Today we celebrate St. Dominic, who went to God from this little earth in 1221, just fifty years old. It is said that he spent his nights listening to God, and spent his days sharing with others what he had heard the night before. Contemplatio et praedicatio: to contemplate God’s wonders, and then to preach God’s wonders, has been motivating the Order of Preachers (the “Dominicans”) for the last 800 years. To “contemplate,” we must focus, and that’s hard these days with a thousand distractions and countervailing ideologies constantly besieging us.

When riding my bike over the crowded Golden Gate Bridge, I usually focus on the road, not the people. Sometimes I look up in wonder at the beauty of the Bridge itself. The other day the GGB was packed with more visitors than usual. It was the second day of San Francisco’s biggest rock concert, which takes over Golden Gate Park and fills the entire the city with extra cars, bikes, and monowheeled gyroscopes. It’s tempting to despise tourists when they stop their rental bikes in the middle of the narrow bikeway to take a picture. The other day, however, rather than shaking my head in disgust, I looked into the face of the offender. He looked like quite a likable fellow. And I began looking at the faces of all the people I normally zoom past on my bike.

The Golden Gate Bridge is fascinating, but far more fascinating are the people who built it—people like you and me, people like those tourists parking their rental bikes at the very narrowest part of sidewalks. After all, one person is worth more than twenty Golden Gate Bridges. The least interesting person is vastly more fascinating than anything made by man, or for that matter, any other order of the natural world made by God.

These days, it is fashionable to despise the human race. In a fit of self-loathing, one of my neighbors scrawled these words on a 7-foot plywood board in front of his house: “Save the planet. F— the human race.” I suppose Marshall (normally a nice enough chap) had seen one too many news reports on climate change or Monkeypox or some other proof that “we” are the enemy.
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People are a problem, to be sure, ever since the disaster in Eden. Every one of us is selfish and dishonest and hypocritical. I’m writing this on a jetliner where the flight attendants talk about “recycling” our soda cans to save the planet while the throbbing engines beneath us burn through 26,000 pounds of carbon fuel per hour. Not one of us, from Al Gore to Donald Trump, is willing to significantly sacrifice our wants to “save the planet,” and anyone who claims to “care for the planet” while flying about on jetliners is also a liar (well, perhaps just clueless). Every last one of us desperately needs a savior. Could we even just admit that we cannot save ourselves? But the good news is that every human being is also an image of God: a wondrous act of creation, providing endless discovery and fascination for biologists, physicists, psychiatrists, poets, philosophers, and theologians. Every human person has been given the potential to bestow godlike gifts upon the natural order. People are the problem, but people are also the solution, by the grace of God. I have to remember that, to look at people rather than just zooming past them on my very fast bicycle.

The Golden Gate Bridge is a thing of beauty, but consider how much more beautiful the creatures that made it, by the grace of God.

I often take my daily exercise by cycling up through the Presidio and down to San Francisco’s “Wave Organ.” Peter Richards, artist-in-residence at the City’s Exploratorium, built this structure in 1986 from cast-off granite monuments from the old Laurel Hill Cemetery. It beautifully caps a spit of land extending into the Bay, affording both spectacular views and shelter from the prevailing winds. It’s the only spot on my daily bike rides that I can make phone calls without being overcome by maritime gusts.

The Wave Organ was paid for by the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s “temple of innovation.” Over the years I’ve taken many groups of kids to this wonderful hands-on museum of the most fascinating inventions that move the modern world. My favorites include the cut-away automobile differential that shows how cars turn both wheels on a single axle at different speeds, the scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge showing how suspension support and stresses are equalized, the tornado and icy comet chambers, and the gearbox that starts with a small spinning wheel and ends up with a large wheel that makes one revolution every 13.7 billion years. All of these gadgets “work” in some way, contributing to the beauty, intelligence, and function of the world in which we live.

