For much of the Church’s history the Solemn High Mass set the gold standard for iconic Catholic worship. If Hollywood wanted “the Catholic Church” in a movie it would show a High Mass in the cathedral, clergy and servers engulfed in clouds of incense, backed by a Gregorian choir soundtrack. To a liturgically sensitive person, there is nothing more beautiful than a Solemn High Mass done well. Our parish is one of the few in Northern California that attempts the High Mass, and we are finally, they tell me, doing it tolerably well. It is a treasure made possible by God’s grace and the hard work of our music department, our dedicated servers, priests, and support staff. Earlier this month Fr. John Chung, Fr. John Fewel, and I offered a High Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation. For the first time I felt at home in the Solemn High Mass, moving with the other priests as one body, in serene prayer.
In the beautiful month of May our parish will offer three Solemn High Masses: May 1 (St. Joseph), May 10 (Ascension Thursday) and May 31 (Corpus Christi). Learning the Solemn High Mass, and celebrating it well, is challenging, both for priests and for servers. But it’s a challenge that invigorates. For much of the Church’s history the Solemn High Mass set the gold standard for iconic Catholic worship. If Hollywood wanted “the Catholic Church” in a movie it would show a High Mass in the cathedral, clergy and servers engulfed in clouds of incense, backed by a Gregorian choir soundtrack. To a liturgically sensitive person, there is nothing more beautiful than a Solemn High Mass done well. Our parish is one of the few in Northern California that attempts the High Mass, and we are finally, they tell me, doing it tolerably well. It is a treasure made possible by God’s grace and the hard work of our music department, our dedicated servers, priests, and support staff. Earlier this month Fr. John Chung, Fr. John Fewel, and I offered a High Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation. For the first time I felt at home in the Solemn High Mass, moving with the other priests as one body, in serene prayer. On April 7 seven young men became deacons at St. Pius in Redwood City, ordained by Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu. Among them were Michael Rocha, who was one of my faithful altar boys while I was pastor in Modesto. I joked with him that many hearts were broken that day; young Catholic women across the archdiocese were in mourning because seven good Catholic men were no longer available. Michael began his journey to the priesthood as a lowly altar boy. “Why do you like to serve so much?” I asked him fifteen years ago. “It’s so bright and beautiful near the altar,” he replied. Michael will find much in the priesthood that is not so bright and beautiful, but it is the shining grace of the Mass that draws us, and that sustains us. Nothing inspires a boy or young man more for seminary than a robust altar server program. Last year we sent four men into the seminary from our little parish, three of whom were altar servers. As the Church teaches, altar boy programs are one of our strongest sources of priestly vocations. Serving the Latin Mass is particularly challenging and so particularly inspiring for a young man. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
I’m a believer in Retrouvaille, a weekend workshop for marriages needing help. And which of our marriages does not need help? I think everyone should do this workshop at some point in their marriage! Last weekend I helped at a Retrouvaille, and I was again inspired by the heroism of couples fighting to rebuild and protect their families from the floodtide against marriage. As one of the presenting couples said, “Growing up I didn’t have a clue about real marriage. Everything I had seen in movies and TV, or heard at school or learned from my extended family, taught me that no one really keeps their marriage vows. They told me in so many ways that taking chastity seriously was unhealthy.” Every one of us must thank those couples who fight for their marriages, and so fight for our whole society. Another tide rises to meet the toxic waves of the “sexual revolution.” The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and grace swells all about us. Eighteen couples arrived last Friday night at the conference room in Mountain View, overwhelmed by tides of sadness, hurt, and despair. They were drowning, but the Retrouvaille couples at our weekend (five of them, all of whom had been drowning themselves not so long ago) threw them a life line. The couples who began the Retrouvaille movement in French-speaking Canada in 1977 chose the life preserver as their symbol. My favorite moment in the 44-hour workshop is Saturday night, when we open it up to individual testimonies. The sad darkness from just the night before has been replaced by smiles. A lightness of spirit fills the room as couples witness to the glimmers of hope they are beginning to see. Maybe we can recover love, they say. The presenting couples have done it. Why can’t we, if there is a God? My second favorite moment in the 44-hour workshop is a three-hour break in the presentation schedule for the couples to spend quiet time together. It’s also free time for the priest, and as soon as I was released from the conference room I got on my bike to find a church with the Blessed Sacrament. After all, I needed to spend some alone time with my spouse too. But as I drove up to the nearest church I could hear horns trumpeting from inside: a Quinsinera was in progress. I drove on to the second church and saw a stretch limo out front—a wedding was in progress. So I ended up sitting on a hillside under the bright sun. Not a bad holy hour, but I longed for the Blessed Sacrament. The next morning my guardian angel woke me quite early, and I drove to the nearest church again. It was not yet open, but an old man was sitting in his car in the empty parking lot. “Is there a way I can get into the church?” I asked him. “Sure, padre. I’ll let you in.” And so he did, and he prayed with me before the tabernacle. Others came in, even though the first Sunday Mass wouldn’t be for another hour, and the church became a beautiful and quiet and prayerful community. But the church building was not beautiful. It had been built as a gym, and then the church never got built, although a state of the art gymnasium did get built, while altar and tabernacle remained in the old gym. As we prayed in that drafty and plain structure, I gazed at the cheap felt banners, threadbare carpet, dull concrete walls, and naked tabernacle. Hooks meant to hold the veil were still in place, but the veil had been torn away. Despite the “bare ruined choirs” of many of our parishes, where