Today and tomorrow Holy Mother Church celebrates "Epiphany," a Greek word that means "to shine upon." The Western Church focuses on the star that shone on Bethlehem, manifesting the baby Jesus as Messiah and Lord, the Savior of the Nations. Three "wise men" or "kings" came from East to West to bestow treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh upon this Holy Family, prostrating themselves in service to the King of Kings. 

The Eastern Church has long celebrated Epiphany as the Baptism of the Lord, when the 30-year-old Jesus was manifested as God and King at the River Jordan before thousands of people. The Church also threw in the mystery of Cana on this day, the first public manifestation of Christ's great miracles. "And the disciples began to believe in Him," writes St. John after the miracle of 150 gallons of water made wine at Cana. 

A venerable tradition of the Church today, on the Eve of Epiphany, is to bless the waters. Today I will bless several hundred gallons of water, brought by hundreds of the faithful, in the annual blessing of Epiphany Water. If you are nearby, bring a gallon or two of your own to Star of the Sea Church at 6pm tonight. This water will refresh and sanctify your family throughout the year. 

On the cover of this month’s Magnificat magazine rides the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Mary and Jesus ride on the back of a donkey, whom, as the magazine’s editor points out, is … us! “This brave, sympathetic, yet sometimes stubborn and ill-tempered donkey,” writes Pierre Marie Dumont, “represents us Christians.” The donkey is not too clever but smart enough, and his great virtue is pushing on from start to finish. His great vocation is to carry the King of Kings.
 
We do indeed carry Christ, especially after having received Holy Communion. “Mother Teresa,” Jesus asked the young nun, “will you carry me into the dark holes of the poor? They don’t know me, and so they don’t want me.” And that is why Teresa of Calcutta founded the “Missionaries of Charity:” to bring Charity Himself where no one else was bringing Him. Mother Teresa often said the Mary was the first Missionary of Charity because she first brought the newly-conceived Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth. Mary was the first Eucharistic monstrance in history in history’s first Corpus Christi procession. But who carried Our Lady, who carried Jesus? A donkey.
 
And that donkey is you. And me. And Pierre-Marie.
 
What a joy to be a donkey! What a joy to be “brave and sympathetic” and, even when we are stubborn and ill-tempered, to be still useful for God’s purposes. The devil tries to convince us that, when we are ill-tempered and not too clever, the game is up. Old hairy legs tells us that we are hopelessly inadequate to carry Jesus. And some donkeys give up when that old lizard whispers into their ears.
 
But most donkeys do not give up. They are stubborn, and they are faithful. They plod on, bearing their burdens with a grim and deeply joyful smile. God needs me! I am useful after all! Who was the most unlikely hero in the Chronicles of Narnia (with Reepicheep the Mouse as runner-up)? None other than Puzzle the Donkey. Who was the most endearing character in the Shrek movie? It was the donkey, ably voiced by Eddie Murphy.

Be that donkey for the Holy Family!

My good Irish friend Donncha was convinced that if every Catholic in San Francisco put a nativity scene in their front window this December, the City would change. The problem with our cities, he rightly observed, is that we rush back and forth from work to play, from expensive restaurants to expensive entertainment, and we don’t stop to look at Jesus. We have forgotten the fundamental truth of human existence: that God became human so that humans could become like God. We have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas, even though everyone longs for the spirit of Christmas. Macy’s on Union Square, for example, has a brightly lit wreath filling every window on every one of their eight floors, and Union Square itself has a 50 foot Christmas tree dominating the sky. Despite all this “Christmas spirit,” few remember the genesis of our celebration. So, Donncha said, we have to remind each other. And there’s nothing like a Nativity scene to reawaken our memory for the beautiful.
 
