What has he done to/for you?

Mass of the Last Supper

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

Church of the Incarnation, Irving

“Do you realize what I have done for you?” An ominous question for the disciples. Knowing as we do that all but John were horribly murdered for bearing witness to the Gospel, we can be forgiven for thinking the better question would be, “Do you realize what I have done TO you?” What did their teacher and friend do to them? He made them servants. He made them slaves to a way of life that requires them to become divine love incarnate. To the limits of their gifts, they must be living, breathing incarnations of the Father's love, bearing word of His freely offered mercy to the world. So, why would we think that this has been done TO them rather than FOR them? Because their intended audience – the world – hates a slave, loves sin, and despises mercy. Weakness. Cowardice. Helpless. Frail. For the world, sacrifice is failure. Surrender is impotence. Obedience, a disgrace. And service, service is best left to those too faint to rule. The world proudly shouts, “Non serviam!” The apostles with their freshly washed feet answer, “Serviam.” And b/c they served, they died. But they died bearing witness to the divine love that redeems the world. Do you realize what Christ has done for and to you?”

Jesus interrupts his last supper with the apostles to wash their feet. Everyone at that table understands what's happening. Their Master and Teacher is lowering himself, taking on the role of a house slave, to serve them in a way most actual slaves would resent doing. It's a dirty, humiliating job. Peter – being Peter! – objects. Though we can only speculate on his reasons for objecting, we can definitely say that he's forgotten Jesus' earlier rebuke – “Get behind me, Satan!” He hasn't yet learned that Jesus doesn't need Peter to protect his dignity. He doesn't want Peter to protect him from his prophetic mission. He says to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” If you will not allow me to serve you, you cannot be my brother, a son to the Father. If you refuse my service, you cannot be an heir to the Kingdom. Peter relents and allows his Teacher to wash his feet. Peter receives the grace of service and becomes in the receiving a servant himself. He will die as Christ did – on a cross. A martyr-sacrifice, an incarnation of divine love.

If you have been washed in baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit, do you realize what Christ has done for and to you?” Imperfect now, still growing in holiness and traveling the Way, he has made you a Christ for the salvation of the world. He has made you a slave to the Gospel, a servant of divine love and a witness in the prosecution of the world's hatred of mercy. You chose this life. Don't blame Mom and Dad or your peers. There are no armed guards here tonight forcing your presence at the sacrifice of the altar. You chose this. You chose the life of a servant. You chose the life of a witness. You chose to walk the way of holiness and peace. You even chose to wash the feet of Christ's littlest ones. If you live out your vocation of service, you will find yourself in trouble with the world. In large ways and small, you will bump into the dark spirit of non serviam and feel the power and allure of having it your way; of giving license to your passions to run wild; of using others to your advantage; you will feel the thrill of disobedience, the rush of violating boundaries, and the exhilaration of being applauded for your bravery in conforming to the world's low standards. If you fall to this power, you will “fit right in.” But you will not be a servant, a slave, a witness. And you will not be an heir. Jesus says, “You will have no inheritance with me.” The door to heaven is a service entrance.

If being a servant, a slave, a witness sounds weak; if it all sounds pathetic and dull, then consider: Christ died a servant to his students and rose to defeat death. He won. He didn't fight the Devil. He didn't wage a cosmic war against evil and come out barely alive but victorious. He did the one thing necessary to kill death. He died a servant of eternal life. He died a slave to divine love, as the incarnation of Divine Love. And he manifested that love in flesh and bone on the cross, sacrificing himself to make us holy – set apart, in the world but not of it. When we chose – and we did choose! – to be washed and sealed, we chose to become Christs for the salvation of the world. As mom and dad at home and at work, you are Christs. As students and professors, you are Christs. As priests and religious, you are Christs. As doctors, lawyers, accountants, cops, nurses, cashiers, you are Christs. Whoever you are and wherever you are, you are Christs. You are witnesses to his mercy. You are voluntary slaves of forgiveness and hope. Do you realize what Christ has done for and to you? He has made you foot washers in the world. You have chosen. Your serviam is your salvation.

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Speak kindly of Judas

Wednesday of Holy Week
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

I will speak kindly of Judas. It has been fashionable among the fashionable to look at Judas and see a man unjustly maligned for his careful act of deceit and betrayal. Aren’t we being just a little too hard on the poor man? He was under a lot of stress! The agony of being the one of the Twelve who would betray his Master and friend must have been horrible to bear. The sweaty nights tossing in his bed, worrying about money problems. The constant gnawing bite of ulcers, watching Jesus intentionally provoke the authorities. The pounding headaches from anxiety as his Master and friend claims, near-suicidally, in the middle of thronging crowds, that he is the Son of God! The insults, the arguments with the priests and scribes, even that day when the crowd starting throwing stones and they had to run for their lives! Too much, too much. You can see why he did what he did. All was lost anyway. Jesus’ end was inevitable. Who could blame Judas for siding with the arc of History against a man determined to die? You and I were in the crowd shouting “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” All too soon, you and I will be in the crowd shouting “crucify him!” On the last day, will we ask him, “Surely, it is not I, Lord?”