sports is given so much more time and money than divine worship, people still come to pray. The faith has not been completely eradicated, nor can it be. No one can stop the work of God in our parishes and schools. We can delay it, through fear and neglect, but we cannot stop it. A rising tide of grace will always flood the earth, now that Christ is risen and sent his Holy Spirit among us. This morning, Holy Saturday, I did my holy hour at a favorite hideout in Golden Gate Park. On only these two days of the year (Good Friday and Holy Saturday), Jesus’ sacramental Presence is absent from our churches. Tabernacles stand empty, doors agape, little red flames extinguished. We pray in our empty churches to an absent God, and we sit under the blue sky in parks and backyards in silence. Yesterday was warm and sunny in San Francisco, and so this morning I looked forward to a delicious hour in the predawn park. But it was the droning boom of foghorns that greeted me from beyond the window pane as the alarm woke me up. Every hour is different with Jesus. Sometimes they begin in sunny warmth, filled with joyful expectation. Sometimes they begin in disappointment and doubt. Indeed, it was hard to get out of bed this morning and I wondered about spending time with Jesus later in the day. But earlier is always better, so I bundled up and started out for the park. Today my hour began in darkness and fog. An ocean wind lightly whipped condensation droplets about my bench. My friend the night owl was still softly hooting as the daybirds began waking up. I gradually began to perceive the Presence from my bench, and then I read a few lines that brought Him to me full force. “There is a scene in the Gospel that anticipates the silence of Holy Saturday … a portrait of our historical hour. Christ is sleeping in a boat about to sink….” Joseph Ratzinger wrote these words some years ago as he watched our little human boat flail about in the waves of history. “God sleeps while His affairs are about to sink. … Do the Church and the faith not appear like a little sinking ship ... while God is absent?” My hour began today without God, but in a moment He came to me. The fog had not cleared, but the birds were singing lustily—all kinds of them! Again they sing, and again a new day begins with God’s Word: “It was I who brought you here. Stay with me and discover what your life means. You are in the right place.” Every hour with God is different. Some hours begin in darkness, others in light. Some end in vapidity, others yield inspiration. But always, always He is there. It is ours simply to show up, to stay still, and to listen. Male Virtues Adventures, and the discoveries attained in those adventures, require certain male virtues. The word “virtue” or “Virtus” in Latin does not mean “goodness;” it means strength. To practice the virtues strengthens a man. To commit vice enfeebles him. The very word “virtue” comes from the word vir or “man” in Latin, as in “virile.” So etymologically, the word virtue means “manliness.” Here are three male virtues.
Conclusion: Captain Your Ship God has given every man a particular bridge to build and a particular ship to captain. For his own reasons, God gives some men great responsibilities: I think of Winston Churchill, whom God made not only the Prime Minister of the British Realm in 1940, but the leader of the free world against Japanese, German and Russian dictatorships. I think every man should read a good biography of Churchill: a man of many flaws, but who stood alone before an army the rest of Europe thought invincible. “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” One man said those words to a weak and cowering British Parliament on June 4, 1940. One man breathed new strength into the British People at their darkest hour. One man gave hope to the people of France who had had all hope beaten out of them. One man challenged the United States who, like King David, wanted to stay home, wanted no part in this war, and declined to commit. One man stood up to Hitler with virile conviction. God has entrusted the command of a ship to each one of us men here. Some of us have families to guide through stormy waters. Some have parishes to steer, or businesses, or classrooms, or public trusts. Some of us have no more than ourselves to captain, to maintain serene self-possession in the face of assaults from within and without. In the end, gaining and maintaining self-possession is the fundamental task of every man. If we can captain the ship of our own personal lives, we can captain any other ship in life. To stay the course from birth to death, from earth to heaven, in the ways of God, is all God asks of a man. Now for your homework. If not every member of your family is at Mass every Sunday, get them there. Begin with yourself, of course, taking your place at the Supreme Sacrifice, every day if you can. Captaining your ship begins with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and if you don’t lead your family and friends in this one thing necessary, you can expect no one else to do it. Christopher Columbus assisted at the Holy Mass almost every day of the two months he was at sea, receiving Holy Communion devoutly. And if you don’t know where you are going at times, and the seas of life seem endless and dark and uncertain, it is in the Holy Mass that God will tell you where to go and what to do next. Calculating Risk Despite the impression rendered in most contemporary movies and TV shows, men do have brains. In the last thirty years, most popular shows depict men and fathers as bumbling idiots. One inspiring exception is the recent movie Dunkirk, a real “man movie” that portrays the intelligence and nobility of men by land, sea, and air: men of all ages and professions, working together to defend “their Island” of England. We men actually have keen analytical minds. So a good man does not charge into danger. He analyzes a situation, and based on that data makes calculated, intelligent risks so as to be able to achieve an objective. Bridges are a great story of calculated risk. In 1869 engineers told John Roebling that spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn could not be done. He died trying, along with 26 other men. But just before dying, he handed the project over to his son Washington Roebling, who spent the next 14 years supervising the project from his bedroom window. Like his father, Washington himself had sacrificed himself for the project (from decompression sickness while supervising tower excavations deep below the East River). But the bridge opened in 1883, a triumph of human ingenuity. Have you ever walked the pedestrian terrace over the Brooklyn Bridge? One strides above vehicular traffic on the bridge deck and river