Blog Archives

From the Pastor’s Laptop: My Second Birthday

12/31/2014

Pope Francis baptizing a baby

It’s New Year’s Eve, and no doubt you are reading this on New Year’s Day, or perhaps even on the second day of the New Year. But for your scribe it is still December 31, and my “second birthday.” I was born on December 4, 1961, and three weeks later baptized, on that year’s last day. At Mass today I mentioned that Dec 31 is my birthday, because our baptism day is the day we were reborn in the Holy Spirit—when you think about it, an infinitely more important anniversary than the day your body came out of the womb. Someone gave me a gift after Mass; it was really a belated Christmas gift, but she said “Happy Birthday, Father!”

Do you know the date of your baptism? I looked mine up about ten years ago, many years after I had begun gently scolding people for not celebrating their baptism day. I was delighted to find my old baptismal certificate, a copy of which has ever since hung above my desk. I was baptized by one Rev. Fr. J. McCormick at Star of the Sea parish in the Bronx. Fr. J. McCormick became an auxiliary bishop in New York, and I became a pastor at Star of the Sea parish, but on the other coast.

My homework assignment to all of you is to find your baptismal certificate, or call you mother (I called mine today and thanked her for having me baptized). Find out where and when and by whom you were baptized, and who were your godparents. After I write this laptop, I’m going to email my still-living godfather, Dr. Peter Curran in Queens, and say an Ave for my deceased godmother Lillian, who is buried in the Bronx.

It’s a new year, and indeed Jesus Christ makes all things new, at every moment. He made me new in the waters of baptism 53 years ago, and he made you new at a certain time and place as well. Let the old year move aside, and let the ever-new, eternally-young Jesus Christ sweep us up with him to our journey’s end, the splendor of eternal life.

Homily: Holy Family Sunday

12/28/2014

On the Sunday after Christmas Holy Mother Church points to the Holy Family, because with Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph became a family. “How vast and rich,” writes St. John Paul, “is the treasure of Christian truth about the family!”

Noble Poverty

Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple in obedience to the Law of Moses. They can’t afford a calf or a goat to redeem their Son, so they offer what they can afford—two little pigeons. The Lord enters his own temple, he who made and sustains the entire universe, and all his parents have to offer are two scrawny birds. Joseph and Mary show us what noble poverty looks like. When God assumed the indignity of a human body, He ennobled the honest poverty of being human. No longer is poverty of intellect, or poverty of physical beauty, or poverty of money, or poverty of health or friends or social standing shameful. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords entered his Temple clothed in no more than His radiant simplicity.

A family that imitates Christ’s poverty is never poor. Love, and children who are the fruit of love—a sense of home—are the true wealth only a family can provide. We live in one of the richest per-capita cities in America (the median household income in San Francisco is $75,000, compared with New York at $50,000), but we have the lowest number of children. In this city, money is more important than children. But wealth is measured in love, not in dollars. Without children we become inexpressibly poor. Pity people who can afford only chic restaurants and million dollar condos, but can’t afford children.

Attacks on the Family

I was talking to a woman in a plane recently. Everyone in her family—herself, her second husband, her children, and even one of her grandchildren, have been divorced. She has recovered somewhat, but only after 20 years of therapy. We can scarcely imagine the scope of devastation resulting from the collapse of family life in America. “The family,” wrote St. John Paul, “is a necessary good for peoples, an indispensable foundation for society… it is a unique good for children… a school which enables men and women to grow to the full measure of their humanity.” If the family fails, our children will be stunted and dysfunctional, only a fraction of their potential. We’ve seen a lot of anger over black men attacking police officers, and police officers shooting black men. But is anyone asking why America’s jails contain a disproportionate number of black males? Could it be because 75% of black boys grow up without a father, deprived of the irreplaceable benefit of a home and a family?

We must awaken to the fact that the family has been under societal attack since contraception and then divorce began to be promoted in the 1930s. Today the attack takes the form of equating same-sex relationships with marriages and families, and tomorrow it will be polygamy or even incestuous relationships. Many of these attacks begin right here in our own city in the name of free choice, but what choice do the poor African American kids have who grow up without a family to call their own?

