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Angelus News | July 31-August 7, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 21

The eight deacons being ordained priests Aug. 8 for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles strike a pose in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Starting on Page 10, the men of St. John’s Seminary’s “Pandemic Class of 2020” reflect on where God called them from and what they’re looking forward to the most.

The eight deacons being ordained priests Aug. 8 for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles strike a pose in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Starting on Page 10, the men of St. John’s Seminary’s “Pandemic Class of 2020” reflect on where God called them from and what they’re looking forward to the most.

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ANGELUS<br />

HERE TO HEAL<br />

LA’s new priests prepare to minister<br />

in a pandemic — and beyond<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> <strong>Vol</strong>. 5 <strong>No</strong>. <strong>21</strong>


Contents<br />

Pope Watch 2<br />

Archbishop Gomez 3<br />

World, Nation, and Local <strong>News</strong> 4-7<br />

Scott Hahn on Scripture 8<br />

Father Rolheiser 9<br />

Mission San Buenaventura gets ‘basilica’ added to its name 20<br />

John Allen: Who will heed the Vatican’s advice on parish life? 24<br />

Robert Brennan: A Hollywood lesson on the priesthood 26<br />

Reclaiming the fortune of our literary ‘Hundredfold’ 28<br />

A dispatch from Heather King’s Pasadena bungalow 32<br />

ON THE COVER<br />

The eight deacons being ordained priests Aug. 8 for the Archdiocese<br />

of Los Angeles strike a pose in front of the Cathedral of Our<br />

Lady of the Angels. Starting on Page 10, the men of St. John’s<br />

Seminary’s “Pandemic Class of <strong>2020</strong>” reflect on where God called<br />

them from and what they’re looking forward to the most.<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

IMAGE:<br />

People look out over Dodgers Stadium as the Los Angeles<br />

Dodgers play the San Francisco Giants in an empty stadium on<br />

the opening day of the coronavirus-abbreviated Major League<br />

Baseball season, <strong>July</strong> 23, in Los Angeles. The game was played<br />

without fans in the stadium due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<br />

ROBYN BECK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


ANGELUS<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong><br />

<strong>Vol</strong>. 5 • <strong>No</strong>. <strong>21</strong><br />

3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010-2241<br />

(<strong>21</strong>3) 637-7360 • FAX (<strong>21</strong>3) 637-6360 — Published<br />

by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles<br />

by The Tidings (a corporation), established 1895.<br />

POPE WATCH<br />

Waiting for the weeds<br />

Publisher<br />

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ<br />

Vice Chancellor for Communications<br />

DAVID SCOTT<br />

Editor-in-Chief<br />

PABLO KAY<br />

pkay@angelusnews.com<br />

Multimedia Editor<br />

TAMARA LONG-GARCÍA<br />

Production Artist<br />

DIANNE ROHKOHL<br />

Photo Editor<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

Managing Editor<br />

RICHARD G. BEEMER<br />

Assistant Editor<br />

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ANGELUS is published biweekly<br />

by The Tidings (a corporation),<br />

established 1895. Periodicals postage<br />

paid at Los Angeles, California.<br />

One-year subscriptions (26 issues),<br />

$30.00; single copies, $3.00 ©<br />

<strong>2020</strong> ANGELUS (2473-2699). <strong>No</strong> part of this<br />

publication may be reproduced without the written<br />

permission of the publisher. Events and products<br />

advertised in ANGELUS do not carry the implicit<br />

endorsement of The Tidings Corporation or the<br />

Archdiocese of Los Angeles.<br />

The following is adapted from Pope<br />

Francis’ <strong>July</strong> 19 <strong>Angelus</strong> address delivered<br />

to visitors in St. Peter’s Square from the<br />

window of the Vatican Apostolic Palace.<br />

In the parable of the weeds in today’s<br />

Gospel (Matthew 13:24–43), Jesus<br />

helps us understand God’s patience,<br />

opening our hearts to hope.<br />

Jesus narrates that, in the field in<br />

which good seed was sown, weeds<br />

sprout up as well. The servants then<br />

go to the master to know where the<br />

weeds come from.<br />

He responds: “An enemy has done<br />

this!” Because we sowed good seed!<br />

The servants want to go right away<br />

to pull them up, the weeds that are<br />

growing.<br />

Instead, the master says no, because<br />

that would risk pulling the vegetation<br />

— the weeds — up together with<br />

the wheat. It is necessary to wait for<br />

harvest time: Only then will the weeds<br />

be separated and burned.<br />

A way of looking at history can be<br />

read in this parable. Alongside God,<br />

the master of the field, who only and<br />

always sows good seed, there is an<br />

adversary who sows weeds to impede<br />

the wheat’s growth.<br />

The master acts in the open, in<br />

broad daylight, and his goal is a good<br />

harvest. Instead, the other, the adversary,<br />

takes advantage of the darkness<br />

of night and works out of envy and<br />

hostility to ruin everything.<br />

The adversary has a name: it is the<br />

devil, God’s quintessential opponent.<br />

The devil’s intention is to hinder the<br />

work of salvation, to stonewall the kingdom<br />

of God through wicked workers,<br />

sowers of scandal. In fact, the good<br />

seed and the weeds do not represent<br />

good and bad in the abstract, no; but<br />

we human beings, who can follow<br />

God or the devil.<br />

Destruction always happens by<br />

sowing evil. It is always the devil who<br />

does this or our own temptations:<br />

when we fall into the temptation to<br />

gossip to destroy others.<br />

The servants’ intention is to eliminate<br />

evil immediately, that is,<br />

evil people. But the master is wiser,<br />

he sees farther. They must learn to<br />

wait because enduring persecution<br />

and hostility is part of the Christian<br />

vocation.<br />

Certainly, evil must be rejected, but<br />

those who do evil are people with<br />

whom it is necessary to be patient. If<br />

Jesus came to seek sinners more than<br />

the righteous, to cure the sick first<br />

before the healthy, so must the actions<br />

of his disciples be focused not on<br />

suppressing the wicked, but on saving<br />

them. Patience lies here.<br />

Today’s Gospel presents two ways<br />

of acting and of living history: on the<br />

one hand, the master’s vision who<br />

sees far; on the other, the vision of the<br />

servants who just see the problem.<br />

The Lord invites us to adopt his own<br />

vision, one that is focused on good<br />

wheat, that knows how to protect it<br />

even amid the weeds. Those who are<br />

always hunting for the limitations and<br />

defects of others do not collaborate<br />

well with God, but, rather, those<br />

who know how to recognize the good<br />

that silently grows in the field of the<br />

Church and history, cultivating it<br />

until it becomes mature. <br />

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:<br />

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call (844) 245-6630 (Mon - Fri, 7 am-4 pm PT).<br />

Papal Prayer Intention for <strong>August</strong>: We pray for all those who work and live<br />