traffic below that, gazing up at the Manhattan skyline. Such a one cannot fail to acknowledge that this was a risk, and a sacrifice, worth making. At least John Roebling and sons thought so. Fifty years later, few thought that building a bridge over the 1.3 mile Golden Gate Strait was possible. Construction would have to deal with notorious tides and currents, in 372 ft of water on the Marin side, in ferocious winds and blinding fogs. It was an Irish immigrant, Michael Maurice O'Shaughnessy, who did not shrink from the challenge. He had already spanned the 200 miles between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Coast with an aqueduct that delivers plentiful mountain snowmelt to our city’s water faucets. Whoever decided to build the Golden Gate Bridge, however, would have to span the greatest distance ever spanned. He would have to build towers taller than any bridge towers that could withstand unparalleled ocean forces. He would have to finance it all in the depths of the Great Depression. Eleven men lost their lives building the most photographed bridge in the world, still the tallest in the United States. The men who risked and lost their lives teach us that some risks are worth taking. To be a Christian, indeed, is to make calculated risks for ones we love, because that is what Our Savior did. He risked, and lost, his life to provide what only He could provide. And God raised him up. All Christian adventure takes its meaning from the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest of all adventures. Adventure It is good for men to take prudent risks and to set out on adventures. God gave us a longing to seek goals, even if we don’t know what those goals are. We seek what is yet to be found. We plan these adventures, we analyze costs and benefits, and we set out. We stretch our muscles and push our limits to provide for our wives and our children and our communities. Consider King David, Israel’s most beloved ruler. The people loved this man because he took risks—he defied the giant Goliath unarmed for his people, trusting in God more than himself. If I ask you what is “David’s sin,” you will say “Bathsheba,” and the murder of her husband. But King David’s greatest sin was staying home. “In the spring,” we read in 2 Samuel 11, “at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.” The King’s job was to defend his people from enemy aggression, but “David stayed in the city.” While his men fought Ammon, this man lounged on his roof with nothing better to do than look at things he shouldn’t look at. “Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful…” Notice that David arose from his bed “at evening.” He was laying around all day, bored out of his mind, and decided to look around for some excitement. Today the internet has made voyeurism very easy for us. But if we are doing our jobs, engaging the adventure of Christian manhood, we won’t have time for pornography. Mother Teresa can help us men here: she told her sisters, when the devil tempted them to thoughts of lust, to say to him quite simply: “I’m sorry, but I do not have time for that right now.” She kept her sisters quite busy in prayer and service, and we must do the same. We simply don’t have time for lust, because we are busy building God’s kingdom on earth for its full realization in heaven. Columbus It was King David’s sheer laziness that drove him to great sin. He should have gone to war with his men instead of staying home on soft pillows and throw rugs. We men, who are given to laziness, must go out of our doors, into danger, from time to time. Adventures steel us, challenge us, and prepare us to defend what must be defended. One of the great adventurers in Western History has been largely forgotten. In second grade I learned a ditty, which we used to sing every October 14. In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain. He sailed by night; he sailed by day; He used the stars to find his way. By the end of the fifteenth century, a few men had attempted to find the end of the vast Atlantic Ocean, but none had ever returned. Cristoforo Columbo was the son of tavern keeper from Genoa. He was a bright boy and loved reading about the seas and continents and winds. When he grew up, he spent ten years planning and raising support for a voyage that would double the size of the known world. He set out on August 3 with three ships, the largest of which was shorter than many of today’s average pleasure yachts. He faced an unknown and seemingly endless ocean. Over two months he and 88 men suffered hunger, thirst, the fear of losing their way, storms and heat and cold. He held his desperate crew together as they were on the point of dissolving into mutiny. On October 14, 1492, he was the first European to kneel on a beach in the New World. With tears for the immeasurable mercy of God, he named the island San Salvador. Christopher Columbus wasn’t perfect, and he wasn’t a saint, but he was a man. He used the gifts of his manhood given by the good God to expand our world and provide for his fellow men. The Bay Adventure Every man should keep himself sharp and ready by smaller voyages of discovery. Who knows when God will call us to be another Christopher Columbus or John Glenn? A few weeks ago one of our young adults asked me to take him kayaking on the bay. We checked the tidal charts and set out. The wind came up, however, and the currents swept us out under the Golden Gate Bridge into the mighty Pacific. Joe’s kayak overturned and began taking on water. He had to learn how to keep calm even as overwhelming currents were carrying both of us into the open ocean. After some initial panic, he stabilized his boat and got back on. We made for the far shore, regrouped, and fought our way back through the choppiest water I’ve ever seen. I was sure he would capsize again, and I with him, but we concentrated on keeping the paddles in the water, taking long deep strokes, and made it past the worst of the current. We attained a high water mark of our endurance and skill, a new level of confidence, and a greater capacity for teamwork. Houston, we have a Problem Patti Armstrong began her article on Men’s Movements in Our Sunday Visitor last week with these observations: “Perception of men’s identities has gone through a lot of confusion in recent decades, with conflicting voices telling them they are too strong or too weak, that they need to take charge or give up control. More recently, the toxic depth of how men live out their sexualities and relate to others has been laid bare in the raft of accusations and allegations around the #MeToo movement. Issues of how boys are formed have come to the fore, with at least one recent commentator highlighting that all school shooters have been male.”
