Yesterday I offered a solemn festive Mass of Thanksgiving at 10am, which is one of the most heavily-attended Masses of the year. People instinctively feel the need to thank someone, and even nominally religious people feel the need to thank God. It’s hard for anyone to live in the beautiful city of San Francisco without feeling thankful. But for many of us, it’s a love-hate relationship as the city declines. We thank those who have built the up San Francisco (and rebuilt it after 1906), but we resent the elites who are deconstructing our city.
 
The Gold Rush of 1849 flooded this port city with millions, and the tech boom of the last twenty years has inundated it with trillions. In Mark Twain’s time, a few millionaires controlled San Francisco. Today, a few billionaires control the city. The superrich tell us what to think and what not to think. They tell us how to vote, what to buy, how to spend our time, and what to fear. They don’t tell us directly but by deftly managing market forces and government mandates. This is done through “algorithms” but much more by simply repeating certain phrases a billion times. “My Body My Choice.” “Toxic Masculinity.” “Stay Safe.” The rulers of our city close and open our streets, open and close private businesses and public projects, tax and spend, all without feeling the need to justify or explain their decisions. At least, this is how I see it from the street level, and this is what I hear from the vanishing middle class of San Francisco.
 
A few billion dollars is different than a few million dollars. Fantastic money warps one’s thinking, as one can see in the more paltry experiences of those who have won very large lottery amounts. A good argument is made that no one should own a billion dollars, because the billion dollars inevitably takes ownership of the man. To be fair to our dear billionaires and trillionaires, they mostly think that they are benefitting the common good. Perhaps unconsciously, they have come to think that the future and well-being of the planet is in their hands.
 
Not unlike today, during the Roman Empire a few supremely wealthy people controlled the population through “bread and circuses.” Several times a week the emperor would put on a free gladiatorial show with unlimited food and wine. Today, rather than gladiatorial shows, we are provided with screens, everywhere. Everyone gets a smartphone with unlimited entertainment. As for food and drink, every week hordes of my neighbors line up, fully compliant in gloves and masks, for free government food in a parking lot on 8th Avenue. We quietly accept the “stimulus checks” the government neatly inserts into our bank accounts, and we quietly vote for the leader who promises the most loan cancellations.
 
This exponential increase of the welfare state reduces us to a zombie-like state of existence dependent on bread and circuses. We clients should thank our benefactors, but we must keep in mind that all blessings flow from God, including those what flow through Google and Amazon and the federal government. Thanking God first is why our country invented the national feast of Thanksgiving. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, at precisely the lowest ebb of our national history (1863):
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“The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

How well our greatest president understood how manifold bounties, “so constantly enjoyed,” easily lead us “to forget the source from which they come.” To remain a free people, to resist inevitable totalitarian control by the superrich, we must render absolute thanks God alone, early and often.

Every day I go for a half-hour bike ride, and San Francisco is one of the best cities in the world to get outdoors. My normal loop is through the Presidio and under the Golden Gate Bridge, with a stop for midday prayer at a favorite bench. Most of the joggers who pass within two feet of my bench don’t look up, but I say hello nonetheless and try not to be put off if they do not respond. This morning I called out a cheery “Good Morning” to a young woman whose hearing was blocked up with earbuds, but she didn’t look up. A few minutes later a gloomy-looking young man came along the same trail, and when I said “good morning” he looked up in surprise. A faintly sad smile passed over his features, and he said hello in return.
 
It made me think of a man in his thirties who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge a few years ago. He left a note in his apartment that said “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If at least one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.” An hour later the waves were dragging the remains of his body back and forth five hundred feet below the cars speeding to and from San Francisco. Mother Teresa once said to her sisters, “Today we have no time. The father and mother are so busy. The children come home and there’s no one to love them, to smile at them.”
 
A few years ago I made a commitment to say hello to at least one perfect stranger a day in this city. Today I decided to say hello, with a smile, to every stranger I see on that trail to the Golden Gate Bridge.

