​A Bitter Pill

​On July 25, 1968 a respected world leader published a document predicting grave social consequences if a certain new drug were to be approved. His document set off international outrage, but all of what he said has come to pass. I was seven years old, the fourth of six children in a happy home. The American family was strong, with few divorces and many healthy children. Pornography was considered despicable and children played in the streets without fear. Fifty years before the #MeToo movement, this world leader predicted the exploitation of women, widespread divorce, and a general lowering of morality, if we chose to use the drug that had recently been developed.
 
The drug was the hormonal contraceptive pill, and Pope Paul VI was the world leader. The widespread use of contraception, he said in his encyclical Humanae vitae, will “open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards…. A man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to a mere instrument … of his desires.…” The pope’s prescience is certainly remarkable, a clarity inspired by God. At a time when cultural trendsetters were convinced that the contraceptive pill would strengthen marriage and liberate women, Paul VI foresaw the weakening of family life and disrespect for women from which we now suffer. Actually, he had only to consider the Soviet Union, which had legalized contraception forty years before. Today, Russia’s divorce rate is still an unbelievable 90%. The average Russian woman has had eight abortions, and most Russian children do not know who their father is. The Soviet Union was certain to collapse, because as goes the family, so goes society.

Everyone Condemned Contraception until 1930

The Bible condemns contraception; St. Augustine condemned contraception in the fourth century; Thomas Aquinas condemned contraception in the thirteenth century; Martin Luther in the sixteenth century as did every Christian theologian until 1930, when the Anglicans became the first in history to approve its limited use. The divorce rate in America that year was 15%. By 1968, when virtually all religions but Catholicism had accepted contraception, the divorce rate had doubled to 30%. Today, almost everyone contracepts, and the divorce rate is 50%, but in fact less than half of Americans are even getting married. “Modern contraception is not only a fact of our time; it may even be the central fact; it is hard to think of any other [innovation] whose demographic, social, behavioral, and personal fallout has been as profound” writes author Mary Eberstadt.
 
Has the sexual revolution delivered on its promises to liberate women, to bring love and peace to the world, and to strengthen society? On this, the 50th anniversary of his prophetic encyclical, we should listen carefully to the vicar of Christ; he teaches that the mystery of human love is revealed only within the natural laws of God. To begin with, contraception is unnatural: what other creature in the natural world contracepts the reproductive act? But beyond nature, contraception denies the supernatural meaning of the marital act. It tosses God’s gift of co-creation back in His face. The fullness of human love is meant to transcend the present; it is meant to express itself into the future in new life—even into eternity, when an immortal soul is created at conception. Contra-ception steals love’s tomorrow. I think of my mother and father, enfeebled by old age, dependent on the love now of their six children. How terrible to have contracepted or aborted the children God meant to give you in life! What a lonely death a woman would face had she no children to help her through the last part of her life!
 
In response to the errors of the Anglican church in 1930, Pope Pius IX published Casti Connubii that same year: “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature.” We frustrate our love when we sterilize it. One woman or one man cannot meet my need to love and be loved. It takes a family, a big family, because I need lots of love. Contraception is designed to limit our families. It limits the family’s potential to provide that love we all need.

The Good News

​The good news is that every marriage has to potential to provide the enduring love we all crave. Statistically, spouses that do not contracept almost never divorce. Most of us do not know about these marriages, because the sexual revolution has shouted down the Gospel for the 50 years. But there are signs that people are fed up with the false promises of the “summer of love.” Some young people are turning back to the perennial teachings of Jesus, transmitted through the Catholic Church. I know of many families that have never contracepted. Happiness has not been easy for them, but it has been possible. Fifty years after their wedding day, most of them will be more deeply in love than ever. Their adult children will be able to say to their own children that the man sitting next to my mother is my father. There is no reason more families cannot be like these families. Your homework is to read Pope Paul’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae. I first read it at age 21, when I had been dating a lovely young lady for two years. It speaks not primarily about birth control but about human life and human love. It gave me great hope and joy upon that first reading, and I would like you to have that same joy in knowing that God has created us for greater things—to love and to be loved. We can find authentic love in this life, if we learn to trust God and follow His precepts for the great gift of Christian marriage.

Jesus sends his apostles out two by two in today’s Gospel. Religious orders would never send their sisters out alone. St. Francis sent his friars out with a companion, and to this day you can see Mother Teresa’s sisters walking the streets of San Francisco two by two, praying the rosary as they go to the homes of the poor. The Church is essentially a community, not a solitary experience. 