Some suggest that Judas was predestined to hand Jesus over. Others will claim that Jesus asked Judas to betray him in order to fulfill the OT prophecies that prefigure his sacrifice on the cross. Still others will claim that Judas is a modern, existential figure, a man persecuted by history for making a hard choice and playing out the consequences of that choice with focused integrity. Maybe. What we know for sure is that Judas went to the chief priest. Offered Jesus' freedom and his life to those who would see him dead. He negotiated a price to betray his friend – thirty pieces of silver, the fine for murdering a slave. And then he continued living, working, ministering with Jesus, waiting for an opportunity to hand him over to his enemies.

But I said I would speak kindly of Judas. We all should. Why? Judas is so repugnant to us, so vile a man, and deserving of our contempt that, if we believe, truly believe what Jesus died to teach us, we must find it in our hearts not only to forgive him his violence against Christ, but we must see clearly, staring back at us from the twisted face of the Messiah’s betrayer, our own face – disobedient and scarred by our battles against temptation, by our struggles to find, grasp, and cling to God.

If the Christ is the best face we could wear, turned to the Father in beatitude, then Judas is the face we could wear in those moments of loneliness and distress, moments of despair at ever finding the light again. His is the face we put on when that small devilish whisper causally speaks our ruin: “This cannot be forgiven. Not even God loves you that much.” What aren’t we capable of then? What act of betrayal, deceit, selfishness, or violence is beyond us when we believe we are unlovable?

Speak kindly of Judas. Not to excuse his sin, of course not. Not to make right what is always wrong. But perhaps as an act of caution against what we hope is impossible for us. He is our anti-exemplar, the model of what happens in the ruin of despair, the wreck we make of ourselves when we kill hope with yesterday’s hatred or today’s temporary anxiety. Sometime today, ask in prayer, “Surely, it is not I, Lord?” Wait for an answer and then, with whatever answer you receive, remember mercy, and speak kindly of Judas.

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You are free

5^th Week of Lent (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The Jews think that they have never been slaves to sin b/c they are the children of Abraham. Children of the covenant who have never succumbed to idolatry. Fair enough. Except that Jesus isn't just talking about the kind of slavery that comes with the generational worship of idols. He's talking about the kind of slavery to sin that comes with just being human. A condition every child of Adam and Eve is born into. Because the Jews misunderstand the true nature of spiritual slavery, they misunderstand the true nature of spiritual freedom. Thus, in their minds, they are justified in trying to kill Jesus. He's telling them that their covenant with God through Abraham isn't enough to save them. Their freedom is deficient. He says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” Covenant or no covenant, if you sin, you are a slave to sin. The first step to spiritual freedom in Christ is to confess to being a slave to sin. You cannot defeat an enemy you refuse to see. Jesus says, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

There are four stages here: remain in the Word; be a disciple of Christ; know the truth; and be free. Notice that the last three stages are rooted in the first: remain in the Word. Remain in the Word of God, the Christ. Remain in the Word of creation, what is really Real. Remain in the Word of Christ's Body, the Church. Remain in the Word of Revelation, scripture and tradition. Remain in him and with him and you will be a faithful student of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. A disciple of Christ, imperfectly Christ for now, but learning to become perfectly Christ along the Way. And along the Way, your freedom is completed as is your joy. Claiming to be a child of God while remaining in sin is nothing else but claiming to be free while wearing chains. Even worse: it's claiming to be free while wear chains you have put on yourself. The truth will set you free. And the truth is: there is no freedom from sin except in Christ Jesus. Consider Lent your cram session for the final exam of Easter. There's just one question on this final: will you be a disciple of the Word made flesh? If the answer is yes, then you are already free.

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Raining on the righteous and the unrighteous

3rd Week of Lent (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving

A Pharisee and a tax collector go to the temple to pray. The Pharisee marches right into the temple courtyard, but the tax collector stands off at a distance. The Pharisee prays aloud. The tax collector prays silently. The Pharisee recounts his righteous deeds and gives God thanks that he is “not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous.” While the tax collector humbly beats his breast in contrition and prays, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Watching from the sidelines, anyone with eyes to see could tell the difference btw these two men. Their demeanor, dress, speech; the stance each takes before God. All different. But can we see how they are alike? Is there any reason to believe that either of two men is lying? Not that I can see. Both are telling the truth. That's how they are alike. The Pharisee is righteous. And the tax collector is a sinner. What justifies each man, for Jesus, is what they do with these truths. To what purpose do they put their spiritual condition? Both the righteous and the unrighteous will be exalted if they humble themselves before God.