I’m writing these lines on Christmas Eve from my office above Geary Boulevard, where Donncha and his Irish carpenters have built a life size Nativity scene on the steps of our church. From my desk I can hear the excited screams of children as they look at the five-foot, three-D figures of Wise Men, Shepherds, Joseph, Mary, and the Bambino Gesù. From my window, I can see people stopping to look, to take pictures, to make the sign of the cross as they balance shopping bags. Whole families spend 20 minutes in front of the scene, as if looking into a mirror. Their children dance about, and the parents stop to talk to each other, as if at a festival. They’ve never seen anything like this, although they’ve heard about it. They dimly remember someone telling them about a poor little family in Bethlehem, and a baby born in a stable with a cow and a donkey keeping the newborn child warm in the dead of winter.
 
The people of San Francisco immediately respond to that family. They feel at home in this Nativity scene. Marriage, family, and home have been denied to most of them. They’ve been told in school that marriage is bondage and only for those with weak minds. Most have been taught that there is no such thing as a “natural family” because life is only about power. “What’s Love Got To Do With It” they’ve heard on iTunes. There is no “home” beyond the little world you make up in your head (with the help of your headphones). Two generations of Americans have been deprived of family life, and when they see a family, they are fascinated, captivated, and consoled. Dare I believe that I too have a place in this family, or even that I can have a family of my own some day?
 
Donncha was right. If every Catholic put a Nativity scene on their lawn or in their window, this country would change. I can see the joy, the hope, and the excitement of average San Franciscans stopping to look his Nativity scene on my front steps. One man, excitedly taking pictures, asked if he could go in the church. He was Eritrean Orthodox and not sure if a Catholic Church would allow him in. I welcomed him in, of course, and he said that all his churches in Eritrea had these Nativity scenes in December. “This scene makes me feel at home,” he said. I said it made me feel at home too.

 Yesterday I offered the Mass of the Immaculate Conception but forgot to mention the saint who is usually celebrated on December 9: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. This vastly humble Mexica was running to Mass on that day in 1531 when he heard rare and exquisite birdsong. He saw gemlike hues lighting up the cactus and mesquite along his rocky path, and he met a lady clothed with the sky. She smiled at him: “Juanito, Juan Diegito, el mas pequeno de mis hijos…” He had found her, and she had found him. It was a dark time for the Mexica lake people of what was then known as Tenochtitlán (now “Mexico City”). The Spaniards had destroyed their gods, and now the Mexica people had no father in heaven or mother in the sky to comfort them. Everyone calls for their mother in times of darkness. On that dark day in December 1531, a woman clothed with the sun and the stars heard the calls of both her Mexica and Spanish children. She came running to them on that day.
 
Yesterday, on St. Juan Diego’s Day, I found my credit card after 7 days of searching. I looked in every pocket, every drawer, and every vehicle (car, scooter, bike) for that little piece of plastic. I tried not to obsess over the loss, but I spent hours and hours searching and thinking where it might be. How much of life is spent searching for what we've lost! On St. Juan Diego’s Day, after the Mass of the Immaculate Conception, I found that naughty little card hiding in the inside pocket of a little-used fleece. I had shoved it there in a hurry after filling my scooter with gas last week. How was an old man to remember where he had put that little card on a cold morning at the gas pump?
 
Someday I hope I will not need credit cards any longer, and I don’t mean through Google Pay. I hope someday that the cold necessities of this world will no longer coerce my energies. Someday I hope to find my way home, or be found on my dark path by the Mother of God. I hope someday she will bring me to the Father’s House, where I will finally be home.
 
Today is the feast, not of Juan Diego, but of Loretto. A mile and a half from the Adriatic, in the Italian Marches, there lie the ruins of a poor house, three simple stone walls not more than a few feet high. This “house” was said to have been brought from Nazareth to Loretto by angels, or at least by a Greek merchant named “Angelos,” 800 years ago. This simple stone dwelling is said to have been the home of Mary when the Angel Gabriel came to her. In this house she conceived a son by the power of God. Here God lived with men, and with a woman, who was to be His mother. Here God visited His people, inviting us to come to His Home beyond the skies. It is not for nothing that we long for Home most of all, and that longing will not be disappointed.

