The real problem is leaf blowers. I’ve always thought that. The aggravating whine of leaf blowers is the failing candle in the coal mine when the oxygen runs out. Leaf Blowers signal the decadence of western civilization.
 
In a healthier age, on crisp afternoons in October, we would all gather up the fallen leaves with large rakes. With a smile, breathing deeply of the pungent air, we would put our backs into it, bringing a bit of order to gardens upon which cascades of bright foliage had fallen during the day. We would push the leaves into great piles and take running leaps into them, or have leaf fights, inhaling the turning of the season with every sense.
 
Now … we pay landscaping companies to run noisy, smelly, horrid leaf blowers and edge trimmers. We stay inside, staring blankly at flickering screens, posting vacuous messages on “social media.” We have lost touch with the soil, and the autumnal fruits of the earth. A few months later, we would rejoice in the first snowfall. We would bring out big boots and big shovels, hats and gloves, and charge outside. Now we hire poor Mexicans to drive up in their battered pickups to run snowblowers while we “work” safely indoors.

I’m told that one of the Black Lives Matter founders was caught buying multi-million-dollar homes in Malibu and other exclusive locales. Patrisse Khan Cullors is one more story of how a respected religious leader (for certainly BLM is a religion) has been unmasked as a hypocrite As Eric Hoffer observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” The difference between right religion and secular causes is that Christianity at least acknowledges Original Sin. Despite the unholiness and at times criminality of her members, the Church daily confesses her sins and makes efforts to do penance. I suggest that an example of humble penance for our national and personal sins could be raking leaves and shoveling snow by hand. St. Francis never hired a groundskeeper, and Mother Theresa never purchased a leaf blower.
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Leaf blowers disturb us, not only because they vomit noise and toxic smoke into our neighborhoods. They annoy us because they signal decadence. They reveal the laziness and arrogance of a people who cannot work for themselves, who purchase expensive machines at Home Depot or pay immigrants to do their manual tasks so they can fly off to expensive conferences on social justice and global warming. We claim victimhood while purchasing lavish homes in Malibu. If Patrisse Khan Cullors, and the rest of us, want to be a bit happier and a bit more human, we might begin by raking our own leaves, and enjoying the work of our hands.

Have you ever noticed that traffic often stacks up in one lane on a two-lane street? The other day I pulled onto Geary Boulevard for a meeting at the cathedral, which is located two miles down that same street. Ten cars were lined up in the right lane, and one car in the left lane. I pulled into the left lane and went all the way up. I was feeling quite satisfied with myself, pulling out when the light turned green ahead of most of the traffic. I noticed the same phenomenon at almost every intersection on the way to the cathedral. I’ve also noticed, not without some annoyance when in I’m in the passenger seat and in a hurry, that my friends almost always get behind other cars, in the lane with more traffic. Most folks, unconsciously I suppose, want to get behind someone, to congregate where it seems safer, rather than to blaze a trail and stick out in a lane all alone.
 
It’s only human, I guess, to prefer safety to risk. Moving in herds is built into our animal instincts. It’s easier to get in line than to be constantly analyzing situations. And that is what is happening in our global society today. A few “experts” tell us to lock down because the risk of death is so great, and uncritically we lock down. The experts tell us to put on masks even though an elementary analysis would show that the harm done outweighs the benefits for most people. But we all put on masks, even when they don’t tell us to do so. Our shadowy experts tell us that we will die or kill others unless we take a vaccine, and we just do it. We get in line. We don’t think for ourselves.
 
Not thinking for ourselves works in a loving family. Trusting the experts works when you are surrounded by people who love you. But the people making our laws and developing our technology are so far removed from us, and so far removed from an anthropology that respects the human individual, that we have to start thinking for ourselves again.

​On this day in 1941, St. Maximilian Kolbe died in Auschwitz. They tried to starve him to death with nine other men in cell #17 of Block 11, but in the end they had to finish him off with a shot of carbolic acid to his arm. They burned his body and dumped the ashes into a pond, but Maximilian Kolbe speaks to us from beyond the ash pond. Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, wrote in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, “Father Maximilian Kolbe found meaning within the fraction of a second when he decided to sacrifice his life, asking the SS for permission to let himself be sentenced to death instead of a family father.” Jerzy Bielecki, who survived Auschwitz, wrote later that when word got around the camp of what Kolbe had done, “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength.… It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”
 
Fr. Kolbe lived in a time of growing totalitarianism. The German people had voted in the Nazis, and the Russian people had not done enough to resist the Soviets. In 1941 Hitler and Stalin had signed a secret “non-aggression pact” to dominate all of Europe, with aspirations for a global government under their joint control. I have no doubt that the powers of the earth have done the same in our own time, but as both the Nazi and Soviet Socialist regimes collapsed, so will all totalitarian powers, in God’s good time.
 
