Today is the patronal feast of my parish, Our Lady, Star of the Sea. I offered the first full Mass for my mother’s soul today at the early morning liturgy, which is fitting because she taught me to how love our heavenly mother.
​
My greatest fear—and I confess I was afraid, which is always a lack of faith—was that Mom would die alone. My brother took her to the hospital a few days ago for a chest x-ray and they found pneumonia in her lungs, in addition to her chronic congestive heart failure. The doctor gave her a few days to live, but mercifully did not restrict visitors. So on Friday the whole tribe was able to spend time with Mom in her hospital room: Dad (at age 95) led the charge, followed by my siblings and their wives from near and far. With luminous energy, she sang happy birthday to my brother-in-law and welcomed all with shining eyes.

Still, I was worried that she would gasp her last breath on earth alone in a hospital room. It was during the 9:30 Mass yesterday morning, being celebrated by another priest, that I had a moment to call my brother, who had just texted that he was going in to see Mom. He answered the phone in a quiet voice and said the Mom had just died five minutes ago. He and his wife were reading Psalm 23 to her, and had begun one of Mom’s favorite songs, In the Garden, when she took a deep breath, and exhaled one last time. She expired during the morning Mass, just after the lector was reading her name in the prayers of the faithful. An hour later, I offered the next Mass for her soul and realized that for this she had prepared me for the priesthood.

Yesterday a dear friend, whose mother also died on a Sunday just five weeks before my mother, invited me to her Mom’s house with some close friends “to celebrate the successful completion of our mothers’ earthly course.” At the end of the meal I said grace and prayed the usual prayer for the “souls of the faithful departed.” Like a flash of lightning it struck me that my mother was now one of those souls, now passed beyond the thin veil separating time from eternity. I have shed a few tears, but the same conviction comes to me when I learned of Mother Teresa’s death in 1997: she is closer to me know than she could ever have been on earth. She is closer to God now, filled with an understanding love not possible on our side of the grave. Thanks be to God.

For a society that prides itself on self-expression and personal choice, we got lots of rules.

A few weeks ago I took a stroll on a deserted beach at the Jersey Shore, a charming spit of land arching into the Atlantic called Sandy Hook. After I made it past all the signs about mask-wearing and hand-sanitizing and six-feet, a six-foot sign stood between me and the wide-open beach. It said: NO grilling. NO littering. NO kites. NO Pets. NO tents. NO camping. NO fires. NO glass containers. NO metal detectors. NO bicycles.

Hmmmm. Ten “Thou Shalt Nots.” And then, just for good measure, another sign to my right added NO alcohol (because there are NO lifeguards). Eleven commandments for a deserted beach. On Mount Sinai, God Almighty only gave us ten, three of which were positive moral precepts rather than negative prohibitions. I would say that our Brave New World Without God is a bit more negative even than the Old Testament. Do you think that perhaps, despite its guarantees of "personal freedom," we've allowed the Administrative State a little too much control?

Does the government really think a kid flying a kite on beach, or a man walking his dog, or an elderly couple enjoying a bottle of wine, is a threat to public health and safety? I suppose we should just sit still on the beach with our masks and face shields on, safely distant from everyone else. In fact, if you really care about other people, just don’t breathe!

Behind these schoolmarmish signs, a flock of seabirds enjoyed wind, wave, and sunshine. Government regulations had neglected to prohibit “bird-pooping” on Sandy Hook beach. I think I will contact my elected representative to get that regulated. 

Not long ago I went to Ireland for the First Holy Communion of a friend’s niece. We went on to visit the sacred places of Holy Eire, including Our Lady of Knock, Croagh Patrick, and the monasteries of St. Finnbarr (Gougane Barra), St. Kevin (Glendalough), and St. Kieran (Clonmacnoise). We prayed vespers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, built on the site where he baptized Ireland’s first Christians. In the centuries following those baptisms, hundreds of Irish saints and scholars would bring Christ to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and other countries, strengthening a waning Catholic faith in Europe. In subsequent centuries, Irish missionaries would bring the faith to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. My own parish was established in 1894 by Irish immigrants who ran horse and cattle farms in what was then called “The Extended Area” west of the City of San Francisco. At one point, there were so many Irish bishops and priests in America that the “hierarchy” was known as the “Hibernarchy!” Irish priests built the parishes and Irish sisters built the schools that built our nation. If Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi take pride in their Catholic education, they can thank the Irish monks who brought Christ to  Europe 1500 years ago.

