Welcome to the month of May, and the day of St. Joseph. In 1955, Pius XII moved the Feast of “St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church” from the 3rd Sunday after Easter to May 1st and renamed it In Festo Sancti Ioseph, Opificis. Translated, that means “in the feast of St. Joseph, Workman.” Now, “opifcis” is a curious word for “worker” or “workman” (in the genitive Opificis, and in the nominative, Opifex). Pius XII didn’t choose the usual word for “worker” to describe St. Joseph, such as operator or operarius or laborator. He chose to describe St. Joseph as an opifex, which literally means maker of “sustenance” or producer of “wealth” (Opes = “wealth, goods, fruits” and facio = “to make, to produce). St. Joseph, under this title, makes wealth; he wins bread.
 
In the early 1950s, Marxist Communism was the cool thing. European and American intellectual elites lionized Stalin’s Soviet Socialist Republic and the satellite forms of communism in Eastern Europe, as well as Mao’s China. My dear father, educated at Columbia University in the 1950s, hung a five-foot red photograph of Mao behind his desk at the university (this was before the gulags, body counts, and economic devastation from Soviet and Maoist Communism became evident). Italy, where Pius XII lived, and much of Europe, were in real danger of becoming communist countries as workers across the continent struggled to feed their families in the ruins of two World Wars. But Europe was still deeply Catholic, so when the Pope put St. Joseph’s feast on Mayday and called him an “opi-fex,” Europe turned back from the promises of a Marxist paradise to the promises of Christ. Soviet communism’s captivating power simply faded away in Catholic Europe as workers turned to him rather than to Marx for answers and inspiration.
 
Karl Marx didn’t believe in a power higher than “the market,” which is composed of capital and labor, or, so to speak, of opes and facio. The human person for Marx was no more than a cog in a big labor machine that produced the “wealth of the nations.” For Karl, the worker had no dignity greater than what he make with his hands, so Marx put labor on a pedestal, exalting the “proletariat” and even calling for its “dictatorship.” As things turned out in Russia and China, the people got their dictatorship, but it was of the Communist Party elites, not of the proletariat.  
 
Marx wrote Das Kapital in a very comfortable place, the reading room of the British Library in London. He thought about, and talked about, labor, but he did very little with his hands beyond holding a pen. By contrast, we have not one written or spoken word of Joseph of Nazareth. He did, rather than talked. He worked with his hands, rather than simply thinking about working with his hands. He worked, not only for himself, but for two others, his little family of Jesus and Mary. But even more than working to produce bread for the table, he worked for the glory of God. He was a believer in a power greater than himself, and greater even than global economics.
 
Today I offered the early Mass in a Carmelite chapel of contemplative nuns. Monks and nuns are the kind of folks communists love to hate because the don’t “produce” anything. They are the consummate “leeches of society,” adding nothing to the economy but only taking. In this convent chapel, the priest faces the sisters but can see beyond them, through the large windows overlooking the City of Oakland and the Bay of San Francisco far below. As the sisters softly and sweetly chanted the Gloria, I could see a whole world of frenetic work behind them: big trucks rushing by on I-80, long freight trains rumbling along the Union Pacific Railway, cargo and passenger planes on their final approaches to Oakland and San Francisco airports, massive container ships steaming into port or heading out for Pacific markets, thousands of cars with workers in them rushing on their morning commute. This was Das Kapital in all its glory, the global economy at work in one of the world’s great centers of commerce.
 
Impressive, and yet, without those little nuns singing sweetly to the glory of God high above them, all this activity would be without final meaning. As Mother Teresa would say, “the moment we offer something to God, it becomes infinite.” The sisters were offering all the work of the San Francisco Bay Area, and in fact the entire global economy, to God. Without these quiet sisters, the world is just a rat race. By offering human activity to God, however, the sisters mystically render all that we do capable of eternal significance. Every day at work, if offered to God, brings us a day closer to eternal perfection. St. Joseph, so beloved and depended upon by the Carmelite Order, is truly an “opi-fex,” a maker of wealth, and not only temporal goods but the wealth that endures to eternal life.

