Greed is Death

All three readings today warn against greed, one of the seven capital sins. In fact, Jesus replies to a greedy man with what seems to be snarky remark: “Friend, who appointed me your lawyer?” St. Paul is even more direct: put greed to death. Jacopone da Todi, in 1265, described it in even more acerbically: “obsessive avarice, a worm that knows no rest, erodes the mind with endless preoccupations.” It breeds discontent and dissatisfaction; it poisons our inner thoughts with envy and resentment; greed is a cancer that spreads its fibrous tentacles into every dimension of our lives. But the Bible gives a cure, which I will show you at the end of this homily.
 
Vanities

The first reading from the book of Qoheleth declares rather drearily “Vanity of Vanities.” Nothingness eventually claims everything on earth. Bishop Baron points out the Hebrew word which we translate “vanity” is actually “bubbles.” All the prettiest things in life are no more than shiny bubbles that disappear within a few seconds. So don’t form an idolatrous greed, because your bubble will burst. As a kid I was greedy for matchbox cars. I had collected about a hundred shiny, fast, and fascinating little idols. They probably still lie in a box somewhere in my parents’ home. At a certain point they ceased to fascinate me, and I wondered why I had spent so much time and money on them.
A few years ago a woman and her husband came for marriage counseling. “He works three jobs!” she complained. “The children and I never see him!” Her husband replied that he was working so hard precisely to provide good things for them—a large house, a boat, vacations, etc. A few years later he came home from work to that large and beautiful house—and it was empty. His wife and children had left. Greed had killed his marriage; and all that he had worked for—to whom would it go?

God calls in the debt
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In Jesus’ parable, a man has worked very hard to amass so many things that he has to build bigger barns to store them. Putting things in storage pretty much describes our American society of endless acquisition. Even though I have fourteen pairs of shoes, I must satisfy my greed for even more footgear idols. Does anyone in this church not have stuff in storage somewhere? I had planned on a gentle reprimand, but then remembered that I myself have a few dozen boxes of stuff in a friend’s garage. So in Jesus’ parable, God “demands” the life of that man, just as he was moving his stuff into bigger barns. The literal Hebrew words are that God “calls in the debt.” Our possessions, and our very life, are on loan from God, and he can call in the debt at any time. It will go badly for us if we are not ready to give it back.
So how do I free myself of greed? “Put to death, then, …. the greed that is idolatry,” St. Paul writes. We kill greed by giving a portion of what we have been given away. When I tithe (give a tenth of my goods to another), I declare my freedom from those things. They no longer use me, but I use them to glorify God and help His children.

It really works!

But does almsgiving work? Some years ago I had managed to save up $17,000 over three years to buy a new car. The vehicle ended up costing $27,000, so I had to borrow $10,000 from a friend. Just at that time another priest-friend invited me to a talk on tithing at his parish. The married couples were so joyful in their dedication to sacrificial giving that I decided to begin right away, heedless of my $10,000 debt. And then something strange happened. Even though I was giving significant weekly tithes to the parish, I was able to repay that $10,000 in three months. Money came from everywhere: an unusually large tax refund; a personal debt repaid; an unexpected reimbursement. A family told me after the first Mass yesterday that they had exactly the same experience: they began tithing—they broke the stranglehold—and money came at them. I must say that “free money” dropped on me only once, (probably as an assurance that He was really there), but I’ve never had personal money worries since. The same goes for time: if you give God an hour a week in the adoration chapel, or with the family rosary, or daily Mass, He will give you many more hours in return. I don’t know how it works, but I know it works. “Don’t worry about money,” Mother Teresa said. “God has lots of it.”

Now I know why priests shouldn’t talk politics! In my last blog, I expressed frustration with the Republican National Convention. Some of you took that to mean that I’m endorsing the Democratic Party. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, and if I offended any in the Republican Party. One blog reader rightly pointed out that my criticisms were based on very little evidence, so I read over the Republican platform. The platform itself is pretty clear on some important issues; for example, it courageously defines pornography as a “public health crisis.”
 
