Yesterday was the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, and I had meant to pray all twenty mysteries throughout the day. With a little ingenuity, I was able to get in fifteen mysteries before switching off the light. We are “busy,” but the desire to pause and pray is always there.
 
Last Sunday, after Mass, I got on a plane for New Orleans, which was hosting a Catholic Stewardship Conference. The city must be under the patronage of St. Joan of Arc, the “Maid of Orleans.” There are many such cities in the New World named after saints: St. Louis and Santa Fe, Quebec and Montreal, Los Angeles and San Francisco. These great cities, both in the New World and the Old, must’ve been built by men and women of faith, for you can’t build a great city on money and politics alone. They built honest businesses and neighborhoods united by Gospel charity and common prayer.

​Alas, in these cities today not much time is given to prayer. The houses of public prayer are mostly shut and mostly empty. It is assumed that religion is no longer needed to order our communities. As a retired gentleman once told me quite matter-of-factly, “I have everything I need now. I don’t need to go to church anymore.” He meant he had paid off his home, gotten his children through college, and could afford home delivery of the New York Times.
 
But as I say, I got onto this plane headed for New Orleans. Feeling a bit more ebullient than normal, in greeting the smiling flight attendant with “Today is Sunday and I’m here to celebrate Mass on board this airliner!” She smiled delightedly and said “Yes, Father, let’s pray!” I didn’t, of course, celebrate Mass on the Airbus 320, but in at least one person the desire to pray was evident. Sadly, America does not pray the way she used to. Gone are the novenas, the revivals, the packed Sunday Masses and overflowing Gospel services. But I was much encouraged by this flight attendant’s evident desire to pray. Let’s do what we can to lift that desire out of the pit into which secularism has buried it. Let us not be afraid to pray in public, and to invite others to join us. “God” is not a dirty word.
 
Today is our annual Rosary Rally. Archbishop Cordileone will carry the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of San Francisco to the Civic Center, where seminarians will lead a rosary in the shadow of City Hall. Join us, if you can’t bodily, by praying the rosary wherever you are. Pray in public, and maybe even ask others to join you in lifting your joyful hearts to heaven.

Wine
Dies mali sunt: “these days are evil,” St. Paul tells us in the Epistle. “Watch carefully how you live, or, literally in the Latin, “where you are walking.” Don’t walk “stupidly” (insipientes)… be intelligentes, Paul says. I once spent two weeks in Vladivostok, at our Russian sister parish. The city was so poor at the time that thieves would often steal manhole covers to sell them for scrap. At night, especially after drinking, people would often walk right into them, and fall into the sewer. Some would get terribly scraped up and get all kinds of infections. “watch where you are walking,” St. Paul says. In our godless society, there are many open cesspools and it’s not hard to trip right into a hole of filth. We have to be careful where we walk and use our intelligence.

​Gratitude
St. Paul instructs us today in gratitude.  “Give thanks always and for everything in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father,” he writes. These next three weeks we are focusing on the spirituality of stewardship, which is essentially Christian gratitude. Is there any thing for which we should withhold thanks to God? Is there any time during which we should not bless and thank the Almighty Hand of Providence? When are we justified in grumbling? In fact, it is never right to gripe over anything. If we grumble, we effectively throw God’s gifts back in his face. Do you have a good job, or a good marriage, or obedient children? Give thanks to God! Do you have a poor job, or a difficult marriage, or children who don’t go to Mass? Give thanks to God! It’s all good, because it is all from God, or at least nothing happens without his permission. The only important thing in life is to become a saint, not whether we enjoy any particular thing in life or not. The Gospel is a story of gratitude too: a royal official who did not complain about Jesus’ apparent rebuke, but persisted, like Jacob: “I will not let you go until you bless me.” And Jesus blessed him, healing his son, and bringing faith to his entire household.
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Lepanto and the Rosary
I want to tell you a story of gratitude, the gratitude of a Pope, in the story of the epic sea battle at Lepanto, which decided modern European history. The Ottoman Turks had attacked Cyprus and positioned themselves to strike deep into Christian Europe. The Christian nations assembled an allied navy to defend themselves, but with fewer ships and soldiers, the Christians had little hope of defeating the up-to-then invincible Ottoman navy. Pope Pius V ordered all of Europe to pray the rosary on that desperate day, October 7, 1571. He himself went to St. Mary Major in Rome to pray. Back off the coast of Lepanto, the morning wind blew from the east, driving the Turkish fleet full into the Christian ships. But as the day wore on, and the sailors themselves kept the rosary in one hand, the wind shifted to the west, giving the Christian ships the advantage. It is said that, about that time in Rome, Pope Pius interrupted a meeting with these words: "Let us interrupt this business! Our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given…." And indeed, after 5 hours of engagement, the Christian fleet had overcome the Muslim navy, and Islam was prevented from enslaving Christian Europe.
 