​​Five cartons of my first book, a 250-year history of Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco, from 1776-2026, arrived last week. It’s got lots of pictures! Thirty-six photos, most of them archival and some from our own time, grace the book’s 120 pages. One of the most beautiful pictures is of John Paul II with Archbishop John Quinn at the Golden Gate Bridge in 1987, which I found in an old parish brochure. It took some weeks to locate the original in the Vatican’s archives, but the nice fellow in Rome was glad to locate it for me and sell the right to print it for 100 euros, which I consider a deal (see the photo below). I’ve got 300 copies of the book; if you are local you can purchase it for $25 at the parish office or after Sunday Mass the next two weeks. I’m also doing two book signings this coming Friday (at 1:30pm and at 7pm in the school auditorium). If you are further afield, you can get the book online at https://itascabooks.com/products/star-of-the-west-a-history-of-star-of-the-sea-parish-san-francisco?_pos=1&_sid=11f1b9e3b&_ss=r%2C. (the online purchase will cost you $30 to cover the online company’s fees, plus $4.50 for shipping).
​


 
To give you the flavor of the book, here is part of the Introduction:
 
Spanning twenty centuries, the Catholic Church is the longest continuously existing institution in human history.  It is often perceived as a vast and impenetrable bureaucracy spread to every corner of the globe, governed by 2,000 years of laws and customs.  In truth, however, its structure is remarkably simple.  No Catholic anywhere in the world is more than three degrees removed from the Pope.  The entire hierarchy rests on three levels of authority:  the parish priest, the diocesan bishop, and the Roman Pontiff.  Have a question about the faith?  Start with your parish priest.  Not satisfied?  Go to your bishop.  Still not happy?  Your third appeal is to the Pope himself.
 
But it’s not easy to get an audience with the Holy Father, or even with the diocesan bishop, which is why parishes and parish priests matter.  Second only to the ecclesia domestica, the “domestic Church” of the Christian family, the parish is the basic cell of the Catholic Church.  While all Catholics should receive the Word at home, from our parents, only the parish can provide the Sacraments.  In a sense, then, it is in your local parish that your hope of eternal life resides:  in its baptismal font, its confessional, and its tabernacle.  Your home parish is more important for you than the chancery offices and even the Vatican itself.  Within the domestic Church, the most vital seeds of hope for eternal life are planted, but it is in the parish that these seeds are nourished.
 
What follows is the history of a Catholic parish, Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco, one of the 17,000 parishes in our country and 225,000 parishes across the planet.  Each parish, like each family, has its own history.  Our story begins with a Spanish Franciscan (Junipero Serra, California’s first saint), continues with a Spanish Dominican (Joseph Alemany, San Francisco’s first bishop), and becomes properly parochial with San Francisco’s first priest (John Coyle, Star of the Sea’s first pastor).  One way to write history is to focus on its leading men and women, but their lives are themselves largely determined by the circumstances given them by the Almighty.  The major characters in our story follow larger movements:  the discovery of America in 1492, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, a major earthquake in 1906, and the waves of human migration precipitated by those events.  This parish’s history is the story of men and women providing the things of God to these migrants, doing what the Catholic Church has always done:  following people wherever they go, setting up missions and churches to provide Word and Sacrament.
 
The story of this parish is, in some ways, the story of every parish, and indeed that of the Catholic Church.  The Greek word catolicos means not “universal,” as it is commonly translated, but more precisely “of the whole.”  Each part of this church fundamentally manifests the whole Church.  Your domestic church, your parish, your diocese, and the Holy See all reflect each other, and much understanding of the whole is to be gained in understanding the parts.
 