Witnessing to the family

How can we defend and build up the family, we who live at ground zero? We can begin by coming to church. This church is mostly empty, and empty churches in America’s cities mean empty families. Where is America going to hear the truth about family life and its irreplaceable role in society? From the government? At school? In a movie theatre? The Church has been in the marriage business for 3500 years. She knows a thing or two about marriage and culture.

And where are families going find the grace to withstand these attacks? From the Eucharist, from the sacraments, from their prayer lives. Thank you for coming to Mass—of course, I’m preaching to the choir. I need to preach to the fence-sitters. Only you can bring them in. We must also witness to family life by riding out the difficulties of our own marriages. A boy asked his grandma if she ever thought of divorcing grandpa. “Oh no, child,” she replied. “I never thought of divorcing him. I wanted to kill him a few times, but never divorce him.”

Finally we must pray for the family. Every time you pray the rosary, pray for your family, and all families. I can’t think of a better prayer to strengthen and save the family than the rosary. If you don’t pray the family rosary, you are not doing all you can to save the family, and save America. May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph protect my own family, and all families in this great land.

From the Pastor’s Laptop: Merry Christmas

12/24/2014

I get cabin fever in my new parish, which does not have a back yard or more than a postage-sized view of the sky. The sun had come yesterday out after two weeks of rain and everyone in San Francisco seemed happier, so I hopped on my bike to be a part of the general euphoria. There is a green bench in a remote part of Golden Gate Park on which I like to pray my office. It is surrounded by tall trees, ivy, ferns, and flowers, with lots of singing (and sometimes cawing) birds.

As I was praying, a mother, two children, and a doggie came up the path. The little boy sang out “Merry Christmas!” to the down-and-out man the next bench over. I suppose he smiled, but I had my head down in my breviary until they got nearer. “Merry Christmas!” the boy sang out as I looked up. “And to all of you as well, Merry Christmas,” I smiled.

Christmas is not yet dead, even in San Francisco. It gives occasion for a boy to greet a perfect stranger in the name of Christ. He is young; he has not yet been badly bruised by life, and it is perfectly natural for him to assume good will from a stranger on a park bench. But the mother too, she greeted me with a warm and loving smile and those words, “Merry Christmas.” Certainly she has been bruised by this dark world, but Christmas had again given her heart permission to trust like a child again. Only God, only someone who is greater than our limited humanity, can give us this joyful trust. When I say “merry Christmas” to the cabby, to the check-out girl, to the homeless man in the park, to the impeccably-dressed business man on the street, I am professing a faith that God will overcome all our human suspicions and dysfunctions. One cannot say “happy holidays” with the same guileless joy.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Homily: 4th Sunday of Advent 2014

12/21/2014

The Angelus’ by Jean-Francois Millet

The Angelus Prayer

Does anyone recognize the Collect for today’s Mass? “Pour forth, we beseech you O Lord, your grace into our hearts that we to whom the incarnation of Christ, your Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by his passion and cross, be brought the glory of his resurrection?” It is the “Angelus Prayer,” which Catholics for centuries have prayed three times a day. In Europe all the church bells ring at noon, as do our own bells here at Star of the Sea, calling us to this prayer. We would do well to regain this tradition.

The Angelus prayer reflects today’s Gospel, which is the Annunciation, the precise moment in which the eternal Word became incarnate. The mystery of the Incarnation stands at the head of all the Christian mysteries. This first mystery of the rosary contains all the other mysteries within it. God became man, so that man might become God. We ‘become God’ not because we are capable of anything great, but because God shares his divine life with us. It is by his own gracious will that He brings us into himself. “God does not choose the qualified; he qualifies those whom he chooses.” It is only for us to surrender to that perfect will.

Total Surrender

No human being had ever, or has ever, or will ever perfectly surrender to God except the Blessed Virgin Mary. Only she who was conceived without original sin could do this, and she did do it. The rest of humanity is trapped in the fears, addictions, and dysfunctions of Original Sin. But the wonder of Christmas is that one person did completely surrender to God’s perfect will in loving trust.