On December 1st we set out on the path to Christmas, making this the happiest time of the year. This flower-strewn path leads to Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means “House of Bread.” In Bethlehem there lies a delightful House of Bread, a bright home in which we are fed at St. Joseph’s table, comforted by Mother Mary and charmed by the baby Jesus, the Bread of Life. Bethlehem has inspired all kinds of holiday breads, from gingerbread houses to cinnamon rolls, Yule logs and sugar cookies with green and red sprinkles, mince pies and fruitcakes, Christmas pinwheels and sweet potato dinner rolls, not to mention figgy pudding. Christmas is the happiest time of the year because food is love, and we are happiest when good food made by loving hands surrounds us.
 
Christianity is a religion of food. Its original sin was to eat of a forbidden fruit, and its Founder commanded us to “eat and drink in memory of me.” Our fundamental act of worship is to consume bread which has become His Body. We attain mystical communion with God and each other by partaking of consecrated bread and wine. Today I am 63 years old, and an aging man asks himself what he has done with his life. The answer came at morning Mass: I was born to feed the “little birds” who line up at the alar rail for the Body and the Blood each morning. A man is a fundamentally a breadwinner, putting bread and meat on the table. Blessed is the man called to put the Bread of Life on God’s table. Thank you, dear Savior, for my vocation to the priesthood! Thank you, dear God, for my brother priests, and for all the children of the New Israel who hunger for the Bread of eternal life. Thank you for my dear parishioners, who kneel at the edge of the sanctuary every day to be fed by the hand of God.
 
The other day I cycled by San Francisco’s bison herd in Golden Gate Park, which seems to be growing. After the 1906 earthquake the number of bison was increased, it is said, to provide an emergency food source for the city should supply lines break down again. But how many people would 12 bison feed, and for how long, if it came to that? During Covid many worried that food delivery systems would break down, and going hungry is never far from any of our minds. In 1968, Paul Erlich’s book The Population Bomb predicted that hundreds of millions would starve from worldwide food shortages in the 1970s. Will we ever have a safe and secure food source?
 
The fact is, even the most substantial food doesn’t sustain us for long. We have to eat again after a few hours. What we really need is supersubstantial food. This morning, in fact, I gave 30 people “food that lasts….” Having fed 5000 men with more than they could eat, Jesus told them not to work for “food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”
 
They say religion is coming back to San Francisco. Apparently my fair city has lost its title of “America’s most secular city” to Seattle, and even Big Tech is beginning to realize what Steve Jobs has always known: an Apple device is helpful but not enough. Many newcomers to my parish are truly San Francisco foodies (how wonderful when they invite me to their favorite restaurants!), but they are pouring into Star of the Sea for something more. They want that supersubstantial bread that they’ve been hearing about.

The day before the Thanksgiving…. the City is quiet. Most people in San Francisco have “gone home” for the holiday, while those who are at home in the City of St. Francis are off work because everyone else is off work. I love this city when it is quiet, but “quiet” and “city” are by definition oxymoronic. Cities are places of great activity, and that can be a very good thing.
 
This morning I read Genesis 11, the story of Babel. I have always thought of Babel as a tower, but actually it was an entire city. “Come,” the people said, “let us build ourselves a town….” Within that town was a tower, “reaching to heaven,” by which, the people said, “let us make a name for ourselves.” Most of us want to live in cities because cities give us an identity and a status above “flyover state” people. A certain amount of pride motivated me to move back to San Francisco from a country parish.
 
Genesis 11 continues: “Now Yahweh came down to see the town and the tower that the sons of man had built.” You can picture Father Yahweh walking the streets of Babel, humming to himself, looking into alleyways and up at the great towers, shielding his eyes against the glare. And you know the story: God humbles the pride of this city by confusing their language. Ever since Babel, we have been struggling to communicate between over 7000 global languages.
 
