You gotta be the hose!

All Saints

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I hear from the seminarians and my UD students all the time, “Father, I want to be a saint.” I usually respond with, “Good for you. And good luck.” If they get my weak attempt at humor, we smile and part ways. If they don't, well, we spend some time talking about what attaining sainthood entails. For the most part, they seem to think that becoming a saint is all about absolute moral purity. It's about never violating the 10C's. Or never thinking bad thoughts. Or being dramatically and publicly “humble.” Or all of the above. They usually have a favorite saint they try to imitate. And that saint is usually one with a fantastic backstory, including a harrowing conversion and a list of miracles James Cameron would find difficult to re-create in a movie. Nothing wrong with any of this. Having a holy hero to look up to is nothing to sneer at. But...we have to be careful that we do not make our saints out to be the Christian answer to the Avengers or the X-Men. Saints – those men and women fully realized in Christ – are more than superheroes. They are children of God who see Him as He is.

John tells us that we – those not yet fully realized in Christ – are children of God too. He says, “...we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” So, we might say that we are saints-on-the-way. I'm sure you feel it too. That “on-the-way” part seems much more real than the saint part. That is, the feeling of being incomplete, not-yet, almost-there but not quite. Am I right? We can spend years, decades striving for saintliness – building our merits in prayer and good works, going to Mass, avoiding sin – and still barely limp toward the next step. Just barely making it. And then the whole thing starts all over. The frustration is maddening. What's missing in all this struggle? Maybe, just maybe, we let it slip our mind that we are already children of God. We are already graced with everything we need to become saints. We are already well-equipped to live with Not Yet and Almost There. John says it plainly, “...what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” If what we shall be has not yet been revealed, then why are we fighting so hard to figure it out? We know what we are now: children of God. Can't that be enough right now? Can't just being the best children of God we can be be enough until what we will be is revealed?

John goes on to say, “We do know that when [what we shall be] is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” So, we do know something about what we will be. We will be like God b/c we will see Him as he is. What is it “to be like God”? The Catechism of Trent gives us a partial answer: “...beatitude consists of two things: that we shall behold God such as he is in his own nature and substance; and that we ourselves shall become, as it were, gods. For those who enjoy God while they retain their own nature, assume a certain admirable and almost divine form, so as to seem gods rather than men” (I, 13, 7). For us to be like God then is to be fully human and almost divine. That is, for us to be like God is to be saints – first, children of God; then, Christs. Christ plural. To be Christ imperfectly now and perfectly then. To embody the beatitudes right when and where we are. Jesus says again and again that to be among the blessed is to be poor in all the ways that the world thinks is rich. To be among the blessed is never about the work we ourselves put into becoming blessed. We can do nothing w/o Christ. Whatever work we put into becoming saints is first the work of Christ done through us. To believe otherwise is to believe that we can make ourselves into saints. That error is known as Pride. And nothing motivated by Pride can enter the Kingdom of God.

How do we become saints and enter the Kingdom? It is both insanely simple and devilishly complex. Simple b/c all we have to do is receive sainthood from God. Receive His perfection into our imperfect nature. Receive Him and then simply be His son and daughters. But it's complex b/c we have trouble shaking the idea that anything free is valuable. Anything worth having is worth working for. Anything worth anything at all should be difficult to obtain. So, we fight temptation. We struggle against sin. We wrestle with our demons. We bargain with God to get what He has already given us for free. What the Saints know now – being in the presence of God – is that nothing they did on earth was done w/o Christ doing it first. Their prayer, their fasting, their devotion, their miracles, all of it was Christ himself working in them. And they understood their role: get out of his way and let him work! Let him work in you and through you. I'll leave you with a weird image. You're washing your car. Which gets wet first? The car or the hose? Right. To become a saint, you gotta be a hose for God's abundant love!

