Last month I returned from three weeks in the wilderness with an unshakable confidence in God’s providence. The fear that we will “wreck the planet” diminishes after a week among towering mountains and mighty redwoods. One gets the peaceful conviction under big skies that, long after our moment in history has come and gone, the sun will still rise over snowy peaks and shimmering rivers.

My few weeks hiking through the granite cathedrals of the Sierras also put our current ecclesiastical dramas in perspective. Doubtless, there’s plenty of malfeasance among the Catholic clergy, but God has made Holy Mother Church ​indefectible.  We can’t sink this ship. One recalls Cardinal Ercole Consalvi’s moment with Napoleon in 1807. The undefeated emperor assured Pius VII's eminent Secretary of State that he would "destroy the Church." The Cardinal smiled. “Pas du tout, Emperor. Not even we cardinals have been able to do that.” Seventy-nine years after Consalvi's observation, Leo XIII asked all priests to lead a prayer to St. Michael after every Mass. God sends this mighty champion of His angels to protect the Church, and it is St. Michael the Archangel we celebrate today. We must have every confidence that God will preserve the Sacred Body of His Son, strengthened each day by His Sacred Blood. 
 
My peace was a little compromised last week, however, at a catered luncheon. I was chatting with the Mexican chef, a likeable fellow who produced the finest quesadillas I’ve ever tasted. “I was in the seminary myself,” he said. “But I don’t practice the faith anymore.” And he told me why. Another student, who happened to be the Cardinal’s nephew, demanded that he perform a sexual act on him, threatening to have him removed from the seminary if he refused. He did refuse, and was dismissed from the seminary and, as it were, from the Catholic Church. I’ve heard this same sad story told many times by many different people.
 
Same-sex attraction is a cross many people carry, especially in the current culture of chaotic sexual saturation. Many carry this burden heroically, with great sanctity, but some allow this weakness to dominate them. The current culture promotes sexual sin, and many suffer the misery of social disorder because of it. The priesthood, in particular, is not for a man with this particular weakness, as the Catholic Church has clarified in a 2005 document from the Congregation for Catholic Education:
 
"In the light of such teaching, this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question,  cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called “'gay culture.'”
 
In 2002, a “gay friendly” bishop asked his priests for their input. He was on his way to a meeting of American bishops in Dallas to deal with the newly-revealed cases of clergy sexual abuse. One priest said, “if the bishops don’t talk about the significant number of actively homosexual priests, you won’t have much credibility.” Many priests bravely made the same point to this bishop, but his response was the same for each one: stony silence. The subsequent bishops’ meeting in Dallas did not talk about it either. Instead, a fairly open homosexual, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was entrusted with drawing up a “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
 
“Where sin abounds,” St. Paul claims, “grace abounds all the more.” Two weeks ago, our troubled Catholic hierarchy beatified the Ulma family, all nine of whom were shot in 1944 for sheltering Jews. On March 23 of that year, Joseph and Victoria Ulma had six children and one on the way. They had taken in eight Jewish neighbors at the risk of their own lives, and sure enough, the Nazi police arrived that evening with guns drawn. First they shot all eight Jews in the head, and then shot the children’s parents, Joseph and Victoria, in front of their children and neighbors. Finally, the Nazi's shot the screaming children, and their bodies were dumped into a pit in the front yard.
 
All nine members of the Ulma family were declared to be of heroic sanctity on September 10, the first beatification of an entire family (and one of them an unborn child). The names and faces of their killers have been forgotten, but the heroic goodness of the Ulma family will radiate through history. Good has overcome evil, and will always do so. Long after the particular sins and disorders of our historical moment have passed, the brilliant goodness of the saints will be remembered. No matter how bad things get within the Church and without, the goodness of God will prevail.
 
So strive to be a saint. Since we can't sink this ship, let's sail it bravely. We can be sure that our little crew of willing sailors can find a path through the stormiest of seas. Let's all be saints together, like the joyful Ulma family, focusing our minds on God’s perfect order, and bending our energies to God’s perfect will. All the rest will pass.

​Down a dirt road, surrounded by cornfields, between two lakes, not far from a small country cemetery, rests a monastery. It began in San Francisco, then went to Las Vegas, and finally settled in Nebraska. Many monasteries locate in cities, but I think the best place for contemplative communities is under the wide blue sky.
 