A few decades ago some clever people invented One Language to Bind them All. They called it “Esperanto,” but it never caught on. In San Francisco we all speak English, more or less. But we don’t really speak the same language. Those of us who studied “logic” and “grammar” and “history” in school can’t really communicate with those who never learned these basic tools of human discourse. The language I learned in college uses the concepts of “true” and “false,” “right” and “wrong,” but these words don’t translate for folks who went to college after the 90’s, when relativism became the in-thing. We speak different languages.
 
I went into Target yesterday to buy some socks. Most of the clothing in the store was locked behind glass cabinets because in San Francisco you can steal up to $1000 and the City does not define "stealing" as a crime. Because of the increased cost of all those cabinets, and the extra employees needed to continually unlock them for customers, and because of the beefy security guards needed at all the doors, and because of the vast sums lost through legalized shoplifting, the price of socks has doubled. And it takes me twice as long to get them from behind those locked cabinets.
 
If I say to the younger generation who are running our city, “stealing is wrong,” I will be met with a blank stare. “Stealing,” I will be told, is merely a culturally-conditioned concept, probably invented by a colonial patriarchy. “Stealing” is only wrong for certain races of people, at certain times in history. “This is what we were taught in university,” they will tell me, “and it is certain.” But of course, we are told further, there is nothing absolutely "certain" in life. There is only ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth.’ Which means, in the end, there is only “power.”
 
In the current dictatorship of relativism, we all speak different languages, with mutually-exclusive concepts and lots of self-contradiction. There is no such thing as biological gender, we are told, unless of course you need sex-specific medical treatment or belong to the #MeeToo movement. We have been confused in our speech and in our thought patterns. The City, and its bright tower, will never “reach up to heaven” under these circumstances....
 
But today is also the Feast of the Miraculous Medal. Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Laboure on Rue du Bac in Paris on this day in 1830, and she gave her a medal to wear. My mother put a sterling silver copy of that medal on me in 1968, and I’ve never taken it off. And I’m hoping it will lead me all the way to heaven, where I will live in a bright and beautiful city forever!

Seven years ago my spiritual director suggested I read a chapter of the Bible every morning, and I’ve been doing that. Six months ago, however, I finished the Bible (for the third time!) and began reading other things in the morning. I read a spiritual biography of St. John of the Cross, and a commentary on St. John’s Gospel—all good spiritual reading, but there is nothing to compare with the Good Book itself. So last week I opened the large Bible that I keep open on my mantlepiece. I had purchased this Bible in 1983 from the Daughters of St. Paul when they had a store on Geary at Market, just down from Macy’s. I bought it for ten dollars, and I’ve read it cover to cover four times now. After purchasing it, I would pour through the words, chapter by chapter, every day after work. I would read every footnote and  make  my own marginal notes, I would study the introductions to each of its 63 books, and I took delight in gazing over the colored maps in the appendix, dreaming of one day exploring the Holy Land myself. I’ve taken this Bible with me to Oxford, Rome, and New York as a student of theology. I’ve carried it with me to every one of my seven priestly assignments, from Stockton to Los Angeles to San Francisco and had it rebound twice with leather reinforcements. When I first began reading it at age 22, I felt like I was falling in love. I declared: “I am going to marry the Bible!” This Bible and I have been with each other for 41 years now, and I’ve just returned to my daily morning reading, a chapter a day. There is no reading like the Scriptures, truly our “daily bread.”