      

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The Idol of Ingratitude

28^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The benefits of gratitude are obvious: a deep humility and a graced clarity in seeing God's blessings. When we give God thanks and praise for His abundant goodness, we reinforce the central truth of our being: we are made from dirt and divine breath. As dirt, we are not worthy of His notice. As divine breath, we are made worthy to participate in the life of the Trinity. Humility is the good habit of living as dirt made worthy of divinity. And gratitude keeps us honest. If the benefits of gratitude are obvious, can we say that the perils of ingratitude are obvious as well? They should be. But there's something about us that tempts us to believe that all that we are and all that we have is ours by right, or ours by hard work, or ours by clever invention. This idol is praised everyday in the market, the office, our school and universities, our sports arenas. It seems as though we begin with the idea that we are blessed or cursed to the degree that we are busy getting more, having more, accumulating more. And what's worse, we seem to think that all that More makes us better – wiser, holier, stronger, just. . .better overall. I think of Flannery O'Connor's Ruby Turpin* who says, “You have to have things to know things.”

To break this idolatrous spell, we turn to our Gospel scene. Jesus is met by ten lepers in a village. They beg him for pity. He heals all ten. Only one returns to give God – Jesus – thanks. He asks the fateful question: “I healed ten. Where are the other nine?” Apparently, the other nine think their renewed health is an entitlement, a miracle they received as a right. Jesus tells the lone, grateful former-leper that his faith has saved him. The other nine? Not so much. NB. the connection Jesus makes between gratitude and salvation. The act of returning to Jesus to say a simple Thank You is enough to bring this man into the Holy Family of the Father. Everything he is right now and everything he has right now is a freely offered gift from God. He received it all as a gift with praise and thanksgiving. He was not owed healing. He didn't earn healing. He didn't borrow it or steal it. He humbly took it from the hands of Christ, went to the priests as commanded, and then returned, “glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.” Maybe Mrs. Turpin is right. You have to have things to know things. But having things must teach us humility and gratitude.

The idol of ingratitude seems to thrive on the idea that if I don't think of my things as mine first, I will lose them. Or if I don't think of myself as mine first, I might end up a slave to someone else. The problem here is that – as a follower of Christ – nothing is truly mine. Not my stuff, not even me. This truth is expressed for religious in our vows of poverty and obedience. What about all of you “just normal Catholics”? Well, you aren't immune to the effects of ingratitude. And you reap the benefits of giving God thanks and praise! You can find humility in living your marriage vows. Your spouse is given to you as a help in gaining heaven. You can find humility in raising your children in the faith by example. They are given to you as a help in growing in patience and strength. Children, you can grow in humility by being a help to your parents and siblings. Do you say “thank you” to mom, dad, brother, sister? You depend on them, so be grateful! Whatever your state in life, there is someone or something there to goad you toward humility. A co-worker? A classmate? A professor or teacher? A student? That middle-aged guy in the red Miata that cuts you off every morning on the commute to work? If you look, you will find abundant reasons to give God thanks and praise. If you cannot see these reasons, ask God to heal your blindness.

Mrs. Turpin is a haughty, middle-class white Southern woman, living in the late 1950's. She's an unrepentant racist, a snob, a gossip, and, according to a college girl at her doctor's office, “a warthog from hell.” That college girl hits Ruby in the face with a textbook. She deserves it. But that textbook and her new status as a warthog push her to contemplate her pride. While hosing down her hogs on the farm, Ruby has a revelation. A vision. She sees everyone – even those she thinks unworthy – rising to heaven on a bridge of light. And she knows – it is all a gift. It has nothing to do with race or property or cleanliness or good manners or being law-abiding or having or knowing. It's all about taking in what God gives and giving Him thanks and praise. Ms. Ruby, her story ends in shocked gratitude.

