​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 

Today we celebrate St. Nicholas, the fatherly bishop of Myra (then a Greek city near the sea, now the Turkish city of Demre). Yesterday I told our schoolchildren how, around the year 310, he quietly left bags of gold at night in the home of three poor women, saving them from misery. The children looked up in wonder as they made the connection: “Saint Nicholas … Santa Claus!”
 
St. Nicholas provided joy for his people during the Great Persecution of the Emperor Diocletian. Today the Church is again under persecution, but in more subtle ways. Clever use of digital media trivializes the Gospel, cheap products and contemptible entertainment corrupt our hearts, and many Catholics have apostatized. Faithful clergy and parents ask what can be done as their children lose the joy of faith, becoming vacant-eyed slaves to their i-phones.  
 
Nicholas of Myra grew up as the Roman Empire was declining. Educational, economic, and political systems were coming apart. In 395 the imperial armies collapsed and by 410 Rome could not defend itself from gothic invaders who overran the Imperial City. Nevertheless, the good bishop did not lose his joy. He kept his eyes on Jesus. Many families in my own parish have not lost the joy of knowing Jesus either. Despite the confusion and anger around us today, these families and individuals radiate joy.
 
Today in the chapel, after morning prayer, St. Nicholas gave me the gift of joy. God had given it to him, and he gave it to me as I read about his life: “After the death of his parents, Nicholas began to consider how he might make use of his great wealth…. Some little time later Nicholas threw a double sum of gold into the house. The noise awakened the man and he pursued the fleeing figure, calling out, ‘Stop! Stop! Don’t hide from me!’ and ran faster until he saw that it was Nicholas.” Picture this middle-aged father who had despaired to the point of selling his own daughters into prostitution—a death sentence, really—racing after the fleeing Nicholas! A thrill of hope surged through my core as I considered the joyful energy of both pursued and pursuer. 
 
Later, when the local prelate was looking for a new bishop for Myra, “Nicholas, miraculously guided by God, went early to the church and was the first to enter.… Filled with the simplicity of a dove, he bowed his head and answered ‘Nicholas, the servant of your holiness.’ Then all the bishops led him in and installed him on the episcopal throne. But he, amidst his honors, always preserved his formed humility and gravity of manner.”
 
I urge you to read the lives of the saints early and often. The little monthly magazine Magnificat has a one-page saint story every day, and publishers like Ignatius Press have produced hundreds of book-length biographies. It is the Bible, and the Lives of the Saints, that will keep us from despairing in our own time of decline. Ask the saints to give you the gift of joy so that you will be able to give that same joy to your own children. St. Nicholas, pray for us!
​

“San Francisco is one big singles’ bar” someone told me a few years ago. Young adults migrate to the cities for tech jobs and other thrilling employment; they find lots to keep them excited in cities; the years go by and they remain single.
 
I moved to San Francisco after college in 1983 and found it very exciting, even for a daily-Mass-going, daily-rosary-praying, pro-life activist college graduate. My little brother and I arrived with one small suitcase each; both of us found girlfriends, but neither of us married them. When he did marry, my brother moved to a sensibly small town, and when I married it was to the Church as a Roman Catholic priest in a sensibly suburban diocese. And yet I missed the city, and eventually the city missed me: the archbishop gave me an assignment in the city.
 
When I returned to the Big Singles’ Bar on the Bay eight years ago, the Archbishop gave me a task: establish a Catholic Young Adults group. I did so, and Star of the Sea has one of the city’s most successful Catholic singles apostolates. When our young adults marry (24 of them have done so over the last 18 months), they drop out of the Young Adults Group and most leave the city. I greatly miss them, but I am happy that they have found love. Mission accomplished.  
 
But many young adults do not find love. They spend years, perhaps the rest of their lives, searching for love and suffering disappointment. Certainly those who marry will also suffer disappointment, but at least they have found love in sacramental matrimony. Matrimony, by the way, means “mother-hood” or “baby making” from the Latin mater. Although marriage is not perfect, it will save the spouses if they remain open to what matrimony was designed to do; that is, to bear children and educate them for heaven.
 
Matrimony is a good thing in itself, even if no marriage is perfect. The Sacrament of Matrimony works well enough, however, like a car that doesn’t run perfectly but gets you where you need to go, or like a job that annoys at times but pays the bills and contributes some good to society. Marriage is like any friendship that has points of irritation but is better, in the end, than no friendship.
 
I have been pastor and father to many single people over the years. Many suffer quietly for years, waiting to be loved and at a loss as to why no one wants them. Certainly many married people despair of love too—the “neglected wife who knows her husband is ashamed to be seen with her” (Peter Leithart), the unwanted husband despised by his wife and hated by his children. But to remain single is never to have even been given a chance at love.
 
When I was ten years old, TV shows modeled marriage and family: Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, even The Partridge Family. Then came that awful show Three’s Company, and from then on New York and Los Angeles taught us that marriage was for losers. Success in life was to remain single: free, in control, and endlessly entertained (coincidentally, by the same products New York and Los Angles were selling).
 
Single, free, and in control is not good for most of the young adults I know in San Francisco. My job as a father to all my young adults is to get them married. It is the sacred task of all fathers who love their children.

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):
​
“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.