​Happy feast of St. Andrew, the incredible man of faith who died in an incredible way: on an X-shaped cross. Wait. Every time I hear the word “incredible” more than once I cringe. My advice is not to take anyone seriously who uses the word “incredible” twice in two sentences.
 
“Incredible” has been the hype word of choice for the last ten years, an adjective people use when they don’t think we are taking their hysteria seriously enough. At best, it indicates a dismal ignorance of language, and at worst a banal attempt at shock value. The word means “non-belief,” and its constant use probably manifests an unthinking rejection of faith in anything larger than basic “science.” One could say “technology” is incredible, and one would be right.
 
Take the curious case of Lauren Donahue, program director for new student engagement at Notre Dame, a university that built on faith in Jesus Christ. At a pre-Welcome Week meeting for her volunteers, Miss Donahue made all her volunteers wear rainbow pins. In an interview with the Irish Rover, an independent newspaper run by Notre Dame undergraduates, she explained: 
 
“I view my work as honoring the inherent dignity that every individual has in the likeness and image of God, and I think conversations about allyship and inclusion go hand in hand to that for me. The characteristics of what it means to be an ally and what it means to be inclusive feels incredibly rooted in the way that I live out my Catholic faith, and I think it is one that the university strives for similarly—that all are welcome at the Eucharistic table. If you imagine the way that Jesus broke bread, who he was breaking bread with was just incredibly inclusive.”

Note first that Miss Donahue talks a lot about herself in those lines (“my work,” “for me,” “I live out my Catholic faith”). It’s not the Catholic faith she describes, but her opinion of the Catholic faith. Note second that she uses the word “incredible” twice in two sentences, referring oxymoronically to the “incredible Catholic faith” and the “incredible way Jesus broke bread.” I think she really does “believe” that Jesus is incredible—that one cannot really believe in Him or the Bread that He breaks. Don’t trust her! I’m sure she’s a very nice person, actually, but probably somewhat lacking in the Christian faith. May God have mercy on us all, as my Dad used to say.

Speaking of Dads, the incredible Australian Cardinal, George Pell, is coming to Star of the Sea next week, on December 8th. More about that in my next post. But come if you can, at 7pm in the church.

We have come to the end, the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Every November the Archbishop offers a Mass for deceased clergy in the mausoleum where the prelates of San Francisco are buried. Afterwards we process to the priest section of Holy Cross Cemetery singing the litany of saints. Some of these men were saints, and some of them were sinners. Some of them were heroes of the faith who built the Church in what used to be one of America’s most Catholic cities, and some of them were criminals who destroyed the faith of children and adults alike, emptying the churches their brothers built up. But all of them are dead, and all of them have been judged by the great High Priest, Christ the King and Supreme Judge of men. 
 
Last year, as he stood before the tombs of San Francisco’s first archbishop, Joseph Alemany, and of San Francisco’s first Cardinal, William Levada, and the other prelates, Archbishop Cordileone gave a striking homily. “It certainly seems,” he said quietly in the echoing halls of the dead, “that we are witnessing the end of life as we have known it, and even the end of the Church as we have known her. But let it not frighten or upset us. Heaven and earth will pass away, says the Lord, but my Word will not pass away.” This week we celebrate Thanksgiving for all that God has given us, and we refrain from complaining about what He has not given us. Most of all we thank God for the gift of eternal life, when the long cycle of seasons, of endings and beginnings, comes to its perfection in those who believe in Him.
 
Heaven is God’s gift but requires endurance on our part, which St. Paul describes as longanimitas in Latin—long-suffering, literally “to a great length.” Our pilgrimage to heaven is a marathon, not a sprint. “We do not cease praying for you,” he reassures us on as persevere through discouragement, weariness, and scandal. Without doubt the Apostle is praying for us today, as we see the Bark of Peter taking on water at all sides, listing badly to the portside—that is, to the left—apparently sinking. Only he who “perseveres to the end will be saved” Christ warns us. In Latin, the words are permanserit usque ad finem, “stays with him until the end.” We have to make it the finish line—to the day of our death—with our faith intact. In heaven, the Church hierarchy will not be needed, and we will no longer need even the sacraments, because we will have Christ himself. He will bring about full justice, perfect peace and the tranquility of order. But that day has not yet come, and so we must keep working and keep walking, maintaining hope and stamina.
 