Here is the story of one local part, one parish, which portrays, in charming hues, something of the whole.  I’ve entitled this book "Star of the West" because at the time of its 1888 foundation, Star of the Sea was the parish farthest west on the American continent—a shining bit of Christ’s light in the blowing sands and chilling fogbanks west of Gold Rush-era San Francisco.  In 1888, nothing but lonely dunes stood between forty-nine Irish families and the Pacific Ocean.  These families chose the expansive title “Star of the Sea” to describe both their location and their aspirations.  Since then, these coastal wilds have been largely paved over and civilized, crowded with apartment buildings and coffee shops.  Spiritually, though, the territory remains as perilous as ever.  May Our Lady, Stella Maris, guide our paths through lonely lands and rough seas to our safe haven, Christ Our Lord.

My father was not a scifi enthusiast, but in 1977, when NBC announced that it would air Stanely Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odessey, Dad announced that we would all watch it. I remember the film as somewhat humorless and abstract, not enough action for a fifteen-year-old male. It was my first science fiction movie, showing the possibilities and dangers of technology, as well as piquing my imagination about extraterrestrials. Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters was my next space movie, and my third movie on this topic was last week’s Project Hail Mary.
 
It struck me as a funny, lighthearted version of 2001, adapted for all ages, sure to draw laughs and tears from just about everyone. Unlike 2001, and more than Close Encounters, however, Project Hail Mary is eminently marketable: it checks all the boxes, and it has something for everybody. After a rousing round of pickleball a few weeks ago, a dear and very Catholic friend told me she had seen the movie with some girlfriends and loved it. “Is it about Our Lady?” I asked her. No. “Is it about Notre Dame football?” No. “It’s a funny doomsday space movie,” she told me, “but I won’t tell you anything more. No sex, no violence, no blasphemy, no vulgarity. You should see it.” So last week, a bunch of us priest buddies were on break and this movie came up. Bishop Barron had given Project Hail Mary a positive review, and what better choice for a bunch of priests than a movie named after the Mother of God?
 
If is a fun and funny movie, and somewhat thought provoking, and I too recommend it, but with this caveat: it is a commercial product more than an inspired work of art. Most movies are these days. It is as if AI wrote the script to include every possible identity group, assuring the widest possible viewership. I’ve no doubt the entertainment industry relies on finely-tuned algorithms to determine maximum ticket sales. Movie scripts must check every possible box for every possible sensitivity, and this somewhat flattens the landscape.
 
What boxes am I talking about? Well, Google’s Gemini will tell us how religion is experiencing something of a worldwide revival (numbers of new Catholics are doubling every year in many dioceses, and most people are allowed again to mention the word “God” in public). So the biggest box that this movie checks is the “religion” box. The Catholic faith, in particular, is obviously reflected in the movie’s title, but also the hero’s name (“Grace”) and his decision to sacrifice himself to save the world makes Christians feel good. The character of Eva Stratt, a European scientist, even functions as the New Eve, Mother Mary, in interceding with a reluctant Dr. Grace to sacrifice himself for the people. She it is who says flat out that she believes in God because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.  
 
But lots of other boxes get checked, boxes that don’t normally bed down with religion, although these other identify groups are satisfied in such subtle ways as not to upset religious customers. The Transgender Box is deftly checked when Grace asks Rocky about his “partner” with the nonbinary pronoun “their” (which is grammatically incorrect in English but grammatically required in transgenderese). The Climate Box is checked with the impending annihilation of life on earth, but the anti-Climate Box is checked with this annihilation coming not through global warming but through global cooling. The Black and Asian and White boxes are checked, of course, with the regulation Black, Asian, and European characters, and the globalist box is checked because a Dutch/German woman European Space Agency scientist coordinates a multinational effort to save the planet. The technology box and the transhuman boxes both get checked with the ship’s android AI computer that attempts to shave Dr. Grace’s beard and do other little nice things for him (Grace responds to this computer/robot with a pet name, but I can’t remember what he calls “her!”). I may be overstating the political aspects of this film, seeing market-driven motivations where there are none; I grant that I may be a bit paranoid when it comes to any commercial product in our highly politicized culture.
 