The key to understanding this deceptively simply parable is understanding the parable's audience. Luke writes, “Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.” This parable at fired at those of us who are certain that we are righteous AND – b/c we are certain of our righteousness – despise everyone else. For a Pharisee to be sure of his righteousness is hardly scandalous. Follow the Law and your rightness with God is certain. There's no anxious hand-wringing about being in a state of grace. Now that we are certain of our rightness with God, what do we do? Well, one thing we do not do is despise everyone else b/c we are righteous. Nor do we give God thanks for helping us stay clean w/o also asking Him to pour out His graces on others in need of His help. Rather than despising your fellow sinners, your security in righteousness should compel you to further acts of sacrificial love in order to bring as many as possible into right relationship with God. The Pharisee's problem is his lack of genuine humility before God and his lack of genuine gratitude to God for his hard-won holiness. Humility and gratitude will persist in the truly righteous soul.

The Lord says to Hosea, regarding His chosen people, “Your piety [Judah] is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” In place of “piety,” other English translations use love, goodness, loyalty. The Latin Vulgate uses misericordia, which conveys the notion of a compassionate mercy, a sympathetic humanity towards others. Through the mouth of His prophet, Hosea, the Lord condemns Judah for its fleeting compassion, its fugitive goodness and stingy mercy. He says, “. . . it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Give Me your love, come to know Me in love. Keep your sacrifices, your burnt offerings. Dare to be genuinely righteous before Me; lay all your wounds before Me – your worry, your pride, your fear, all of your secret sins. Set these ablaze before My altar, come to know Me in love. And I will bind all your wounds. I will come to you like the rain, like spring rain watering the earth. Then, when you stand to pray, you can pray with genuine humility and give wholehearted thanks. True righteousness can abide only when humility and gratitude stand under you as your unbreakable foundation.

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Paid in full

3^rd Week of Lent (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

When you order a book from Amazon, it arrives in a package marked “Amazon Fulfillment Center.” When you pay a bill, you may receive a receipt marked “paid in full.” The obligations of a commercial contract are “fulfilled.” That word – “fulfill” – and all its variations means to complete, to be done with, to satisfy. It can also mean to perfect, to make whole again. So, when Jesus says he has come to fulfill the Law, he's saying that he's here to perfect the Law, to bring the Law to completion. Naturally, we need to ask: what is the telos, the end of the Law? The telos of the Law was and is to make of us a holy nation, a baptismal priesthood, a people assembled together to carry out His will. For centuries before Christ, the Law and Prophets worked toward this end. Sometimes with great success. But most of the time without. At the appointed time, the Son took on human flesh, becoming Man like one of us, and did what we could not – he gave himself to death in an act of sacrificial love so that our part in the Covenant could be fulfilled. The Law is not destroyed. It is made perfect. All of the Law and the Prophets is incorporated into the body and blood of Christ and our duty under the Law is complete.

Now that the obligations of the Law and the Prophets are complete, are we licensed to do as we please? No. The Law and the Prophets are completed under the first Law of Love: love God and neighbor as you love yourself. Do that and you perfectly obey the Law. You love perfectly. What we are doing right now – during Lent – is frankly inventorying our fidelity to the Law of Love. And while we take account of how well we love or do not love, we remember that we are only able to love in the first place b/c Love Himself loves us first. It is only through His originating love that we exist at all. Only through Him that we can love spouses, children, friends, and enemies. Only through Him do we come at last to the source of creating and re-creating love. If we follow Christ – and we say we do – and if Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets – and he did – and if we hope to find a place at the Wedding Feast – and we do – then we too will live and breathe and have our being in the world as fulfillers of the Law of Love. We are the Priests and Prophets of Divine Love sent to show the world its salvation in Christ Jesus.

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Fakin' it ain't makin' it

2^nd Week of Lent (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

One day during lunch at Notre Dame Seminary I was passing around an Ignatius Press catalog. One of the seminarians glanced at the address label and asked how I go the title “Very Reverend.” I said, “Because I'm prior at St. Dominic Priory. They probably got it from the Catholic Directory.” Seminarians being seminarians, they started calling me “Very Rev Philip Neri.” I countered with, “That would be 'the Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Prior' to you peons!” We got a good laugh out of it. But my underlying – and formational point, I hope – was that fancy ecclesial titles tell us nothing about the holiness of the title's bearer. They tell us nothing about the bearer's actual relationship with God. Father, Sister, Brother, Your Eminence, Your Holiness – none of these is descriptive of the person beyond his or her place in the hierarchy. In fact, I'm almost convinced the Lord allows these titles to test his vowed and ordained servants for humility and obedience. But Catholic Officialdom is not the only place where religious theater can quickly overtake one's earnest striving for holiness. By virtue of baptism, we are all priests, prophets, and kings. Everyone of us is vowed by baptism to be Christ in the world for the world. Here's your Lenten challenge: are you Christ in the world for the world? Or, are you an actor in religious theater?

