Deo gratias is the last word of the Divine Liturgy. The priest formally concludes the Mass with “ite missa est” and the people respond “Deo gratias.” He lingers a few minutes longer at the altar to read the prologue to St. John’s Gospel (“In the beginning was the Word….), a kind of evangelical coda to the liturgy. At the end the people again say Deo gratias. The priest leaves the altar at those words, the only appropriate response of the creature to the Creator. What more can we say?

The people do not merely say “thanks” (that overused and insipid filler response to everything and everyone). We do not even say “thank you God,” a quick prayer breathed when finding a parking place or dodging one of life’s bullets. The proper response to the entire Liturgy of Being is thanks be to God. Meaning: all gratitude is properly due to the source of all good.
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The other day I rode to my favorite little corner of Golden Gate Park with a book. To my delight I discovered a flock of Canadian geese milling about the green lakeshore. As my red bike and I approached our favorite bench, these splendid fowl briefly regarded us with serene approval. They quickly returned to their worms and bugs, or to preening their ample plumage, with their soothing little clicks and clacks. They were content to eat what God provided beside Metson Lake. And I, the only rational being in that assembly (with the possible exception of my red bike), gave thanks to God. How could I not? But the geese too gave thanks to God, in their own way. All was beauty, and all was peace.

Today is Thanksgiving, thanks be to God. We get a day off, and we get some time with the ones we love most. Yesterday I offered a Mass for Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, for indeed in the older calendar November 27 is the Feast of the Miraculous Medal, and November 28 (today) is the Feast of St. Catherine Laboure, who received that medal from Our Lady in 1830. In 1968 my mother put a miraculous medal around my neck and told me never to take it off. Even though I’ve gone through a dozen such medals in the 51 years since that day, a large miraculous medal still swings over my heart as I ride my red bike through life. I would be a dead man, or I would have lost my faith in Jesus, or I would have abandoned the priesthood, if it were not for Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. Thanks Mom! And thanks be to God.

Viva Cristo Rey

Today the Church celebrates Cristo Rey: Christ the King. We remember our dear Carmelites at our neighborhood Cristo Rey monastery, founded by refugees from the persecutions in Mexico in the 1920s. Blessed Miguel Pro, a Jesuit priest who died by government firing squad on November 23, 1927, cried out Viva Cristo Rey one last time before receiving their bullets into his body, arms stretched out as on a Cross. He steadfastly declared to Mexico’s atheist president, Plutarco Calles, that Jesus Christ is our only King. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 after the horrors of World War I made it clear that universal devastation is the price we pay for denying God. “These manifold evils,” he wrote, “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.” We have thrust God even further from us since he wrote those words, we who cannot mention the name of God in our schools, whose university students are taught that Christianity is essentially bigoted and hateful. We have thrust God from our politics and blaspheme his sacred name in public entertainment and discourse. We desperately try to stabilize our social order with nothing more than human opinion and the will to power. It will not work. Apart from God and his laws, there is no lasting peace.
 
In the Gospel Christ reigns from the cross below the inscription “Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Ideorum” (INRI). Pilate hung that sign above Christ’s crucified body to mock him with the “jeering” Roman soldiers and Jewish priests. Look how helpless is this “king!” How many armored divisions and fighter squadrons does he command? What global production and delivery systems does he control? How many high techn corporations does he own? How quickly can he move the needle of public opinion? Christ declared from the Cross that he could summon “12 legions of angels” to rescue him, but he chose rather to die for the people. He is the King of sacrificial love, not a king of dominating power. “The feast of Christ the King is not 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.

No Other King Beside Him

​Fr. Miguel Pro was executed by the Mexican government two years after Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King, and his last words were Viva Cristo Rey. There is no other king, and there is no other God. It’s hard for me to say what I’m about to say, but as your pastor I must say it. Last month a false god was worshipped in a Vatican ceremony as the Pope looked on. The Holy Father seemed disturbed, but he did not stop the blasphemy. The wooden statue is known as the “Pachamama,” which Encyclopedia Britannica defines as the Amazonian “goddess of the Earth.” At least one Franciscan priest and many others bowed down to this pagan image of a naked pregnant woman. Now, all of us worship idols to some degree. We put the things of this world above the things of God. Any of us, for example, who chooses a prestigious secular university for a child whose faith is weak worships at the altar of success rather than at the altar of God. Let’s be honest that success in this world is more important to most of us than fidelity to God. But what happened in Rome last month made it clear that some church leaders have now publicly submitted to another god than Christ. Perhaps their intention was to honor the indigenous people, which is good, but it was a grave error to bow before their pagan god. We must pray that they admit their mistake and correct it.
 
