In the beautiful month of May our parish will offer three Solemn High Masses: May 1 (St. Joseph), May 10 (Ascension Thursday) and May 31 (Corpus Christi). Learning the Solemn High Mass, and celebrating it well, is challenging, both for priests and for servers. But it’s a challenge that invigorates.
 
For much of the Church’s history the Solemn High Mass set the gold standard for iconic Catholic worship. If Hollywood wanted “the Catholic Church” in a movie it would show a High Mass in the cathedral, clergy and servers engulfed in clouds of incense, backed by a Gregorian choir soundtrack. To a liturgically sensitive person, there is nothing more beautiful than a Solemn High Mass done well. Our parish is one of the few in Northern California that attempts the High Mass, and we are finally, they tell me, doing it tolerably well. It is a treasure made possible by God’s grace and the hard work of our music department, our dedicated servers, priests, and support staff. Earlier this month Fr. John Chung, Fr. John Fewel, and I offered a High Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation. For the first time I felt at home in the Solemn High Mass, moving with the other priests as one body, in serene prayer.

​On April 7 seven young men became deacons at St. Pius in Redwood City, ordained by Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu. Among them were Michael Rocha, who was one of my faithful altar boys while I was pastor in Modesto. I joked with him that many hearts were broken that day; young Catholic women across the archdiocese were in mourning because seven good Catholic men were no longer available. Michael began his journey to the priesthood as a lowly altar boy. “Why do you like to serve so much?” I asked him fifteen years ago. “It’s so bright and beautiful near the altar,” he replied. Michael will find much in the priesthood that is not so bright and beautiful, but it is the shining grace of the Mass that draws us, and that sustains us. Nothing inspires a boy or young man more for seminary than a robust altar server program. Last year we sent four men into the seminary from our little parish, three of whom were altar servers. As the Church teaches, altar boy programs are one of our strongest sources of priestly vocations. Serving the Latin Mass is particularly challenging and so particularly inspiring for a young man. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! 

I’m a believer in Retrouvaille, a weekend workshop for marriages needing help. And which of our marriages does not need help? I think everyone should do this workshop at some point in their marriage! Last weekend I helped at a Retrouvaille, and I was again inspired by the heroism of couples fighting to rebuild and protect their families from the floodtide against marriage. As one of the presenting couples said, “Growing up I didn’t have a clue about real marriage. Everything I had seen in movies and TV, or heard at school or learned from my extended family, taught me that no one really keeps their marriage vows. They told me in so many ways that taking chastity seriously was unhealthy.” Every one of us must thank those couples who fight for their marriages, and so fight for our whole society.
 
Another tide rises to meet the toxic waves of the “sexual revolution.” The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and grace swells all about us. Eighteen couples arrived last Friday night at the conference room in Mountain View, overwhelmed by tides of sadness, hurt, and despair. They were drowning, but the Retrouvaille couples at our weekend (five of them, all of whom had been drowning themselves not so long ago) threw them a life line. The couples who began the Retrouvaille movement in French-speaking Canada in 1977 chose the life preserver as their symbol.
 
My favorite moment in the 44-hour workshop is Saturday night, when we open it up to individual testimonies. The sad darkness from just the night before has been replaced by smiles. A lightness of spirit fills the room as couples witness to the glimmers of hope they are beginning to see. Maybe we can recover love, they say. The presenting couples have done it. Why can’t we, if there is a God?

​My second favorite moment in the 44-hour workshop is a three-hour break in the presentation schedule for the couples to spend quiet time together. It’s also free time for the priest, and as soon as I was released from the conference room I got on my bike to find a church with the Blessed Sacrament. After all, I needed to spend some alone time with my spouse too. But as I drove up to the nearest church I could hear horns trumpeting from inside: a Quinsinera was in progress. I drove on to the second church and saw a stretch limo out front—a wedding was in progress. So I ended up sitting on a hillside under the bright sun. Not a bad holy hour, but I longed for the Blessed Sacrament. The next morning my guardian angel woke me quite early, and I drove to the nearest church again. It was not yet open, but an old man was sitting in his car in the empty parking lot. “Is there a way I can get into the church?” I asked him. “Sure, padre. I’ll let you in.” And so he did, and he prayed with me before the tabernacle. Others came in, even though the first Sunday Mass wouldn’t be for another hour, and the church became a beautiful and quiet and prayerful community.
 
