I’ve been listening to San Francisco’s wonderful classical music station, KDFC, for 35 years. This morning the amiable radio host wished listeners a happy Father’s Day, so I extend his greeting to you all. Candles have been burning in front of a little Father’s Day altar in our sanctuary for the month of June, as did a little Mother’s Day altar for the month of May. Fathers and mothers are both essential to human flourishing, and I was delighted to hear our classical music station honoring fathers today.
 
It’s only reasonable to support fathers of families, but it occurred to me that the low-grade disdain for paternity so prevalent in popular movies, songs, and school curricula has not made it to San Francisco’s classical music station. For that matter, the usual woke themes are wholly absent from KDFC. I’ve never heard “Black Lives Matter” or “The Genderbread Man” or even “Gay Pride” on this station. Why, I wonder.
 
Could it be that the type of people who listen to classical music simply will not put up with ideological propaganda? On Thursday I watched a baseball game on TV with some friends. Every third ad promoted either “Pride Month” or “BLM.” The camera lingered on the Levi’s sign in the stadium, proudly draped in rainbow colors. These ideologies, cloaked in “social justice” themes and most profitable to corporate America, annoy but achieve their goal of indoctrinating the masses. We all speak the same language, a language foisted upon us by the wealthy. This indoctrination, this annoyance, however, is wholly absent from San Francisco’s classical music station, thanks be to God. It suggests that the folks who fund it don’t believe in it, or at least want to hear it. I’ve been told that Steve Jobs would not allow his own children to use an iPad. He provided his kids with a rigorous classical education rather than issuing the Chromebooks he sold to middle and lower class America. He was a good father to his own children.
 
Men of America: be good fathers, be smart fathers, and provide your children with the real thing!

Every December I send about 150 Christmas cards, but I receive around 300, along with a few dozen birthday cards (my mother brought me into the light of day on a December 4). I put some of the cards on my mantle and take them down on February 2 (Candlemas). Before consigning them to the recycle bin, I read all of them once more. Toward the end of March, I begin putting Easter cards on the mantle. On Trinity Sunday I take these down, read them again, and consign them to the recycle bin. The pictures on the cards are lovely (I can’t help but keep three or four of them on my bookshelf all year) and the messages from so many dear friends lift my heart.
 
This year I’m a little behind. I didn’t take my Christmas cards down until Ash Wednesday, and I didn’t take my Easter cards down until last week. All of them—about 400 cards—are held in a large box, awaiting a final reading, which I began yesterday. I thought I would look all of them over quickly in one sitting, consign them to recycling, and move on with my life. But these cards require a little more time—a lot more time, actually.
 
Each card is a treasure, to be reflected upon and savored for some moments. Each card bestows a particular love from a particular soul. God have given me to know so many people over 30 years and seven priestly assignments. Dear priest friends, parents and those elderly who become a priest’s spiritual parents in every parish, parish and school staff members, beloved lay friends from every parish, religious sisters and brothers, bishops past and present, and even some names I cannot place but who express love and gratitude for services rendered in the past.
 
When we are tempted to feel useless and to think our lives meaningless, when we are tempted to give into sadness at the world’s rejection and the loss of particular friendships: when we fear we have no place or purpose in life, we must think on how many people God has in fact given to us, who love and understand us. Some of us receive 300 Christmas cards, some of us receive three, and some three thousand. But everyone has some friends, some people whom the good God has given them as kindred souls and fellow pilgrims. I have to remember, and to recalibrate, every day: I will give thanks for what I have been given and refuse to complain about what I have not been given.

​Yesterday I rode my bike past the Santa Cruz police station. An American flag fluttered at the top of their flagpole, and just below it, a rainbow flag. I was reminded that it was “pride” month.
 
Of what are we so proud as Americans? Are we proud of our unnatural and disordered sexual practices? Are we proud that we have corrupted our children and robbed them of stable family life? Are we proud that so many of our teenage boys, growing up without a supportive father--most of them poor African-American children--bear the burden of sexual confusion? Are we proud that 25% of our girls have been molested by the time they reach 18? Are we proud that the leading cause of death among young people in America is despair (suicide, drug overdose, gang violence, and alcohol poisoning)? Are we proud of the fact that the corporations that bankroll “Pride” have grown unimaginably wealthy while most Americans are growing poorer?
 
