Public Speaking Rule #2: when there’s an elephant in the room, address it. (Rule #1, of course, is know your audience. But as you might imagine, that’s difficult to do these days.) 

Each morning I make my way to our church; check each shrine to make sure a candle is lit, stopping to pray at one or two of them; find a pew in a section of the church I’ve not sat in for a while; and pray for you, especially those whose faces I usually see in that section.

Since we’ve been sheltering in place, I’ve done a few video messages, but this is the first pastoral letter I’ve written in this time of COVID-19. It feels different somehow, knowing that I won’t see you on Sunday. But it also feels different in a good way.

A number of the parishioners have been meeting to discuss A Pilgrimageto Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith, by Timothy Egan. I had never read any of his books before although I know many regard him as a notable author; I have read his columns for The New York Times. On the suggestion of a parishioner who is discussing the book, I bought it and read it. I could not put it down.

I have been reading and prayerfully reflecting on Veronica Rolf’s book, published by Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2019, 243 pp. It is an extraordinary read with a foreword by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. In the introduction, Rolf reminds us that“Scripture is a love story. It is the saga of God wooing and humanity wavering; God promising and humanity responding; God commanding and humanity disobeying; God being faithful and humanity mostly unfaithful; God forgiving and humanity repenting.”Rolf points to the radical unconditionality of God’s love. She asks us to reclaim an attitude of ardent expectation as a vibrant but often neglected aspect of our faith. The book appears in ten chapters, many of them soaked deeply in excellent biblical analysis but also always pointing to us. The subtitle, “The Story of our Lives in Sacred Scripture” is central to the thrust of the book.

Much as I was delighted at the religious integrity of the film, The Two Popes, I was even more swept away by the religious film about Franz Jagerstatter, A Hidden Life. Terence Malick has equaled in many ways his earlier films Days of Heaven and Tree of Life (the latter won the Palme D’Or in 2011 at Cannes).

I was literally blown away and mesmerized by the movie, The Two Popes, and not only by the two stellar actors. Jonathan Pryce, who plays Jorge Bergoglio and later Pope Francis, is a Welsh actor known for his performances in the movies Patience, Glengary Glenn Ross, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He has been nominated for a Best Actor award for his wonderful and warm performance. The other actor,Sir Anthony Hopkins,plays PopeBenedict and is, of course, famous for his roles in The Lion in Winter, Mutiny on the Bounty(in which he played Captain Bligh), The Silence of the Lambs–for which he won an Academy Award as Best Actor–The Remains of the Day, Shadow Lands, and The Dresser. Hopkins has been nominated for a Best SupportingActor award for his role as Benedict.

My friend of many years, L. Patrick Carroll,sent me a copy of a poem he wrote for Advent. I thought I might use it for my homily for the fourth Sunday of Advent, and maybe I still will, but I tend to want to reflect on the famous and lovely O Antiphons for that Fourth Week of Advent. Here is his Advent Poem, giving us something to reflect on as we pray, hope and love through Advent:

In June 2018, Fr. Ray Allender, S.J., pastor of St. Agnes Parish, and I wrote a joint letter to our two parishes. In that letter, we communicated to you the desire of our Provincial, Fr. Scott Santarosa, S.J., to engage in a process of discernment that answered this question: Given the pending retirement of Fr. Allender as pastor, what pastoral and administrative structures are necessary to maintain two distinct, vibrant Jesuit parishes in San Francisco, with one pastor (intended to be me)?

In my homily last weekend, I introduced parishioners to my Sicilian grandmother, Nana, as we called her. The first Sunday each month, she made sure that her and Grandpa’s entire family was around their dining room table for dinner. She would serve us course after course: spaghetti with her homemade tomato sauce and meatballs, Italian sausage, veal cutlets, eggplant and [too!] much more.

I was in New York from October 28th until November 3rd, a week or so ago. Originally, my main purpose for going there was to visit my first cousin (whom I have known since I was 8), Marion Early who lives in Ridge on Long Island. She turned 90 in August but I told her I did not want to be in New York when it is that hot, so I postponed my visit until October.

Over the course of his pontificate, Pope Francis has in varied ways called on the faithful to be a Church that takes seriously the lived experience of all human beings. Early on he gave us the image of the Church as a field hospital, exhorting us to listen to and bind the wounds of those who are hurt, in any manner of speaking.

In last week’s pastoral letter, I recalled sharing with you at Pentecost one of the traits of my ideal parish – that parishioners feel seen, feel that we feel that we belong to one another in some way. That same day, I introduced our Be Seen books, inviting everyone to share with me and with our community – either anonymously or with your name – the holy desires for our parish faith community given to us that live in our individual hearts.

I was asked to give a talk to the Thomas More Society of Catholic lawyers in San Francisco on sensible and just immigration reform. Our present immigration system is neither just or working. As Tom Jawetz, the VicePresident for Immigration Policy at American Progresstestified at a field hearing on immigration reform: “ Our current immigration system does not work for families who are trying to reunite but face wait times that can last many years or even decades. It does not work for businesses that must meet the needs of American consumers and get workers they need while also honoring workers’ rights. It does not work for intending immigrants—laborers, entrepreneurs and others—who want to play by the rules, earn a goodliving and give their children a brighter future. These are values we celebrate as undergirding the American dream.

At the combined 10:00 a.m. Mass on the Solemnity of Pentecost last June, I shared with you that one feature of my ideal parish is one in which parishioners feel seen – or heard or noticed or known. Choose the verb; you get the idea.

I have carefully read, outlined, took notes on and went back three or four times to Rohr’s latest book. On the book jacket Bono says of The Universal Christ: “ Rohr sees Christ everywhere and not just in people. He reminds us that the first incarnation of God is in Creation itself, and he tells us that ‘ God loves things by becoming them’. Just for that sentence and there are many more, I cannot put this book down.” Rohr asks us for a mystical or experiential knowing of Christ, not just a theoretical or dogmatic one. He asserts that the risen Christ is ubiquitous and eternal. Christ is the name for the transcendent within everything in the universe.

Two weeks ago I preached about St. Ignatius’s invitation to those who follow Jesus to be Contemplatives in Action. That is to say that we are called to share Jesus’ life, to think like him, to hold important in ourselves what he values, and to do what he does.

This picture reminds us of the rich ecology of California. This and the challenge to its ecology was the topic of an important pastoral letter of the California Conference of CatholicBishops released in June and written for the bishops by Brother Keith Douglas Warner OFM. I served as one of the advisors for the letter. Issued on the fourth anniversary of Laudato Si, it is a powerful document to help us think both about the rich ecology of California and its new challenges.

Before Mass starts, those who assist at Mass gather in a circle in the sacristy to pray. I often hear myself wrapping up the prayer by saying “… and may God bind those who gather today into the Body of Christ that we might be his body to all who are in need.”

As I sit to write a few words on Father’s Day, my own father is in surgery for a badly torn rotator cuff sustained in a fall at their home a few weeks ago. As surgeries go, rotator cuff isn’t at all bad. But, Dad is 89. You get the picture—it’s fair to worry.