​In November the Mass texts point us to the last day of human history, the dies illa, “that day,” the day Christ will return. The number of Gentiles who will accept Christ—a number known only to God—will have been fully converted and the Jewish people themselves will have accepted Christ as the Messiah. The November liturgies keep our minds and hearts fixed on that day on which the Sun of Righteousness will return with his healing rays. In the Epistle from Philippians 3, St. Paul speaks with tears to his children who are throwing away their lives: “Many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their god is their stomach.” Stomach refers to all our lustful appetites. If we cannot see beyond the next meal, the next bit of entertainment, the “next big thing”—if we cannot see our final end—we are hopelessly lost. We will never get to heaven.
 
The evil one throws both distractions and fears like grenades in our path. Distractions are virtually limitless with the internet and a cash-flush economy, but consider how fear is used to block our progress toward heaven. Almost every “news” story, both from the left and the right, is “a crisis” calculated to generate fear. If you are going to watch the news, friends, try to see how fear mongering is simply a means of control. Governments have always used fear to control power, and media companies have always used fear to control sales. The great day of decision will come—a true cosmic “crisis”—when the Messiah returns. Those who believe will go with him into heaven, and those who do not believe will be left behind on earth, which will become hell. It is for that day that we are preparing. Life offers many “trial runs” leading up to that day, and certainly the recent pandemic and government lockdowns forced us to make a decision. Whom do we trust more: the government and the tech corporations, or the providence of God? When the government forced excessive measures on us that have since proven largely ineffective, including closing churches, what was our response? During the pandemic, while on a hike, I saw a T-Shirt that said “Faith over Fear.” No three words better express what happened during the pandemic. So many of us traded rational faith for unreasonable fear, but I hope many of us also learned something during that time.
 
Last week California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition One, which legalized abortion up to the moment of birth. The abortion industry put a lot of money into promoting fear among Californians: “If Prop One doesn’t pass, women will die and our rights will be forfeit. We cannot let the fascists take over!” Again we voted for irrational fear over rational faith. Most people don’t know that we essentially legalized infanticide, certainly not the man I was talked with yesterday after Mass (“you mean a doctor can now abort a child even while the mother is having contractions?!?!”). Yup.
 
Church leaders led a pitiful political attempt to block Prop One. It was, in my opinion, an egregious waste of time and money.  Do the bishops of California really think they can do better than the billionaires who have built and control our media culture? Church leaders should put our time and money, rather, into what we were ordained to do: education and worship, Word and Sacrament. In those two things, Church leadership has miserably failed over the last fifty years. Gavin Newsom leads perhaps the most successful and aggressive political war against the Gospel in this country. He was baptized Catholic, attended Notre Dame des Victoires Catholic school here in San Francisco, and went to Santa Clara Jesuit University. He identifies himself as a “practicing Catholic” along with our President and Speaker of the House. It's imperative that Church leaders ask themselves why our parishes and schools are failing to make disciples of Christ so badly.
 
Most Catholics have been worshipping backwards for fifty years in their parishes and have received a very poor education in their Catholic schools. What I mean by “backwards worship” is that most parishes celebrate the community more than they worship God, most obviously when the priest faces the people when he prays the Eucharistic prayer. What I mean by “very poor education” is that most Catholic schools and universities have adopted curricula almost indistinguishable from secular schools. Rather than ineffective rearguard political activity, our bishops and priests should be reforming their parishes and schools. Until priests and bishops deliver God's Word and Sacrament faithfully, we will continue to lose the culture war. We ordinary citizens cannot fix the archdiocese of San Francisco. We cannot restore the city of San Francisco, nor the state of California, nor the United States of America. But we can teach our own children the truth; we can stop consuming anti-Catholic and fear-mongering propaganda; we can worship God rather than ourselves at Mass; we can pray the family rosary,  read good books, and watch good movies. We can build truly Catholic families, and truly Catholic parishes, and truly Catholic schools. It's not that complicated, and not even that hard. But it is crunch time, friends. Catholic parishes and schools are failing. Every Catholic bishop, priest, and layperson has to decide what god he will serve. As for me and my parish (and school), we will serve the Lord.
 
