A blessed feast of the Holy Archangels, Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael! Here in California three of our 21 founding Missions are built under the patronage of these great Protectors. Here at Star of the Sea we pray to St. Michael to defend us after every Mass. I have Mass at the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration today, and our valiant priests will offer three parish Masses for the Archangels, and at 6pm a high Sung Mass in their honor.
 
Friday will be the Feast of the Guardian Angels, and Sunday the Feast of St. Francis, Patron of the City and County of San Francisco. The Archbishop of San Francisco will lead a 6pm procession on Saturday night with statues of Our Lady and St. Francis through the streets, from St. Anthony’s parish in the Mission District to our Cathedral. There he will offer the Mass of St. Francis at 7pm, followed by a candlelight rosary for all (at least 2000 will be in attendance). Everyone will receive a blessed candle, and we will lift our tiny flames together as we sing the Ave Maria, just like they do at Lourdes and Fatima. I invite you to join us, either at 6pm at St. Anthony’s Church on Cesar Chavez Boulevard, or at 7pm at the Cathedral Plaza.  

Some say that America is losing its faith. I contest that. America is changing its faith. I see a surge in faith, especially among the wealthier folks who can afford to live in Marin County, where I spent two days last week kayaking with friends. Consider the statement of faith prominently posted at the entrance of a rustic resort outside the lovely little village of Inverness:
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“We Believe: black lives matter; love is love; feminism is for everyone; no human being is illegal; science is real; be kind to all.”

Let’s take a closer look at the creed so boldly displayed at this establishment. It seems to me an ersatz faith, not more nourishing than the ersatz “coffee,” mostly sawdust, given to prisoners in Auschwitz. They were expected to perform 12 hours of backbreaking labor on sawdust. This “creed” provides little more nourishment to us, who must perform the great labor of rightly ordering our lives together. With statements of faith as vapid as the one you see above, we are, simply, malnourished.

“Love is love” means nothing, really. It is what we call a tautology. It cannot sustain the human intellect, nor inspire the human will for longer than the ephemera of a fleeting feeling. Ditto on “be kind to all,” which is contradicted by the articles of faith that precede it: are the feminist and BLM movements characterized by kindness? Quite the opposite: radical feminism and race theory call us to anger and violence. “Love is love” obliquely refers to gender theory, which contradicts itself. We are told that there is no such thing as “male” and “female,” and at the same time we are told that one can be a “male” trapped in a “female” body….

The human person needs right religion, and right religion is always rational. We need to anchor our self-definition in something greater than ourselves, because in fact the human race did not make itself. Without reference to something outside of ourselves, we have no identity. Psychologists have long known that a child deprived of human touch—of a relationship outside of itself—lacks self-understanding. Such children are severely autistic.

We are starving for truth and meaning, and we are given sawdust. Children need authentic friendship and they are given a screen. Children need a father and a mother, and they get state-run foster-care, or a single parent struggling to be both father and mother, or brave grandparents struggling to provide what only a mother and father and siblings can provide. We need love, and we get hook-ups.

Many, perhaps most, are starving to death, quite literally. “Death by despair” (suicide, drug overdose, and other lethal behaviors) have tripled in the last ten years. This malnutrition is a great injustice, when spiritual, emotional, and psychological nourishment is ready at hand. When starving people get desperate enough, they will turn to violence. People who lack a sense of who they are, even whether they are a man or a woman, have nothing to lose by throwing their lives away in senseless acts of violence.

