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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve always wondered how Google and Youtube and Facebook can provide such marvelous services at no cost to the consumer. These internet services are so marvelous that they have become addictive, almost as if they were designed that way. But they are still free. How is that possible?

It’s possible because clever people have learned how to sell us products without us knowing it. Almost all the revenue Google generates is from advertising. But as most of us pay no attention to internet ads, how does Google make their billions in profits every year?

Maybe there are products that I buy without knowing I’m buying them. One of those products might be … the Covid vaccine. If I pay taxes, I’ve bought this product. My taxes went up sharply this year, so maybe I bought a lot of Covid vaccines without knowing it. After all, the government offers them “for free,” meaning of course that Joe Taxpayer provides them.

If I’m buying Covid vaccines, I suppose I have a right to ask how effective they are. The government and the drug companies have all sorts of studies showing how marvelous the vaccines are at preventing Covid. But why would I trust government or drug company studies, given that both sell the vaccine? It’s been a year since the vaccines have been out, along with massive ad campaigns to get people to take them, but everyone seems to be still getting Covid. In the house where I live, three of us got Covid in January, but only the vaccinated person suffered serious symptoms. Many of my friends and acquaintances tell me the same story about their households. In any case, if the vaccines were effective, Covid rates would be going down, but they are not (at least the internet tells us they are not going down).

How is it possible that such a poor product receives unlimited free advertising from the world’s largest ad firms? Why are corporations and governments forcing their employees to buy a product with such abysmal performance?

May I suggest an answer, at the risk of being censored? It’s because the drug companies, and their internet advertisers, don’t want us to be entirely healthy. If we were all healthy, Pfizer and Google would lose a lot of business. It’s much more lucrative to keep everyone just a little sick, and afraid of getting sick, so we will remain dependent on their products. “I’m quadruple vaccinated and can’t wait for the next booster” is money to the ears of those who produce and market vaccines. And every time Facebook censors a doctor who questions the vaccines, or promotes a doctor who pushes the vaccines, it is marketing these products.

The business of America is business, not health, I suppose. Everything we see on Google, I hate to tell you, is in some way an ad. Google doesn’t run its business for free. So, caveat emptor (you can look that up on Google if you don’t know what it means). Don’t believe everything you hear, and don’t believe anything you read on the internet without thinking it through most critically and carefully. Look around you, with your own eyes, rather than through the eyes of Google or YouTube, and you will be a better person.

 The day after Mother’s Day I was called to the hospital. The mother of two teenage children “was not long for this world,” I was told, and could I get right down to give her the last rites? It took a little time getting through all the covid screening, and then the ICU nurse wasn’t sure if I could be admitted unless someone left the room, but finally I got inside. The woman was propped up in bed with her children and husband nearby, breathing softly, with eyes closed. Her older child was having a really difficult time accepting the situation. “How could God do this to her … to us … to me?” I tried to reassure her that nothing God permits is meaningless, but it would take time and effort to find meaning in this very difficult experience.

I asked her family if she was still able to hear. “No,” the older child said, “she’s been unresponsive for a few days.” Nevertheless, I bent to her ear and said “my name is Fr. Joseph. I’m a Catholic priest and I’ve brought you the sacraments.” She made no movement. When the woman’s sister arrived I began the sacramental liturgy.

As I was praying the litany of saints, she gently stopped breathing. The older child looked at her mother, confused. She couldn’t believe what was happening. I glanced up at the monitor to see that all her vitals were flatlined. An alarm went off softly, and two nurses came in. They nodded quietly and I kept praying the litany. I pronounced the Apostolic Pardon with an unsteady voice, and I administered the Holy Oils with an unsteady hand. I began to cry myself as her family dissolved into uncontrollable weeping.

The younger child exclaimed, through his tears, that it was a miracle. God had provided the priest just in time! Her husband grasped my arm: “She held on until you brought her the sacraments! She made it to heaven!” And indeed, I’ve seen this four or five times over the last 30 years. Twenty years ago I was anointing a man when he flatlined, and the nurse came in to turn off the alarms. I expressed concern, but she replied matter-of-factly that he had “died” three times earlier that day, but each time he had revived. “This time,” she assured me, “he would not come back. We often see patients who will simply not die until they get the sacraments.”

