My father was not a scifi enthusiast, but in 1977, when NBC announced that it would air Stanely Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odessey, Dad announced that we would all watch it. I remember the film as somewhat humorless and abstract, not enough action for a fifteen-year-old male. It was my first science fiction movie, showing the possibilities and dangers of technology, as well as piquing my imagination about extraterrestrials. Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters was my next space movie, and my third movie on this topic was last week’s Project Hail Mary.
 
It struck me as a funny, lighthearted version of 2001, adapted for all ages, sure to draw laughs and tears from just about everyone. Unlike 2001, and more than Close Encounters, however, Project Hail Mary is eminently marketable: it checks all the boxes, and it has something for everybody. After a rousing round of pickleball a few weeks ago, a dear and very Catholic friend told me she had seen the movie with some girlfriends and loved it. “Is it about Our Lady?” I asked her. No. “Is it about Notre Dame football?” No. “It’s a funny doomsday space movie,” she told me, “but I won’t tell you anything more. No sex, no violence, no blasphemy, no vulgarity. You should see it.” So last week, a bunch of us priest buddies were on break and this movie came up. Bishop Barron had given Project Hail Mary a positive review, and what better choice for a bunch of priests than a movie named after the Mother of God?
 
If is a fun and funny movie, and somewhat thought provoking, and I too recommend it, but with this caveat: it is a commercial product more than an inspired work of art. Most movies are these days. It is as if AI wrote the script to include every possible identity group, assuring the widest possible viewership. I’ve no doubt the entertainment industry relies on finely-tuned algorithms to determine maximum ticket sales. Movie scripts must check every possible box for every possible sensitivity, and this somewhat flattens the landscape.
 
What boxes am I talking about? Well, Google’s Gemini will tell us how religion is experiencing something of a worldwide revival (numbers of new Catholics are doubling every year in many dioceses, and most people are allowed again to mention the word “God” in public). So the biggest box that this movie checks is the “religion” box. The Catholic faith, in particular, is obviously reflected in the movie’s title, but also the hero’s name (“Grace”) and his decision to sacrifice himself to save the world makes Christians feel good. The character of Eva Stratt, a European scientist, even functions as the New Eve, Mother Mary, in interceding with a reluctant Dr. Grace to sacrifice himself for the people. She it is who says flat out that she believes in God because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.  
 
But lots of other boxes get checked, boxes that don’t normally bed down with religion, although these other identify groups are satisfied in such subtle ways as not to upset religious customers. The Transgender Box is deftly checked when Grace asks Rocky about his “partner” with the nonbinary pronoun “their” (which is grammatically incorrect in English but grammatically required in transgenderese). The Climate Box is checked with the impending annihilation of life on earth, but the anti-Climate Box is checked with this annihilation coming not through global warming but through global cooling. The Black and Asian and White boxes are checked, of course, with the regulation Black, Asian, and European characters, and the globalist box is checked because a Dutch/German woman European Space Agency scientist coordinates a multinational effort to save the planet. The technology box and the transhuman boxes both get checked with the ship’s android AI computer that attempts to shave Dr. Grace’s beard and do other little nice things for him (Grace responds to this computer/robot with a pet name, but I can’t remember what he calls “her!”). I may be overstating the political aspects of this film, seeing market-driven motivations where there are none; I grant that I may be a bit paranoid when it comes to any commercial product in our highly politicized culture.
 
Almost everyone will leave the movie theatre feeling good and not feeling too bad about anything. Each customer is mostly satisfied, and what might disturb us is put in such subtle tones that only the targeted identity group will pick up its own particular signals. In that sense, the movie is a masterpiece, and it’s also fun to watch. I’m not sure that it’s as visionary and inspiring, however, as artistic works not so tightly governed by the market.

Yesterday, with “Quasimodo Sunday,” the Easter Octave came to its conclusion. Most of us picture a hideous hunchback haunting the belltowers of Notre Dame in Paris when we hear the word “Quasimodo,” from Victor Hugo’s 1831 Romantic novel. But the poor foundling, raised by the canons of Notre Dame, received that name because he was born on Quasimodo Sunday, which takes its name from its opening verse: in Latin, Quasi modo geniti infantes…. (“In the way newborn children thirst for pure milk…,” so we must thirst for the Living God.
 
