America’s First Thanksgiving

A Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and many thanks for beginning your holiday with Mass this morning. You are among the faithful who celebrate a genuine Thanksgiving as did America’s founding pilgrims. We must never forget that America was founded by religious pilgrims, motivated more to worship God freely than material prosperity. Prosperity followed, but worship came first. They, and Presidents Washington and Lincoln after them, established Thanksgiving as a day of worship and sacred gratitude to God. America’s very first Thanksgiving took place at what is now St. Augustine in Florida, in 1565. The Spanish colonists offered a Mass in thanksgiving followed by a meal with the local Indians fifty years before the gathering at Plymouth Rock. The first act of thanksgiving on our soil was the Catholic Mass, the same Mass that we are offering on this Thanksgiving Day in 2016.

Homeless Gratitude

Earlier this month a homeless man died at his usual sleeping place at Funston and Clement. 700 people attended Thomas Myron Hooker’s funeral ten days later, and we finally laid him to rest in a proper burial site at Holy Cross in Colma on Tuesday. I signed all the papers as his next of kin and discovered that a standard burial costs $15,000, although of course you can spend a lot more. This cost was split three ways by our local funeral home, the Catholic cemetery, and this parish community, for which I am deeply grateful. Why all this outpouring of love for Thomas? So many have said they loved Thomas because for 30 years he brought a joyful smile to the streets of our Inner Richmond. And why did he smile? Because he was grateful to God for everything. He suffered from mental illness and the homelessness born of that sickness, but that did not stop him from smiling and thanking God. His thanksgiving brought light and joy to all the Richmond district.

Stand Erect

Our National Holiday of Thanksgiving usually occurs in the very last week of the catholic liturgical year, when the readings speak of gloom and doom, the end of civilization as we know it. The Church permits pastors to have special “Thanksgiving” readings but I think it always best to hear the sobering biblical prophecies proper to this time of year, at the end of all things. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,” we hear in our first reading from the book of the Apocalypse. “She has become a haunt for demons … because your merchants were the great ones of the world, all nations were led astray by you…” America is the most powerful nation on earth, but we risk forgetting that she is mighty precisely because she is Christian, because our first national act was that of Thanksgiving to God. Abraham Lincoln faced the end of the Republic in 1862 but was able to pull the nation back together with these words “The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. These bounties … are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come.”
 
St. John’s apocalypse is frightening, but ends with these words today: “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” This Mass is that wedding feast, and your thanksgiving dinners today are joyful occasions because you first attended the supreme act of Thanksgiving, the Holy mass. “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,” Jesus says in the Gospel, “know that its desolation is at hand… But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.” We thank God because our redemption has been accomplished, and no sorrow can undo the grace won for us by Jesus Christ.

Thank God

​President Lincoln was not a Catholic, nor even really a Christian, but he believed in a “beneficent” power greater than himself. May you enjoy the blessings of peace and joy with family and friends today, granted to those who put God first, thanking Him with grateful hearts. Thank Him by making a good confession this Advent, and going to Mass every Sunday, and every day if you can. Notice that the actual ritual of the sacrament of penance has the priest say “Give Thanks to the Lord, for He is good… and the penitent says “Thanks be to God.” All Christian prayer is fundamentally praise and thanksgiving to the giver of all gifts. With Our lady, we thank God, as is good stewards, from whom all blessings flow.

​Perseverance

Today’s daily Mass gospel is a briefer version of the Sunday Gospel ten days ago, when we began wrapping up the liturgical year by considering the Last Things. “By your perseverance,” Jesus says “you will secure your lives.” We all want security, but perseverance can be difficult in hard times. Overall, however, it is not that difficult. We need to only rise each morning to the simple tasks God asks of us: wash up, say our prayers, eat a good breakfast, and go to work. At work God asks us to smile at each other, and to help each other build a civilization of love. Our King is with us, and within his reign we are safely provided for.