But not all bright ideas actually prove themselves functional. Probably most of mankind’s innovations do not achieve their intended results in the long run. Yesterday at the Wave Organ, as I sat down to do my midday prayers, a Brit-tish tourist was explaining the Wave Organ in her charming cockney. “When the tides rise and fall,” she confidently announced to her family, “the 25 PVC pipes produce various organ-like sounds.” Well, not actually. I’ve never heard anything more than occasional gurgle from these pipes, and I mean occasional—maybe once every 50 times I’ve sat next to them to catch up on phone calls. The Wave Organ was a fetching concept on paper, winning a large grant of public monies for its construction. Its granite funerary monuments, skillfully arranged, recall the elegant history of our City, and its position overlooking Alcatraz, the Bridges, and the City charms the heart. But in fact it does not do what it was designed to do. Maybe we should change its name from “wave organ” to “portals of the past" or something more accurate.

Successful projects require different types of people: idea people (to visualize innovation), political people (to raise the money and get the permits), worker bee people (to get the job done), and critical people (to troubleshoot problems). Innovation alone is not enough. But here in California, "innovation" has come to be an end in itself. The Wave Organ was a fascinating concept, so it must work! After all, we spent so much money on it!

Social media was a brilliant idea, but does it do what it was designed to do (enrich our personal relationships)? Does that great innovation of the Third Decade of the New Millennium—curing the common cold—actually work? Have we found a cure for the SARS-CoV virus, or are we just taking innovative vaccine technology simply because "it’s a good idea?" Even leftist leaders are now conceding that the Covid vaccine is mostly a placebo.

Placebos have their own value, I suppose. I wanted to stand up yesterday and say to our lovely tourists: “The Wave Organ doesn’t work.” But that would have darkened their glittering experience of this lovely City by the Bay.

Everyone has tales of airport horrors, especially now when the airlines are fighting for their lives. Delays, missed connections, overbookings and canceled flights are on the rise.  But many can also tell of airport miracles, when against all odds we make a connection or land on that “perfect” flight. Mother Teresa of Calcutta flew a lot, patiently enduring delayed flights and cancellations like the rest of us. How did she remain calm? She prayed a lot, of course, but in particular she prayed the “flying novena” in desperate situations. A Flying Novena is nine Memorares asking for a specific favor, plus one more in thanksgiving. The graces don’t always look like what we asked for, but they are always just what the Divine Doctor ordered. Jesus says we should ask for what we need, but not demand what we want. That’s a delicate balance to achieve.

Last Saturday my flight from Omaha to Denver was delayed an hour, “but don’t worry,” they told us at the desk, “all flights out of Denver are on hold because of thunderstorms, so you will make your connections.” I hoped that was true, because I was scheduled for a Sung Latin Mass the next day in San Francisco, which no other priest was able to do. I struggled to remain calm, and to trust.

When we finally landed in Denver, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the flight attendant told us that in fact many of us would miss our connections. I was at the back of the plane, and had had to check my carry-on, so the chance of making my connection was slim to none. Turning on my phone, I saw that United had already re-booked me on the last flight to San Francisco that night, arriving at 1am. So I prayed a Flying Novena. Because I was almost the last one off the plane, I had time to finish the prayer before getting to the jetway, where many were waiting for their carry-ons. “Dear Lord,” I prayed, “all things are in your hands. Whatever happens, I thank you and praise you.” Of course, I was struggling to really mean that prayer, fighting down the panic that was turning my stomach into knots.

Then three things lined up. First, my bag was the first one to the jetway. Second, the monitor said that my original flight had not yet departed and I was able to race a quarter mile to its gate. Third, the nice lady at the desk was able to get me back on that flight before the door closed. Safely on the plane, I glanced once more at my phone. United had texted me that, unfortunately, my rebooked flight to San Francisco had been canceled: I would have to spend the night in Denver and rebook for the next day. I switched my phone off and chuckled as the plane lifted off for San Francisco. I would be able to celebrate all my Masses the next day after all.
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I have lots of airport horror stories, and many airport miracle stories. The real miracle, though, is that we can find it within ourselves to give thanks in all circumstances. Mother Teresa, veteran of many horrors and many miracles, put this on her “business card:” The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace.” Joyful peace is the gift God wants to give to all who will find it within themselves to trust in Him. It’s not easy to trust, so we must pray. I recommend the Flying Novena, especially in airports.