It's a beautiful verse, but we sang an even better verse every day of the Easter Octave: Haec dies quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in ea, Alleluia. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us exalt and rejoice in it, Alleluia.” Every day is God’s gift, His creation, but none more than Easter Day, when He recreated the entire universe, giving life and health to what was dying.
 
I now suffer a chronic disability, and over the last two years wake up every morning in some bit of pain, struggling to function well, not knowing how difficult the day will be. It’s the first time in my life that I have borne a persistent infirmity, although many others have lived with such debilities all their lives. I had a good run of near-perfect health for 62 years, and a chronic sickness does take a bit of getting used to. Some days, it’s hard to believe that God made the day in which I am living, with all its frustrations. Some days, it's rather hard to trust that weakness has its purpose in God’s all-wise plan. The annual Easter  Octave certainly helps one to rejoice and be thankful in ea, “in it," and to believe that God knows what He is doing. Today is the day that God has made, for me and for all of us, and it is very good, in all its joys and sorrows.
 
These eight days of Easter have been given us to believe again, over an entire week, in the goodness of this day, the day we are in right now. For thirty years, a couple of us priests have spent at least a few days of the Octave in community. We catch up on sleep and food after the deprivations of Holy Week, and we swap stories about how the Triduum liturgies went in our parishes. We stay at a beach house kindly lent us by friends, a dwelling by the sea, where we chortle over the unexpected events of the Paschal Triduum: how one of the men who sat to have his foot washed on Holy Thursday refused to take off his shoes; how the deacon dropped the Cross during its veneration on Good Friday; how one of the women shrieked as the waters of baptism (too cold!) soaked her at the Easter Vigil. At our beach house, we sing Easter Lauds and Vespers, we offer Mass each morning together, we pray the rosary on long walks along the shore, we ride bikes through leafy avenues and venture forth upon the deep in kayaks, we prepare meals and spend hours at table together, and we laugh a lot.
 
On the second day of our Easter Break, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I watched a movie in a theatre with my brothers. It was called Project Hail Mary, and I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

I gave up listening to music for Lent, but to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, I switched on WQXR during my morning stretches today. One of my favorite hosts, Jeff Spurgeon, announced “Tolkien Reading Day,” established in 2003 by the Tolkien Society to promote readings from Middle Earth. Why March 25th? Mr. Spurgeon explained that it was on March 25th that Frodo cast the Ring of Power into fiery chasms on Mordor’s Mount Doom, undoing its dark powers and thus freeing both Frodo and all of Middle Earth from Sauron’s tyranny. Mr. Spurgeon might not know that today is also the Solemnity of the Annunciation, but it is certain that J.R.R Tolkien knew it. As a devout Catholic, Tolkien knew that March 25th is the day eternity stepped into time and the infinite God became a little baby—a very little baby indeed! March 25th is the day God’s Word became Flesh, thus undoing the Will to Power through the Power of Love. On becoming a human baby, our Divine Messiah and King freed all the earth from the tyranny of Satan. Today the most high God, through his emissary Gabriel, asked the maiden’s hand in marriage, and today the highest honor of our race assented without reserve to God’s holy will. Thus were God and Earth finally reconciled.
 
Mr. Spurgeon perhaps does not know the significance of Tolkien’s placing the salvation of Middle Earth on the same day that Catholics celebrate the salvation of all the earth. Tolkien, unlike his dear friend Lewis, did not write Christian allegories, which draw a one-to-one correspondence between literary figures and biblical figures. In Lewis’ Narnia series, the lion Aslan is obviously a figure of Christ, but Tolkien’s Rings trilogy is much more subtle. Gandalf has some Christlike attributes (his ageless wisdom, his death from the evil Balrog, and his resurrection as Gandalf the White), but so does Aragorn (his rightful kingship, his mighty defense of the people from the orcs, his healing powers), so does Frodo (his self-sacrifice for all of Middle Earth), and so does Sam (his readiness to die for his friend).
 