The Feast of Christ the King 

Last Sunday the Church celebrated Cristo Rey: Christ the King. We remember our dear Carmelites at Cristo Rey monastery up the street, founded by refugees from the persecutions in Mexico in the 1920s. Many were martyred in those years with the cry of Viva Cristo Rey on their lips, “long live Christ the king.” Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 after World War I made it terrifyingly clear that universal devastation is the price we pay for denying Christ’s Kingship. “These manifold evils in the world,” he wrote as the world braced for a second war, “are due to the fact that the majority of men have thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; [with] no place either in private affairs or in politics: as long as individuals and states refuse to submit to the rule of our Savior, there will be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.”

Love frees

On Sunday we saw Christ reigning from the cross, below the inscription in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek Jesus Nazarenus Rex Ideorum, the acronym of which you see on every Catholic crucifix (INRI). Pontius Pilate hung that sign above Christ’s crucified body, intending to mock him with the “jeering” Roman soldiers: “This is what the Jews call a king! How many armies does he command?” For this world’s politics, “king” means power. Armored divisions. Fighter jets. Control of economic production and delivery systems. Power over public opinion. But this King, reigning from a tree, is a different kind of ruler. “The feast of Christ the King is not therefore a feast of those who are subjugated,” writes Pope Benedict, “but a feast of those who know that they are in the hands” of one who loves them. We are all free subjects of this Kingdom, because love is freely chosen and frees him who trustfully subjects himself to the lover. We have, sadly, lost much of our loving trust in God. And as we lose this trust, we become more desperate to control our environment.

Potter’s Field

​Yesterday I buried Thomas Myron, a homeless man who was much beloved here in our neighborhood. 700 people came to his funeral Mass two weeks ago; the local funeral home and our Catholic cemetery donated much of his burial expenses. The funeral was featured on the front page of Catholic San Francisco, and by all accounts our street person Thomas was given a royal send-off. But yesterday, only a handful of people gathered at the edge of his grave to drop handfuls of dust upon his coffin. Today the Missionaries of Charity asked me to do another funeral for a homeless man who will be buried in the “potter’s field,” in an unmarked grave. These two men have gone before us to the Last Things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell. They go to them as free subjects of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They did their best to persevere even under quite difficult circumstances: incapacitating mental illness and resulting decades of homelessness. But they are home, for we are all equal subjects in Christ’s Kingdom of Love. In Him, our two street people are of no less account than the most secure living in our Nob Hill mansions. And the wealthiest and perhaps loneliest among us are no less secure if they can freely submit themselves to Christ the King.

Some of us labor under the burden of having been English Majors in college. We get irritated when words or syntax are used incorrectly. By now, most of us are sick of the word “awesome.” Some of us have become weary of the word “incredible” used to describe everything from a mediocre performance to a beautifully-uttered prayer (and some even laugh at the irony of describing any acts of faith as “incredible”). But have you noticed the word “absolutely”? Everyone’s using it in every other sentence. Question: “Has your department addressed the immigration issue?” Answer: “Absolutely.” Question: “Do you have the votes to win this election?” Answer: “Absolutely.”
 
Why this tendency to be so absolutist? As with the glib use of the word “incredible” indicates a certain unconscious “unbelief” in our time, so the use of “absolutely” seems to manifest an unconscious absolutist mentality. Is it perhaps our nervous insecurity in a beneficent universe (born of unbelief) that vainly insists on knowing things “absolutely?” Is it perhaps our very doubt that demands “absolute” proofs. Doubting Thomas demanded to see with his eyes and touch with his hands because he could not trust the witness of his friends, nor believe in the power of God.
 
I think it would be humbler and more reasonable to restrain our demands for “absolute” control in life. So if someone asks you “Are you happy in your current position?” you might consider answering not “Absolutely” but something more reasonable, such as “I’m not perfectly happy, and I don’t know everything there is to know, but we are not in heaven yet.”

