Speech is silver, but silence is golden. “If you speak,” Mother Teresa told her sisters, “you can make mistakes….” She counseled her spiritual daughters to listen far more than they speak, especially because “God is the friend of silence. We need to find God, but we cannot find him in noise, in excitement. See how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass grow in deep silence. See how the stars, the moon, and the sun move in silence.”
 
Speech is silver, but silence is golden, and here I am speaking again (by way of this blog). I haven’t posted anything for two weeks, and that may be a relief to some. A nice lady told me last week that she likes “getting my emails” (meaning she had, perhaps unwittingly, hit the subscribe button on frilloblog.com), but she is glad my “emails” only come once a week or so.
 
Speech is silver, but silence is golden, so let me say something briefly, if I can, and then retreat into silence. In my morning Scripture reading from Ecclesiasticus 28, I read these silent words:
 
A curse on the scandal-monger ….
That ‘third tongue’ has shaken many,
pulled down fortified cities,
driven virtuous wives out of house and home.
Anyone who listens to it will never know peace of mind.
Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but many more have fallen by the tongue.
 
Almost every bit of what we call “news” is what the Talmud called the “third tongue.” It is a talking head, a wagging tongue that interferes between two quarrelling people, provoking conflict, fear, and hatred. If any two people have any kind of disagreement anywhere in the world, the “media” is there, escalating division, broadcasting it to every iphone and television set. From CNN to Fox to Lifesite News to NPR: where can one find a balanced, disinterested, honest source of information? For several years now I have not watched or read any major news sites. I get all my information from “commentary” sources, that is, writers who wait, who keep a prudent silence, before weighing in. Reserving judgement for a week vastly reduces the tendency to scandal monger. I’ve never been on social media, thanks be to God, but useless curiosity drives almost all of it. Curiosity killed the cat.
 
How is it that so many people are locked down in fear, anger, and confusion since March of 2020? Well, might I suggest that our fear is generally proportionate to the amount of time we spend on “news” and social media? If a lady is wearing two masks alone in her car, I can almost guarantee she watches CNN every night. If a man confesses hatred of our political leaders and despair over our country’s decline, I counsel him to stop watching FOX. The solution is simple: break the addiction. Stop watching "the news.”
 
About a year ago I clicked a link someone had texted me to a CBS newscast about some “horrendous” event. Within 60 seconds a dread fear overcame me, a kind of panic and sadness. They are really good at what they do! What if it really is as bad as this lady is saying? What if her hysteria is justified and this really is "the news I need to know?” I shut it down and went on with my life. And nothing bad happened. For almost two years now I’ve been operating my parish as if there is an all-beneficent Father in heaven who provides for His children. And indeed nothing “horrendous” has happened to any of us at the parish. Quite the opposite, thanks be to God. Since March 2020, among the thousands that attend Mass every week, one older gentleman got Covid and stayed home for a week. No one else in the parish, that I know of, has gotten sick. We opened a small hospital in Nairobi, we opened a classical Academy in San Francisco, and we provided a clean, well-lighted place to pray in community. 
 
The temptation to panic, to talk too much, and to doubt God’s providence is always a problem. As the father of this parish, I have to pray a lot, provide for my children’s needs, and calm their fears. And I have to limit what I say. “Put a door with bolts across your mouth,” the sage Ben Sira writes in Ecclesiasticus 28. “Take care you take no false step though it, in case you fall a prey to him who lies in wait.” There is a God, and there are demons. The demon lies in wait for those who step through doors they should not, for those who talk too much, and for those who listen to things they should ignore. The good news is that God is greater than the demon, and He will rescue everyone who wants to be rescued. To be rescued, however, we must trust Him more than we trust CNN and FOX. We must listen to Him more than we listen to anyone else.