from the sea, among them sailors, fishermen, and their families.<br />

2 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


NEW WORLD<br />

OF FAITH<br />

BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ<br />

Missionary disciples in a pandemic<br />

On Aug. 8, I will ordain eight new<br />

priests for the family of God here in<br />

the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.<br />

Every new priest is a sign of God’s<br />

love and his care for his people, and<br />

our new priests will be sent out to serve<br />

in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus<br />

pandemic that continues to disrupt<br />

our families, economy, schools, and<br />

parishes.<br />

These months of the pandemic have<br />

also disrupted the way our priests live<br />

out their vocations and how they minister<br />

to people.<br />

It has been inspiring for me to see<br />

how some of our priests have adapted,<br />

with quiet heroism reaching out to<br />

parishioners through phone calls or<br />

emails, ministering to the sick and<br />

those in need, even offering occasions<br />

for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.<br />

It is hard to see it now, but the<br />

Church will come out of this moment,<br />

as she has survived under persecutions<br />

and plagues and pandemics in the<br />

past. But there is no question that how<br />

we minister in the future — not only<br />

priests, but all of us in the Church —<br />

is going to change.<br />

I have been trying to pray and reflect<br />

on this a lot in these summer days,<br />

thinking not only about the impact on<br />

our institutions and ministries, but also<br />

about people’s needs in our parishes<br />

and society.<br />

We must make sure that our social<br />

distance does not become emotional<br />

distance; we have to stay connected,<br />

caring for one another, listening, sharing<br />

our stories and our hope in Christ.<br />

I have been saying this for many years<br />

now, but it becomes more urgent in<br />

light of this pandemic: Every one of us<br />

in the Church must feel this responsibility<br />

to be a missionary disciple.<br />

The Church has never been about<br />

programs and events. Everything is<br />

about this Person, Jesus Christ, fully<br />

and truly human and fully and truly<br />

divine, who enters into our lives and<br />

calls us to follow him and to become<br />

“a new creation.”<br />

As we navigate the new reality created<br />

by this pandemic, we need to be clear<br />

about means and ends.<br />

Right now, we are all very focused<br />

on “means.” That is understandable.<br />

The world has changed. Just coming<br />

together in person, face-to-face is now<br />

much more complicated. How do we<br />

reach people, how do we gather them<br />

together to teach, to share the faith, to<br />

build fellowship?<br />

These are important questions. We<br />

should be asking these questions in<br />

light of our goal, which is bringing<br />

people to a personal meeting with Jesus<br />

Christ — to see his face, to hear his<br />

voice, to know and feel his loving and<br />

merciful presence in their lives.<br />

That is why we need to think deeply<br />

about how we use digital technology<br />

and “virtual” solutions, which will obviously<br />

play an increasingly important<br />

role in our post-pandemic ministry.<br />

It has been amazing what we have<br />

been able to do in this emergency<br />

time when we are still restricted from<br />

gathering in large numbers — so many<br />

parishes and ministries offering livestreamed<br />

liturgies and events.<br />

Going forward, we need to see that<br />

our websites and social media platforms<br />

are far more than simply ways we<br />

can “push out” messages to our people.<br />

The beauty of these tools is that they<br />

are interactive. So, we need to seek<br />

creative ways to help people express<br />

and share their faith online.<br />

We need to give them the resources<br />

they need to be living witnesses and<br />

missionary disciples on their own<br />

platforms.<br />

Think of the possibilities if we could<br />

help every Catholic in the Archdiocese<br />

of Los Angeles to share one message of<br />

hope every day on their personal social<br />

media platforms.<br />

Imagine 5 million messages of love<br />

and mercy daily on Instagram, Twitter,<br />

and Facebook! We could change the<br />

tone of these channels, which is so<br />

often mean and self-centered, and<br />

we could help people to think about<br />

all the good and beautiful things that<br />

people are doing in the world.<br />

And what if every parish organized<br />

a daily rosary, not from inside church<br />

walls, but with the prayer coming from<br />

parishioners’ homes and being shared<br />

on their own personal social channels.<br />

Again, imagine nearly 300 families<br />

each day, each representing one of our<br />

parishes, flooding these channels with<br />

prayers to Our Lady and reflections on<br />

the mysteries of Christ!<br />

Pray this week for our new priests.<br />

And if you have never attended a<br />

priestly ordination, now is your chance!<br />

We will be livestreaming the ordinations<br />

on Aug. 8. It is a beautiful sacrament,<br />

and a moment to feel the beauty<br />

of the Church and the love of God.<br />

More information is here: lacatholics.<br />

org/ordination.<br />

Pray for me this week, and I will pray<br />

for you. And let us ask our Blessed<br />

Mother Mary to pray for our new<br />

priests, to bring us more vocations to<br />

the priesthood, and to be ever more<br />

near to all of us in these difficult<br />

days. <br />

To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 3


WORLD<br />

AMONG THE LITTLE ONES — Children perform for Pope Francis,<br />

who made a surprise visit to their summer program in the<br />

Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall <strong>July</strong> 20. About 100 children of<br />

Vatican employees were attending the program for the month of<br />

<strong>July</strong>. “The kids were so stunned they stayed completely silent,”<br />

a chaplain for the summer program said. <br />

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/COURTESY PLAY IT<br />

Arson suspected in French cathedral fire<br />

Barely a year after the catastrophic fire of <strong>No</strong>tre Dame,<br />

another French cathedral has suffered a similar fate. But this<br />

time, the blaze was no accident. A church volunteer admitted<br />

to starting three separate fires <strong>July</strong> 18 in the Cathedral of<br />

Sts. Peter and Paul in Nantes.<br />

The unnamed 39-year-old Rwandan refugee, who was an altar<br />

server, was arrested and indicted on <strong>July</strong> 25. He had been<br />

responsible for closing the building on the night of the fire.<br />

Although the fire damaged the Gothic church’s organ and<br />

rose window, the local fire chief stated at a press conference<br />

that the fire was not nearly as harmful as that of <strong>No</strong>tre Dame<br />

last year.<br />

The disaster “plunges the Christians of Loire Atlantique into<br />

a great sadness,” the Diocese of Nantes announced in a statement.<br />

“For them, the cathedral, an architectural masterpiece,<br />

is above all the mother church of the diocese.” <br />

New Vatican guide on<br />

handling abuse scandals<br />

The Vatican has issued a step-by-step guide for bishops and<br />

canon lawyers on how to respond to cases of sexual abuse of<br />

minors by priests.<br />

The document, known as a “vademecum,” was originally<br />

requested at a global summit of bishops from around the<br />

world in February 2019 in response to the clerical abuse crisis.<br />

In about 15 pages divided into nine chapters, it addresses<br />

a variety of “frequently asked questions” on issues like what<br />

constitutes a crime, and how to verify accusations and guidelines<br />

on working with civil authorities.<br />

Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the Vatican’s top doctrinal official,<br />

said that while the document presents no new Church<br />

teaching, it will serve as a tool “to help whoever has to deal<br />

with concrete cases from the beginning to the end.” <br />

Debris caused by the fire inside the Cathedral of Nantes.<br />

STEPHANE MAHE, REUTERS<br />

Polish president thanks Mary for election victory<br />

Andrzej Duda (fourth from left) prays at the<br />

Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa.<br />

JASNAGORANEWS<br />

After winning Poland’s presidential<br />

election, Andrzej Duda knew exactly<br />

where he wanted to be: at the national<br />

Marian shrine.<br />

Duda was elected <strong>July</strong> 13 to a second<br />

presidential term by just 420,000<br />

votes, a narrow margin in a country<br />

of almost 38 million. That same day,<br />

he went to the Shrine of Our Lady of<br />

Czestochowa for the evening prayer.<br />

The venerated painting at the site has<br />

been an icon of national faith and culture<br />

in Poland since the 14th century.<br />

During the ceremony, shrine custodian<br />

Father Waldemar Pastusiak<br />

thanked Duda for his presence and<br />

prayed that the patroness of Poland<br />

would guide him. “On the threshold<br />

of the second term,” said Father Pastusiak,<br />

Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency reported,<br />

“we are giving him into your hands,<br />

Mary, and all the matters of our homeland,<br />

believing that you will always be<br />

present with him.” <br />

4 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


NATION<br />

Gov. John Bel Edwards<br />

Louisiana: A ‘spiritual<br />

diet’ against coronavirus<br />

While state leaders race to build<br />

strategies to combat coronavirus<br />

(COVID-19), Gov. John Bel Edwards<br />

of Louisiana is turning to a different<br />

tactic: prayer.<br />

Edwards, a Catholic who has served<br />

as governor since 2016, called for three<br />

days (<strong>July</strong> 20-22) of prayer and fasting<br />

for those impacted by the COVID-19<br />

pandemic.<br />

“This will be a spiritual diet and<br />

exercise that I, as a Catholic Christian,<br />

believe is very important,” he said at a<br />

<strong>July</strong> 16 press conference.<br />

Edwards encouraged others to join<br />

him in skipping lunch while praying<br />

for the sick, their caregivers, and the<br />

deceased.<br />

Bishop Michael G. Duca of Baton<br />

Rouge praised the governor’s announcement.<br />

“God’s people have<br />

turned to fasting and prayer throughout<br />

their journeys of faith to remind themselves<br />

of their dependence on God,”<br />

he stated in a press release, “to focus<br />

on his grace, and to seek deliverance<br />

during times of great trial and tribulation.”<br />

<br />

MARIE CONSTANTIN<br />

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />

Planned Parenthood owns up to racist roots<br />

It has long been known that Margaret Sanger, founder<br />

of Planned Parenthood, supported eugenics, a philosophy<br />

of genetic hierarchy and selective breeding.<br />

In <strong>July</strong>, the New York arm of the nation’s largest<br />

abortion provider finally decided to acknowledge<br />

those racist roots.<br />

In a <strong>July</strong> <strong>21</strong> press release, Planned Parenthood<br />