It's a question for me as well. After all, the preacher preaches to himself first! So I'm not just being rude. The temptation is real. Very real. The rewards of appearing to be holy can be seductive. I get to be thought well of. I get all the public benefits of being holy w/o the bother of actually being holy. Who knows? Acting religious in public might actually rub off on me a little! The best part though is thinking of myself as holy, appearing holy, and getting to judge those who are not as holy as I am. The problem of course is that I could start to believe my part in religious theater is real and mistake faking it for making it. The only audience member clapping at that point is the Devil. When the sons of Zebedee ask to be elevated above their fellow disciples, Jesus asks a pointed question: “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” They answer: “We can.” A suicidal Hamlet says offstage: “Ay, there's the rub.” The sons of Zebedee have no idea what that chalice is or what it means. Besides, Jesus says, places of honor are not his to give. If he can't give them to us, we certainly can't give them to ourselves.

What the sons of Zebedee don't know and we do it is that the chalice Jesus drinks is the chalice of sacrificial love. It's not a cup of power or a cup of wealth and influence. It's the chalice of service and surrender; a slave's cup, leading to the Cross, the tomb, and – in hope – the resurrection. We are in a time of examination. Look hard at your religiosity. Look hard at your public holiness. Make absolutely sure that the inside matches the outside. Make sure that the depth of your love goes deeper than a finely tailored costume and a few scripted lines. Christ has handed you his chalice. Before you take and drink, ask yourself: am I Christ in the world for the world? Or, am I faking it so as to be seen making it?   

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Why do we love God?

2nd Sunday of Lent

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

    God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham goes up the mountain and begins the sacrifice. He's willingly, obediently about to kill his only son b/c God has ordered him to do so. We can stop here and ask: does Abraham love God more than he loves Isaac? No, he doesn't. But his obedience to God shows that he loves God first; he loves God before he loves Isaac, therefore, Abraham loves Isaac b/c he loves God first. At the very last second, an angel stays Abraham's knife and God provides a substitute sacrifice in the form of a ram. What we love most can only be loved through the love God has for us b/c He is love itself. That God loves us is never in question. He is love. Love is who He is and what He does. No question. But there is a question about God and love that we must ask, and ask daily: do I love God? If so, what purpose does my love for God serve? On Mt. Tabor – in the presence of Peter, James, and John – the transfigured Christ tells us why we love. We love God for the same reason He loves us: so that we may be made holy. And in holiness we live out sacrificial love.

So, how do we help God make us holy? That is, what do we do/think/say/feel on a day to day basis that assists God's love for us so that we are actually growing in holiness? Loving God, yourself, your family and friends, your neighbors, and even loving your enemies is easy in the abstract. It is far more difficult to get out there and perform loving acts; to perform forgiveness; to show mercy; to treat everyone you meet – at church, at the bank, at the office, in traffic – to treat everyone you meet as another soul deeply in love with God and eternally loved by God. This is why the Church has always bound faith and works together: our loving works demonstrate our trust in God and our trust in God is made real in our loving works. When we fail to love, we confess these failures as sins in thought, word, and deed. So, how do we help God make us holy? Well, first, we understand that loving God and those He loves is not simply an abstract, intellectual exercise; next, we understand that love is a behavior – like driving or walking or getting dressed. To love is to see, hear, think about, and treat yourself and everyone else the way God Himself treats us all. With kindness, compassion, dignity, patience, and forgiveness. Do this and you grow in holiness. You become more like Christ – set apart. You are transfigured.

Becoming more like Christ is we have vowed to do. But we need to hear this: loving God, self, and everyone else – becoming more like Christ – is dangerous. Dangerous how? Besides Jesus' promises of persecution, trial, and death for those who follow him, we can point to the forty days he spent in the desert being tempted by Satan. We too are tempted to play the Devil's Games with sin and death. The Devil always takes God's gifts and tweaks them ever-so-slightly and then presents them to us infected with his poison. God's love and His command to us to love is no different. With God's love and His command to love comes His truth and His command to obey the truth. Love and truth cannot be separated. When we love intensely, we dwell intensely in the truth. And when we tell the Truth we always express love. The Devil plays on our desire to love by pointing out all the ways we appear to fail at love. He accuses the Church of not loving women b/c we truthfully name artificial contraception, abortion, and sterilization evil. He accuses us of hatred b/c we truthfully call sex outside of a sacramental marriage evil. He accuses us of not loving orphans b/c we cannot place them in homes with two fathers or two mothers. He accuses us of not loving non-Christians b/c we truthfully teach that Christ is the only name under heaven through which all are saved. What Satan is tempting us to do, want us to do, is sever truth from love and then love without truth. This we cannot do b/c our Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. We follow him so that we may be transfigured.