In these confusing times, I receive great consolation in reading a chapter or two of the Bible every morning, before even leaving my room. At the moment, I’m traveling through the Second Book of Chronicles, which describes the reigns of the Jewish Kings from David’s foundation of Jerusalem to the Babylonian demolition of Israel. The kings are back and forth: one king does what is pleasing to Yahweh, and the people flourish. Prosperity, however, brings about pride and laziness, so typically the next few kings become unfaithful to Yahweh, and society declines until the money runs out, and they are overcome by a belligerent neighbor. Now at rock bottom, king and people humble themselves, return to right worship of Yahweh, and begin to receive His blessings again, rebuilding their city.
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In 2 Chronicles 28 we have the sad history of King Ahaz, who closed the doors of the city’s temple and extinguished the candles before the altar of sacrifice. Deprived of right worship, the city quickly became weak and chaotic. The Arameans took advantage of Jerusalem’s weakness and marched on the city, destroying much of it and leading its citizens off to captivity. Ahaz’s son, however, “good King Hezekiah,” reopened the temple and relit the lamps within a month of his taking office. He restored right worship and the city became rightly-ordered again, strong enough to defend itself against enemy powers.
Yesterday the Archbishop of San Francisco led one thousand people from City Hall to the Cathedral. He led them with an upraised monstrance to the City’s Eucharistic temple, where twenty priests offered Masses for the people. We fed them with the Word of God and the Holy Eucharist. The Archbishop “reopened” the temple, so to speak, and “relit” the lamps. The City, this morning, is much stronger for it.

When I arrived at Star of the Sea six years ago the doors of the church were closed, like just about every other diocesan parish. Pope Francis had just called the priests to “reopen” the churches and “turn the lights on” for the people. We did so, and the parish went from moribund to flourishing. A joyful peace has reordered the parish. My priestly vocation is inspired by Pope John Paul II, who called the people to Aprite le Porte—throw open the doors to right worship.
The “demonstration” yesterday at City Hall and the Cathedral was about one thing: reopening the doors of our churches, which have been closed too long. “We need the sacraments” one sign read, and another, “Dios es esencial.” God is essential. Let the pastors of the Church reopen their doors to God’s people!

I was listening to a podcast from a notable Catholic media Institute this morning. In a most annoying fashion, the director of the institute kept breathlessly repeating the words “absolutely” and “incredible” and “amazing.” Exciting music played in the background as he insisted that the Institute’s initiative was “unprecedented” and “huge.” The problem is that he said the same thing last month about another initiative, and the same thing three weeks before that. The subject matter of this podcast was excellent, but I couldn’t take it any longer. How is it that otherwise intelligent and good Catholic media hype out as shamelessly as CNN?
 
Some describe our culture as “performative.” We live to be seen and heard. I am only as good as my twitter account. Members of Congress, for example, have stopped doing the hard work of quietly building legislative consensus; their time is spent preparing for the next YouTube launch. Even we Catholic priests, for a long time now, have been “performing” the Mass rather than quietly offering the Divine Sacrifice, supported by small armies of lay "ministers" and liturgy committees. And now with Covid, livestream technicians and social media experts have joined the Liturgy Performance Team.
 
A few weeks ago my Archbishop asked 12 of his priests to take one of the 12 altars he had set up on the cathedral plaza, because the City of San Francisco limited Masses to 12 people. Accordingly, 12 priests offered 12 Masses next to each other, so that at least 144 people could receive the Body of the Lord. During the Masses, however, a photographer roved about, clicking away, while a drone buzzed overhead. It was quite distracting, such that I would say few were thinking about Jesus Christ during the filming. We were, rather, positioning ourselves for the best camera angle. After Mass, the Archbishop complained about the drone but was assured that the video would be “amazing.” Within three hours a video had been produced and declared “viral.”
 
Don’t get me wrong: evangelization requires good communication. But have we lost our priorities? The priority of the Catholic Church must always be sacred worship. Maintaining good public relations is important but should not eclipse our fundamental purpose. Did we offer these 12 Masses more as a PR statement, or more to provide the Sacred Eucharist to the People of God? 
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You are richer than you think.
 
Two months before a presidential election, we all can’t agree on much, but we can all agree on the first reading today: “wrath and anger are hateful things….” We all hate the wrath and anger blanketing our America, like the noxious black clouds of smoke covering the Bay Area for almost a month now. When will it lift? On a personal level, how can we clear the air after a hurtful argument with a friend or family member?
 