Tolkien’s mythology is multivalent and textured while Lewis’ obviously Christian literature is more black and white. Both forms of literature wonderfully achieve the purpose for which they were written, but while Lewis’ Narnia series thrills Christian readers, Tolkien’s trilogy portrays more true-to-life nuances, appealing to a wider audience. Tolkien’s literature, as well as Peter Jackson’s cinematography and Howard Shore’s orchestral score, have conveyed a Christian perspective to millions who would never think to open a bible.
 
Case in point: Jeff Spurgeon, the much-loved WQXR host who must eschew any hint of religion on his morning show, read a line from The Lord of the Rings this morning in which Tolkien quietly teaches us to accept God’s will in all things. Departing from his usual lighthearted wit, today Mr. Spurgeon paused to quote Tolkien in a hushed and reverent tone:
 
“I wish the ring had never come to me,” Frodo said. “I wish none of this had happened.”


“So do all who live to see such times,” Gandalf replied. “But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
 
Thank you, Mr. Spurgeon, for daring to utter such true and beautiful words on the air. I can’t think of a better way for WQXR to celebrate “Tolkien Reading Day,” and for secular New Yorkers to celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation. 

 
This morning I listened to Bishop Robert Barron’s homily on the Gospel for what is traditionally known as Passion Sunday. Today’s Gospel is the third of five long Sunday readings, increasing each week until Palm Sunday, on which we will hear the entire Passion recited or chanted in parts. Finally, at the Easter Vigil in two weeks, we will hear nine long readings in the darkened  church, a true night watch of prayerful Scripture.
 
Bishop Barron is one year older than me, although his hair is not yet white like mine. I have known of him, and met him several times, since we were both in our late thirties, and now he is 65. His inspired homily https://www.wordonfire.org/videos/sermons/jesus-wept-2/ on the death of Lazarus manifests the deep beauty of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s also great to be old.
 
Bishop Barron understands the human condition—its limitations and its possibilities—in a way he could not have understood thirty years ago. He understands the tragedy and the glory of being human as an “old man” who has suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” for sixty years. I say he is an “old” man as I say I am an “old man,” which makes my parishioners laugh, because both of us are mostly still in command of robust physical and mental vigor. In fact, however, Bishop Barron and I are priests, a word from the Greek “presbyter” which means “old man.” In this sense, we were already old when we were ordained in our twenties. But sixty-five used to be “old,” and still is old, even for those in tip top physical health, because from 65 years one can peer directly into the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s. From the mid-sixties we get used to peering into our own death, which is now not so far away. And that is a bracingly beautiful perspective, given only to the “old.”
 
In the Scripture this Sunday, Lazarus dies, and Jesus lets him die. He lets Lazarus rot in the grave for four days, which as Bishop Barron points out was the Jewish legal definition of truly “dead.” Both the dead man’s sisters, Martha and Mary, accuse Jesus of letting their brother die in precisely the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Where were you when we needed you? I thought we were friends, but you didn’t even bother to come as our brother lay dying! The two women are confounded, in deep anguish over what feels like the betrayal of God. Why do you let these things happen when you can prevent them?
 
As I type these words into my old computer in the predawn dark, I hear one of San Francisco’s many mentally disturbed people outside my window, shouting into the night, a furious string of “F*#@ you’s.” A friend in New York City tells me he hears the same cries of rage outside his window, and from the sidewalks as he strolls down Park Avenue. Why does God allow the modern world to fall into hateful darkness?
 
Martha and Mary are both weeping, and God weeps with them. “And Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the Bible. It says everything we need to know about God in three words. He came from heaven, where there is no crying out in pain or weeping, and He cries out from the Cross: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” But Christ does something more: he says to Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” And He says to Lazarus, “Come out.” And He says to the mourners who see the dead man come out, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
 
Why God lets us suffer is certainly confounding. No one can say why the all-good God does not render justice and bring healing to his suffering children when we cry out for help. In the end, we must acknowledge that we are not God, and we don’t tell God what to do. It is He who tells his friend what to do: “Lazarus, come forth!” I suppose Lazarus could have stayed comfortably in his final resting place, but his Lord and Friend’s voice drew him out into the sunlight. It was not time for Lazarus to rest, and by the grace of God, Lazarus obeyed the Lord’s voice.
 