A few miles from the monastery of St. Finnbarr (his feast day is this Saturday!) is the village of Ballingeary. Entering its small parish church, my Irish friend and I saw a red biretta in a glass case with an inscription: “In remembrance of His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Manning, born in Ballingeary November 14, 1909, Ordained 1934, Bishop of Los Angeles 1946.” Cardinal Manning, the son of a blacksmith in a village of 235 souls, built up the largest archdiocese in America, opening a new parish every month and a new school every other month. Business was booming in the 1950s.

Today Ireland has lost much of its faith. Few Irish attend Mass regularly, or teach their children the faith, or even get married to the people with whom they have children. Ireland legalized abortion two years ago and easily submits to the dictates of gnostic ideologies such as gender and racialist theories. The enemies of Christ are blowing big holes in what was once Ireland’s thriving Christian culture, and the Irish are defenseless against the onslaught. In the four parishes in which I concelebrated Mass during my visit, only one had an Irish priest, an elderly and charming man, but helpless against the destruction of his Church. The other priests were from Poland, Nigeria, India, and anywhere the Irish bishops can get them. They are good men, but not missionaries, not fired with energy to build the Church in Ireland. Where are the Irish priests? The parishes of Ireland are mostly empty, museum pieces of a once thriving society, while the hierarchy can manages only the most feeble resistance against the overwhelming firepower of the enemy.

And yet, the Irish people retain their charm, which springs from their natural faith in humanity and, I hope, deep-seated faith in God. I pray that God sends a new St. Patrick to Ireland, another St. Kieran, a modern St. Lawrence O’Toole, to rebuild its faith. What has happened to Ireland is happening to America. We pretend that we are Catholic, but we buy into every gnostic and pagan ideology that comes our way. We do not pull our children from schools that teach them to despise religion and to hate their bodies. A beloved and respected priest in a nearby San Francisco parish told me that “we priests are just here to close up the churches as gently as we can.” But I believe that another St. Patrick will come to us, another St. Francis to rebuild the Church, for God continues to send His prophets. As we await these saints, and as we hope for the rebirth of Christian culture, let us remain faithful to our own parishes, to our own families, and to our personal prayer. In the words of Padre Pio (his feast day is this Thursday!): prega, spera, e non ti preoccupare! Pray, hope, and do not worry. Jesus Christ is Lord, and He will provide.

​Yesterday I approached San Francisco’s dreaded Department of Motor Vehicles to update my license. I pass by the massive bureaucracy, which occupies an entire city block, several times a week and gaze with pity on the lines of slump-shouldered working people snaking around the block. The last time I ventured into DMV, 30 years ago, I spent an entire day in that complex, shuffling from one line to another.
 
With the wonders of the internet, however, I was able to fill out forms and upload documents ahead of my appointment this time. Once inside the building, however, I became disoriented at the scores of windows, staffers, screens, and waiting lines. The security guard came up to me with a smile: “Father, check your number on that screen and wait in that area to be called.” I was touched by his kindness and gladly took a seat.
 
When my number came up I moved to window 27. The clerk said to me “good morning, father,” providing a kindly chat while processing my documents. “God bless you” he called out as I left the window. I returned the blessing.
 
My next stop was “Camera B,” at which an officious woman was trying her level best to move the line quickly. She called out to me when my turn came, “next—step right up to the camera.” She seemed agitated, but as we talked, and I bantered a bit, she softened up. “What church are you at, father?” I told her Star of the Sea at 8th and Geary. “Oh, I’ve been past that church many times, but never stopped in. Are you open? Do you have Masses? I haven’t received Holy Communion since last March.” I assured her we were open with three daily Masses, and looked forward to seeing her sometime. “I’ll be there,” she chirped. “See you soon, father!”
 
All three of these good people are, from the perspective of the state, cogs in the vast machinery of the city. One would not expect any sense of transcendence from one doing such a mundane job. But all three seemed delighted to see a man of the cloth. They seemed reassured that God had not abandoned them, after all, even in the depths of the DMV. These seemed relieved. And their relief relieved me. Beneath the layers of the all-consuming state, God is present and we are human beings, made in His image, not merely cogs in a machine.