The Rosary
Prayer works. The rosary works. It draws us into the mystery of God’s inner life, and replaces dissatisfaction and fear with loving trust and grateful praise. Prayer doesn’t so much change our circumstances as it changes us. It leads us to loving trust of our beneficent Father. Our Christian culture is all but dead, extinguished by militant secularism; the Muslims who were stopped at Lepanto in 1571 are now taking over Europe by default, for any faith is better than no faith. But we can still pray to Our Lady, the Blessed Mother given us by God himself. Neglecting to turn to her would be ingratitude to God who gave us his Mother as our gift from the Cross: “Behold your mother.” Let us pray the rosary as Americans, lest our own nation be overcome by the forces of evil. Can you afford 20 a day to pray the rosary? The rosary saved Europe in 1571; it might save America today.
 
In six days several thousand faithful San Franciscans will pray the rosary at the Civic center after having processed with the Blessed Sacrament, carried by their archbishop, down Van Ness Avenue. I want everyone to join me at this annual rosary rally. Most of you do not attend anything beyond Sunday Mass, and I am telling you that is not enough. I am calling you, the way Pope Pius V called all of Europe in 1571, as Islam was poised to take over their country. I am calling you to stop what you are doing and take up the rosary. A secular, atheist  culture is poised to take over our land. If God-fearing people are not elected in five weeks, we may not have a church to attend in the near future. Our schools will lose their accreditation and our churches their tax-exempt status. If you do not see this pray for the grace to see the big picture. We need everyone to pray, publicly. I invite you to take a bus down to the cathedral next Saturday and pray with our Archbishop to Jesus our only Savior. Only God and Our Lady can help us at this time. I beg you to turn to them in prayer, both public and private. 

Last Saturday I preached a wedding Mass for Christopher Kuebler and Anne Kaiser, married in our College Chapel with a High Nuptial Mass. Some of the wedding guests asked me to post the homily. It may not be of interest to everyone.

An Extraordinary Wedding

On behalf of the Kuebler and Kaiser families, I welcome all of you to this Chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, the jewel of TAC. Chris and Annie have chosen to be married in what we call the “extraordinary form” of the Mass, perhaps because they aspire to an extraordinary marriage. You’ll notice that in this form of the Mass, bride and groom exchange vows before Mass so they can attend the sacrifice as husband and wife. We attend not only to witness their public commitment, but also to pray for them. It is not easy to be married, but for those who make the necessary sacrifices, it is the highest and most consoling blessing this side of heaven, a foretaste of divine love in heaven.


A rightly-ordered marriage rightly orders all of society

Towards the end of Mass, just after the Pater Noster, I will impart the nuptial blessing upon our bride and groom. You will notice that the blessing focuses more on the woman than the man; some say it imposes a disproportionate responsibility on the woman. In one sense, women do bear the greater responsibility for marriage and family life, even as they have born each of us for nine months in their bodies and for life, in their hearts. “The future of humanity passes by way of the family,” St. John Paul wrote in 1981, and I might add that the family itself passes through the heart of the mother. If Mamma’s not happy, nobody’s happy.

So, like St. Joseph, husbands must quietly serve the mother, who herself quietly serves the child. In God’s plan, as we see in the Holy Family, the child is at the center of a marriage, and after him the mother, and then the man. In social systems without God, marriage and family is turned upside down: the man is center stage because he is the most powerful, and then the woman, who is forever grasping for her share of power from the man, and least of all, and quite neglected, is the child. This is the current state of affairs (present company excluded, of course). This upside-down social structure, which must either right itself or collapse, is the world into which both of you are marrying. It is your task to help restore right order to our social landscape by witnessing to the truth in love (veritas in caritate, in Pope Benedict’s words). Power is not man’s final end. Love is. Love one another, the way Joseph loved Mary, the way Mary loved Jesus, the way Jesus loves you.

The nuptial blessing includes these words: “O God, by Whom woman is joined to man, on which fellowship society mainly depends…” Both of you, in the manner specific to your sex, contribute to that “joining,” that con-jugal bond which embraces every dimension of your lives. The connubial bond, or lack thereof, determines the well being of so many others, beginning with your children (should God be pleased to grant you this blessing). Marriage is essentially a public act, although it has private dimensions. When marriage becomes just a private adventure between two consenting adults, it loses its meaning and society begins to unravel. Your task is to knit it back together by knitting yourselves together.