I have two questions for you: does God send us out—I mean you, the laypeople—to evangelize the culture? And if so, what does that look like day to day? The answer to the first question is yes, God sends everyone out from their comfortable homes on Christian mission. Many ignore this call, but in fact no Catholic is exempt from the task of evangelization. In the first reading Amos complains about this. “I was no prophet,” he tells the court prophet Amaziah, who resents Amos’ interference. “I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores” (a tree surgeon). It was the Lord who said to me ‘go, prophesy to the people of Israel.” Why? Because the professional prophets, like Amaziah, were not doing their job. Israel had run off the rails, and if the professional clergy would not fix the problem God would send tree surgeons if necessary.

Our Leaders are Confused

Today, if I may say so, many of our leaders, in both church and state, are confused. In both the federal government and in the churches, leaders are bickering and taking opposite positions on our founding documents—the Bible and the US Constitution. One Catholic bishop says divorce is permitted and another says marriage is for life. One supreme court justice says our constitution gives doctors a right to kill an unborn child, or an emotionally fragile patient (what we call “assisted suicide”) and another supreme court justice says the opposite. The confusion is most painful when it comes from Rome itself, the center of Church unity, or from Washington itself, the center of national unity.
 
God has given us a natural law, written on the human heart. To end our painful confusion, we need prophets, both priests and laypeople, to point out this natural law. Who will say “marriage is a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman made for babies”? Who will say “it is wrong to kill an unborn child”? Who will say “right religion is good for America”? Who will say, to the bishops of Germany and to the Pope if necessary, that they should not bless same sex unions, but rather give real Christian support to those who are confused about their sexuality?

The Christian Family

​We are all afraid and unsure what to say when we hear falsehoods in politics, the media, and among our own friends. We need the support of a community to speak the truth, and to find a way to convert hearts rather than just angrily condemn error. How does God send the laity out, two by two, as prophets? By means of marriage. Marriage is your two by two mission. Marriage is not private but a public institution at the service of the common good. Marriage – the lifelong bonding of a man and a woman, open to the transmission of new life—is the most fundamental community of both church and state. When you mess with marriage and family life, you jeopardize the entire human community.
 
It is impossible to do the work of God alone. Priests—even secular priests—need to live in community, not only working together, but living, praying, and recreating together. For most of us, marriage is how we evangelize. It is our great mission of building community, of training ourselves and our children in patience, thoughtfulness, and sacrifice. The future of humanity passes by way of the family, as St. John Paul famously wrote in his great document on the family, Familiaris consortio of 1981. I just came back from three days at the Napa Conference, an annual gathering of church leaders from around the country. The theme this year was marriage as the most basic tool of evangelization. There is great hope for marriage, and for the Gospel. The church is not dead yet. Of the 700 inspired and inspiring participants at that gathering, less than 60 were clergy. The vast majority were laypeople, married people. I wish you could have heard Dr. Scott Hahn’s powerful testimony, both from Scripture and his own life. “Imagine if one generation of Catholics in this country lived their vocation to marriage faithfully, how this nation would be transformed!” Scott and Kimberly Hahn, with their eight children and 15 grandchildren, will celebrate 39 years of marriage next month. God has blessed them in their struggles to learn selflessness themselves, and to witness to the joy of surrendering to Jesus for others. May we all believe in the Way of the Lord Jesus through families like theirs. 

The Great Feasts of Our Lord and Our Lady

We have returned to the simple green of “ordinary time,” having just come off the liturgical highway of feasts which began last December. We traveled through Advent and Christmastide, then back into Lent and Eastertide with its grand finale of Pentecost followed by Trinity Sunday. The feasts of Corpus Christi (last Sunday) and the Sacred Heart (last Friday) followed by the Immaculate Heart (yesterday) cap this great liturgical sweep. We live the core mysteries of the Incarnation and the Resurrection through the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary, communicated to us at every Mass within the Body of Christ. Truly our own hearts are restless until they rest within the hearts of Jesus and Mary. The Church of the Eucharist is our earthly home while on pilgrimage to our eternal Home, the House of the Father.
 
The Day we became Homeless

The first reading today, from Genesis 3, tells the sad tale of the day humanity became homeless. Adam and Eve decided to leave their Father’s House by a fundamental act of distrust. “After the man had eaten of the tree”—that is, after he had lost his trust in God’s perfect will (we call this the Original Sin), God asks Adam … why? Why did you not trust me? Adam blames someone else: “She gave it to me—the woman you gave me.” It’s her fault, and really, it’s your fault! God then asks the woman: why did you give death to your husband? Eve blames someone else—“The serpent tricked me” and now implies, with Adam, that God himself is at fault: why did God put a snake in Paradise in the first place? With Adam and Eve, we say that God cannot lay all sorts of traps in our lives and expect us not to get hurt.
 