Today is St. Benedict’s Day, and I am at a monastery in the middle of a vast cornfield. The monastery is the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, situated among the rolling green stretches of Nebraska, the only state of the Union that has managed to run its politics from a “unicameral” legislature (meaning they trust each other enough not to need two houses looking over each other’s shoulders). Every state in these United States is beautiful in its own way, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the serene farmlands between Omaha and Lincoln.

Today is St. Benedict’s Day, and in 522AD, the young Benedict had had enough of city life. He had been sent to Rome to study “rhetoric,” the art of “persuasive speaking,” something like communications media and journalism today. His fellow students were falling into all sorts of vices, and the young student realized that rhetoric was not about truth but about “persuasion:” selling something to somebody who doesn’t want it. So he fled into the countryside, and eventually established a system of monasteries around Europe that preserved Western culture through the decline of the Roman Empire. Thanks, St. Benedict!

Ironically, the monks who fled city life preserved the best of city life. It takes a certain distance from the seething mass of humanity to appreciate humanity, and the sciences and arts that built Athens and Rome would be preserved in the countryside monasteries, ready to rebuild those cities when the time was right. For the last 40 years, Catholic popes and bishops have been calling upon priests and laity to rebuild parishes and schools, which have taken a nose-dive since the 60s. You could shoot a few cannonballs through most parish Sunday Masses (at least in our cities) without hurting anyone. Schools that produce Catholic political leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, who legislate against fundamental Catholic principles and religious liberty, can hardly be called “Catholic” anymore. Is there anywhere in the Church where parishes, schools, and Catholic culture are flourishing?

Actually, there are. Christianity flourishes in Africa, for example, and in other humbler parts of the world. But even in wealthy and powerful nations, even in Europe, Canada, and the United States, there are plenty of thriving Catholic parishes, schools, and monasteries. As I write this, the monastery bells are ringing out over the fields, calling man and beast to glorify their Creator.

The sisters in this monastery chose to leave San Francisco 25 years ago for the “flyover” state of Nebraska (with a stop in Las Vegas, which didn’t work out!). They wanted to return to the more traditional forms of worship, and they are bursting with novices: over forty sisters, most of them under 35. If Church leadership really wants to renew parishes and religious orders, it need look no further than the healthy inclusion of the more traditional forms of worship in the Church’s liturgical life. No one can deny the numbers: more traditional parishes and religious communities have been growing for 60 years while less traditional communities are dying out. When Hollywood wants to portray "Catholic," it portrays parishes and schools and nuns who look Catholic!
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But it is not only in the monastery that Catholicism flourishes near Lincoln. Yesterday I got invited to a “pig roast” at a local home. Backyards are spacious in Nebraska, so when I got to the picnic about 150 people had already arrived. Parents were chatting in small groups, six or seven of the local priests stood about in their cassocks, and hordes of children were chasing each other over the lush green grass. I had a good talk with the party’s hostess, a mother of twelve, one of whom was a priest that I had worked with in years past. At 6pm her husband, who serves as physician, mentor, and all-around elder to the neighborhood, called out for one of the priests to lead the Angelus. Everyone knew how to pray it, when to kneel, and when to stand. It was a beautifully Catholic picnic: smiling parents, racing children, venerable priests, delightful food and drinks and games, barking dogs and heartfelt prayers. No one was left out. If the Vatican, or any diocesan chancery, wants to know how to evangelize, it need look no further than the joy and the love flowing through some of our more traditionally-minded communities.

San Francisco, like most towns this morning, is quiet. Riding through the streets to offer an early Mass at a monastery of sisters on Ashbury Street, I had the city to myself. Thousands will flock to Crissy Field tonight for the fireworks, but this morning America is sleeping in, grateful for the peaceful and prosperous Republic set up 246 years ago this day in Philadelphia. We still have warm beds to sleep in, and streets that are quiet on holidays.