The first reading is clear about the problem, and equally clear about the solution: “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice….” And Peter asks in the Gospel: “how many times?” In corporate America we say “fool me once bad on you, fool me twice bad on me.” You get two strikes before I end our business relationship. The rest of us say “three strikes and you’re out.” But Peter says “I’ll forgive even up to seven times. Is that enough, Jesus?” Jesus says “seventy-seven times, Peter.
 
How can a mere mortal forgive someone 77 times? After about 66 times I would lose count, which is precisely the point. 77 times means … forever. To illustrate, Jesus tells a parable: one man owes another man “a huge amount,” and the original Greek text literally says “10,000 talents.” A “talent” was a year’s wage, so it would take the man 10,000 years to pay it off. Well, since no one lives that long, he would never pay it off. A third man owes the second man “a much smaller amount,” and in Greek it is “100 denarii.” A denarius was a day’s wage. He could pay it off in 100 days.
 
But man #2 does not forgive man #3, even though man #1 forgave man #2. And because man #2 does not forgive man #3, man #1 revokes the forgiveness of man #2’s debt. “So will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart,” Jesus says.
 
God dearly wants to forgive our debt. But if we don’t forgive man #3, we refuse God’s forgiveness. If you want forgiveness, give forgiveness. Yes, you say, but how can I forgive a former spouse who continues to hurt me and my children, or an employer who keeps me in economic and workplace misery, or a man who has killed my son? Because God has forgiven us for killing His Son, we can forgive. His Son’s blood transforms us into forgiving machines! If we knew what we had in the bank, we would gladly forgive everybody everything, because what we have in the bank is infinite forgiveness, and infinite grace. God has forgiven our 10,000-year jail sentence. If we know this (and we can only know it through prayer and works of charity), we will have no trouble forgiving another’s 100-day jail sentence.
 
We are richer than we think. We are free. We are not slaves to unforgiveness, wrath, and anger. We are free because Christ has made us free, by freely dying for us.

Today we celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, nine months after her Immaculate Conception (December 8). Everyone loves Mary, the mother of Jesus. Muslims love her, Protestants love her (although secretly), and even atheists love her. Once a Mexican governor, who had converted to Jehovah’s Witness, was asked if he believed in Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Of course, he replied. I am not a Catholic, but I am certainly a Guadalupano.
 
A mother can only mother well within a well-ordered family. Mary needed Joseph, and Jesus needed both. 30 years ago the social engineers at CBS made America’s first promotion of single motherhood in the sitcom Murphy Brown. The vice president of the time criticized CBS for devaluing the family and childhood, and he was shouted down. From that day on, we began to redefine divorce and single parenting as a triumph of the human spirit rather than a tragedy. The social wreckage of this intellectual error is incontestable.
 
Along those lines I would like to recommend a book for your back-to-school reading: Mary Eberstadt’s Primal Screams. She is, for my money, one of the most perspicacious observers of our cultural moment. Last week I read her 119-page book, which answers the question “Where is all the rage coming from?” Why have politics become so vitriolic? Why are people looting and burning stores in the name of racial justice? Why is social media filled with such outrage? How is it that angry street mobs attack people leaving political conventions, and university professors are physically assaulted by furious students? Why can’t we just get along like we used to? This is what society looks like, says Mary Eberstadt, when a significant portion of its citizens have been deprived of their families. We become isolated and socially incompetent to the extent that we are deprived of a father, siblings, and extended family members. We don’t learn how to share, to sacrifice, to forgive, and how to work together. The “sexual revolution” necessarily destroys families, because you can’t have stable families and unlimited sexual access at the same time.
 
We must fight for the family. We must believe in it again. We must keep our marriages together if at all possible, because divorce scars children for life. Parents must know what their children are learning in school about the family, and all of us must hold entertainment corporations accountable for mocking family life. We must resolve to repudiate shows that equate unnatural “families” with natural families, or celebrate single-parent families, or portray broken families as the norm. We should insist that our elected officials promote the irreplaceable good of family life in law and economics. We allowed Murphy Brown to denigrate marriage and family in 1992. Are we angry enough now to take family and childhood back? Let us pray to the Mother of God for wisdom, grace, and fortitude. 
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