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They need to believe in Someone

27^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

If you pay no attention to social media you may not have heard – there's an unprecedented boom going on in the Church. Specifically, a surprising increase in the number of 18 – 24yo's being baptized and confirmed worldwide. For example, btw 2023 – 2025, the number of young people entering the Church in France has doubled. And then doubled again. Campus ministries in the US are also noticing a huge increase in Mass attendance. So are regular parishes. This boom isn't restricted to the Catholic Church. Protestant and EO ministries are also reporting similar revivals. What's going on? Secular media are pointing to CK's assassination and attributing the booms to reactionary forces taking advantage of populist sentiments to rile up the rabble. There may be some of that going on. But the vast majority of these young people seem to be drawn to the Church by everything but politics. Their motivations vary but the common thread seems to be: they are tired of the incessant drone of nihilism and the performative morality of their peers. IOW, they are tired of the emptiness preached by the spirits of the world and fake utopias of godless ideology. They want to believe in something. They need to believe in Someone. They are seeking faith.

(Forgive me for Going Professorial. But it's always a danger with Dominican preachers). We've been calling the last eight decades of turmoil in the West a “culture war.” And it is that – at some level. All sorts of ism's get thrown around: capitalism, modernism, nihilism, progressivism, fascism, etc. It's a near-blinding flurry of warring ideologies and philosophies, each trying to define the Real and insisting that only its solutions can truly bring about utopia. What all these ism's have in common is their disdain for faith in a transcendent referent, something to point to beyond the material world that gives meaning. If your only way of making meaning in the world is the world itself and the world itself is constantly changing, then who and what you are is always changing. These young people are living with the war-torn leftovers of their cultures' failed revolutions, most especially the horrific failures of the sexual revolution. I don't need to list all the failures but here's a few: abortion-on-demand, the collapse of marriage, the destruction of the family, and transgender ideology. From this moral and social chaos, these young people are looking for – needing! – a way to give their lives meaning.

Thus, the culture wars. But these wars aren't just being fought in the world. They are being fought in the Spirit. I don't mean some sort of cosmic battle btw the equally matched forces of Good and Evil. That's heresy. Christ has won. He won from the Cross and the cosmic war is always, already won. The spiritual wars I mean are being fought within the hearts and minds of each man and woman. They fight to choose Christ. These men and women were born and raised in de facto Christian cultures. And they have in them the seed of God's Word (however deeply buried!). Paul writes, “...God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.” It is this spirit who is stirring and finding its voice in the tumultuous lives of these young people. I see it everyday in my UD students, the seminarians I direct and teach; and in our own novices. What I hear them saying is that they are exhausted by defeat in a worldly war that can have no winners. They are tired of the stupidity of politics and the pablum of therapeutic religion. Where is the Spirit of power, love, and self-control? Where are the witnesses who will testify to the saving power of God?

The Sexual Revolution has failed. Paraphrasing Cardinal George from 2007, the progressive revolution in the Church has failed. One Utopian revolution after another has failed. Now it's time for a Spiritual Revolution and – as usual – our young people will lead the way. What can we older brothers and sisters do to help them choose Christ? Again, Paul writes, “...do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord...but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” Show them your scars. Tell them about your battles and how Christ rescued you. Let them see you fight yourself and win with God's grace. Don't be ashamed of your battleground. With Christ, it's where you won. This is not a fight where you must maintain your polite, middle-class American facade to save face. Your fight may be private but the war is public. Share your hardship. But most importantly, share your victory in Christ Jesus. They are looking for witnesses. You've been there. Tell them what you know. Tell them what to expect. And then show them nothing but mercy and the love Christ died for sinners. For you and for me. 

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Spiritual Direction: Diagnostic Mode

You work from home. Your laptop is a necessity. It's your only source of income. One day, right in the middle of a major project, your laptop crashes. You panic. Once you've calmed down, you call your company's IT department for help.

The tech arrives and spends about two hours fixing your laptop. As he's leaving, he says, “You can prevent this from happening again if you run the included diagnostic software. It will warn you about problems and suggest fixes.”

Relieved that your laptop is working again, you get back on-task with that project. An hour in, you recall your earlier panic and decide to run the diagnostic software. Just to be safe. It only takes about ten minutes. You get a big green thumbs-up on the screen. Great! Back to work.

Another hour in and you start feel like your machine is teetering on the edge of breaking down. There's no objective reason for feeling this way. It's working just fine. But there's something comforting about knowing for sure that all is well. You run diagnostic mode again. Again, big green thumb. Whew.