I’ve been reading Paul Johnson’s thousand-page History of the American People over the last month. The eminent English historian describes it as a “labor of love,” citing his longstanding admiration and affection for the people of the United States. Johnson does not, however, canonize our founders or gloss over our nation’s sins. He wrote this history in 1995, twenty-five years before the wealthy and powerful New York Times defined our country as fundamentally racist with their “1619 Project.” Actually, Johnson writes, three things happened in 1619: first, ninety young unmarried women arrived from England to find husbands, anchoring the Virginia Colony in stable family life. Second, the First General Assembly met in Jamestown to establish a representative government based on the English rule of law. And third, and a Dutch man-of-war arrived to sell 20 African slaves to the Virginia colonists. A criminal precedent was set in 1619 which would cause untold suffering and death, and nearly destroy our Republic 240 years later. But that vice must be balanced with the virtue of family life and representative government. Today, another 240 years have passed, and reasonable people will consider the entire history of our country, the good and the bad. Patriotism is a virtue—that is, it strengthens—and good citizens give thanks for the good we all enjoy while asking God’s forgiveness for our sins.

America has two great “original sins”: the enslavement of African people and the eradication of Indigenous people. But America has many more virtues than vices, and that is why we have become a haven for immigrants the world over. Good men and women have built for us a democratic republic based on the rule of law and the cultivation of free enterprise, a home for the oppressed and the poor from the entire planet. It is simply puerile to say hateful things about our country while taking advantage of its prosperity (as do many of our elites from their halls of power and gated communities). When I was in high school in the 70's, we read positive histories of America with lots of beautiful illustrations. Our teachers took us to Jamestown, Williamsburg and Washington to see and touch our wonderful history. In public schools today, however, young people read ugly and unbalanced diatribes against America, a Marxist version of history that breeds only resentment and violence.
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An honest reading of our history teaches that we must be both the heirs of America’s virtues and the bearers of her vices. To live in peace with ourselves and other nations, we would do better to exercise the virtue of patriotism—gratitude rather than resentment, esteem both for our own forebears and those of other nations. Every country’s story is beautiful, because the Almighty is the Lord of History, guiding humanity, despite our sins, to rejoice in His beneficence. I think I will ride my bike down to Crissy Field for the fireworks tonight.

A blessed Father’s Day! This morning I wrote a card for my 96-year-old father before stepping into the confessional. “Thank you, father,” each penitent said. The gift of fatherhood, of providing life for them, struck me with full force in all its mystery. Thank you, heavenly Father!
 
On this Sunday we also celebrate Corpus Christi, the “Body of Christ,” the inestimable gift of the Holy Eucharist. This feast is properly celebrated on Thursday, because it was on Holy Thursday that Christ instituted the sacrifice at the Last Supper. “Three Thursdays shine brighter than the sun:” Holy Thursday, Ascension Thursday, and Corpus Christi Thursday. Pope Urban IV established this feast in 1264, asking St. Thomas Aquinas to compose hymns and prayers for the Mass. Thomas wrote the Sequence you just heard, the Lauda Sion, beautifully sung our cantor Natalia. Until 1955 the Church celebrated an Octave of Corpus Christi, concluding with the Feast of the Sacred Heart eight days later. St. Margaret Mary, around the year 1675, received this request from Our Lord: “I ask that the first Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi be set apart as a special feast to honor my Heart.” We physically receive the Sacred Heart of Christ each time we receive the Corpus Christi, as forensic analysis of the Eucharistic miracle at Lanciano demonstrated: human cardiac tissue of blood type AB.
 
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain the Last Supper, whereas John’s Gospel has no Last Supper but provides the doctrine of the Eucharist in the Sixth Chapter: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you, for my flesh is true food and my blood true drink.” This sounds bizarre to those who do not understand sacramental theology. The first century Roman government proscribed the Mass as cannibalism, and today the vast majority of people, and even most Catholics, do not believe that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. It is on Corpus Christi that priests must teach and explain this most core doctrine of the Catholic faith.
 