of Greater New York (PPGNY) announced<br />

that its Manhattan building, formerly named<br />

for Sanger, will now be called the “Manhattan<br />

Health Center.”<br />

“There is overwhelming evidence for Sanger’s<br />

deep belief in eugenic ideology, which runs<br />

completely counter to our values,” stated Karen<br />

Seltzer, PPGNY’s board chair. The organization<br />

is also working on removing a sign labeling the area<br />

“Margaret Sanger Square.”<br />

The abortion provider has often been accused of targeting lower-income and minority<br />

populations. While PPGNY’s statement professed a commitment to “build<br />

accountable relationships with communities of color,” it did not address these<br />

accusations or mention changes to its abortion practice. <br />

Margaret Sanger<br />

The movie star at the Marian shrine<br />

The shrine at Lourdes, France, draws millions of pilgrims each year, including,<br />

recently, movie star Zac Efron.<br />

In a new Netflix documentary series, “Down to Earth With Zac Efron,” the actor<br />

shifts away from his musical routine to study sustainability and healthy lifestyles<br />

around the world. An episode on water includes a trip to the famous Marian<br />

shrine, where Efron speaks with a physician and a priest.<br />

“This is an incredibly special and holy place,” says Efron in the episode. While<br />

he neither confirms nor denies his belief in the miraculous events at Lourdes, he<br />

acknowledges that “there is no denying the sacred feeling you get just by being<br />

here.”<br />

“Down to Earth With Zac Efron” is currently available for streaming on Netflix. <br />

Zac Efron speaks with a physician and a priest in Lourdes, France, during an episode of "Down to<br />

Earth with Zac Efron."<br />

SCREENSHOT VIA NETFLIX<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 5


0307<strong>2020</strong>_M<br />

LOCAL<br />

California bishops warn<br />

against too much<br />

distance learning<br />

The Catholic bishops of California<br />

are asking Gov. Gavin <strong>News</strong>om to<br />

make it easier for schools to return to<br />

in-person classes this fall.<br />

New school reopening guidelines<br />

announced by <strong>News</strong>om <strong>July</strong> 17<br />

effectively require all schools — public<br />

and private — to begin the <strong>2020</strong>-20<strong>21</strong><br />

school year with distance learning until<br />

coronavirus (COVID-19) infection<br />

rates drop to sufficiently low levels.<br />

But in a <strong>July</strong> 22 statement, the state’s<br />

bishops warned about the consequences<br />

of too stringent conditions on<br />

reopening schools.<br />

“We are deeply concerned about the<br />

broader health and development issues<br />

for our children if the state presumes<br />

to rely only on distance learning until<br />

a vaccine is developed,” the bishops<br />

wrote in a <strong>July</strong> 22 statement.<br />

The bishops asked that <strong>News</strong>om<br />

make it easier for schools to obtain special<br />

waivers from local health authorities<br />

to reopen.<br />

“What our children will lose by<br />

“virtual” education — in terms of<br />

emotional development, skills, and<br />

learning and achievement — will<br />

have a significant impact,” the bishops<br />

wrote. “In the name of protecting their<br />

health in the short term, we may very<br />

likely be risking their long-term growth<br />

and potential.”<br />

The Ventura County seal.<br />

Students at Holy Spirit STEM Academy in Mid-City participate in a science experiment.<br />

LA Catholic STEM schools get big boost<br />

STEM schools in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are getting a helping hand<br />

from one of the country’s largest philanthropic organizations.<br />

Announced <strong>July</strong> 23, the $200,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will<br />

be used to expand STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)<br />

programs in low-income communities, with funding for equipment, curriculum,<br />

and professional development for teachers and STEM leaders.<br />

“This grant propels us to continue to address not only achievement gaps related<br />

to math and science learning, but also opportunity gaps students may experience<br />

in accessing hands-on, rigorous STEM education,” said Leslie De Leonardis,<br />

STEM network director for the Department of Catholic Schools.<br />

The STEM Network currently operates at five schools in the archdiocese, and<br />

thanks to the new grant is set to expand into two additional schools in the 20<strong>21</strong>-<br />

2022 school year. <br />

Can a county erase St. Junípero Serra?<br />

After the city of Ventura voted to remove the statue of St. Junípero Serra in<br />

front of City Hall, Ventura County is considering removing the saint’s image<br />

from its seal.<br />

At a June 23 Board of Supervisors meeting, Ventura County CEO Mike Power<br />

announced a redesign of the seal that since 1964 has displayed an image<br />

of St. Junípero with a mission church in the background on the left side. The<br />

question of whether to exclude the image of St. Junípero will be decided by<br />

the board after opportunities for public input.<br />

Father Tom Elewaut, pastor of the Old Mission Basilica of San Buenaventura,<br />

told Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency that in any redesign, “some representation of<br />

Junípero Serra is critical to the history of the county and its economic prosperity<br />

that we all enjoy today.” <br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

C<br />

O<br />

6 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


Return to CIF sports<br />

delayed again<br />

The California Interscholastic<br />

Federation (CIF) has delayed high<br />

school sports until December,<br />

according to a <strong>July</strong> 20 report.<br />

The revised <strong>2020</strong>-20<strong>21</strong> calendar<br />

calls for some sports to switch seasons<br />

and condenses three seasons<br />

into two.<br />

CIF also cut off season lengths<br />

to 72 days to avoid an overlap for<br />

student-athletes, coaches, and facilities.<br />

Championship competitions<br />

will take place as normal, but state<br />

and regional championships will be<br />

streamlined.<br />

The final sports calendar is subject<br />

to approval at an Aug. 13 meeting,<br />

where it will be considered as an<br />

emergency action item. Currently,<br />

the plan calls for cross-country,<br />

volleyball, water polo, football, field<br />

hockey, and gymnastics to kick off<br />

the new “fall” season at the end of<br />

the year. <br />

Church moves outdoors in California<br />

Churches around the state, including in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, have<br />

been forced to move liturgical services outdoors after new statewide restrictions<br />

on indoor activities aimed at slowing the summer spike in coronavirus (COV-<br />

ID-19) cases were announced <strong>July</strong> 13 by California Gov. Gavin <strong>News</strong>om.<br />

“Outdoor Masses and other liturgical services such as adoration and prayer<br />

services are allowed and encouraged. Parishes may continue to celebrate confessions,<br />

first Communions, confirmations, funerals, and weddings outdoors on the<br />

parish grounds,” read a memo sent to parishes around the archdiocese <strong>July</strong> 13.<br />

Guidelines issued to the parishes stated that “face coverings and social distancing<br />

are required for any services held outdoors.”<br />

The memo sent to parish pastors in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara<br />

counties — all of which are among the 30 California counties included in <strong>News</strong>om’s<br />

order — called the restrictions “discouraging and disappointing,” but also<br />

stressed the importance of public safety.<br />

In addition to<br />

houses of worship,<br />

the <strong>July</strong> 13 restrictions<br />

also ordered<br />

closure of bars,<br />

gyms, hair salons,<br />

malls, zoos, and<br />

museums, as well<br />

as indoor dining.<br />

State officials have<br />

not said when the<br />

restrictions may be<br />

Outdoor Mass at St. John Fisher Church in Rancho Palos Verdes. lifted again. <br />

