​​Taking Jesus into the Streets
On Sunday in my parish, halfway through Eastertide, seven children will make their First Holy Communion because Eastertide points to the Feast of Corpus Christi. The Pascal Mystery begins with Holy Thursday, before the Resurrection, and concludes on the Thursday of Corpus Christi, ten days after Pentecost. On Holy Thursday (after Christ is arrested) we process behind the Eucharist inside our churches, but on Corpus Christi (after Christ has arisen), we will joyfully take the Eucharist into the streets, following behind Christ without fear. When the Church was strong, Corpus Christi processions, with dozens of First Communicants in their white suits and dresses, filled the streets of San Francisco. We have not seen the Holy Eucharist in the streets of San Francisco for many years, however. “The Culture War?” sneered an atheist commentator recently. “It’s over. You lost.” Most Catholic churches didn’t have the strength to even keep their churches open when secularist governments ordered them to close. Thanks be to God that our own Archbishop ordered his pastors to resist. “Keep your churches open, with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament if possible” he wrote as the lockdowns began. But most of us did not have the strength to resist. Our Lord remained locked inside shuttered churches while Catholics stopped receiving the Risen Eucharistic Lord, or even visiting the Blessed Sacrament.
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​A three-hour Eucharistic Fast
Our current weakness results from ignorance. If most Catholics do not know that God is truly present in the Eucharist (75% of Catholics profess ignorance of the Real Presence), why would we come to Mass (75% of Catholics do not attend Mass regularly)? How to regain faith in the Eucharist? Among many ways, I suggest a simple step: regaining the Eucharistic fast. In 1957 the fast from midnight was shortened to three hours, and in 1964 it was reduced to just one hour, which is kind of a joke: it means only that I can’t eat on the way to Mass. It means that I, as a priest, can have a donut just before walking into the sacristy for the 11:30am Mass. Rather than cursing the darkness, however, let’s light a candle. Let’s begin to practice the three-hour fast again (the sick, the elderly, and priests with multiple Masses should be prudent), offering any inconveniences and bodily sufferings to the crucified and risen Christ, Our Lord and Redeemer. We simply won't believe that the Holy Eucharist is not just a "wafer" if we don't do what Christians and believers in other religions have always done: to fast.

Ten months ago, Star of the Sea parish hired Dr. Gavin Colvert as Head of School for the proposed new Stella Maris Academy, San Francisco’s first Catholic Classical Academy in many decades. In the day, every Catholic school was a Classical Academy, in the sense that all of them taught the classics in a fully integrated, Catholic manner. Gradually, over 80 years, many Catholic schools followed the path of public schools in “de-integrating” their curricula, and in de-emphasizing the eternal truths held by the Catholic Church. Star of the Sea had attempted to re-integrate our existing school but met with fierce opposition, such that enrollment dropped so low as to close the school two years ago. But we would rise from the ashes. We had funding, we had buildings, we had the support of the Archdiocese, and now we had a Headmaster. The only thing we didn’t have was students. Eminently qualified, Gavin took the job with great enthusiasm, but soon came to terms with the immense challenges, including a pandemic that was driving many of San Francisco’s remaining families out of the city. “This is a loaves and fishes operation,” he mused one day. We needed a minimum of 25 enrollments by May 15, but truly God would have to multiply the families and the students.

Last Friday, the Gospel at daily Mass was the loaves and the fishes. “Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted….” Because Jesus “gave thanks” for the five barley loaves and two fish as a gift, instead of doubting that so little could ever feed so many, His all-provident Father multiplied them. On Friday, just before I vested for Mass to read that Gospel, Gavin texted me. “We are now at 28 students, three more than the minimum needed to open the school. Deo Gratias!” I put down my phone, entered the sanctuary, and offered the supreme act of thanksgiving which we call, from the Greek, the Holy Eucharist. God had, once again, provided.
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We had put the school in God’s hands, working very hard with what little we had, and He has provided. I also thank Our Lady, for whom the school is named, and St. Joseph, to whom we prayed a 33-day novena from February 15 to March 19. We will continue to beg God’s mercy and pray to the saints for help, because my new goal is 40 students. If it please God, I ask that the school get off to a strong start, even beyond the minimum needed to survive. But … we will rejoice in whatever God is pleased to give us. It will always be a “loaves and fishes” operation.

