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 co ..read more

The Salesforce Tower, tallest in San Francisco. Photo Credit: Mid-Am Metal Forming, Inc. The day before the Thanksgiving…. the City is quiet. Most people in San Francisco have “gone home” for the holiday, while those who are at home in the City of St. Francis are off work because everyone else is off work. I love this city when it is quiet, but “quiet” and “city” are by definition oxymoronic. Cities are places of great activity, and that can be a very g ..read more

Seven years ago my spiritual director suggested I read a chapter of the Bible every morning, and I’ve been doing that. Six months ago, however, I finished the Bible (for the third time!) and began reading other things in the morning. I read a spiritual biography of St. John of the Cross, and a commentary on St. John’s Gospel—all good spiritual reading, but there is nothing to compare with the Good Book itself. So last week I opened the large Bible that I keep open on my mantlep ..read more

 ​Welcome to November, and a blessed feast of All Saints! November is becoming my favorite month because of the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. The older I get, the more clearly I perceive the Life of the World to Come, and the more I long to join the vast numbers who have crossed over the waters of death ahead of me. They now live within a joy we cannot possibly imagine. But, truth to tell, we have “miles to go before we sleep” (Robert Frost, despite his human li ..read more

I wasn’t going to write a blog today, but the sound of hatred assaulted my ears this morning. On the street outside my window a motorcycle rider was blasting rap music that could be heard for three blocks in any direction. I guess he thought we needed to hear this expression of anger (toward whom or for what we know not). All of us hear “rap” music, or other expressions of anger, throughout the day from people’s devices. Anger not only assaults our ears, but our eyes. Her ..read more

Last Sunday at 3pm, as six Blue Angel F18 jets roared above our church towers for San Francisco's Fleet Week, I baptized the sixth Moeck baby, Thomas Leo. In a memorable photograph of that event, reproduced here, you will see God’s glory in a Christian family: six children, each of them fascinating, with Mom and Dad smiling benignly. Grandma, as babysitter-in-chief, looks into the camera but with two hands on the grandchildren and a worried look that one of them might spin out of control ..read more

Men are not too good at remembering anniversaries, which are essentially relationships. Women, naturally relational, are much better at it. Remembering the day of someone’s birth or wedding or death is an act of communion with a person, transcending time and space. Today is the third anniversary of my mother’s death, and the women of the parish began reminding me about a week ago. One arranged a Mass for her today; one reminded me by email yesterday; this morning another w ..read more

Men in Kalighat, 1981. Photo credit: M. Kobayashi, Exile Images ​On the plane to Calcutta last week I read a book on the Concentration Camp of Dachau, and on the plane back I watched a movie on Auschwitz. While in Calcutta, I went to Mother Teresa’s famous Home for Dying Destitutes, “Kalighat” (it was a BBC documentary called Something Beautiful for God, filmed in Kalighat, that gained Mother Teresa worldwide recognition in 1969). Dachau, Auschwitz, and Kalighat all look ..read more

A street dweller prepares a meal in front of her hovel on the sidewalk outside of our residence in Calcutta. Calcutta is sometimes called "The City of Joy," and I wonder why. When Mother Teresa began her work here in 1948 (the year George Orwell wrote his book "1984"), Calcutta had been flooded with refugees from the Indian War of Partition and the Bengali Famine, both consequences of the Second World War. Calcutta, like Port-au-Prince or Beruit today, had suffered an almost total collapse ..read more

The Archbishop of Calcutta, Thomas D'Souza, lights a candle with Sr. Christie at Mother Teresa's tomb after morning Mass today Mother Teresa died 27 years ago today, but as Fr. Thomas and I walked up to Motherhouse in Calcutta this morning for her feast day, we noticed that the hand-painted sign by the front door read "Mother Teresa is ... IN." That's the thing about saints--they never die. They are forevermore "in" after they go to heaven, and much "in" than before. St. Therese of Lisieux (afte ..read more