Each time you use diagnostic mode, you lose about ten minutes of productivity. Add to that number the cost of disrupting your focus.

This pattern of running diagnostic mode several times a day continues through the month. Everything is fine. But you can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. Then it hits you: what if the diagnostic mode is malfunctioning? What if the software designed to tell you what's broken is itself broken?

You call the IT department. The tech checks out your machine and assures you that all is well. Though you are relieved, doubts linger. What if the tech is wrong? Maybe he missed something. Maybe his diagnostic software is faulty. . .

And the cycle of relief, anxiety, doubt continues rolling along until you're fired b/c you're spending half your working day diagnosing your laptop.

If you allow it, this is what the Devil does to your spiritual life. Rather than spending your time growing in holiness through prayer, fasting, etc. you obsess over what's wrong, what could be wrong, what will be wrong in the future. You spend your time looking for fixes to problems that don't exist and will probably never exist. The really insidious part of this cycle is that you come to believe that Diagnostic Mode is what your spiritual life is supposed to look like.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the occasional diagnostic scan of your spiritual life. But being in a constant state of diagnosis is damaging.

Pray, fast, give alms, read spiritually beneficial literature; build good friendships; celebrate the sacraments, and stop wasting your time and energy on endless diagnostic scans.  

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Are your feet beautiful?

Simple Profession 2025

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

Church of the Incarnation, TX

Novices brothers, please stand and face the congregation. Folks, I want you to look at these young men very closely. Take a second to really SEE them. Now, here's my question: do these novices have beautiful feet? It's difficult to tell with their shoes on, right? In yesterday's reading for the feast of St. Dominic, we heard read the words of Isaiah: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.” We can't see the novices' feet at the moment. They may be beautiful already. Or they may need some work. We don't know. What we do know is these men are here this morning to announce to this congregation, to the Order of Preachers, and to all the People of God that they are ready to take next step in a life-long transfiguration, growing from novice preachers into men walking on the most beautiful feet! One year down, brothers. Seventy years or eighty with good health to go. What must they do to become the great preachers God has called them to be? What must they give to Christ to be bearers of his Word?

The RYM asks Jesus a similar question. “Teacher, what must I do to gain eternal life?” We can imagine the RYM preparing himself for all sorts of answers. Climb that mountain and sit in silence for a year. Wash in the river everyday while singing the Psalms. Cross the desert w/o food or water. Instead, Jesus says, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” We can almost see the RYM's relief. Whew! I'm doing that already. But just to be sure, he asks, “Which ones?” Jesus quotes the first few commandments. The RYM, maybe growing anxious again, says, “I'm doing all that. What do I still lack?” What do I still lack? This tells us that the RYM isn't happy. He's not fulfilled. Following the commandments isn't enough to attain eternal life. What's fueling his lack, his sense of not having what he knows he needs? Jesus answers, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” You can see the RYM's face drop. Not the answer he is looking for. Why? Because he has many possessions. We goes away sad. He goes away with that lack still gnawing at his heart. IOW, he is unwilling to do what it takes to follow Christ, to become a witness to Christ's Word in the world.

These novice brothers asked Christ to teach them the way to eternal life. He taught them to detach from the world and follow him. They've answered his call to work out their salvation in fear and trembling as Dominican friars. They've chosen to cooperate with God's grace in the perfection of their nature by taking simple vows and striving to live those vows as faithfully as they are able. Their gifts will be turned toward bringing divine love and mercy into the lives of everyone they meet and in turn that love will be perfected in them. What “rough edges” they have will be smoothed out over time. Community life will see to that! Whatever deficiencies each may have will be made up for by the gifts of their brothers. And together with their brothers and sisters in the Order, they will contribute to a more perfect witness to the Father's mercy wherever they go. They know that Dominican life is both the hardest and the easiest life they can live. Hard b/c we expect great things from them. And easy b/c they will receive in abundance the mercy they need to flourish. I've lived with these five for the past year. I can bear witness that they are good men motivated by a love of God, a longing for holiness, and a readiness to learn what they must learn. Their vows bind them to us and at the same time free them to be what God has made and remade them to be. Where do they go from here?