“Have a Safe Day” Women also want men to be men. The bracing article on Men’s Movements I just quoted from is authored by a woman. How many of you men are here because your wives sent you? The women in my parish are all excited about this Men’s Conference, probably a lot more excited than us men. How could we be men without the women in our lives? And yet, at some point, we need to detach from our mother’s apron strings and “estote viri,” be men. Let’s talk about “safety.” All sorts of people, it seems, find it necessary to remind me to “be safe.” In one day last week, as I was preparing this talk, I noticed how frequently people say this to me. I passed a large manly construction truck on the freeway with the usual bumper sticker on it: “Safety is my goal.” It’s good to be safe. But no one ever accomplished anything great by being completely safe. To be a man is to take strategic risks. I was heading out the door with my bike for some exercise. One of the rectory priests called out “be safe.” If safety were my goal in cycling I would definitely not ride a skinny little racing bike into city traffic. My goal in cycling is assuredly not safety, but building my strengths and pushing my limits. I was leaving a meeting with our school faculty and the principal ended the meeting with “have a safe day everyone.” Let’s be clear: our primary goal, and the fundamental orientation of our life, is not safety. It’s getting to heaven, and the way to heaven includes much danger. “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Jesus said. And again, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The Son of God did not come to earth to be safe, but to lose his life. Safety is good in its proper proportion, but we must subordinate our desire to be safe to a greater good, that is, attaining eternal life. Life is an exodus, and we are travelers on a dangerous journey, towards a Safe Havens. As Bilbo Baggins told his nephew, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door." But go out of that door we must. Notice that while our public obsession with safety coincides with a public obsession with danger. That is, we love to watch other people risk life and limb in extreme sports, depictions of violence, cataclysm, and danger. We feed on a steady diet of danger and violence in news, movies, and video games. A young friend of mine studying film production said the goal of every movie maker is to produce an R-rated movie simply because PG-13 doesn’t sell anymore. Anything less than “Restricted” violence is not profitable. And to get that R rating they have to include a few scenes of extreme violence, even though it compromises the movie. I think this craving for what I can only describe as “replacement danger” is a consequence of too much safety and security. Men need a certain amount of unsafety in our lives, and if we can’t get it in a natural, healthy manner we will seek it in artificial, unhealthy ways. Isn’t it the height of cowardice to shrink from personal danger while eagerly watching others suffer extreme danger. So the Romans, in the decadence, flocked to the amphitheaters in their perfumed and soft togas to watch gladiators lung at each other and fight beasts barehanded. Whence this Safety Obsession? We crave virtual violence because we have insulated ourselves from the dangers of real life. In the old days life was not so safe. Just to drive a car, when I was growing up, was a mortal risk, at least the old junkers my family owned. Tires were bald, clutches didn’t work well, break pads were worn, and cars had a propensity to stall just when you needed acceleration. Neither airbags or even headrests had yet been invented, and some didn’t even have seat belts. But they were an adventure to drive and in some way satisfied the male need for challenge! Don’t get me wrong: safety is a good thing. But it’s not the main thing, and no man becomes a hero by focusing too much on safety. I want to propose another reason for our safety obsession, which will probably get me into trouble. I refer to the feminization of our society. For the last 50 years we men have been trained to be safety engineers rather than heroes. Now, let’s admit it: we men are generally lazy—it’s one of our great weaknesses. (“Honey, could you please mow the lawn?”) The first males of our state, California Indian men, were by all reports shockingly lazy. The men would lay around naked all day while the women collected food, cooked, made clothing for the children, and kept the houses. I’m not sure how much progress we modern California men have made since them. Every California man dreams of being a beach bum by summer and a ski bum by winter. Who was behind the drive to legalize marijuana in this state? Mostly men, I’ll wager. But it’s not only California men. On a mission trip to eastern Russia in 2002, I was surprised to see women doing all the work. Not a man was to be seen in the businesses, the factories, the museums. Even the police and fire departments were mostly female. Where are all the men? I asked. “At home drinking,” one woman told me. Women, God bless them, have had to step in where men and fathers have abrogated their duties. We are quite familiar with the term “deadbeat Dad;” have you ever heard of a “deadbeat Mom?” Radical feminism, which my mother used to identify as simple frustration with deadbeat men, is mostly men’s fault. If we were doing our job, women could do their job. And what is a woman’s job? Safety. Women are designed to be “safe,” to provide a warm and safe environment, beginning with their own wombs. Their full breasts and soft skin and tender voices and gentle hearts feed and console and heal. No one can make a home like a mother, and the fact