St. Paul, in our second reading, explains it himself. “Brethren, I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘this is my body, given up for you.’… As often as you eat this bread and drink this chalice, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” Most Catholics think of the Mass as a meal, and indeed it is a sacred banquet. But Paul does not use the word "meal;" rather he defines the Eucharist as "the death of the Lord," a sacrificial banquet in which the host serves his own flesh (indeed, the English word "host" comes from the Latin hostia, meaning "sacrifice." But the manner in which the Mass has usually been celebrated for the last 50 years does not portray a sacrificial death. Most Masses look like polite social gatherings or even birthday parties with clowns and balloons. And that is largely why most Catholics no longer believe in the Eucharist.  If priests and musicians celebrate Mass as a "party," people will understand it as a “party.” If priests celebrate the Mass as a sacrifice, "proclaiming the death of the Lord until He comes," people will understand it as a sacrifice.
 
St. Paul goes on to say in the verse after today’s second reading: “therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the chalice of the Lord unworthily must answer for the blood of the Lord.” These words were deleted from the Corpus Christi Mass in 1970, and as a result most Catholics have no concept of an “unworthy” reception of the Eucharist. Paul defines “unworthy” reception as eating the Body of Christ without “discerning” the Body—not believing in the Real Presence, or not believing in the Presence of Christ in the bodies of others. For this reason, canon law requires pastors to deny holy communion to those who “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin,” and requires all of us to “examine” ourselves. If we are in mortal sin, we must seek sacramental absolution before approaching the Body of Christ. This is not easy, either for pastors or for any Catholic. It’s not easy to be Catholic.

Receiving the Body of Christ while denying the Body of Christ (either in the Sacrament or in the People of God) is drinking death unto ourselves, as St. Thomas expresses it in verses 16 and 17 of the Lauda Sion: Sumunt boni, sumunt mali; mors est malis, vita bonis. “The good receive it, the bad receive it; it is death to the bad, but life to the good.” Things have not changed since 1264! Most Catholics still receive the Eucharist, the “good” and the “bad,” but to those “not discerning the body,” the Eucharist is death. Truly, those Catholics who have given up their faith but still receive Holy Communion so as to “look good” have become the most powerful promoters of death in politics, the entertainment industry, and the education system. The corruption of the best is the worst.
 
Not one of us is “worthy” to receive the Body of Christ. We are only made worthy by surrendering ourselves to Christ, whose body we receive. And so the most appropriate prayer before receiving the Body of Christ is that of the pagan centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul will be healed.”

The Feast of the Holy Trinity always follows Pentecost because the Holy Spirit completes the Holy Trinity. As Our Lord says in today’s Gospel, “when He comes, the Spirit of Truth, He will guide you into all truth.” The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental truth about God, who God really is. The Feast of the Holy Trinity also follows Pentecost because only with the Spirit’s gifts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, can we begin to appreciate the Trinitarian mystery. What is this most fundamental truth? It is that God is a community, an eternal exchange of love between persons. St. John, in his first letter, says that “God is love,” but there is no love without an “other,” a person besides oneself to love and from whom to receive love.
 
Have you ever wondered why everyone is looking for love? Almost every popular song in human history, and almost every movie ever made and every story every told, describes someone's search for love. We all thirst for love because we are made in God’s image, who is Himself an eternal exchange of love between three persons. Mother Teresa was fond of saying that “you were created for greater things: to love and to be loved.” But what is “love,” and where do we find it?
 
The other day I saw a rainbow-colored sign that said “Love is love.” Well, that’s not very helpful. It’s a very poor definition whose subject and predicate are identical, kind of like saying “Nuclear fusion is nuclear fusion.” A real definition requires both a difference and a similarity between subject and predicate. How about St. John’s definition again: “God is love”? This definition anchors love in something greater than ourselves. It defines love as a “longing,” always incomplete, always desiring more. That sounds a lot more like the love I’ve experienced, and that I’ve heard described in literature.
 