A Sacrament of God’s fidelity and love for us

In Ephesians’ famous description of marriage, St. Paul first addresses the woman: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands,” for the husband is head of his wife as is Christ to the Church. The responsibility to achieve and maintain this level of trust and is immense. But you do this in order to sanctify your husband, who will respond to your holiness with an even greater holiness of his own. He is to be another Christ to you, and to all the world through you. God has given the woman that initial grace of purity and love for others that nourishes sanctity. Mother Teresa would say that simple thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity. The simple thoughtfulness of the woman sanctifies her husband. The husband, in the end, has the great task of “loving” his wife as Christ loved the Church. Consider how privileged is the wife’s role in bringing forth this supreme sanctity in the heart of her husband.

Disciplined Prayer

Obviously, you can’t do this. Jesus says flatly, a little further in today’s Gospel (Matt 19), that lifelong faithful marriage—the kind of total surrender and loving trust that manifests heaven on earth—is impossible for man. “But not for God,” he adds. And so you have come to the altar of God at the beginning of your married life. To sustain the love you are given this day—even to grow that love as good stewards–you need a consistent, disciplined life of prayer. Take the trouble to pray, to pray often, alone and together. This marriage will not work—you are too sinful, both of you—unless you pray often, from the heart. Sometimes you will pray alone with none but thee, my God. Sometimes you will pray together as a couple. Sometimes as a family. You must develop your own conjugal life of prayer. But let me remind you of the family rosary. The family that prays together stays together. Christopher, God places you at the head of the family, and that means above all the spiritual head. Do not wait for your wife to lead the rosary or any other prayer. She and the children will gladly follow you in sanctity, but you must go before them all.

Place your marriage, and your children, in the hands of our Jesus’ own mother; pray for hearts so beautiful, so pure, as the Immaculate heart of Mary, whose feast day we celebrate today. If you are consistent with the family rosary, nothing really evil can touch you. May God bless you now, and all the days of your married life.

The Feast of Christ the King 

Today Holy Mother Church celebrates In Festo Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Regis: Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 to help correct the world’s tilt toward the chaos of secularism. The Great War (which ended in November 1918) made terrifyingly evident that universal devastation is the price we must pay for casting God out of public life. A few years after this war, and foreseeing the next global war to come, Pius XI wrote the encyclical Quas primas: “These manifold evils in the world 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.” Before Christ, the world knew no peace, but on a certain year in human history, the Son of God became incarnate and established his Kingdom. It is at this moment we enter today’s Gospel reading. Jesus Christ faces Pilate. The Roman king of Judea stands in judgment over the eternal King of heaven.

A King faces the King

Pilate was not a bad king, as earthly rulers go. He had nothing against God—he just didn’t know him. He was only trying to keep order in the best way he knew. He was like most political officials in our day—non-Christian, with no recourse to a higher moral authority—for our social order has lapsed into its primitive, non-Christian state. Like Pilate, Christ has nothing to do with our decision-making, and we are trying to maintain peace without God.

Pilate asks Jesus: who are you? Are you a king? Jesus answers Pilate’s question with a question: “Do you say this on your own?” In other words, do you really want to know who I am, and what it means to be a king? Pilate becomes a little frustrated with these deeper questions, which seem like riddles to his crudely political mind: “Do I look like a Jew to you?” he flings back at Jesus. “How am I supposed to know about your weird religion? Just tell me who you are and what you’ve done to cause a riot in my district.”

Pilate Doesn’t Get It

Then Jesus gives Pilate, and all humanity, the answer we have been longing to hear: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Every worldly political order will fail to the degree that it refuses to have reference beyond the world. We can’t keep order by ourselves. What do you think will happen if you put three children in a room by themselves for five hours? They need an adult to keep from hurting each other. We “adults” need a Father greater than any earthly father. Deep down, we all know this, and we know that the answer to our political conflicts is not found in this world.

Jesus continues: “I came to testify to the truth.” Every politically mature person asks whether an earthly ruler ever be completely honest. And Jesus answers that question: No, he can’t. The world is ruined; it is lost to original sin. Only the ruler who is beyond this world can bring peace and order. Only God bears the fullness of truth, and the only way to rule this world is to refer beyond it. Pilate doesn’t get it, and, with all due respect, Barak Obama doesn’t get it. Few rulers have ever understood this; most politicians who call themselves “Catholic” don’t get it, and I’m not sure how much we get it either. It is enormously difficult for anyone in our society, soaked as we are in secularism, to grasp how empty, how frail, how vain is any attempt at a peaceful order divorced from God’s laws.

