I History is my hobby, and I wrote my M.A. paper on the history of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Part of that history is Star of the Sea Parish, which celebrates its 125th year on November 9th. You are all invited, although I suppose many of you may not be within driving distance of my parish. For those of you who are, the celebration of our parish’s “Quasquicentennial” will begin on November 9th with a 4:30pm Mass preached by the legendary Fr. Lawrence Goode, who served as our parochial vicar from 1978-1981. Now eighty years old, Fr. Goode is one of the most active priests in San Francisco, running probably the income-poorest but vocations-richest parish in the archdiocese (St. Francis of Assisi in East Palo Alto). I think of Fr. Goode as the St. John Vianney of San Francisco, a quiet but faithful priest who has never lost his good humor and buoyant hope during fifty years of cultural and ecclesial decline. His seminars on Total Consecration to Our Lady blessed me as a young adult, and it is on this subject he will preach at our anniversary Mass. A banquet will follow (for which you will need  a ticket), featuring a keynote address by Patrick Coffin. Besides hosting his own Catholic radio show, Mr. Coffin performs professional magic tricks (he promised some stunning slight of hand at our Gala in addition to his motivational talk). I will give a 7-minute history of the parish, with slides, and Fr. Mark Taheny will sing a song or two and dance a jig or two. Fr. Cameron Faller, our vocations director, will be there with seminarians in tow, as well as some aspirants. Friday (Nov 1, All Saints Day—don’t forget to go to Mass) is the last day you can buy tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/star-of-the-sea-125th-anniversary-gala-tickets-68696702687
 
And now a little history to whet your appetite. That part of San Francisco over which Star of the Sea presides was not incorporated into the City until 1866. It was known as the “Outside Lands,” a lonely area of drifting sand dunes and sagebrush. Only one street marked this blank area on county maps: a dirt track called Point Lobos Toll Road (now Geary Boulevard) pierced the billows of salty fog all the way to Ocean Beach.  Locals called it “Pneumonia Gulch” because of the frigid fogbound summers. Also known as “Beyond the Graves,” this area lay west of the great cemeteries known as the Silent City (these graves were exhumed to Colma, south of the City, in the 1920s, and today the University of San Francisco sits atop the former sepulchres).
 
By 1870 sports fans had built the Bay District Track for horseracing and a few enterprising Irishmen established horse ranches, farms, and public houses among the rolling dunes. At one point there were more horses than people, and then more cows than horses or people, but finally the Irishmen got to work having large families. These families needed a Catholic Church. They had been making the trip to Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral east of Nob Hill, but in 1886 forty-one Catholic families felt “strong” enough to maintain a church of their own. The first Mass was celebrated at Farrell’s Dance Hall at Ninth and Geary on Easter Sunday 1887. Within a year the Irishmen had built their own 500-seat framework building at a cost of $10,000. Father John P. Coyle, the first native San Franciscan to be ordained a Catholic priest, became the first pastor of Star of the Sea Parish in 1894.
 
A photograph taken from Golden Gate Park shows some houses near Star of the Sea and then an almost unbroken undulation of sand dunes stretching to the Pacific Ocean. Father Coyle worked hard to build up the new parish and pastored the community through the 1906 earthquake, which led to a westward expansion of the city and rapid growth of the church.
 
Fr. Coyle survived the earthquake by only two years, and in 1908 Archbishop Riordan realized he needed a man of vision and energy for the growing community. A gifted young priest from Country Tipperary, Father Philip O’Ryan, became the second pastor. He set about bringing a measure of discipline and gentility to the men and women of the “Outside Lands.” They described their pastor as a man of tireless effort, a marvelous teacher who was a gentle, loving guide to children and adults alike. In the first year of his pastorate he built a school with the Sisters of St. Joseph, opening Star of the Sea Grammar School in 1909 with 137 parish children. It was he who built the first stone structure in 1914, the dedication of which is portrayed in the photograph above.
 
