​On March 10, Catholics traditionally commemorate the heroic witness of the Forty Martyrs, Christian soldiers who were executed by the Roman government in the year 320. A luminous Band of Brothers, they died in Sebaste (then in Armenia, now in Turkey) by freezing, exposed naked on a frozen pond throughout the night. One soldier’s courage failed him; he renounced Christ, was taken to a warm bath, and quickly died of shock. One of the guards, seeing the faith of the other 39, removed his garments and joined them on the ice, bringing the total back to forty.
 
In today’s Mass readings, Joseph’s eleven brothers seek to kill him, even though he is his father’s favorite son. In the gospel, vineyard workers kill the landowner’s favorite son, reasoning that by so doing they will inherit the vineyard. But how can these workers be so irrational as to think that the landowner will reward them for killing his son? How do Joseph’s brothers imagine that killing Jacob’s favorite son will endear them to their father? How could they be so irrational?
 
The irrational is a sign of the demonic. Satan is a “liar from the beginning,” the father of lies, and he seeks to blind people to right reason. Irrational behavior leads to death, which is the end goal of the demonic. Widespread irrationality is a sure sign of the demonic.
 
Powerful institutions in our society speak and act irrationally, forcing unreason upon all of us. The law defines a female as a male but requires female-specific medical treatment for women who identify as men. Hospitals that perform abortions deny that what is in a mother’s womb is “a baby” but advertise their maternity services with billboards of pregnant women expecting “your baby.” Critical Race Theory demands an end to racism by judging people on the color of their skin.
 
The internal contradictions that abound in our powerful institutions are a sure sign of the demonic. He tries to terrorize us by irrational fears, and to bully us into submission, to impose unreasonable laws upon us just because he says so. But he is weak, and God is strong. Stand up to him with the strength, and the rationality, of God’s own Word. To resist the irrational requires courage, perseverance, and dependence on God’s grace. By God’s grace I’ve been praying in front of abortion facilities for 35 years, calmly (with some regrettable exceptions) speaking truth to power.
 
The martyrs we commemorate today provide a luminous witness of calm rationality. Against the full might of the Roman Empire, they stood on a frozen pond 1700 years ago simply witnessing that there is a God, since it is impossible that the universe created itself. We are not gods, but God loves us despite our puerile petulance. Keep calm, and speak rationally, with eyes fixed on the Logos and logical principle of all that exists, Jesus Christ, the Word of God.

Yesterday, although I had vowed to eschew music for Lent, I listened to Mozart play his first composition (written at the precocious age of five) on our old school piano. Well, it was actually a Mozart stunt double with a slightly lopsided costume store wig and baggy frock coat, but it was the music that counted. Mozart lived at our Classical School yesterday!
 
Our fourth-grade teacher, Miss Carmel Richard, who is also a music teacher, pulled off a school-wide music festival yesterday, herself playing Mozart’s elder sister Nannerl. Somehow Carmel convinced me to dress up like Pope Gregory, although I ended up looking more like a cross between Don Bosco and Hercule Poirot. In any case my peculiar attire arrested the attention of our schoolchildren, a sea of wide-eyed youngsters to whom I described in foppishly Italianate English how I had invented “Gregorian Chant.” Next was Wolfgang Amadeus himself, in excited and thickly Teutonic tones, describing how he had begun composing at age five and never stopped. Then there was Beethoven and J.S. Bach, again in charmingly affected German accents, and finally Sir Thomas Ravenscroft in the Queen’s own English. Between live piano pieces and violin duets, Miss Carmel (AKA Wolfie’s older sister) would run up to the CD player for some harpsichord and chamber ensemble pieces.
 
I usually listen to Classical music every morning while washing up, but I have been fasting from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart since Ash Wednesday. “Hunger is the best spice,” they say, and so hearing (and seeing) the beauty of these compositions was a feast to a starving man. But consider this: most children today have been starved of Classical Music all their lives. They’ve never heard (let alone seen) good music. Yesterday’s performances opened up a wonderland for their ears and minds. And that is why classically-educated children are so happy.
 
