On the evening of March 19, 2000, the body of Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei was brought into my parish to lie in state before the altar. The Cardinal Archbishop of Taiwan then led a rosary and offered a Mass in Chinese for the repose of the 98-year-old son of Shanghai who had spent 30 years in communist prisons (from 1955 to 1985). Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I would often see pictures of Cardinal Kung around the house. My mother led prayers for him, telling us how he had disappeared into Mao’s prisons many years ago. No one knew whether he was dead or alive, or where he was, but we remembered him in our bedtime prayers.
 
Last night I attended a dinner with his niece, Agnes Kung, and thirty others who have not forgotten the gentle bishop of Shanghai who stared down the overwhelming might of Chinese Communism. Agnes spoke about her uncle much like my mother spoke about him in our little Pennsylvania farmhouse. She spoke rather too long for my brothers and me, who just wanted to go out and play, but who needed to know what Christians were suffering on the other side of the world. She taught us, through him, what it meant to be a Christian in a totalitarian regime. Today the Archbishop of San Francisco will offer a requiem Mass, preached by Cardinal Raymond Burke, in front of a catafalque, in the same sanctuary in which Cardinal Kung lay 25 years ago.
 
Mao Tse-Tung was confident that he could eradicate Christianity, and indeed all belief in God, from China. Even Confucian beliefs were not “Chinese” enough for him. When Kung Pin-Mei defended himself at his show trial with Confucian principles, the communists raged against any appeal to a power higher than the Party. Today in China the Vatican seems to have colluded with the Party, and each table last night was named for a Chinese bishop who has disappeared into the Party’s jail system in the last ten years. But Christianity goes underground when necessary, and the Catholic faith somehow survives every onslaught against its freedom.
 
We have not a few Chinese in our “OCIA” classes for people who want to learn more about the Catholic faith. They have all been raised without religion, other than obeisance to “the Party” and its Supreme Leader. But they are looking for a power even higher than Xi Jinping. They want God.
 
“We had 300 people at the noon Mass!” the sacristan reported on Ash Wednesday. That’s 70 more people than last year. I marvel every year how everyone—Democrats and Republicans, young and old, rich and poor, binary and non-binary—come through that door on the first day of Lent to get smeared with the sign of death on their faces. "There just has to be more to life than eating and drinking," they say, "and death cannot be the end. So let me take the Christian inoculation against death, and do penance for my sins against the natural laws. Who knows? Maybe the God of the universe will regard me with fatherly love?" Last Sunday the Archbishop presided over an OCIA service called the Rite of Election, the last step before becoming Catholic. In ten years of attending this service, I’ve never seen the cathedral’s 2500 seats completely occupied, with people standing along the walls.
 
It’s been 25 years since Ignatius Pin-Mei returned to the Father’s House. The faith for which he suffered waxes and wanes over the years. Remarkably, it is waxing at the moment. But we can be sure that it will never disappear completely, because after all the truth of God’s existence is in every person’s heart, somewhere, somehow. 

​​“What are you giving up for Lent?” the school children asked me at morning assembly on “Fat” Tuesday. Having just given them every last bit of chocolate from the rectory, I said “for starters, I’m not eating any white death until Easter.” Lent is dying to this world to live for the next, but it also makes this life a lot healthier. “But what else are you giving up?” they cried out. Later that day, one of the parish secretaries asked me what I was “doing” for Lent. I rubbed my chin and looked out the window. “Well, I suppose I’d better give up being impatient with parish secretaries….”
 
Lent is famous for “giving up” things. Fasting (giving up things) is an indispensable means to God (because our lives are so full of junk), but almsgiving (giving things) is another essential way to God. He ceaselessly pours Himself out like the sun, streaming life and light in every direction. We become like God when we do as He does, pouring grace and beauty upon all around us.
 
Lent calls us to a third holy practice, as you heard in yesterday’s Gospel: prayer. Prayer is listening, stilling our bodies and souls enough to receive what God gives. “In the silence of the heart God speaks,” Mother Teresa of Calcutta often said.
 
Which is why I recommend, warmly, a “digital fast” this Lent. Never has there been so much noise in the world. Most people on the planet live in bondage to screens and earbuds. My school works to correct this problem, requiring students to check in their phones at the beginning of the day. Stella Maris is a fone-free zone. One of our 8th graders recently visited a nearby high school. She was amazed at how dead the schoolyard was at lunch. Everyone, it seemed, was by themselves staring at a phone. No one was talking, and no one was playing.
 