Almost everyone will leave the movie theatre feeling good and not feeling too bad about anything. Each customer is mostly satisfied, and what might disturb us is put in such subtle tones that only the targeted identity group will pick up its own particular signals. In that sense, the movie is a masterpiece, and it’s also fun to watch. I’m not sure that it’s as visionary and inspiring, however, as artistic works not so tightly governed by the market.

Yesterday, with “Quasimodo Sunday,” the Easter Octave came to its conclusion. Most of us picture a hideous hunchback haunting the belltowers of Notre Dame in Paris when we hear the word “Quasimodo,” from Victor Hugo’s 1831 Romantic novel. But the poor foundling, raised by the canons of Notre Dame, received that name because he was born on Quasimodo Sunday, which takes its name from its opening verse: in Latin, Quasi modo geniti infantes…. (“In the way newborn children thirst for pure milk…,” so we must thirst for the Living God.
 
It's a beautiful verse, but we sang an even better verse every day of the Easter Octave: Haec dies quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in ea, Alleluia. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us exalt and rejoice in it, Alleluia.” Every day is God’s gift, His creation, but none more than Easter Day, when He recreated the entire universe, giving life and health to what was dying.
 
I now suffer a chronic disability, and over the last two years wake up every morning in some bit of pain, struggling to function well, not knowing how difficult the day will be. It’s the first time in my life that I have borne a persistent infirmity, although many others have lived with such debilities all their lives. I had a good run of near-perfect health for 62 years, and a chronic sickness does take a bit of getting used to. Some days, it’s hard to believe that God made the day in which I am living, with all its frustrations. Some days, it's rather hard to trust that weakness has its purpose in God’s all-wise plan. The annual Easter  Octave certainly helps one to rejoice and be thankful in ea, “in it," and to believe that God knows what He is doing. Today is the day that God has made, for me and for all of us, and it is very good, in all its joys and sorrows.
 
These eight days of Easter have been given us to believe again, over an entire week, in the goodness of this day, the day we are in right now. For thirty years, a couple of us priests have spent at least a few days of the Octave in community. We catch up on sleep and food after the deprivations of Holy Week, and we swap stories about how the Triduum liturgies went in our parishes. We stay at a beach house kindly lent us by friends, a dwelling by the sea, where we chortle over the unexpected events of the Paschal Triduum: how one of the men who sat to have his foot washed on Holy Thursday refused to take off his shoes; how the deacon dropped the Cross during its veneration on Good Friday; how one of the women shrieked as the waters of baptism (too cold!) soaked her at the Easter Vigil. At our beach house, we sing Easter Lauds and Vespers, we offer Mass each morning together, we pray the rosary on long walks along the shore, we ride bikes through leafy avenues and venture forth upon the deep in kayaks, we prepare meals and spend hours at table together, and we laugh a lot.
 
On the second day of our Easter Break, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I watched a movie in a theatre with my brothers. It was called Project Hail Mary, and I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

I gave up listening to music for Lent, but to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, I switched on WQXR during my morning stretches today. One of my favorite hosts, Jeff Spurgeon, announced “Tolkien Reading Day,” established in 2003 by the Tolkien Society to promote readings from Middle Earth. Why March 25th? Mr. Spurgeon explained that it was on March 25th that Frodo cast the Ring of Power into fiery chasms on Mordor’s Mount Doom, undoing its dark powers and thus freeing both Frodo and all of Middle Earth from Sauron’s tyranny. Mr. Spurgeon might not know that today is also the Solemnity of the Annunciation, but it is certain that J.R.R Tolkien knew it. As a devout Catholic, Tolkien knew that March 25th is the day eternity stepped into time and the infinite God became a little baby—a very little baby indeed! March 25th is the day God’s Word became Flesh, thus undoing the Will to Power through the Power of Love. On becoming a human baby, our Divine Messiah and King freed all the earth from the tyranny of Satan. Today the most high God, through his emissary Gabriel, asked the maiden’s hand in marriage, and today the highest honor of our race assented without reserve to God’s holy will. Thus were God and Earth finally reconciled.
 