My complaint is with the Convention itself: I didn’t hear anyone speaking with conviction on the fundamental social issues: Respect for human life, legal recognition for authentic marriage, and protections for conscience convictions. The Democrats forcefully articulate that abortion should be legal, marriage (and sexual identify itself) should redefined, and individual consciences should be subject to state control. Are the Republicans opposing these fundamental errors as forcefully as the Democrats are promoting them? Is anyone at the Convention saying flat-out that abortion should not be legal, marriage is between one man and one woman, and conscience rights should be safe from government coercion? Rather, all I heard at the convention was vague talk about the economy and “prosperity.” The economic questions, in fact, are secondary to issues directly related to the human person, such as who is a human person and do unborn human persons have rights? That’s why Thomas Jefferson put “the right to life” first in the Declaration. Who in the Republican leadership is putting the Right to Life first in these speeches? Who is bold and clear enough to bring the discussion back to the Natural Law, the foundation of all social prosperity?
 
Some of you expressed hurt—and a few outrage—over what you perceived to be my endorsement of the Democratic platform. Do you really think I am endorsing the secularist agenda, according to which only the government will decide what is true and what is false? In effect, a vote for the Democratic platform is a vote to further restrict citizens’ conscience rights, to force physicians to kill the unborn and disabled, to further weaken marriage and family, and probably to put your priests in jail (already in 2014 a Texas mayor demanded pastors turn over their sermons for her review). I am quite aware that the relativistic “pro-choice” tenets of the Democratic party are incompatible with a free and rational society. But who in the Republican party is opposing these errors at their root? They talk about the economy; they talk about security and prosperity. But they are not bold enough to talk about current violations of basic human rights, principally through legal abortion and euthanasia.
 
Even Governor Pence, whom I respect, spent a lot of time vainly criticizing the Democrats while vaguely promising “prosperity.” “On issue by issue,” he said, “[we] will take our case to the voters, pointing out the failures of the Obama-Clinton agenda and showing a better way. We will win the hearts and minds of the American people with an agenda for a stronger and more prosperous America." The only “better way” to a “stronger and more prosperous America” is to restore fundamental human rights—to life, to marriage, to conscience, to safe bathrooms! The Republicans will not win this election by arguing about the economy and "prosperity" with the Democrats--it hasn't worked in the last two elections. They must return the national discussion to the fundamentals: in Jefferson's words again, to the "laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Nothing less will suffice at this moment in our nation's history.

​On Monday I turned on the car radio to catch a bit of the Republican convention in Cleveland. After only ten minutes, I knew that they will lose big time to the Democrats.
 
They will lose because their leaders have nothing to speak about. They lack the courageous conviction to speak about anything real, to identify the cause of the problems against which they rail. The Democrats speak with conviction because they believe in something. They believe in human progress, which of course is a false idol, but at least they believe in it.
 
The Republicans will continue to lag in the Democrats’ shadow as long as they straddle the fence between two gods:
 
On one hand, the Republicans honor the God of their fathers, in whose service a ragged band of pilgrims founded a new nation on Plymouth Rock 350 years ago. Some Americans still worship this God, but most of us pay mere lip service to Him. We speak wistfully about an American culture founded on Christian principles, but we are not willing to live according to those principles. We want to do it Our Way, the so-called American Way. So our speeches sound like Hallmark Channel reruns. The God of our fathers, however, really is God, and requires submission, not merely nostalgia.
 
The other god the Republicans straddle is called “Mammon.” It is a false idol, of course, a close cousin to the Democrats’ god of “Progress.” Republicans value not the laws of God, but the laws of the free market, and the bottom line drives the vast majority of their behavior. Every serious decision is made on the basis of how much will it cost me, and how much do I stand to make on it? From the universities I choose for my children, to the careers I choose for myself, to the church I attend, decisions are made according to the god Prosperity.
 
The Democrats believe with passion in human progress, and their clear coherence wins our respect. The Republicans, by sad contrast, come across as inarticulate, tiresome, ambiguous, and driven by base self-interest. If only they could summon the courage to believe in something greater, they would sweep the country, and save it. Their opponents have no faith in anything greater than themselves, but at least they believe in that. How much good the Republicans could do if they insisted on a rational faith in God. They will lose big time, again, to those who have faith at least in something.