Last week I began again with Genesis, Chapter One. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” Those words declare the fullness of our joy, our faith, our wonderous beauty. We did not make ourselves, and we do not have to save ourselves. We have been fearfully, wonderfully made, and we are saved at every moment by a loving God who dwells beyond the heavens. There have been many attempts at atheism over the centuries. The Chinese Communist Party, for example, is attempting to build a society on absolute “faith” in the Chinese Communist Party. Russia tried to build a society on a similar “atheism,” and when the first Soviet cosmonaut rocketed past earth’s atmosphere into outer space, he reported (apparently seriously) that he had gone to heaven and did not see God there. Our country is tending toward a similar kind of mentality, wanting to expunge “in God we trust” from our dollar bills in favor of “in the government we trust” or “in technology we trust.” It’s hard to say where American society will be in fifty years, but one thing is historically certain: every society that has traded faith in God for faith in anything less has ended badly.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but He Himself dwells beyond the heavens. He created the heavens and the earth in six days (so to speak) and on the seventh day he rested. He declared the seventh day “holy,” a day to gaze on all the good that He had created and to “rest.” That Seventh Day is heaven itself, to which Sunday points. All our political unrest, and our personal anxieties, will someday come to an end, either by the end of the World or by our own death, whichever comes sooner. In this holy month of November, we think on the death of this world, and we fix our sights on the Seventh Day, now the “Eighth Day,” when the dead shall rise, and we will enter into that perfect rest with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fr. Joseph Illo

 ​Welcome to November, and a blessed feast of All Saints! November is becoming my favorite month because of the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. The older I get, the more clearly I perceive the Life of the World to Come, and the more I long to join the vast numbers who have crossed over the waters of death ahead of me. They now live within a joy we cannot possibly imagine.
 
But, truth to tell, we have “miles to go before we sleep” (Robert Frost, despite his human limitations, is still one of my favorite poets). We still have work here on earth, among which is ordering our lives together. We must work to be “united states,” which is working against a strong headwind these days. That which unites people is a power higher than themselves, and Americans have come to imagine we are the work of our own hands. Left to ourselves, we will destroy each other. Only if we understand ourselves as children of a beneficent Father in Heaven can we stop bickering and attacking each other.
 
I want to vote for Jesus Christ for president, but alas He didn’t make it past the primaries. I want to vote for the saints: Teresa of Avila for Mayor of San Francisco, Elizabeth Seton for President of San Francisco Unified School District, Pier Giorgio Frassati for Governor of California, and Gregory the Great for President of the United States. Alas, none of them has thrown in their hats. We must, tragically, vote for lesser leaders. But those we vote for must be in some measure “saints”—those most likely to acknowledge “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” (from the first lines of our Declaration of Independence).
 
If you haven’t voted yet, I remind you that voting is a Catholic duty, and voting for the candidate most likely to promote Gospel principles is also a Catholic duty. I hear from many people their anxiety and depression, even their panic, at our steeply worsening political situation. I give the same advice to everyone: stop watching the news. It’s designed by very smart individuals to keep us in fear. Of course, the media industry sensationalizes everything as clickbait, to make money on our “fear of missing out.” But keeping people in fear is easily used by darker intentions to keep us securely within their control. Terror has always been the weapon of choice for totalitarian power, from Nazis to Soviets to Islamicists. If I can keep you in fear, I can keep you in my control, especially if you believe that “only I can save you.”
 
We Catholics certainly do believe that “only I can save you,” but that “I” is not CNN or the federal government or the tech industry. Only God can save us, and the farther we walk from God the worse it gets for all of us. Only Jesus Christ can save us, and he does so not through terror, but through love. So, dear people, do not be afraid. Only He can save us, and He will! No political collapse can undo His will. In the end, the most powerful on earth will die, but the Word of God will remain.
 
So stop watching “the news,” and keep your eyes on the Good News. Read the Scriptures, and read the lives of the saints, and read good classic literature, not the scare tactics of the enemy. Not even Kamala Harris, not even Donald Trump, and not even George Soros or Bill Gates is stronger than God. We are in the almighty and loving hands of God, so let’s stay there, and refuse to be frightened.

I wasn’t going to write a blog today, but the sound of hatred assaulted my ears this morning. On the street outside my window a motorcycle rider was blasting rap music that could be heard for three blocks in any direction. I guess he thought we needed to hear this expression of anger (toward whom or for what we know not). All of us hear “rap” music, or other expressions of anger, throughout the day from people’s devices. Anger not only assaults our ears, but our eyes. Here in San Francisco, we have been paying for a public service announcement on billboards and bus stop signs over the last 12 months: an angry black man looking down on us with these words “tear the paper ceiling.” Tear. Break. Destroy. Condemn. Cancel. That is what we are told we must do. The ad itself promotes a nonprofit doing the praiseworthy work of finding jobs for underserved people, but it uses anger to deliver its message. By the way, who is paying for this angry ad plastered on thousands of signs around our city?
 