Mr. Spurgeon perhaps does not know the significance of Tolkien’s placing the salvation of Middle Earth on the same day that Catholics celebrate the salvation of all the earth. Tolkien, unlike his dear friend Lewis, did not write Christian allegories, which draw a one-to-one correspondence between literary figures and biblical figures. In Lewis’ Narnia series, the lion Aslan is obviously a figure of Christ, but Tolkien’s Rings trilogy is much more subtle. Gandalf has some Christlike attributes (his ageless wisdom, his death from the evil Balrog, and his resurrection as Gandalf the White), but so does Aragorn (his rightful kingship, his mighty defense of the people from the orcs, his healing powers), so does Frodo (his self-sacrifice for all of Middle Earth), and so does Sam (his readiness to die for his friend).
 
Tolkien’s mythology is multivalent and textured while Lewis’ obviously Christian literature is more black and white. Both forms of literature wonderfully achieve the purpose for which they were written, but while Lewis’ Narnia series thrills Christian readers, Tolkien’s trilogy portrays more true-to-life nuances, appealing to a wider audience. Tolkien’s literature, as well as Peter Jackson’s cinematography and Howard Shore’s orchestral score, have conveyed a Christian perspective to millions who would never think to open a bible.
 
Case in point: Jeff Spurgeon, the much-loved WQXR host who must eschew any hint of religion on his morning show, read a line from The Lord of the Rings this morning in which Tolkien quietly teaches us to accept God’s will in all things. Departing from his usual lighthearted wit, today Mr. Spurgeon paused to quote Tolkien in a hushed and reverent tone:
 
“I wish the ring had never come to me,” Frodo said. “I wish none of this had happened.”


“So do all who live to see such times,” Gandalf replied. “But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
 
Thank you, Mr. Spurgeon, for daring to utter such true and beautiful words on the air. I can’t think of a better way for WQXR to celebrate “Tolkien Reading Day,” and for secular New Yorkers to celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation. 

 
This morning I listened to Bishop Robert Barron’s homily on the Gospel for what is traditionally known as Passion Sunday. Today’s Gospel is the third of five long Sunday readings, increasing each week until Palm Sunday, on which we will hear the entire Passion recited or chanted in parts. Finally, at the Easter Vigil in two weeks, we will hear nine long readings in the darkened  church, a true night watch of prayerful Scripture.
 
Bishop Barron is one year older than me, although his hair is not yet white like mine. I have known of him, and met him several times, since we were both in our late thirties, and now he is 65. His inspired homily https://www.wordonfire.org/videos/sermons/jesus-wept-2/ on the death of Lazarus manifests the deep beauty of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s also great to be old.
 
Bishop Barron understands the human condition—its limitations and its possibilities—in a way he could not have understood thirty years ago. He understands the tragedy and the glory of being human as an “old man” who has suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” for sixty years. I say he is an “old” man as I say I am an “old man,” which makes my parishioners laugh, because both of us are mostly still in command of robust physical and mental vigor. In fact, however, Bishop Barron and I are priests, a word from the Greek “presbyter” which means “old man.” In this sense, we were already old when we were ordained in our twenties. But sixty-five used to be “old,” and still is old, even for those in tip top physical health, because from 65 years one can peer directly into the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s. From the mid-sixties we get used to peering into our own death, which is now not so far away. And that is a bracingly beautiful perspective, given only to the “old.”
 
In the Scripture this Sunday, Lazarus dies, and Jesus lets him die. He lets Lazarus rot in the grave for four days, which as Bishop Barron points out was the Jewish legal definition of truly “dead.” Both the dead man’s sisters, Martha and Mary, accuse Jesus of letting their brother die in precisely the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Where were you when we needed you? I thought we were friends, but you didn’t even bother to come as our brother lay dying! The two women are confounded, in deep anguish over what feels like the betrayal of God. Why do you let these things happen when you can prevent them?
 