The month of June is set apart for “love.” Do you know what special celebration of love happens every June in San Francisco? That’s right: the Feast of the Sacred Heart. We sing sacred songs to the Heart of Jesus, proclaiming that God has a heart, and that heart thirsts for you and for me. But, in fact, images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are not what you will see in downtown San Francisco this month. There is another image on every city lampost in the Castro, on corporate advertisements, on sports teams jerseys, on TV ads, and on internet pages this month: the rainbow flag. It’s even flying from the Vatican embassy in Rome. People say June is “Pride Month.”
 
It's my job as a Catholic priest, and your pastor, to preach Catholic truth, and to point out errors that harm our faith. It is sometimes a distasteful task, especially when it means speaking against what most people, and most Catholics, have embraced. But let me say clearly that the promotion of homosexual acts—the rainbow flag—is incompatible with Catholicism.
 
For starters, “pride” is a sin, in fact a “capital sin,” and the first of the capital sins. We do use the word “pride” in some virtuous ways, such as “I’m proud of my children” or “we are proud of our school,” meaning “we appreciate these good things.” But what gay activists, and their corporate sponsors, promote is not a good thing. Rainbow activists are “proud” of their rebellion against “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” to borrow a phrase from our nation’s Declaration of Independence. Rebellion against nature always ends badly, for "Mother Nature is not mocked."
 
Many suffer from same sex attraction, gender dysphoria, and other sexual disorders in our disordered society. We all suffer from one kind of confusion or another. But we must help each other overcome rather than celebrate our disorders. We must be clear: the rainbow flag is not for Catholics. It rejects the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we must make a decision: either to celebrate disordered sexual acts or to lament them. There is no middle ground, as the rainbow coalition has made quite clear: those who are not with gay pride are against gay pride.
 
How about if we replaced “pride month” with “humility month?” Shouldn’t Christians seek virtues like humility and purity rather than pride and impurity? We all want love. Democrats and Republicans, communists and monarchists, progressives and traditionalists: every last one of us wants “love.” And so I return to my original question: where do we find love? We find it in the family, which John Paul II described as “the school of love.” If we don’t learn how to love from our mothers and fathers —how to share, how to be patient, how to sacrifice ourselves for others—we will never learn how to love. And it is precisely the family which the various atheistic movements—of which the rainbow coalition is the most well-funded at the moment—are trying to eliminate.
 
They’ve made impressive progress. Less than half of the children in America’s cities grow up in an unbroken family. To rebuild a healthy society built of healthy families, we look to the Holy Trinity, the “family of God,” the model that powers every human family and every community. To restore real love, we cannot do better than imitate the humility, the purity, and the charity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

I’m a bike rider—have been all my life, from the time I sustained full-body road rash from a crash down “deadman’s hill” and climbed back onto my banana-seat the next day. San Francisco is a bike rider’s city. Stunning seascapes and soaring cliffs, large leafy parks and towering bridges, and plenty of bike lanes delight the cyclist on foggy mornings and sunny evenings alike. For many years, the City Supervisors ensured that streets and bikeways were well-paved and open for riders. That has been changing, however. Over the last three years, random barricades pop up to block the way and once-smooth bikeways have been repaved with pitted and irregular asphalt. No one knows why these restrictions happen, who controls them, or what recourse we have to question them. It’s all rather anonymous, but one thing is certain: someone else is in control of the City.

I spent the summer of 2001 teaching English in Ukraine. In those days, the electricity and water would be turned off a few times a week without notice. Nobody knew why, or who was responsible, or how long it would last. Everyone had to keep buckets of water handy to flush the toilets when the government decided to turn off the utilities. “Why are they doing this?” I asked in some exasperation as we all came to class unshaven and unwashed on a waterless morning. “Is there really a water shortage and a power outage every other day?” Not at all, they told me. The government arbitrarily cuts off power and water to remind people who is in control. “They” are in control, and we were not to question “their” decisions. We lived in continual dependence on the government, which were in fact the old communist bosses: their titles had changed since the fall of the Soviet Union, I was told, but the same old people run the government.

