Yesterday was what they call “Boxing Day” in England (on St. Stephen’s Day), and tomorrow is the Feast of the Holy Family. I’ll submit some thoughts for your consideration on the Holy Family tomorrow, but today some thoughts on “Boxing Day.”
 
In the Middle Ages, the name referred to the alms boxes into which Christians would put gifts for the poor the day after Christmas. "Boxing Day" also came to mean the gift boxes employers would give to their employees on St. Stephen’s Day. In the Consumer Age, however, Boxing Day refers to the Christmas gifts that need to be “reboxed” after we return them. Big Retail guilts us into getting something as proof of our love for friends and family at Christmas, and so packages of socks, books, scarves, sweaters, sweatpants, and various other products began piling up at home. The day after Christmas is a paroxysm of “returns and exchanges” for something that might actually fit our needs. Have you seen the parking lots at shopping centers after Christmas, and the exchange lines at department stores? Boxing Day has outpaced Black Friday as the most congested day of the year!
 
One dear friend gave me a pair of gloves and five pairs of socks for Christmas. With genuine gratitude, I opened the vacuum-sealed plastic packaging (which had itself been boxed over with cardboard packaging) to discover the gloves were the wrong size and the socks were the wrong color (only black for priests, please). She took them back, which meant driving to the store again and activating shipping, repackaging, and reshipping from the main distribution center. She presented me with new vacuum-packaged socks a week later, which were not of the needed thickness (some old men have precise sartorial requirements). I told her I would just wear two of them at a time, but she insisted on returning these socks too, and a few days later I received a large box from Amazon. Within this box was a brightly-colored plastic gift bag, within which was a cardboard box, wrapped in tissue paper, within which were five pairs of socks with plastic and cardboard packaging on them: five layers of packaging from a company that proudly trumpets its care for the planet!
 
Christmas originally proposed simplicity: just a baby in a manger. God didn’t require a five star hotel or even a Motel Six: just a stable with some straw to sleep in. The greatest became the least, and He was happy, because He needed only the love of Mary and Joseph. He didn't need a quintuple-boxed package with products fabricated in Thailand and shipped across the Pacific from China, freighted across the United States in big smokey trucks from distribution centers worked day and night by wage slaves, and delivered in shiny Amazon trucks by people of color working three jobs. Next year, try not to buy into Big Retail. The best gift you can give those you love is not found on the internet or in the mall. It doesn’t have to shipped from across the planet. Just a card, handwritten with love, goes a lot farther than a piece of plastic ordered online.
 
But, dear friends, if you insist on giving your priest something at Christmas, may I suggest making a donation to my parish school? Stella Maris Academy spends a million dollars a year educating San Francisco’s poorest children, shoulder to shoulder with the city's most gifted students, and they become best friends. I am so edified to see the wealthier families  of my school supporting the poorer families without a hint of patronizing. Even with this magnificent generosity, however, our annual shortfall is still around $500,000.

​If you want to make me happy at Christmas, buy a table or a ticket to our School Gala, which is on January 31. Fr. Donald Calloway will be our keynote speaker, and a renaissance music group will provide lighthearted entertainment. If you can’t attend that night, buy a ticket or a table for parents that cannot afford a ticket. You can get tickets or tables HERE. You won’t feel guilty for having shipped a triple-boxed piece of plastic from China (or gorgeous merino wool from New Zealand) to a man who already has everything. You can help save the planet by helping educate our future leaders, right here in San Francisco, at the City's finest elementary school.

I began the day with a 6am Rorate Caeli, the traditional Advent sung Mass of Our Lady, with the altar illuminated by a hundred candles. I couldn’t see the hundred pilgrims in our dark and cavernous church behind me, but at Holy Communion a second priest appeared from the shadows to help administer the Sacrament. God sends assistance when and where it is needed, often without prior notification, and that has certainly proved true for our parish school.
 
By 8:30am, our school choir was preparing for the next Mass with Hassler’s Dixit Maria. I could hardly believe our rag-tag second and third graders could deliver one of the world’s apogees of Christian beauty with such precision! I wondered if I were in heaven or on earth.
 
Hassler put to music the words of Luke 1:28: “The Angel said unto Mary, behold….” And Mary said unto the Angel, “let it be done unto me according to every word God has spoken.” Christmas is the annual remembrance of that moment in history, when God stepped into time at the invitation of a maiden from Nazareth. Thus did Mary conceive a child and, after some months, bring Him into our world.
 