The real problem is leaf blowers. I’ve always thought that. The aggravating whine of leaf blowers is the failing candle in the coal mine when the oxygen runs out. Leaf Blowers signal the decadence of western civilization.
 
In a healthier age, on crisp afternoons in October, we would all gather up the fallen leaves with large rakes. With a smile, breathing deeply of the pungent air, we would put our backs into it, bringing a bit of order to gardens upon which cascades of bright foliage had fallen during the day. We would push the leaves into great piles and take running leaps into them, or have leaf fights, inhaling the turning of the season with every sense.
 
Now … we pay landscaping companies to run noisy, smelly, horrid leaf blowers and edge trimmers. We stay inside, staring blankly at flickering screens, posting vacuous messages on “social media.” We have lost touch with the soil, and the autumnal fruits of the earth. A few months later, we would rejoice in the first snowfall. We would bring out big boots and big shovels, hats and gloves, and charge outside. Now we hire poor Mexicans to drive up in their battered pickups to run snowblowers while we “work” safely indoors.

I’m told that one of the Black Lives Matter founders was caught buying multi-million-dollar homes in Malibu and other exclusive locales. Patrisse Khan Cullors is one more story of how a respected religious leader (for certainly BLM is a religion) has been unmasked as a hypocrite As Eric Hoffer observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” The difference between right religion and secular causes is that Christianity at least acknowledges Original Sin. Despite the unholiness and at times criminality of her members, the Church daily confesses her sins and makes efforts to do penance. I suggest that an example of humble penance for our national and personal sins could be raking leaves and shoveling snow by hand. St. Francis never hired a groundskeeper, and Mother Theresa never purchased a leaf blower.
​
Leaf blowers disturb us, not only because they vomit noise and toxic smoke into our neighborhoods. They annoy us because they signal decadence. They reveal the laziness and arrogance of a people who cannot work for themselves, who purchase expensive machines at Home Depot or pay immigrants to do their manual tasks so they can fly off to expensive conferences on social justice and global warming. We claim victimhood while purchasing lavish homes in Malibu. If Patrisse Khan Cullors, and the rest of us, want to be a bit happier and a bit more human, we might begin by raking our own leaves, and enjoying the work of our hands.

Have you ever noticed that traffic often stacks up in one lane on a two-lane street? The other day I pulled onto Geary Boulevard for a meeting at the cathedral, which is located two miles down that same street. Ten cars were lined up in the right lane, and one car in the left lane. I pulled into the left lane and went all the way up. I was feeling quite satisfied with myself, pulling out when the light turned green ahead of most of the traffic. I noticed the same phenomenon at almost every intersection on the way to the cathedral. I’ve also noticed, not without some annoyance when in I’m in the passenger seat and in a hurry, that my friends almost always get behind other cars, in the lane with more traffic. Most folks, unconsciously I suppose, want to get behind someone, to congregate where it seems safer, rather than to blaze a trail and stick out in a lane all alone.
 
It’s only human, I guess, to prefer safety to risk. Moving in herds is built into our animal instincts. It’s easier to get in line than to be constantly analyzing situations. And that is what is happening in our global society today. A few “experts” tell us to lock down because the risk of death is so great, and uncritically we lock down. The experts tell us to put on masks even though an elementary analysis would show that the harm done outweighs the benefits for most people. But we all put on masks, even when they don’t tell us to do so. Our shadowy experts tell us that we will die or kill others unless we take a vaccine, and we just do it. We get in line. We don’t think for ourselves.
 
Not thinking for ourselves works in a loving family. Trusting the experts works when you are surrounded by people who love you. But the people making our laws and developing our technology are so far removed from us, and so far removed from an anthropology that respects the human individual, that we have to start thinking for ourselves again.