Last Monday Holy Mother Church remembered St. Joseph of Cupertino, the “flying saint.” It was a third-class feast—nothing special—and the nuns would normally not chant the Mass. But as I waited inside the darkened sacristy for the monastery clock to reach 7am, their 29 voices were still singing the last verses of lauds, in exquisite counterpoint to the tower bells, which ring continuously until Mass begins. The sisters concluded their morning song as the great bell faded. Silence descended, punctuated only by the faint sound of crickets outside, still awake as dawn spread her soft light over the fields. The server’s hand reached out tentatively for the sacristy bell, then grasped it for a firm shake (good servers know that it’s all in the wrist). Vested in magnificent vestments, we moved from the darkened sacristy into the blazing light of the sanctuary, and the sisters surprised us with a sung introit.
 
Every Holy Mass with contemplative sisters, and every day in the monastery, is filled with wonder. In most of Europe’s history, the powerful knew where their bread was buttered. They dedicated part of their wealth to contemplative communities, who usually built their monasteries on high places just outside city walls, where the bells would ring out over village and city alike.
 
The world still needs monasteries. Our imaginations, our hearts, and our endeavors wither to mere existence without the divine mysteries, delivered most wonderfully by monastic communities. In this Carmelite monastery just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, one cannot see the nuns, as they are behind an enclosure. But one can hear them, and one can hear the bells ringing out over the cornfields. I’m back in San Francisco now, but I know that adoration of God and contemplation of the mysteries continue unceasingly in a monastery on 20 acres of farmland in Nebraska. And for that matter, in several monasteries here in the City. Unnoticed but always flowing, like our bodies’ own circulatory systems, the monastic communities are the lifeblood of Church and City alike.

​Today the city streets are quiet, and the parish office is dark, but we are gathered in this well-lit place at God’s altar. On this Labor Day we thank God for the gift of honest work. The green vestments I’m wearing might remind us of dollar bills, and the laborer certainly deserves his pay. But the fundamental purpose of labor is not to make money. God has given us strength and intelligence to glorify His awesome majesty, and to build up a well-ordered human community. A man once told Mother Teresa that he would not do what she was doing (picking worm-infested people out of Calcutta’s gutters) “for a million bucks.” She replied, “neither would I.”

Today’s Gospel from Matthew 6 just happens to contain these words: “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Either we work for money, or we work for the sheer joy of serving the Almighty’s perfect will. “Therefore,” Our Lord continues in His Sermon on the Mount, “I say to you: do not worry about your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will wear…. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither labor nor do they spin,” and yet God provides for them. How could our labor improve on God's natural beauty, and yet He commands us to join Him in sacred work. Honest work is our privilege, and today we celebrate labor by thanking God, first of all, for giving us the capacity to build and to plant.
 
The work is God’s, not man’s. A friend of mine here in San Francisco is an illegal immigrant. He has been trying to get a “work permit” for several years, begging the government permission to join America’s labor force. The bigger the US Government gets, the harder it is to get a work permit. Certainly governments must do their best to rightly order the societies entrusted to their oversight. But “it is better to trust in God than to trust in men,” as every piece of money in our country states: “In God we trust.” Government can only do so much to order our lives, and truly the government that governs least governs best. In the words of St. Philip Neri, “He who wishes to be perfectly obeyed, should give but few orders.”
 
Today’s Mass includes these words in the gradual, from Psalm 117: “It is better to trust in the Lord, than to trust in men. It is better to trust in the Lord, than to trust in princes.” We don’t have “princes” in America, but we do have 20 million government employees. They do the best they can, I’m sure, but their ability to regulate labor, and every other aspect of our lives together, is quite limited. Obey just laws, certainly, and respect civil servants, but put not your absolute trust in anyone but God. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His justice” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, “and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Bruno Chaouat, professor of French and Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota, has written an illuminating article on ChatGPT (you can read it by clicking on the button above). His immediate concern is that students write their own papers rather than having ChatGPT “write” them. How can he teach his students to think for themselves if they let algorithms do the “thinking” for them? The “T” in ChatGPT stands for “transformer,” but it’s hard to see how using algorithms to write a paper “transforms” anything. All it does is regurgitate. Dr. Chaouat writes:
 
"ChatGPT concerns the essence of learning, which, along with reading and writing, pertains to the realm of experience. Experience is transformative: If I climb a mountain, I will not be the same person after my experience as before. I will have gone through a physical and mental effort and have presumably taken some risks. (“Experience” shares the same root as “peril.”) … To read (and to think and write) is to flirt with the abyss. When we read a monumental book, we are not guided by GPS. We are in uncharted territory and must surrender ourselves to the guidance of the author."
 
