits of our graced capacity. Lent is a long 40 days to test our willingness to be sorrowful in our disobedience. To suffer well, knowing we are heirs. And to surrender everything, everything so that we are truly free!

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Authority, obedience, conscience

Chair of St. Peter

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

What's wrong with the Church? Why can't the bishops get their act together? How much obedience do we owe this Pope? I hear these kinds of questions a lot. I heard them in 2001 when JPII was Pope. And in 2010 when BXVI was Pope. And pretty much just yesterday while Francis is still Pope. Who is asking these questions seems to depend a lot on who is sitting in the Chair of St. Peter! The questioners change. The Popes change. But the questions themselves never do. It's always a problem with authority, obedience, and freedom of conscience. If Your Guy is sitting in the Chair, then authority/obedience is the bedrock of the Church. If not, then freedom of conscience is the foundation of right religion. The folks preaching freedom from BXVI in 2010 are the same ones preaching obedience to Francis in 2025. And the ones preaching obedience to BXVI in 2010. . .well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, for both camps – that's not how religious authority works. Here's what Christ has to say, “I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” That's the authority we submit to in obedience.

And what does this authority entail? Christ says, “I will give you [Peter] the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.” IOW, Christ appoints Peter as his royal steward. His caretaker and vicar. This means that “whatever [Peter] bind[s] on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever [Peter] loose[s] on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” We all know this to be the authority of the Holy Father to govern the Church and to define the faith and morals of believing Catholics. Are there any limits to this authority? Yes. These limits are canonically defined by the First Vatican Council in its declaration on papal infallibility. But more importantly, the Holy Father's authority and our obedience are defined in terms of charity – the governing theological virtue. Charity requires the presumption of grace; that is, charity starts by assuming that the one in authority is governing in accord with the faith handed to the Apostles. The alternative is to assume a lack of grace and suspect deception. Grace cannot thrive in a mind ruled by constant suspicion. The whole point of giving us Peter as our rock is to dispel any nagging doubts about what is and is not in accord with the apostolic faith. Christ knows what he's doing. And he knows Peter. . .better than we ever will. So, trusting Peter is trusting Christ.

American Catholics are often Protestants at heart. We live and breathe the individualist, freedom as license, pick and choose consumerist religion of modern Protestantism. And it doesn't help that we've had five decades of moral theologians telling us that the job of conscience is to invent personal truths. Peter makes a world-changing declaration of trust: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That's not Simon Peter's “personal truth.” It is The Truth. And on this Truth is the Church founded. And b/c he revealed this Truth, on Peter himself is the Church founded. From Peter and his confession is the whole of the apostolic faith handed on. We celebrate the Chair of St. Peter to be reminded that the faith we profess is a guarantee of victory against the works of the netherworld. But that guarantee is good only when we hold steadfast to the trust Peter expressed to Christ and his disciples. We are saved as a Body. Not as free-floating individuals picking and choosing what we believe. So, who do you say the Son of Man is? Say it with Peter: “[He is] the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

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What's blinding you?

6^th Week OT (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

At first go, Jesus fails to heal the blind man fully. It's an easy-to-miss moment. It takes a second attempt to get the healing right. What's happening here? Is Jesus running out of juice? Was he distracted? Most ancient commentators read this story as a symbol for “gradual enlightenment”; that is, a symbolic story pointing to Jesus' bit-by-bit revelation of his mission and ministry to the public. In the same way that the blind man's healing doesn't happen all at once, Jesus' self-revelation as the Messiah doesn't happen all at once. Fair enough. But I'd wager that there's another reason for the failed first attempt at a cure. The blind man isn't fully prepared to be healed. Notice that the blind man is brought to Jesus by his neighbors. He doesn't approach Jesus himself. Notice too that it's the man's neighbors who ask for healing. Not the man himself. If he's been blind since birth, he knows no other way of being. He's more than just used to being blind. Being blind is who he is. Being cured will not only allow him to see, it will radically change who he is. It's possible that Jesus' first attempt at the cure fails b/c the poor man is scared to death of being able to see. Who will he be if he can see?