No one knows the time or the exact manner in which the Lord will return, but he describes that day in today’s Gospel in these words: when you will see a desolating abomination in the holy place, you must flee to the mountains. When you see sacrilege, perversion, and crime in your priests, in the sanctuary, you must flee to the “mountain,” taking only your faith. Catholic altars are built on little “mountains,” elevated platforms with three steps to symbolize Calvary. Some of these altars have been desecrated by criminal clergy, but some are still clean. If you see the “desolating abomination” in your holy place—in your parish—flee to a parish that has persevered in purity and right worship. Jesus assures us that had those days not been shortened even the elect would lose their faith. Is it possible that we are entering these times?  
 
Many priests and bishops have abandoned their vocations, although they still wear the garb. Wolves in sheep’s clothing fill the Church. When Pope Benedict took the office of Peter, he asked the Church to pray for him, “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” It seems that he did flee, perhaps because we did not pray enough. In the last few years some of even the highest ecclesiastical authorities have been revealed as deceitful and malignant. It is certainly a difficult time for us. But we can and we must persevere in our faith. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” We cannot reform the Church. Pope Benedict failed, and Pope Francis is failing. But we can remain faithful as individual disciples. Even if our prelates and friends and civil leaders betray the faith, we will not. We will turn ever more fervently to the Mass, to confession, to intense interior lives with Our Lady, holding on desperately until He returns, which He surely will, and sooner than we think. Come, Lord Jesus! 

​

​A bookmark fell out of the little volume I’ve been reading these last few mornings, Priests—What Lies Ahead. More about the bookmark later.
 
I found chapter four of this book particularly edifying. Don Livio Melina, then president of a Roman university specializing in the theology of marriage, sexuality, and family life, speaks on priests as “physicians, healers of wounds.” He points to the “original wound” in every human person, our longing to love and be loved, to understand and be understood, an open wound that never completely heals. Sexual love is both the symptom of that longing and the cure, but even the most fulfilling sexual union is not meant to be perfect. Sexual union itself points to a higher good, like every other good thing in life. Delectable foods, beautiful sunsets, warm human friendships, and every other earthly good is sacramental. It reveals--points to--something greater, but it also modestly conceals that greater good by its own relative goodness.
 
Holding out for a Supreme Good is a risk, because there’s no “scientific” proof that it exists. What if “sex” is as much as we get in life? What if there’s nothing more than expensive restaurants, fast cars, and cosmetic beauty? Most of us, most of the time, say “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We don’t want to risk losing what we’ve got, even though it is never quite enough. “Postmodern man,” writes Don Livio, “is always in a limbo of indecision because he never definitively risks his life.”
 
In this age of government safety-nets and technological security, we are trained to avoid risk. But completely eliminating all risk also eliminates human love, which is always risky. For that matter, total “safety” eliminates human excellence in sports, business, politics, and every other human endeavor, which by definition requires overcoming obstacles which could cause serious harm. “Stay Safe” means “Don’t Risk,” which means “Don’t Commit.” We are told to keep our options open and always have a few exit plans.
 
Priests are ordained for life, without an exit plan, putting all our hope in God’s providence. They do this to be able to heal the original wound in the human heart. His own wound (especially his celibacy, but also his poverty and his obedience) bleeds continuously, pointing him to God, who alone can heal his fundamental wound. Some call priests “wounded healers,” even as the great High Priest, Christ, healed our original wound from his open wounds on the Cross.
 
Priests today are deeply wounded, along with everyone else. But today, perhaps unlike in previous epochs, Catholic priests see their bride, the Church, hemorrhaging blood and pus. Not only have some clergy proven just as criminal as some politicians and Hollywood moguls, but it seems like almost all of Church leadership has become indecisive, helpless, and hopeless. Is there any hope for a Church that has been proven so feeble?
 