Two weeks ago I climbed Mt. Whitney with two friends, and I for one am still recovering my physical strength. Having struggled for three weeks on the John Muir Trail to reach that mountain, crossing snowbound passes and swollen rivers, carrying my pack up steep trails littered with shattered trees and rocks, asking myself each morning how I could keep going for two more weeks, I am a changed man. The physical exertions have changed my body, and the mental strain has changed my thinking. The severe beauty of three weeks in the Sierra Nevada has made me more human, and closer to the divine.
 
Climbing a mountain is a human experience. AI is not a human experience. It’s one more removal of ourselves from experience. The foot, being shod, feels not the earth as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins pointed out. Climbing a mountain, or writing an original thought, on the other hand, is transformative. Working through things ourselves rather than having “the government” or “technology” do it for us, exposing ourselves to calculated risks so as to discover things, transforms us. We become more like God, who made us in His image by endowing us with intellect and will, by actually using those gifts. The good news is that we are free. We can simply say “no thanks” to government agencies that want to act for us, and we can simply refuse technologies that want to think for us. We can write our own papers.
 
Most backpackers bring GPS technology into the wilderness these days. We made the conscious decision to rely only on a map and a compass (we also wanted to save money). One of us, misreading the map, got lost for a day. Neither he nor the other two of us were the same persons when we found each other 24 hours later. We realized how fragile we are in the cosmos, how stubborn and stupid we can be, and how much God provides for us. We are most grateful to the park rangers and other hikers who helped us find the lost hiker, and it was a truly human experience. A GPS would have pointed out the trail for us every three feet, but it was better for us to use our intellects and our wills, and to accept the help of other people, to find the path.
 
Dr. Chaouat’s article on ChatGPT is instructive, and Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem, ​God’s Grandeur, is beautiful:
 
                                             The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
                                                  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
                                                  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
                                             Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
                                             Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
                                                   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
                                                   And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
                                             Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
 
                                             And for all this, nature is never spent;
                                                   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
                                             And though the last lights off the black West went
                                                   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
                                             Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
                                                   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Today our John Muir Trail permit expired. We had until today to complete the trail, which we did indeed complete last Sunday. I’m grateful for the extra time, however, as it took us two more days than we had budgeted (which is one reason we ran short of food, and were gratefully resupplied by a kind ranger and some fellow hikers). A three-week hike in the wilderness holds many treasures for the backpacker, and one of them unfolded for me on August 2.
 
We had made camp the night before on Marie Lake, a mile south of Selden Pass. The next morning it was my turn to offer the morning Mass, and my job to find a suitable rock for the altar. I found a flattish boulder just before the sun rose, and deliberated whether to face east or west. Facing East would be painful, with my face directly into the blazing sun. Facing West would be much more comfortable, with my eyes sheltered from the sun’s blinding and burning rays.
 
The art of wilderness hiking is the art of orienteering, which literally means “pointing east,” toward the “orient.” The rising sun is often hailed in Latin as “O Oriens,” and Catholic worship for most of its twenty-one centuries has been offered to God “facing East.” The Lord came from the East (as in “we saw His Star rising in the East”) and is expected to return from the East. So Catholic priests, and Catholic altars, and Catholic churches, are “oriented” eastward, eagerly anticipating the Second Coming of the Lord from the East. The natural orientation of all life is toward the sun (just ask any sunflower); we naturally seek light and warmth. But the sun’s blazing light and heat can be painful, as can God’s burning love and truth and beauty. It can be too much for us at times, and we hide our faces from Him.
 
In the end, I braved the rising sun by facing East for that morning Mass. I couldn’t see the people around me, and could barely see the altar and missal, but isn’t that the essence of the mystery, after all? If we think we can “see” or understand the mystery of God’s Real Presence in the Mass, we are not looking very carefully into the reality. To look directly into the face of God would annihilate us, and even to peer into the depths through the sacraments terrifies us. But face East we must, in order to be ready for Him when He comes. 
 