Star of the Sea Parish has since seen eight more pastors, all of whom have had to respond to the ebbs and flows of demographic shifts and changing attitudes toward organized religion. In recent years the church has grown as it has offered more traditionally Catholic liturgies and devotions, and God only knows how the parish will develop in the years to come. I welcome you to our Anniversary Gala on November 9th. Come to the Mass at 4:30pm, even if you don't come to the banquet, and thank God for 125 years of Beauty and Catholic Worship in San Francisco's Richmond District.

​October is Respect Life month among Catholics, perhaps chosen because November is Respect Death month among Catholics. That is, beginning with All Souls Day on November 2, we give thanks for the earthly lives and pray for the souls of the faithful departed throughout the entire month. This year my parish will again decorate Our Lady’s altar with flowers, candles, and photographs of our forebears as we offer one Mass each day for all souls, especially those who have died unloved and unknown, with no one to pray for them.
 
In these last days of October, a month in which we have celebrated so many glorious saints, including St. Francis, St. John Paul, St. Therese and St. Teresa, St. Isaac Jogues and St. Denis of Paris, St. Luke and St. Ignatius of Antioch, we prepare for All Hallows Eve on Thursday: the feast of All Saints. Maybe that is why October is the month chosen to Respect Life, and to Give Thanks for Life.
 
It is in some way scandalous, then, that the City of San Francisco, two weeks after St. Francis’ Day, and right in the middle of Respect Life Month, ruled against human life. On October 16 San Francisco’s City Manager sent a memo to all her employees banning business with 22 states that protect unborn Americans by restricting abortions after the fetal heartbeat is detected. Supervisor Vallie Brown said that the city would do its $12 billion annual business only with people that “share our values.”
 
Let’s consider this ruling rationally. First, the City’s ruling ignores clear scientific fact by defining what is in a pregnant woman’s uterus as not human. Embryology defines the human fetus as a human individual with its distinct DNA and organic systems. I understand that Ms. Brown values a pregnant woman’s absolute right to choose what to do with her unborn child, but sound reason defines one person’s right to live as more important than another person’s right to choose a lifestyle. Second, the City cannot both claim it is “inclusive” and “tolerant” while excluding and not tolerating other states who think differently, especially when their thinking is backed by proven scientific conclusions. “Taking our $12 billion elsewhere” is simply an arrogant and wealthy city bullying poorer and humbler cities. Our City has no rational or scientific justification for this move. In a healthy democracy the citizens of such a city call out their elected representatives on such political hypocrisy, on such affronts to our intelligence and freedom. St. Francis of Assisi, and all saints, pray for us!

Stewardship of Time
Today is our annual Stewardship Commitment Sunday, when we consider all that God has given us and what return we plan to make to him this year. But what comes to your mind when you hear the word “stewardship?” I’m fairly certain the word “money” comes to your mind when you hear the word “stewardship.” True enough: the fundamental act of Christian stewardship is giving, but not money. It is giving time to God in prayer, adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to the Giver of All Gifts. The first debt of every creature is to its Creator, and so the most fundamental human act is to acknowledge God as Lord and Master. We are given time not just to make and spend money, still less to do sinful things. We are given 168 precious hours every week to glorify God.
 
Moses’ Prayer
In the first reading Moses, the great priest and commander of Israel, is leading the people across the desert when they catch sight of their perennial enemy, the Amalekites. Moses puts his nation’s troops under Joshua’s command and then climbs a hill to pray. Moses’ prayer on that small mountain exemplifies the two essential marks of real prayer. First, perseverance: he prays all day, keeping hands and arms lifted up to God, even when this becomes impossible for him to do without help (Aaron and Hur prop him up). Second, confidence: from that hill, for all his troops to see, he proclaimes that God is their only hope and He will deliver them.
 