The worship of idols quickly becomes the worship of demons, and so a group of exorcists have asked that December 6 be a day of Fasting, Prayer, and Reparation for these sins against faith in the heart of the Church. The worship of idols, along with the sexual crimes against children and seminarians by their spiritual fathers, clearly manifest the presence of the demonic within the Church. “Some demons,” Jesus teaches, “can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.” I urge you to offer more intense prayer and fasting on the First Friday of December atone for these crimes. Attend one of the three Masses that day and make the consecration to the Sacred Heart led by your priests. Pray the rosary with your family, or after Mass; spend an hour with Jesus before the Blessed Sacrament, which will be enthroned all day on this altar. To make our prayer effective we should also practice some form of penance that day: fasting from food, but also fasting from the internet and vain entertainment. We cannot pretend that the heart of the Church has not been invaded by the powers of the air. With Our Lady, let us call out to Jesus on the Cross, as did the good thief in today’s gospel. He had asked only that Jesus remember him when he came into his Kingdom. Jesus said, rather, “today, you will be with me in paradise.” Viva Cristo Rey!

Last week I rode my scooter down to the imposing Federal Building not far from City Hall here in San Francisco. An elevator whisked me up the 17th floor, and I walked through the silent halls of justice to courtroom #3. Inside, Judge William Orrick was sitting back in his tall chair, listening to an attorney from Planned Parenthood. The lawyer was professional and self-assured. The innocence or guilt of David Daleiden, who took undercover videos of the illegal sale of human body parts, would be determined by this court. Closing arguments wrapped up at precisely 11am, and as I had an 11am appointment back at the parish, I quietly left the courtroom as the judge began his final instructions to the jury.

This is what the judge told the jury, according to reports: “I have already determined that these defendants trespassed at each of these locations. Because I determined that these defendants trespassed, the law assumes that Planned Parenthood has been harmed and is entitled to an award of nominal damages such as one dollar for each trespass.” I had assumed the American legal system holds jury trials so that a jury can determine guilt or innocence. But I was wrong. On Friday the jury confirmed Judge Orrick’s prior decision of guilt and awarded a multi-billion dollar corporation fines that will cripple David Daleiden.

The next day I had the morning Mass. The Gospel for that day, as it turned out, was about an unjust judge. “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being.” A widow in that town had been asking the judge for a just decision against her adversary, but apparently the adversary had bought the judge off, and he refused to grant justice to the poor woman. But because of her persistence, the dishonest judge finally said to himself: “While it is true that I fear neither God nor man, I shall deliver a just decision to this widow lest she come and finally strike me.” This image is meant to be funny: something like the little old lady bopping the powerful judge with her umbrella. What can David Daleiden and his lawyers do against the powerful attorneys for Planned Parenthood? What recourse does he have against a corporation with $1.6 billion in assets, with a judge who himself sat on a board for an organization that helped run a Planned Parenthood facility?
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And yet the poor widow persevered. She kept asking for justice, despite the corruption. David Daleiden too intends to appeal, if they will let him, and if he can afford it. Justice is in God’s hands, as is everything. Jesus had told his disciples, in Saturday’s gospel, of the necessity to “pray always without growing weary.” If we do not lose faith in God, Jesus tells them, “He will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.” Let us too pray, with David, that justice will be done speedily against the Goliaths of the abortion industry.

On this Veteran’s Day, or as we called it before 1954, Armistice Day (the day the Great War ended in 1918), I remember my own father, Dr. John Illo. He is 93 years old, living with his bride of 66 years in their peaceful golden time of life in a small house with my brother, who takes care of them. Dad stepped off a troop ship in the summer of 1944, an 18-year-old soldier in McArthur’s great army, to help rebuild Manila, which had just been liberated from the Japanese. He brought back a fistful of Japanese occupation currency, one piece of which I’ve taped above my desk to remember my father’s service to our country and to the world. History and remembrance are essential building blocks of a peacefully-ordered society. “Tradition,” wrote Chesterton, “is the democracy of the dead.” On Veteran’s Day we remember not only the dead, but also the living who are serving or have served in our nation’s military. Thank you, Dad, for your service to our country. We study the history of our elders (I’m just finishing my third 1000-page Churchill biography!) not only to know their stories but also to gain wisdom, that their sacrifice will not have been in vain.