I was nine years old when I first heard Gregorian Chant. I was bounding down the stairs for dinner, and Dad had put on a record of French monks chanting the Missa de angelis. The sound lifted me up to heaven, opened my intellect to a new dimension of creation, stirred my heart with a burning desire to know and love God, and inspired a fascination with all things, Great and Small. Most “music” today is self-referential and performative, unable to escape the centrifugal force of one’s own navel. Classical music, by contrast, is outward-looking, and Gregorian Chant in particular is positively universal. By its measured order and comprehensive perspective, good music affords listeners the joy of beholding the entirety of the human experience; it reveals how individual parts of the created order relate to each other in forming an integral whole.
 
Besides all that, good music is good fun. In our period costumes yesterday, portraying charming cultural accents and playing the sprightly capriccios of Mozart and Bach, we laughed and rejoiced to see ourselves as parts of God’s wonderful universe. A good school teaches good music, and so teaches goodness along with truth and beauty. That’s why our students—including myself yesterday afternoon—are so happy!

​I woke up in silence today, an hour before my alarm. I rested in silence for an hour before getting up to begin Lent. Yesterday we burned last year’s palms at School Assembly, and today I will impose ashes from that fire. Each us must pass through the fires of earthly death one day; our ashes will rest in the silence of the tomb for a time.
 
I woke up in silence today, the first day of Lent. Usually I wash up in the morning to the sounds of either Mozart or a stimulating podcast. But for the next 40 days I will shave in silence; I will do my morning stretches in the still emptiness of a city before dawn. I will listen only to the Word of God before going downstairs and watch nothing more than the light quietly rising from the east.
 
Fasting from food is essential, but fasting from noise is no less essential. Giving up sweets heals our bodies, but giving up noise heals our souls. Silence of the ears, silence of the eyes, silence of the touch: this purifies our souls to receive God and His wonders. This Lent, I warmly recommend fasting from screen time, from music, from podcasts and “news,” from useless conversations (e.g., gossip). Read a book instead. The written word, received in silence and recollection, is still the best way to see and hear God’s truth, goodness, and beauty.
 
I woke up in silence today, dreading my usual discipline of silence for forty days. Having entered the emptiness, however, my deeper senses quickly sharpened, and I rejoiced in the stillness. In the silence of the heart God speaks, and I’m ready to listen.

There’s one thing we can all agree on these days: The bad guys are in charge. The right says the left has seized power, and the left says the right still calls the shots. Someone paints a huge “resist” sign above the city, and someone else paints “damn right” underneath it (in San Francisco the “damn right” gets quickly erased). Republicans say Democrats take their orders from the “deep state,” and Democrats say Republicans take their orders from some Fascist Man in the High Tower.
 
Everyone, it seems, suspects there is a “deep state” pulling the levers of global power, and not without reason. My contribution to these ruminations is to point out that … the Latin language has three degrees of intensity: positive (“deep”), comparative (“deeper”), and superlative (“deepest”). In Latin that would be profundus, profundior, and profundissimus.
 
I’m going to say that there is a “Deep State” and a “Deep Church,” but that is not new. There have always been clandestine structures of power beneath the visible structures of every organization—things are never quite what they seem. The leaders of both Church and State say one thing and do the opposite—why? Why does Pope Francis repudiate homosexual acts but then empower those who promote homosexual acts? Why does the Mayor of San Francisco condemn homelessness but then encourage homelessness? They are influenced, and perhaps at times even controlled by, deeper powers.
 
I’m also going to say, however, that there is a “deeper state” (before that term even becomes popular), and I’m going leapfrog over the “deeper state” to say that there is a “Deepest State.” And I’m going to say that no one tells the leader of the Deepest State, the Profundissimus, what to do. I’m going to say the Deepest State is Ipse Actus Essendi Subsistens, in the words of Aquinas, the “Subsistent Act of Being,” and that that this Being Itself is a Person, and that that He is all good, and that the Deepest State of the universe is good. In fact, He said that the world is "very good," because it was made by Him. The bad guys always lose when they pick a fight with Profundissimus (which in Latin means both the "The Deepest" and the "Most High").
 