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7/26/20 3:51 PM


SUNDAY<br />

READINGS<br />

BY SCOTT HAHN<br />

LOCAL<br />

TARGETED<br />

FAITH BASED<br />

Is. 55:1–3 / Ps. 145:8–9, 15–18 / Rom. 8:35, 37–39 / Mt. 14:13–<strong>21</strong><br />

ANGELUS<br />

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by targeting those who<br />

share your faith and values.<br />

Contact Jim Garcia at <strong>21</strong>3.637.7590<br />

or jagarcia@angelusnews.com<br />

“The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,” by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1519–1594, Italian.<br />

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />

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In Jesus and the Church, Isaiah’s<br />

promises in this Sunday’s First Reading<br />

are fulfilled. All who are thirsty come<br />

to the living waters of baptism (see<br />

John 4:14). The hungry delight in rich<br />

fare — given bread to eat and wine to<br />

drink at the eucharistic table.<br />

This is the point, too, of the Gospel<br />

this week. The story of Jesus’ feeding<br />

of the 5,000 brims with allusions to<br />

the Old Testament. Jesus is portrayed<br />

as a David-like shepherd who leads<br />

his flock to lie down on green grass as<br />

he spreads the table of the Messiah’s<br />

banquet before them (see Psalm 23).<br />

Jesus is shown as a new Moses, who<br />

likewise feeds vast crowds in a deserted<br />

place. Finally, Jesus is shown doing<br />

what the prophet Elisha did: satisfying<br />

the hunger of the crowd with a few<br />

loaves and having some left over (see 2<br />

Kings 4:42–44).<br />

Matthew also wants us to see the<br />

feeding of the 5,000 as a sign of the<br />

Eucharist. <strong>No</strong>tice that Jesus performs<br />

the same actions in the same sequence<br />

as at the Last Supper; he takes bread,<br />

says a blessing, breaks it, and gives it<br />

(see Matthew 26:26).<br />

Jesus instructed his apostles to celebrate<br />

the Eucharist in memory of him.<br />

And the ministry of the Twelve is subtly<br />

stressed in this week’s Gospel account.<br />

Before he performs the miracle, Jesus<br />

instructs the Twelve to give the crowd<br />

“some food yourselves.” Indeed, the<br />

apostles themselves distribute the bread<br />

blessed by Jesus (see Matthew 15:36).<br />

And the leftovers are enough to fill<br />

precisely 12 baskets, corresponding to<br />

each of the apostles, the pillars of the<br />

Church (see Galatians 2:9; Revelation<br />

<strong>21</strong>:14).<br />

In the Church, as we sing in this<br />

week’s Psalm, God gives us food in due<br />

season, opens his hands and satisfies<br />

the desires of every living thing. <strong>No</strong>w,<br />

as Paul reminds us in the Epistle,<br />

nothing can separate us from the love<br />

of God in Christ Jesus. <br />

Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.<br />

8 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


IN EXILE<br />

BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI<br />

Sacred permission to feel human<br />

It is normal to feel restless as a child,<br />

lonely as a teenager, and frustrated by<br />

lack of intimacy as an adult; after all,<br />

we live with insatiable desires of every<br />

kind, none of which will ever find full<br />

fulfillment this side of eternity.<br />

Where do these desires come from?<br />

Why are they so insatiable? What is<br />

their meaning?<br />

As a young boy, the Catholic catechisms<br />

I was instructed from and<br />

sermons I heard from the pulpit in<br />

fact answered those questions, but in<br />

a vocabulary far too abstract, theological,<br />

and churchy to do much for me<br />

existentially.<br />

They left me sensing there was an<br />

answer, but not one that was of help to<br />

me. So I quietly suffered the loneliness<br />

and the restlessness. Moreover, I agonized<br />

because I felt that it was unholy<br />

to feel the way I did. My religious<br />

instruction, rich as it was, did not offer<br />

any benevolent smile from God on my<br />

restlessness and dissatisfaction.<br />

Puberty and the conscious stirring of<br />

sexuality made things worse. <strong>No</strong>w not<br />

only was I restless and dissatisfied, but<br />

the raw feelings and fantasies that were<br />

besetting me were considered sinful.<br />

That was my state of mind when I<br />

entered religious life and the seminary<br />

after high school. Of course, the restlessness<br />

continued, but my philosophical<br />

and theological studies gave me<br />

an understanding of what was stirring<br />

inside me and gave me sacred permission<br />

to be OK with that.<br />

It started in my novitiate year with a<br />

talk one day from a priest. We were in<br />

our late teens, and despite our commitment<br />

to religious life we were understandably<br />

restless, lonely, and fraught<br />

with sexual tension.<br />

Our visitor began his conference<br />

with a question: “Are you guys a little<br />

restless? Feeling a bit cooped up here?”<br />

We nodded. He went on: “Well you<br />

should be! You must be jumping out<br />

of your skins! All that young energy<br />

boiling inside you! You must be going<br />

crazy! But it’s OK, that’s what you<br />

should be feeling if you’re healthy! It’s<br />

normal, it’s good. You’re young; this<br />

gets better!”<br />

Hearing this freed up something<br />

inside me. For the first time, in a<br />

language that genuinely spoke to me,<br />

someone had given me sacred permission<br />

to be at home inside my own skin.<br />

My studies in literature, theology, and<br />

spirituality continued to give me that<br />

permission, even as they helped me<br />

form a vision as to why these feelings<br />

were inside me, how they took their<br />

origins and meaning in God, and how<br />

they were far from impure and unholy.<br />

Looking back on my studies, a<br />

number of salient persons stand out in<br />

helping me understand the wildness,<br />

insatiability, meaning, and ultimate<br />

goodness of human desire. The first<br />

was St. <strong>August</strong>ine. The quote with<br />

which he begins his “Confessions”:<br />

“You have made us for yourself, Lord,<br />

and our hearts are restless until they<br />

rest in you,” has forever served me as<br />

the key to tie everything else together.<br />

With that as my secret for synthesis, I<br />

met this axiom in St. Thomas Aquinas:<br />

“The adequate object of the intellect<br />

and will is all being as such.” That<br />

might sound abstract, but even as a<br />

20-year-old, I grasped its meaning: In<br />

brief, what would you need to experience<br />

to finally say, “Enough, I am satisfied?”<br />

Aquinas’ answer: “Everything!”<br />

Later in my studies I read Karl<br />

Rahner. Like St. Aquinas, he, too, can<br />

seem hopelessly abstract when, for<br />

instance, he defines the human person<br />

as “Obediential potency living inside a<br />

supernatural existential.” Really? Well,<br />

what he means by that can be translated<br />

into a single counsel he once<br />

offered a friend: “In the torment of the<br />

insufficiency of everything attainable<br />

we ultimately learn that here, in this<br />

life, there is no finished symphony.”<br />

Finally, in my studies, I met the<br />

person and thought of Father Henri<br />

<strong>No</strong>uwen. He continued to teach me<br />

what it means to live without ever<br />

getting to enjoy the finished symphony,<br />

and he articulated this with a unique<br />

genius and in a fresh vocabulary.<br />

Reading Father <strong>No</strong>uwen is like being<br />

introduced to yourself, while still<br />

standing inside all your shadows. He<br />

also helps give you the sense that it is<br />

normal, healthy, and not impure or<br />

unholy to feel all those wild stirrings<br />

with their concomitant temptations<br />

inside yourself.<br />

Each of us is a bundle of much<br />

untamed eros, of wild desire, longing,<br />

restlessness, loneliness, dissatisfaction,<br />

sexuality, and insatiability. We need<br />

to be given sacred permission to know<br />

this is normal and good because it<br />

is what we all feel, unless we are in<br />