Back in the ICU room on Monday: I stayed a few more minutes in respect for the family and for the dead. Then I quietly slipped past the nurses. Both were Filipinos, and I suppose both were believers. They thanked me with their eyes, and I thanked them with my eyes, and we all thanked God that Sister Death had come so gently to this woman. It would be very hard for her husband and children, but God would be with them. Back on the street outside the hospital, I climbed onto my scooter for home. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. “Take this mother’s hand and lead her safely over the waters of death, into the presence of God!”

A blessed Mother’s Day to all of my readers, both to those who have born children and to the rest of us who marvel at the miracle of motherhood. Yesterday, after the Vigil Mass, I asked all the mothers present to come up for a red rose and a blessing. I was delighted by how many women in a relatively small congregation came up—about 65% of the congregation. I’ve given out roses before on Mother’s Day, but for some reason I saw these women with a new wonder this year. Each one was a flower herself! Unique, delicate, luminous, strong, graceful, and fragrant.

A man I greatly respect once told me that “every woman is sacred: no exceptions.” God has placed within every woman the capacity to bear new human lives, each endowed with an immortal soul, and each worth more than all the power and glory of the most glittering cities on earth. While many who claim to be “feminists” denigrate motherhood and childbearing as an intolerable limitation to the woman’s “freedom,” true feminism supports women in their sublime ability to nurture new lives.

Our Lady, of course, is the supreme example of motherhood: she who lost nothing of her virginal purity by bringing God into the world in human flesh. Mary, the mother of Him who did not abhor the Virgin’s womb, helps us overcome our fear of human flesh. Without the love of God, without a deep appreciation for all that God has created, and a deep faith in God Himself, we often find the carnal dimensions of marriage and childbearing repulsive. Mary changed God’s diapers, potty-trained Him, and cleaned up his vomit. I can understand why non-believers think we are nuts to believe that the Almighty God took on the disgrace of human flesh!

​But God loves the flesh that he has created. He endows women with a maternal love that overcomes the more unpleasant aspects of their children’s bodies. Moreover, God elevates a mother’s natural love by faith in the Incarnate God, and through the love of His own Mother. We glorify God for giving us each our own mothers. Mine is beyond the grave now, but I talk to her several times a week. “Mom, I love you. Mom, I need your help on this one! Mom, pray for me.” May God’s blessing, and our deep gratitude, be upon all women, especially those God has given the gift of conceiving and bearing children.
 

You never know what you will see out your window each morning. I got up early today and glanced out the window. Looking East over Geary Boulevard I saw two planets almost touching each other! Jupiter and Venus are in a closer conjunction this morning than they will be until 2039. Leaning out the window, I snapped this picture on my phone.

I'm used to seeing Venus, the "Morning Star," outside my east-facing window. But today the Morning Star almost touched (at least in our field of vision) the great King of Planets, Jupiter. Venus is a small heavenly body, but she seems to cover the great gas giant planet of Jupiter with her sweet closeness this morning. 

Everything in life is sacramental. Everything points toward God. We call the Mother of God the "Morning Star" because she not only reflects the light of the rising sun (the Son of God, who is still hidden when she comes into human history), but she also announces the rising of that Sun by her own radiance. Mary is not God, but she reflects God's grace and proclaims that God is to be born into our world. In a few hours the Sun itself will rise over Geary Boulevard, right where Venus now steadily shines. Today Venus and Jupiter are as close as mother and son. 
​
Tomorrow begins the lovely Month of May, the Month of Our Lady. We begin the Month of May with a May crowning of Our Lady in my parish at the 9:30am Sunday Mass. At that Mass I will lift one of our preschoolers up to the statue of Our Lady of Grace, so that she can place her handmade crown of flowers upon Mary's brow. Tomorrow is also the Feast of St. Joseph “the Workman.” We honor and pray for all those who work with their hands, and all in blue-collar jobs who provide for our basic needs, day in and day out. May the Morning Star, and her holy spouse, bring us this month to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

As I write this it is Good Friday in Ukraine (most Christians in that nation follow the Orthodox liturgical calendar, which is a week behind the Roman calendar this year). One of our Ukrainian parishioners asked me to bless her this morning. Her mother and sister have fled to Germany with the children, but her brother-in-law remains in Ukraine to defend the country. “My family,” she told me, “is enduring a Good Friday in the certain hope of an Easter Sunday.” The faith of this people is remarkable, annealed over a thousand years of loss and gain. The national anthem of this people sings that “Ukraine is not dead yet.”