Was Fr. Kolbe’s usual joy defeated as he saw his homeland invaded by Nazis from the west and Soviets from the east? Did he give into fear or negativity when he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz? It seems that he wasn’t. Fr. Kolbe sent a letter to his mother, dated June 15, 1941, from the extermination camp, the last letter he ever wrote. “My dearest Mother,” he wrote. “Towards the end of the month of May I reached the concentration camp of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) by rail convoy. Everything is going well with me. Beloved Mom, don’t worry about me or about my health, because the good God is everywhere and with immense love he thinks about all of us and about everything. It would be best not to write to me until I send you another letter. I don’t know how long I shall remain here. With Heartfelt greetings and a kiss.” He often said to fellow prisoners that “Our Lady has brought us here for some good purpose.”
 
Kolbe was not pretending to be “fine” to his mother and other prisoners. He knew that “everything is going well” in the death camp, because he knew that “the Good God is everywhere.” That’s the good news that Christians are supposed to believe, because it’s the truth. The fact is, we live under friendly skies. Life is good, and then we die (that is, we go to heaven). We have been created in God’s image, and we are fundamentally good. Jesus Christ is Lord, and He provides. We will always have enough. There is a rational order to the universe, and we have the capacity to choose the good, the true, and the beautiful. These are the true facts of life, but it’s not what you hear on “the news.”
 
If it’s always bad news you hear on mainstream media—"the pandemic is worse than ever,” “the planet is overheating,” “the vaccines are not working,” “the economy is in trouble,” “America is irremediably racist” —you know they are lying. There is, in fact, no reason to be afraid or discouraged or angry. Behind the media’s lies is the Father of Lies who uses fear to destroy people. If we are in a state of perpetual fear and sadness, know for sure that we have come to believe in a lie.
 
If the news you watch is mostly bad, don’t watch it. It’s a lie. Train your intellect on what is true, and good, and beautiful. There’s plenty of that around. Might I suggest reading a biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe, perhaps A Man for Others by Patricia Treece. God has filled the universe with goodness, so please don’t be discouraged.
 
“Finally, brothers,” wrote St. Paul in Philippians 4, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

We celebrate the great Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Sunday. My mother, when she prayed the rosary with us children, used to announce the Fourth Glorious Mystery as “The Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into Heaven.” What must it have looked like, this rising of a human body into the sky? At each of the Fatima apparitions, Lucia described Our Lady’s leave-taking as rising into the sky, towards the east, “into the immense distance of the firmament.” She didn't die. She fell asleep.

Mary’s “Dormition” helps us believe that death is falling asleep in the Lord. Two weeks ago Mariella Zevallos, our parish Director of Communications, saw this with her own eyes when her mother, Maria Casavilca, died. Diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, Maria was given only a few weeks to live. Mariella asked me to hear her mother’s confession and administer the Last Rites, which Maria received with joy. Within a few days she entered her final agony, a struggle with death that no palliative drugs can eliminate. Three days before she died, Maria was no longer able to assimilate food and became non-responsive. I gave her the Last Rites again five hours before the end, and the war between life and death was terrible to behold. Her unseeing eyes had rolled slightly up in her head with lids half closed. The skin of her face had sunken into her skull, her breathing had become the body’s intense attempt to force a little air into her collapsing lungs. A violent death rattle was upon her. She labored on through the darkness. But at midnight, Life arrived.

Mariella describes how death was overcome: “A few minutes before she died, my mother suddenly turned her face with energy and looked up (as when someone calls you and you turn your face to see who it is). She fixed her eyes on something above our heads with eyes wide open, as if in admiration. After three days of unconsciousness, she was wide awake! She kept her eyes fixed on that point above us for some moments and then began turning her face to look at us with direct eye contact. First she gazed at my dad and held his hand with a strong grasp. Then she gripped my hand too. Next we realized that her face was changing, beginning to regain the glow of health. It seemed as if a hand were gently uncovering the face of her youth. My mom looked healthy and young; her skin was flawless. Her cheeks, which had been sunken in, filled out and she was breathing normally again, with no signs of pain. Her face looked peaceful as she turned younger right in front of our eyes. We thought that she had been completely healed and would get up and begin walking around the room. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep...she had died.” She had not, in fact, “died,” but she had been taken back to God. Let us not fear death, but only separation from the good God.