St. John Henry Today is the feast of St. John Henry Newman, England’s most celebrated Anglican homilist before he became Catholic on this day 1845. He put his trust in the Catholic Church, and in the end he was not disappointed. But in the time between his conversion and his death, the human dimension of the Church did disappoint him. The trust he put in many Catholic bishops, priests, and lay leaders was often betrayed. His patient humility and perseverance in grief is why we call him a saint. He learned to put his trust in God, not in men.
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Hypocrites Trust in human institutions is at an all-time low, I would say. How can we trust a Pope who preaches mercy but lashes out at those who ask for clarification on his self-contradictions? People often say the Church is full of hypocrites, and they are right. But hypocrisy is at an all-time high in the rest of the world too. How can we trust a government that routinely lies to us? How can we trust a tech industry that calls for tolerance and openness but censors books and divergent points of view? How can we trust celebrities who talk green but live wasteful lifestyles with carbon footprints several hundred times that of the working class Joe? Flying back from my mother’s funeral last week on United Airlines, I had to listen to incessant posturing about carbon neutrality while flight attendants went through the cabin with big plastic bags ten times to pick up the mountains of trash generated by their triple and quadruple packaging of snacks and drinks. Heavenly Valley Ski Area in Lake Tahoe has big signs about “achieving carbon neutrality” while they run play areas for the wealthy that consume vast amounts of the earth’s natural resources. 

Can anyone trust anyone? You can trust some people. You can trust the people you know, like your family members, your good friends, and your co-workers. But you can’t implicitly trust Big Anything. As a general rule, the bigger it gets, the less accountable it becomes, and the less trustworthy. Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Entertainment, Big Tech, and … Big Church—all must be regarded with a healthy amount of reserve. Trust your local grocery store, and your local parish, and the people you actually know. Smaller is better. Don’t trust those big chains that claim to be “Your Neighborhood Grocery Store” or “Your Neighborhood Grill.” The food is often terrible and the service lackluster. Jesus did not do things big: he had 12 apostles, one of whom betrayed him. In the end, he put his absolute trust only in His Heavenly Father. You can trust God, and you can even trust some people--trust but verify. St. John Henry Newman realized, as do all saints, that in God alone do I place my [absolute] trust.
 

Sister Death Today is the feast of St. Francis, the patron of the city in which I live and the archdiocese in which I work. St. Francis died in 1226, calling out for “Sister Death” to take him back to the Father’s House. On Friday, the Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, who also died young, not fearing death, I buried my mother in Pennsylvania.

“He is not here” I deeply appreciate the many dozens of beautiful cards, texts, emails, and calls expressing condolences. Thank you for offering so many Masses and so many prayers for her! The Mass was exceptionally beautiful, but I have to say that I had been dreading “the viewing.” The family was allotted a half hour before the public around her open casket to … do what? Stare at my mother’s dead body? As it turned out, however, my brother and I went to the funeral home the day before to pick up a DVD, and my brother wanted to see how they had “arranged her.” The funeral director showed us into a room, and there was Mom’s body. But the body was not Mom. My mother wasn’t in that room. Without a soul, a human body is not a human person, and certainly Mom had gone somewhere else. The body was a holy relic of her life, but not in any sense her. In the end, there wasn’t much to see in the funeral parlor. I am sure that she is alive, but no longer here. She has moved on, either to purgatory to prepare for heaven, or to heaven itself. But as the angels told Mary Magdalene on Easter morning at the tomb, “you seek the Lord. He is not here.”  

Seventy years together Dad, at age 95, was able to attend Mom’s Mass, along with all six of us children. He told me the day previously that “I did not think it would be this hard.” I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie classic (which he and Mom have been doing every night for the last six years), and he said “not without her.” He could not imagine life without the woman with whom he shared his life for seventy years. “Mom is gone,” I told him, “but you have her six children with you.” He replied (rather quickly I thought) that “it’s not the same.” Certainly not. All Dad has left now is God, and he prayerfully received Holy Communion from my hand during Mom’s Mass.