Isn’t it true that I’m messed up because someone else—probably in my childhood—messed me up. And they keep messing me up. My husband or my wife, my employer or my coworkers—someone right now is messing me up. I’ll always be messed up, so I’ll just have to self-medicate with food, or alcohol, or marijuana, or porn, or anger, or the internet. The temptation, when we mess up, is to think that we are helpless victims of this messed up world.
 
A New Adam and a New Eve

But God sent a rescue mission, a New Adam, born of a New Eve. The First Eve gave death to Adam. The Second Eve gives life to the entire human race by giving birth to a Savior, who trusts that God really is looking after him. In the Gospel this New Eve asks for Jesus from the edge of the crowd. Maybe she had a basket of food for him (she had heard, perhaps, that the crowds kept her Son so busy he had not even enough time to eat). Maybe she just wanted a word with him (she had heard, perhaps, that the leaders had decided to kill Him). The mother just wants to see her son for a moment. But Jesus says: “Anyone who does the will of my Father is my mother, and my brother, and my sister.” He directs our eyes to his own Mother, the perfect disciple, perfectly committed to the will of God. But Jesus also says that we all have a place in God’s house, if we do the will of the Father. Mary broke the chain reaction of rebellion begun by Eve, and now no one has to sin. Everyone can be a saint, and no one is excluded from the House of the Father.
 
Come Home

​The journey begins and continues with prayer. Only within prayer could Mary have responded to God’s Word through the Angel Gabriel, “Let it be done to me according to your will.” She trusted where Eve did not trust. Prayer is essentially silence, a stillness that can learn to trust the quiet voice of God. “In the Silence of the Heart God speaks” Mother Teresa would say. Today, in this parish, we begin the Forty Hours Devotion: 40 uninterrupted hours of silent adoration before the Eucharistic Face of Christ. It is only in this grace-filled emptiness that God can fill us with his perfect will. You are not OK, and I am not OK, but that’s OK because we have a heavenly Father who welcomes us into His home, the place where His Son awaits us in the most Blessed Sacrament. Give yourself an hour with Him over these next two days.

Last Year: The Annunciation

Normally we celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation today, but this year March 25 falls on Palm Sunday. The Annunciation has been moved to April 9, but it was one year ago today that Archbishop Cordileone blessed our Perpetual Adoration Chapel. In the past 12 months we have tripled the hours of Eucharistic adoration, with hundreds of people from all over the city praying before the exposed Heart of Jesus day and night. God has chosen our parish to provide the Sacred Eucharist of His Divine Son, our only hope and unfailing consolation. Every week I see saints being formed before the Presence of the Eucharistic Heart of the World. Thanks be to God.

This Year: Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

Palm Sunday, the only Mass of the year with two gospels, two colors, two themes, and two names: Palm and Passion Sunday. The Mass begins in green (life) and ends in red (death). It begins with joyous song and ends in empty silence as we move toward Good Friday.
It begins with an altar decorated with bright palms and ends with a barren and stripped altar after the Holy Thursday Mass later this week.

Blood

The altar is clothed in red today, red for the blood of Christ as we hear the entire Passion read in three parts. In horror movies blood means death, but in the Bible blood means life. The Jews revered blood as the principle of all life. A man was forbidden to approach his wife during her menses, out of reverence for the sacred blood which transmits human life. To this day, orthodox Jews do not consume an animal until its sacred blood has been drained from it. One does not consume blood, but Jesus would give his blood for us, and command us to drink it. Blood taken is death, but blood given gives life. A man's blood given for his family day by day provides for the life his wife brings into the world through her blood. Christ’s blood is life for us.​

Silence

This week ends in silence on Good Friday, the only day of the year that has no Mass, a liturgy that begins and ends in silence. As God’s blood is life rather than death, so God’s silence is joy rather than sorrow. “In the silence of the heart God speaks.” We must silence our own clamoring self-will, we must die to ourselves, in order to hear the still soft voice of God. He does not shout, like we do. Only in silencing ourselves can we hear a baby's breath, an old woman's sigh, a gentle breeze.