The most pressing problem of our time is noise. Nonstop visual and auditory noise renders us all rather stupid. One gets the impression of zombies in public places rather than fellow travelers. We have made very little effort to discipline our consumption of digital distraction. Everyone complains about it, but we all reach for our phones at the slightest pause in activity. We were promised “connectivity,” and we got isolation. They told us the internet would make us more intelligent, and we became rather more stupid. Certainly digital communications is a great blessing, but we must use it with self-control. And that's where Lent comes in.
 
Lent is the time to enter silence, to stay with stillness, to resist the compulsion So consider a media fast, at least on Fridays, or perhaps for the entire season of Lent. No music or podcasts in the car, on the trail or the sidewalk; no flickering screens while waiting in the airport or the dentist office. After a few days you will begin to see people and things you have not seen for some time. You will begin to think more deeply and perceive wonders you have forgotten. You will begin to hear what you have been longing to hear, and you will find a joyful peace in hearing the echoes of God’s voice in His beautiful creation.

​Yesterday I was riding across “The Bridge” when a large Yang Ming container ship slid beneath me. I stopped the bike and snapped a picture of incoming fog swirling about a massive vessel steaming out for China. The name of the ship, I noticed as the stern swung into view, was the YM Uniformity. What is Yang Ming's “uniformity?” Certainly the crew must uniformly adhere to nautical rules to keep things ship shape on the long voyage. As a priest, I must submit to many rules that keep the Church on course for her long voyage through history. 
 
I assume a Chinese shipping company's vessel also requires “uniformity” in less desirable ways, such as paying lip service to the Chinese Communist Party. That means keeping uniformity in Supreme Leader Xi Jinping’s dictates and  even thinking with The Party. I’ll bet the crew, for instance, wears surgical masks most of the time, as many of my Chinese neighbors do while outdoors in San Francisco’s fresh ocean air.
 
The Chinese are a great people, having sustained a civilization for longer than any other cultural demographic on our planet. One of China’s strengths is a certain humble trust in authority that enables great numbers of people to work for a common purpose. This trusting submission, however, can be a weakness. A dear friend from Hong Kong still wears her surgical mask all the time. I asked her the other day: how is it possible that I have not worn a surgical mask for the last four years and have not gotten sick? She shrugged and said “I don’t know. Ask the doctors.” In other words, “ask the experts, who do the thinking for us.”
 
American culture has strengths and weaknesses too. I was amazed how humbly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stood behind Donald Trump during the peaceful transition of political power last month. The United States of America has the longest surviving government on the planet. We kept the union together during a terrible civil war two centuries ago, and we somehow are keeping the union together during the current cultural civil war.
 
One of our weaknesses, however, is “non-conformity,” in the sense of a perverse insistence on individual rights. Our proud obsession with “free choice” is easily manipulated and monetized by clever people. In fact, we Americans have become, in my opinion, slaves to the “uniformity” dictated by the market and power politics. We think we think for ourselves, but a preponderance of Americans have the same tats, nose rings, earbuds, and lockstep answers to political questions. It seems that most of us have been letting “the experts” do the thinking for us.
 
The Yang Ming Uniformity slid under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday stacked with containers full of stuff we don’t need. If there’s one thing America and China can agree on, it’s the supreme value of market share. Putting “uniformity” at the service of the human person requires all of us to put supreme value not on market share but on individual human beings. Every crew member on the Yang Ming Uniformity is a person of inalienable value, made in God’s image and ceaselessly loved by Him. Even one person on board that ship is of greater value than the entire Chinese economy. 

I was talking, or trying to talk, to an older friend in a crowded restaurant. She had trouble hearing me, and I had trouble seeing her. With the years, her hearing had declined and my vision had declined, and we discussed which was worse. We both agreed that we’d rather be blind than deaf. She observed that many artists, authors, and world leaders have gone on engaging the outside world even as their eyes disengaged, but deafness paralyzes people through a terrible isolation.
 