a clinical depression or have for so<br />

long repressed these feelings that now<br />

they are expressed only negatively in<br />

destructive ways.<br />

We all need to have someone to come<br />

visit us inside our particular “novitiate,”<br />

ask us if we are painfully restless, and<br />

when we nod our heads, say: “Good!<br />

You’re supposed to feel like that! It<br />

means you’re healthy! Know too that<br />

God is smiling on this!” <br />

Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology<br />

in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 9


A moment worth<br />

waiting for<br />

Ordination plans for LA’s<br />

eight newest priests may<br />

have changed, but their<br />

mission has not<br />

BY STEVE LOWERY AND<br />

PABLO KAY / ANGELUS<br />

Preparation for the priesthood typically<br />

involves a long, slow process:<br />

the several years of discernment<br />

come with rites, retreats, parish work,<br />

and years of study.<br />

For the eight deacons being ordained<br />

priests this summer for the Archdiocese<br />

of Los Angeles, the process involved<br />

another important yet unforeseen step:<br />

a global pandemic that changed all<br />

their plans, including their ordination<br />

date, which was pushed from May 30<br />

to Aug. 8.<br />

The “Pandemic Class of <strong>2020</strong>” – as<br />

they like to call themselves – were<br />

forced in March to quarantine at St.<br />

John’s Seminary until finally being<br />

able to return to their diaconate parish<br />

10 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong><br />

assignments as churches began to<br />

reopen to the public in the late spring.<br />

In the meantime, the deacons did<br />

more reading, praying, and reflecting on<br />

God’s call in their lives than they had<br />

planned to – time that they all agree<br />

was providential in preparing them to<br />

become priests. Here are their stories. <br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN


Thomas Park<br />

Age: 58<br />

Hometown: Seoul, South Korea<br />

Home parish: St. Joan of Arc Church, West LA<br />

First parish assignment: St. John Fisher Church in<br />

Rancho Palos Verdes<br />

“The one thing for sure is that there’s<br />

always a hope and the hope is found in<br />

Jesus Christ.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

Though he was ready to give up his previous life, Park still<br />

had the mind of an engineer, and he quickly crunched the<br />

numbers and decided on an outcome.<br />

“Because of my age, I thought becoming a priest was not<br />

possible,” he said. “So, I thought about becoming a deacon.”<br />

But, during a Divine Mercy pilgrimage to Europe in 2008,<br />

he had a chance conversation with the tour’s host, a priest<br />

who told Park, much to his amazement, that he, too, had<br />

been called later in life, taking his final vows in his mid-50s.<br />

Thomas Park is now 58—“soon to be 59”—but listening<br />

to him talk about his first assignment, the energy and<br />

excitement is obvious. While youth has its place, so do the<br />

experiences of a lifetime, experiences he believes can help<br />

parishioners deal with the “trials and dark times we’re going<br />

through.”<br />

Asked what his message will be to his new congregation<br />

outside of “just looking forward to meeting with you all,” he<br />

makes clear he’s much more inclined to listen.<br />

“I’m excited. I’m just in the moment, living all for God and<br />

letting him surprise me,” he said. “I’m looking forward to<br />

meeting the parishioners and pastor and working together.”<br />

Still, if his journey has taught him anything he would like<br />

to share with others, whether they lead families or may be<br />

considering leading flocks, it is to always maintain a patient<br />

heart. Oh, and one other key element.<br />

“Don’t give up hope,” he said. “We’re going through a lot of<br />

challenges and trials at the moment. The one thing for sure<br />

is that there’s always a hope and the hope is found in Jesus<br />

Christ.<br />

“There is always something to learn, you may not know it<br />

right now, but after perhaps a few years later, perhaps 10 or<br />

20 years later, like me, God will reveal that answer to you.” <br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

In these times of exceptional uncertainty, parishioners<br />

of St. John Fisher Church in Rancho Palos Verdes will<br />

likely count their blessings they’re being ministered to by<br />

Thomas Park, a man who knows firsthand how quickly life<br />

can turn, no matter your plans, no matter your age.<br />

From the time he and his family emigrated from South<br />

Korea to the U.S. when he was 10, Park knew he would be an<br />

engineer. He dreamed about it, worked toward it. Yes, there<br />

was that gnawing feeling he’d get about the priesthood, but,<br />

“I didn’t really seriously think about it because my desire, my<br />

dream was to be an engineer.”<br />

By the time he reached his mid-40s, he assumed any<br />

thought of the priesthood was pointless. But, in 2007, it was<br />

nonetheless rekindled while reading “Divine Mercy in My<br />

Soul: The Diary of Sister Faustina Kowalska.”<br />

“I read that and that just changed my life,” he said. “I just<br />

totally wanted to give myself after that. I was content with my<br />

life and all, but still I was ready to give that up and serve the<br />

Lord.”<br />

Thomas Park in the late 1980s, "relaxing at home listening to<br />

music after a busy day at work."<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 11<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO


Filiberto Cortez<br />

Age: 43<br />

Hometown: Puebla, Mexico<br />

Home parish: St. Dominic Savio Church, Bellflower<br />

First parish assignment: Our Lady of Lourdes<br />

Church, <strong>No</strong>rthridge<br />

“I’m called for ... the salvation of souls.<br />

There’s no greater joy than to see a soul<br />

restored in Christ.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

“Why do I still feel something is missing?” Cortez asked<br />

himself. “I could not figure it out.”<br />

One day, his existential crisis brought him to shed his first<br />

tears in years. It was then, he said, that he had an interior<br />

experience of God’s forgiveness.<br />

For Cortez, the healing process was long and slow. The<br />

difficulty of overcoming his old habits pushed him to go back<br />

to church for help.<br />

Cortez’s older brother, a religious brother, encouraged him<br />

to frequent the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist as<br />

much as possible.<br />

“Fili, when you fall, just get up,” he would tell him during<br />

visits.<br />

One of the things that took Cortez time was coming to<br />

terms with the pain his sins had caused other people in the<br />

past.<br />

“I knew the Lord forgave me, but how do I forgive myself?”<br />

Eventually, Cortez said, he received a grace that helped him<br />

with that, too. He also recalled an emotional reconciliation<br />

with his father, with whom he’d had a difficult relationship<br />

growing up, as a turning point.<br />

But the person Cortez is most grateful to is his mother, who,<br />

when her son was suffering the most, would pay all-night<br />

visits to the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of the night at a<br />

nearby parish that offered nocturnal adoration.<br />

“She was always the pillar, praying for me,” he said.<br />

From there, things began to “fall into place” and Cortez<br />

began to realize that his conversion experience was a sign of<br />

a greater plan. He left his job as a health teacher at a charter<br />

high school in South LA to discern with the Salesians of Don<br />

Bosco for three years before entering St. John’s Seminary.<br />

When asked about his vocation, he said it can be summed<br />

up in one word: gratitude.<br />

“There’s one thing that I’m called for, and that is for the<br />

salvation of souls,” said Cortez. “There’s no greater joy than<br />

to see a soul restored in Christ.” <br />

If the Catholic Church is a “field hospital,” as Pope Francis<br />

says it should be, parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes<br />

