​Last week I went back to my hometown in Pennsylvania to spend some time with my 96-year-old father, and to lay flowers at my mother’s grave. It’s most clarifying to spend time with a very old person. As Dad himself said a few years ago, “at my age, it’s getting harder and harder to deny reality.” Dad is preparing for join my mother in death, although it would surprise no one if he were to surpass 100 years. As he looks back on his life and forward to the life of the world to come, Dad enlightens all who have the patience to converse with him.
 
“Your mother,” he told me slowly, almost in a whisper, “came to New York as a fashion model, but she ended up marrying a professor and having six children.” They met on a subway platform: among all the rushing Manhattanites, Mom asked Dad for directions because he held a few books under his arm (he was on his way to Columbia University for class). Dad was enchanted by the damsel in distress and got her on the right train for the modeling studio, but not before he got her phone number. Six children later, Mom was in no shape to resume her modelling career, but she was a happy woman.
 
Dad left New York in 1944 for basic training in Fort Riley, Kansas, and from there through San Francisco to Manila. I often ride my bike past the “embarkation building” at Fort Mason where Dad spent a night before steaming under the Golden Gate Bridge for the Pacific Theatre. “We spent three months in troop ships, going very slowly in convoy on watch for Japanese submarines,” he whispered. “I slept under a row of depth charges.” A depth charge is a 60-gallon drum packed with TNT to sink attacking submarines, but one wonders how peacefully a soldier sleeps under a few thousand pounds of high explosives.
 
Both Mom and Dad, like most of their generation, reacted to the twists and turns of their lives with aplomb. Mom gave up her modeling career when motherhood called, and Dad offered his very life for the liberation of Manila when the US Army called.
 
Last Thursday we commemorated Our Lord’s Ascension, and in seven days we will commemorate Pentecost. The nine days between Ascension and Pentecost is the Church’s greatest novena, commanded by the Lord himself to his apostles: “stay in the city and pray for the Father’s promised gift.” We pray for this fundamental grace, to receive the Holy Spirit day by day, and so receive the mysterious twists and turns of God’s will with aplomb. The Lord Jesus did not ascend into heaven to abandon us, but to take us with him. Where the Head has gone, the Members must follow, because we are One Body in Christ. Our souls are already with Him, in heaven, and yet we are to “stay in the city,” to live our lives on earth in expectation of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Ascension triggers Pentecost, for only if Christ returns to his Father can we “be clothed with power from on high” at Pentecost. We received the Holy Spirit in baptism, and we receive the Holy Spirit at every Holy Communion.
 
Dad returned from the War in one piece and got his doctorate at Columbia University. The “Frankfurt School” of Marxists from Germany had already taken over the School of Education at Columbia, fascinating my father with Marxism’s doctrines. For many years he was an angry communist, but for the last ten years he has been mellowing. Marxism is ideology, not reality, because we can’t trust ourselves to create a perfect world, or even a just world. Marxism applies justice without mercy, and so it fails every time. “Trust no love that is not truthful,” the philosopher Edith Stein wrote, “but trust no truth that is not given with love.” My father is preparing for death, which is a truth no man can deny. He is learning, and teaching us, to hope for love beyond the grave, a Person that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. “I go to prepare a place for you,” the Lord told his disciples at the end of his earthly life. And I will send you another Advocate, who will lead you to the place I have prepared for you. Come, O Holy Spirit!

Today, 57 years ago, my mother took her six children out of school and up a small mountain named “Twin Lights,” a castle with two lighthouse towers far above the Navesink River in New Jersey. It was Ascension Thursday, and Mom would take us out of school every year to celebrate the Lord’s return to heaven. We would ascend some small height and have a picnic.

Last night I flew East to celebrate Ascension Thursday with my mother, but this time I will visit her grave rather than ascend South Mountain with her. Later today, however, I’ll go with my brother up South Mountain and look up into the sky, toward Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I hope and pray that my mother is in the fullness of heaven now, and I hope and pray we will all ascend to God after we die. After visiting Mom’s grave, we will visit Dad, who recently turned 96, and wish him a happy Ascension Thursday.