Every day I say a bright “hello” to at least one perfect stranger as I walk our city’s streets. Most people don’t hear me, however, because their ears are stopped up with little white pieces of plastic. Never before, I suppose, have so many peoples stopped listening to the outside world: a friend’s greeting, a bird singing, the wind in the trees, a dog barking, the waves on the seashore. But it’s worse than deafness, because everyone is hearing … something—a podcast, a piece of rap music, a Google ad, a political message. Never before has commercial media had the ear of just about everyone on the planet. Never before has it been so easy for so few to captivate so many. We don’t hear the sounds of nature as we run through the park; we hear what someone else wants us to hear, and we do what we are told rather than listen and think for ourselves.
 
It is said that Mark Zuckerberg, that young genius who so widely portrays our brief cultural moment, had a texting exchange with a fellow Harvard student in 2004: Zuck: “Yeah, so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS….” Zuck’s Friend: “What!? how’d you manage that one”? Zuck: “People just submitted it. I don’t know why they ‘trust me.’ Dumb f*cks.”
 
Mark was only 19 at the time, and most of us have said far worse in the folly of our youth. I mention Mark’s youthful indiscretion to point out something he grasped at the dawn of social media: that most of us don’t want to think for ourselves. We really are “dumb;” that is, largely incapable of intelligent speech, because we do not listen well. We unthinkingly stop our ears to the sounds of Nature, and to Nature’s God, preferring to listen dumbly to every manipulative sound that either tickles our emotions or covers over our fear of the outside world.
 
One of our older parishioners came to me in tears the other day. An exemplary Catholic for 80 years, she told me she is losing her faith in God. She is frightened and depressed: her children have all left the faith, wildfires are destroying Los Angeles, a fascist antichrist has been elected president, we are destroying the planet, the economy is tanking, and a terrible unnamed virus is set to unleash at any moment. “Are you spending time with the people you love and keeping your mind engaged in the world?” I asked her. “Yes, of course!” she said with an anguished expression. “I’m on Facebook with friends many hours a day. I watch CNN all the time. I read the San Francisco Chronicle religiously….”
 
When will we “dumb f*cks” unplug our ears and again listen to the birds and the wind? We are so easily controlled. When will we believe more in what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears rather than what we are told to think and believe through our earbuds? 

Today and tomorrow Holy Mother Church celebrates "Epiphany," a Greek word that means "to shine upon." The Western Church focuses on the star that shone on Bethlehem, manifesting the baby Jesus as Messiah and Lord, the Savior of the Nations. Three "wise men" or "kings" came from East to West to bestow treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh upon this Holy Family, prostrating themselves in service to the King of Kings. 

The Eastern Church has long celebrated Epiphany as the Baptism of the Lord, when the 30-year-old Jesus was manifested as God and King at the River Jordan before thousands of people. The Church also threw in the mystery of Cana on this day, the first public manifestation of Christ's great miracles. "And the disciples began to believe in Him," writes St. John after the miracle of 150 gallons of water made wine at Cana. 

A venerable tradition of the Church today, on the Eve of Epiphany, is to bless the waters. Today I will bless several hundred gallons of water, brought by hundreds of the faithful, in the annual blessing of Epiphany Water. If you are nearby, bring a gallon or two of your own to Star of the Sea Church at 6pm tonight. This water will refresh and sanctify your family throughout the year. 

On the cover of this month’s Magnificat magazine rides the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Mary and Jesus ride on the back of a donkey, whom, as the magazine’s editor points out, is … us! “This brave, sympathetic, yet sometimes stubborn and ill-tempered donkey,” writes Pierre Marie Dumont, “represents us Christians.” The donkey is not too clever but smart enough, and his great virtue is pushing on from start to finish. His great vocation is to carry the King of Kings.
 
We do indeed carry Christ, especially after having received Holy Communion. “Mother Teresa,” Jesus asked the young nun, “will you carry me into the dark holes of the poor? They don’t know me, and so they don’t want me.” And that is why Teresa of Calcutta founded the “Missionaries of Charity:” to bring Charity Himself where no one else was bringing Him. Mother Teresa often said the Mary was the first Missionary of Charity because she first brought the newly-conceived Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth. Mary was the first Eucharistic monstrance in history in history’s first Corpus Christi procession. But who carried Our Lady, who carried Jesus? A donkey.
 
And that donkey is you. And me. And Pierre-Marie.
 