As I type these words into my old computer in the predawn dark, I hear one of San Francisco’s many mentally disturbed people outside my window, shouting into the night, a furious string of “F*#@ you’s.” A friend in New York City tells me he hears the same cries of rage outside his window, and from the sidewalks as he strolls down Park Avenue. Why does God allow the modern world to fall into hateful darkness?
 
Martha and Mary are both weeping, and God weeps with them. “And Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the Bible. It says everything we need to know about God in three words. He came from heaven, where there is no crying out in pain or weeping, and He cries out from the Cross: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” But Christ does something more: he says to Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” And He says to Lazarus, “Come out.” And He says to the mourners who see the dead man come out, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
 
Why God lets us suffer is certainly confounding. No one can say why the all-good God does not render justice and bring healing to his suffering children when we cry out for help. In the end, we must acknowledge that we are not God, and we don’t tell God what to do. It is He who tells his friend what to do: “Lazarus, come forth!” I suppose Lazarus could have stayed comfortably in his final resting place, but his Lord and Friend’s voice drew him out into the sunlight. It was not time for Lazarus to rest, and by the grace of God, Lazarus obeyed the Lord’s voice.
 
Lazarus would grow old and die again, but not now without the certain hope, confirmed with his unique experience of resurrection, that “those who believe in me, even if they die, will rise again.” When I saw Robert Barron deliver his weekly homily on my computer screen this morning, I saw an old man who believed in the resurrection with a certain hope. His many years of suffering on earth have confirmed this hope, and he is able to bring that hope now to others. That’s the greatness of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s greater to grow old!

On this Second Sunday of Lent, when Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor and we peer into the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb, we should remember that we are not there yet. We are on a journey, up a steep mountain, and we need to “tighten our belts” as food is rationed on this trek. Two years ago, three of us, like Peter, James and John, “went up a high mountain” with Jesus, the highest mountain in Continental America (Mount Whitney). We were running low of food by the 16th day of the John Muir Trail, but we still had enough bread and wine for Mass. Christ was with us (and so were three intrepid Indian hikers, who shared their homemade Indian bread with us along the way), and so we were able to summit on Day 19 and scramble back down for burgers and beer in a Lone Pine restaurant. But it was quite an adventure to run out of food with forty miles of steep trail between us and a Seven Eleven. Each of us lost twenty pounds and gained an appreciation for God’s providence.
 
Eating less food is the most essential Lenten fast, and fundamental to our interior life. We can’t be attentive to God when we are stuffing our mouths with grub, or constantly thinking about which of the city’s restaurants we want to “experience.” As Beth Bubik told 150 women at St. Dominic’s in San Francisco last Saturday, when your brain tells your body it has to eat, your brain must “delay and pray.” You must tell your body: not just now, darling, and let’s say a few prayers. We can eat later! So: back off on the food and drink!
 
But these days we need to fast from something else if we want peace and the love of God. We need to fast from the cursed noise relentlessly vomiting from our devices. We must fast not only from food, but from noise. The other week I was in Paris, waiting in line to enter the great basilica of Sacré-Cœur (which dedicates the City of Lights to the Sacred Heart, along with the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, Notre Dame​). I was in line to enter the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built on the tallest hill in Paris, Montmartre. The sun was going down, casting a roseate glow across the city below us and, in particular, over the vast marble domes above us. Hundreds of birds were calling to each other from the lofty trees that frame this neighborhood, singing that enchanting lullaby birds do just before the sun goes to bed. Most people in my line, however, were not looking at the sun setting over Paris. They were bent, zombielike, over little glowing screens. The young man behind me also had earbuds inserted and was kind of grunting to what I suppose was a kind of music coming through his earphones. He kept bumping into me, somewhat unaware, as both his hearing and his vision were impaired. I was getting angry. So I turned around and looked straight at him. He became aware of me at that point and backed up a little. “You should unplug your ears,” I said to him. To his credit, he unplugged his ears. “What?” he asked me. “I said,” trying to smile, “you should hear the beautiful sounds all around us, especially the birdsong.” Again, to his credit, he returned my smile, cocked his head, and said “yes, that sounds beautiful.”
 