Emptiness

This week ends in the emptiness of an altar stripped after the Holy Thursday Mass. The barren altar speaks to us, inspiring us to strip our wills so that God may fill us. Even God cannot fill a soul that is full of expectations and demands, of angers and resentments. God will not force himself upon us, as we do upon ourselves and others. The altars of first Christian centuries were built to resemble empty tombs. Mass was held upon this empty tomb of Christ, an emptiness that would be filled with God’s glory because He emptied himself on the Cross.


an ancient Christian burial box built to resemble the empty tomb of Christ.


Sacrifice

Every human story is an echo of this empty tomb, the story of one who sacrifices himself for another. I flew to Washington last week to visit my mother. On the plane I watched one movie going east and two movies going west. All three of them told the same story: sacrifice. It’s the only story that really holds our attention. In Bridge of Spies a lawyer risks life and career to defend a Russian spy; in Born in China (a wonderful nature film), a snow leopard dies trying to feed her cubs; in … ahem … Wonder Woman [I fast forwarded through the bad scenes to get to the story’s conclusion], the heroine offers her life to protect others from violence (after showing the viewer dozens of scenes of intense violence, of course). Every story worth telling is the story of one person’s sacrifice for another, and that’s why we listen to the entire story of the Passion every year. It’s the only story worth listening to.
 
Mom

Last week I spent a few days with my mother. She needs 24-hour nursing care because she is dying. Death is gaining the upper hand with my mother’s tortured body and failing mind, although God may permit her to wrestle with death some months more. I sat for hours in her room, which became my chapel. I prayed my breviary out loud at her request, and quietly when she slept. We her children must prepare ourselves for the silence and emptiness, the absurdity of death. My sister in law, who lost her mother last year, recently told us to prepare to lose her bit by bit. She hardly eats and her big boned body is down to 88lbs. Her twisted and bent frame is hardly recognizable. Who can make sense of this, and what can prepare us? Only Jesus. The Son of Man let his body become twisted and bent, and let death and silence and emptiness swallow him. But he entered into that emptiness with brave faith, and in so doing made a way for my mother. He made a way for each of us. And so:
 
Crown him with many crowns                         
The Lord upon his throne …
Awake my soul and sing                                  
of him who died for thee
and hail him as thy matchless king                          
for all eternity.
​

(This Homily was preached to the Missionaries of Charity in San Jose, Costa Rica, during their annual retreat)

The Pope’s Wife’s Mother

Our Lord enters first papal apartment in history only to find the Pope’s wife’s mother in bed with a fever. In today’s third installment of the second Gospel (we will cover the entire Gospel of Mark this year), Jesus enters St. Peter’s home in Caper-naum (“Nahum’s Village”) for the first time. This little house will serve as Our Lord’s home base during his three years’ public ministry. St. Peter’s first order of business is to bring Jesus to his mother-in-law, whom He heals with one word. It doesn’t take long for news to spread around the fishing village that there’s a healer in town, and he’s not charging anything. That evening “the whole town” was at Peter’s door. Apparently every one of the 1500 inhabitants of Capernaum were sick. It’s the same today. When the priest offers a “healing Mass” [with the Sacrament of Anointing], everyone comes up to be healed.
 
In fact, every one of us bears some physical and/or spiritual infection within us, for to live is to suffer. Thus spoke the prophet Job from his ash pit, covered with boils, in the first reading. “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?” he asks. “I have been assigned months of misery ... I shall not see happiness again.” This world of suffering is what Jesus showed your foundress Mother Teresa in her third and last vision: a dark sea of the poor calling out for help, with the crucified Christ in the midst of them. Jesus asked her: “Will you go into the dark holes of the poor? They don’t know me and so they don’t want me. Come, be my light.”

“Everyone is Sick”

The world is full of sick people, and Jesus Christ can cure everything and everyone. In today’s gospel, Peter’s home becomes a field hospital. Every cure took a little energy out of him, so “rising very early” Jesus went off to a deserted place to pray. I can certainly testify that only prayer restores a priest’s curative energies. I would not be able to function if not for the daily holy hour. But Simon “pursues” Jesus, interrupting his morning holy hour with the newsflash: “Everyone is looking for you!” Everyone? Is everyone sick? Apparently so. “Let us go on to the nearby villages,” Jesus replies. “For this purpose have I come.” Our Lord does not refuse to go into the dark holes of the poor, into the stinking sickrooms of every one of us. In Mother Teresa’s third vision, Jesus presses her: “Come be my light. I have asked you. She (pointing to Mary) has asked you. Wilt thou refuse?” Mother Teresa did not refuse. She became the 20th Century’s greatest servant of the poor, a willing slave, really, of the poorest of the poor.