God has always loved us, but we have not always loved God. It was at the precise moment when the young maiden of Nazareth chose to trust him completely that the world changed. The human and divine wills, for the first time in the history of our race, perfectly aligned, and she became the mother of all the living, humanity’s solitary boast, our one great merit to become children of God. That’s why Christmas is not just about Jesus, and the US Post Office doesn’t just have a Christmas stamp with Jesus, but a picture of Jesus and Mary, Mary holding Jesus.

Echoing the words of Our Lady

We so want to believe that we can hold God in our arms, as he holds us in his arms, that we can let him love us as he wills. We cannot love him like she did, but we can at least echo her words of loving surrender. That’s why I recommend that we all learn the Angelus Prayer, the prayer of today’s Mass, and we pray it three times a day, morning, noon, and night. We can develop the habit of saying those words, “let it be done to me according to your word,” even if we don’t perfectly understand or mean them. In time, if we persist in saying this prayer of the Virgin Mary, we will learn to trust like her.

At the Hour of our Death

I ask your prayers for my father, who is very weak, and perhaps dying. Like all of us, he has had trouble trusting in God. He has not received communion in forty years, and we children are praying that he receives Christ one last time before he dies. He has led a difficult life, has burned many bridges as all of us have. Everyone lives with many regrets and disappointments. How can a dying man learn to trust again after all these years? At our family reunion last year, dear old Dad simply said, when it was his turn to speak, that it was getting awfully hard to keep denying reality. Reality is God’s love for us, and our necessary surrender to that love. Perhaps the best thing for my father is simply to say the Angelus, echoing Our Lady’s words, to prepare himself to receive the Word Incarnate. Perhaps this is the best I can do for my father, to pray for him and with him the only words that can bring us to heaven: “Be it done unto me according to your will.” Our Lady said them first, and she will help us to say them at the last.

Homily: 3rd Sunday of Advent

12/14/2014

Gaudete: joy

Today, the Third Sunday of Advent, is “Gaudete Sunday,” so named from the first word of the entrance verse for the Mass: Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say it, Rejoice!... the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4). The priest and the altar clad themselves in rose colored vestments to express the Church’s joyful expectation of the Lord’s imminent arrival. We anticipate the Lord not with fear and trembling but with steadfast joy. The Prophet Isaiah’s joy flows from his heart and soul: “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul.” His joy is that of one sent to bear glad tidings to a people in darkness; an exultant energy, as Our Lady went in haste to bring Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth.

This Present Darkness

Next Sunday will be the darkest day of the year, the day before the Winter Solstice. There is no longer and colder night than December 21st. Christmas brightens the long winter of our earthly exile. In this month of December the Church celebrates feasts of light. On Monday we celebrated the Immaculate Conception, the “white dawn announcing the Son’s rising.” Yesterday it was St. Lucy, a child martyr of the 3rd century whose names means light (Lucy from “lux”), and whose radiant joy overcame the hatred of her executioners. In ten days we celebrate the greatest of all Festivals of Light, the star of Bethlehem, the radiance of angels over nighttime flocks, the Solemnity of Christmas. “O that birth forever blessed,” writes Aurelius Prudentius in his 4th century hymn. “When the Virgin, full of grace, Overshadowed by the Spirit, Bore the Savior of our Race.” It is by virtue of His birth that St. Paul can command us in the Epistle to “rejoice always.”

Anyone can rejoice in every circumstance if he knows that God is with him, because joy is a virtue, not merely a feeling. Joy is an act of the will, sometimes difficult, but always possible to men of faith. We do not have to be sad, we do not have to be negative; we can choose to smile into the darkness, to sing while we work at even disagreeable tasks. “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.” ‘Always’ because God is with us in every circumstance. Joy is a virtue that becomes less difficult and more perfect with practice.

“Make Straight the Path”

In the Gospel, John is baptizing at the River Jordan, and some priests ask him: who are you? He tells them that he is not the Messiah, but a voice in the desert crying out “make straight the way of the Lord.” The sad and lonely desert, the dangerous and frightening wilderness, is spreading. Senselessness, perhaps guided by calculated demonic fury, is undermining the once solid foundations of an earlier Christian era. Two years ago today a young man drove up to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 20 children. Two days ago a 22-year-old man opened fire at Rosemary Anderson School in Oregon. School shootings are relatively common now, but unknown just a generation ago. What has changed? Well, we can hardly expect people not to kill children when our government subsidizes child murder under another name. Not 20 children but 20,000 children die every day in this world through government-subsidized abortion.