​Alone at the grave We buried my mother and then returned to the parish to share blessed memories for a few hours over a meal. As folks drifted away, I went into the church to be alone with God and then, as the sun was going down, drove back to the cemetery. The men had filled it in and packed down the dirt, laying a spray of red roses on her grave. My mother was a Third Order Carmelite, and devoted to St. Therese, who promised to send “a shower of roses from heaven” after she died. God had arranged that Mom be buried on October 1st, the Feast of St. Therese, whom it seemed to me had covered Mom’s grave with a dozen red roses. And yet, she was now under six feet of dirt, alone in that cemetery. A temptation to despair struck me like a flash of lightning. Life is meaningless, I thought. Breathing a few quick prayers, I looked up. In fact, Mom is not here. She has moved on to Life itself, and I’ve got to keep moving too. Our greatest temptation is to idolize, to attach to anything on earth. It’s precisely in the face of death that we need resist the temptation to fixate. We are pilgrims and must keep moving towards God. He has built us for movement, and we must not give in to paralysis. We must keep moving towards heaven. I will offer a public requiem Mass for my mother, with reception following, on November 3 at 6pm, at my parish in San Francisco. You are all welcome.

Today is the patronal feast of my parish, Our Lady, Star of the Sea. I offered the first full Mass for my mother’s soul today at the early morning liturgy, which is fitting because she taught me to how love our heavenly mother.
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My greatest fear—and I confess I was afraid, which is always a lack of faith—was that Mom would die alone. My brother took her to the hospital a few days ago for a chest x-ray and they found pneumonia in her lungs, in addition to her chronic congestive heart failure. The doctor gave her a few days to live, but mercifully did not restrict visitors. So on Friday the whole tribe was able to spend time with Mom in her hospital room: Dad (at age 95) led the charge, followed by my siblings and their wives from near and far. With luminous energy, she sang happy birthday to my brother-in-law and welcomed all with shining eyes.

Still, I was worried that she would gasp her last breath on earth alone in a hospital room. It was during the 9:30 Mass yesterday morning, being celebrated by another priest, that I had a moment to call my brother, who had just texted that he was going in to see Mom. He answered the phone in a quiet voice and said the Mom had just died five minutes ago. He and his wife were reading Psalm 23 to her, and had begun one of Mom’s favorite songs, In the Garden, when she took a deep breath, and exhaled one last time. She expired during the morning Mass, just after the lector was reading her name in the prayers of the faithful. An hour later, I offered the next Mass for her soul and realized that for this she had prepared me for the priesthood.

Yesterday a dear friend, whose mother also died on a Sunday just five weeks before my mother, invited me to her Mom’s house with some close friends “to celebrate the successful completion of our mothers’ earthly course.” At the end of the meal I said grace and prayed the usual prayer for the “souls of the faithful departed.” Like a flash of lightning it struck me that my mother was now one of those souls, now passed beyond the thin veil separating time from eternity. I have shed a few tears, but the same conviction comes to me when I learned of Mother Teresa’s death in 1997: she is closer to me know than she could ever have been on earth. She is closer to God now, filled with an understanding love not possible on our side of the grave. Thanks be to God.

For a society that prides itself on self-expression and personal choice, we got lots of rules.

A few weeks ago I took a stroll on a deserted beach at the Jersey Shore, a charming spit of land arching into the Atlantic called Sandy Hook. After I made it past all the signs about mask-wearing and hand-sanitizing and six-feet, a six-foot sign stood between me and the wide-open beach. It said: NO grilling. NO littering. NO kites. NO Pets. NO tents. NO camping. NO fires. NO glass containers. NO metal detectors. NO bicycles.

Hmmmm. Ten “Thou Shalt Nots.” And then, just for good measure, another sign to my right added NO alcohol (because there are NO lifeguards). Eleven commandments for a deserted beach. On Mount Sinai, God Almighty only gave us ten, three of which were positive moral precepts rather than negative prohibitions. I would say that our Brave New World Without God is a bit more negative even than the Old Testament. Do you think that perhaps, despite its guarantees of "personal freedom," we've allowed the Administrative State a little too much control?

Does the government really think a kid flying a kite on beach, or a man walking his dog, or an elderly couple enjoying a bottle of wine, is a threat to public health and safety? I suppose we should just sit still on the beach with our masks and face shields on, safely distant from everyone else. In fact, if you really care about other people, just don’t breathe!