I mentioned that I’ve been rereading The Lord of the Rings these last few weeks, and yesterday I read the third chapter of the sixth book, where Sam and Frodo have given up all hope but persevere in carrying the Ring up the slopes of Orodruin, Mount Doom. The Lord of the Rings movies barely scratch the surface of the books, but they do provide helpful images. As I reread the books, I could picture Gandalf, Aragorn, and the others with particular human characteristics, as living actors in a real narrative. In addition, the movie’s storylines often follow the books somewhat closely and so helped me keep particular details and plotlines in proper order.

So last night, having just read the grand finale of the trilogy (Frodo and Sam’s “Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday” on Mount Doom), I decided to watch that part of the movie again. But golly whiz, the movie frustrated me yet again, and I’m back to lamenting how much the screenwriters banalized Tolkien’s great work. For example, in the book, Gollum obtains the Ring in the end by biting off Frodo’s finger. He hops around the edge of the abyss with the Ring in such delirium that he casts himself over the edge. In the movie it is Frodo who throws Gollum over the edge in his fury to regain the Ring. A negligible departure from the book? Not at all, because in the book, Frodo, once relieved of the Ring, does not seek to regain it. He lets go of the fatal attraction and is a free man. All throughout the books Frodo has refused to take Gollum's life, and it is that respect for life that saves Frodo, and the whole world, in the end. In the movie, Frodo kills Gollum through his refusal to let go of the Ring's power. Tolkien portrays a man capable of gaining freedom from evil, whereas Jackson portrays a man never quite able to break free of his fatal addiction.

Another example: Aragorn’s army marches up to Mordor’s Black Gate, seeking justice for Sauron’s criminal invasion of Gondor. In the book Mordor's ambassador, the “Mouth of Sauron,” rides through the Gate to meet the Captains of the West, holding up Frodo’s mithril coat and sword as proof that the Ringbearer’s mission has failed. He announces Sauron’s terms, in which Gondor and all western lands will become slaves of Mordor in return for their lives. Gandalf magnificently snatches Frodo’s coat and sword from the ambassador with these words: “These we will take, in memory of our friend. But as for your terms, we reject them utterly. Get you gone, for your embassy is over and death is near to you. We did not come here to waste words with Sauron, faithless and accursed; still less with one of his slaves.” In the movie (although I must say the hideous “Mouth of Sauron” is brilliantly portrayed), Aragorn rides up to the ambassador and lops off his head, and we never hear Gandalf’s magnificent dismissal of tyranny. Jackson’s Aragorn decapitates the ambassador (so the movie could include one more scene of violence?), but Tolkien’s Aragorn would not have violated the rules of a just war. One of Tolkien’s points is that just wars—even though tragically necessary at times—are governed by rules in accord with right reason. They are not just food fights among children. Even should tyrants fight dishonorably, mature men fight honorably, with fundamental respect for their enemies as fellow human beings. Even should they have to kill to defend fatherland and family, they do so fairly and justly.

Finally, in the book, the Captains of the West stand their ground before the Black Gate. They have made their case, but they will not initiate further war. They will defend themselves and their land, according to the rule that a just war is always essentially defensive. In the movie, however, rather than standing their ground, Aragorn attacks Mordor, recklessly trusting in his own power rather than, as in the book, in a Power greater and wiser and more benevolent than himself. Aragorn trusts that this Power is greater even than the seemingly invincible power of Mordor. Jackson's Aragorn, however, trusts in himself more than he should, and so displays a dismal lack of kingly prudence. 

Today as I write it is Good Friday in Ukraine, or even Holy Saturday (given the time difference), and as you read this it will be almost Easter Sunday in Ukraine. The people of this beleaguered nation, with no earthly hope of defending themselves against a vastly more powerful empire, trust in a Power greater than themselves. They believe that Ukraine is not dead yet, and even if she should die, she would rise again, because her Lord rose again.

If you’ve never read The Lord of the Rings, now is a good time to read Chapter 10 of Book Five and Chapters 3 and 4 of Book Six. If you have read the books already, a careful rereading at this time of year, and at this time in history, will greatly reward you. It is the story of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and the story will repeat itself again and again until the Return of the King.