Yesterday we buried a priest, my good friend Fr. Peter Carota. Fifteen years ago, he had been assigned as parochial vicar to a parish in Modesto, and I had been assigned pastor of another parish in the same city. That year, he won the somewhat silly but telling People’s Choice Award as “most popular pastor” by the local newspaper. “But he’s not even a pastor!” I objected to myself. God gave Fr. Peter much energy, which he poured upon his people in loving service. Somehow he had convinced Bishop Blaire to offer his funeral Mass in Latin (not the Bishop’s favorite language--God bless him for his charity!), and it proceeded with all due solemnity yesterday. The cathedral was packed four and five deep along the walls, spilling into the streets.
 
But I felt no emotion as they carried my friend in a black box up the altar steps. His friend Fr. Bill McDonald, the first to welcome him to Stockton as vocations director in 1990, spoke just about perfectly of his elder but younger brother in the priesthood. Many were wiping their eyes, and his poor father, Mario, seemed virtually crumpled by the ordeal. I sat with four brother priests looking on, we who had belonged to his priestly fraternity, who had gone through so many hopes and disappointments with him, who had spent many days off and vacations with him, in the mountains and at the beach, kayaking the rivers and swinging uselessly at little white balls, who had journeyed to Paris and Rome and Toronto with huddling hordes of young people to see the Pope. And yet, our eyes were dry as the funeral Mass continued.
 
Then came time for Holy Communion. They assigned his closer friends to various communion stations in the cathedral, and I began my simple task. “Corpus Christi” I began, offering the Divine Sacrament to the outstretched hands or (more frequently) open mouths of the people. Suddenly the floodgates opened, and my heart began to weep. “Why am I crying?!” I asked myself in frustration. I could hardly see, and barely talk. “The body….”—I couldn’t finish. To one man, the brother of one of our priestly fraternity, I couldn’t even say a word, just dumbly holding up the Body of Christ with watery eyes. “Get a grip!” I told myself. But the tears and the swollen throat persisted until I finished by last communicant.
 
Why at Holy Communion? Probably because Fr. Peter gave his life to this simple task of distributing Holy Communion. “Do you love me?” Christ had asked Fr. Peter’s namesake. “If you love me, Peter, you will feed my sheep.” I suppose I wept at the sheer beauty of such a simple vocation, to which I too have been called. I wept also because we have lost a priest who so faithfully fed us the Body of Christ. “Who will feed us now that you are gone?” my mind questioned. Thus the Apostles spoke when Jesus told them he would soon die. But, He assured them, I will not abandon you. “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
 
We followed Fr. Peter’s earthly remains out of the cathedral and stood before the hearse as they loaded him in. We sang an off-key Salve Regina. We took him to the cemetery, and lowered the box with his dear face, now decaying, into the ground. We tried the Salve Regina again, and this time got it right. He is with God now, and before long we will join him. May we priests feed Christ’s lambs faithfully as long as it pleases His Majesty, for He indeed is with us, until the end of our age. Requiescat in pace.

​On Friday morning, at 6:53am, I was preparing for Mass at a men’s shelter in Pacifica. The Missionaries of Charity have been preparing poor men for death in their AIDS hospice for over 30 years in San Francisco, and as I put on my amice and alb, a few of them shuffled past for Mass. At that moment, 80 miles away, a dear friend took his last breath.  Fr. Peter Carota became part of our priestly fraternity in the Diocese of Stockton even before he took Holy Orders. He died at 6:53am on a farm outside of Escalon, just before my Mass began in Pacifica.
 
Fr. Peter loved the poor, and was loved by them. I didn’t know he had gone back to God as I approached the altar on Friday, but the humility of the poor men at Mass lit a simple joy in my heart. We were offering the Holy Sacrifice together in a homeless shelter; Fr. Peter’s life began in the soup kitchens he established in Santa Cruz to the priesthood he exercised in Stockton and Phoenix. God directed him to feed his men not only with the day-old bread he begged from Santa Cruz bakeries, but with the Bread of Life. As he lay dying in Escalon, he would whisper to us: “you must thank God for your priesthood, that you can still offer the Holy Mass.”
 