Goodness and truth and beauty will always come out on top in the end, and this period of social decline will reach bottom at some point and begin its way back up. After showing the three children at Fatima the horrors of what was to come in world history, Our Lady reassured them: “In in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” We live and work in our moment of history with faith in that assurance.

Yesterday, two thirds of our fellow citizens in this great State of California chose to fund abortions, even from other states, up the moment of birth, which is essentially infanticide.  Proposition One failed miserably in the sense that most of us failed to
protect the weakest in our society from the abortion industry. We voted for the killing of children to a degree matched only by governments such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. This rejection of the natural law will have long term consequences, and we Californians must try to understand what just happened. We have chosen genocide based on age: we have vigorously insisted that an entire part of our human race does not have the right to live.
 
A similar event took place in Rwanda in 1994. More powerful people decided to kill the less powerful in the race wars between Hutu and Tutsi. To understand how this could have happened, and to understand our own moment in history, I’ve invited a survivor of the Rwandan genocide to speak at our parish. Immaculée Ilibagiza will speak this Friday (day after tomorrow) at 7pm in our auditorium. I became familiar with Rwanda when I wrote a brochure about Our Lady of Kibeho (available at her shrine in our church). She predicted the slaughter of a million people in Rwanda 12 years before it happened. This morning I read an article published on the First Things website, written before Proposition One was decided. Here is an excerpt by the author, John Murdock, who prays every week before an abortion facility in Boise.
 
“On the sidewalk, my own memory flashes to Rwanda. I was there in 2007 with a group from an American congregation with African ties. One of our stops was at a school campus, to which Rwandans had been drawn with promises of safety during the 100 days of death that swept the nation. … A few dozen bodies had been preserved as they were found through a mummification process involving a ghostly white lye. The hope was that no one could look at these corpses and say the genocide never happened. Our guide at the school was a walking testament. He literally had a bullet hole in his forehead. The man had somehow escaped to the woods, but most of his family perished. … I pray and read the psalms by the clinic’s street sign that says ‘Care. No matter what.’ A few feet away is a room where over a thousand people a year have been killed. Will this one day be a memorial? Will school children walk through it with wide eyes, shocked that their ancestors could undertake such barbarity? Or will it simply be repurposed and scrubbed from history? Might the nearby doggie daycare expand so that pets are groomed in the place where human blood was shed?”
 
Last month, here in San Francisco, I was asked to do an exorcism and blessing for the former Planned Parenthood clinic on Valencia Street, which will be leased to a new tenant. I sprinkled blessed salt and water through six windowless rooms in which thousands had died violent deaths. A group from our parish had been praying every Thursday evening at that building until it closed, and now we pray in front of the new facility on Bush Street, which is much larger and lavishly-funded. Killing is killing. No honest medical professional would deny that the human fetus is a human life, even though political leaders deny this scientific fact day after day. 
 
On this day, when California has made its choice for death, when we will pay to have nine-month-old babies aborted, I encourage you to attend Immaculee’s talk this Friday. She has seen death, and she knows how the more powerful can simply kill the less powerful. Tickets are $25 at the door, and under 18 are free, this Friday, November 11, at 7pm in the auditorium.

Today is All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead. Last night I offered a celestial Sung High Mass for All Saints in a church full of holy people, and truly I felt as if I were already in heaven. Today we lower our eyes to those in purgatory, joining our suffering to theirs. The greatest suffering, certainly, is to be not yet perfectly with God. To help us remember the Holy Souls, we set up an "All Souls Altar" every November in the church with pictures of our loved ones who have died.