A Free Slave

​In today’s epistle, Paul calls himself a slave. “Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave,” he writes. He is a “free slave,” motivated by love rather than compulsion. That’s why every one of you became a Missionary of Charity. Your fourth vow is “to render wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.”
 
So, sisters, while there is daylight, let us work. By our vows, and by our baptism, we have freely become slaves of love to our adorable Jesus. We follow Him who gave up sleep and food and even prayer to serve the world. Where there is sickness, let us bring Christ. Where there is ignorance, let us bring the Word. Where there are demons, let us call on the Holy Name. Once a co-worker called Mother Teresa to say she was burning up with a fever and couldn’t come in that day to serve the poor. Mother replied, “better to burn now than burn later.” I don’t think that poor woman came in that day, but Mother gave her something to think about. A good mother cares for her sick child even when she herself is sick. Let us pray to the Blessed Mother, and let us pray to Mother Teresa, to help us be good mothers to this world full of sick people, so long as God is pleased to give us strength.

Time is Running Out

“I tell you, brethren,” St. Paul wrote to his contemporaries 2000 years ago, “time is running out.” Time is still running out, and we, like him, live in the End Times. Everything passes but the Word of God, Jesus Christ. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Christ said, “but my words will not pass away.” It’s healthy to climb a hill over a large city, such as Twin Peaks here in San Francisco. Gaze over the panorama of shining glass and steel buildings and say to yourself: this will all burn someday. No earthly city lasts forever. We should consider everything sub specie aeternitatis, in light of eternity. “The world in its present form is passing away,” concludes St. Paul. If we want to be eternally happy, we have to keep our minds focused on the one thing necessary, which is not Google or Tesla or American politics or climate change. The one thing necessary is God’s Word. Are we in right relationship to Him, because time is running out.

Nineveh

Time was running out for the Ninevites, and that is why the first reading is from the prophet Jonah. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire in 700BC, was the largest city in the world at the time. Today the city of Mosul in Iraq is built on part of its ruins, because Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BC. All cities eventually get destroyed. Only God’s Word lasts. God had sent Jonah to the city of Nineveh to speak His Word to them. “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed” was his message. Thankfully, the people listened to God, through his prophet Jonah. They converted—that is, they turned from themselves to God—and so saved themselves and their city. The city would be destroyed later, through the infidelity of a later population, who chose not to turn to God for help.

They Followed Him

​Which brings us to the Gospel. God sent his beloved Son Jesus to earth in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus. He came to a lakeside in the Galilee region of the Roman Empire and proclaimed: “This is the time of fulfilment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in me.” Some believed, but most didn’t. Of those who did believe were two brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee, of the village of Capernaum. They had what appears to be a successful fishing business. “Come follow me,” Jesus called to them from the lake shore, “and I will make you fishers of men.” They left their father in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
They did that because they realized that time was running out. All they knew—their fishing business, their nation, their very lives—were passing away. Only this man that stood in front of them would last. Only Jesus lasts.
Do we sense that urgency in our lives? Probably not. We are pretty comfortable. As comfortable as James and John were in their successful fishing business. Jesus calls us like he called them. Will we refuse him? The most basic answer to that call is right here, at Sunday Mass. Thank you for coming to Holy Mass. Never miss a Sunday Mass if you can help it. Another practical way to follow Jesus will be next week at the Walk for Life. We are our brother’s keepers, God says. Just over 1 million human lives are lost each year in America because of our unjust laws. Do we defend these voiceless people, truly the poorest of the poor in America? Let’s stand with them, and advocate for reform of our abortion laws. I hope to see you on Saturday morning at the cathedral at 9:30 for Mass with our Archbishop, and then in front of City Hall at 12:30.

Every other Sin

In our second reading, from 1 Corinthians 6, St. Paul affirms the Jewish teaching on the sacredness of the human body. He warns against “immorality”— meaning sexual immorality: “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.” St. Paul, and the whole Christian tradition, sets sexual sin apart from every other sin, because the flesh is sacred. An impure person doesn’t just sin “in” his own body. He sins against his own body. He shoots himself in the foot.

The Flesh is Sacred

Is human flesh really that important, we might ask, we who breath the air of a post-sexual revolution society. Isn’t the body just a meat machine, and sex just harmless recreation? No. The body is more than that. St. Paul defines the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Everything you do in that body, from eating to driving your car to smiling at a difficult coworker, either honors or dishonors the Holy Spirit. But sexuality is in a class apart. Sexuality is fundamentally sacred, because it is relational; it makes us capable of love, portraying the self-gift that makes us human, and makes us divine. Sex is so sacred that some of us consecrate our flesh to lifelong celibacy. We offer our manhood to God in the way a girl offers her hair to God when she takes the religious habit (in the 1984 movie Mother Teresa, a beautiful young Indian woman says the decisive moment was cutting off her hair before taking the veil: “I wanted to give God what was most precious to me”).