Lazarus would grow old and die again, but not now without the certain hope, confirmed with his unique experience of resurrection, that “those who believe in me, even if they die, will rise again.” When I saw Robert Barron deliver his weekly homily on my computer screen this morning, I saw an old man who believed in the resurrection with a certain hope. His many years of suffering on earth have confirmed this hope, and he is able to bring that hope now to others. That’s the greatness of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s greater to grow old!

On this Second Sunday of Lent, when Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor and we peer into the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb, we should remember that we are not there yet. We are on a journey, up a steep mountain, and we need to “tighten our belts” as food is rationed on this trek. Two years ago, three of us, like Peter, James and John, “went up a high mountain” with Jesus, the highest mountain in Continental America (Mount Whitney). We were running low of food by the 16th day of the John Muir Trail, but we still had enough bread and wine for Mass. Christ was with us (and so were three intrepid Indian hikers, who shared their homemade Indian bread with us along the way), and so we were able to summit on Day 19 and scramble back down for burgers and beer in a Lone Pine restaurant. But it was quite an adventure to run out of food with forty miles of steep trail between us and a Seven Eleven. Each of us lost twenty pounds and gained an appreciation for God’s providence.
 
Eating less food is the most essential Lenten fast, and fundamental to our interior life. We can’t be attentive to God when we are stuffing our mouths with grub, or constantly thinking about which of the city’s restaurants we want to “experience.” As Beth Bubik told 150 women at St. Dominic’s in San Francisco last Saturday, when your brain tells your body it has to eat, your brain must “delay and pray.” You must tell your body: not just now, darling, and let’s say a few prayers. We can eat later! So: back off on the food and drink!
 
But these days we need to fast from something else if we want peace and the love of God. We need to fast from the cursed noise relentlessly vomiting from our devices. We must fast not only from food, but from noise. The other week I was in Paris, waiting in line to enter the great basilica of Sacré-Cœur (which dedicates the City of Lights to the Sacred Heart, along with the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, Notre Dame​). I was in line to enter the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built on the tallest hill in Paris, Montmartre. The sun was going down, casting a roseate glow across the city below us and, in particular, over the vast marble domes above us. Hundreds of birds were calling to each other from the lofty trees that frame this neighborhood, singing that enchanting lullaby birds do just before the sun goes to bed. Most people in my line, however, were not looking at the sun setting over Paris. They were bent, zombielike, over little glowing screens. The young man behind me also had earbuds inserted and was kind of grunting to what I suppose was a kind of music coming through his earphones. He kept bumping into me, somewhat unaware, as both his hearing and his vision were impaired. I was getting angry. So I turned around and looked straight at him. He became aware of me at that point and backed up a little. “You should unplug your ears,” I said to him. To his credit, he unplugged his ears. “What?” he asked me. “I said,” trying to smile, “you should hear the beautiful sounds all around us, especially the birdsong.” Again, to his credit, he returned my smile, cocked his head, and said “yes, that sounds beautiful.”
 
We began talking. He was from Thailand, it was his first time in France, and we talked a little about the church we were about to enter, and the love of God. We parted, at the security checkpoint, with all goodwill, and I lamented my initial anger towards him. Every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and every person is Jesus. God, I prayed, help me to unplug my heart to see You in every person!
 
During my four days in Paris I took all sorts of public transport: city buses, underground metro, surface trains, and lots of sidewalks. 90% of the people in the busses and trains were staring at their phones, many with ears plugged up. And yet, how beautiful they were, even in their zombielike state. How beautiful is the City of Paris, God’s gift to the world! Beauty is all around us, especially in other people, made in His image and likeness. So let us abstain, not only from meat, but from noise. Let us fast, not only from food, but from artificially generated images and sounds. As the Desert Fathers would say, look up, not down!  ​

​On Wednesday I concelebrated the 6pm Mass at Notre Dame de Paris. Her stonework shone with renewed splendor, as did the faces of the three French priests who welcomed me to offer the First Mass of Lent in the planet's most beloved church. It’s been over a year since the world finished putting almost a billion dollars into restoring Notre Dame from the 2019 fire, but the joy of her reopening has not diminished. Notre Dame is the most visited monument in a city bursting with beauty, and the 12 million who wait in line each year proclaim that Our Lady’s beauty far surpasses that of any other, for she is the Mother of God.
 