Satan and the world he rules teaches that “Love” is to be practiced without Truth. Love w/o truth is nothing more than tolerance or indifference, an emotion that feels good to emote but ultimately leaves those who live it living a lie. Godly love is always true. Never a lie. True love is always gives the glory to God. Never to man. Love always carries us to goodness; never to evil. Love always binds us in obedience; it never frees us to be disobedient. Godly love always heals, always cleans, sometimes hurts, sometimes cuts away. Love never winks at sin, shrugs at injustice, or ignores the poor. Love always looks to Christ, his church, and his Mother. Love never uses the bottom-line, the convenient, the practical, or the efficient to destroy God’s creatures, especially His unborn children. Love always encourages spiritual growth from faithful experience. Love never gives license to novelty for novelty’s sake nor does love trust innovation for the sake of excitement. Love can be a terrible whirlwind, a bone-shattering blow, a heart-ripping loss. But love always builds up in perfection, grows in wisdom and kindness; love attracts questions about eternal things, and discourages attachment to impermanent things. The love that Satan and the world he rules wants to settle for is a passion for indifference, permissiveness, choice w/o consequence, and, ultimately, death.

Will you be made holy? Let's ask that differently: do you will to be made holy? If you will to become a transfigured instrument for God’s Word, you will love as He loves you. You will speak the truth and only the truth; you will spread goodness and only goodness; you will honor beauty and only beauty; you will correct error, confront sin, expose lies, forgive all offenses; and you will build up his Body with works of mercy and open the doors of your faith to the stranger. And you will remember – if you will to be made holy – that you are not alone. God is with us, and who can stand against Him?

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God loves those who hate us

1st Week of Lent (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving

That we may be children of our heavenly Father, we must love our enemies, pray for them, especially those who persecute us. If there's a teaching in scripture that is more contrary to our animal instinct for self-preservation than this one, I'm not sure what it is. Loving family and friends comes easily. We can even manage to love God and ourselves without too much difficulty. But loving and praying for those who would see us destroyed is not only contrary to our survival it is downright suicidal. If our enemies defeat us b/c they are stronger, smarter, and more numerous, well, that's unfortunate for us but we can at least grasp the idea that we lost b/c our enemies were stronger, smarter, and more numerous. What is beyond comprehension is the idea that we would lose b/c we were too busy loving and praying to fight with all our strength! That's not a battle, it's a retreat, a surrender. And it's suicide. Jesus must be winking at the disciples when he teaches them to love and pray for their enemies. He must've spoken this nonsense in a sarcastic tone. As strange as it might be to hear: no, he's deadly serious and there was no winking. We defeat our enemies by wielding a weapon called Truth. “[The Father] makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” God loves those who hate us. And we must be perfect as He is perfect. 

If we will be the children of our heavenly Father, we must be perfect as He is perfect. God is perfect in His love. He is Love. Love is Who He is and What He does. In every thought we think, every word we speak, and every deed we do, we too must be thinkers, speakers, and doers of love. If we pick and choose whom to love, sort through the options and select this one or that to love but not that one or this one, then we do not love as God loves. The sun shines on both the good and the bad; the rain falls on our friends and our enemies. Jesus asks us, “. . . if you love those who love you, what compensation will you have? Do not [traitors] do the same? And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that?” In other words, how does loving only those who love you make you a child of the Father? What truth are you living when you only pray for those who pray for you? “Do not the pagans do the same?” Why imitate those who would see us destroyed? Yes, we might die if we love them, but it would not be by suicide.

The key to understanding this difficult teaching is to understand that Jesus is pointing us to our lives beyond this one. Though our mortal lives are immensely important, they are not ultimately important; that is, in the Father's plan for our salvation it is more important that we practice love than it is to merely survive. It is essential to our eternal survival that we practice the love He gives us by loving those He Himself loves. Our enemies hate us. We can fight them with our own hatred, and we might even mortally defeat them. But in fighting them with hatred, we are immortally defeated. We become our own enemy, haters of self and God. Jesus understands our natural instinct for survival, but he pushes us to think and feel beyond the limits of this mortal life and live in the perfection of his Father's love right now. We trust in the loving-goodness of our God. And this is our fundamental strength, our deadliest weapon against the hatred of our enemies. If we bombard them with prayer, then both we and they win the battle against our mutual enemy – Sin and the death it brings.

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The only sign we need

1^st Week of Lent (W)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Jesus seems irritated. Maybe “frustrated” is a better word. Apparently, the crowd is clamoring after signs to prove that he is who and what he says he is. We don't know if the crowd is genuinely interested in his claims, or if they are just idly curious or bored. We can assume that they don't believe him. That's usually the case when proof is demanded. Evidence will support or refute his claim. Evidence will settle the issue. But how often is evidence presented; the claim obviously supported; and still acceptance of the claim is not forthcoming? If my mind is made up on some hot button issue (gun control, abortion, capital punishment, the identity of the Messiah), how likely is it that evidence and good argumentation will change my mind? Ideally, my mind is properly ordered to the true, good, and beautiful and can be persuaded to see the true, good, and beautiful wherever it is revealed. But we know all too well that once entrenched into a pattern of thinking, changing one's mind is difficult if not outright impossible. There's always a way to read the evidence to fit my intellectual habits. The crowd wants signs so that they can judge for themselves whether or not Jesus is telling the truth. Unfortunately, signs are not going to help them. Nor will they help us.