It is providential that we celebrate the Feast of the Lateran Basilica following Election Day this year. Today Catholics look to this Cathedral in Rome, "the Head and Mother of all Churches in the city and the world," which has serenely presided over a worldwide communion since 324 AD. Political leaders come and go, but the Church remains. Constantine's second wife Fausta gave the Lateran family's land to the Church, on which her husband built a great basilica to Christ the Savior. The doors of this church were taken from the old Roman Senate building a mile away. These doors remind all who pass through them that, at their best, Church and State work together in mutual respect for a peaceful social order.

The mainstream media had been assuring us of a Clinton victory, while it seemed to me that Trump himself was doing everything he could to prevent his own election. The many texts and emails I've already received this morning manifest our national turmoil. Some express gleeful relief and some frightened distress, but I hope calmer heads will prevail now that we have made a decision.

To maintain our peace in the midst of tumultuous politics it is good to remember two things:
First, America is still governed by "checks and balances," which prevent any one man from exercising undue power. Donald Trump will be our president, but, if we keep our heads, he will not be our dictator. America does not elect dictators but presidents, who must answer to the Congress and the Judiciary, as well as to the electorate. No president will assume dictatorial powers unless we let him, and we certainly have the means to maintain checks and balances.

Second, and more to the point, the man who exercises essential authority over America lives not in the White House but in St. John Lateran Basilica. He also lives in your own little parish churches, and nothing happens in America without his permission. In our national convulsions over this election, have we forgotten that God is God? "All things work for the good for those who love God," Paul writes. After every government has failed us, Jesus will still be our Lord and Savior. I assumed I would be writing these words after a third Clinton presidency was announced this morning, but it turns out to be Trump. In the long run, it doesn't much matter who wins the presidency, because God always wins. He is our victor today, infinitely more than any politician, and we would be well-advised not to forget it.

​Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!
 

Early this morning, while it was still dark, I entered the stillness of the church and found some women praying. These women come every morning to the altar, built like an empty tomb, to pray for the living and the dead. May God reward them! I prepared to offer the Mass for the Dead as they kept watch. I vested in black, but these vestments were lined in bright silver: the silver lining to the cruel fact of death. The extraordinary form of the Mass for the Dead strikes a subtle balance, it seems to me, between the dread finality of death, and the shining hope for eternal life.
 
Three days ago I drove down to Stanford Medical Center to keep watch at another Calvary. Evelyn Ereso, a dear friend who had argued valiantly with cancer for ten years, was dying. Her devoted husband, their three children and assorted grandchildren, extended family, and close friends kept watch with him. I anointed her, gave the final absolution, and each of the family then traced a cross on her forehead. She died three hours later.
 
Today her husband called me, asking to do the funeral Mass next week. His contact came up on my phone as “Virgil and Evelyn Ereso.” We talked a little and hung up. I slowly pulled up their contact on the device and quietly erased “Evelyn” from the phone’s memory. I went back to “recent calls” and watched as for one last instant “Virgil and Evelyn” came up; then Evelyn’s name silently disappeared from the screen.
 
Let us not pretend that death is just a “passing away.” Yes, we Christians know death is a passing from this world to the next, but for those left behind, death is final in this life. Virgil will never see his wife again this side of the grave. He too will have to eliminate her name from his contact lists, lest death mock him. He will never be able to call Evelyn on his cellphone again. She is gone.
 
The Catholic Church takes death seriously, and for that reason provides serious medicine for our mortality. She provides the Word of Life and the Sacraments. We cannot pretend death is not the absolute worst thing about life. But rather than making light of it, or hiding from it, we enter fully into it, as did our Lord. Entering fully into death, with Him, is our only hope to get through it. And we will get through it. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1968, "Christ strode through the gate of our final loneliness ... in his Passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he."

Make sure you pray for the dead today, and if possible, attend Mass for them. 

May Evelyn's soul, and the souls of all of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.