We began talking. He was from Thailand, it was his first time in France, and we talked a little about the church we were about to enter, and the love of God. We parted, at the security checkpoint, with all goodwill, and I lamented my initial anger towards him. Every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and every person is Jesus. God, I prayed, help me to unplug my heart to see You in every person!
 
During my four days in Paris I took all sorts of public transport: city buses, underground metro, surface trains, and lots of sidewalks. 90% of the people in the busses and trains were staring at their phones, many with ears plugged up. And yet, how beautiful they were, even in their zombielike state. How beautiful is the City of Paris, God’s gift to the world! Beauty is all around us, especially in other people, made in His image and likeness. So let us abstain, not only from meat, but from noise. Let us fast, not only from food, but from artificially generated images and sounds. As the Desert Fathers would say, look up, not down!  ​

​On Wednesday I concelebrated the 6pm Mass at Notre Dame de Paris. Her stonework shone with renewed splendor, as did the faces of the three French priests who welcomed me to offer the First Mass of Lent in the planet's most beloved church. It’s been over a year since the world finished putting almost a billion dollars into restoring Notre Dame from the 2019 fire, but the joy of her reopening has not diminished. Notre Dame is the most visited monument in a city bursting with beauty, and the 12 million who wait in line each year proclaim that Our Lady’s beauty far surpasses that of any other, for she is the Mother of God.
 
I had just completed my annual retreat, which this year was in Lourdes with 30 other priests from fifteen nations. The preacher was none other than Fr. Brian Kolodiuchuk, postulator for the canonization of Mother Teresa, of whom no man alive knows more about her life and spirituality. His retreat, entitled “Two lives; One Vocation,” described “The Little Way” (of sanctification) revealed both to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Most of us cannot do great things, but we can all do small things with great love, and so reach heaven by this “little way” of simple trust in God.
 
The parallels between St. Thérèse, who never left her Carmelite cloister before dying at age 24, and Mother Teresa, who established mission houses in every nation on earth (except China) before dying at age 87, are astonishing. Both attained invincible strength by remaining as weak as little children, entrusting everything and operating entirely on God’s grace. The fact is that we are nothing, really, or next to nothing, and God is everything. “Jesus is my all in all” Mother Teresa would say with a big smile, full trustful peace in the face of certain disaster. We are but a handful of dust, or as Jesus said to Catherine of Siena, “I am who is, and you are she who is not.” The joy of these women came from knowing that God loves the little, the poor, and the children with a particular affection. For a Christian, to be happy is to be little, and on ash Wednesday the Church describes this holy simplicity as “dust.”
 
Back in the sacristy at Notre Dame, the priest taught me the words in French used to mark the foreheads of the faithful: Souviens-toi, que tu es poussière, et que le retourneras a la poussière. I repeated the words several times as we headed into a basilica, filled with mostly young people hoping for eternal life and the "ashes” that would help get them there.  As we processed up the main aisle with the organ thundering its plaintive tones, I began mixing up the words. The priest saw my consternation and whispered “Ah bon, you can use the shorter form, Convertissez-vous et croyez à l'Évangile. But I knew the people wanted to hear about “dust,” so I kept repeating at least that one word, poussière. Clutching my little bowl of ashes, I did my best to say the correct formula in French, but sometimes the best I could do was to say something like “tu … poussière … et retourner a … poussière!” It was enough. They wanted the ashes, and they wanted to hear that they are just a handful of dust, but dust held lovingly in the hands of God.
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Millions, perhaps billions, around the world came to churches on Wednesday to hear a priest tell them that there is a God, and that we are not He. The eager and devout faces of France’s young people lining up showed me how we will always feel the need for a Higher Power. We do not have to save the world—that has already been done. We are nothing, but by entrusting ourselves to the God who can make something out of nothing, we become something. 