“I would tell the priest,” Don Livio writes, “to cultivate more and more the hope of the farmer, who sows in difficult times, too, with the certainty that God will ripen the generously sown seed in the fullness of time.” That hope in a future we cannot see or control requires blind trust. It is a risk.
 
Which brings us to the bookmark that fell out of Don Livio’s this morning. It is the ordination card of a younger priest I greatly respect, Fr. Cameron Faller. He was ordained on June 6, 2015, in San Francisco. He lived a year with us at Star of the Sea and is now archdiocesan vocations director.
 
“Father,” the card begins, “I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all. I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.”
 
It is Charles de Foucauld who wrote this prayer. Of French nobility, Charles became a Calvary officer in 1881, exploring North Africa, winning heroic renown as a dashing French soldier. Following a profound conversion of heart, however, he built a hermitage in the Algerian desert, serving the Taureg people. He was assassinated in a Bedouin raid, is buried in El Menia, and will be canonized on May 15. His life marvelously portrays one man’s complete surrender to God’s will, heedless of the risks. He is a mystery that both reveals and conceals the mystery of God. This is what priests are ordained to be: men that take the greatest risk of all, complete surrender to a God no one can “prove” even exists. Not many of us do it very well, but some do, like Blessed Charles de Foucauld, and, I pray, Fr. Cameron Faller and today’s young priests.

Today the first great Christian basilica, St. John Lateran, was consecrated in Rome, in the year 324. Yesterday I visited San Francisco’s “Latin School,” our own Stella Maris Academy. But our usually bright-eyed students were a little slow. “It’s Monday morning” one of them told me.
 
In music class the teacher was warming up the class by singing her questions, asking them to sing back their replies. “How do you feel to-day?” she warbled. The girls sang back like angels, but the boys fidgeted and mumbled through reluctant lips. One 6th grade boy droned “pessime,” and the teacher sang back in Latin, Quare pessime O puer? (“Why do you feel rotten, O youth?”) The sad boy had no coherent reply, so when it was my turn to sing how I felt that morning, I belted out optime!
 
Why are today’s children pessimists rather than optimists? Even in a Classical Academy that seeks the beautiful, the true, and the good, despondency infects our children. But children are not pessimistic by nature. Who or what has stolen their natural energy?
 
After visiting the school, I went for a bike ride in San Francisco’s wonderful Golden Gate Park. Monument after historical monument glided by, but many of them were headless. The bright statue of Junipero Serra, the Father of California, had been decapitated. Francis Scott Key had been torn down. Ulysses S. Grant was gone. Shakespeare, hiding in a clump of trees, was still up, but I’m sure “they” will cancel him too at some point. I pedaled past the sprawling George Washington High School, whose murals must be effaced and whose name must be expunged because … no one knows quite why these facts of history must be canceled other than … rage dictates that everything must burn. Thomas Jefferson’s statue will be removed from the New York City Council chambers. The past must be expunged simply because it is the past.
 
Children feel “pessime” when they feel homeless, without father or mother whom they can trust, without a Fatherland or a Mother Church they can depend on. Children feel homeless when they are told that anything that happened before 1960 is bad, and anyone older than 35 cannot be taken seriously. In most movies, Dad is an idiot and Mom is a narcissist. Even when I was in high school, history had been replaced by “social studies,” which even then was morphing into progressivist propaganda.
 
We teach history at Stella Maris Academy, as do all Classical Curriculum schools. The good, the bad, and the ugly—it really happened, and those who do not know their own roots drift nervously through life without confidence in much of anything. If our children’s eyes seem vacant, if they cannot focus without heavy doses of Ritalin and Adderall, if they cannot sit still and think, it is because they do not know their own history. Let them read and study the lives of the men and women who have gone before us, the “democracy of the dead,” in Chesterton’s words. One of my happiest Christmas breaks was spent reading a high school textbook on American history as background for my MA paper on the first bishop of California, Joseph Sadoc Alemany. The story of our country, like the stories of our own families and the story of our planet, is fascinating, inspiring, hopeful, and sobering, all at the same time. Real history, not political powerplays like the 1619 Project, gives joy and hope to students. Propaganda makes them simply “pessime.” They become like the Russian people I saw on the streets of grey Vladivostok some years ago after 70 years of Soviet propaganda: listless, suspicious, defeated. Our school parents tell me how their children are already more joyful, less stressed out, more coherent, and less depressed. They are learning to sing history, not to cancel it. They are discovering the inherent goodness and order of creation rather than simply trying to manipulate it.
 