So don’t worry about the Deep State or the Deeper State, or anything else, because there is in fact a Deepest State, and Jesus Christ is He. Living in San Francisco, I see the marks of a disordered Deep State all around me: gender bender sloganeering on every street corner (paid for with my extraordinarily high California taxes), poop and needles and trash littering the sidewalks of a city that "prides" itself, Mom-and Pop shops boarded up and neighborhood pharmacies driven out of business thanks to a city attorney paid to protect the little guy, potholes big enough to swallow a scooter in a city that has billions in accumulated revenue, and general sadness on faces still hiding behind masks. But, I have to say, amid these ruins, I see vastly more evidence of a beautiful and rightly-ordered Deepest State: birds that welcome the day every morning, blue skies and blue seas and white clouds and white flowers, fresh air and fresh faces in my school and church, smiles and laughter from the street dwellers who gladly receive a sandwich, a pair of socks, and a smile from us on Sunday afternoons.
 
The Deeper State (run by a guy with two horns and a forked tail) tells us he is in charge, but old hairy-legs is not in fact in charge. There is a Deepest State, and His Goodness always prevails in the end. Just Stay Calm and Believe in Him!

​Catholic Schools Week
Catholic Schools Week begins with this Sunday Mass, with these words from the opening prayer of the Mass: “Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honor you with all our mind, and love everyone in truth of heart.” We honor God by using our minds; God is glorified when we educate the human intellect that He gave us. Indeed, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” but much of what passes for education today cannot be considered independent and critical thinking. Many schools and most universities today, if I may be excused for saying so, simply generate groupthink and propaganda. It is simply irrational not to posit a First Cause to empirical phenomena, and a rightly-ordered society, a peaceful and just human community, begins by honoring this “First Cause” with our minds—being “mindful” of the First Principle and Final End of all reality. By using the minds God gave us, as the opening prayer continues, we attain the capacity to “love everyone in truth of heart.” One cannot love what one does not know, so education in the truth must precede love, and even basic respect, for others. Love comes through an understanding of Truth—the truth about God, the truth about man, the truth about all of the natural world. Authentic educators lead students to see the whole of reality, from the first principles of philosophy to an empirical knowledge of astronomy to molecular biology and subatomic physics, to geometric theorems and every kind of mathematics, to the science of history and languages and music and art. Every subject brings us to God’s truth, and every subject is integral to “Catholic”  (meaning universal) education.  Learning how to love by learning how the human person and the natural world works is the genius of Catholic education.
 
A New School
In 1894 God gave this part of San Francisco a precious gift: a new parish, which the Irish horse farmers out here asked to be called “Our Lady, Star of the Sea.” In 1909 God gave the Richmond District another treasure: a Catholic school taught by the sisters of St. Joseph. Five years ago the Archdiocesan superintendent of Schools asked me to make Star of the Sea School a Catholic Classical Academy, reclaiming the integrated classical method of teaching, the full patrimony of Catholic education. “Seek the Lord, you humble of the earth” the prophet Zephaniah tells us in the first reading. “Seek justice, seek humility.” The Catholic approach to education requires an intellectual humility that discovers knowledge rather than inventing it. The Catholic approach receives truths from God rather than fabricating our own “truths.”
 
Peace and Joy
Parents of our school tell me that their children are so much more peaceful at Stella Maris, and I think that this is because they are learning where they have come from and where they are going. Parents tell me that their children want to go to school now because each day reveals new wonders to them. Parents tell me that the anger and sadness with which they used to come home from school have been replaced by a joyful humility.
 
Teaching our children the truth, goodness, and beauty of the natural order is how we “honor God with our minds.” Be mindful of heaven, and your mind will flourish on earth. Be mindful of the truths of God, and your mind will see the truths of man. A Catholic education does not teach children to “make” their own reality, or to control their environment, but to seek understanding and wisdom and beauty in the world as it is given to us. This intellectual humility and realism is what distinguishes a Catholic education. It is our patrimony, and the Archbishop has asked our parish school to reclaim what is rightfully ours as heirs of the Kingdom, for the glory of God and the good of the world.

This morning I vested in red for the Feast of St. Polycarp [in the older calendar], bishop of Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey), martyred in 155 by fire. Polycarp is the second generation of Christians, a disciple of John the Evangelist, a disciple of Christ. When the Roman government attempted to force the good bishop to burn incense at the altar of the emperor (who had declared himself a god), the old man said these words: "Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and Savior? You threaten me with a fire that burns for a season, and after a little while is quenched, but you are ignorant of the fire of everlasting punishment that is prepared for the wicked.” That last comment didn’t endear him to the Roman officials, so without further ado they lit the mound of brush and wood under his body. But then a curious thing happened: the fire raced up “like a great sail” around the old bishop, “as it were a dome encircling the martyr’s body.” After the flames had died down they had to dispatch the old man Polycarp with sword thrusts to his grizzled chest.
 