I had just completed my annual retreat, which this year was in Lourdes with 30 other priests from fifteen nations. The preacher was none other than Fr. Brian Kolodiuchuk, postulator for the canonization of Mother Teresa, of whom no man alive knows more about her life and spirituality. His retreat, entitled “Two lives; One Vocation,” described “The Little Way” (of sanctification) revealed both to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Most of us cannot do great things, but we can all do small things with great love, and so reach heaven by this “little way” of simple trust in God.
 
The parallels between St. Thérèse, who never left her Carmelite cloister before dying at age 24, and Mother Teresa, who established mission houses in every nation on earth (except China) before dying at age 87, are astonishing. Both attained invincible strength by remaining as weak as little children, entrusting everything and operating entirely on God’s grace. The fact is that we are nothing, really, or next to nothing, and God is everything. “Jesus is my all in all” Mother Teresa would say with a big smile, full trustful peace in the face of certain disaster. We are but a handful of dust, or as Jesus said to Catherine of Siena, “I am who is, and you are she who is not.” The joy of these women came from knowing that God loves the little, the poor, and the children with a particular affection. For a Christian, to be happy is to be little, and on ash Wednesday the Church describes this holy simplicity as “dust.”
 
Back in the sacristy at Notre Dame, the priest taught me the words in French used to mark the foreheads of the faithful: Souviens-toi, que tu es poussière, et que le retourneras a la poussière. I repeated the words several times as we headed into a basilica, filled with mostly young people hoping for eternal life and the "ashes” that would help get them there.  As we processed up the main aisle with the organ thundering its plaintive tones, I began mixing up the words. The priest saw my consternation and whispered “Ah bon, you can use the shorter form, Convertissez-vous et croyez à l'Évangile. But I knew the people wanted to hear about “dust,” so I kept repeating at least that one word, poussière. Clutching my little bowl of ashes, I did my best to say the correct formula in French, but sometimes the best I could do was to say something like “tu … poussière … et retourner a … poussière!” It was enough. They wanted the ashes, and they wanted to hear that they are just a handful of dust, but dust held lovingly in the hands of God.
​
Millions, perhaps billions, around the world came to churches on Wednesday to hear a priest tell them that there is a God, and that we are not He. The eager and devout faces of France’s young people lining up showed me how we will always feel the need for a Higher Power. We do not have to save the world—that has already been done. We are nothing, but by entrusting ourselves to the God who can make something out of nothing, we become something. 

 Twenty-six years ago, Robert D. Putnam published a book entitled Bowling Alone. We still bowl alone, but now we do almost everything else alone. This morning, on my bike, I passed three Waymo self-driving Jaguars waiting meekly at a red light. In each a lone passenger was sitting beside an empty driver’s seat, staring vacantly out the windshield. How lonely and passive they looked! The Jaguar Waymos that line up for business here in San Francisco have a little ad printed on the white flank of each vehicle: “Ride Today.” What they mean is “Ride Alone Today,” because their ads promise a taxi without a taxi driver, so you can be completely alone if you wish.
 
During my morning ride, I stopped at a favorite park bench to catch my breath and check my texts. As I was staring into my screen, a tall and lanky man with his female consort approached on the dirt path. I glanced up at their approach and called out a robust “good morning!” He returned the greeting and then added, with a big smile, “I hope you have a beautiful day.” His smile warmed my heart and made me think how much we need the human touch. The human heart needs to love and be loved, to notice and to be noticed, by other human hearts. Robots can do lots of cool stuff, but they can't smile at us.

The only thing worse than staring vacantly out a window of a driverless car is staring into a little screen with flickering blue light. Produced by very clever people, the beguiling media on our screens tell us what to think, how to feel, and what to do. Like the driverless cars, our devices are controlled by faceless agents for those who surrendered at least some of their human agency. We would rather sit back and let the cars the do the driving and the screens do the thinking.

Unlike others in the animal kingdom, human persons are endowed with intellect and will. We can think and act for ourselves. As the menagerie of autonomous devices grows, however, we think and act less. But, in the long term, we are generally happier driving than being driven. We were designed to be in the driver's seat, exercising our gifts of intelligence and free will.
 