A happy and blessed feast Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother! Because of the prevenient grace of her Immaculate Conception, God lifted Our Lady up to heaven at the moment of her death. She who fed God at her breast now dines with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at the eternal banquet of grace.
 
Yesterday I returned with two friends from 19 days in the wilderness, where one has to carefully ration one’s food. In fact, we ran out of food towards the end, but God provided a kindly forest service ranger and three generous Indian hikers who resupplied us.
 
We had hiked the John Muir Trail, from Yosemite to Mount Whitney, 200 miles and 47,000 feet of elevation gain. We spent almost three weeks climbing through rockfalls and blasted trees from avalanches, fording ice-cold rivers and digging for footholds over steep snowbound passes, enduring electrical storms with sleet and rain, and (worst of all!) unusually large clouds of relentless mosquitos. Snow covered the trail in many places, making it hard to find the trail on the other side, and one of us got lost for a day. Thanks be to God, he found his way back to the main trail as a search and rescue was beginning, and the Fellowship continued its journey. We reached the highest point in our country south of Alaska on Sunday morning and offered a Mass of thanksgiving in the emergency shelter as freezing wind and fog lashed the summit. How hard it is even to reach 14,505 feet on this planet! But God lifted Our Lady up into the highest heavens today by a perfectly simple gesture of grace. How good He is!
 
Yesterday I thought of food as I emptied my exhausted backpack. Only a dirty plastic bag with a dozen stale almonds remained of all the food we had carried over three weeks. I tossed the sour nuts into the garbage. The scraps of food we treasured on the trail were now contemptable to me. Back at home, who would attempt to choke down the pitifully-desiccated food we had treasured on the trail? I found a small bag of freeze-dried stroganov that had not made it into my pack. I would have given anything for that little bag of dried food in the wilderness, but now it seemed dirty and disgusting.
 
Our Lady has made it to the summit of perfection, by God’s grace. She lived on earthly food while on pilgrimage, but in heaven things so treasured on earth must seem utterly contemptible. We eat, with joy, the food God gives us on earth, but we eagerly anticipate another kind of food in the life of the world to come. Even the Holy Eucharist itself is only a poor foretaste of what God has prepared for those who love Him. We are all pilgrims in the wilderness, desperately rationing scraps of nourishment. But someday, like Our Lady, we will come into our true home, and take our seats at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

At a recent priests’ study week in Springfield, the capital of the great state of Illinois, we visited Lincoln’s tomb. As one approaches the burial chamber, one notices a bronze plaque with the words of Lincoln’s farewell address to his fellow townsfolk on the evening of February 11, 1861. The Illinois State Journal reported the next day: “We have known Mr. Lincoln for many years; we have heard him speak upon a hundred different occasions; but we never saw him so profoundly affected, nor did he ever utter an address, which seemed to us as full of simple and touching eloquence…. Although it was raining fast when he began to speak, every hat was lifted, and every head bent forward to catch the last words of the departing chief. When he said, with the earnestness of a sudden inspiration of feeling, that with God's help he should not fail, there was an uncontrollable burst of applause.”
 
The Illinois State Journal provided the text as written down by the reporters who heard him speak:
 
“My friends - No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”
 
Although Lincoln never professed a particular Christian creed, the clarity of his words in 1861 contrasts strikingly with the elusive words presidents use today. Clearly Lincoln believed in God, and depended upon God. “Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended [George Washington], I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.” The question of human existence is always the question of God. Is there a God, or are we alone on this windswept planet? How much better life would be if there were a God!
 
Next week about a million people will gather in Lisbon for Pope Francis’ “World Youth Day.” The event’s coordinator, Portuguese Bishop Américo Aguiar, said on July 6 that “we don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.” He was apparently trying to be welcoming, but it was certainly unfortunate wording from a Catholic bishop. The Portuguese prelate has walked back his words since then, but American bishop Robert Barron wrote that the Church “most certainly does maintain that evangelization is its central, pivotal, most defining work.” If Abraham Lincoln “evangelized” as President of the United States (urging the people of Springfield to trust in God), we can expect Catholic bishops to be even more zealous in spreading the good news that there is a God, in whom alone we find joy, health, and peace.
 