Are We Taking Earthly Politics Too Seriously?

Many good Catholics complain to me that they struggle with despair over our country. American leadership, and world politics, becomes more anti-Christian, more irrational and chaotic, more dishonest, every day. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and we can’t do anything about it.

But remember this: Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. So why do we expect order, peace, and honest politics from this world? The world as we know it is passing away. Our hopes are not in this world, but in Jesus Christ, the Lord of a Kingdom not of this world. If we are discouraged by earthly politics, we probably think too much of them. If you never miss the evening news, whether it’s Fox or CNN or NPR, but you do miss your evening family rosary, you are bound to be depressed. But don’t you know that the rosary is far more real than the news? Turn the TV and computer off, and pray the rosary together, and you will gain courage and hope.

Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King to remind us how transitory are this world’s rule. The Lord Jesus Christ reigns over heaven and earth; nothing and nobody can topple him. We put our hope in him, we commit our allegiance to him. With our Lady, we work to bring about his Kingdom in this world, but with our heart set on the Kingdom that is not of this world.

Sacramentals

In every culture, and in every age, people admire valiant and virtuous military commanders: men who put their strength, courage, and intelligence at the service of their country. Such was Naaman in the first reading, commander of the military forces of Syria, a giant of a man, expert in battle, loyal to king and people. Valiant though he was, the Bible tells us, he was a leper. A little Jewish slave girl tells him of a man of God in Israel, so Naaman goes with an impressive retinue, loaded with gifts, to Elisha for healing. The man of God, however, refuses even to meet him, but tells him to bathe seven times in the river Jordan. At first Naaman refuses, but then plunges into the waters. “His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child….” If someone asks you why you dip your finger into holy water upon entering a Catholic Church, you tell them this story. It’s to keep your skin as young as that of a little baby. Have you ever seen a nun with wrinkles?

Blessed water is a “sacramental”—a simple element that communicates God’s healing power: a drop of olive oil, a splash of water, a flickering candle flame, a waft of sweet-smelling incense. If we were angels, we would not need sacraments or sacramentals, but we poor human beings learn through our senses, so God gives us these little helps to our faith. In the Gospel, not one but ten lepers come to the Man of God, Jesus Christ, who is God himself. Like Elisha, Jesus does not heal them directly. He tells them to “show themselves to the priests,” to perform the simple sacramental rituals of Jewish law. It was not the ritual that saved them, but their humble obedience, their faith, in God, who gives us these sacramentals. Jesus says to the one grateful leper that returned: “your faith has saved you.”

Many people—Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do not take sacramentals seriously. They don’t put crucifixes and statues in their homes or build little “altarcitos” in their homes. They don’t make the sign of the cross in public, or carry a rosary, or say traditional prayers. But these simple expressions of our faith are most important: at least Jesus thought so; he would not heal without them. My mother used to remove the little holy water font in our house before our Protestant cousins came for dinner so as not to offend, but one day she just left it up and said “I can’t help it if the Catholic Church has all the good stuff!”

Naaman goes back to Elisha, after bathing in the river, to ask for two mule loads of dirt. He intended to bring the soil back to Syria, so he could kneel on holy ground while worshipping the true God. Do we have to go to a consecrated chapel to pray to the living God? Jesus says we should pray not on this mountain nor that mountain but in spirit and truth. And yet Jesus himself goes to Jerusalem for the Passover, and follows traditional rituals, directing his disciples to do the same. Holy things and times and places are important to our faith. Can you pray to God without candles, statues, and rosaries? Yes, but they certainly help. They are biblical, and Jesus uses them.

The Rosary

The simplest and most effective Catholic sacramental is the rosary of the blessed ever-virgin Mary. October is the month of the Holy Rosary (the feast of the Holy Rosary is Oct 7), and a good time to resolve never to leave home without a rosary. If you have a rosary, you are more likely to pray it. It’s a simple prayer, but as John Paul II said, “marvelous in its simplicity and its depth.” In my last parish, I tried many ways to pray with my staff, but nothing worked until we began praying the rosary together once a week. 