Literally, they go to St Louis to begin six years of study. Spiritually, they begin what will be a life-long formation in charity under the vow of obedience. To modern American ears, “vow of obedience” sounds ominous, almost draconian. Images of identical little robots marching in step come to mind. Not even remotely close. If you know Dominicans, you know we may look alike from a distance but up close we're a grab bag of everything from Martin de Porres to Garrigou-Lagrange, from Rose of Lima to Catherine de Ricci. Our variety is marshaled and freed in obedience – the vow to listen to one another; to submit our preferences to the good of the community; and to wholeheartedly follow those elected to lead us. These brothers know that life of a Dominican friar is never lived in its Platonic Form. We are men not angels. They know we fall. They know we sin. They know we sometimes want to quit. And this is why we take vows. We say Yes to the mission of the Order once for all our lives. We should never need to say Yes again. We've said it. And once is enough. But when we do start to feel the urge to backslide, we have the brothers to strengthen us. And they will, if we let them.

Brothers, I've been your Prior and Professor this year. I can't resist one more priorial lesson: surrender. You've heard my wild stories of my novitiate and studium years. I was the RYM who refused to surrender his possessions to follow Christ. My possessions weren't the stuff of wealth and privilege. What I refused to surrender – at first – was my Pride. It kept me in trouble. So, I admonish you: do not be like me! It's not worth the anguish. Instead, go to STL with an open heart and critical mind ready to learn what you need to learn to be great preachers. You're going to be challenged. You're going to balk on occasion. And you will likely find yourself wondering, “What have I done?” Persevere. The studium is not the province; the province is not the Order; and the Order is not the Church. Stay the course. Be obedient. Contribute your gifts. And you will flourish. Detach from whatever it is that keeps you bound to this temporary world of things and strive for all the treasure in heaven. Brothers, we are proud of who you've become this year, and we give God thanks for your vocation and your Yes. God has amazing things in store you and through you for us. May your feet become as beautiful as they were made to be.

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You have no power here

16^th Week OT (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Parables usually have a villain – a character or character-type who exemplifies an obstacle for or foil to the hero. Our villains this morning are the birds, rocky ground, and thorns. Individually and all together these villains thwart the good fruit the sown seeds are sown to produce. They prevent the seeds from taking root, or from germinating, or from blossoming. If we understand the seeds to be the Word of God sown into the world, then we can take to the villains to be the enemies of the Word. If we were to give contemporary names to these villains, what would they be? Perhaps the birds would be the people in our lives who come along and devour our hope with their cynicism. Or maybe those who peck away at our faith with their anxiety. The rocky ground could be how we were raised, or our current living conditions. Faith can take root in the most hostile soil, but it's a fight to see it flourish. The thorns would be temptations – pricking skin, drawing blood, causing infection. We all know these thorns too well. They grow even in the best soil. If these are our contemporary villains, how do we combat them? We don't. We surrender to Christ's victory on the Cross and allow the ground where we are planted to be made fruitful.

The idea of not fighting a villain is almost outrageous. Goes against everything we've ever heard about “fighting temptation.” But the truth of the matter is that you and I have already won the fight. Or rather, we haven't won, Christ has won, and we are hidden in him. We win with him. Whatever power the villains have, they have b/c we give it to them by fighting them. They are already defeated. Why fight the loser? Doing so clearly proclaims that the loser isn't really the loser and that Christ has failed to win his victory on the Cross. When one of these villains threatens to damage your good harvest, to choke the seed of the Word given you by God, remember – at that moment – to surrender to Christ's big win and say – aloud if you have to – “You have nothing I want. You have no power over me.” And then give thanks and praise to God for making your soil rich and fertile. You have ears to hear. You understand already. There is nothing and no one to fight. Nothing and no one to lose to. Stay hidden in Christ and produce much good fruit.     