Even yesterday (before the All Souls Altar officially began), fifty pictures of our beloved dead had already been placed under the great marble statue of Our Lady. On November 2nd I put $100 into the offering box  for a month’s worth of candles. Every day of November I will light three little candles and kneel in front of these pictures, under Our Lady’s image, to say a prayer for their deliverance from purgatory. If these holy people are already in heaven, my prayers will go to them there, begging their prayers for my own deliverance. Certainly, the Holy Souls pray for us as we pray for them. It is said that their prayers, in particular, are most effective in obtaining healing for our bodily illnesses, and giving us strength of will to suffer what we must in this life.

I’ve placed photographs of my grandmother, my uncle, and my mother at the November Altar, and this year I will add pictures of my maternal grandparents and paternal grandfather. I love to look at these hundreds of pictures, fascinating and wonderful historical images of real people. They show people on earth, but they also show what they look in heaven, because God conserves our essential identities. People do not lose their personal identity after death, and I will still be Joseph Peter Illo in the next life just as I am in this life. Our bodies, our psyches, and our souls will be glorified, purified, and perfected, but not essentially changed. That is why looking upon these images is looking into heaven. That is why we are fascinated by pictures of real people, especially after they have died. That is why many cultures place images of the deceased on their graves. The dead do not disappear, but they take their individuality either to heaven or to hell. “For I know,” the prophet Job writes, “that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Our Lady’s Assumption is the clearest promise of the hope to which we cling. God took her, body and soul, into heaven, where she reigns with her Son. And that is why we place the photographs of our beloved dead on her altar. She looks upon all these pictures too, interceding for the souls of the faithful departed with us. 

Last week I was talking with an old friend about skiing this winter. He told me that he didn’t think there would be enough snow. He went on to tell me that a drought was paralyzing the nation. When I got home I googled “drought.” All of mainstream news had alarming reports of “extreme” drought across the nation, proof of climate change. And I mean change for the worse.

I’ve been on this planet 61 years and seen dry spells come and go. We had a seven-year drought a few years ago and the reservoirs went empty. The next winter five good rains filled them back up again. But let’s say that the climate is going haywire. I don’t think it will, but it could happen—it’s happened at various times in history and will probably happen again. What should be our reaction to changing climate?

In 1846 Our Lady visited two poor children in a French alpine village. She was weeping because the people of that village routinely broke the second and third commandments: blaspheming God’s name and refusing to worship him on Sunday. “If the harvest is spoilt,” she told them, “it is all on your account. I gave you warning last year … but you did not heed it. On the contrary, when you found the potatoes spoilt, you swore, you took the name of my Son in vain. They will continue to decay, so that by Christmas there will be none left.” The villagers worked seven days a week, but the harder they worked, the less money they had. “I have given you six days to work. The seventh I have reserved for myself, yet no one will give it to me. Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer. During Lent, they go to the butcher shops like dogs. There will come a great famine. The walnuts will become bad, and the grapes will rot.”

Are there droughts in some areas and floods in others? Is the climate unbalanced? Is mother nature outraged? If she is, it is partly because we have outraged her by outraging her Maker. We commit all manner of unnatural acts. We kill our own children by the millions and call it “reproductive freedom.” The liberal synagogue up the street has hung a banner claiming that “reproductive freedom” is a “Jewish value.” Everybody knows perfectly well that this is a lie, that the Old Testament expressly forbids murder, not to mention the fornication that leads to this particular kind of murder. Our Catholic-educated governor has put campaign ads on midwestern state billboards with the blasphemous claim that Jesus commands us to abort our children (“Need an abortion? California is ready to help. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.’ Mark 12:31.”) But nature is not mocked. We mutilate adolescent girls after convincing them that their natural sexual organs were a mistake of nature. We reject nature’s gifts and expect nature to be kind to us? The vast majority of Christian churches in San Francisco, including many Catholic parishes, promote unnatural sexual acts, and then we complain that it doesn’t rain?
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The first step to restoring order to the planet is to worship its creator, to render what is simply God’s due: making public thanksgiving and praise to the divine beneficence. In 520 BC, the Jewish people were returning from Babylon, from 40 years of slavery that had ineluctably resulted from their rejection of God. Many them wanted to rebuild the temple immediately, but the wealthier ones said they should rebuild their own homes first. Haggai the prophet spoke these words of God to them:

“Is it time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied. Why is this?—it is because my house lies in ruins. Therefore, the heavens withheld the dew, and the earth its yield. And I have proclaimed a devastating heat upon the land and upon the mountains.”
 