Behind these schoolmarmish signs, a flock of seabirds enjoyed wind, wave, and sunshine. Government regulations had neglected to prohibit “bird-pooping” on Sandy Hook beach. I think I will contact my elected representative to get that regulated. 

Not long ago I went to Ireland for the First Holy Communion of a friend’s niece. We went on to visit the sacred places of Holy Eire, including Our Lady of Knock, Croagh Patrick, and the monasteries of St. Finnbarr (Gougane Barra), St. Kevin (Glendalough), and St. Kieran (Clonmacnoise). We prayed vespers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, built on the site where he baptized Ireland’s first Christians. In the centuries following those baptisms, hundreds of Irish saints and scholars would bring Christ to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and other countries, strengthening a waning Catholic faith in Europe. In subsequent centuries, Irish missionaries would bring the faith to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. My own parish was established in 1894 by Irish immigrants who ran horse and cattle farms in what was then called “The Extended Area” west of the City of San Francisco. At one point, there were so many Irish bishops and priests in America that the “hierarchy” was known as the “Hibernarchy!” Irish priests built the parishes and Irish sisters built the schools that built our nation. If Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi take pride in their Catholic education, they can thank the Irish monks who brought Christ to  Europe 1500 years ago.

A few miles from the monastery of St. Finnbarr (his feast day is this Saturday!) is the village of Ballingeary. Entering its small parish church, my Irish friend and I saw a red biretta in a glass case with an inscription: “In remembrance of His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Manning, born in Ballingeary November 14, 1909, Ordained 1934, Bishop of Los Angeles 1946.” Cardinal Manning, the son of a blacksmith in a village of 235 souls, built up the largest archdiocese in America, opening a new parish every month and a new school every other month. Business was booming in the 1950s.

Today Ireland has lost much of its faith. Few Irish attend Mass regularly, or teach their children the faith, or even get married to the people with whom they have children. Ireland legalized abortion two years ago and easily submits to the dictates of gnostic ideologies such as gender and racialist theories. The enemies of Christ are blowing big holes in what was once Ireland’s thriving Christian culture, and the Irish are defenseless against the onslaught. In the four parishes in which I concelebrated Mass during my visit, only one had an Irish priest, an elderly and charming man, but helpless against the destruction of his Church. The other priests were from Poland, Nigeria, India, and anywhere the Irish bishops can get them. They are good men, but not missionaries, not fired with energy to build the Church in Ireland. Where are the Irish priests? The parishes of Ireland are mostly empty, museum pieces of a once thriving society, while the hierarchy can manages only the most feeble resistance against the overwhelming firepower of the enemy.

And yet, the Irish people retain their charm, which springs from their natural faith in humanity and, I hope, deep-seated faith in God. I pray that God sends a new St. Patrick to Ireland, another St. Kieran, a modern St. Lawrence O’Toole, to rebuild its faith. What has happened to Ireland is happening to America. We pretend that we are Catholic, but we buy into every gnostic and pagan ideology that comes our way. We do not pull our children from schools that teach them to despise religion and to hate their bodies. A beloved and respected priest in a nearby San Francisco parish told me that “we priests are just here to close up the churches as gently as we can.” But I believe that another St. Patrick will come to us, another St. Francis to rebuild the Church, for God continues to send His prophets. As we await these saints, and as we hope for the rebirth of Christian culture, let us remain faithful to our own parishes, to our own families, and to our personal prayer. In the words of Padre Pio (his feast day is this Thursday!): prega, spera, e non ti preoccupare! Pray, hope, and do not worry. Jesus Christ is Lord, and He will provide.

​Yesterday I approached San Francisco’s dreaded Department of Motor Vehicles to update my license. I pass by the massive bureaucracy, which occupies an entire city block, several times a week and gaze with pity on the lines of slump-shouldered working people snaking around the block. The last time I ventured into DMV, 30 years ago, I spent an entire day in that complex, shuffling from one line to another.
 
With the wonders of the internet, however, I was able to fill out forms and upload documents ahead of my appointment this time. Once inside the building, however, I became disoriented at the scores of windows, staffers, screens, and waiting lines. The security guard came up to me with a smile: “Father, check your number on that screen and wait in that area to be called.” I was touched by his kindness and gladly took a seat.
 