that many no longer keep the home has led to a general social fear, for “safe zones” on college campuses, for galaxies of laws that attempt to protect us from each other. Chaos is on the rise because Mom is not home. She’s at work because Dad is not at work. And what is a man’s job? Engineering. Designing projects, executing plans, and achieving objectives. God built men to sustain risk and danger. While women have tougher psychological capacities (which they need to nurture human relationships), men have tougher physiological capacities. Our bodies are bigger and stronger, and our brains work more analytically. We are designed for discovery and conquest and bringing home the bounty of our exploits. What a woman rightly expects above all from a man is that he provide. But we can’t provide much of anything if we sit at home all day being safe. Neil Armstrong didn’t bring a piece of the moon to us by being safe. Thomas Edison didn’t patent 2,332 inventions by staying home. Keep the Faith Latin Mass Conference, Monterey , CA Ending the Ecclesial Crisis: The Fatima Perspective Lecture Title: Recovering the Ancient Liturgy in San Francisco by Fr. Joseph Illo PART THREE of THREE Recovering Ortho-Doxy How can we recover right worship, which in Greek is translated “ortho-doxy?” Right worship leads to right faith. But many folks in the pews seem to be spiritually “supine,” flailing helplessly on our backs like upside down turtles, seemingly beyond recovery. In one parish, for example, I encouraged people to receive communion on the tongue. The president of our Finance Council, a good-hearted man, generous with his time and money, at Mass every Sunday—he simply chuckled. “I was trained by the Jesuits, father, and they told us Vatican II changed all that. It was hard to make the change from the tongue to the hand, and it’s too late for me to change back.” Who, after all, will the people believe—a professor of theology or a simple parish priest? Even our best rational arguments for liturgical reverence simply will not make sense to the vast majority of Catholics, even those who attend Mass every day. They’ve been through too many changes already. They’ve heard too many conflicting opinions, and now they see even Cardinals and Popes disagreeing with each other. The most effective recovery of the Sacred Liturgy is, in my humble experience, simply to begin implementing simple changes. One must be ready for backlash, but one can remain firm, patient, and charitable. A few years ago I spent a week with the Oxford Oratory, at St. Aloysius parish, a former “Jesuit Institution.” For over 20 years the Oratorians have practiced beautiful, reverent, and proper liturgy. They met disapproval with humility and criticism with firm conviction. They responded to controversy with informed intelligence. At first people were suspicious and some resentful, but the Oratorians were kind, patient, and helpful to all. And after 20 years, the Oratorians have become an integral part of Catholic Oxford, prized by Catholics and non-Catholics alike for their reverence and charity. Our Experience at Star of the Sea Here are some of the simple changes we have made at my parish, Star of the Sea in San Francisco, that have made the parish more prayerful: a. Confessions. One must begin at the beginning, which is the fact that we are sinners and beggars at the throne of grace. We put a priest in the confessional 15 minutes before every Mass; that is, we offer confessions at least 17 times a week. If nobody comes (rarely) we catch up on our breviary or our reading. People come from all over the city, because they know they will find a confessional light on at Star of the Sea. b. Altar servers. I’ve already related the story of “altargate” and my five minutes of fame over our all-boys server program. We remained firm despite almost unanimous opposition from our local area. I received over 900 letters and emails from all over the world, 90% of which were positive. But 90% of the negative emails were from the San Francisco Bay Area. We stood firm, and trained our young men so well that the Archbishop stole some of our best ones for his cathedral Masses. Some boys serve two or three Masses in a row, both in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form. We did not neglect the girls either, but established a “Star Girls” group that meets every other week for fun and service, including altar guild activity. c. Sacred Music. We put time and money into our music department, recovering chant and polyphony. At one point the department consumed 25% of our budget. Sacred Music had been much developed before I arrived at the parish, but much had to be done, and still needs to be done. Good music costs a pastor time and money, but I remembered St. John Vianney, the pastor who lived like a pauper but spent money on the Sacred Mass like a king. d. Vessels and vestments. We quickly moved banal vestments and vessels to storage, and we repaired what was torn and tarnished, purchasing new vestments where needed. We asked this question: in 100 years would you find this vessel or that vestment in a museum? The timebound and faddish are now in a closet, and the beautiful and timeless grace our altars every day. e. Church Interior. We restored the altar predella marble by removing the tired red carpet that had been glued over it. We replaced the same old carpet over our sanctuary with splendid stone tilework. We gilded the altar, replaced burned out fixtures, installed more brilliant lighting, and made the sanctuary lamp prominent and brighter. Our church has “good bones” and has preserved its essential integrity, but much remains to be done so that it regains the vivid beauty of an age of greater faith.
