We must be made ready

1^st Sunday of Lent

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

The Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the desert. Why? Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man, the Messiah. Why must he endure 40 days of hunger, thirst, and loneliness? He doesn't need the discipline to help him repent of his sins. He is sinless. He doesn't need the time alone with God the Father b/c he is God the Son. Satan knows who he is, so there's no need for Jesus to prove his identity to himself or the Enemy. What makes our question even more interesting and infuriating is that Mark uses the Greek verb, ἐκβάλλει (ekballei) which means “casts out.” The same verb used to describe what Jesus does the demons he encounters in his ministry. So, in the same way that Jesus casts out demons, so the Holy Spirit casts Jesus out into the wilderness. There's an almost dismissive or casual sense that Jesus is being “thrown away,” tossed out like garbage. But to get the full picture here we need to remember where Jesus is heading next. He goes to Galilee and begins to preach, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Before he can endure his passion in Jerusalem and die on the cross at Calvary, he must be made ready. We too must be made ready. And Jesus shows us the way.

We can think of Jesus' time in the desert in the same way that we think about his baptism. The Messiah, sinless and unable to sin, doesn't need to be baptized. Jesus' baptism in the Jordan is God's way of revealing His Son to us; His way of announcing to the world that His Christ has arrived. Jesus forty days in the desert didn't need to happen either; that is, he didn't need to endure all that for his own sake. He did it for us. He did it to reveal himself – his true nature and purpose – before he set off to Galilee to begin his public ministry. What this scene in the wilderness tells us about our Lord is that though he cannot be properly tempted, he knows that we can. He knows that the power of the Devil – though real – is ultimately temporary and deceiving. And he know that when we place ourselves at the mercy of Father, we will be ministered to by the choirs of angels. None of this knowing on Jesus' part prevents us from actually feeling hunger, thirst, loneliness, or pain. Our knowing that we can be tempted doesn't make enduring temptation any easier. Knowing the Devil's power is deceptive or that we are ministered to by angels makes the preparation for our own passion and death any more pleasant.

BUT knowing that Christ has gone before us and is with us now, makes any trial here and now endurable. Knowing that Christ is with us when we fast, when we pray, when we give what we have to others, knowing he is with us always and everywhere, that makes our troubles more than endurable. . .it makes them sacrificial. When do as he did and speak as he spoke, and when we do and speak in his name for his sake, we follow faithfully behind, picking up his work and his words, and we bear witness in the world to the love that made it possible for him to die on a cross for us. His forty days in the wilderness with Satan and the wild beasts was our preparation, the preparation of his future body, the Church, to carry on with his ministry. And, thanks be to God, we do not minister alone. The same spirit that drives Jesus into the desert, the same spirit that saw the angels minister to him, and the same spirit that set the apostles to fire at Pentecost is the same Holy Spirit that binds us together now in the Church.

 

Make these forty days of Lent a time for preparation for your own passion and death. It may sound a bit morbid. But think: death misses no one; no one gets out of here alive. Take this season to heart and spend the time necessary to dig deep into your relationship with God. He loves you. Do you love Him? If there is sin in your life that prevents you from receiving His love, confess it, repent, and believe the Gospel! If there is temptation pestering you, name it and face it. Call on the Holy Spirit for help. That's His job. If you are attached to something that has become a god, an idol for you, sacrifice it – make it holy by giving it up. Fast and pray. There is no better way to see the deceptive power of the Enemy than through the eyes of fasting and prayer. Give what you have to others. There is no better way to destroy the power of attachment than to surrender whatever it is you believe you can't live without. Jesus did it all before us, he did it all for us. And, now, it's our turn to prepare. Prepare well. “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand.”

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Why does God love us?

6^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

Why does God love us? One answer to this question goes like this: God love us b/c He is Love; it is His nature to love – Love is who He is and what He does. According to His nature, God cannot not love. If we take the question to mean – what is the ultimate purpose of God's loving us? – we get a slightly different answer. The purpose behind God's loving us is to change us for the better. And to change us for the better, God's love requires our cooperation. God will not force us to love Him. He will not force us to change. He loves us without condition or pretense b/c it is His nature to love. So, you need never worry about whether or not God loves you. He does. Always. And in all circumstances. If you must worry, worry about whether or not you love God. Notice the leper. Despite his disease, despite the fact that he is required by Mosaic Law to avoid healthy people, and declare himself Unclean, he approaches Jesus, kneels, and begs, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus touches the Leper and says, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Christ loves without condition or pretense, but he will only cleanse you of sin if you ask to be made clean.