As with any new invention put up for sale, the old Latin dictum applies: caveat emptor.

​The other day I was sitting quietly in the chapel, looking at some striking poinsettias on either side of the altar. A lovely Filipina grandmother (“Lola”) placed them there, as she does all the church flowers every Friday afternoon. Lola's poinsettias reminded me of my Polish grandmother's poinsettias. My Nana would place enchanting poinsettias about her New Jersey hillside home every December. Their deep green and brilliant red leaves, so wondrously complementary, painted an enchanted forest in my imagination. Growing into adolescence with these poinsettias every Christmas, I began to marvel at how God fills the world with contrasts that manifest His burning glory: fiery red sunsets over cool blue oceans, blazing summer days following frozen winter nights, men from Mars marrying women from Venus, quantum particles describing quantum waves, yin and yang, red and green.
 
The intense red flowers that crown dark green leaves between Christmas and Epiphany, from St. Stephen’s Day to Holy Family Sunday, between the Baptism of the Holy Innocents in blood and the Baptism of Christ in water, manifest splendid opposites working together. The poinsettia’s deep green leaves, almost hidden in the bottom of the plant, remind me of my Nana’s dreamlike home in the woods, including her mysterious little brown refrigerator containing frozen eclairs, and of my own mother, whose quiet love afforded us peaceful security throughout childhood. The poinsettia’s flaming red leaves, on the other hand, convey energy and fire, risk and adventure. They portray my grandfather’s life in the traveling circus (before meeting my grandmother) and of my own father’s two years in the Second World War, his return to New Jersey, and the sprawling house he procured for his family. Dad built us a house, and Mom made it a home.
 
The woman nurtures the family’s interior life, while the man leads his children outside the home, teaching them to engage the wider world. The contrast between the poinsettia's hidden green leaves and its prominent red leaves portray the Christian home with its paired interior and exterior dimensions. The family is meant to be both ad intra and ad extra, both private and public, formed by both the mother and the father. A healthy family forms a balance of both inner-facing and outer-facing dimensions in a child's life. The tragedy of broken families, and their failure to impart both of these dimensions, partly explains the “failure to launch” of so many young people today. This is the problem, and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is the solution. Let the mother be Mary, and the father be Joseph, and families will build a civilization of love.

​It is a new year here in San Francisco, and the sun is shining between storms. I paddled out to Alcatraz yesterday in the driving rain and found it deserted for New Year’s Day—what a wonder to see the island inhabited only by seagulls and cormorants, as if God had just created it! Every time I get on the Bay in my kayak it’s as if I’m on the water for the first time. Life is ever new, and we must bravely resist the old man’s illness of world-weariness, of becoming a has-been, of succumbing to cynicism and boredom after a life of disappointments. With every dawn God creates anew the world, and all the waters, the heavens, and the earth that is within it. That includes world-weary travelers like you and me who must never tire of exclaiming with Jeremiah the prophet, through his tears, “God's mercies are renewed each morning” (Lamentations 3:22).
 
Twelve years ago I bought a new car, my first hybrid electric, a Toyota Prius. From the day I drove it off the lot with four miles on the odometer, it has not ceased to be a "new car.” It had that new car smell, along with bells and whistles I had never dreamed of. As the dealer said, “basically it’s a computer on wheels.” We have to give it to the Japanese: I’ve had no major problems over the last twelve years, and with all its dents and scratches (mostly caused by throwing kayaks on and off the roof), the car is still “new” to me. It’s funny how a man and a new car can grow old together but continue to regard each other with the same delight as on the day they met.
 
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob commanded his children to save themselves for marriage. We are to marry a virgin and be faithful to her through thick and thin. The Messiah went further, elevating marriage to a sacrament for life, even declaring that by the power of God the two would become one flesh. In His great love for us, God established the unbreakable bond of matrimony, in which we find our true home, both here and hereafter. More than anything else, the human heart longs for “home,” found within the irrevocable bond between husband and wife, and their children, if God so blesses them.  
 
For many in a “throw away culture,” a new year means a new woman or a new man: a resolution to get out of a troublesome relationship and find someone “better.” For others, a new year means a renewed marriage: a resolution to find God’s grace even in the troublesome aspects of an existing relationship. I recommend the second approach.
 