Church in <strong>No</strong>rthridge are getting a priest who has been to<br />

its intensive care unit.<br />

Filiberto Cortez was born in Puebla, Mexico, but moved<br />

with his family to the Downey area when he was 11. The<br />

“culture shock” of life in a new country made the adjustment<br />

a difficult one, and Cortez eventually drifted from his family’s<br />

traditional Catholic faith while trying to keep up the image of<br />

being a “tough guy.”<br />

“I felt like God was punishing me, like he had something<br />

against me because growing up was so difficult as a child,” he<br />

said.<br />

The next several years were spent looking everywhere he<br />

could for satisfaction and meaning: relationships, partying,<br />

overseas backpacking trips, off-road adventures in his Jeep<br />

Wrangler, and even existentialist philosophy.<br />

That search, and the lifestyle that came with it, led Cortez<br />

to a place he called “rock bottom.”<br />

Filiberto Cortez on a backpacking trip to Machu Picchu, Peru,<br />

in 2011.<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO<br />

12 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


Michael Mesa<br />

Age: <strong>31</strong><br />

Hometown: Pomona/Diamond Bar<br />

Home parish: St. Denis Church, Diamond Bar<br />

First parish assignment: Holy Family Church,<br />

Glendale<br />

“Doctors have crazy hours. I think that<br />

kind of prepared me for the sacrifice<br />

involved in the life of a priest.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

what does that mean for my life?<br />

“I think that initial call to find God through my intellect<br />

kind of led me to then look at the faith that was right in front<br />

of me.”<br />

Fittingly, his search led him to a book, well, the book. He<br />

began reading the Bible, from cover to cover, on Jan. 1, 2011.<br />

From the beginning, from the first pages of Genesis, he said,<br />

“The word of God stirred up something in my heart. There<br />

was this truth and beauty reflected in all these questions I<br />

had been thinking about and it kind of started me on this<br />

journey.”<br />

Around the same time, he was led back to his home parish<br />

of St. Denis Church in Diamond Bar, where he was given a<br />

book on rediscovering one’s Catholicism. He read it, loved it,<br />

and soon found himself back at Mass, fully awake.<br />

“I noticed in the Mass that there was this joy, this hope that<br />

was, you know, in everyone,” he said.<br />

And it’s that hope and joy he hopes to bring to his new<br />

parish, Holy Family Church in Glendale. He said he is<br />

“honored and humbled” to be going to a parish in possession<br />

of more than 100 years of history, a stunning church and a<br />

personal connection to St. Frances Cabrini. He believes the<br />

journey that delivered him to Glendale prepared him well.<br />

“Doctors have crazy hours. I think that kind of prepared me<br />

for the sacrifice involved in the life of a priest,” he said. “I<br />

didn’t really feel it was a sacrifice, just the next step in following<br />

God; kind of an adventure.”<br />

It’s an adventure he’s eager to share with others, even in<br />

these historically uncertain times, even when some may<br />

question God’s role in their lives or God’s very existence.<br />

He believes he can offer some comfort and perhaps a few<br />

answers.<br />

After all, he’s done the research. <br />

Michael Mesa grew up in the Pomona/Diamond Bar<br />

area and was raised Catholic, but admittedly was<br />

the kind of Catholic who sort of took his faith for<br />

granted; the kind who attended Mass every Sunday but did so<br />

half asleep.<br />

“We went to the 7:30 a.m. Mass,” he said. “So, I didn’t really<br />

pay attention that much.”<br />

Most of his energy was focused on becoming a doctor, a<br />

focus that landed him at USC where he majored in biology.<br />

It was after graduation, while working in a research lab at<br />

USC, that his life changed as he, in his words, “came to God<br />

through science.”<br />

Employing his training in biology, he began to ponder life’s<br />

big questions: What is consciousness and what is the purpose<br />

of life? Yeah. Big.<br />

“You start to get into the physics of what the universe is<br />

made out of and then eventually you hit philosophy where,<br />

you know, I had to decide does God exist or not,” he said.<br />

“And I kind of reached the conclusion, OK, he does exist, so<br />

Michael Mesa<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 13


Manuel Ramos<br />

Age: 47<br />

Hometown: San Pedro<br />

Home parish: Holy Trinity Church, San Pedro<br />

First parish assignment: St. Joseph Church,<br />

Carpinteria<br />

“Jesus Christ is here to heal and to<br />

offer salvation and that’s something<br />

I want to echo.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

film. As for the call that still came to him from time to time?<br />

“Unfortunately, I kept running from my vocation.”<br />

That is until 2000, when Father Edward Benioff at Holy<br />

Trinity encouraged him to take a more active role in his<br />

faith, and it was then that he discovered a joy in ministry.<br />

Before too long, he was a member of multiple ministries. The<br />

satisfaction of not just thinking about his faith but performing<br />

it “is what fueled my vocation,” he said.<br />

In 2009, during a drive to Tijuana, Mexico, to visit his<br />

grandmother, he heard “a distinct voice coming from deep<br />

inside of me saying, ‘It’s time.’ ”<br />

This time, he listened and soon entered the seminary.<br />

He found a welcoming community willing to offer whatever<br />

he needed, a shoulder to lean on, an ear to listen to help him<br />

break through all that had been holding him back.<br />

“The truth is we’re all human beings with flaws, with broken<br />

natures, and the task is to understand yourself, understand<br />

your triggers, understand the flaws that you have,” he said.<br />

“They were definitely there for me, you know, to help me to<br />

get up when I had fallen down. These seven years there were<br />

struggles, there were difficulties, there were health concerns<br />

that I had to go through, but it wasn’t a path that I was walking<br />

alone.”<br />

His fellow seminarians’ kindness further confirmed to him<br />

that real faith must be acted upon and provided to whoever<br />

needs it, which, let’s face it, is everyone. He says he’ll emphasize<br />

this message of an active faith at his new parish, St.<br />

Joseph Church in Carpinteria.<br />

“I think that’s the crux, getting involved, getting active,<br />

becoming a part of the parish and not just sitting passively<br />

waiting for the spirit to come to [you],” he said. “Jesus Christ<br />

is here to heal and to offer salvation and that’s something I<br />

want to echo. I want that to resonate from my ministry.” <br />

Manuel Ramos admitted to being a “little naive” when<br />

first entering the seminary, believing that those<br />

he would be sharing this journey with came to it<br />

armed with the innocence and certainty of “a community of<br />

altar servers.”<br />

It was therefore somewhat of a relief for him to discover that<br />

his colleagues were far from any of that, that “the men that I<br />

was surrounded with were great men, but they experienced<br />

doubts, they experienced struggles and pressures, nonetheless.”<br />

If Ramos didn’t have doubts growing up, he certainly could<br />

overwhelm himself with conflicting thoughts. Raised in San<br />

Pedro, a member of Holy Trinity Church, he said it was there<br />

that he first heard the call to a vocation, but “like many men,<br />

you have dreams of having a family, of having work, and so I<br />

went the other way.”<br />

That other way led him to Bishop Montgomery High<br />

School and then UC Irvine, where he first majored in premed<br />

only to do a complete 180 and change his emphasis to<br />

Manuel Ramos on his diaconate ordination day with Bishop<br />

Alex Aclan.<br />

FACEBOOK VIA ST. JOHN'S SEMINARY<br />

14 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


Daniel Garcia<br />

Age: 45<br />

Hometown: Los Angeles<br />

Home parish: St. Paul Church, Los Angeles<br />

Parish assignment: Our Lady of Perpetual Help<br />

Church, Downey<br />

“We need to be in silence so that God<br />

can speak to us in that silence. God will<br />

if you open your heart.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

“This figure was smiling at me and said, ‘Come to me,<br />

everything’s going to be OK,’ ” he said. “When I woke up,<br />

I was filled with grace, I was filled with this feeling of love.<br />

And that was the sign for me that I had been asking for. And<br />

I knew in my heart that God was calling me to something<br />

greater.”<br />

That the sign came while he slept doesn’t surprise Garcia at<br />

all. The world is full of distractions, he said, distractions that<br />

make it hard to focus on God’s plan. Entering the seminary<br />

provided him with a necessary state of quiet, one that allowed<br />

him to separate himself from the daily stresses of life.<br />

If it sounds as if he viewed the seminary as a retreat, far<br />

from it. He said he saw the seminary as a “hospital for the<br />

soul,” one where men could be broken down and then<br />

“molded again with the help of the Holy Spirit in how God<br />

wants us to be molded because we’re going to be working for<br />

him and with him.”<br />

Part of being broken down was learning that it was not<br />

“about me anymore,” that<br />

it was only when he surrendered<br />

that he could see<br />

what others had for years.<br />

He said it’s important for<br />

anyone, whether considering<br />

the seminary or simply<br />

attempting to live God’s<br />

plan, to quiet down and be<br />

patient.<br />

“Just listen to God, you<br />

Daniel Garcia at his first<br />

holy Communion at St. Paul<br />

Church, Los Angeles, in 1981.<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO<br />