In recent years, the Church has been roiled by internal debates about the nature of mercy and sin; the morality of “second marriages” and taking communion; whether or not the individual conscience trumps the Church's moral teaching; whether or not a pastor can bless same-sex “marriages.” The different sides of these debates line up like you might expect: those who say every case is different so we cannot impose universal rules and those who say that there are rock-bottom truths that always apply to all cases. We hear that God loves us unconditionally, therefore, all are welcome! We hear that God hates sin, therefore, sinners must not be welcomed as sinners. Bishop Bob says we must embrace the sinner. While Bishop Jim says the sinner must be admonished. Pastors and lay folks get in on the action – documents are quoted; popes are cited; councils invoked; and theologians and Celebrity Catholics rant in the media about the respective rigidity or moral laxity of the other side. Either the Church must always keep up with the times, or the Church must never change. Notice the leper. His faith in Christ pushes him to ask for healing. He asks. And Christ heals him. God loves us in order to change us. To make us holy.

Some would have us believe that God's unconditional love affirms the OK-ness of our sin; that is, they say, since God always loves us (true), despite our sin (true), then our sin must be OK. False. My sin is a sign, is evidence that I do not love God. He still loves me, true, but I do not love Him. If I am to be healed, I must ask to be healed. If my sins are to be forgiven, I must ask to be forgiven. And in order to ask to be forgiven I must first actually believe that my sins are indeed sins! But if God loves me despite my sins, why bother with asking for forgiveness? Because my sins tell God that I do not love Him, and He will not force His love upon me. Without my cooperation, God's love cannot help me to grow in holiness; without my cooperation, God's graces go unused. And when my time for judgment comes, God will honor my choice not to love Him and allow me to live apart from Him for all eternity. The love that God has for of us does not – in any way – diminish or negate the damage we do to ourselves when we sin, when we refuse to repent of that sin and ask for His mercy. Notice the leper, begging, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” And Christ responding, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Ask, receive. No asking, no receiving.

So, the bottom-line is this: if all you want out of your life as a follower of Christ is to be loved by God. . .well, you got it. You're done. In fact, you were done the moment you were conceived. God loved you in your mother's womb; He loves you now, and He will always love you. He will even love you as you choose to spend eternity separated from Him. If, however, you want your life as a follower of Christ to be a love affair between you and God, a mutual, life-giving, grace-filled affair, then you will name your sin what it is and ask to be healed. And God will heal you b/c He loves you. What you – we – cannot do is ask God to love our sin, to pretend that our disobedience is not disobedience. Doing that would make God – who always loves us – an accomplice in our damnation. That He cannot/will not do. Lent is fast-approaching. We'll be charged with spending some time and energy examining our relationship with God in Christ Jesus. Take some of that time and energy to explore the depth and breadth of your love for God. Ask yourself: do I just presume that my sins are forgiven b/c God loves me? Or, have I actually asked Him to heal me? The difference it makes is eternal.

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Everything is Lost!

NB: from 2006 a Vintage (oh boy) Fr. Philip Neri homily! (The deacon preached tonight. . .)

5th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas 

 

Hear it!

Everything is lost. Nothing really lives here. There is no light, no life, no hope of being found. There is work with no purpose. Movement toward no end. Day, then night, then day again. No meaning. Pointless striving. Unraveling hours of nothing at all. Sleep brings no rest. Work never tires. It won’t end soon enough. Or, too soon. Like an exhausted wind weakly blowing dust. Sigh. Job is not a happy man. He’s learned that his life of blessing and prosperity is very easily washed away. Troubled nights. Restlessness ‘til dawn. His life like a wind. Never to see happiness again. Job has lost his faith. And with it his humility and his gratitude. Self-pity and anger are not the seeds of blessing. So, he will be hopeless, restless, and sleepless until he finds again a purpose bigger than his small dreams, his little dramas of success.