Jesus’ Prayer
In the Gospel we move into the New Testament, where the enemy is not an army of muscle and steel but the “powers of the air, the spirits of this present darkness” as St. Paul calls them in Ephesians 2. “Pray always, without losing heart,” Jesus commands us. Serious prayer is the only kind of prayer God takes seriously. We must pray every day, from the heart, as if our lives and the lives of those we love depended on it, which they do. For priests this means a daily holy hour, daily Mass, daily rosary, daily spiritual reading, confession twice a month, a retreat once a year. For laypeople this means daily rosary or at least decade of the rosary, weekly holy hour, weekly or biweekly Mass, confession once a month, and some spiritual reading. Do I always measure up? Not always, but we need a standard to measure our prayer lives against. Do we wash our hair every day, and drink 8 cups of liquid a day, and eat four servings of fruit and vegetables each day? Not always, but we strive each day to meet the standard practices for bodily health. If we know what keeps our bodies healthy, how much more should we know what keeps our souls healthy? And meeting these standards is often a battle. In fact, the Catechism’s fourth section, on prayer, is entitled “The Battle for Prayer.” Even after we develop good prayer habits, prayer is often quite difficult. Dedicated prayer brings great peace, but often enough only after a pitched battle to hold the line against the powers of the air.
 
Much to Pray for
Prayer is essentially silence: listening to God in the stillness of an early morning or a quiet afternoon breeze or the flickering of a sanctuary lamp. But as baptized Christians we also must speak to God at times: we must intercede for the needs of the world. I want all of you to pray more, of course. I want you to come before the Blessed Sacrament more than just on Sundays, and I ask your particular intercession for three needs in particular. First, you may know that this month a Synod or meeting of bishops is taking place in Rome called the Amazon Synod (concerning the Amazon region of South America). By all accounts it is not going well. Many of the bishops at this synod are relativizing faith in Christ. In the opening ceremony they bowed before pagan idols, effectively saying that Christ is just one god among many gods. These bishops are seeking to abolish priestly celibacy, which is the basis of our spiritual fatherhood. Some demons are only cast out by prayer and fasting, so let us get serious about praying for the Church during this Synod. A second intention I ask you to pray for is priestly vocations. Scandalously, only eleven men are currently preparing for the priesthood from the 500,000 Catholics in our archdiocese. That is an all time low, and certainly cannot sustain our 93 parishes, 16 high schools, and 36 elementary schools. Three of these eleven seminarians come form one of these 93 parishes, and that is this one. Why? Because we have perpetual prayer before the Blessed Sacrament here. The other night I couldn’t sleep and went down to the chapel at 4:30am. Five people were in the chapel at four in the morning! Their prayers are being heard. So we must pray God’s mercy on the scandalous goings on in Rome; we must pray for the scandalous lack of priestly vocations; and we must pray for the scandal of death. The fundamental crisis in our lives is that we will someday die, and we must pray for those who died before us, that God have mercy on their sins and bring them to eternal happiness. November is the month of prayer for the dead, and we do well to say frequent prayers for our beloved faithful departed, and especially for those who die unknown and unloved. May they rest in peace, dear God!
 
Faith comes through Prayer
​The Gospel ends with these arresting words: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?” How many people in San Francisco today will kneel in dedicated prayer to God? We spend the vast majority of our time and money on food, entertainment, sex, and travel, but very little, if at all, on the things of God. We regain our balance, our faith in something greater than these superficialities, only through persevering and confident prayer. The crisis in our Church—the scandal of criminal priests, the scandal of non-practicing laity, the scandal of Catholic high schools and universities mocking their own faith—the crisis of faith can only be resolved when we get on our knees and listen to God’s word, thanking and adoring Him. May God grant us the grace to do so.

Today we celebrate St. Luke, priest and martyr. Each morning I read a few pages of Cardinal Sarah’s new book, The Day is Now Far Spent, and I marvel at his depth and precision in regards to the crisis of the Christian faith right now. This morning’s reading addresses the question of celibacy for priests, which the Amazon Synod in Rome this month is seeking to relativize. The priest’s celibacy is not just a feminine kind of virginity, but an essential poverty, a suffering without which the priesthood loses its power. In his celibacy, and in the daily offering of the Mass, in which the priest enters into the mystery of the Cross, the priest configures himself to the poor, chaste, and obedient Christ.
 