know, most of the time we<br />

love talking,” he said. “We<br />

need to be in silence so<br />

that God can speak to us<br />

in that silence. God will if<br />

you open your heart. God<br />

will place the answer for<br />

you.” <br />

That Daniel Garcia is becoming a priest — soon to call<br />

Downey’s Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church his<br />

home parish — is really no surprise to anyone who’s<br />

known him. As early as sixth grade at St. Paul Elementary<br />

School, people saw that he was called to something, one<br />

teacher telling him, “Danny, I see Jesus in you.”<br />

But sometimes those who are called are the last to realize it.<br />

Looking back, Garcia said he can clearly see the signs of him<br />

being drawn to service, whether as an altar server assisting at<br />

weddings and funerals, working in a rectory, or acting as a<br />

lector during Mass.<br />

Still, he had a hard time seeing what others did, wondering<br />

how anyone “could see Jesus in me.”<br />

While he did get involved in Catholic ministry, it was in<br />

education, first as a teacher then vice principal, and finally<br />

as principal at St. Malachy School in Los Angeles. But<br />

despite what he had accomplished, despite all he had served,<br />

he still felt himself wanting and prayed for a sign. It arrived<br />

while he slept.<br />

Daniel Garcia with his family at his diaconate ordination at<br />

the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 15


Justin Oh<br />

Age: <strong>31</strong><br />

Hometown: Cerritos<br />

Home parish: St. Raphael Korean Catholic Center,<br />

<strong>No</strong>rwalk<br />

Parish assignment: St. Gertrude Church, Bell Gardens<br />

“Of course, my first reaction was, ‘<strong>No</strong> way,’ actually with<br />

some inappropriate words,” Oh said. “I said ‘<strong>No</strong>, God. I think<br />

you and [the] Blessed Mother, I think you’re just tripping.”<br />

He still attended daily Mass and remained involved in youth<br />

ministry, but would not listen to God’s call. This lasted for<br />

five years, years he admitted, he knew, “deep down inside,”<br />

he wasn’t living the life that was meant for him, the life he<br />

encouraged others to pursue.<br />

“I would work with a lot of kids and talk to them about<br />

God’s love or God’s will for us and the purpose of our lives,<br />

and I would always encourage them to stay open to the will<br />

of God because he’s the one who made us and who probably<br />

knows best,” he said.<br />

“And yet [in my life] I was saying, ‘Well, God, that’s great<br />

that you’re calling me to this, but I think I know what’s best<br />

for me,’ placing my own will above the will of the Lord.”<br />

But, as we know, when it comes to life’s journey, the Lord<br />

can be as relentless as the person in the passenger seat telling<br />

the driver they really need to pull over and ask for directions.<br />

For Oh, the map was laid out by a priest who helped him<br />

discern, and turn that no into a yes.<br />

Today, he can’t wait to get started.<br />

“The role of the priest is to help sanctify the people, to help<br />

them grow in holiness and sanctify the world,” he said. “I<br />

want to be a bridge to holiness and help them grow in their<br />

relationship with Christ. I’m most excited for that, to really<br />

journey with these people. I look forward to going there.” <br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

“The role of the priest is to help<br />

sanctify the people, to help them<br />

grow in holiness.”<br />

While Justin Oh, like so many other new priests,<br />

looks forward to celebrating Mass, offering the<br />

sacrament of reconciliation and the other daily<br />

duties of a priest, what really excites him is the “journey” he<br />

will take with his parishioners.<br />

“I look forward to when I’m doing the baptism for a couple<br />

and it’s a couple that I married,” he said. “You know, and I’m<br />

there for their kid’s first Communion and I accompany them<br />

on this journey, the whole process.”<br />

Although Oh sees his own journey to the priesthood as<br />

“rather ordinary,” nothing “dramatic, like St. Paul,” it has had<br />

its share of unexpected turns, delays and, yes, drama.<br />

Born to South Korean immigrants, raised in Cerritos, Oh’s<br />

Catholic life was typical, if a bit delayed: baptized at the age<br />

of 5, first Communion while in high school, confirmation<br />

while in college. It was during college that he heard God’s<br />

call to become a priest, a call he heard “clear as day” the day<br />

after completing a 54-day novena.<br />

At first, it was a call he rejected completely.<br />

Justin Oh (right) golfing with Father Brian and Father Daniel.<br />

SUBMITTED PHOTO<br />

16 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


Louie Reyes<br />

Age: 35<br />

Hometown: Salinas<br />

Home parish: St. Mark’s UCSB Newman Center,<br />

Goleta<br />

Parish assignment: St. Phillip Neri Church, Lynwood<br />

“Priests can actually be joyful. They can<br />

actually laugh and be serious at the same<br />

time and really down to earth.”<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

“He took me under his wing,” he said. “I was like ‘Wow!’<br />

Priests can actually be joyful. They can actually laugh and be<br />

serious at the same time and really down to earth. I was like,<br />

OK, this is a different side of the priesthood.”<br />

Suddenly, the call that others had seen in him and that Reyes<br />

had contemplated as a younger man, became the driving<br />

force in his life.<br />

He joined a faith-sharing group called Catholic Isla Vista<br />

(Catholic IV) and started attending daily Mass. The pull in<br />

him became so strong that even when Father Ellis retired a<br />

few years later, he connected with his replacement, Father<br />

John Love, a man who, he said, “just really exuded what the<br />

priesthood is supposed to look like.”<br />

<strong>No</strong>w that it is time for him to go out in the world as a priest<br />

himself, he wants to make sure that he can affect as many<br />

people as possible. Because of that Reyes, already fluent in<br />

Tagalog and English, has continued to study Spanish since<br />

his first parish assignment, St. Philip Neri Church in Lynwood,<br />

is overwhelmingly Latino.<br />

“I ask that they continue to pray for me as I continue to<br />

learn,” he said. “They are going to have to be patient because<br />

my Spanish is going to need a lot of work. I know they’re<br />

going to help me with that.”<br />

Though he may sound apprehensive about this third language,<br />

his voice belies someone who can’t wait to go on with<br />

his vocation, knowing full well that one person, one smile,<br />

one wing to find refuge and strength under, can mean all the<br />

difference in one person’s life.<br />

“[We’re] trying to bring life into this culture,” he said. “I<br />

don’t think you can find it anywhere else and I know it<br />

doesn’t stay in the seminary, it can’t stay in the seminary. It<br />

has to go out into the world, into the parishes that we’re going<br />

to.” <br />

There’s no need to tell Louie Reyes that one person, one<br />

priest, can change the course of someone’s life. He<br />

knows that. He’s lived it.<br />

It happened while Reyes was attending UC Santa Barbara,<br />

a university well-known, as he said, as “a party school.” And<br />

Reyes admitted he took part in what might be described as a<br />

somewhat <strong>August</strong>inian existence.<br />

“I just got sucked into that culture of party and craziness,”<br />

he said.<br />

Reyes was still going to Mass at the university parish, St.<br />

Mark’s, but he did that more out of habit.<br />

Born in Manila, Philippines, and brought to the United<br />

States by his parents at age 7, he grew up in Salinas and<br />

attended Mass every Sunday, but his spiritual life never really<br />

extended beyond the end of the weekend.<br />

“I was never part of a youth group; faith was just kind of<br />

something on the side for me.”<br />

But it was at St. Mark’s that he met Father Tomas Ellis, who<br />

made an immediate impression on him.<br />

Louie Reyes with Archbishop José H. Gomez at the opening<br />

Mass of the academic year at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo<br />