​On this day in 1941, St. Maximilian Kolbe died in Auschwitz. They tried to starve him to death with nine other men in cell #17 of Block 11, but in the end they had to finish him off with a shot of carbolic acid to his arm. They burned his body and dumped the ashes into a pond, but Maximilian Kolbe speaks to us from beyond the ash pond. Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, wrote in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, “Father Maximilian Kolbe found meaning within the fraction of a second when he decided to sacrifice his life, asking the SS for permission to let himself be sentenced to death instead of a family father.” Jerzy Bielecki, who survived Auschwitz, wrote later that when word got around the camp of what Kolbe had done, “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength.… It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”
 
Fr. Kolbe lived in a time of growing totalitarianism. The German people had voted in the Nazis, and the Russian people had not done enough to resist the Soviets. In 1941 Hitler and Stalin had signed a secret “non-aggression pact” to dominate all of Europe, with aspirations for a global government under their joint control. I have no doubt that the powers of the earth have done the same in our own time, but as both the Nazi and Soviet Socialist regimes collapsed, so will all totalitarian powers, in God’s good time.
 
Was Fr. Kolbe’s usual joy defeated as he saw his homeland invaded by Nazis from the west and Soviets from the east? Did he give into fear or negativity when he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz? It seems that he wasn’t. Fr. Kolbe sent a letter to his mother, dated June 15, 1941, from the extermination camp, the last letter he ever wrote. “My dearest Mother,” he wrote. “Towards the end of the month of May I reached the concentration camp of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) by rail convoy. Everything is going well with me. Beloved Mom, don’t worry about me or about my health, because the good God is everywhere and with immense love he thinks about all of us and about everything. It would be best not to write to me until I send you another letter. I don’t know how long I shall remain here. With Heartfelt greetings and a kiss.” He often said to fellow prisoners that “Our Lady has brought us here for some good purpose.”
 
Kolbe was not pretending to be “fine” to his mother and other prisoners. He knew that “everything is going well” in the death camp, because he knew that “the Good God is everywhere.” That’s the good news that Christians are supposed to believe, because it’s the truth. The fact is, we live under friendly skies. Life is good, and then we die (that is, we go to heaven). We have been created in God’s image, and we are fundamentally good. Jesus Christ is Lord, and He provides. We will always have enough. There is a rational order to the universe, and we have the capacity to choose the good, the true, and the beautiful. These are the true facts of life, but it’s not what you hear on “the news.”
 
If it’s always bad news you hear on mainstream media—"the pandemic is worse than ever,” “the planet is overheating,” “the vaccines are not working,” “the economy is in trouble,” “America is irremediably racist” —you know they are lying. There is, in fact, no reason to be afraid or discouraged or angry. Behind the media’s lies is the Father of Lies who uses fear to destroy people. If we are in a state of perpetual fear and sadness, know for sure that we have come to believe in a lie.
 
If the news you watch is mostly bad, don’t watch it. It’s a lie. Train your intellect on what is true, and good, and beautiful. There’s plenty of that around. Might I suggest reading a biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe, perhaps A Man for Others by Patricia Treece. God has filled the universe with goodness, so please don’t be discouraged.
 
“Finally, brothers,” wrote St. Paul in Philippians 4, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

We celebrate the great Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Sunday. My mother, when she prayed the rosary with us children, used to announce the Fourth Glorious Mystery as “The Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into Heaven.” What must it have looked like, this rising of a human body into the sky? At each of the Fatima apparitions, Lucia described Our Lady’s leave-taking as rising into the sky, towards the east, “into the immense distance of the firmament.” She didn't die. She fell asleep.

Mary’s “Dormition” helps us believe that death is falling asleep in the Lord. Two weeks ago Mariella Zevallos, our parish Director of Communications, saw this with her own eyes when her mother, Maria Casavilca, died. Diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, Maria was given only a few weeks to live. Mariella asked me to hear her mother’s confession and administer the Last Rites, which Maria received with joy. Within a few days she entered her final agony, a struggle with death that no palliative drugs can eliminate. Three days before she died, Maria was no longer able to assimilate food and became non-responsive. I gave her the Last Rites again five hours before the end, and the war between life and death was terrible to behold. Her unseeing eyes had rolled slightly up in her head with lids half closed. The skin of her face had sunken into her skull, her breathing had become the body’s intense attempt to force a little air into her collapsing lungs. A violent death rattle was upon her. She labored on through the darkness. But at midnight, Life arrived.