Two things will happen if we refuse to worship God and submit to His laws. First, we will begin to see disaster, “extreme conditions,” and crisis all around us. We will become afraid of everything, even the natural gifts of God. Every little storm will terrify us, and we will hate and fear our own bodies. Resentment will replace gratitude and anger will replace joy among us. We will cling to human authorities and the technologies they provide for safety because we will have lost faith in God’s providence. Second, the natural order really will become unbalanced to some degree because of our outrages against nature. We will upset the natural order, both physical and societal, by our unnatural lifestyles.
 
The good news, all through the bible and throughout human history, is that we can restore the balance of nature by returning to a humble reverence for the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Harmony will return both to individuals and to communities to the degree that we respect God’s natural order. We will not be afraid of every little “act of nature” because we will appreciate the big picture, the beneficent authority behind all of nature. If we keep attuned to this natural order by keeping our eyes on Nature’s God, we will be plenty strong enough to weather any type of storm. We will not be afraid, but the praise of God will be our strength and our joy. The will of God will be our delight.

Today is the feast of the Guardian Angels, those mighty beings given by God to keep us safe. My boyhood home had a steep and narrow staircase that we six kids raced up and down several dozen times a day. Every few months you would hear someone tumbling down that incline like a giant snowball, landing at the bottom in a "yard sale" of scattered toys, scrapes, groans, and tears. I don’t remember anyone actually breaking a bone, but finally my mother nailed a guardian angel plaque at the top of those stairs. It showed two little kids tremulously crossing a broken bridge over a rushing stream. Invisible to them, an angel stretched his protecting arms over their faltering steps. 

Yesterday, as I sat at a park bench to pray my midday prayers, a large and unhealthy-looking tourist plopped down on the neighboring bench with his female consort. He was tatted up and puffing from the exertion of walking, but he looked friendly. I said hello and we began a conversation about various things. As I climbed back on my bike, he said amicably “stay Safe.”

“Good-bye” [from “God be with you”] or “God bless you” used to be a standard form of parting, but now we say “stay Safe.” Most folks didn’t think about what “God bless you” meant, and most folks don’t think about what “stay Safe” means, but in my mind, “be Safe” means “be compliant” or “be boring” or “do and think all and only what CNN tells you.” Why would I want to do that? I find it off-putting when someone tells me to "stay Safe," and no doubt some find “God bless you” off-putting. Religious freedom is the first amendment to our Constitution, and while God is one man’s religion and Safety is another man’s religion.

During the Covid lockdowns I would reply to the ubiquitous “be Safe” with the snarky “I don’t want to be Safe. I want to be dangerous.” But snark is not charity, and certainly my large and unhealthy-looking new friend on the park bench was only trying to be charitable. God bless him! Nowadays when someone says "be Safe" I just reply “God bless you.” If one of my countrymen is permitted to promote the god Safety (albeit unconsciously), I am permitted to promote my god God. It’s a free country, but I may also be permitted to observe that the god Safety is not keeping us entirely safe. Since we adopted Safety as our god, America seems less safe and healthy than before. That guardian of Safety, the Centers for Disease Control, tells us that life-expectancy continues to drop while obesity, addictions, and depression continue to rise.

When it comes to health and safety, I think I’ll stick with my Guardian Angels.