What a joy to be a donkey! What a joy to be “brave and sympathetic” and, even when we are stubborn and ill-tempered, to be still useful for God’s purposes. The devil tries to convince us that, when we are ill-tempered and not too clever, the game is up. Old hairy legs tells us that we are hopelessly inadequate to carry Jesus. And some donkeys give up when that old lizard whispers into their ears.
 
But most donkeys do not give up. They are stubborn, and they are faithful. They plod on, bearing their burdens with a grim and deeply joyful smile. God needs me! I am useful after all! Who was the most unlikely hero in the Chronicles of Narnia (with Reepicheep the Mouse as runner-up)? None other than Puzzle the Donkey. Who was the most endearing character in the Shrek movie? It was the donkey, ably voiced by Eddie Murphy.

Be that donkey for the Holy Family!

My good Irish friend Donncha was convinced that if every Catholic in San Francisco put a nativity scene in their front window this December, the City would change. The problem with our cities, he rightly observed, is that we rush back and forth from work to play, from expensive restaurants to expensive entertainment, and we don’t stop to look at Jesus. We have forgotten the fundamental truth of human existence: that God became human so that humans could become like God. We have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas, even though everyone longs for the spirit of Christmas. Macy’s on Union Square, for example, has a brightly lit wreath filling every window on every one of their eight floors, and Union Square itself has a 50 foot Christmas tree dominating the sky. Despite all this “Christmas spirit,” few remember the genesis of our celebration. So, Donncha said, we have to remind each other. And there’s nothing like a Nativity scene to reawaken our memory for the beautiful.
 
I’m writing these lines on Christmas Eve from my office above Geary Boulevard, where Donncha and his Irish carpenters have built a life size Nativity scene on the steps of our church. From my desk I can hear the excited screams of children as they look at the five-foot, three-D figures of Wise Men, Shepherds, Joseph, Mary, and the Bambino Gesù. From my window, I can see people stopping to look, to take pictures, to make the sign of the cross as they balance shopping bags. Whole families spend 20 minutes in front of the scene, as if looking into a mirror. Their children dance about, and the parents stop to talk to each other, as if at a festival. They’ve never seen anything like this, although they’ve heard about it. They dimly remember someone telling them about a poor little family in Bethlehem, and a baby born in a stable with a cow and a donkey keeping the newborn child warm in the dead of winter.
 
The people of San Francisco immediately respond to that family. They feel at home in this Nativity scene. Marriage, family, and home have been denied to most of them. They’ve been told in school that marriage is bondage and only for those with weak minds. Most have been taught that there is no such thing as a “natural family” because life is only about power. “What’s Love Got To Do With It” they’ve heard on iTunes. There is no “home” beyond the little world you make up in your head (with the help of your headphones). Two generations of Americans have been deprived of family life, and when they see a family, they are fascinated, captivated, and consoled. Dare I believe that I too have a place in this family, or even that I can have a family of my own some day?
 
Donncha was right. If every Catholic put a Nativity scene on their lawn or in their window, this country would change. I can see the joy, the hope, and the excitement of average San Franciscans stopping to look his Nativity scene on my front steps. One man, excitedly taking pictures, asked if he could go in the church. He was Eritrean Orthodox and not sure if a Catholic Church would allow him in. I welcomed him in, of course, and he said that all his churches in Eritrea had these Nativity scenes in December. “This scene makes me feel at home,” he said. I said it made me feel at home too.

 Yesterday I offered the Mass of the Immaculate Conception but forgot to mention the saint who is usually celebrated on December 9: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. This vastly humble Mexica was running to Mass on that day in 1531 when he heard rare and exquisite birdsong. He saw gemlike hues lighting up the cactus and mesquite along his rocky path, and he met a lady clothed with the sky. She smiled at him: “Juanito, Juan Diegito, el mas pequeno de mis hijos…” He had found her, and she had found him. It was a dark time for the Mexica lake people of what was then known as Tenochtitlán (now “Mexico City”). The Spaniards had destroyed their gods, and now the Mexica people had no father in heaven or mother in the sky to comfort them. Everyone calls for their mother in times of darkness. On that dark day in December 1531, a woman clothed with the sun and the stars heard the calls of both her Mexica and Spanish children. She came running to them on that day.
 
