I have put three years and $800,000 into starting a Classical Academy in San Francisco. Thanks to the committed efforts of many people, Stella Maris Academy will open its doors this August to a pioneer group of eager students. One of the steering committee members told me to come up with a tagline: a poignant phrase that describes the school in vibrant color. Lots of possibilities have come to mind, such as “A better Curriculum,” “Thinking Freely,” “A Liberating Education,” “Restoring Freedom of Thought,” and “Discovering Wonder.” How can I describe thee, O Classical Academy?

Having just finished the Book of Job, this tagline comes to mind: “Wonder and Praise.” In Chapter 39, Yahweh addresses Job and his companions from the storm cloud. “Have you an inkling of the extent of the earth?” He asks the trembling men. “Can you fasten the harness of the Pleiades, or untie Orion’s bands? Who gave the wild donkey his freedom, and untied the rope from his proud neck? Can the wing of the ostrich be compared with the plumage of the stork or the falcon? She leaves her eggs on the ground with only earth to warm them…God, you see, has made her unwise, and given her no share of common sense. Yet, if she bestirs herself to use her height, she can make fools of horse and rider too.” The Book of Job concludes with five chapters of wonder: of skies and seas, of plants and beasts, of the human heart and of the God who made it all. These wonders have fascinated the best minds of our civilization for 35 centuries, producing wondrous art, literature, science, and social order. What can Job say? He can only respond with wonder and praise.
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We, and our children, need wonder and praise. Without them, life is so sad. Our souls yearn to discover the fascinating and beautiful order in creation, and to praise the God who addresses us personally from the storm cloud with terrifying love. I remember discovering, in a high school library, that dolphins navigate the ocean blue by sonar. I was filled with wonder. I burned to know everything about the stunning natural order of our planet. Most schools in America today, dare I say it, have lost a sense of wonder and certainly lost a sense of praise. But in the eyes and speech of Classical Academy students, I see wonder and gratitude. The great good of establishing a Catholic Classical Academy is worth $800,000 and many years of hard work: just to see wonder in the eyes of our children again.

We have come to Quinquagesima Sunday, three days before Ash Wednesday. Today, on Valentine’s Day, we prepare for ashes, the sign of death, on our foreheads. Valentinus (the name in Latin means “valiant” or “strong”) was a priest of the Church in Rome who continued bringing the sacraments to his parishioners after the empire had made it illegal. He was eventually arrested, tortured, and martyred on February 14, 269. Christ commanded his first priests, the night before his crucifixion, to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in remembrance of him. “Do you love me Peter?” he asked his first priest. “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Feed my sheep, Christ replied. St. Valentine died bringing his parishioners the sacraments of God, and he is certainly a model and inspiration to all of us priests here at Star of the Sea. St. Valentine died for those he loved, because love is not a feeling but a decision.
 
One of my heroes is St. Maximilian Kolbe, a priest of the Church in Poland, died bringing the sacraments to his “parishioners” in Auschwitz. He had prepared for that final act of love, taking the place of another man condemned to death, by years of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We enter into those disciplines on Wednesday in the hope that penance will refine our capacity to love deeply. The Epistle for Quinquagesima is St. Paul’s great hymn to Christian love, which most fiancées choose for their wedding Masses: “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous, it is never rude, it is not quick-tempered.  Love never fails.” Real love must grow deeper than romance, and most brides, I hope, know quite well that neither they nor their husbands can attain the love described by St. Paul without God’s help and daily discipline.
 
Today’s Gospel portrays this deeper love. First Jesus tells his apostles he is going to Jerusalem to lay his life in obedience to his Father, and for love of them. But then the Gospel gives us a little side incident. Jesus notices a ragged roadside beggar. He sees the beggar that most of us do not even see. He sees him, he talks to him as a man, and he heals him. In 1948 Mother Teresa noticed a man lying in a Calcutta gutter, one man in a city of 13 million men. She saw the man no one else saw. She picked him up, washed him, fed him, and looked at him. He looked back at her and asked, “why are you doing this?” She replied simply, “Because I love you.” The man smiled, and then died. Another man told her that he had lived like and animal but would die as an angel, in her arms. God makes every one of us capable of divine love, if we pray to him, discipline our bodies, and practice daily acts of charity. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving lay the groundwork for heartfelt love.
 
Love begins at home, to be sure, and so make quite sure you meet the daily obligations of domestic love—patience with your spouse and children, kindness toward an annoying relative, small acts of thoughtfulness to siblings and grandparents. But we need friends as well, and generally one has only two or three very close friends in a lifetime. I have two very close friends, both priests, without whom I would not have survived as a priest. The first priests with whom I lived did not believe what I believed, and each had an addiction to either alcohol or sex. Was this the priesthood to which I had dedicated my life? I knew of a solid priest about my own age, and I risked a phone call to him: “Fr. Mark, I need a priest support group, or I’m not going to make it.” Fr. Mark agreed to begin praying with me, and we invited a few others. We’ve been brothers for over 30 years now, and without him and some others, I would have long ago abandoned my vocation.
 
In addition to two or three close friends, we need a supportive community of people who believe what we believe and desire what we desire. Rod Dreher articulates this in his famous book The Benedict Option. If you don’t have the support of a small community of believers, he writes, you will lose your faith. Christian friendship is an obligation, a matter of spiritual life and death. We are made in God’s image, who is himself a community of persons. Christ formed a community of twelve friends while on earth. You too must form authentic friendships with other Catholics if you are to be happy and do God’s work. Pray together, work together, sup together, rest together. Make the effort to build convivium, the Latin word that best describes the Last Supper. So many lonely people pass through these church doors, desperately lonely people, and it need not be so. Ask God to give you friends, and then risk forming deep friendships, and God will give you true love.