I am told that some Catholic priests and bishops promote “pride month.” June, for the Catholic Church, is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is not the month of unnatural sexual practices. Are the clergy proud to have paid out four billion dollars of the people’s money for priests’ and bishops’ sexual assault on boys? If we want love, we know where to find it: in the divine and sacred heart of Jesus, reflected in the lives of married couples, priests, and single people who struggle to be faithful to God's will. We all struggle with what life has given us. My heart goes out to those who have endured difficult, lonely childhoods and struggle as adults to integrate their lives. We all struggle. It is God alone who can help us. His Sacred Heart is open to all of us who long to love and to be loved. 

A Sacred Thursday
Today is Corpus Christi, although for many years the feast has been transferred to the following Sunday. Corpus Christi, however, is properly celebrated on Thursday, because it was on Thursday that the Lord instituted the Most Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper. In moving this feast to Sunday, we lose the sense of a sacred moment in history, a particular day (Thursday) on which the Lord instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood at the Last Supper. The older calendar celebrates Corpus Christi on Thursday for those who can come (we had about 40 at Mass this morning) but celebrates it again the following Sunday, for all the faithful. I find the older practice more practical—it provides the feast both for those who can participate on the very day itself, but also for everyone on the following Sunday. It provides the opportunity, also, for some of us to celebrate the great feasts twice, because … once is never enough!

Responsible for My Blood
The feast of the Body of Christ was promoted by St. Thomas Aquinas, who composed the hymns for this Mass in the 13th Century, after the Eucharistic miracle at Bolsena (blood stains manifesting on a Mass corporal, now kept in the chapel at Orvieto, north of Rome). Thomas’ friend, Pope Urban IV, made it a universal feast in 1264. Thomas’ poem, the Lauda Sion, is the longest sequence in the Roman liturgy.
 
The Epistle for today is from 1 Cor 11. The Apostle Paul hands on the faith he has received, that “the same night Christ was betrayed, He took bread and wine, offered thanks, and said ‘this is my body and this is my blood.’” Therefore, Paul continues, whoever eats and drinks the Body and Blood unworthily “shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord.” My own Archbishop has pointed out that very few Catholics understand what “worthy” reception of Holy Communion means. It doesn’t mean you have to be a saint to receive the Eucharist, but it does mean you have to “recognize” (in Paul’s words) the Real Presence. That “real presence” is essentially in the Sacred Species, but not limited to the Sacred Host and Precious Chalice. It is also in the entire Body of Christ, in every human person created in the image of God. As Mother Teresa said, “every person is Christ,” and “the Blessed Eucharist we receive at morning Mass, and the bodies of the poor we touch later in the day on the streets—it is the same Jesus.”
 
If a Catholic were to receive the Body of Christ at Mass, and then order the killing of innocent persons later in the day, he or she would be receiving the Eucharist “unworthily.” That Catholic would not in fact be “recognizing” the Real Presence at Mass because he or she is not “recognizing” the presence of God in other human beings. Catholic lawmakers who promote slavery, or abortion, or genocide—any killing of innocent human beings—should not present themselves for Holy Communion. Taking the Eucharist thus “unworthily,” they would be guilty of the Blood of Christ—not only killing innocent human beings, but killing Christ Himself, who said “what you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.”
 
And this is exactly what is happening today. The nation’s most powerful lawmaker, and the nation’s most powerful executive, receive Holy Communion with great fanfare, and later in the day promote the killing of innocent children.

Eucharistic Coherence
My Archbishop publicly called all Catholic public officials to “Eucharistic coherence” (in the words of Pope Francis) in a May 1st Pastoral Letter. If you say you believe in the Body of Christ at Mass, he pointed out, you must respect the Body of Christ in all people outside of Mass. If you can’t do that, you should not receive Holy Communion, until you do learn to respect all human life.
 
He was immediately accused of “politicizing the Eucharist,” even by some brother bishops who should know better. What he is actually trying to do is keep these officials from becoming guilty of spilling the Blood of Christ. If the Speaker of the House, or the President of the United States, promotes the killing of children, they kill Christ. They cannot at the same time kill Christ and receive Christ in Holy Communion. The Body of Christ, St. Paul points out, is not a source of life for such people, but a condemnation unto death. God is not mocked. We don’t break the laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God. We break against them. Let us pray that all Catholics, but especially those entrusted with the Common Good, recognize the Body and Blood of the Lord.