Glorify God in Your Bodies

​“Glorify God in your bodies,” Paul concludes in today’s Epistle. All this is predicated on the fact that “your bodies are not your own—you have been purchased at a price.” In two weeks 50,000 people will witness to this fact in the Walk for Life West Coast here in San Francisco. We will gather en masse in front of City Hall, standing athwart the abortion industry’s mantra, taken from the sexual revolution’s playbook, “my body, my choice.”
 
Really? Your body? Tell me how you made your body. Who gave it to you, and how much did you pay for it? Can you change the chromosomes in even one of your body’s 37 trillion cells from male to female? No, you can’t. And you don’t. The so-called sexual revolution shamelessly lies about human nature and Mother Nature. It’s long past time to call these falsehoods out. There is a God and we are not He. We did not make our selves. We are part of a greater and more beautiful world than the little universes we imagine for ourselves.
 
To glorify God in our bodies means to be fully human, fully the sons and daughters of a loving Father in heaven, for he takes delight in our delight. It seems a small thing to have sex with another person these days, and true enough we have tried to make sex small. But sexuality, which is so essential to our natural personhood, will not be made small. You can try to break the natural law, but you only end up breaking yourself against it. We have destroyed much of the human nature God has given us. The western world is a wasteland of broken bodies and broken hearts. And yet our loving Father is always ready to welcome us home. He will restore us, and rebuild us, if we turn to Him. Blessed be He, forever and ever.

Holy Family Sunday

While all the Christmas decorations are still cheering us with warmth and bright color, Holy Mother Church celebrates the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “The family,” wrote St. John Paul, “is a necessary good for peoples, an indispensable foundation for society… it is a unique good for children.” But the family has been in decline for the last 40 years in our country. Children suffer most from infidelity and divorce, but no society can survive long without stable, loving families. More than half of children living in urban areas have no father at home, and in some areas of our nation only one in ten black children ever see their father at home. 75% of American children entering adulthood without the “necessary goods” only a family can provide is a ticking time bomb for the common good and public safety. What to do? Well, as Fr. Patrick Peyton said, and Mother Teresa loved to repeat, “the family that prays together stays together.” We must pray. We must pray together at Sunday Mass, and we must pray quietly in solitude before the Blessed Sacrament, begging God’s help.

“Son, How could you do this to us?”

But let’s take a closer look at the Holy Family. The Gospel on Holy Family Sunday does not portray Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as free of conflict. Rather, we see the one occasion on which Mary expressed what seems like frustration with her Son. He had just become a teen-ager (in those days a twelve-year old boy was already an adolescent). Jesus’ parents had lost him for three days, but it is clear that the boy was not lost; he intentionally separated himself from his parents, knowing the anguish it would cause them. Mary reprimands Jesus: “Son, what have you done to us? Behold your father and I have been searching for you in sorrow.” We should take courage in the fact that even the Holy Family suffered misunderstandings and confusion. Tragically, people often give up when they reach an impasse with a spouse or children. Mary did not panic. She took a deep breath, she closed her mouth, and she accepted what she could not understand (“she kept all these things in her heart”). The boy Jesus, for his part, submitted himself to his parents’ authority, even though he was not bound to do so. None of them insisted on their “rights” to control the situation. They submitted themselves to each other in patient and loving reverence. It is these acts of humility that brought joy and health to the Holy Family.

Unhealthy Families

But most of our families are not healthy. As I mentioned, scarcely one in ten African American children in some parts of urban America know their fathers, and those same children are six times more likely to see their family members murdered than white children. By some statistics, Blacks commit homicides at ten times the rate of whites. Could it be related to the fact that in some areas only one in ten Black children know their fathers? A Latino woman told me on a plane a few years ago that everyone in her family—herself, her second husband, her children, and even one of her grandchildren, have been divorced and in therapy. The scope of devastation when the family breaks down is incalculable.