We read tonight that Jesus and Paul know their purpose. And they know happiness in knowing their purpose. What makes you happy? What Purpose do you serve?

Isn’t it easier getting out of bed in the morning knowing you have a purpose, knowing you have a goal to achieve, a To Do List for your life that needs some work? Isn't it easier making it to work or class or the next thing on the list knowing that your attention, energy, labor, and time will be focused on completing a mission, on getting something done? With the time we have and the talents given to us, don’t we prefer to see constructive and profitable outcomes? Even when we’re being a bit lazy, wasting a little time doing much of nothing, we have it in the back of our mind to get busy, to get going on something, checking that next thing on the list and moving toward a goal. It’s how we are made. It’s how we live in the world.

Paul writes to the Corinthians: “If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation have been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!” Paul has been given an end, a goal, a purpose beyond mere survival, beyond merely getting along. Having been smacked around by the Lord for persecuting the Church, Paul finds himself ordered to a regime of holiness, a kingdom of righteousness, that demands more than rule-following, more than simply showing up and breathing the temple air. Paul must preach. He must travel city to city, province to province, publicly witnessing to his repentance, to the power of Christ’s mercy.

Paul’s sleep is restful. His work exhausts him. He is a slave whose labor is never drudgery, never pointless. His end, his purpose is Jesus Christ, the telling again and again of his story, his bruising encounter with the man of love. And offering to anyone who will open their eyes to see and their ears to hear, offering to them the same restfulness, the same pleasing exhaustion, the same intense focus of a purpose driven by the need to proclaim Christ.

Jesus, doing his best to find a little time away from the crowds, responds responsibly when Simon and other disciples find him and say, “Everyone is looking for you.” Jesus, pursued, literally, by his purpose says, “Let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” Soon he will look out over the vast crowd and, moved by compassion, teach them many things. Now, nearly exhausted himself, he takes his students out again to preach and teach the Good News. It is his purpose—to show those hungry for God that God does indeed rule, that He holds dominion here, over all creation—heaven and earth, human and devil—and that healing flows from faith, light always overcomes darkness, and that evil, no matter how much ahead in the race, has already lost.

Job has lost his purpose and dwells in an anxious darkness. Paul is driven by his need to witness. Jesus reveals His Father’s kingdom—healing, driving out demons, preaching. Job recovers his purpose when the Lord dramatically reminds him who is God and who is creature, Who Is Purpose Himself and who has a purpose. Paul runs his preaching into every town he crosses, proclaiming the Word, setting up houses of prayer, and leaving behind men and women strong in the faith. Jesus moves inexorably toward the Cross, his work for the Way along the way reveals again and again the always, already present victory of Life over Death, freedom over slavery, final success over endless failure.

What goals do you serve? Why do you get up in the morning? What meaning does your work, your play have for you? Who are you in light of what you have promised to be and do? What makes you happy? Where do you find joy? Lots of questions! But all of these are really just one question: what is your purpose?

You have a given purpose and a chosen purpose. Your given purpose is dyed into your flesh, pressed through into your bones; it is a God-placed hook in your heart, a hook that tugs you relentlessly back to God, back to His perfecting goodness. Your chosen purpose is how you choose to live out day-to-day your given purpose, how you have figured out how to make it back to God. Student, mother, professor, virgin, priest, monk, artist, poet, engineer, athlete, clerk, scientist, father, nurse, dentist. When your chosen purpose best reveals your given purpose, when what you have chosen to do helps who you are given to be flourish, your anxiety finds trust, your sleeplessness finds rest, your despair finds joy. And you can say with Paul: “All this I do for the sake of the gospel,”—heal, study, pray, minister, write, research, teach, drive, build, all this I do for the gospel—“so that I too may have a share in it.”

What Purpose do you serve? I mean, when you work, when you study and teach and play, toward what end do you reach? What goal seduces you forward, pulls you to the finish line? Surely for us, all of us here tonight, that purpose is Jesus Christ. Our goal is his friendship, his love. And our goal is his witness, our telling of his Good News. We can waddle around in the darkness of sin, bumping around blind, reaching for what’s never there. We can wail into the wind like Job, moaning about the meaninglessness of life, the pointlessness of our daily striving. We can even refuse happiness, refuse to see that we have a given purpose. But you will find your release and your license, your freedom and your choice when you make yourself a slave to all, when you make yourself all things to all, to save at least some.