“The capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth, and justice,” he quotes Benedict XVI, “is an essential criterion of humanity.” I’ve often thought how relatively easy my life is as a priest. I have enough to eat, take European vacations, drive a car that rarely breaks down and have a garage to park it in, and live in a spacious home in a beautiful city. I have many friends and enjoy respect in my community, and will never be without a livelihood. What can a priest offer God if not at least his natural desire for a wife and family? If not for celibacy, the priest would not suffer at all, and if he would not suffer, he would not bring the Cross to the world that so needs this sign of redemption. As Pope Benedict again wrote, “A world without the Cross would be a world without hope, a world in which torture and brutality would go unchecked, the weak would be exploited and greed would have the final word.”
 
I encourage you again to get this book and read it. The passages I’ve quoted come from pages 67-74. “The Christian priesthood,” Sarah writes, “is the rampart of this saved humanity…. Dear brother priests, your mission is to carry the Cross into the heart of the world.” Let us hope and pray for the conversion of mind for those who do not see as deeply into the Christian mysteries as this brave African cardinal.  Let us pray for those who want to relativize the Gospel in the current Amazon synod.

God does not allow me to sleep much later than 5am anymore, so I try to get to bed by ten. Rising early gives me an hour and a half of “empty time” before morning prayer with my brother priests. What to do with 90 minutes each morning? I used to work on emails, reports, correspondence, and other “important stuff,” but recently I’ve rediscovered the joy of reading in the stillness before dawn. Spiritual reading in particular: Scripture, and the lives and writings of the saints.
 
In fact, I’ve begun a most important book, each page of which has been helping me make sense of today’s chaos within our Church and society. I warmly recommend The Day is Now Far Spent by the African Cardinal Robert Sarah. He is one of the few clear-thinking bishops today, a man of deep prayer, and courageous enough to speak truthfully about the essential crisis in the Church. Our crisis, he writes, is fundamentally about faith in God. Like St. Peter warming himself by the fire outside the Praetorium, we deny that we know Christ. We are embarrassed to admit there is a God, and that we need Him. Cardinal Sarah quotes Hierax, the third century martyr. The Roman Prefect Rusticus had asked him “who are your parents?” Hierax replies “Our true father is Christ, and our mother: faith in Him.” A man without faith, writes the Cardinal, is like a man who has no father or mother. Rootless and so “we rush toward suicide.”
 
To fill this terrible emptiness in our lives, we engage in ceaseless activity, unending twittering and babbling. We see “an unprecedented quantity of time and effort but with no result. Now the whole history of the Church shows that one saint is enough to transform thousands of souls.” Holiness born of silence and prayer is the priest’s first job, not social activity. He must be a saint himself, and then work to sanctify his people. Recently I spent a week in Germany with a dear priest friend. I saw a Church full of money and activity, but little faith. Although some bishops in Germany have remained faithful, and suffered greatly for their fidelity, the most powerful bishops of Germany are leading the Church into schism by proclaiming heresies about marriage, the Eucharist, and faith in Jesus Christ. The Church in Germany, which enjoyed a thriving faith only two generations ago, has become little more than a social aid organization and curator of museums (i.e., the thousands of beautiful but empty churches in Germany). All of this activity is funded by the government through the "church tax," which rivets the Church in Germany to the government. While many Catholics in Germany have remained faithful, the overwhelming trend in this once-Catholic country is to choose social activism over faith in God.
 
Cardinal Sarah’s insights on activism versus holiness is just one treasure I’ve discovered in his new book, certainly his best thus far. I’m inclined to think this book will distinguish the Guinean cardinal as one of the Church’s greater prophets in this dark period of Church history.

One Commandment
[Note the St. Francis icon] A lawyer asks a tricky question: Of the ten commandments of Moses, and of the 613 lesser commandments, which is the one law I cannot break if I want to get to heaven? “This is the One,” Our Lord replies: “Love God.” Love God with all your heart (emotions and affections), with all your soul (prayers and sacrifices), and with all your mind (intellect and will). Love God with everything you’ve got. But, Jesus continues, there is a Second Commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. “Neighbor” comes from the German word “Nahe” or “near:” “he who is near you”. Could be on a bus, or at work, or at your kitchen table. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your “neighbors”—they just show up, and often enough, at rather inconvenient times.
 