Church Doors Reopen We thank God that the Supreme Court has safeguarded our constitutional right to worship. Many parishes have been making great efforts to provide the Mass and sacraments in a prudent manner. The Holy Eucharist and communal worship at Star of the Sea has not spread any sickness. Quite the opposite: it has brought peace, joy, and communal health to isolated and depressed people. We can worship God together without endangering our health. We must come together in universal brotherhood if we are to be healthy as individuals and as a society.

Valentine’s Day Since 496 AD we have been celebrating the martyrdom of St. Valentine on February 14. A priest of Rome, Valentinus (the name in Latin means “valiant” or “strong”) risked his life bringing the sacraments to persecuted Christians. He was eventually arrested, tortured, and martyred on February 14, 269. St. Valentine loved God enough to risk his life in obedience to Christ’s command to “feed my sheep.” Valentine died while bringing his parishioners the sacraments of God, the measure of true love. Love is a decision, not merely a sentiment. When I was in third grade, love was giving pink valentine cards to cute girls. Let’s hope, however, we learn to love more deeply than cute cards.

​Ashes to Ashes Next week we will celebrate our first “post-Covid” Ash Wednesday (the lockdowns began just after Lent began last year). Since then, the fear of death has gripped our country, closing many businesses, churches, and schools. Let’s try to regain our balance, looking to the martyrs to keep a healthy perspective on bodily health and safety. They did not seek death, but neither did they fear it. The blood of the martyrs testifies that life is more than “staying alive and having stuff.” Setting our hopes on the Resurrection enables us to manage a pandemic rationally. Without seeing this life in the perspective of eternity, we will end up sacrificing far too much to obtain far too little. Ash Wednesday reminds us that “I am dust, and unto dust I shall return.” It’s an arresting thought, and as one priest told me, “cheer up. Soon you’ll be dead and all your problems will be over.” Indeed. God has always provided, so why would I think He wouldn’t provide for me after I die? 

Is abortion a matter of religion, or is it a matter of science? Those currently in power insist, and most of us unthinkingly accept, that the question of whether a human fetus is human is not a question of science but a matter of personal religious belief. Embryology, however, clearly answers the question in the affirmative. The further question of whether the human fetus has the right to live is answered clearly by rational jurisprudence in the affirmative. So why do most of us let those in power so easily claim that abortion is a “religious belief”?

The reason is that most who appeal to embryology and jurisprudence in this matter are also religious. Religion doesn’t prove the issue, but it gives people to capacity to understand science “scientifically.” Religious people can understand scientific evidence dispassionately and rationally because they are accustomed to disciplining their desire to get what they want at any cost. The scientific evidence is clear, but a woman who becomes pregnant without support will need to make great sacrifices to keep her baby. She will have to deny her own wants to meet the needs of another person. In general, those without the altruistic principles and habitual disciplines of right religion scarcely have the capacity to make the necessary sacrifices. They will rationalize irrational positions to deal with their dilemmas. They will appeal to “science” to excuse clearly irrational and unscientific behaviors.

Opposition to abortion and opposition to gender ideology (for example, insisting that men can compete fairly in women’s sports) are not religious issues. They are human rights issues. But it is mostly religious people who defend reason and science in these questions. There are exceptions, such as my friend Terrisa Bukovinac, founder of Pro-life San Francisco. Terrisa courageously advocates for unborn people at City Hall and in front of Planned Parenthood, and just as courageously declares herself an atheist, feminist, and member of the Democratic Party as she stands with mostly believing Catholics and Evangelicals. She’s got a tough row to hoe!

It is hard, but not impossible, to be an atheist and pro-life, because it is hard to be objective about science without a First Principle that grounds the science. One of religion’s first principles is that the human race needs help from a power greater than itself. Catholic theology calls the problem “Original Sin,” which fatally compromises the human intellect and the human will. Atheistic socialism pretends that humans can save themselves if they just think hard enough, and if they submit themselves to a sufficiently powerful government. History—another branch of objective science that is easily manipulated—proves otherwise. There is no historical evidence that atheistic socialism has ever successfully ordered a human society.

The questions of abortion, human sexuality, and political governance are clearly defined by the empirical sciences, but we need help perceiving and accepting the empirical science. That is why most non-religious people, who decline that help, cannot perceive and cannot accept the basic science. Those who do not want to admit scientific data when it interferes with their personal desires call these issues “religious,” and they convince us who have not received an education that enables us to think clearly, logically, and scientifically. I myself am painfully aware of the limits of my own education, although schools in the late sixties had not completely lost their way.

I will light a candle, with God’s help, rather than curse the darkness. Which is why I am putting a lot of time and money into reopening my parish school in San Francisco as an Integrated Classical Catholic Academy. Do your part to spread the word that there will be a Classical Catholic School in San Francisco this August. Many good parents imagine that the public and private schools are “good enough.” That is not true. The time has come to make a choice: either get your child into a school capable of educating your children in empirical science grounded in first principles and final ends, or watch them lose their faith. Watch them lose their ability to think clearly. Those who cannot think clearly become the slaves of those who have power over them.