When my number came up I moved to window 27. The clerk said to me “good morning, father,” providing a kindly chat while processing my documents. “God bless you” he called out as I left the window. I returned the blessing.
 
My next stop was “Camera B,” at which an officious woman was trying her level best to move the line quickly. She called out to me when my turn came, “next—step right up to the camera.” She seemed agitated, but as we talked, and I bantered a bit, she softened up. “What church are you at, father?” I told her Star of the Sea at 8th and Geary. “Oh, I’ve been past that church many times, but never stopped in. Are you open? Do you have Masses? I haven’t received Holy Communion since last March.” I assured her we were open with three daily Masses, and looked forward to seeing her sometime. “I’ll be there,” she chirped. “See you soon, father!”
 
All three of these good people are, from the perspective of the state, cogs in the vast machinery of the city. One would not expect any sense of transcendence from one doing such a mundane job. But all three seemed delighted to see a man of the cloth. They seemed reassured that God had not abandoned them, after all, even in the depths of the DMV. These seemed relieved. And their relief relieved me. Beneath the layers of the all-consuming state, God is present and we are human beings, made in His image, not merely cogs in a machine.

The real problem is leaf blowers. I’ve always thought that. The aggravating whine of leaf blowers is the failing candle in the coal mine when the oxygen runs out. Leaf Blowers signal the decadence of western civilization.
 
In a healthier age, on crisp afternoons in October, we would all gather up the fallen leaves with large rakes. With a smile, breathing deeply of the pungent air, we would put our backs into it, bringing a bit of order to gardens upon which cascades of bright foliage had fallen during the day. We would push the leaves into great piles and take running leaps into them, or have leaf fights, inhaling the turning of the season with every sense.
 
Now … we pay landscaping companies to run noisy, smelly, horrid leaf blowers and edge trimmers. We stay inside, staring blankly at flickering screens, posting vacuous messages on “social media.” We have lost touch with the soil, and the autumnal fruits of the earth. A few months later, we would rejoice in the first snowfall. We would bring out big boots and big shovels, hats and gloves, and charge outside. Now we hire poor Mexicans to drive up in their battered pickups to run snowblowers while we “work” safely indoors.

I’m told that one of the Black Lives Matter founders was caught buying multi-million-dollar homes in Malibu and other exclusive locales. Patrisse Khan Cullors is one more story of how a respected religious leader (for certainly BLM is a religion) has been unmasked as a hypocrite As Eric Hoffer observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” The difference between right religion and secular causes is that Christianity at least acknowledges Original Sin. Despite the unholiness and at times criminality of her members, the Church daily confesses her sins and makes efforts to do penance. I suggest that an example of humble penance for our national and personal sins could be raking leaves and shoveling snow by hand. St. Francis never hired a groundskeeper, and Mother Theresa never purchased a leaf blower.
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Leaf blowers disturb us, not only because they vomit noise and toxic smoke into our neighborhoods. They annoy us because they signal decadence. They reveal the laziness and arrogance of a people who cannot work for themselves, who purchase expensive machines at Home Depot or pay immigrants to do their manual tasks so they can fly off to expensive conferences on social justice and global warming. We claim victimhood while purchasing lavish homes in Malibu. If Patrisse Khan Cullors, and the rest of us, want to be a bit happier and a bit more human, we might begin by raking our own leaves, and enjoying the work of our hands.

Have you ever noticed that traffic often stacks up in one lane on a two-lane street? The other day I pulled onto Geary Boulevard for a meeting at the cathedral, which is located two miles down that same street. Ten cars were lined up in the right lane, and one car in the left lane. I pulled into the left lane and went all the way up. I was feeling quite satisfied with myself, pulling out when the light turned green ahead of most of the traffic. I noticed the same phenomenon at almost every intersection on the way to the cathedral. I’ve also noticed, not without some annoyance when in I’m in the passenger seat and in a hurry, that my friends almost always get behind other cars, in the lane with more traffic. Most folks, unconsciously I suppose, want to get behind someone, to congregate where it seems safer, rather than to blaze a trail and stick out in a lane all alone.
 