1.    One Heart and One Mind
Our first reading describes the first Christian community, “of one heart and one mind, holding everything in common.” This kind of community is the aspiration and joy of every faithful Catholic, or at least it should be. Parish priests often spend the Easter Octave in community, and that is what I did last week. Six of us from different parishes and three different dioceses spent four days in a parishioner family's beach house--God reward our benefactors! The six of us priests have been good friends for many years, some of us for close to 40 years. We rested after the labors of Holy Week, swapping funny stories from parish life, praying our breviaries and rosaries and offering Mass together, biking and kayaking, and otherwise rejoicing in Christ Jesus our Risen Lord. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
 
Over the seven years I’ve been at Star of the Sea, I’ve seen our parish growing in community too. We’ve fought many battles together, especially this past year, struggles that have united us in mind and heart. “With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection….” This great power is God’s, but shines through us, his servants, who believe in His resurrection, testifying to freedom in Christ. Our Lord has protected this parish and provided for us this past year: more people are coming to our Masses than before the pandemic, and giving more of themselves in time, talent, and treasure. How is it possible that our offertory has increased 40%, that six of our young adults will enter into marriage this year, that this small parish is building a Catholic hospital in Africa and a Catholic family clinic in San Francisco, that three different groups have spontaneously begun feeding and clothing the poor on our streets, that one of our young men will become a priest himself in two months and many others are in the seminary, and that in all ways we are caring for each other? Our community is a miracle of God’s grace, for which we, always beggars at the throne of grace, praise and thank Him. We must persevere in one heart—genuine and reverent prayer to God—and in one mind—religious submission of intellect to the full teachings of the Bible and the Church. God will be with us if we are with Him.
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 2.    Peace
In the Gospel, Jesus returns to his community on the evening of the same day he rose from the dead. His eleven remaining apostles are cowering behind locked doors, but he strides through their fears and says “peace be with you.” He says it three times, and the Church has been repeating these words in her liturgies since then: “Grace and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” Pax vobis; et cum spiritu tuo. He shows them his wounds. He is not bitter towards his executioners, nor towards his apostles who abandoned him, nor toward Thomas who refused to believe in Him. “Peace be with you.” His peace, his joy, springs precisely from the deadly violence men have done to Him, because his peace has overcomes every violence. Christ’s peace in us has greater stamina than any darkness or fear. This past year has been dark and fearful for many, but for believing communities it has been a year of peace and joy.
 
3. Water and Blood
In the Great Jubilee, the Year 2000, Pope John Paul II named this day Mercy Sunday. Indeed, the collect for this Mass prays to the God of everlasting mercy.  “Increase your grace in us, that we may rightly understand in what font we have been washed, by whose blood we have been redeemed.” 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 touching his garment at the breast from which came forth two large rays, one red and the other pale.” One hand raised in mercy, the other hand pointing to His heart slashed open, the price of that mercy.
 
This poor nun, Sr. Faustina, grew up in southern Poland just after the Great War of 1914-18. Nations had turned on each other like wolves, and Europe had been so traumatized that when Germany began arming itself for the next war, no one had the strength to resist. In our own time, too, few have the strength to resist. In the end, there is no political solution to our fears and hatreds. Only God can bring His children to true community. Only God’s water (holy baptism) and His blood (the Eucharist) brings about true fellowship. “O my Jesus,” Sister Faustina wrote in her diary, “despite the deep night that is all around me and the dark clouds on the horizon, I know that the sun never goes out. I trust in your mercy.” 

Today is my father's 95th birthday. Could I ask you, dear reader, to say a Hail Mary for him? Just about this time of year in 1944, not long after he turned 18, he reported to the Army’s San Francisco Port of Embarkation building, which still stands at Fort Mason near Fisherman’s Wharf. He got on a troop ship for Manila and served in the Pacific theatre under General Douglas MacArthur until the war was over. He brought a few fistfuls of Japanese occupation money back as souvenirs, and I still have a “one centavo” note by which to remember his service. In gratitude to my Dad, I will offer Mass for him at noon today and hope many Ave’s will be lifted up to heaven for him. Somehow he never received the Sacrament of Confirmation, something my mother has always lamented. I hope that during my next visit home he will permit me to confer that sacrament upon him, if I can get permission from the Bishop of Harrisburg. Thank you for remembering him, and all those who fought in the two World Wars, in your prayers.

Last night, after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, I returned to strip the altars. In the older usage, the priest stands before the altar and intones verse 19 of Psalm 22: diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea (“They divided my vesture among them”). King David wrote these words a thousand years before a few Roman soldiers stripped Christ of his vestments and tossed lots for them. As the choir chants the rest of the psalm, the priest gets to work. With an assistant, he strips the main altar of its three cloths, and then moves on to the side altars. “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” the choir chants. We will hear these words today at the Passion Service as Christ cries out the first verse of Psalm 22 from the Cross.

The altars are stripped, the tabernacles emptied, the candles removed, the people leave, and the church reverts to silent darkness. The Son of Man is left hanging on a cross between two criminals, abandoned by all but his mother and a few women. Usually we keep the Sacred Eucharist in Holy Thursday’s Altar of Repose only until midnight, but this year some women asked that we leave Christ in the tabernacle all night. At 4:30am I went down to pray. I found five people in the chapel who had apparently kept watch all night. All of them were women.  

The three or four women who kept watch at Calvary 2000 years ago have been keeping watch until our own time. They are poor women, abused women, marginalized women. It is rare for a powerful and wealthy woman to spend much time in church, but someday I hope every woman, even the most powerful in America, will bend the knee before the crucified God. It is the Christian hope that every living being will one day grow silent before the mystery of Love Crucified. Ave Crux, spes unica!