We can pray for better health

​What to do? One thing is to attend church, together. A 2013 article in the NYTimes stated: “Religious attendance boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life. The reason for this is not entirely clear.” The reasons God is good for us may not be clear to the New York Times, but it’s clear to most of us. Many of you have told me with tears how few of your children practice the faith any longer, even after 12 years of Catholic schooling. How to save the American family, and America, if our children won’t even come to church? Well, we can pray for them, and pray for them before the Blessed Sacrament. I’ve known quite a few couples who faced crises in their marriages that would almost certainly end in divorce. One or both simply spent many hours before the Blessed Sacrament, and miraculously they saved their families. Three priests told me in my first week of seminary, when I was 26 years old, that if I didn’t do a holy hour every day, I wouldn’t survive as a priest. Half of the men I was ordained with have left the priesthood, but these were not the priests who did the daily holy hour. What can we do to rebuild the family? Come to the Holy Family, to the Blessed Sacrament. Let us pray.

Rose Colored Vestments

“Gaudete Sunday” takes its name from the first word of its opening scripture verse, the introit from Philippians 4, which is also the Epistle for this Mass: Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Dominus prope est. “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say it, Rejoice!... the Lord is near.” From the perspective of a sinner facing judgement, the nearness of the Lord is fearful, as in the Dies irae sequence. But from the perspective of the sinner facing final redemption, his imminent arrival is joyful. We want to get on with the necessary judgement so we can get through Purgatory and on to Heaven. We want the Lord to come quickly, because the arrival of the Lord is always our supreme good. Thus the priest and the altar clothe themselves in rose vesture to indicate the joy of the Lord’s imminent arrival.

Joy is More than a Feeling

St. Paul does not ask but commands us to be joyful, in the imperative. He does not suggest; he requires that we radiate joy. Remember that birthday party when you were pouting and your mother said “You will be happy!” St. Paul can command joy because joy is not just a feeling. As they say in Retrouvaille, a program for troubled marriages, love is not a feeling; it is a decision. I will love you, even when I don’t love you! I will radiate joy, especially when I don’t feel joyful. Sound “inauthentic” or “fake?” It’s not. It’s simple fidelity. Contemporary culture, following the dictates of the sexual revolution, commands us to follow our feelings. Jesus commands us to overcome our feelings and to practice goodness even and especially when we don’t feel good. The good news is that we can choose to exercise joy even when things around us make us feel sad.
 
Joy is a virtue: it’s a habit we form by repeatedly choosing a good behavior.
Joy is a duty: God calls his disciples to radiate confident joy in his divine providence, the unshakable conviction that “all things work for the good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28). Joy is a net by which we catch souls, beginning with our own. A sad Christian is a bad Christian. We can lose our own soul by grumbling, by complaining, by falling into a pervasive negativity. When we grumble we throw God’s gifts back in his face. Complaining is a kind of blasphemy. And finally, joy is possible. God does not command the impossible. We all know people who have suffered terribly but remain serenely joyful.

Prayer Guarantees joy

How can I retain that joyful peace when so much is wrong within and without? St. Paul’s answer is clear: prayer. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” he says. “Have no anxiety at all, but by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” Like everyone else, I struggle with sadness, frustration and discouragement. Religion is a hard sell these days. Being a priest in a culture that marginalizes priests because it ignores God, and progressively despises religion, is not easy. You all struggle with discouragement with your own spouses, children, co-workers, and that worst of all enemies, yourself. Personally, what saves me is getting my old carcass out of bed and into the chapel every morning (after brushing my teeth, of course). Silent prayer before the Sacrament saves me.
 
The Star of the New Evangelization

​The great image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to my left is still with us, as we are celebrating as it were the Octave of her feast (last Tuesday). She brought joy to an entire continent at the lowest point in American history. The most highly developed civilization on the American continent, the Aztec empire, was in its death throes. When she appeared to Juan Diego Cuatloatatzin in 1531, his civilization and the sacred beliefs of his ancestors were being destroyed by the Spaniards. She said to him, “Know for certain, my son, my littlest one, that I am the perfect and ever virgin holy Mary, mother of the true God, through whom all things live... I ardently desire that they build me here my sacred house, where I will show Him, I will exalt Him and make Him manifest. Where I will offer Him to all the people with all my love, my compassionate gaze, my help and my deliverance, Because I am truly your merciful mother, Yours and mother of all who live together in this land; now my son, my smallest one, you have heard my voice; go and do everything as best you can."
 
She appeared on the hill of the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin, but she said she was the mother of God, not a god herself. She wanted to bring the one true God, which the Aztecs themselves called the true God, through whom all things live, to both Mexica and Spaniard, so that both peoples would know how much they are loved. You know the rest of the story, how Juan Diego opened his tilma to pour out roses for the bishop, roses the Lady had arranged in his tilma with her own hands. As the roses fell to the ground so did the bishop and his attendants, for this is what they saw. A woman with hands folded, praying in the European way, and her left leg bent in dance, praying in the Mexica way. So it was that the Lady brought the joy of prayer to both races, leading to their reconciliation and the mixing of these two peoples to form what is now the Mexican race.
 