Polycarp was a presbyter, a Greek word meaning “old man,” from which we get the word “priest.” He is kind a patron saint of old men because, unlike almost all of the first-generation disciples who died young (as martyrs), Polycarp died old. Second-generation disciples lived during a time of relative calm for the Church. It wasn’t until his 86th year that persecutions ramped up, and that Polycarp’s faith and the Roman government came into an impassable conflict.
 
In the end, why did this kindly old man have to be executed? The epistle for today’s Mass is from 1 John 3:10-16, words that Polycarp (as a student of John) probably heard John himself speak. “Do not be like Cain, who killed his brother,” John writes. And why did Cain slay his own brother? Simply, John says, because Cain’s works were wicked, and his brother’s works were just. Those who worship false gods cannot tolerate those who worship the true God. Christians in a pagan world must expect martyrdom. As they tie us to the pyre, however, God will give us the grace to speak kindly to those who kill us. Martyrdom means “witness” in Greek, and what martyrs witness to above all is the love of Christ, pouring with his blood from the Cross upon those who crucified Him.
 
I am a presbyter, but most of my priesthood has been in a time of relative calm for the Church. I’ve long had the premonition that I will die, or at least face jail time, for the Catholic faith. But here I am, in my 61st year, and still alive. If I die for the faith, along with other priests and bishops of my generation, it will be as an old man. How much easier it is to let go of this world as an old man! With Qoheleth, I say “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.” How silly it is, on the other hand, for old people to cling to the things of this world as our physical powers wane, as our memory, our friends and our influence become negligible. As we grow old, and as the culture grows increasingly intolerant of Christians, the older generation must keep our eyes and hearts on Christ, on the life of the world to come. Thus we will leave this world with a peaceful mien and kindly disposition, commending ourselves, and all our lives, and all our fellow travelers in this world, to God’s loving mercy.

I expect a few hundred visitors to our parish this weekend as San Francisco hosts the annual Walk for Life West Coast. My parishioners and dear friends, Eva Muntean and Dolores Meehan, founded this magnificent witness to human life in 2004 and have managed the tens of thousands who come to our fair city every January to walk for life for the last nineteen years. In the name of God, I welcome visitors to Star of the Sea and San Francisco this week.
 
Guests often remark on the sixteen shrines to Our Lady (sixteen historical apparitions) along the east and west walls of our church. I’ve written small brochures describing the apparitions for each of the sixteen shrines. It has been a rewarding exercise to research and write these trifolds, sifting out the essential facts and messages of each apparition, fitting each of them into just five short pages. I just finished writing the brochure on Our lady of Manaoag (Philippines), who appeared to a poor farmer in 1602 in much the same way she appeared to Juan Diego in in 1531. In both cases she came as a mother, giving and protecting life. In both 16th century Mexico and 17th century Philippines, human life was grievously violated. The Aztec religion practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale in Mexico; tribal warfare wasted many human lives in the Philippines, which was largely animist, seeing human life as no more sacred than that of plants and animals. Sadly, our culture has reverted to human sacrifice (aborting children to increase personal wealth) and animism (valuing very young children less than pets and whales).
 
God continues to send his Holy Mother to help us cherish every human life. “I am the mother of the one true God by whom all live” she told Juan Diego in 1531. She has appeared in other times and places where human life was in danger of violation—Kibeho, for example, to warn of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, or Fatima during the Great War in 1917 to warn of a “worse war to come.”
 
In present-day California, the war against human life has intensified with 22 million dollars poured into passing Proposition One amending the state constitution. It is now legal to kill a child up to the moment of birth without restriction, and to leave children born alive after abortion to die. We turn to Our Lady, Mother of Life (mother of Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life), with many heartfelt rosaries, as we witness to God’s gift of human life. Violating human life, we violate every other form of life, and we destroy the earth. With Oskar Schindler, who quoted an old Jewish proverb, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire,” and Dr. Seuss’ elephant Horton, who insisted that “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” we insist that every life is a precious gift. Honoring one human life, we honor God, and we hope to live eternally with Him in heaven.