g. Altar Rail. By God’s grace our parish has retained its original altar rail from 1914. I had encouraged Holy Communion on the tongue at the English Masses, but didn’t get many takers. Only after I encouraged people to come to the altar rail did most folks begin receiving on the tongue. If people stand in line for Holy Communion, as if waiting for a handout, most will naturally put out their hands. But when one kneels, one realizes that one is no longer at the bank or the post office. At first we only gave people the option of Holy Communion at the rail, but within two or three months almost everyone had forsaken the “communion line” for the altar rail. Then we asked everyone to come to the rail, and the vast majority now receive Holy Communion on the tongue.
h. Perpetual Adoration. We built a new chapel at significant cost ($300,000) and promoted adoration at every opportunity. Our adoration program is still very much a work in progress, but perpetual Eucharistic adoration is a game changer for any parish or diocese. It draws people to the parish, of course, but beyond that it transforms the parish into a praying community. The nocturnal hours are unparalleled hours of grace for priests and people. A young men’s group, for example, does a holy hour every Thursday from 5-6am. “Success” In an area where Mass attendance is generally diminishing, our attendance has increased about 8% annually. The Sunday offertory has tripled in three years. Many new social, study, and service groups have formed, such as the Knights of Columbus, Young Adults (who begin their weekly meeting with an hour of Eucharistic adoration and confession), a Mother’s Group, a monthly men’s recollection, a Reading Club, and many more. We baptized seven adults last year in a parish that apparently hadn’t witnessed an adult baptism in several years. Four men entered the seminary from Star of the Sea in 2017. But success is a fickle friend. This year we will baptize no adults, and who knows what the attendance and offertory will be in a year or two? We only know that we must worship God as he would have us do. As Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out in his book Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy, Moses insisted on leaving Egypt for three days to worship God in the desert. “Why can’t you worship your God right here?” Pharaoh asked Moses. “Because,” Moses said, “we must sacrifice to the Lord our God as he will command us.” The prophet would not compromise with a furious Pharaoh—he insisted on taking his flocks and herds, for, he said, “we don’t know how God would have us worship until we get there.” Moses put every one of his people’s lives in jeopardy in order to get to the desert, the place where they would have freedom of right worship. The Exodus was not a political or economic liberation, but a liberation from false gods and false worship. True Worship is freedom. Young people, in particular, have a deep sense of this, as I have seen in my parish. They will flock to right worship, if we provide it for them. We are all sinners in my parish, struggling against our fears and distrust of God. We labor to worship the Good God in spirit and truth, denying our preferences to adore Him in the manner He chooses. Despite our limitations, and the immense tasks before us, we rejoice in what has already been recovered, and what we know can be recovered in years to come. May Our Lady, Star of the Sea, guide us into true and right worship of her Divine Son. Keep the Faith Latin Mass Conference, Monterey , CA Ending the Ecclesial Crisis: The Fatima Perspective Lecture Title: Recovering the Ancient Liturgy in San Francisco by Fr. Joseph Illo PART TWO of THREE Altargate In August 2014 I was assigned to Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco. My predecessor had laudably begun offering the Latin Mass every day, so many were growing in reverence for the Holy Sacraments. The casualness and even indifference toward the Holy Eucharist at the English Masses, however, was rather discouraging. Where does one begin when so many did not seem to realize what they were receiving in their outstretched hands? We began with the altar servers. I’ll never forget my first funeral at the parish, served by two girls from the school. They did the best they could, but neither was Catholic. So going forward, we decided to train only Catholic boys to serve the Mass. Some in the parish and many in the school expressed concern with this decision, but all was relatively quiet for three months. Then, the day before the Walk for Life West Coast, the second-largest prolife march in the country, a CBS camera crew stopped me after the noon Mass. “We have heard that you have banned girls from the altar,” the reporter said. “We’d like to interview you.” I gave a brief interview, making the simple point that, while the Church permits altar girls, it encourages priests to develop boys’ server programs, especially to form priestly vocations. I referenced the 1994 directive from Holy See permitting altar girls: “The Holy See wishes to recall that it will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar. As is well known, this has led to a reassuring development of priestly vocations. Thus the obligation to support such groups of altar boys will always continue.” That night, however, “altargate” was the first story on the evening news. Two grim-faced news anchors appeared on the screen to alert the public to credible reports of a priest banning girls from a church in San Francisco. The next day NCB’s “investigative unit” was parked outside the church. They certainly had not been assigned to City Hall, were 50,000 pro-lifers were calling for civil rights for the unborn. On Monday a camera crew showed up from Good Morning America, and I eventually received over 1000 emails and letters from around the world. “Altergate,” the scandalous news story of a priest in San Francisco who had banned girls from the altar, had gone viral. Why had the media pounced on a little parish doing what lots of other big and little parishes were already doing? At first I thought it was only the usual pro-abortion agenda: airing a Catholic-Church-Hates-Women