Not long ago, on a beautiful morning, I said hello to a young black man in the park. No response. I said “good morning” again and heard only angry silence. Then I got angry. “I said ‘good morning’ to you!” He turned to me with threatening hatred: “if you say one more F-ing thing to me ….” How did he get so angry? How did I get so angry?
 
In the original Star Wars saga, Luke Skywalker enters into mortal combat with Darth Vader. He discovers at that point that Darth is his father, and he feels helpless rage rising within him. A “presence” behind both Luke and his father (the evil emperor) smiles wickedly as son and father fight each other. “Feel the anger, Luke,” the emperor tells him. “Give in to your hatred!” But Luke resists the anger, and that is why he is the hero of the original Star Wars legend.
 
Let us be clear that hatred is from the evil one, who is also known as diabolus, or “he who divides.” Those who promote anger are in the service of this Satanas, which means “the accuser” or “he who condemns.” It’s a wicked thing to play rap music, and public service ads promoting anger destroy goodwill. They do not promote justice, but only destruction.
 
For those Catholics who think condemnation, anger, and division are acts of “social justice,” think again. Think on the only Savior who came “not to condemn the world.” Be very clear from whence the anger comes: not from any good person, but from a very bad person. Let us commit ourselves to resisting these calls to anger and hatred, and to working for true justice, which always begins with a smile, not a frown. It looks up (to God), not down (on people). 

Last Sunday at 3pm, as six Blue Angel F18 jets roared above our church towers for San Francisco's Fleet Week, I baptized the sixth Moeck baby, Thomas Leo. In a memorable photograph of that event, reproduced here, you will see God’s glory in a Christian family: six children, each of them fascinating, with Mom and Dad smiling benignly. Grandma, as babysitter-in-chief, looks into the camera but with two hands on the grandchildren and a worried look that one of them might spin out of control. But each of these children is a masterpiece of divine grace. Abigail, the oldest, manifests a maternal serenity, then down the line: John (notice the untied right shoelace) seems confident as oldest male (notice also the scholarly spectacles); Caleb looks confidentially into the camera with his Brooks Brothers tie and shirt (untucked however); Catherine the Sanguine Extrovert slightly smiles because she already has a project in mind that you don’t know about; Teresa with her tongue stuck out at just the right moment has just been ousted as the Baby Queen of the family; and finally the newborn, Thomas, looking up to heaven, whence he came and wither he goes. The priest has blinked, oblivious to his crooked stole.

​In this decidedly anti-natalist culture, the Moeck family has forged ahead with God’s first commandment, “have as many children as fast as possible!” (AKA “be fruitful and multiply”). God commanded that of our first parents, not only because He loves children, but because he loves their parents, the best thing of which in their entire lives is to love and be loved by many offspring. We have been lied to, and not by God Almighty. “Someone” has been telling us fruitfulness is a failure, and babies are a blight. My own parents had six children, but the Moecks are set to surpass my venerable forebears. I can testify that we six sibs were ingredient in keeping Dad and Mom together, more or less happily, for 68 years. As difficult as marriage can be, we are better together. Nowhere are people more “together” than in the family, and especially in the large Catholic family. Thanks be to God, I can easily count fifteen other families in our parish who are defying the dictate that more than two children is “unsustainable” and “irresponsible.” Almost every woman I know who has had more than two children has been harassed, belittled, and pressured to sterilize herself by at least one attending physician and more than one friend or family member. God reward them for defying the naysayers! When friends would balk at my cousin’s seven beautiful children, she would line them up and ask “now you tell me: which one should I not have had?”