I am reminded of post-Soviet Ukraine when, in San Francisco, without notice or explanation, a barricade closes a road or bikeway. One area is closed without explanation several times a week, and we cyclists have to get off the bike and walk around the barricades. I am reminded of the Soviet Union when it takes five years to repave Van Ness Avenue in downtown San Francisco, utterly dismissive of the traffic jams it causes. I am reminded of East Berlin when a bikeway that was paved three years ago, as smooth as glass, is “repaved” with such pockmarking and pitting as to be barely ridable. A few people are making a lot of money on these “construction” projects, a friend told me who recently left San Francisco’s Water Department. “The City’s Public Works Department,” he told me, “is utterly corrupt, but also untouchable, because of the vast amounts of money at stake.”

But power is more valuable than money. The powerful people in our wealthy cities do not want wealth as much as they want control.  A year ago I wrote a letter to the Public Works Department asking why a perfectly good and smooth road through the Presidio was resurfaced so badly that the paver had to have been either drunk or high. A polite letter explained that Public Works does not oversee the Presidio: “Please express your concern to the Presidio Trust.” I expressed my concern to the Presidio Trust, who politely informed me that they were “looking into it.” Since then many more streets and bikeways in both Presidio and City have been “resurfaced” so badly that cyclists ride on them at their own risk. The game here is not money so much as power. Anonymous and arbitrary mandates continuously remind us who is in control.

The middle class is leaving our wealthy coastal cities. The poor, who are used to being told what to do by their betters, stay in the city, although they lament the crime, traffic, and poor services as much as anyone. The wealthy have their own luxury living arrangements, and they enjoy the conceit of being in control. Democracy is disappearing in San Francisco. And the feeling is that there is nothing we can do about it.

San Francisco will always be a beautiful city in which to live and ride. Even though it feels like the walls are closing in on us at times, little people like you and me will always find a way to survive, and a place to ride our bikes. 

​Last week I went back to my hometown in Pennsylvania to spend some time with my 96-year-old father, and to lay flowers at my mother’s grave. It’s most clarifying to spend time with a very old person. As Dad himself said a few years ago, “at my age, it’s getting harder and harder to deny reality.” Dad is preparing for join my mother in death, although it would surprise no one if he were to surpass 100 years. As he looks back on his life and forward to the life of the world to come, Dad enlightens all who have the patience to converse with him.
 
“Your mother,” he told me slowly, almost in a whisper, “came to New York as a fashion model, but she ended up marrying a professor and having six children.” They met on a subway platform: among all the rushing Manhattanites, Mom asked Dad for directions because he held a few books under his arm (he was on his way to Columbia University for class). Dad was enchanted by the damsel in distress and got her on the right train for the modeling studio, but not before he got her phone number. Six children later, Mom was in no shape to resume her modelling career, but she was a happy woman.
 
Dad left New York in 1944 for basic training in Fort Riley, Kansas, and from there through San Francisco to Manila. I often ride my bike past the “embarkation building” at Fort Mason where Dad spent a night before steaming under the Golden Gate Bridge for the Pacific Theatre. “We spent three months in troop ships, going very slowly in convoy on watch for Japanese submarines,” he whispered. “I slept under a row of depth charges.” A depth charge is a 60-gallon drum packed with TNT to sink attacking submarines, but one wonders how peacefully a soldier sleeps under a few thousand pounds of high explosives.
 
Both Mom and Dad, like most of their generation, reacted to the twists and turns of their lives with aplomb. Mom gave up her modeling career when motherhood called, and Dad offered his very life for the liberation of Manila when the US Army called.
 