Our Lord has returned to heaven, not to abandon us but to prepare a place for us in the skies. The brave shepherd goes ahead of us, opening a way for all who wish to follow him into heaven. At the end of our lives, Christ will say to us “Come. Come follow me.” We will follow him at that moment only if we have made an honest attempt to follow him throughout our lives on earth.

Just a week ago the Archbishop of San Francisco made the difficult decision, after nine years of deliberation, to notify his parishioner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, that she should not receive Holy Communion until she repudiates the legalized killing of unborn human beings. He did this, following canon law 915 (“those who persist in manifest grave sin should not be admitted to Holy Communion”) in hopes that she will look up, towards the life of the world to come. Mrs. Pelosi insists that she is a devout Catholic, placing herself under the pastoral care of the Archbishop of San Francisco. By invoking canon 915, Archbishop Cordileone has made an attempt to save her soul before it is too late. Another reason for invoking canon 915 is to protect the integrity of the Holy Eucharist. We are all sinners, of course, but for one who manifestly [publicly and politically] promotes this grave injustice, receiving the Body of the Lord is a terrible scandal. It confuses those who are trying to believe that what appears to be just a piece of bread is really the Body of Christ; it diminishes faith in the Eucharist and diminishes faith in God’s presence in all human beings, especially very tiny ones that you can’t see without a sonogram machine.
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We will all die, and it takes a good deal of courage to face death with serene joy. Is there really anything beyond the grave? Is there really anyone above the skies? No one believes in God alone, because God is essentially a community of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know God through other people, through his goodness and beauty shining through them. We have to help each other believe in God, and that is why my mother would take us out of school every Ascension Thursday for a family picnic. Take some time today to be with and pray for those you love, helping them to look toward heaven.

I’ve always wondered how Google and Youtube and Facebook can provide such marvelous services at no cost to the consumer. These internet services are so marvelous that they have become addictive, almost as if they were designed that way. But they are still free. How is that possible?

It’s possible because clever people have learned how to sell us products without us knowing it. Almost all the revenue Google generates is from advertising. But as most of us pay no attention to internet ads, how does Google make their billions in profits every year?

Maybe there are products that I buy without knowing I’m buying them. One of those products might be … the Covid vaccine. If I pay taxes, I’ve bought this product. My taxes went up sharply this year, so maybe I bought a lot of Covid vaccines without knowing it. After all, the government offers them “for free,” meaning of course that Joe Taxpayer provides them.

If I’m buying Covid vaccines, I suppose I have a right to ask how effective they are. The government and the drug companies have all sorts of studies showing how marvelous the vaccines are at preventing Covid. But why would I trust government or drug company studies, given that both sell the vaccine? It’s been a year since the vaccines have been out, along with massive ad campaigns to get people to take them, but everyone seems to be still getting Covid. In the house where I live, three of us got Covid in January, but only the vaccinated person suffered serious symptoms. Many of my friends and acquaintances tell me the same story about their households. In any case, if the vaccines were effective, Covid rates would be going down, but they are not (at least the internet tells us they are not going down).

How is it possible that such a poor product receives unlimited free advertising from the world’s largest ad firms? Why are corporations and governments forcing their employees to buy a product with such abysmal performance?

May I suggest an answer, at the risk of being censored? It’s because the drug companies, and their internet advertisers, don’t want us to be entirely healthy. If we were all healthy, Pfizer and Google would lose a lot of business. It’s much more lucrative to keep everyone just a little sick, and afraid of getting sick, so we will remain dependent on their products. “I’m quadruple vaccinated and can’t wait for the next booster” is money to the ears of those who produce and market vaccines. And every time Facebook censors a doctor who questions the vaccines, or promotes a doctor who pushes the vaccines, it is marketing these products.

The business of America is business, not health, I suppose. Everything we see on Google, I hate to tell you, is in some way an ad. Google doesn’t run its business for free. So, caveat emptor (you can look that up on Google if you don’t know what it means). Don’t believe everything you hear, and don’t believe anything you read on the internet without thinking it through most critically and carefully. Look around you, with your own eyes, rather than through the eyes of Google or YouTube, and you will be a better person.