A few days before I was ordained to the priesthood at age 29, I spent a night in prayer at my home parish of Our Lady of the Visitation in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. It was something young men used to do before becoming a knight, and I certainly wanted to become a knight of Our Lady, for Christ.
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Today, the last day of May, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Visitation, recalling that Mary, just after she had conceived the Redeemer of the World, “set out and traveled to the hill country in haste” to her cousin Elizabeth, who was with child. She became, in Mother Teresa’s words, “a carrier of Christ’s love.” God gives every woman a womb, a fist-sized muscle that “carries” a child for nine months, and as the child becomes quite burdensome, the muscle stretches and grows stronger. Our Lady carried the Redeemer of Humanity over rough roads and steep hills to her cousin Elizabeth, and she bears the burden of her Son still, from heaven. In sculpting his famous pieta, the marble figure of Mary carrying the body of her crucified son from the Cross, Michelangelo made Mary’s dimensions larger than life (she would be six feet tall if she stood, much taller than the Christ in her lap). He also depicted her at about age 25, youthful and strong enough to bear the burden of Redeemer, who said “take my yoke upon your shoulders, for my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
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The Collect for today, as I pointed out to Mother Teresa’s sisters at morning Mass, echoes her command to the Missionaries of Charity to “be carriers of God’s love.” The prayer begins “Almighty, ever-living God, who, while the Blessed Virgin Mary was carrying your son in her womb….” A woman carries her children physically in the strong muscle of the uterus, but for the rest of her life, she carries her children in her heart, helping them bear the burdens of the day. We men, we priests, must help the women in our lives carry those burdens. We must be knights of Our Lady, and knights for all ladies.
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One June 29th I will mark 30 years of my priestly ordination. It will also be the 70th year of Pope Benedict’s ordination. But closer to home, my parish will celebrate two other ordinations: Fr. John Chung is ten years ordained, and Fr. Mark Taheny is 25 years ordained. We will celebrate all three of our anniversaries together, on June 26th, at the 4:30pm Mass in the parish, at which the rector of our seminary, Fr. Mark Doherty, will preach. A reception will follow in the hall, a potluck. I’m inviting you, if you can make it. There is no cost, but folks must reserve at our parish website (www.starparish.com) and as a bonus, we will celebrate the first week anniversary of the first man to be ordained from Star of the Sea in 30 years. Cameron Pollette, who grew up a few blocks from the parish, will be ordained on June 19, and will concelebrate the anniversary Mass on June 26.
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In lieu of the customary gifts to priests on their anniversaries, we three priests are asking folks to make gifts to Stella Maris Academy, our newly-opened school, at which 75% of students in our inaugural year will be on tuition assistance. I hope to see some of you on June 26—see our parish website for more details.

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Sohrab Ahmari,, has just published a book he originally wrote for his son, entitled, The Unbroken thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos.
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Like JRR Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit for his own children, this book speaks a delightful wisdom for all ages. 
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One of the chapters explains humanity's traditional approach to death.  Covid has revealed how fearful we are of death, but Ahmari quotes the Roman philosopher Seneca, "Whoever doesn't want to die doesn't want to live."  I would read this book just for this chapter, because only in losing our fear of death can we begin to really live.

A few years ago (it seems like another era), Pope Benedict established May 24, today, as “A Day of Prayer for China.” Mother Teresa would always ask us to “pray that we be allowed to enter China,” but even before Xi Jinping, the CCP never permitted Mother Teresa to bring Jesus into China. So the sisters pray every day to Our Lady of Sheshan for the “beloved Chinese people.” All over San Francisco I see signs “Stop Asian Hate.” The greatest amount of hate against Asians is coming from the Chinese Communist Party. The best way to stop hate in Asia is to allow Jesus into China.