It is always darkest before dawn. We cannot lift the darkness—only God can save our world—but we can make straight the path. It is the joyful penances of Advent, our spiritual preparation, that make Christmas the most joyful season of the year. Take those spiritual practices away, and Christmas loses its joy. It becomes just another commercial event, driven by blind market forces.

“Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you catch souls,” wrote Mother Teresa. If you pray, you will be joyful, because you will see light in even the deepest darkness. Go to Mass every week, every day if possible, and bring your friends. Make a good confession, schedule in a weekly holy hour, pray the rosary, and you will radiate the light of a joyful Christian. “Pow’rs, dominions bow before him, the babe, the world’s redeemer,” wrote Aurelius Prudentius 1600 years ago. “Now he shines, the long expected. Let creation praise its Lord.”

Pastor’s Laptop: Fear of Rain

12/11/2014

As I write this the rain is pouring down on the skylight outside my office window: a very good sound. We have been praying for rain, and God has answered our prayers. The news, however, has unleashed a barrage of dire warnings about the “worst storm in five years….”

This morning before sunrise, I drove through the plashing rain for Mass at Mother Teresa’s sisters. I was delighted to hear the Alleluia verse sung by 40 angelic sisters’ voices: “Let the clouds rain down the Just One, and the earth bring forth a Savior.” Rather than spreading “dire fear,” let the news media spread joy and thanksgiving to an all-provident Father who provides rain and wind and sun for his beloved children.

Reflecting a culture empty of God, however, the media usually spreads anxiety. It trembles with panic at every change in the weather, or the economy, or the human condition. It fears change, because it does not fear God.

The first reading today (Dec 11) reassures us, if we have ears to hear: “Fear not, O worm Jacob, o maggot Israel: I will help you, says the Lord”—not very flattering to us poor maggots, but an accurate description of our trembling helplessness. “They seek water in vain…but I will open up fountains … I will turn dry ground into springs, that all may know that the hand of the Lord has done this.”

If we think we can control the climate, or even manage our own fears, we live in fear, because life is bigger than us. We are only worms, slithering on a rainy sidewalk. But our Father loves these little worms, and provides rain and sun for them. A Christian should know this, and fear not.

Modesto Advent Mission: Sanctifying Marriage

12/10/2014

The Immaculate Conception

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. We honor the day God led the spouses Anne and Joachim to conceive a baby girl; we praise God for giving us this girl, this woman, who would be the white dawn announcing the rising of God’s Son. Our Lady came to us as the fruit of a marriage, and she became a wife and mother herself, giving the world the infinite fruit both of her divine espousal to the Holy Spirit and her human espousal to the man Joseph. Tonight we consider the gift of the Holy Family, and we look for ways that our families may become holy. The holy family defines marriage and family life. It defines marriage as a sacrament meant to sanctify, as a means to heaven. The title of tonight’s talk is “Sanctifying Marriage.”

Putting God First

In the Holy Family, in any holy family, God is first. No matter what the cost, God is first. Not work, nor education, nor sexuality, nor even the children, but God is first. If any one of those things or any other thing or person comes between God and the soul, it has to go. And how do we know if God is first? By how perfectly we practice obedience. Click here to read more...

Modesto Advent Mission: Defending Marriage

12/8/2014

Thank you for participating

Most of you know me, and I know most of you, and it’s sure good to be back in Modesto. You know, I took a parish in San Francisco this year, and it’s nice being in the city, near the beach, the museums, the fascinating parks and restaurants. But I miss Modesto. When I moved from San Francisco to the Valley in 1991, I would go back to the city about once a month. Now that I’m back in the city, I go back to Modesto about once a week! It was so good to be back on Thursday for Fr. Tony’s funeral, to be with my brother priests whom I’ve known for 30 years, to the warmth of a loving parish community.