Like Paul, a trusted steward, a faithful child, preach the gospel. Live it right where you are. Make it your reason for getting out of bed, for going to work, for making it to class. Make it who you are, what you do, and everything you ever will become.

Everyone is looking for you. For what purpose do you live

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Anxiety Kills

4^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

OLR, NOLA

Distraction kills. So does anxiety. But spiritual distraction and anxiety can kill you. . .forever. Between December 21^st and January 22^nd I drove Interstates 10 and 55 some 2,310 miles back and forth among NOLA, Houston, and Memphis. In all those miles I lost count of the number of times people passed me on the road doing 90mph while texting, talking on their cell, putting on make-up, and eating. One guy passed me doing over 90 holding a plate in one hand and stuffing a piece of pizza into his face with the other. Ninety plus MPH w/o a finger on the wheel! That sort of distraction will kill you and anyone who happens to be in your way. But as bad as distracted driving is, it can't compare with a distracted and anxious spiritual life. So Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I should like you to be free of anxieties.” And Jesus casts out a distracting and unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue, saying, “Quiet! Come out of him!” For us to grow in holiness, for us to flourish on the Way to the Lord, we need to be free and quiet. Free from worry and doubt; free from attachments and worldly burdens. We need to be quiet, surrendering ourselves to the loving-care of God our Father.

What does this all mean in practical, day-to-day terms? Paul, ever practical, says that marriage can cause us to be anxious. Husbands distract wives. Wives distract husbands. He doesn't mention kids, but I'm pretty sure they can be their own sort of anxiety! He's clear that his point is not about the innate value of celibacy over marriage but about what it takes to be freed so that our hearts and minds may serve the Lord unburdened with the worries of pleasing a spouse. It's not the Grand Problems of Being that Paul believes drives us toward the unclean spirit of Anxiety and Distraction but rather the mundane, everyday, purely routine chores that accumulate over time and wear us down. Paying the bills, laundry, lawn care, car repair, buying groceries, going to work, cooking, cleaning, the stuff we all do every single day. So the trick is to stop doing these things, right? Husbands and wives are cheering Paul on! No, that's not his point. His point is to do these things in order to please the Lord. If the routine stuff we do everyday is done in the spirit of pleasing the Lord, then our routine stuff becomes something truly worshipful, truly spiritually beneficial. It all becomes prayer, a means of speaking to God our Father.

 

Look again at the man possessed by the unclean spirit. Jesus orders the spirit to be quiet and come out! He separates the spirit from the man; he doesn't destroy the man b/c he's possessed. . .he frees him. He removes from the man the spirit that is causing him to be distracted and distracting. We can do the same with our every thought, word, and deed. We can – in the name of Christ – consecrate (set aside, separate) everything we think, say, and do to the pleasing service of God thus making our entire earthly existence one long sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Pay that car note and give God thanks that you have transportation. Buy groceries and praise the Lord that you will eat tonight. Clean the house in the name of Christ to keep it filled with his abiding love. Give God thanks for your co-workers. You have others to help you with your job. Many of you will confess to being distracted during Mass, thinking about Sunday football, or the roast in crock pot, or the kids' undone homework. What if instead of seeing these thoughts as distractions you see them as promptings from the Holy Spirit to give thanks to God for giving you leisure time, food to eat, and children to love? 

 

There is no reason for us to be anxious or distracted. Neither anxiety nor distraction has any power over us. . .IF you choose to place your anxieties and worries into the hands of God, trusting that whatever good thing you must do will be done to please Him and give Him glory.

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Death is Not the End

Mom's Memorial Mass
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA

Death is not the end. We know this. Death is not the end, and we know this b/c Christ died to defeat death. He died on the Cross to put an end to sin and death, to create in us a hope for the resurrection and life eternal. Death cannot be the end b/c “hope does not disappoint,” hope in, trust in the promises of Christ cannot fail. And we know this b/c Christ himself prays, “Father, those whom you gave me are your gift to me.” We are Christ's, and again he prays, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me. . .” And we are here, where he is, in the Body, giving thanks for his passion and death, and hoping in our resurrection when Defeated Death comes to take his best, last shot. Death is not the end; it cannot be the end b/c we – each one of us – b/c we are bought, paid for, and delivered into the possession of, the family of God, our Father. We are His adopted sons and adopted daughters, reborn in baptism, confirmed in the Spirit, and joined into the Body through his body and blood. If dying is not the end, then why does the death of a mother, a father, a child, why does it hurt so much? If dying is not the end, then what do the dead do for us, for those left behind?