Many of my parishioners come from Hong Kong. One of them asks me, frequently, “Father, pray for Hong Kong.” My friend Fr. Raymond de Souza posted a good analysis on the First Things website today: “Last week, Father Stephen Chow Sau-yan was named the new bishop of Hong Kong. He is so reluctant to take the job that he will not assume office until next December, even though the usual canonical rules require him to start in four months. The Church can set the date of his ordination. Beijing’s communist regime will set the date of his imprisonment.”
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We must pray for Hong Kong, and for all of China. Our own government, and our own Church, is at best appeasing, and at worst cooperating with, Marxist totalitarianism. I pray not only for Hong Kong, but for my own President and my own Pope, that they may begin defending the beloved Chinese people rather than, apparently, throwing sheep to wolves.

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​The first day of this month, the Month of Our Lady, we turned to St. Joseph the Workman. Work is good and holy and pleasant, when it is offered to God. I love my often arduous work as a parish priest, building up God’s household here on Geary Boulevard. Our Lord defines “work” in John 6:29. “The work God demands of you,” he said to the crowds “is that you believe in the One He sent.” Believing, and helping others believe in a God beyond themselves, is hard work!
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Joseph the Workman believed before he put his hand to any project. You can imagine him bowing his head to recite the Shema Israel before putting his powerful hands to shape wood and stone. The work that St. Joseph does now is to bring us to Mary, who brings us to Jesus, who brings us to the Father. That is why the Month of Mary begins with the Feast day of St. Joseph. God, apparently, loves mediators. He chooses others to share in His work, and He “sends” them. He sent his Son from heaven to earth to complete the mighty labor of the Redemption. He likewise “sends” Mary, and Joseph, and you and me, to assist in this mighty task. The Father loves his children by giving us all a role in managing His household. The greatest poverty, Mother Teresa observed, is to be unwanted and unneeded. God needs us!
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Long Overdue
The Catholic Church in America has needed clarity on the Holy Eucharist for some time. The pastoral letter  my Archbishop issued on May 1st was “long overdue,” as he himself says, but it represents a great labor undertaken as yet by no other prelate. The luminous text is clearly the fruit of much work, over many months. The media, and one or two other bishops, are misrepresenting his letter as an attack on Nancy Pelosi over abortion, but a closer reading of the text reveals its core purpose: to define the inestimable gift of the Holy Eucharist. Archbishop Cordileone has often pointed out how the Church’s essential weakness at this time is ignorance about the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, the Church's source and summit. The vast majority of Catholics do not do the one thing necessary to be Catholic, which is to “eat the Body and drink the Blood.” A great number of Catholics who do attend Mass receive the Eucharist “unworthily,” which is a technical term in Catholic theology meaning they don’t “recognize the Body and the Blood:” they don’t know what they are receiving, or with what disposition a person must take into themselves the infinite power of God Incarnate. Taking the Body and the Blood “unworthily” is not medicinal but toxic, like giving insulin to a person suffering from diabetic shock. Nancy Pelosi is not the only Catholic who receives Holy Communion while denying the Body. Any Catholic who receives Holy Communion while denying any of the natural laws of God eats and drinks condemnation unto themselves (1 Cor 11:29).
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A Parish Named for St. Joseph
Back to St. Joseph. There used to be a parish named for St. Joseph in downtown San Francisco, but it was sold to a developer after the 1989 earthquake for “lack of interest”—not enough parishioners willing to repair it. It was acquired by the “St. Joseph Arts Society,” a wealthy club, which graciously restored the building’s exterior to its former glory. But what goes on inside this former Church of St. Joseph? In a Dec 17, 2018 article by Tony Bravo, the San Francisco Chronicle  describes it: “Inside the church where religious statues once gazed out, papier-mache bear sculptures by the society’s first featured artists in residence, Dutch taxidermists-photographers Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren, watched over a VIP crowd. Guests drank at the new bars, inspected the art installations by Carpenters Workshop Gallery and took in the night’s entertainment, which included a performance by drag queens Juanita More and Glamamore on the former altar.”
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Does it matter to the Catholic Church in San Francisco that wealthy elites are paying to see unnatural acts on the altar once dedicated to St. Joseph, the poor carpenter? I propose a partial remedy: name another parish for St. Joseph, placing the entire archdiocese under his mighty protection. St. Joseph is co-patron of the City, along with St. Francis and St. Patrick, but there has been no St. Joseph’s parish in San Francisco for 30 years. This is one of the reasons San Francisco is suffering social decline. We all feel the increasing tension on our streets, within our families, and among our colleagues of a society struggling to order our lives together without God. I think that giving St. Joseph a more prominent role in the Church would strengthen all of us, but especially us clergy, with greater prudence and courage. Sensing this need, Pope Francis has given us the Year of St. Joseph.
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A Pastor’s Plea
Archbishop Cordileone, whose middle name is Joseph, released his pastoral letter on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. He will need Joseph’s fortitude and protection, because his enemies cannot tolerate a clear teaching on the Holy Eucharist. Moreover, his watertight argument from embryology, law, psychology, and theology leaves only one conclusion: no Catholic in good conscience can support abortion. Nevertheless, he writes,
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​Addressing Catholic political leaders, he writes:
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​​The powerful Speaker of the House falls under our Archbishop’s pastoral jurisdiction. Through the intercession of St. Joseph, may she surrender her heart and will to the Good God, who loves her infinitely. May she use the power God has given her to believe, and to bring others to believe.