 Twenty-six years ago, Robert D. Putnam published a book entitled Bowling Alone. We still bowl alone, but now we do almost everything else alone. This morning, on my bike, I passed three Waymo self-driving Jaguars waiting meekly at a red light. In each a lone passenger was sitting beside an empty driver’s seat, staring vacantly out the windshield. How lonely and passive they looked! The Jaguar Waymos that line up for business here in San Francisco have a little ad printed on the white flank of each vehicle: “Ride Today.” What they mean is “Ride Alone Today,” because their ads promise a taxi without a taxi driver, so you can be completely alone if you wish.
 
During my morning ride, I stopped at a favorite park bench to catch my breath and check my texts. As I was staring into my screen, a tall and lanky man with his female consort approached on the dirt path. I glanced up at their approach and called out a robust “good morning!” He returned the greeting and then added, with a big smile, “I hope you have a beautiful day.” His smile warmed my heart and made me think how much we need the human touch. The human heart needs to love and be loved, to notice and to be noticed, by other human hearts. Robots can do lots of cool stuff, but they can't smile at us.

The only thing worse than staring vacantly out a window of a driverless car is staring into a little screen with flickering blue light. Produced by very clever people, the beguiling media on our screens tell us what to think, how to feel, and what to do. Like the driverless cars, our devices are controlled by faceless agents for those who surrendered at least some of their human agency. We would rather sit back and let the cars the do the driving and the screens do the thinking.

Unlike others in the animal kingdom, human persons are endowed with intellect and will. We can think and act for ourselves. As the menagerie of autonomous devices grows, however, we think and act less. But, in the long term, we are generally happier driving than being driven. We were designed to be in the driver's seat, exercising our gifts of intelligence and free will.
 
As with any new invention put up for sale, the old Latin dictum applies: caveat emptor.

​The other day I was sitting quietly in the chapel, looking at some striking poinsettias on either side of the altar. A lovely Filipina grandmother (“Lola”) placed them there, as she does all the church flowers every Friday afternoon. Lola's poinsettias reminded me of my Polish grandmother's poinsettias. My Nana would place enchanting poinsettias about her New Jersey hillside home every December. Their deep green and brilliant red leaves, so wondrously complementary, painted an enchanted forest in my imagination. Growing into adolescence with these poinsettias every Christmas, I began to marvel at how God fills the world with contrasts that manifest His burning glory: fiery red sunsets over cool blue oceans, blazing summer days following frozen winter nights, men from Mars marrying women from Venus, quantum particles describing quantum waves, yin and yang, red and green.
 
The intense red flowers that crown dark green leaves between Christmas and Epiphany, from St. Stephen’s Day to Holy Family Sunday, between the Baptism of the Holy Innocents in blood and the Baptism of Christ in water, manifest splendid opposites working together. The poinsettia’s deep green leaves, almost hidden in the bottom of the plant, remind me of my Nana’s dreamlike home in the woods, including her mysterious little brown refrigerator containing frozen eclairs, and of my own mother, whose quiet love afforded us peaceful security throughout childhood. The poinsettia’s flaming red leaves, on the other hand, convey energy and fire, risk and adventure. They portray my grandfather’s life in the traveling circus (before meeting my grandmother) and of my own father’s two years in the Second World War, his return to New Jersey, and the sprawling house he procured for his family. Dad built us a house, and Mom made it a home.
 
The woman nurtures the family’s interior life, while the man leads his children outside the home, teaching them to engage the wider world. The contrast between the poinsettia's hidden green leaves and its prominent red leaves portray the Christian home with its paired interior and exterior dimensions. The family is meant to be both ad intra and ad extra, both private and public, formed by both the mother and the father. A healthy family forms a balance of both inner-facing and outer-facing dimensions in a child's life. The tragedy of broken families, and their failure to impart both of these dimensions, partly explains the “failure to launch” of so many young people today. This is the problem, and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is the solution. Let the mother be Mary, and the father be Joseph, and families will build a civilization of love.