During my Mass on Friday morning, a schizophrenic man came up for communion. The sisters indicated that he should receive only a blessing, so I blessed him with the Sacred Host. He began to yell at me and pulled off his dark sunglasses: “Do you know who I am?” Anger, fear, and frustration contorted his creased face. In my weakness, I took offense and lightly derided him. “No I don’t. Who are you?” I smiled sardonically. “If you don’t know who I am, you’ve got a problem, and you need to deal with it. You need help.” I smiled weakly, and the sisters bundled him off. The Mass continued.
 
After Mass I had regained a bit of composure and asked Sr. John Marie if I should have given him Holy Communion. “Yes,” she said: the sisters were overly cautious. But we might ask him if he would like to receive in his room. We went to his room, and I feared the worst. He again manifested belligerence, but as I lifted the Host, he knelt on the floor. “I kneel before my Lord Jesus Christ.” He received the Holy Eucharist with great humility, and my blessing, and we embraced, all smiles.
 
Was Fr. Peter interceding for us? Certainly he was. Not only the souls in heaven, but also the souls in purgatory intercede for us on earth, as we intercede for them. Fr. Peter, and all the holy souls, intercede for us! Help us to know the love of Christ in the poorest of the poor, and to serve Him in them!

​I was so happy today to see St. Maria Goretti’s feast day in the extraordinary form calendar! On Wednesdays I have the Latin Mass and often do not get to celebrate the modern saints. But today I was able to vest in blazing red and pray the entrance verse from the common of martyrs: in virtute tua, Domine, laetabitur justus…desiderium animae ejus tribuisti ei. “the just man rejoices in your strength, O Lord…you have given him the desire of his soul.” Maria Goretti, an eleven year old girl, desired to see God with all her soul, and knew the only way to see God was to remain pure. She pleaded with Alessandro, the 19-year-old man who had become addicted to pornography and was trying to rape her: “Don’t, Alessandro: think of your soul!” Her primary concern was their souls, not their bodies. Alessandro stabbed her 14 times; she died 2 days later, and he went to prison for 30 years. Maria appeared to him in jail, assuring him of her love and prayers. He came back to God while in jail, and attended her canonization Mass in 1950. Alessandro died in 1970 at age 88, having spent the rest of his life after prison as a gardener in a Franciscan friary not far from where he killed Maria. We cannot believe the mercy of God, which has made a saint of a man who would stab to death an 11-year-old girl because she would not become one of his pornographic images. “in virtute tua, Domine…” God’s strength, his “virtue,” (the same word in Latin) pulled him back from hell, and gave him the desiderium animae, the true desire of his soul in the end.
 
  A Blessed Jubilee
I haven’t posted a laptop for some time, engulfed as I was in my silver anniversary preparations. For those who could attend the Jubilee, I hope you found the Solemn High Mass as serenely beautiful as I did. Archbishop Cordileone and about 20 local priests assisted in choir. San Francisco seminarian Deacon Alvin Yu guided us about as Master of Ceremonies, and Canon Oliver Meney from St. Margaret Mary parish in Oakland lent us the beautiful red vestment set. Our parish seminarian Cameron Pollette served as subdeacon with Fr. Jeffrey Keyes as deacon. Many priests told me how prayerful they felt in the pure white sanctuary, watching God’s presence unfold through the sacred liturgy. Fr. Keyes preached a stirring sermon, and when he spoke the name of Jesus, would carefully remove the biretta from his head, keeping it bare for some moments. He would gently replace it, after asking permission, as it were, to cover his head in the presence of the Savior. Holy Communion took a long time, with many hundreds receiving, and at one point whole convents of Missionaries of Charity were seen approaching the altar.
 
Our sanctuary and altar gleamed with white stone tile and new Carrara marble just in time for the Mass, largely funded by jubilee gifts. We have received a bit over $30,000 in personal and parish gifts for this occasion, which will all go toward the sanctuary and chapel renovation. Both are being made ready for Perpetual Adoration—daytime in the church sanctuary, and nighttime in the chapel. Our sanctuary now radiates light, reflecting the purity of the Blessed Sacrament itself—as pristine as the souls of today’s saints, Maria Goretti and Alessandro, pure and strong and destined to live forever.
 
Many thanks to Archbishop Cordileone, to so many priests, and hundreds of laity, for participating. We’ll do it again in 2041!