Read this way, the story is symbolic of our reluctance to let go of our darkness and embrace the light. What if I like my darkness? What if I AM my darkness? It's familiar and comfortable. I know how to navigate in the shadows. Allowing Christ to heal me fully means that everything changes! It could mean losing friends, alienating family, changing jobs. It could mean a shift in my politics or the way I do business. Being healed in Christ Jesus obligates me in ways I can't even begin to imagine right now. And then there's the whole Church Thing – going to Mass, going to confession, being a volunteer, donating money. Yeah, so, the first try doesn't take. We see indistinctly. Better but still blurred. What becomes clear – between the first and second try – is that we cannot remain in darkness when the light is our calling. When being free from sin and death is how we were made to be. Sin and death are unnatural. Not according to our nature. The comfort we feel in darkness isn't comfort. It's just familiarity. We've gotten used to it. Now we are being dared to receive Christ's healing and live in the light. What familiar darkness is holding you prisoner? What's making you blind?  

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Your reward is great already

6^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The promise of heaven and the threat of hell for good behavior or bad behavior is really all about social control. It's about using the promise/threat of an afterlife to keep us in line while we're still alive. Pie-in-the-sky, fire and brimstone – all that nonsense. I believed this lie when I was younger; that is, I believed the lie that heaven and hell were just fables told to keep us peasants under control. Back then, in my twenties, I thought everything was about power and control. Who has it? Who suffers b/c they don't? Who benefits from the system of religious myths and rituals? Now, have ecclesial and political authorities used religion as a means of social control? Sure. Anything humans touch can and will be twisted to an evil end. That a hammer can be used to murder doesn't mean that hammers are morally bad. That the Beatitudes can be used to pacify the angry masses into believing that things will be better in some fictitious heaven – well, that doesn't mean we are not blessed when we follow Christ and work toward being perfected in him. “Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.” Better yet: rejoice and leap for joy for your reward is – right now – already great!

We make a big mistake when we assume that we must wait for heaven to receive our reward for being faithful followers of Christ. Sure, the fullness of our reward will be great then – no doubt! – but we start sharing in the Kingdom we've inherited even now. What is the Mass but a foretaste of the heavenly banquet? What is confession but a glimpse into the Father's mercy? What is baptism and confirmation but our first steps as heirs and members of the holy family? Marriage makes the married couple a sacrament of Christ's love for his Bride, the Church. And the sacrament of anointing brings us directly into the healing power of God. Jesus preaches the Beatitudes not to pacify us deprived peasants into a compliant citizenry but to show us that our suffering now shapes us into perfected vessels for his gifts. But. . .we must suffer well. We can suffer now with an eye on some distant reward. Or, we can suffer now, suffer well, and benefit immediately from how we choose to suffer. The sacraments help. Prayer certainly helps. Good works always increase merit. But nothing beats loving sacrifice in bringing us close and closer to our perfection in Christ.

There are two components of loving sacrifice: surrender and gratitude. Together these two result in obedience. Not mere compliance. But obedience – truly loving God, listening to His Word, and following His will. Surrender is about coming to know a simple truth: I am not in control. Never have been. Never will be. I was thrown into this world by my parents. I wasn't consulted. No one asked for my permission to be born. I didn't get a choice in my race or sex or anything else for that matter. Yet – here I am. At some point, I started making choices. And at that point, I started thinking (falsely) that I was in control. The sum total of my choices up until I surrendered proved to be...less than spectacular. MUCH less than spectacular, in fact. At death's door from an internal staph infection at 34yo, I chose surrender. I let go of the wheel. Did I occasionally snatch it back? Yes. Did I successfully drive my life toward Christ when I did? No. Ended up in a ditch every time. Age helps surrender b/c age helps you see the Real as it is...not as you want it to be. Think of surrender as your first sacrifice. Your intellect and will upon His altar, your contrite heart and mind raised up and given over to be made holy. A sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Giving thanks is harder than we sometimes imagine. Saying “thank you” is an admission of dependence. It's a confession of needing help. Once you've surrendered, once you've offered your heart and mind in sacrifice, the help you need is abundant and freely given. Turning your prayer life toward gratitude deepens your humility, and you begin to understand what Jesus means when he preaches about being blessed. Blessed now, blessed then. Always blessed in thanksgiving. The deeper you grow in humility, the easier obedience becomes. You learn a new habit, or rather, you relearn an old habit in a new way: faith. It's not just trust anymore, or hope, but a still, grounded, rock-solid certainty that God's promises will not be fulfilled. BUT...they have already, always been fulfilled and you participate fully in them. That's blessedness this side of paradise. And with that blessedness comes the driving need to bear witness to the gift you have been given, the gift you have freely received. When you do, when you bear witness, you offer loving sacrifice. And you grow closer to Christ. Blessed are those who die to self in surrender and gratitude and become Christ for another. 

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