story the night before a massive pro-life Walk. But as the story grew, I saw something deeper was at play. It was really a dispute about the Mass, about our orientation and disposition toward the Presence of God in the Sacred Liturgy. Purity and Reverence The Sacred Liturgy, offered reverently, rebukes impurity. Its modesty, its restraint, and its humility stands athwart the arrogance of this world. The world tolerates the Mass, but only if it is reduced to a kind of social gathering. If the priest and people at Mass commit themselves to divine mystery, to Christian solemnity and transcendence, the world becomes very nervous about the Mass. Ultimately it cannot tolerate true reverence and modesty. Contemporary expressions of divine liturgy, for example, find veils embarrassing. Veils point to a mystery that must be modestly concealed, lest we imagine we understand the mystery. Veils cover the most sacred parts of the liturgy—the tabernacle, the chalice and paten, and the priest himself (the chasuble). They are unveiled only at the most sacred moment, when the body of the Lord is to be communicated to the faithful. In authentic expressions of the divine, modesty veils the tabernacle, chalice, priest and the faithful themselves (Psalm 96 exhorts us to “worship the Lord in holy attire”). A church in which the tabernacle stands naked, the chalice remains unclothed, and the priest neglects to vest himself properly communicates impurity. People will dress beautifully and modestly for Mass if the priest is vested in modest beauty, and if the chalice and tabernacle are arrayed in splendor. The Holy Mass, especially the older usage, quietly rebukes the impurity of our voyeuristic culture. That is why it is opposed and attacked. A few weeks after my brief moment of fame in the evening news, I had dinner with a trusted friend, an older San Francisco priest who had himself been through the wars. “They are not persecuting you for any other reason than that you celebrate the Latin Mass,” he said. “They will oppose you implacably as long as you offer the Mass like that.” Keep the Faith Latin Mass Conference, Monterey , CA Ending the Ecclesial Crisis: The Fatima Perspective Lecture Title: Recovering the Ancient Liturgy in San Francisco by Fr. Joseph Illo PART ONE of THREE Recovery The theme of my talk this morning is “Recovery:” recovering the Ancient Liturgy. Recovery implies that the object has not completely disappeared and is not beyond recovery. You can “permanently” delete a year’s worth of work on you hard drive but it’s still there. You just have to pay a data “recovery” company to find it for you. They piece it back together from bits and pieces stored on your computer memory. Our sponsoring organization for these conferences is “Keep the Faith.” The faith has never left us. Some call us “conservatives:” we conserve what is still with us. The human capacity to know beauty, for example, can never be completely extinguished. Douglas Murry, author of The Strange Death of Europe, tells of us visit to a modern art exhibit. He found the art uninspiring, and the halls rather empty, but then “I heard the strains of Spem in alium (16th Century, Thomas Tallis) and made my way to the sound…. Everybody had migrated toward the same “sound installation” by Janet Cardiff, consisting of 40 speakers arranged in an oval, each replaying the voice of a singer in the choir. In the center people stood mesmerized.” The museum of modern art had “discovered” a sacred polyphony from the 16th Century. It had discovered a remnant of the Roman Liturgy, mesmerizing in its beauty. In this talk I will relate how we have begun to recover the truth and beauty in a typical diocesan parish, a liturgy that, as Bishop Schneider mentioned, is “in exile,” but not irrevocably eliminated. Perhaps Pope Benedict’s most important contribution to the Church in his all-too short papacy was to point out the simple fact that the Sacred Roman Liturgy has never been “abrogated.” The Sacred Rites have never left the Roman Church, but they are scattered about in bits and pieces. They were exiled not only merely to dusty tomes of rubric and chant (many of which have now been republished, Deo Gratias). More fundamentally our Sacred Rites have been exiled to the dark and vague parts of peoples’ subconsciousness. Most Catholics have a distant recollection of a more beautiful, reverent, transcendent liturgy. Maybe we saw a Solemn High Mass in an old movie (the Sound of Music!), or heard bits of chant in a concert. Somewhere in our olfactory nerves the memory of liturgical incense wafts. The human person’s longing for beauty cannot be “permanently deleted.” It’s not impossible, and really not that hard, to recover a proper reverence and beauty in the Sacred Rites. It takes time and effort. I include “San Francisco” in my presentation title because that is where I live and work in a typical diocesan parish with a typical parochial school. God has blessed my city with exceptional natural beauty, and although San Francisco prides itself in its progressive secularization, deep down it’s a Catholic city. It was founded by a Franciscan priest in 1776, and named for St. Francis himself. From any moderate hill you can pick out six or seven Catholic churches whose domes and spires still punctuate the city. Inside these lovely buildings you will discover that their sanctuaries have not been gutted. High altars and altar rails remain, although some of them have been carpeted over. But with time and effort one can remove the carpet and recover the shining white marble beneath. Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament But first let’s orient the talk with the overall theme of our conference, “Ending the Ecclesial Crisis from the Fatima Perspective.” Many popes have said that Fatima is Our Lady’s most important apparition. They say that her messages were singularly imperative and universal, more urgent now than when she appeared. She gave us in 1917 the means to recover the faith that by our time has been driven into exile. Our Lady chose May 13, the feast of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, to appear to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco. When we look at her many messages as a whole, it becomes evident that her purpose was to lead us to the Blessed Sacrament. Her insistence on the “first Saturdays,” for instance (confession, Mass, rosary, and 15 minutes of meditation) work together to orient us toward the Most Blessed Sacrament. In July 1913 Our Lady showed three small children a vision of hell. Had she not assured them before that they would all go to heaven, they would not have survived the vision. Why would Our Lady take such an extreme measure with these little ones? Obviously because souls are indeed falling into hell, and the mother of all the living has been sent by God to prevent this supreme tragedy. The loving mother of all these souls falling into hell begged the children to intercede for them by offering Communions of Reparation and the First Saturdays. The enemy, therefore, has concentrated his powers on destroying reverence for the Most Blessed Sacrament. He has focused his energies on rendering the Sacred Rites unintelligible. Cardinal Robert Sarah, in a preface to Fr. Frederico Bartoli’s recently-issued historical analysis of communion in the hand, writes: “The most insidious diabolical attack consists in trying to extinguish faith in the Eucharist.... Satan’s target is the sacrifice of the Mass.” We must recover, as best we can, the sacred rites. “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” Our Lady told the children. “To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.” Devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart means not only honoring her in prayers and devotions, but much more in imitating the purity of her Immaculate Heart. It means first of all fidelity to the Mass, receiving the Jesus as she received Him at the Annunciation, in purity and trust. How to Receive the Holy Sacrament God sent the Guardian angel of Portugal in 1915 and 1916 to prepare the children for Our Lady’s apparitions in 1917. His third and final message was to teach the children how to receive the Holy Eucharist. He held a chalice in his left hand and above the chalice, suspended in mid air, was a host and drops of blood fell from the host into the chalice. The angel left the chalice in the air with the host above it, and knelt down with the children to pray. “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly and offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended.” Outrages (satanic rituals, destruction of churches and tabernacles, online sale of hosts, etc), sacrileges (receiving Christ in mortal sin—even now promoted by some bishops—or without believing in the Real Presence), indifference (the irreverence with which we receive, and attend, Mass, hosts that crumble to the floor, and the 75% of Catholics who do not attend Mass regularly). Three years ago I gave a retreat to Mother Teresa’s sisters in Dominican Republic. All her sisters receive on the tongue with great reverence, but the local pastor asked me to take a Sunday Mass for him. It was in a poor village, and the chapel had only a roof with no walls. Everyone was receiving in the hand, and hosts were so crumbly that pieces were flying away in the wind. I was amazed at such carelessness on the part of the priests and bishops, who would offer Mass with such shoddy hosts. How can we expect folk to believe that these hosts are the physical presence of God when we throw them away? How could we possibly treat the body of Mary’s Son like this and say we are devoted to her? We are little better than those who crucified Him in front of His mother as she stood at Calvary, or the indifferent onlookers who didn’t lift a finger to help a man who was being crucified in front of his mother. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart means, first of all, purity of worship. It is urgent that the bishops of the world return all their dioceses to the ancient practice of communion on the tongue. This basic devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament is a simple but necessary act of devotion to the Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart. Yesterday a nice man drove me from the San Jose airport to the Missionaries of Charity convent. San Jose, Costa Rica, that is. The sisters met me at the gate, all smiles, and told me of their country’s goodness. Indeed, this particular stretch of Central American coast is rich in beauty and peace. Costa Rica is one of the few countries in the world that has chosen not to have an army. I asked Edwin, our driver, why his country did not need an army. “There’s still many good people here,” he said with just a touch of melancholy. His rueful intonation made me say “for how long?” He smiled a bit, tilting his head, as if to the providence of God, but didn’t say anything. The airport highway was clean and well-ordered. Not a piece of garbage was to be seen along the grassy median, and come to think of it, no one was honking their horns, even though traffic was thick. People were deferring to each other in the normal struggle for a piece of pavement. Presidential campaign billboards also proliferated, preparing for Sunday’s general election. “Will there be any violence during your election?” I asked. “Not here,” the sisters said. “Why is Costa Rica so clean and peaceful,” I asked Edwin. “Por ahora, there are many good people here,” he repeated. “For now.” “Hasta cuando?” I asked again teasingly. “For how long?” Again Edwin tilted his head, as if to the Almighty. Our country is in God’s hands, he seemed to say. How long can we hold out against the seemingly inexorable tide of globalization, of big tech and big data, of big oil and big agriculture, of big pharma and big media and big government? How much longer can this small country remain content with “a sufficiency,” as St. Paul writes. Only God knows. But I know this: that each of us can decide to be content with what we have. We can choose to respect the balance of nature by living in quiet joy, seeing beauty where it is to be found, in the smallest and simplest gifts of God. These dear sisters have chosen it, and Edwin has chosen it … for now. |
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