As I was pedaling back home yesterday I saw a billboard pedaling Instagram. It showed an androgynous creature, all tattooed and pierced with orange hair, scowling into his device, with the belligerent words “We make today.” I certainly don’t want to be like such a creature, nor be around such creatures, nor watch our children become such creatures.  
 
We don’t make today. God has already made it for us, and with joy we discover its beauty, its goodness, its truth. Find a good history of our Country, of our Church, of our Planet; study it, ponder it, rejoice in it, teach it to your children, and thank God for his manifold blessings. 

​A blessed All Saints Day to you all, and the first day of the month of the Holy Souls. Today we peer into heaven, looking toward that Land of Rest, communion with all the saints in the Life of the World to Come. Benedict XVI, in his first All Saints homily after becoming pope, described today’s feast in these words:
 
"The saints are not a small caste of chosen souls but an innumerable crowd to which the liturgy urges us to raise our eyes. This multitude not only includes the officially recognized saints, but the baptized of every epoch and nation who sought to carry out the divine will faithfully and lovingly…. Looking at the shining example of the saints to reawaken within us the great longing to be like them; happy to live near God, in his light, in the great family of God’s friends."
 
These “friends of God” live in perfect harmony with all that is good, true, and beautiful, and where they have gone, we hope to follow. The Judeo-Christian perspective is always forward, as in the mottos of St. Junipero Serra (“siempre adelante!”) and St. Piergiorgio Frassati (“verso l’alto!”). I think today’s regnant “progressivism” —belief in a “future” that is always better than the present (and certainly superior to the past)—comes from the Bible. “Progressives” implicitly believe that technology will continue to improve our lives, that politics will always get smarter, and that the economy will expand indefinitely. We assume that Tomorrowland will look like the Jetsons—smooth and sleek and smart. Even though setbacks like World War I, the race riots of the 60s, and the Covid pandemic throw the Doctrine of Progress into doubt, we keep hoping that new technologies, improved medicines, and more progressive politics will overcome these problems.
 
Where did the Western World come up with this Doctrine of Progress, this inherent belief that human history is a trajectory of constant improvement? From Moses and Jesus, of course. Moses pointed the way forward (literally, through the Red Sea to the Promised Land), preparing the way for the Messiah. The Messiah came, but He himself said only that He was the “way” to the Father, to our final destiny in heaven. So Jews and Christians do not say “life’s a bitch and then you die,” but “life’s a gift and then you go to heaven.” It is with that joyful expectation that we enter November, a month of dreary weather but bright anticipation of a better future. Our future is with God, and we must apply our energies to attaining that luminous summit.
 
Wednesday is the fortieth day of my mother’s death. She used to say, after I was ordained and often traveling the world to give retreats or explore new lands with my priest buddies, “I wish I could be a mouse in your pocket.” Well, now that she has passed through the thin veil between time and eternity, she is a mouse in my pocket. And I am a mouse in her pocket as she works her way through the landscape of purgatory toward the Land of Perfect Rest. We are in deeper communion with the saints than with our best friends and family on earth. I certainly feel much closer to my mother now that she has returned to God.
 
I will offer a Solemn High Requiem for her, with the help of Fathers Michael Rocha and Mark Wagner, at Star of the Sea this Wednesday at 6pm. I will have a dozen of my sister Camille’s book, Honey Sandwiches, about my mother’s life, as well as holy cards from her funeral Mass on October 1st. You are all welcome to attend my mother’s Requiem at our Shrine Church, Star of the Sea, on Wednesday at 6pm.