Last Thursday we commemorated Our Lord’s Ascension, and in seven days we will commemorate Pentecost. The nine days between Ascension and Pentecost is the Church’s greatest novena, commanded by the Lord himself to his apostles: “stay in the city and pray for the Father’s promised gift.” We pray for this fundamental grace, to receive the Holy Spirit day by day, and so receive the mysterious twists and turns of God’s will with aplomb. The Lord Jesus did not ascend into heaven to abandon us, but to take us with him. Where the Head has gone, the Members must follow, because we are One Body in Christ. Our souls are already with Him, in heaven, and yet we are to “stay in the city,” to live our lives on earth in expectation of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Ascension triggers Pentecost, for only if Christ returns to his Father can we “be clothed with power from on high” at Pentecost. We received the Holy Spirit in baptism, and we receive the Holy Spirit at every Holy Communion.
 
Dad returned from the War in one piece and got his doctorate at Columbia University. The “Frankfurt School” of Marxists from Germany had already taken over the School of Education at Columbia, fascinating my father with Marxism’s doctrines. For many years he was an angry communist, but for the last ten years he has been mellowing. Marxism is ideology, not reality, because we can’t trust ourselves to create a perfect world, or even a just world. Marxism applies justice without mercy, and so it fails every time. “Trust no love that is not truthful,” the philosopher Edith Stein wrote, “but trust no truth that is not given with love.” My father is preparing for death, which is a truth no man can deny. He is learning, and teaching us, to hope for love beyond the grave, a Person that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. “I go to prepare a place for you,” the Lord told his disciples at the end of his earthly life. And I will send you another Advocate, who will lead you to the place I have prepared for you. Come, O Holy Spirit!

Today, 57 years ago, my mother took her six children out of school and up a small mountain named “Twin Lights,” a castle with two lighthouse towers far above the Navesink River in New Jersey. It was Ascension Thursday, and Mom would take us out of school every year to celebrate the Lord’s return to heaven. We would ascend some small height and have a picnic.

Last night I flew East to celebrate Ascension Thursday with my mother, but this time I will visit her grave rather than ascend South Mountain with her. Later today, however, I’ll go with my brother up South Mountain and look up into the sky, toward Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I hope and pray that my mother is in the fullness of heaven now, and I hope and pray we will all ascend to God after we die. After visiting Mom’s grave, we will visit Dad, who recently turned 96, and wish him a happy Ascension Thursday.

Our Lord has returned to heaven, not to abandon us but to prepare a place for us in the skies. The brave shepherd goes ahead of us, opening a way for all who wish to follow him into heaven. At the end of our lives, Christ will say to us “Come. Come follow me.” We will follow him at that moment only if we have made an honest attempt to follow him throughout our lives on earth.

Just a week ago the Archbishop of San Francisco made the difficult decision, after nine years of deliberation, to notify his parishioner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, that she should not receive Holy Communion until she repudiates the legalized killing of unborn human beings. He did this, following canon law 915 (“those who persist in manifest grave sin should not be admitted to Holy Communion”) in hopes that she will look up, towards the life of the world to come. Mrs. Pelosi insists that she is a devout Catholic, placing herself under the pastoral care of the Archbishop of San Francisco. By invoking canon 915, Archbishop Cordileone has made an attempt to save her soul before it is too late. Another reason for invoking canon 915 is to protect the integrity of the Holy Eucharist. We are all sinners, of course, but for one who manifestly [publicly and politically] promotes this grave injustice, receiving the Body of the Lord is a terrible scandal. It confuses those who are trying to believe that what appears to be just a piece of bread is really the Body of Christ; it diminishes faith in the Eucharist and diminishes faith in God’s presence in all human beings, especially very tiny ones that you can’t see without a sonogram machine.
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We will all die, and it takes a good deal of courage to face death with serene joy. Is there really anything beyond the grave? Is there really anyone above the skies? No one believes in God alone, because God is essentially a community of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know God through other people, through his goodness and beauty shining through them. We have to help each other believe in God, and that is why my mother would take us out of school every Ascension Thursday for a family picnic. Take some time today to be with and pray for those you love, helping them to look toward heaven.