On Saturday our parish remembered her own history at a spectacular Anniversary Gala. The Mass and banquet was a touching thanksgiving for all that God and our forebears have provided for us today. At that sold-out banquet I presented the following reflections on Star of the Sea Parish, founded in 1894:

 All Saints and All Souls
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Yesterday many parishes offered Solemn Masses for the Dead, with appropriate music. Mozart’s Requiem was at St. Dominic’s, Faure’s Requiem at St. Ignatius, the Duarte Lobos Requiem at the Cathedral, and here at Star we offered a Solemn High Gregorian Requiem, as did the Latin Mass Society at Cristo Rey Monastery later in the day. These Requiems have become popular in San Francisco, and although some come more for the music than for the Mass, the human heart longs to remember the dead. They also remind us that we will soon join them, with the hope that there is a place for us on the other side of the grave. November 2 is the Day of the Dead, and November is the Month of the Dead, but November begins with All Saints, those who are most fully alive. Those in heaven, and indeed those in purgatory, are the living, and we are ghosts compared to them. This earthly live must give way at last to purgatory, which itself must give way to the perfect peace and joy of heaven.
 
Peace

It is to perfect peace and joy that God calls each of us. The frustrations of this world drain our peace, and lasting joy evades us, but St. Paul writes in the Epistle that “we always pray for you … brethren, not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed …” Now, the essential purpose of the news and entertainment media, to which every one of us turns impulsively several dozen times a day, is precisely that: to alarm us, to shake our minds, to keep us dependent on the news cycle. You can’t sell airtime on newscasts that assure us that all is peaceful and orderly. Mass media has made us drama addicts, adrenaline junkies of disaster, catastrophe, violence, and social collapse. My advice to you, and St. Paul’s advice, is simply not to listen and not to look. Seek peace in Christ; cultivate stillness of spirit through a modest life of regular prayer and fidelity to the simple Christian duties. If anything disturbs your serenity, it is almost certainly not of God, and so is not healthy. Avoid it. If you are stressed and depressed, you know what to do: stop listening to talk radio. Turn off TV news. Stop reading internet gossip.
 
“Before the Lord, the whole universe is as a drop of morning dew” the Book of Wisdom counsels us. He holds the whole world in his beneficent and capacious hands. “You love all things that are, O Lord and lover of souls, and your imperishable spirit is in all things.” The simple fact is that God loves everything that he has made or he wouldn’t have made it. He loves everything that is or He wouldn’t sustain it in being. Everything that is, is good. We have trouble believing this when our minds are alarmed by chaos and evil. Certainly there is plenty of chaos and evil in this old world, but it is as nothing compared to the unsurpassing glory of God’s grace. In the words of the poet, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” which gleams like a sun through a clear and cloudless sky. God’s grace is infinitely greater. We live under friendly skies. Peace and the joy borne of peace is ours, if we seek it and lay hold of it.
 
Joy

Zaccheus the short tax collector was seized by joy. He was the chief tax collector, the richest and most powerful government agent in the region. He scrambles up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, but Jesus calls him down: “I’m coming to your house for dinner tonight.” Zaccheus comes down quickly and receives him with joy, despite his many years of filthy living. The townspeople, who have suffered from his mendacity, mock his change of heart, but the short man stands his ground: “I give half my possessions to the poor, and I give fourfold restitution for those whom I have robbed.” The grace of God, the love of Christ, sweeps away his fears and fills him with an unshakeable joy. The Lord declares to the crowd that today “Salvation” has come to this house. In Latin the word “salvation” (salus) simply means health. Zaccheus the sick man has become whole and strong again, regaining his peace and joy, by trading in his securities for Jesus Christ.
 
Believe me that peace and joy are ours for the taking, both in this world and in the next. Be faithful to your prayers and life’s simple duties, and you will have all the joy this life affords. You will become holy, and at the end of your pilgrimage will enter into the perfect joy of your master.