Mariella describes how death was overcome: “A few minutes before she died, my mother suddenly turned her face with energy and looked up (as when someone calls you and you turn your face to see who it is). She fixed her eyes on something above our heads with eyes wide open, as if in admiration. After three days of unconsciousness, she was wide awake! She kept her eyes fixed on that point above us for some moments and then began turning her face to look at us with direct eye contact. First she gazed at my dad and held his hand with a strong grasp. Then she gripped my hand too. Next we realized that her face was changing, beginning to regain the glow of health. It seemed as if a hand were gently uncovering the face of her youth. My mom looked healthy and young; her skin was flawless. Her cheeks, which had been sunken in, filled out and she was breathing normally again, with no signs of pain. Her face looked peaceful as she turned younger right in front of our eyes. We thought that she had been completely healed and would get up and begin walking around the room. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep...she had died.” She had not, in fact, “died,” but she had been taken back to God. Let us not fear death, but only separation from the good God.

​To smile or not to smile. That is the question. In our parish refectory portraits of the parish’s ten pastors over our 125-year history gaze sternly from the north wall. Well, the first five pastors gaze sternly. In 1894, San Francisco’s first native vocation became the first pastor of Star of the Sea. In his rough woolen coat, buttoned up to his wide Roman collar, Fr. John P. Coyle looks past the camera as if considering how to best raise a parish from the sand dunes and horse farms of what was then called “The Extended Area.” His successor, Fr. Philip J. O’Ryan, a son Ireland, looks directly at the viewer with focused determination. Resolved to rebuild a community on a new continent, Fr. O’Ryan shepherded the growing parish through the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, producing one of San Francisco’s most dynamic Catholic communities.
 
And so the portraits march through the new century, all unsmiling men of determination, until we get to Msgr. Charlie Durkin, who in 1995 became pastor of what had become a declining parish. He sports a somewhat imbalanced smile, seemingly unsure of how to project gaiety into the Catholic priesthood. In fact, Msgr. Durkin was removed from his pastorate on charges of homosexual activity with minors. From Father Charlie on, all of the pastors make heroic efforts to smile into the camera, including my own picture. For this wall of history, I choose a snapshot that sports my most winning smile. After all, we want to win souls for Christ, and we do so with honey better than vinegar.
 
This morning I was working my way through the Book of Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of Vanities,” the sage begins. “All is Vanity.” In Chapter 8 he denounces levity. “Better the day of death than the day of birth,” he writes. “Better sadness than laughter, a severe face confers some benefit…. For laughter makes a fool of the wise man and merriment corrupts the heart.”
 
Our Jewish fathers considered it bad form to smile. Chuckling and chortling, for a good Hebrew, were to be used sparingly. And yet Nehemiah told the Israelites (in Chapter 8 of his book) not to weep or give into sadness, for “rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.” The distinction is between a smile artificially projected to the outside and a smile naturally emanating from within. A contractor friend told me yesterday how difficult it was to renovate the wealthiest homes in San Francisco. “The owners are such miserable people,” he said. An LG Smile (“Life is Good,” especially when you can afford LG Home Theatre systems for your house) is unsure of itself, but a smile radiating from “the simple joy of knowing Jesus" (Mother Teresa's words) cannot fail. This life is a “Vale of Tears,” but how is it that the saints radiate joy in the depths of this Dark Valley? Mother Teresa’s canonization portrait shows a radiant smile, even though she was an old woman in the slums of Calcutta. “Let us always meet each other with a smile,” she wrote, “for a smile is the beginning of love.” Mother Teresa was not thinking of the plastic smile we get from greeters at Walmart (God bless them!).
 
“Some time ago,” she recalls, “a big group of professors from the United States came to our house in Calcutta. Before leaving, they said to me, ‘Tell us something that will help us to become holy.’ And I said to them, “Smile at each other’ (because we have no time even to look at each other). And one of them asked me, ‘Are you married, Mother Teresa?’ I said, ‘Yes, and I find it sometimes very difficult to smile at Jesus for He can be very demanding.’”
 
Should we smile for our portraits, or present a rather more sober aspect? I return to the book of Ecclesiastes. “For everything there is a season. There is a time for tears, and a time for laughter.” Wisdom consists in knowing when and how to smile. I would say, especially as the social order careens into steep decline, that we should sober up a bit. We should laugh a little less and apply ourselves a little more to the great needs of our moment: to rebuild and to restore right worship, true wisdom, and a sober assessment of first principles and final ends. This will allow true joy to radiate from us.