The dead bear witness to our enduring hope. If we open our hearts and minds to the fleeting nature of our earthly existence; if we acknowledge our fragility in this fallen world; and if we have surrendered ourselves to the cross of Christ, following him in all things, then the dead minister to us in their absence from our lives; that is, by not being with us still, they bring us back to a pillar of our faith – the enduring hope of the resurrection and all that that hope requires of us while we still live. The dead, in the hardest possible way, remind us that our lives are given to us – not earned, not borrowed but freely given. They remind us – by their bold absence – that our promised eternal lives are gifts as well. Never earned, never merited by own hands, but freely given, freely gifted. In their silence, they remind us that our hope must be lived – daily, hourly – until we come face-to-face with Christ himself for judgment. The ministry of the dead is remembrance. Even as we remember those who have died, they tend to our desire to forget who we are made to be, who we are re-made to be in Christ Jesus. Even as sinners, Christ died for us. How much more then are we loved now that we are justified by his death and resurrection?

How do we hope in the face of death? How do we go on? Jesus prays to the Father, “I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” We know His name. And we know that the Father's love for His Son is with us, and that Christ is in us. The hope that cannot disappoint is our good habit of living knowing that – as we follow Christ – death in the world is as fleeting as life in the world, a passing through onto the resurrection of the body and life eternal. But even with hope, the death of a mother, a father, a child, death hurts those left behind. Perhaps part of that hurting is the ministry of the dead, their traumatic way of bringing us back to clarity and commitment; their way of pushing hope back into our lives when we have chosen despair. If all of this is true, then to mourn, to grieve is to welcome and nurture hope – as painful as it is. And those who mourn are blessed b/c their dead minister to them with the hope that only Christ can promise and deliver. Death is not the end. Death is defeated. But all of us – each one of us – will be left behind. And our faith in Christ will travel with us. Then one day, it will be our turn – through our bold absence – to minister to the living, to pray for those still on the Way.

____________________


Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Funeral Arrangements for Mom

Mom's visitation and funeral arrangements:

Family will receive guests on Sunday, January 21, 2018 from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm at Olive Branch Christian Church, 8300 Craft Rd. Olive Branch, MS. 

Services to immediately follow. 

Burial will follow at Autumn Woods Cemetery.

Obit from Brantley Funeral Home 

_______________________
 
Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

RIP

I ask your prayers for the repose of the soul of my mother, Nancy Rebecca.

She died this morning at 9.15.

God bless, Fr. Philip Neri, OP

__________________________________

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Thanks and an Update on Mom

Big Mendicant Thanks to Jenny K. for the bottle of paint.

Thanks to the anonymous donor(s) of all the jars of paint.

Mom is only able to breath w/o the vent for a few hours at a time. Since she has been intubated for a week, the doc said that he will need to perform a tracheotomy in order to avoid damage to her vocal cords. 

Please continue your prayers for her and for my dad, Glenn.

Frat., Fr. Philip Neri, OP

________________________________________

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Great News!

Great News!

Mom is breathing on her own this morning. The vent tube is still in place in case she needs it, but she's been doing all the work since around 9.30am (CST).

Thank you all for the prayers!

Frat., Fr. Philip Neri, OP

___________________
 
Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->

Prayer Request for Mom

Prayer Request. . .for those of you who are not on Facebook: my Mom, Becky, has been in the ICU since Jan 2nd. She caught the flu and experienced complete respiratory failure -- she has COPD. She was put on a ventilator and has been on it since. Yesterday, the docs discovered that her right lung had collapsed. They inserted a chest tube to re-inflate it. We're hoping/praying that she will be able to come off the vent tomorrow (Tues).

Your prayers for her would be most appreciated!

Frat., Fr. Philip Neri, OP

_______________________

Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->