Signs won't help us b/c we already believe. Or we say we do. We have already accepted Jesus' claim to be the Messiah and have ordered our lives around being his followers. We aren't always and everywhere perfect followers, but we have fundamentally taken on the mind of Christ and vowed to be Christs in the world. Signs, for us, are pointless. They add nothing to who and what we are. Apparitions, locutions, weeping statues are all well and good, but they are not signs – for us – of Jesus' identity and purpose. If we believe that Jesus is the Messiah and we follow him, then we have a task to complete that's bigger than seeking after signs. We are charged with becoming the signs that the crowd seeks. You and I have agreed to be the signs of God's power in the world. That's His choice and ours. He loves the world through us and in the world we are loved by Him. Thus, we, the Church, are the sacrament by which those in the world encounter divine love. Lenten challenge: go be a sign of divine love. Show the world -- in word and deed -- that Jesus is the Messiah. He died for sinners so that we might live. His empty tomb is the only sign we need.

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Things fall apart

5^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

We think of “healing” as returning a sick or broken body back to its natural state. Kill the virus. Bandage the wound. Reset the bone. Remove the tumor. We can also think of “healing” as reestablishing the balance btw mind and body. Express the disordered emotions. Work through disappointments, betrayals, and losses. Conquer demons. Find some peace. The kind of healing Jesus does this morning is really something altogether different. Yes, he physically heals Simon's mother-in-law. And all the others who come to him. But he does more than reset their broken bodies. More than give them back their health. He sets them free. Free from sin, free from death – free from the inevitabilities of mortality. By healing these people, Jesus sets in motion a wave of spiritual remediation that reconnects his Father's children to the Holy Family and brings them into an inheritance that started building at the first Word of creation. He makes them sons and daughters of the Most High. So, to be healed by Christ is to be made whole and entire a perfected creature of the Father.

Job tells us what it's like to be imperfect creatures of the Father. We are miserable drudges. Restless hirelings and overworked slaves. Our days fly by and our nights are troubled. You can almost hear the despair in his voice: “Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.” Of course, Job's unhappiness is not his fault. He's done nothing to deserve this misery. His friends interrogate him aggressively about any possible transgressions he's made against God's law. There are none. He's been abundantly blessed with a large family, material wealth, good health, and he's accounted righteous among his peers. Yet, he's tortured physically, mentally, and spiritually. He only learns “the why” of his ordeal at its end. He is a creature – a made thing – living in a mortal world subject to failure and death. Everything he has and is is of the world. All of it subject to failure and death. Nothing of the world is permanent. Nothing in the world is exempt from passing away. Health. Wealth. Family. Friends. All of it – himself included – is temporary. At the end, Job is taught: “Things fall apart.” Only God and those who belong to God endure. Jesus heals to make us possessions of God.

We should pray that we never need Job's lesson to learn the truth of our creatureliness. 21^st century middle-class, American comfort can hypnotize us with the illusion of constancy, order, and progress. Things are tidy and always improving. And even when there are setbacks in our orderly progress, we're confident that some hard work and time will see things set right. We can turn to God for help. A good thing. We can turn to one another. Another good thing. But whether we turn to God and/or one another, things fall apart. Belonging to God in no way exempts us from the mortalities of the world. Job was as righteous as a righteous man could be. All those people Jesus healed – what had they done to deserve their diseases and broken bodies? Who deserves abject poverty, systemic violence, political oppression, or natural disaster? No one. But no one is protected from the consequences of being human. What Christ offers in his healing touch is a hope beyond the ravages of mortality. An assurance that this world is not our telos, our end. We are not abandoned, left to fend for ourselves. Created with a purpose, we have more than eating, sleeping, working, and reproducing to look forward to. When our mortality fails, Christ's healing immortality steps in to reveal the Biggest Possible Picture of God's plan for our salvation. That plan needs our cooperation. It requires our freely given assent for fruition. If you will be healed into the Holy Family, you will receive Christ and preach Christ and bear witness to your healing. In word and deed, you will proclaim your healed up wounds, your scars, and you will give God the glory.   

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Don't be a tool

St. Anthony, Abbot

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

Our translation says that the Pharisees “watch Jesus closely.” Other translations say it better: they “spy on him.” In order to spy, one must watch. But not all watching is spying. Spying implies skulking for nefarious reasons. The Pharisees were colluding with the Herodians – supporters of the Roman puppet king – to put Jesus to death. More is at stake here than one man's withered hand. This gospel scene is about the force of the Law; the need for mercy; the realities of divine healing; and – most of all – the depths to which some will fall in the acquisition and maintenance of political power. Jesus' ministry is an existential threat to the power and popularity of the Pharisees and the stability of Herod's rule. At stake is the whole structure of a volatile state consumed by rivalries, betrayals, and the potential for violent revolution. So, the Pharisees spy on Jesus. They need him silenced. They need him dead. To achieve this goal, the Pharisees set aside the truth. They turn away from the Law. They lie, cheat, and set traps. All in pursuit of power. Jesus counters their plot with divine healing and mercy.