Our Lady leads us in this dance before the Ark of God, for she is herself the Ark, within which rests the Divine Presence. The black maternity belt over her womb frames the only four-petal flower on her gown, the Aztec symbol of divinity. “Rejoice,” she says, for the “Lord is near,” just here in my womb, under my heart. “Let nothing disturb you;” she finally told Juan Diego, “am I not here who am your mother?”
 
For more information on Our Lady of Guadalupe, watch this video: Guadalupe: The Miracle and the Message ​

Advent Looks Forward
We have entered the Season of Advent and most of us are thinking of Christmas—certainly the department stores have been thinking about Christmas for the last two or three months. But Advent is not about Christmas, or at least not Christmas as a monthlong shopping spree. The Mass readings and prayers speak of the end of the world; “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea…people will die of fright….” But amidst this confusion Christ the Redeemer will return. Christmas means “Christ’s Mass,” and every Mass points toward His Second Coming—when Christ will return on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory, not as a little babe but as supreme judge. He will bring justice and order and true peace to those who have believed in Him. “Wake up!” the Apostle says in the Epistle today. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
 
The “Holiday Season”
God affords us much comfort in this season, a holiday warmth that literature and art rightly portray: the Christmas star, the charming beauty of the divine child in the manger, choirs of angels singing in the sky. Christ was born in Bethlehem, however, not to make us comfortable on earth, but to guide us to heaven. Advent looks forward to His Second Coming, be that the last day of human history or the last day of your personal history. Every bit of our faith, and every Mass, looks to the next life. Yes, Advent points to Christmas, but Christmas points to heaven. As Jesus himself was a wayfarer on this earth, spending only three decades on this planet, so we too are wayfarers and pilgrims, on our way to our true fatherland. Our Christmas parties and shopping and tinsel must not replace Advent’s guiding purpose, which is to prepare ourselves for the day Christ will return to submit everything to his Father.
 
People will die of fright
In the Gospel today, we hear of confusion and terror: the sea and the waves will roar; the powers of the heavens will be shaken. It is for these days that we must prepare, because they will surely come. But we who believe will not die of fright. “When these things begin to pass, look up,” Jesus instructs us, “because your redemption is at hand.” We spend our lives longing for his return, when all his disciples will pass with him through the splendid gates of his Eternal Kingdom. It would be an unspeakable tragedy if even one of us were to lose our eternal soul. Advent calls us to keep our final end in mind during the Christmas parties and shopping adventures, but also to keep in mind the proximity of our redemption. Now is the time to prepare for judgment; now is the time to hope for redemption.
 
Dressing for Mass
I spoke of one simple way to prepare for Our Lord at the English Masses last week, and I say it now at the Latin Mass: we should dress for Mass in our Sunday best. The clothing we put on for Sunday Mass should be consecrated, reserved for this sacred purpose: to honor God for his Sabbath Sacrifice. Someone gave me a gift card to Macy’s recently, and I bought a nice pair of shoes with it. These shoes look good and feel good, and cost a bit of money. I decided to keep these shoes on a shelf the whole week, and use them only for Sunday Mass. I will use my scuffed up, well-worn work shoes for daily Masses, but on Sunday you will see my polished, more formal footgear from now on. Formality, like other aspects of the sacred, has been denigrated, even mocked, in our era of Blue Jeans. We must recover a reverential formality. We honor Christ’ sacred presence on Sunday by wearing better than ordinary vesture. If I appear for Sunday Mass now without my Sunday Shoes, I want you to call me on it! “Father, where are your Sunday Shoes?”
 
Our Lady
When Christ returns he will clothe us in the fullness of holiness and glory. Let us do our best to anticipate that final coming by clothing ourselves, inside and out, in humility, holiness, and charity. Consider Christ’s Holy Mother. In every painting she wears a veil, a sacred garment reflecting her interior consecration. Let us also clothe ourselves, especially on Sunday, with holiness. Our Lady will help us prepare for Christmas, and for the Second Coming. Even as we shop and enjoy parties and write cards, let us bring Jesus and Mary to every Advent activity—a decade of the rosary or the Angelus and some real Christmas carols at every Christmas party—so that we will be prepared to meet Christ when he returns on the clouds of heaven.