Jesus insists on this second commandment, because it’s the only way by which we know we are loving God in real time, beyond just thinking about it. God is a hidden God, a God of silence. If I don’t love him, he doesn’t throw a fit. If I don’t render him just praise every Sunday at Mass, he doesn’t cut me off. But if I don’t call my mother on Sunday, she will scold me. If I irritate my roommate, he will let me know about it. If I don’t pay my electric bill, someone will cut off my power. Neighbors keep us accountable, because how I love my neighbor is how I love God. Show patience to that anoying woman at work or that nasty man at Safeway, Jesus says, and you show kindness to me. Love your wife when she’s screaming at you, and you love God.

One Law; Three People to Love
So we have two commandments, two people to whom we must show loving kindness: God, and the guy next door. But there’s a third person, and Jesus names that person too: yourself. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” How much do I love myself? A person who treats others badly might say that he is loving others as he loves himself—he just doesn’t love himself very much. God commands me to love every person, including that person who lives inside my own skin. So, we have three to love: God, neighbor, and self, in that order. Some people, especially those who have had rough childhoods, may need to learn to love themselves before they can love others, but it is certain that love of God comes before everything and everyone. And loving God is essentially spending time with Him in prayer. Time is love, even for human relationships. I don’t love God if I don’t come to Him every Sunday in Holy Mass, or spend an hour in adoration. Hanging a rosary from my rear view mirror is not love; taking the time to pray that rosary is love.
 
The Holy Rosary
Yesterday about a thousand people attended Mass at the cathedral to honor Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, whose feast we celebrate tomorrow. They walked with the archbishop, praying the rosary as he carried the Holy Eucharist through the streets. At Civic Center he led a third rosary and then blessed San Francisco with the Blessed Sacrament. Homeless people walking by, tourists strolling down Market Street, billionaires driving by in their Lamborghinis—all of them were blessed yesterday. Many of you took the time to be there. But most of us didn’t. I want to challenge you to spend real time in prayer when the Church calls you to do so. That begins with Sunday Mass but includes also other forms of public, communal prayer. Let’s make even greater efforts to pull together as Catholics in public prayer.
 
We celebrate Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7 because, on that day in 1571, Europe was saved from a Muslim invasion in the gulf of Lepanto. The undefeated Ottoman navy outmanned the Christian forces by almost 2 to 1, and as the ships engaged in the greatest naval battle in history a strong east wind was driving the invader’s ships into the Christian fleet. St. Pius V asked every man, woman and child in Europe to pray the rosary that day for protection. The soldiers themselves held a sword in one hand and a rosary in the other. Just after 12 noon the wind changed, and Our Lady obtained victory for our forefathers. Do you want to be free, and do you want our country to be free? It’s not as simple as it was in 1571. The invader today comes not through ships but through our children’s smartphones and school curricula.  We fight a moral battle, and it is the rosary, not gunpowder, that will defend us. Pray the family rosary, and Our Lady will keep you safe. In Spanish they say sin ella nada; con ella todo. “Without her nothing; with her everything.”

But October’s crowning feast is that of the Holy Rosary, October 7. The rosary is our dearest companion and ladder to heaven, the greatest of all devotions and our defensive weapon against the evil one’s attacks. By praying the rosary, every day, we come under Our Lady’s protective and beautiful mantle; we rest safely in the grace of Christ our Lord. I will tell the story of Lepanto, Our Lady of Victory, at my 11:30 Mass this Sunday, but you can read this story for yourself (or listen to it) on the internet, most beautifully in GK Chesterton’s epic poem Lepanto. I beg all of you who can, who are reading this blog within fifty miles of San Francisco, to attend our annual Rosary Rally with Archbishop Cordileone this Saturday at 10am in the cathedral. He will bear the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of San Francisco to UN Plaza, where we will pray a final rosary and be invested in the scapular. Twelve priests will be hearing confessions. Our Lady of Victory, Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!