I woke before dawn to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. It is the day of my baptism! Sixty-one years ago today my parents brought me to Star of the Sea Parish on City Island to have Fr. William J. McCormack baptize me. I’ve never been the same, and I thank all three of these elders for taking care of that little mite on New Year’s Eve, 1961, in the Bronx.
 
Today I will join Matthew Gariano and Tara Chan in holy wedlock at noon as rain washes over the land. The “news” calls it an ‘atmospheric river,’ nastily describing the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God in mean and upsetting terms. Rain is indeed a river, a river of grace pouring from heaven’s ocean of mercy. They say we will get eight feet of snow in the mountains before the clouds clear, enough water to fill our reservoirs and water our crops all year, not to mention skiing and snowshoeing well into May.
 
The waters of baptism grant us many strengths, but one of them is to perceive God’s providence in every circumstance, and to praise Him at all times. That’s the grace I ask for this new year: to see good in every person, to see beauty in the created order, and to give thanks in all circumstances. I ask for the grace to live the grace of my baptism, to love Him as He’s never been loved before, to render Him praise in right measure for His great glory.  
 
O Lord, let me not grumble even once in this new year of grace, but let me give thanks!

Over the last three weeks, the Advent liturgies have focused on Christ’s Second Coming as supreme judge, in awesome and terrible glory. From December 17 the readings shift to the Birth of Christ (today’s Gospel is the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, and the first meeting of their unborn children). 

Every morning, before facing the day’s troubles, I read a chapter of the Bible, from Genesis to Apocalypse. Since there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, it takes me about three years to go through the entire Book of Books. This morning I read Our Lord’s description of the end times in Matthew 24:21: “For then there will be great distress such as, until now, since the world began, there never has been, nor ever will be again.” Let the reader understand. On the Day the Lord returns to render final justice, the terrible crimes and sins of priest and people alike will be burned away by fire, and who can survive that judgement? 
 
We usually don't take Christ’s apocalyptic warnings as a matter of concern. He said them 2000 years ago and so far nothing has happened. We will probably die in our beds, or perhaps sedated in a “care facility,” before those fearsome days take place. But, in fact, each of us will die, and after death I will held accountable for what I did in the flesh. Who can imagine the trauma of that Day when I am judged for the sins and injustices I committed against God and man? Verse 22 continues: “And if that time had not been shortened, no one would survive. But shortened that time shall be, for the sake of those who are chosen.” We have all been chosen to go to heaven, but we must accept that gift of God. We must cling to the First Coming of Christ, the irresistible smile of Jesus from His cradle in Bethlehem, in order to endure the Second Coming of that same Christ. God will render justice; he will "purify the sons of Levi" by fire, and not one of us will survive it, unless we take refuge in the Sacred Heart of the Babe in Bethlehem.

Today we commemorate St. Lucy, the saint of light (her name comes from the Latin word lux, lucis, for “light”). Lucy is one of a half dozen Roman virgin martyrs, along with Saints Agnes, Agatha, Cecilia, etc. She died in 304 during the Diocletian persecutions, at the age of 21, in the town of Syracuse in Sicily. She is celebrated on the old Winter Solstice, December 13 (before the calendar was adjusted in 1582), the darkest day of the year. In Scandinavian countries, which have particularly cold and dark winters, St. Lucy’s Day is celebrated with processions of young women bearing lighted candles in their hair.
 
A similar arrangement can be seen in the Advent “Rorate Caeli” liturgies, Advent Masses celebrated in the coldest and darkest time of night (just before dawn). The altar and books are illuminated only by candlelight, manifesting the first words of the Mass, “rorate caeli” (from Isaiah 45:8)—"let the Savior drop down from heaven like dew”—like starlight from heaven to light up our dark earth. The Archbishop of San Francisco will be celebrating his annual Rorate Caeli Mass at the cathedral tomorrow at 5:30am, and I will be celebrating our Rorate Caeli Mass at Star of the Sea on December 20 at 7am. Last Advent we lit 85 candles to illuminate our vast church for the Rorate Mass. Rather than curse the darkness, we light candles—lots of them!
  
God bless you, Fr. Joseph Illo