Pope Consecrates world to Our Lady

Today is “Marian Day” in the Year of Faith, the day the sun danced at the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Today Pope Francis consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Rome. Let us also consecrate our city and our families to the Blessed Mother today, using the words like he used at St. Peter’s today: Holy Mary Virgin of Fatima, with a Mother’s benevolence we beg you to accept our act of consecration today, which we offer before your image, so dear to us. We are certain that each of us is precious in your eyes and that nothing in our hearts is unknown to you. Bring everyone under your protection and entrust everyone to your beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus. Amen.

The First Mystery of the Rosary

Today Church allows us to celebrate an “external feast” of the Holy Rosary, which the Church celebrates tomorrow, October 7. Also called “Our Lady of Victory,” this feast commemorates the Battle of Lepanto, but more of that later. The Gospel for this Feast is the First mystery of the Holy Rosary, the Annunciation. This mystery announces and contains all the other 19 mysteries within it, and indeed, stands at the center of our creed, which stands at the center of our Mass.

In center point of the Nicean Creed, which is the center point of the Mass, which is itself the center of our lives, we chant these words: “Et incarnatus est…    de Spiritu Sancto…    ex Maria virgine…     et homo factus est.” Indeed, we kneel at these words, because it marks the moment of humanity’s redemption. God reached down from heaven to touch man, but He first asked this man, who was a woman (Mary), if she would allow him. She said yes, and the Holy Spirit rushed upon her. Eternity stepped into time; the infinite, almighty God becomes a tiny, helpless babe; the floodgates of grace burst open; the Word becomes Flesh. This central article of the Nicene Creed mentions the three persons of the Holy Trinity: “Incarnatus est” points to God the Father, creator of the incarnate, material world; “de Spiritu Sancto” points to the Holy Spirit, by whom the Son is made incarnate, and “et homo factus est” points to the Son, who became man. But there is a fourth person named in the Creed: “ex Maria virgine.”

God is eternally perfect, three in one, needing no one to “complete” or perfect Him. But at the center of the Creed a fourth person, a human being, enters into the Trinity. God “needed” her; that is, He wanted to “need” her. In receiving love from this person, God completes the circle of love, because love cannot always give; it must also receive (as Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est: “Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift”). What kind of friendship or love is one-sided? What love would spouses share if they did not receive acts of love from each other? In receiving Mary’s love, God reveals the inner life of the Trinity, an eternal exchange of giving-receiving-giving.

The Battle of Lepanto

The First Joyful Mystery captures this encounter between God and humanity in the maiden Mary of Nazareth. The rosary is a sacramental reminder of God’s desire to love and be loved by us. It is a powerful defense against the forces of fear and hate. We celebrate Our Lady of the Rosary because of an epic sea battle at Lepanto off the Greek coast 450 years ago. The Ottoman Turks had attacked Cyprus and positioned themselves to strike deep into Christian Europe. The Christian nations assembled an allied navy to defend themselves, but with fewer ships and soldiers, the Christians had little hope of defeating the seemingly invincible Ottoman navy. Pope Pius V ordered all of Europe to pray the rosary on that desperate day, October 7, 1571. He himself went to St. Mary Major in Rome to pray. Back at Lepanto, hundreds of miles away, the morning wind blew from the east, driving the Turkish fleet full into the Christian ships. But as the day wore on, as Europe prayed the rosary, as the Pope prayed in Rome, as the soldiers themselves prayed as they fought, the wind shifted to the west, giving the Christian ships the advantage. It is said that, about that time in Rome, Pope Pius interrupted a meeting with some cardinals: "Let us interrupt this business!” he exclaimed, peering out a window. “Our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given…." And indeed, after 5 hours of engagement, the Christian fleet had overcome the Muslim navy, and Islam was prevented from enslaving Christian Europe.

The Rosary

The rosary works. It draws us into the mystery of God’s inner life, and replaces fearful hatred with loving trust. Sadly, Christian Europe is all but dead, not from Islamic conquest, but from secular atheism. The Muslims who were stopped at Lepanto in 1571 are now taking over Europe by default, for any faith is better than no faith. But we can still pray to Our Blessed Mother, committing ourselves to God’s will, as she did in today’s Gospel: “Let it be done to me as you have said.” Let us pray the rosary as Americans, lest our own nation be overcome by the irrational forces of God’s enemies. Let us pray for Europe, that it may yet gain victory over the dictatorship of relativism. Pray the rosary, in your families, every day. If you think you cannot pray the entire rosary, pray at least a decade, every day. After the Mass, it is the most beautiful, and the most rewarding, means of spending your time.