The Pharisees believe they are doing what's necessary to keep their people and themselves safe. Jesus' ministry is a radical reinterpretation of the Law. Jesus calls it the “fulfillment of the Law.” But to the power brokers of the day, his apparent violations of the Law are dangerous sparks aimed at an open powder keg. Their machinations seem justified b/c they are motivated by a desire for peace and stability. Getting Jesus out of the way – by whatever means necessary – is a Good. What the man's healing shows them – and us – is that lies cannot create truth. Cheating cannot create justice. That compromise, confusion, and political calculation cannot give us peace. And finally, that whatever is broken, sick, cast out, and impoverished can be made whole by the Word of God alone. The Pharisees believe they can control the world by using the tools of the world. But the world makes them its tool. In the end, God reveals who the Master Craftsman really is, using all of them to free us from sin and death. Keep your hearts and minds squarely focused on Christ – his truth, goodness, and beauty. Leave the tool-using and spying to the Pharisees. Nothing created can bring us peace.

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Renovation Update

That wall behind the crucifix was supposed to be finished on Dec 23rd. Didn't happen. But they are almost done. 

The acoustics in the chapel are MUCH better with the tile floors. We actually sound good singing the Office. The choirs stalls will make it even better!

Consider helping us out. We need about $90,000. We have around $8,000 with pledges for more to come in the next few weeks. 

We're looking into putting name plates on the stalls for donors. 

https://www.opdallas.com/renovate

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Becoming the Christ Child

Nativity of the Lord (Day)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

On “the Twenty-fifth Day of December...in the 149th Olympiad; in the year 752 since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the 42nd year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father...was conceived by the Holy Spirit...born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man...” On that same day in the same year, in virtue of Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection, you and I were given – freely given – the gift of our salvation: to become Christs in the flesh, to be made sons of God, heirs to the Kingdom; priests, prophets, and kings to bear witness to His glory in the world. We are rescued, healed, ransomed, adopted, and saved. But by far the greater gift, the greatest grace is our freedom to become Him whom we love – the Son born of Mary in Bethlehem. That son, her son, the Son of God. The Son of God and the Son of Man, the Savior, the Messiah. His name is Christ Jesus, the one sent to save us from sin and death by offering us a share in his divine nature, participation in the divine love that is the Blessed Trinity. This gift of eternal life came wrapped in the flesh of a child born in a stable, adored by shepherds and kings alike.

It is beyond strange – maybe even scandalous – that God chose to offer us a share in His divine life by taking on our human nature. He tried other ways – ritual sacrifice, the Law, the prophets – but none of these served His purpose fully: to bring us into a fundamental intimacy with Him. Human obstinance, vanity, pride, and an inordinate love of worldly things always kept us just far enough away to lose sight of our end. Maybe His older ways of saving us from ourselves were too literal, or maybe they were too difficult. Whatever the reason, we failed. Again and again, we wandered away from the covenant, finding ourselves lost in the wildernesses of the world. He used the nations to chastise us when we strayed. And He used us to show the nations His glory. Finally, at the appointed time, He took it upon Himself to fulfill the terms of the covenant that we ourselves could not or would not fulfill. The Christ Child in the stable in Bethlehem is His final means of bringing us into the Holy Family, of enticing us back into the intimacy of divine love. What the Law and the Prophets did not achieve, the infant Jesus commenced in the manger and the Christ completed on the Cross.

For 2,023 years the Church has marked the Incarnation as that singular moment in human history when the Son of God came to us like us and offered us the possibility of becoming perfectly human. From the year “752 since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the 42nd year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus,” all of humanity, every single human person, received and receives an invitation from their Creator to become Christ. To live and die as a witness to the Word of liberation from sin and death. To minister to those in need of hearing His Word spoken and to see His Word lived out. Each one of us is granted – by the Incarnation – a chance to not only grow in holiness but to become the means of salvation for another. Christmas is Santa Claus, presents, decorated trees, and glazed hams. But more fundamentally, Christmas is a renewal of our Yes to the Father's invitation to be a child of Christ, to become a Christ Child. “What came to be through [the Word] was life, and this life was the light of the human race.” Remember: you've said Yes. You are that light that shines in the darkness.   

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Bro, take the win!