Today is the first-year anniversary of my mother’s death, so please say a prayer for her soul. I lit a candle at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima for her this morning, not least because she it was who taught us little kids all about those great events in 1917, and how to pray the rosary.

The dead are the poorest of the poor because “you can’t take it with you.” In the end, we all die naked and alone, as we see in Christ on the Cross. How not to dread death, then? St. Vincent de Paul, the great apostle to the poor, said that he who serves the poor in this life will not fear death when it comes for him. That’s been my experience too. So yesterday, to prepare for my mother’s death anniversary, I joined the holy women (and one man) of our parish who prepare 300 sandwiches every Sunday. At 3pm we took these sandwiches, along with large tubs of hot chocolate, lemonade, water, as well as shirts, coats, socks, shoes, and gloves to those living on the streets of America’s wealthiest city. Every time I spend some time with these people, I lose my fear of death. I am filled with human warmth and joy. The poor are marvelous people, brilliant in their simplicity. Most of them speak Spanish, and of our group I’m the only Spanish speaker, so I had an immediate connection with them. Most are also Catholic, and they were delighted to find a priest who could hear their confession and give them a blessing.

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​There is much suffering among the street dwellers, but there is much simple joy as well. Most of them do not suffer the smoldering resentment that afflicts so many of us in America today. Drugs are the main enemy, and many are hopelessly addicted. But even in their addiction, most know that there is a God, and we are not He. They all gladly take holy cards and rosaries, not ashamed of religion. One guy was shooting up when we arrived, but as soon as he saw us he threw his needle on the sidewalk and rushed over for a sandwich and a prayer. He is addicted, but he also knows where freedom lies, even if he has not the strength to grasp that freedom.
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When I was nine, my mother would take me on visits to the poor of our small town. We didn’t have homeless living in the streets those days, but there were many elderly shut-ins. I began to visit these elderly poor myself, listening to their stories, and that was the beginning of my priestly vocation. If you feel depressed or isolated or stressed out or angry, go to the poor. God will heal you through them. Find Jesus by serving the poor, by talking with them, by touching the Body of Christ in them. “The poor are marvelous people,” Mother Teresa would say. The poor will heal your soul and bring you much joy, if only you can find the time to serve them.

Today the Roman Calendar commemorates St. Peter Claver, the Spanish Jesuit who took the title escalvo de los escalvos as the servant of the 10,000 African slaves that would arrive every month at the Port of Cartegena (now in Columbia, South America). He and his little band of brothers met the slave ships coming in with food, medicines, and, best of all, the love of Jesus Christ. During his forty years of service to these men, Peter Claver ministered to well over 500,000 slaves, making him by far the great “patron saint of slaves.” Let us pray to him for those 25 million estimated to be in some form of slavery today, especially those in sexual slavery in countries frequented by wealthy Europeans and Americans. God save us!

Today we remember another servant of servants, Queen Elizabeth II. The wise and courageous Englishman, Dr. Carl Trueman, wrote a fine article that you can read at this link: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/09/the-quiet-faith-of-queen-elizabeth-ii

Dr. Trueman points out that Queen Elizabeth’s service to England and its commonwealth countries began under Churchill and continued for 70 years during 14 more Prime Ministers. England and the world’s culture changed in many unsettling ways during those seven decades, but Queen Elizabeth remained steady in restrained humility, placing duty and the needs of her people above her personal interests. She maintained the best of English culture during these decades of decline, and did so by adhering to her Christian faith without blinking in the face of mocking secularism. “Her reign,” writes Dr. Trueman, “was marked with a deep sense of the dignity of her office. She never used profane language. She never sneered at critics. A generation raised on reality TV, life-as-performance, confected Twitter outrage, and “living loud” would do well to reflect upon that.”

Above all, I think, Queen Elizabeth believed in God more than herself. She reigned as a Christian monarch, and as such as a servant to the servants of God. For in God’s kingdom, to serve is to reign, and to reign is to serve. May she rest in peace.