Fr. Mark asked me to give two talks on marriage and family life. The title of tonight’s talk is “Defending marriage,” because marriage is worth defending, and needs a strong defense right now. Without marriage and family (an all marriages are families, even if they cannot have their own children), our society collapses. It’s been collapsing for decades, but in the last few years we are seeing an accelerated, systemic collapse of marriage and family. This triggers the collapse of a civil society’s basic structures, such as trustworthy government honest business, and functional education systems. A citizenry that does not have the benefit of growing up with father, mother, and siblings is trapped in a perpetual adolescence. Tomorrow’s talk will be on Sanctifying Marriages, because marriage & family are ongoing, labor-intensive projects. Click here to read more...

Homily: Second Sunday of Advent 2014

12/7/2014

Christ’s victory procession in San Francisco

The Immaculate Conception

I made up a nice little Advent quiz for all of you today—just three questions.

Question One: Tomorrow is a “holy day of _________.”

Question Two: Tomorrow, December 8, is the Feast of the ____________.

Question Three: The Immaculate Conception refers to whom?

The White Dawn

Why does the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception occur in the middle of Advent? Because Mary’s Immaculate Conception was the prelude to the Incarnation, the necessary preparation for the baby Jesus. It was fitting that God first prepare an immaculate mother for His Son by preserving her body and soul from the decay of original sin. Mary is the “white dawn” that announces the rising of God’s Son. Have you ever passed a very bad night, longing for that first bit of light in the eastern sky? The dawn assures us that the night will not last forever. So in Isaiah Chapter 40, the “Book of Consolation” is written for a people in their 40th year of exile, two generations in Babylonian slavery for their infidelities. “Comfort, give comfort to my people,” says Yahweh. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem—her service (slavery) is at an end, her guilt expiated.” Indeed, she has paid double for her sins. It had seemed an endless exile, but Isaiah announces that God and man are now reconciled. “Cry out at the top of your voice these glad tidings: like a shepherd our God feeds and carries his people.”

Glad Tidings

The first words of Mark’s Gospel brings us these glad tidings: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In this first Gospel to be written, St. Mark is announcing something absolutely new. As Fr. Barron points out in his homily this week, the word “gospel” (in Greek “eu-angelion”) was the “good message” that the emperor would send ahead of him announcing a great military victory. Days before the people would see the emperor marching into Rome at the head of his victory parade, they would hear the heralds or “evangelists” galloping into the city, flags flying: “the emperor has won the victory! We are saved from the enemy!” In fact, one of the emperor’s titles was son of God, but Mark names Jesus Christ the “Son of God.” He is saying that no imperial victory, no good news, can compare with this good news, because Jesus is one and only Son of God and lover of men. These glad tidings are of a whole different order; they address the fundamental problem with our humanity. They grant true freedom.

Prepare

Advent is our annual retreat, our preparation for this king. He has won the victory, and He is on his way to enter San Francisco in triumph (He does that, actually, at every Mass in every Catholic church in this city). His heralds arrive ahead of him, and in today’s gospel it is not only St. Mark, but St. John the Baptist as well. “One mightier than I is coming…he will baptize you with fire,” So make straight his paths—fill up what is lacking in your hearts, and excavate what is burdensome in your bodies.

How to prepare? If all we do before Christmas this year is shop and eat, we will not be ready for such a King. Advent is a time of greater prayer and some measure of fasting, so let’s get at it. Here are three suggestions:

Pray the rosary once a week, with a view to praying it every day, as Our Lady at Fatima requested. Most Catholics use rosaries as rear view mirror ornaments, but let every Mass-going Catholic in this parish pray the rosary at least once a week. Advent 2014 is a good time to start.
Go to confession once a month. The people came to John “acknowledging their sins.” Let us do the same to prepare a heart fit for God’s Advent.
Make a significant gift to someone poorer than you. Christmas is meaningless unless we give sacrificially from our hearts. We need to feel the gift. Money is always nice, and we all know people who have less than we do. Time is good too—a listening ear, a heartfelt letter.

Christmas—that is, Christ’s Mass—is near. I’m sure you all go to Mass on December 25. Please don’t go unprepared: Christmas comes only once a year.

Welcome!