Greetings! I’m Mary Jo “MJ” McConnell, celebrating my one year anniversary as a choir member. My “art” as an actor/singer had been paused during the pandemic and big move from NYC to San Francisco…I found it here.

In the last weeks, I’ve reintroduced Nana, my Sicilian grandmother, to the parish. She’s the one who lovingly required her entire family to gather around her dinner table the first Sunday of every month for a feast of the best veal cutlets, pizza, eggplant, spaghetti and meatballs, and, on the most special occasions, her cannoli. It was the place (the experience!) where we learned a lot about what it is to be family.

I was attracted by the beauty of St Ignatius choir's singing at the Requiem mass last year, and my sister also sang there, so I asked to join. As I live far from church, I hoped to commit only a week at a time. At the first choir rehearsal, I was impressed by how wonderful people sang and eventually more by their friendship and kindness.

Pipe organs have always played an important part in the musical life at St. Ignatius. The Market Street church contained an instrument built by the Hook Brothers of Boston, a major builder of the 19th century. This organ was moved to the new church on Van Ness Avenue when that church opened in 1880, but was replaced in 1896 with an organ built by Farrand & Votey of Detroit, builders of the organ for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

If you ask Barbara, she will tell you why I joined the choir. She will say I was having a hard time sitting still in the pew with my wriggly fidgety children who were driving me crazy with all their wriggling and fidgeting during mass. She will tell you she pleasantly suggested I join the choir.

Maura Lafferty, music minister at St. Ignatius Parish, has "had the occasion to know musicians associated with major symphonies and professional choral societies on the West Coast, as well as former directors of the music program at St. Ignatius." Why is she a music minister? She quotes a Jesuit who served with St. Ignatius for a few years: “Maggie Warner is a treasure.” Read her piece and bring your talent to church!

It’s been nearly five months since the scaffolding began to rise around our beloved St. Ignatius Church. It’s rather awe-inspiring to think that it’s been 110 years since that last happened! I think that the symmetry and the black protective netting have a beauty unto themselves.

I began my first position as a music director in late summer of 2008. I was not yet Catholic, and could not have dreamed that the community I was serving would take my life and completely redirect it.

The ministry of St. Phoebe is an example to all. She was a deacon of the early Church, sent by St. Paul from Corinth to the Christian community in Rome. We seek her guidance as the Global Synod works to prayerfully consider the roles of women in the Church today.

Many will remember our Home4Dinner Sundays back in late 2019 and early 2020, before they were interrupted by the pandemic. Well, they are coming back! We will have four Home4Dinner events, the first of which is Sunday, October 1. Mark your calendars today.

"On September 3rd, we commemorate the feast of St. Phoebe, deacon and benefactor to the early Church. We celebrate her gifts, her courage and, through her example, the contributions of all women to the Church. We seek Phoebe’s guidance and intercession as, throughout the Synod, we rethink women’s participation in the practices and structures of the Church." Read Worship Commission member Ruth Robinson's new article today.

"The heartbreaking news of sexual abuse claims that have led to the bankruptcy of the San Francisco Archdiocese and news about other claims of abuse that have recently come to light lead me to address our community and speak of how we are responding at St. Ignatius Parish." Read this important Pastoral Letter from Fr. Greg.

"Several weeks after his words dominated a news cycle, Pope Francis’s enthusiastic – and very clear – declaration that the Church is for todos, todos, todos continues to give me joy and hope. I also feel it as an affirmation; it is a message of confirmation and support of our own identity as a faith community, that in fact all are indeed welcome here, especially those who feel themselves standing on the outside or at the periphery." Read Fr. Greg's Pastoral Letter today.

Not far from the banks of the Tiber, in a working class district of Rome called Trastevere, in the Church of Santa Maria, a small but beautiful mosaic of the Assumption of Mary graces the wall beside the altar. In this image, apostles and disciples gather in sorrow at the death bed of the Virgin, while above her, surrounded by angels, Jesus stands and holds his mother in a pose reminiscent of many Madonnas—only now, she seems the child, and he the loving parent.

It was one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen—at a wisp below 80º, certainly an unusual day for the Central California Coast in the middle of February. The light was bright but gentle, without any of the haze or harshness one finds in summer. And the waves, large and wintry, ran deeply into the beach and glistened in the full winter sun.

As you know, St. Ignatius Parish is sponsoring a refugee family of four from Venezuela while they navigate their way through the asylum-seeking process of the U.S. immigration system. Since late January, Daniella and Cesar Lopez, and their daughters Alahia (age 4) and Angelita (age 1), have been living in one bedroom of parishioner Naomi Mayer’s home. They need a place of their own.

All are welcome to journey to find God in all things through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. St. Agnes and St. Ignatius Parishes offer the Exercises through the 19th Annotation, known as “a retreat in daily life.”

Adults (18+) are invited to join our upcoming Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program here at St. Ignatius Parish beginning Sunday, Sept. 10, and extending through May 2024. All participants will receive the sacraments at the Easter Vigil on March 30, 2024.

On July 11, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Benedict, honored as the father of Western monasticism, as his twin sister, St. Scholastica, is honored as the patroness of women’s religious orders. St. Benedict was born around AD 480 in Nursia, Italy, and died around AD 547. The Rule of Saint Benedict was written in the early sixth century. In it, St. Benedict set out guidance for monks living in community.

The Fourth of July, which we celebrate this week, can be a complex holiday for many Christians. Concerned by the violence and anger we see in the media, by the sins and selfishness evident in American history, we can become disheartened, wondering if we have not returned to a time when we must choose between Caesar and Christ. And yet, when the words of the Declaration of Independence are read—for all the failure to realize their ideals—I still find myself moved, and called to a people that would proclaim such a vision for the first time in human history.