Yesterday, on St. Juan Diego’s Day, I found my credit card after 7 days of searching. I looked in every pocket, every drawer, and every vehicle (car, scooter, bike) for that little piece of plastic. I tried not to obsess over the loss, but I spent hours and hours searching and thinking where it might be. How much of life is spent searching for what we've lost! On St. Juan Diego’s Day, after the Mass of the Immaculate Conception, I found that naughty little card hiding in the inside pocket of a little-used fleece. I had shoved it there in a hurry after filling my scooter with gas last week. How was an old man to remember where he had put that little card on a cold morning at the gas pump?
 
Someday I hope I will not need credit cards any longer, and I don’t mean through Google Pay. I hope someday that the cold necessities of this world will no longer coerce my energies. Someday I hope to find my way home, or be found on my dark path by the Mother of God. I hope someday she will bring me to the Father’s House, where I will finally be home.
 
Today is the feast, not of Juan Diego, but of Loretto. A mile and a half from the Adriatic, in the Italian Marches, there lie the ruins of a poor house, three simple stone walls not more than a few feet high. This “house” was said to have been brought from Nazareth to Loretto by angels, or at least by a Greek merchant named “Angelos,” 800 years ago. This simple stone dwelling is said to have been the home of Mary when the Angel Gabriel came to her. In this house she conceived a son by the power of God. Here God lived with men, and with a woman, who was to be His mother. Here God visited His people, inviting us to come to His Home beyond the skies. It is not for nothing that we long for Home most of all, and that longing will not be disappointed.

On December 1st we set out on the path to Christmas, making this the happiest time of the year. This flower-strewn path leads to Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means “House of Bread.” In Bethlehem there lies a delightful House of Bread, a bright home in which we are fed at St. Joseph’s table, comforted by Mother Mary and charmed by the baby Jesus, the Bread of Life. Bethlehem has inspired all kinds of holiday breads, from gingerbread houses to cinnamon rolls, Yule logs and sugar cookies with green and red sprinkles, mince pies and fruitcakes, Christmas pinwheels and sweet potato dinner rolls, not to mention figgy pudding. Christmas is the happiest time of the year because food is love, and we are happiest when good food made by loving hands surrounds us.
 
Christianity is a religion of food. Its original sin was to eat of a forbidden fruit, and its Founder commanded us to “eat and drink in memory of me.” Our fundamental act of worship is to consume bread which has become His Body. We attain mystical communion with God and each other by partaking of consecrated bread and wine. Today I am 63 years old, and an aging man asks himself what he has done with his life. The answer came at morning Mass: I was born to feed the “little birds” who line up at the alar rail for the Body and the Blood each morning. A man is a fundamentally a breadwinner, putting bread and meat on the table. Blessed is the man called to put the Bread of Life on God’s table. Thank you, dear Savior, for my vocation to the priesthood! Thank you, dear God, for my brother priests, and for all the children of the New Israel who hunger for the Bread of eternal life. Thank you for my dear parishioners, who kneel at the edge of the sanctuary every day to be fed by the hand of God.
 
The other day I cycled by San Francisco’s bison herd in Golden Gate Park, which seems to be growing. After the 1906 earthquake the number of bison was increased, it is said, to provide an emergency food source for the city should supply lines break down again. But how many people would 12 bison feed, and for how long, if it came to that? During Covid many worried that food delivery systems would break down, and going hungry is never far from any of our minds. In 1968, Paul Erlich’s book The Population Bomb predicted that hundreds of millions would starve from worldwide food shortages in the 1970s. Will we ever have a safe and secure food source?
 
The fact is, even the most substantial food doesn’t sustain us for long. We have to eat again after a few hours. What we really need is supersubstantial food. This morning, in fact, I gave 30 people “food that lasts….” Having fed 5000 men with more than they could eat, Jesus told them not to work for “food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”
 
They say religion is coming back to San Francisco. Apparently my fair city has lost its title of “America’s most secular city” to Seattle, and even Big Tech is beginning to realize what Steve Jobs has always known: an Apple device is helpful but not enough. Many newcomers to my parish are truly San Francisco foodies (how wonderful when they invite me to their favorite restaurants!), but they are pouring into Star of the Sea for something more. They want that supersubstantial bread that they’ve been hearing about.