 The day after Mother’s Day I was called to the hospital. The mother of two teenage children “was not long for this world,” I was told, and could I get right down to give her the last rites? It took a little time getting through all the covid screening, and then the ICU nurse wasn’t sure if I could be admitted unless someone left the room, but finally I got inside. The woman was propped up in bed with her children and husband nearby, breathing softly, with eyes closed. Her older child was having a really difficult time accepting the situation. “How could God do this to her … to us … to me?” I tried to reassure her that nothing God permits is meaningless, but it would take time and effort to find meaning in this very difficult experience.

I asked her family if she was still able to hear. “No,” the older child said, “she’s been unresponsive for a few days.” Nevertheless, I bent to her ear and said “my name is Fr. Joseph. I’m a Catholic priest and I’ve brought you the sacraments.” She made no movement. When the woman’s sister arrived I began the sacramental liturgy.

As I was praying the litany of saints, she gently stopped breathing. The older child looked at her mother, confused. She couldn’t believe what was happening. I glanced up at the monitor to see that all her vitals were flatlined. An alarm went off softly, and two nurses came in. They nodded quietly and I kept praying the litany. I pronounced the Apostolic Pardon with an unsteady voice, and I administered the Holy Oils with an unsteady hand. I began to cry myself as her family dissolved into uncontrollable weeping.

The younger child exclaimed, through his tears, that it was a miracle. God had provided the priest just in time! Her husband grasped my arm: “She held on until you brought her the sacraments! She made it to heaven!” And indeed, I’ve seen this four or five times over the last 30 years. Twenty years ago I was anointing a man when he flatlined, and the nurse came in to turn off the alarms. I expressed concern, but she replied matter-of-factly that he had “died” three times earlier that day, but each time he had revived. “This time,” she assured me, “he would not come back. We often see patients who will simply not die until they get the sacraments.”

Back in the ICU room on Monday: I stayed a few more minutes in respect for the family and for the dead. Then I quietly slipped past the nurses. Both were Filipinos, and I suppose both were believers. They thanked me with their eyes, and I thanked them with my eyes, and we all thanked God that Sister Death had come so gently to this woman. It would be very hard for her husband and children, but God would be with them. Back on the street outside the hospital, I climbed onto my scooter for home. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. “Take this mother’s hand and lead her safely over the waters of death, into the presence of God!”

A blessed Mother’s Day to all of my readers, both to those who have born children and to the rest of us who marvel at the miracle of motherhood. Yesterday, after the Vigil Mass, I asked all the mothers present to come up for a red rose and a blessing. I was delighted by how many women in a relatively small congregation came up—about 65% of the congregation. I’ve given out roses before on Mother’s Day, but for some reason I saw these women with a new wonder this year. Each one was a flower herself! Unique, delicate, luminous, strong, graceful, and fragrant.

A man I greatly respect once told me that “every woman is sacred: no exceptions.” God has placed within every woman the capacity to bear new human lives, each endowed with an immortal soul, and each worth more than all the power and glory of the most glittering cities on earth. While many who claim to be “feminists” denigrate motherhood and childbearing as an intolerable limitation to the woman’s “freedom,” true feminism supports women in their sublime ability to nurture new lives.

Our Lady, of course, is the supreme example of motherhood: she who lost nothing of her virginal purity by bringing God into the world in human flesh. Mary, the mother of Him who did not abhor the Virgin’s womb, helps us overcome our fear of human flesh. Without the love of God, without a deep appreciation for all that God has created, and a deep faith in God Himself, we often find the carnal dimensions of marriage and childbearing repulsive. Mary changed God’s diapers, potty-trained Him, and cleaned up his vomit. I can understand why non-believers think we are nuts to believe that the Almighty God took on the disgrace of human flesh!

​But God loves the flesh that he has created. He endows women with a maternal love that overcomes the more unpleasant aspects of their children’s bodies. Moreover, God elevates a mother’s natural love by faith in the Incarnate God, and through the love of His own Mother. We glorify God for giving us each our own mothers. Mine is beyond the grave now, but I talk to her several times a week. “Mom, I love you. Mom, I need your help on this one! Mom, pray for me.” May God’s blessing, and our deep gratitude, be upon all women, especially those God has given the gift of conceiving and bearing children.