How much more well-ordered our lives were when most Americans believed in God! Imagine Abraham Lincoln facing the Civil War—or simply his own inner demons—without God. “Trusting in Him,” Lincoln said, “let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.” And all has been well. Without God, we must depend on drugs, sex, and technology, but those things have quite a limited shelf-life. How much better to see what is right before our eyes: that there is a natural order. Cats almost always land on their feet, and the planet continues to turn on its axis.  Lincoln tells us from the grave that there is a First Cause and Final Purpose to our existence, and that even if we die, we can trust that all will yet be well.

​Today is the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The former was the gifted Bishop of Rochester in England, and the latter the brilliant Lord Chancellor of the Realm. While every other bishop and every other government official caved into the King’s demands (as did his many wives and mistresses, some of whom lost their heads for their subservience), only one bishop and one civic leader said “no” to the tyrant. They lost their heads too, but they lost their lives without losing their virtue. When John Fisher was named a cardinal by the Pope, King Henry reportedly said “tell the Pope not to bother sending his red hat to London. I’ll send Fisher’s head to Rome.” John Fisher was executed on this day in 1535, and Thomas More two weeks later on July 6.
 
Some say the biopic on Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons (1966), is one of the best movies ever made. The title is apt: Thomas More, and John Fisher, did not change with the seasons. They lived according to perennial truths, and so were men for every political and cultural season. While political power swung crazily back and forth during King Henry VIII’s time, these men rode storms out with composure, including the storm of their own execution. It’s that serene fidelity, that rocklike confidence, that attracts us, especially in our own time of violent political swings from left to right and right to left.
 
Catholics leadership in this country has named June 22 to June 29 “Religious Freedom Week.” June 29 is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, also executed by a dictatorial state (under the Emperor Nero). Tonight in San Francisco the Archdiocese is sponsoring two speakers on Parental Rights, at Mater Dolorosa Church in South San Francisco, at 7pm. A bill in the California Assembly would take children from parents who do not agree with gender ideology. The talk would be worth attending, because we need to know what we are up against. But above all, we must look to the witness of the martyrs to keep our serenity, now matter what happens.

Today is the Feast of the Sacred Heart, a devotion most Protestants and many Catholics find rather odd. My childhood parish had a life-size statue of Jesus on the front lawn, holding his own heart outside of his chest. We kids thought this was just the weirdest thing. So I asked Mom, and she told me it was Jesus offering his heart to me. That made sense. If God is not love, then what good is He? You can have all the candy bars in the world, but if your Mom doesn’t love you, life would still be unbearably sad.
 
“The term ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ denotes the entire mystery of Christ,” the Catholic Church teaches, and Pope Benedict said that “the essential nucleus of Christianity is expressed in the Heart of Jesus.” When he became the Pope in 2005, Benedict chose “love” as the topic for his first open letter to all the world. He began with a line from St. John’s first epistle, Deus caritas est, “God is love.” Religion must be a thing of the heart if it’s going to be any good at all.
 
Last night I watched a heartwarming Disney movie from 1962, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. The last time I watched that movie was fifty years ago (Mom took all us little kids to see it), and it still touches my heart. It portrays village life in 19th century Holland, when Europe was still Christian. Movies back then allowed characters to mention the word “God,” and the Brinker family do their best to practice Christian virtues such as humility, forgiveness, diligence, and trustful prayer. But, for the most part, religion is kept safely out of sight. No one goes to church, and the Brinker’s cottage has no Bible on the mantel (which Dutch Protestants of that period would certainly have prominently in view).
 
By 1962, Hollywood had already decided to keep religion safely behind the scenes. We thought we could have it both ways. We thought we could sustain a well-ordered society without the personal sacrifices religion requires. We thought public faith as window-dressing was enough. But 60 years from that charming movie, Disney has found it necessary not only to cancel religion but to belittle faith in God. Just about every movie today speaks the same message: you have the right and the duty to choose every aspect your life. You are your own god, and any religion that gets in your way must be removed.
 
“He who is not for me,” Jesus said, “is against me.” Even in 1962, Disney was ambivalent about religion. Today Disney is decidedly against Christianity. A society that does not choose to be “for God” will inevitably end up being “against God.”
 