 
5000 Men
Most of us have had our breakfast, and most of us are thinking about lunch already (as you sit through my morning sermon). Food consumes a good deal of our thoughts. Today the Gospel describes one of Our Lord’s more popular miracles, the feeding of 5000 men, not counting women and children. If these men brought their wives and children (and Jewish families at that time were large), then the crowd would be well over 30,000. All of these people were fed with the one dinner surrendered by one boy, a dinner of five “barley loaves” (the size of large dinner rolls) and two fish. Not until October 13, 1917, would more people witness a miracle together, when 70,000 saw the miracle of the sun at Fatima, Portugal. The multiplication of loaves is the most “popular” miracle of the bible—popular in the sense that the most people saw it, and also popular in the sense that it enjoys wide appeal, because we are all foodies at heart.
 
Doubt
But this most spectacular of miracles begins with a question, and a doubt. In fact, the question is asked three times in today’s scriptures, beginning with the first reading, from Second Kings. “A man from Baal-Shalishah brings Elisha, the man of God, 20 barley loaves. “How can I set this before a hundred people?” he asks. Elisha insists: do it. “And when they had eaten, there was some left over.” 600 years later Philip the Apostle asks Jesus the same question: “there is a boy here with five barley loaves, but what good are these for so many?” Jesus replies: “have the people recline on the grass.” 30,000 men, women and children eat their fill, with 12 baskets left over. Our take away is that we can, and we must, trust God, because He provides.
 
But the miracles did not stop with Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Among many saints, Fr. John Bosco, an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Salesian Order in 1859 to provide schools for the street children of Italy’s industrial cities, also witnessed God’s providence. One day he began handing out bagels for 300 boys from a basket that had a few dozen. With great wonder they saw him distribute to all the present, with bagels left over. Another time he began distributing some roasted chestnuts to 650 young people. The supply never ended, again with some left over. In 1848 the sacristan forgot to put hosts on the altar for a Mass with hundreds of young people. Don Bosco raised his eyes to heaven, prayed and then began distributing Holy Communion. Without breaking the Hosts, Don Bosco was able to give Communion to all the boys. Closer to home, Raymond Arroyo told the story of Mother Angelica from this pulpit a few years ago. She ordered a satellite that cost $250K because she needed it but didn’t have the money. It arrived, and she couldn’t pay, so she went into the chapel and said to Jesus “Your transmitter is here.” A phone call came in with that precise amount just as the truck driver was getting ready to take the satellite back.
 
God Never Loses
I attended a remarkable conference last week, the Napa Institute, in which the speakers clearly defined the unprecedented loss of faith in our time, the coordinated efforts of media giants, universities, and world governments to discredit and erase Christianity. But these speakers even more clearly defined the hope within us, one of them quoting St. Josemaria Escriva: “God never loses. Not even one battle.” If it seems like we have lost the culture war, that the culture of death has overcome the gospel of life, if it seems that our children and our college students are helpless against dictatorial ideologies that destroy their families, their minds, and their very identities, do not doubt God’s providence. Jesus is Lord, and He never loses.
 
His Image and Likeness
But back to the question and the doubt: “where can we find enough food?” Why did the Lord ask St. Philip that question? “He said this,” St. John tells us, “to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.” These men needed to know that they cannot possibly, ever, feed the hungry without God’s help. Every Sunday half a dozen people in our parish spend a few hours and a few hundred dollars preparing sandwiches, burritos, and fruit for the street people. They go into the tenderloin to feed the lower classes who have been given opioids and abortion, gender ideology and racial ideologies, in place of God’s truth and God’s love. Rosa and Saori and Kevin and Claudia and Eva give them sandwiches, coats, blankets, and a loving smile, but they would never dare do this before spending an hour or two before the Blessed Sacrament, and attending the Holy Mass. The people that serve the poor best, like St. Francis and Mother Teresa, are the people that pray the most. God never loses, but we will lose unless we depend entirely on Him. With God, all things are possible, and all things are bright and beautiful, even the filthy street encampments in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. People are always beautiful, because they are God’s image and likeness. Let us pray.