​​​​A Gift on Mother’s Day
Early in the morning yesterday, I called my mother and prayed the rosary with her. “It’s the best Mother’s Day gift I could have received!” she said. The cell signal was not perfect, and, at 88, Mom's hearing and enunciation are not what they used to be, so our rosary was a little ... irregular. It made me think that even our most articulate orations are “lisping children's humble pray'r,” but graciously received on this day by our Beautiful Mother. What a grace to still be able pray the rosary with her who taught me to pray it 50 years ago. In light of eternity, in God’s perfect time, it’s never too late.
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Long Overdue but Never Too Late
On May 1st my archbishop released a pastoral letter, his first, on “the human dignity of the unborn, Holy Communion, and Catholics in public life.” The letter is precisely articulated, “following the science,” but also a heartfelt plea from a loving shepherd. He will suffer much from this prophetic utterance, but love proves itself through suffering. It is a clear beam of truth spoken into a world engulfed in falsehood, truth spoken in love. The letter, he concedes, is “long overdue,” but as Mother Teresa would say, “yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not yet here. We have only today. Let us begin.”
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​Dad’s Confirmation
The same could be said for my dear earthly father, John Illo. Somehow he had never received the Sacrament of Confirmation, something my mother had often lamented to us children. When I called Dad a few weeks ago to offer him the Sacrament, he simply said “yes. It is time.” God’s timing is always mysterious, but always to be received with joy. I called the local pastor, who obtained delegation from the local bishop, and on Friday good Fr. Ben administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to my father. At age 95, and 68 years married, my father finally completed his Rites of Christian Initiation. I mentioned this to the good folk of my parish, both in the weekly email blast and in my Sunday homilies, and was delighted at how many people congratulated me and thanked God. One friend described Dad as a modern-day Simeon, who received the child Jesus into his arms as a very old man with the words “Now, O Master, you may let your servant go in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” This friend put “sero te amavi” as the subject of his email, quoting St. Augustine: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient ever new. Late have I loved you.” The people of my parish wonder at this, with me, that goodness, truth, and beauty come to us “long delayed, but never too late.” It is good to hope in the Lord, to wait for Him. As the Children of Israel expressed in Psalm 27, “I am sure that I shall see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Hope in Him; hold firm and take heart. Hope in the Lord!” 

Welcome to the month of May, and Buona Domenica, as we used to say in Rome. “Happy Sunday.” We have made it through another week, sinners that we are, and have come to the First Day again. It is the day God separated the light from the darkness, the Christian day of rest on which our Savior rose in the early dawn, scattering the darkness of death. I often go out early on Sunday to do my morning prayers in the park or by the ocean. I watch the sun rise, because, despite everything, God makes the sun to rise every day.
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Here is a link to an excellent five-minute video by Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix. Over the last three generations the world, the flesh, and the devil have been progressively stealing our Sundays away from us. Now very little of the Day of Rest remains, and it seems the pandemic has put the final nail into Sunday’s coffin. We work from home now, seven days a week, and we shop from home, without rest, and we don’t gather together in houses of God, because we are afraid.
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Be not afraid. The Risen Christ awaits you in your bright churches. He calls you apart to give rest to your souls. Many souls are trickling back into my parish, although some still keep apart through fear. Overcome the isolation of fear, and rediscover the First Day again, the Eighth Day, the Day of a New Dawn. It presages the eternal dawn of the life of the world to come!
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