The good news is that God is love, and love wins. The “essential nucleus” of reality is divine love, and although cultures make a go of it without God, or try to win wars against God, love always wins. The Sacred Heart is eternal, and after every civilization collapses, the love of God remains. Do you want to be on the “right side of history?” My advice is to take the long view. Cultural movements come and go, but God remains. His love is everlasting. He offers that love, His “Heart,” to all who come to Him. So, as Jesus implores in the Gospel today, “come to me.” There he is, on the front lawn, holding out His Heart to us.

​Legislators in California legalized marijuana in 2016 and will probably legalize harder drugs in the near future. In practice, Fentanyl, Meth, and Crack are already legal in San Francisco, because the poor that we feed every Sunday afternoon in the Tenderloin buy and sell it openly. After taking the drug they curl up in catatonic positions on sidewalks and gutters, insensible to anything around them.
 
Many argue that addictive drugs should be legalized because the war on drugs is failing (with even up to eight years of expensive “treatment,” 80% return to their addiction within a year). Dr. Michael Clune (author of White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin) recently made the case that the “war on drugs” fails because it relies on “treatment” rather than “recovery.” The “treatment” approach is chemical (using other drugs to overcome addiction), while the “recovery” approach is spiritual (recovering spiritual purity by calling upon a higher power). For people who deny the existence of a spiritual dimension to the human person, attempts at spiritual “recovery” are useless. But no one can deny the success rates of 12-step and other “recovery” programs.
 
A friend of mine was addicted to eating. When he topped 300 pounds, he signed himself into a residential recovery program, and he overcame his addiction. He’s been clean for six years. “My addiction was essentially a spiritual problem” he told me later. To enter the Kingdom, Jesus says, we must become like little children: we must recover our innocence, our childlike trust in a benevolent power greater than ourselves. For an agnostic, this is quite difficult. If you doubt the existence of a Holy Spirit, you suspect that we are alone on this lonely planet. Humanity cannot expect help from anything greater than our own technology. In Matt Damon’s words from the movie The Martian, in order to survive in a hostile environment “I’ve got to science the hell out of it.”
 
The Church’s task is to help people recover the freedom of the children of God. The problem is sin, the rebellion against the natural order. The solution is repentance, returning to a childlike trust in God’s will. Every priest and bishop finds this task disagreeable. Who wants to say to a smiling and supportive congregation on Sunday, “repent, you bunch of lazy sinners!”
 
Throughout history some Church leaders have tried to find ways to avoid teaching the hard truths of the Gospel that got Jesus crucified. In October of last year the Vatican’s “synod department” published a document calling for “a church capable of radical inclusion.” In January Cardinal Robert McElroy expanded on that idea, suggesting that the Church bless sexual acts outside of marriage, including (no surprise here) homosexual acts. In response, fellow bishops pointed out that the first word that Jesus preached was not “welcome,” but “repent.” Before we can all sit at table together, we need to clear the air: we are living in ways that contradict the Gospel. “If you love me,” Jesus said, “keep my commandments.” So the Catholic Mass begins with repentance, with Kyrie Eleison. It is necessary to wash one’s hands before sitting down for a meal.
 
I’m reading through the Book of Acts these days, and on almost every page, in just about every homily by the first bishops of the Church, is the call to repentance. The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a call to repentance so that we can be in fellowship with the good God. It’s not easy. Dr. Clune said, of his own addiction to heroin, that the only way an addict can recover is to make getting clean the most important thing in his life. To succeed, he needs to ask for help from beyond himself. In Christian terms, that’s called “repentance,” and it just feels so good!
 
June is the month of the Sacred Heart, and today is the feast of Corpus Christi. For Catholics, June is a month of humility, when we bow before the exquisite humility of God. His Sacred Heart burns with love for the people who reject Him. He comes to us in the Holy Eucharist at every Mass, as a tiny piece of bread, and today we will walk in procession, not waving “pride” banners, but gently bearing the Holy Sacrament through the streets. While many churches in San Francisco will have “pride Masses” this month, the true Church will offer the Mass of the Sacred Heart, the Mass of divine humility. How we long to be clean, and simple, and loving like the Sacred Heart of Jesus!