On Wednesday night our two classical schools—primary and secondary—sang their annual Christmas concert. Again, one can scarcely believe that poor children from the barrios can deliver the best classical music to our little school stage. The preschoolers, however, with their somewhat off-key lisping’s, legs and arms twittering about, got the most robust cheers for their guileless enthusiasm over the baby Jesus. The school Christmas concert must be the most delightful hour of the entire parish year, attended tearfully by atheists and believers alike, captivated by the gift of their own children.
 
Seven years ago my parish school closed, as have not a few in San Francisco over the years. I had to decide whether to let the school remain closed or try to restart it with a new vision. To reopen the school, after the trauma of its closure, would cost unknown hours of planning, marketing, and hiring, not to mention several construction jobs. It would cause me and others many sleepless nights and associated health problems. It would cost the parish, and ourselves personally, millions of dollars. I had to decide whether a Catholic school was worth all of that, and whether I was able to make a parochial school the single most important work of my parish. My closest advisor argued against it, saying simply “can any pastor or parish be expected to put this much into a project that will mostly benefit people from outside of the parish?” I began to think of the parish school as a missionary project, not unlike drilling a well in Burundi or building a road in Patagonia. Yes, I decided, my parish had the resources and inspiration to build a classical Catholic school in San Francisco.
 
By God’s grace, Stella Maris Academy is flourishing in its fifth year, but really, in its 116th year. When Fr. O’Ryan (from County Tipperary) opened Star of the Sea School in January of 1909, he was so discouraged by the initial enrollment (50 students) that he almost left the parish to become a miliary chaplain. But some convinced him to stay the course, just as some convinced me seven years ago to restart the school in 2021 with fifty-four students. Both Father O’Ryan and I have come to see that a Catholic school, after the sacraments themselves, is the parish’s most important apostolate. After teaching my first theology class on Wednesday to the seventh and eighth graders, I felt so elated that I wanted to leave the parish and become a teacher! But, of course, it is precisely in this parish that this school flourishes.

The patron saint of priests opened a boarding school for poor girls in his parish, which he called La Providence. St. John Vianney had not the necessary funds, but he trusted in God’s providence and named his school accordingly. That has been my experience as well: God has provided the money and energy to continue Fr. O’Ryan’s original inspiration (he opened Star of the Sea School within eight months of his arrival in 1908). The parochial school is simply the best project a parish can accomplish, the joy of its priests and parents, and we should not give up on our Catholic schools.

Most of us over age 50 have watched in fascination as a younger person, deprived of his or her mobile device, begins to tremble and shake. Thankfully, "lost phone syndrome," also known as nomophobia ("no mobile phobia"), does not last long. A person quickly recovers, and the students at our Catholic schools here in San Francisco, who have to surrender their cellphones each morning at the school office, have adapted quite well to a phoneless school day.
 
I lost my phone the day after Thanksgiving, before I could reply to the dozens of texts from friends wishing me a happy holiday. Today is my birthday, and for all of you who may be texting good wishes on the anniversary of my mother’s great labor, I’m sorry that I cannot respond. My phone is somewhere in the great beyond, and I’m awaiting a replacement.
 
God took my phone from me, no doubt, to detach me from my screen addiction, even if only for a week or so. But the occasion also prompted my liberation from Verizon wireless, into which I’ve been putting $85 a month for the last ten years. I’m finally declaring my freedom from Big Cell and going with a smaller company. I’ve already switched to Charity Mobile, which provides the same data, talk, and text for a third of what Verizon charges. Charity uses the same cell tower network as Verizon, so why does Verizon charge so much more? The answer: Verizon spent $4 billion on advertising last year, and this year it will spend $12 billion in “customer investment” worldwide (according to Google’s AI). How accurate that is I do not know, but I do know that I’m paying two thirds less for the same service. When I called Charity Mobile’s helpline I talked with a real person on the third ring, a nice young man who ended our call with “God bless you.” Compare that with Big Cell’s 20-minute wait times and endless artificially-generated voices redirecting you to other artificial voices and various promotions. Then there is Verizon’s heavy financial commitment to transgender and other woke ideologies….
 
I’m glad I lost my phone, although I wouldn’t want to do it every month. Life has been a little more quiet, at least for a few days, and I’m sorry I cannot respond to the texts and calls of the many kind people who wish me well.