The Bible commands virginity before marriage. The Church teaches that God has made the human heart monogamous, happiest when we discover life and grow old together, faithful to the wife of our youth. Many, if not most, do not marry virginally, and for them there is “second virginity,” godly dedication to a second spouse. But for my eight-graders, who have not yet been disillusioned, I say: start with a brand-new car, and it will always be a new car. Be that unused vehicle for the woman you love, and she will love you all the more for being only and all for her. She will trust you, and you will grow old together, never having known anyone else. You will love each other more with each passing year. That is why God commands us to lie with no woman until we have committed ourselves, for life, all and only to her.

Yesterday was what they call “Boxing Day” in England (on St. Stephen’s Day), and tomorrow is the Feast of the Holy Family. I’ll submit some thoughts for your consideration on the Holy Family tomorrow, but today some thoughts on “Boxing Day.”
 
In the Middle Ages, the name referred to the alms boxes into which Christians would put gifts for the poor the day after Christmas. "Boxing Day" also came to mean the gift boxes employers would give to their employees on St. Stephen’s Day. In the Consumer Age, however, Boxing Day refers to the Christmas gifts that need to be “reboxed” after we return them. Big Retail guilts us into getting something as proof of our love for friends and family at Christmas, and so packages of socks, books, scarves, sweaters, sweatpants, and various other products began piling up at home. The day after Christmas is a paroxysm of “returns and exchanges” for something that might actually fit our needs. Have you seen the parking lots at shopping centers after Christmas, and the exchange lines at department stores? Boxing Day has outpaced Black Friday as the most congested day of the year!
 
One dear friend gave me a pair of gloves and five pairs of socks for Christmas. With genuine gratitude, I opened the vacuum-sealed plastic packaging (which had itself been boxed over with cardboard packaging) to discover the gloves were the wrong size and the socks were the wrong color (only black for priests, please). She took them back, which meant driving to the store again and activating shipping, repackaging, and reshipping from the main distribution center. She presented me with new vacuum-packaged socks a week later, which were not of the needed thickness (some old men have precise sartorial requirements). I told her I would just wear two of them at a time, but she insisted on returning these socks too, and a few days later I received a large box from Amazon. Within this box was a brightly-colored plastic gift bag, within which was a cardboard box, wrapped in tissue paper, within which were five pairs of socks with plastic and cardboard packaging on them: five layers of packaging from a company that proudly trumpets its care for the planet!
 
Christmas originally proposed simplicity: just a baby in a manger. God didn’t require a five star hotel or even a Motel Six: just a stable with some straw to sleep in. The greatest became the least, and He was happy, because He needed only the love of Mary and Joseph. He didn't need a quintuple-boxed package with products fabricated in Thailand and shipped across the Pacific from China, freighted across the United States in big smokey trucks from distribution centers worked day and night by wage slaves, and delivered in shiny Amazon trucks by people of color working three jobs. Next year, try not to buy into Big Retail. The best gift you can give those you love is not found on the internet or in the mall. It doesn’t have to shipped from across the planet. Just a card, handwritten with love, goes a lot farther than a piece of plastic ordered online.
 
But, dear friends, if you insist on giving your priest something at Christmas, may I suggest making a donation to my parish school? Stella Maris Academy spends a million dollars a year educating San Francisco’s poorest children, shoulder to shoulder with the city's most gifted students, and they become best friends. I am so edified to see the wealthier families  of my school supporting the poorer families without a hint of patronizing. Even with this magnificent generosity, however, our annual shortfall is still around $500,000.

​If you want to make me happy at Christmas, buy a table or a ticket to our School Gala, which is on January 31. Fr. Donald Calloway will be our keynote speaker, and a renaissance music group will provide lighthearted entertainment. If you can’t attend that night, buy a ticket or a table for parents that cannot afford a ticket. You can get tickets or tables HERE. You won’t feel guilty for having shipped a triple-boxed piece of plastic from China (or gorgeous merino wool from New Zealand) to a man who already has everything. You can help save the planet by helping educate our future leaders, right here in San Francisco, at the City's finest elementary school.