It’s only human, I guess, to prefer safety to risk. Moving in herds is built into our animal instincts. It’s easier to get in line than to be constantly analyzing situations. And that is what is happening in our global society today. A few “experts” tell us to lock down because the risk of death is so great, and uncritically we lock down. The experts tell us to put on masks even though an elementary analysis would show that the harm done outweighs the benefits for most people. But we all put on masks, even when they don’t tell us to do so. Our shadowy experts tell us that we will die or kill others unless we take a vaccine, and we just do it. We get in line. We don’t think for ourselves.
 
Not thinking for ourselves works in a loving family. Trusting the experts works when you are surrounded by people who love you. But the people making our laws and developing our technology are so far removed from us, and so far removed from an anthropology that respects the human individual, that we have to start thinking for ourselves again.

​On this day in 1941, St. Maximilian Kolbe died in Auschwitz. They tried to starve him to death with nine other men in cell #17 of Block 11, but in the end they had to finish him off with a shot of carbolic acid to his arm. They burned his body and dumped the ashes into a pond, but Maximilian Kolbe speaks to us from beyond the ash pond. Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, wrote in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, “Father Maximilian Kolbe found meaning within the fraction of a second when he decided to sacrifice his life, asking the SS for permission to let himself be sentenced to death instead of a family father.” Jerzy Bielecki, who survived Auschwitz, wrote later that when word got around the camp of what Kolbe had done, “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength.… It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”
 
Fr. Kolbe lived in a time of growing totalitarianism. The German people had voted in the Nazis, and the Russian people had not done enough to resist the Soviets. In 1941 Hitler and Stalin had signed a secret “non-aggression pact” to dominate all of Europe, with aspirations for a global government under their joint control. I have no doubt that the powers of the earth have done the same in our own time, but as both the Nazi and Soviet Socialist regimes collapsed, so will all totalitarian powers, in God’s good time.
 
Was Fr. Kolbe’s usual joy defeated as he saw his homeland invaded by Nazis from the west and Soviets from the east? Did he give into fear or negativity when he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz? It seems that he wasn’t. Fr. Kolbe sent a letter to his mother, dated June 15, 1941, from the extermination camp, the last letter he ever wrote. “My dearest Mother,” he wrote. “Towards the end of the month of May I reached the concentration camp of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) by rail convoy. Everything is going well with me. Beloved Mom, don’t worry about me or about my health, because the good God is everywhere and with immense love he thinks about all of us and about everything. It would be best not to write to me until I send you another letter. I don’t know how long I shall remain here. With Heartfelt greetings and a kiss.” He often said to fellow prisoners that “Our Lady has brought us here for some good purpose.”
 
Kolbe was not pretending to be “fine” to his mother and other prisoners. He knew that “everything is going well” in the death camp, because he knew that “the Good God is everywhere.” That’s the good news that Christians are supposed to believe, because it’s the truth. The fact is, we live under friendly skies. Life is good, and then we die (that is, we go to heaven). We have been created in God’s image, and we are fundamentally good. Jesus Christ is Lord, and He provides. We will always have enough. There is a rational order to the universe, and we have the capacity to choose the good, the true, and the beautiful. These are the true facts of life, but it’s not what you hear on “the news.”
 
If it’s always bad news you hear on mainstream media—"the pandemic is worse than ever,” “the planet is overheating,” “the vaccines are not working,” “the economy is in trouble,” “America is irremediably racist” —you know they are lying. There is, in fact, no reason to be afraid or discouraged or angry. Behind the media’s lies is the Father of Lies who uses fear to destroy people. If we are in a state of perpetual fear and sadness, know for sure that we have come to believe in a lie.
 
If the news you watch is mostly bad, don’t watch it. It’s a lie. Train your intellect on what is true, and good, and beautiful. There’s plenty of that around. Might I suggest reading a biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe, perhaps A Man for Others by Patricia Treece. God has filled the universe with goodness, so please don’t be discouraged.
 
“Finally, brothers,” wrote St. Paul in Philippians 4, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”