3rd Week of Advent (T)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving

Zechariah learns a hard but well-deserved lesson in prayer. You can pray for what you think you want. Get it. Question the veracity of the gift. Fail to be grateful. And. . .get your tongue glued to the floor of your mouth. What makes this lesson most-poignant is that Zechariah is a priest, praying in the Holy of Holies, in the presence of an archangel, who tells him that his long-prayed-for son is on his way, and he still has the audacity to bark out a dumb question like: “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” I'm reminded of a recent incident in my philosophy class when a seminarian correctly answered one of my questions. I congratulated him on being correct. But he continued to argue with me vigorously. One of his classmates shouted, “Bro, shut up and take the win!” Zechariah, bro, take the win. Now, we could excuse Zechariah's incredulity as a reaction to being addressed by an archangel, or excitement at learning he's finally going to be a father – at an advanced age. But it's a safe bet to take that the real problem here is his understanding of God's providence and the purpose of prayer. I'm betting that Zechariah thought of prayer as a sort of cosmic Amazon Wish List. Put your wants on a list and God will provide when you're ready to receive. That's not how this works. God provides and we receive. That's true. God provides what we need to return to Him freely in love. Not every want that crosses our mind. He gives what we need when we need it. Our job is to be always in a receptive mode. That mode is called gratitude. Whether we have actually been given what we need or not, we remain in gratitude. By remaining in gratitude, we remain open to receiving, always ready to get what we have been given. Zechariah muddles the recipe by adding a dash of doubtful curiosity to the mix. That's like adding cilantro and garlic to your brownie batter. Not good. The result is a dire punishment for a priest: if you're not going to use your gift of speech to give God thanks and praise, then you're not going to use it all. As you prepare to receive the gift of the Christ Child six days from now, contemplate how and why you pray. Are you praying with thanksgiving? Are you praying to add to the Wish List, or praying to receive whatever it is that God has to give you? Are you daring an angel to put you on mute by doubting that God knows what He's doing? By doubting that He can do what He wills? Last lesson from Zechariah's fumble: you and I don't have to understand what God is doing in and with our lives. We've already said Yes. Just give Him thanks and praise.

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We are him whom we announce

3^rd Sunday of Advent

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

When asked “who are you?” John confesses who he isn't – the Christ. He's not Elijah. He's not a prophet. When pressed for an answer, he says, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘make straight the way of the Lord.’” What sort of person – one who isn't the Christ or a prophet – cries out in the desert, “Make straight the way of the Lord”? We would say that this sort of person is a herald, a harbinger, one who goes out in front, giving warning that One greater than he is coming. He is not the light, but goes out to testify to the light. We know who John is and what he came to do. Who are we? What have we come to do? We could say that we too are heralds, harbingers sent out ahead to make the paths of the Lord straight. And that's true. We could say that we have taken on the work of prophets, announcing God's Word, preaching and teaching His truth. And that's true as well. But if we see who we are and what we do as mere preparation for the Lord's coming, then we miss the bigger picture: we prepare for Christ's coming again by being Christs for others now. We are him whom we announce. Each imperfect alone but more perfect together.

The Christ Child was born some 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem. He will come again as the Just Judge at the end of the age. In the meantime, what we call the End Times – that's right now –, Christ is here in his Body, the Church. In each one of us as members of his Body. He is with us always b/c he never truly left. He is in his sacraments as priest. He is in his preachers as prophet. He is in his Church as king. And yet, we wait on his coming again. What's the point of waiting for someone who is already with us? What if we're not waiting on him? What if he's waiting on us? That is, what if he's waiting on his Church, his Bride to be fully prepared to welcome him? What if he's waiting for you and me to exhaust our gifts in service to the Gospel, to receive the fullness of the Father's holiness, to totally surrender in gratitude to just being loved creatures desperately in need of his mercy? What if we are imperfect Christs waiting to be made perfect – and that is his Coming Again? It would seem that the only proper response is. . .rejoicing!

What else would we do? Cry? Laugh? Groan in disappointment? To be made perfect in Christ – to be made a Christ – is the highest glory of the baptized. And it's a transformation we must participate in. How? Paul gives us a start: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” Rejoice. Pray. Give thanks. This is the will of God for us. That we rejoice, pray, and give thanks. “[Keep] what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.” Easily done if we are rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks. If we are rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks, we are growing in holiness, becoming more and more like Christ, moving away from the world and toward the kingdom. The closer we get to the kingdom, the closer we get to our perfection in Christ and the closer we come to bearing witness to Christ coming again. But we aren't just sitting around being perfected, passively being worked on by the HS. In receiving all the Father has to give us, we become conduits for those gifts, fire hoses of grace soaking the world with His invitation to repentance and forgiveness. Like the Christ we will become, we minister, attend to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, showing them the mercy we've received, and bearing witness to the mercy they show us.

Paul ends his letter with a blessing: “May the God of peace make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” For this blessing to take hold and bear fruit, we must acknowledge our nascent Christ-hood and rejoice. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Rejoicing is the wordless prayer of thanksgiving that leads to surrender. And surrender leads to perfection.  

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