But the church building was not beautiful. It had been built as a gym, and then the church never got built, although a state of the art gymnasium did get built, while altar and tabernacle remained in the old gym. As we prayed in that drafty and plain structure, I gazed at the cheap felt banners, threadbare carpet, dull concrete walls, and naked tabernacle. Hooks meant to hold the veil were still in place, but the veil had been torn away. Despite the “bare ruined choirs” of many of our parishes, where sports is given so much more time and money than divine worship, people still come to pray. The faith has not been completely eradicated, nor can it be. No one can stop the work of God in our parishes and schools. We can delay it, through fear and neglect, but we cannot stop it. A rising tide of grace will always flood the earth, now that Christ is risen and sent his Holy Spirit among us.

Peace be with you
Yesterday seven men became deacons at St. Pius in Redwood City, ordained by Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu. Among them were Michael Rocha, who was one of my faithful altar boys while I was pastor in Modesto. I joked with him yesterday that many hearts were broken yesterday; and young Catholic women across the archdiocese were in mourning because seven good Catholic men had made vows of perpetual celibacy. Giving up a wife and family is not easy for a priest, but it’s not the greatest sacrifice to which God calls us. To bring Divine Mercy to an unbelieving world will cost us much suffering.
 
Immediately after ordaining these men, Bishop Silva embraced them with these words: “peace be with you.” Our Divine Lord, in today’s Gospel, says those same words four times to His newly-ordained priests. It was Easter Sunday night, and these eleven men were cowering in the upper room, afraid that the Jewish authorities would arrest them as they did Jesus. They were also afraid that the Messiah had actually come back from the dead. What would He who was able to raise Himself from complete death do to them, who had all deserted Him? A priest will always, to some degree, betray and desert the Lord, but Jesus passes through the locked doors and utters His post-Resurrection first words: Peace be with you. He says it four times to reassure the disciples. And then He gives them the authority to forgive as He forgives them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Whose sins you lose are loosed, and yes, whose sins you retain are retained.” He gives them the charism of divine mercy, which includes the charism of moral authority. In God, mercy and truth are one act of divine love, guiding us gently to heaven.
 
Divine Mercy

In 1931 a poor Polish nun received a vision of the Risen Christ, which she described in her diary:  "In the evening, when I was in my cell, I became aware of the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand was raised in blessing, the other was touching his garment at the breast. … there came forth two large rays, one red and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; ... After a while Jesus said to me, 'paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the inscription: Jesus, I trust in You.'" One hand raised in blessing, in mercy, His infinite outpouring love for us; the other hand at His breast, pointing to His heart slashed open on the cross, the price of that mercy.
 
Sr. Faustina, born Helen Kowalska, grew up in southern Poland just after World War I. The nations of Europe had turned on each other like wolves, and God was apparently silent as 41 million people suffered death and destruction. Europe had been so traumatized by World War I that when Adolph Hitler began arming Germany again, no one had the strength to resist. It was at this time, in 1931, that God spoke to a poor, uneducated farm girl, assuring us that God is not silent, and that love, not hateful fear, moves the world. In the year 2000, St. John Paul II canonized this farm girl and established the Feast of Divine Mercy, always to be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. Mercy, God’s tender love, is the only thing that will remain at the end of human history.
 
Do not doubt but believe

​But let’s return to the Gospel.  The Apostle Thomas refused to let go of his bitter disappointment. As in the Great War, God was silent as His Son died in agony on Calvary. A week after Jesus’ first visit to the upper room on Easter, that is, today, Jesus returns to that room and goes straight to Thomas: Touch me, and believe. Let go of your fear. Trust in me. Thomas surrenders, and so becomes a saint on the spot: “My Lord and my God.” Paint an image, Jesus told Sr. Faustina, according to the pattern you see, with the inscription: Jesus, I trust in You.
 
Let us also trust in Jesus’ Divine Mercy. I finish with Sr. Faustina’s own prayers to Jesus. “Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbors’ souls and come to their rescue. Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all. Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful, so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor. May your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.”