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You are The Much More

6^th Week of Easter (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

How much more is there to say? What else is there to reveal? Jesus admits, “I have much more to tell you. . .” And then he adds this ominous line: “. . .but you cannot bear it now.” He's already revealed his fate and the fate of those who faithfully follow him – persecution, arrest, torture, and death! He thinks we can bear that but not the “much more” he has to tell us? Maybe we don't want to know much more. Maybe we know enough. Just enough to get by and get to heaven. The “much more” left unspoken could tempt us to think that there's a trove of secret knowledge out there just waiting to be discovered. Some cryptic manuscripts of forbidden lore that will explode everything we think we know about the faith. The early Church battled several Gnostic sects that claimed to possess occult knowledge about how we are saved. Dan Brown and his anti-Catholic fantasies are just the most recent manifestations of this ever-present shadow fiction. Since the serpent whispered to Eve, we've been tempted with feeling special b/c we know something others don't. Well, here's the secret: you and I are the “much more” that Jesus has to reveal. You and I are “much more” b/c the HS is with us.

You and I are the Body of Christ. His Body is animated by the HS. Just like the human person is body + soul, so the Church is a body and a soul. One Body, one Spirit. The “much more” to be revealed isn't a new truth or a treasure of secret knowledge. It's me and you and the whole Church living minute-by-minute in the world, for the world, revealing to the world all that Christ has left us to reveal. The disciples couldn't bear the “much more” b/c they couldn't live past their own witness to Christ in the first century AD. Imagine the HS showing Peter, Paul, and James the horror of the Holocaust and the Church's faithful response. They couldn't bear it. Each century needs its own witnesses. Each era needs its own saints. The HS raises voices to speak the Word where the Word is needed most. Right here, right now, you and I are needed right here, right now. We are the “much more” that Jesus has to say. Living confidently, zealously right where we are, we bear the HS, standing for the truth of the Gospel. To the world, we are a plague. For the world, we are a revelation.     

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Productively pruned

5^th Week of Easter (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

It's the summer of 1991. I sit on a five-gallon pickle bucket all day everyday pruning tomato vines. The hothouses line up like barracks, baking in the Mississippi heat. Each of the twelve houses, covered in thick plastic, flutter as a huge fan pulls the air through, cooling the plants. I start at the first house nearest the road and work slowly each week from the first house to the twelfth house, pruning the suckers that grow in the between the branches and the vine. They look exactly like every other branch of the plant. But cutting them away is a necessary step in the growth of the plant. Suckers drain moisture and nutrients from the vines. Cutting the branch that bears no fruit makes the whole plant healthier. At the end of the day, I sweep up the drying suckers and burn them at the edge of the field. Had I been Catholic at the time, I might've thought about baptism or confession, clearing up and cleaning out the trash that stunts good fruit from ripening. Had I been Catholic, I might've remembered the parable of the branch and the vine.

Jesus reveals to his disciples that he is the true vine and that his Father is the vine grower. His Father cuts away branches that do not bear fruit and prunes the ones that do. Then Jesus says to the disciples: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” Because I have revealed the Father to you; because I have taught you the way of salvation in mercy; because I have given you to one another as a Body; because I am the Word speaking the Word to you; because you have died with me and will suffer for me; because you will rise again with me and see the Father face-to-face; and because I am the way, the truth, and the life – because I have taught you, given you, shown you, led you, and because I love you, you are pruned, productively wounded and more than ready to bear the fruit of the Spirit that marks you as mine. The difference btw tomato suckers and the followers of Christ is that the suckers have no choice in their cutting. Or their burning. You and I do. You and I can confess what needs to be pruned. Is it the lie that I need to earn God's love and mercy? It is the lie that I can bargain for His grace? Or that I am right to pass judgment on sinners? Maybe it's the Original Lie that I can be a god w/o God? Or maybe it's the Great Deception of the Modern Age – I can love w/o truth? Christ is the true vine – the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And there is no love that can save w/o him. Whatever suckers there are stealing your spiritual nutrients, ask the Lord to cut them off. Ask him to be productively wounded. The sweeping up at the end of the day is fast approaching.  

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