on Sept. 19, 2019.<br />

ADLA VOCATIONS OFFICE<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 17


0205<strong>2020</strong>_C<br />

Jonathan Nestico<br />

Age: <strong>31</strong><br />

Hometown: Santa Clarita<br />

Home parish: St. Clare of Assisi Church, Canyon Country<br />

Parish assignment: St. Charles Borromeo Church,<br />

<strong>No</strong>rth Hollywood<br />

about that.”<br />

Talk to Nestico about his upbringing and it becomes clear<br />

that he was meant for the path he’s chosen. For as long as<br />

he can remember, he has been helping around the parish,<br />

whether as an altar server, usher, or singing in the choir.<br />

“My life really did revolve around the Church and Church<br />

ministry, even in high school, when a lot of people fall away<br />

and question their faith.”<br />

Interestingly enough, the people Nestico is referring to<br />

include himself. He admitted that at certain moments he<br />

definitely found himself “questioning” aspects of his spiritual<br />

life. But rather than panic or fall away, he decided to take<br />

matters into his own hands or, rather, heart and mind.<br />

“I was doing my own research, not just taking the word of<br />

my parents or religion teachers,” he said. “Really doing my<br />

own thing, too.”<br />

That thing included thoughts of a life outside of the priesthood,<br />

of a businessman’s suit as well as marriage and a family.<br />

That changed when he found himself watching a video<br />

of seminarians talking about what convinced them to heed<br />

God’s call. One of the men said he heard God telling him,<br />

“If you don’t do it, who will?”<br />

Nestico knew he would, knew he must.<br />

“I had to do it,” he said. “God really knew how to play me.<br />

It was like, you’ve given your life to the Church and you can<br />

keep doing it. And you’ll do amazing things.” <br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

“It was like, you’ve given your life to the<br />

Church and you can keep doing it. And<br />

you’ll do amazing things.”<br />

Though Jonathan Nestico was too young to remember, it is<br />

well-known within his family that when he was born, <strong>31</strong> years<br />

ago, his grandmother Monique soon after took him to St.<br />

<strong>August</strong>ine Church in Culver City, where she was the director<br />

of religious education, walking with the infant in her arms,<br />

presenting him to her workmates as she repeated, “This is my<br />

grandson. He’s going to do amazing things.”<br />

That amazing time appears to have arrived. Nestico’s first<br />

parish assignment as a priest will be St. Charles Borromeo<br />

Church in <strong>No</strong>rth Hollywood, a diverse faith community<br />

with a rich history, especially when it comes to assisting those<br />

experiencing homelessness.<br />

As eager as Nestico is to celebrate the sacraments, he is also<br />

especially eager to minister to the homeless and the marginalized.<br />

“Growing up in Santa Clarita, we were kind of in this<br />

bubble,” he said. “I was always very adamant about trying to<br />

reach out to the marginalized and the homeless. The people<br />

of St. Charles do so much outreach that I’m really excited<br />

Jonathan Nestico processes in for the acolyte class of 2017<br />

Mass at St. John's Seminary.<br />

FACEBOOK VIA ST. JOHN'S SEMINARY<br />

Pleas<br />

the do<br />

and<br />

in an<br />

Cardin<br />

Fund<br />

Arc<br />

of Lo<br />

3424 W<br />

Los A<br />

900<br />

18 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong><br />

Fo


Cardinal McIntyre Fund for Charity<br />

Since 1951, to help those in crisis situations throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,<br />

your contribution has been going directly toward emergency needs for children, adults and families.<br />

Your gift provides a one-time emergency help for food, utilities, medical, housing, and funeral expenses.<br />

<strong>No</strong>w more than ever your support is greatly needed and appreciated.<br />

Thank you!<br />

Please complete<br />

the donation form<br />

and forward it<br />

in an envelope to:<br />

Cardinal McIntyre<br />

Fund for Charity<br />

Archdiocese<br />

of Los Angeles<br />

3424 Wlshire Blvd.<br />

Los Angeles, CA<br />

90010-2241<br />

My Gift (Mi Contribución) $10 $20 $100 $500 $1000 Other<br />

Name (<strong>No</strong>mbre)<br />

Address (Dirección)<br />

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Make Check Payable to (Haga su cheque a nombre de): Cardinal McIntyre Fund for Charity<br />

Please charge my card (Por favor, cárgelo a mi tarjeta): Visa Mastercard American Express<br />

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<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 19<br />

For more information please call (<strong>21</strong>3) 637-7438, or write to 3424 Wishire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010-2202<br />

0205<strong>2020</strong>_CardMcIntyreFund_<strong>Angelus</strong>_1-2pg.indd 1<br />

5/2/20 11:<strong>21</strong> AM


San Buenaventura’s<br />

papal upgrade<br />

In a surprise announcement, the Vatican<br />

designated the last mission founded by<br />

St. Junípero Serra a minor basilica<br />

BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS<br />

Mission Basilica San Buenaventura<br />

in Ventura.<br />

COLTON MACHADO/ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES<br />

20 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


COLTON MACHADO/ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES<br />

When Father Tom Elewaut<br />

saw the name on his phone’s<br />

caller ID the night of<br />

June 30, the pastor of Mission San<br />

Buenaventura guessed the call had<br />

something to do with the recent controversy<br />

over whether to remove the<br />

statue of St. Junípero Serra in front of<br />

Ventura’s City Hall.<br />

He guessed wrong.<br />

“I’ve got some good news,”<br />

said Archbishop José H. Gomez<br />

on the other end of the line.<br />

“You’re a minor basilica.”<br />

Father Elewaut’s voice started<br />

to crack with emotion. He’d<br />

spent the last six years researching,<br />

praying, and waiting for<br />

Pope Francis to decide whether<br />

to elevate his 238-year-old parish<br />

to the rank of “minor basilica.”<br />

Two weeks later, on <strong>July</strong> 15, the<br />

feast of the mission’s namesake,<br />

St. Bonaventure, the pope’s<br />

decision was made public. At a<br />

special 7:30 a.m. Mass celebrated<br />

by Archbishop Gomez,<br />

along with Father Elewaut and<br />

regional Auxiliary Bishop Robert<br />

Barron, Mission Basilica San<br />

Buenaventura was unveiled as<br />

the first basilica in the Archdiocese<br />

of Los Angeles and the 88th<br />

in the United States.<br />

“When the pope designates<br />

a basilica, it means this is holy<br />

ground, that something beautiful<br />

and important in the history<br />

of salvation happened here,”<br />

Archbishop Gomez said at the<br />

Mass, held outside in the mission’s<br />

garden due to restrictions<br />

on outdoor religious services<br />

mandated by Gov. Gavin<br />

<strong>News</strong>om just two days earlier in<br />

light of the recent spike in coronavirus<br />

(COVID-19) cases in the state.<br />

Of the nine missions St. Junípero<br />

founded in what is today California,<br />

Mission San Buenaventura has the<br />

distinction of being his last.<br />

St. Junípero had planned to establish<br />

San Buenaventura as the third mission<br />

in Alta California, but was forced to<br />

wait more than a decade before receiving<br />

approval.<br />

When the mission was eventually<br />

founded, on Easter Sunday, March<br />

<strong>31</strong>, 1782, St. Junípero alluded to the<br />

fact that it took the Church more than<br />

200 years after Bonaventure’s death to<br />

declare him a saint.<br />

“Today [God] has been kind enough<br />

to grant me the consolation, after<br />

many years of longing, of witnessing<br />

the founding of the Holy Mission of<br />

Msgr. Francis J. Weber speaks at the solemn consecration of<br />

Mission San Buenaventura on Dec. 19, 1976.<br />

Our Seraphic Doctor San Buenaventura,”<br />

he said.<br />

“And the same thing can be said of<br />

this founding as the canonization of<br />

the saint: ‘Quo tardius, eo solemnius’<br />

[‘The more slowly, the more solemnly’].”<br />

In other words, the longer delayed,<br />

the sweeter the celebration.<br />

And in many ways, this expression<br />

could also characterize the nearly<br />

45 years it took for St. Bonaventure’s<br />

mission to be named a basilica.<br />

MISSION SAN BUENAVENTURA<br />

BUMPY ROAD TO 'BASILICA'<br />

The first attempt to get Rome to recognize<br />

San Buenaventura as a basilica<br />

ended in failure. And the second one<br />

almost did, too.<br />

The pursuit began in 1976, when the<br />

Vatican gave the archbishop of Los<br />

Angeles at the time, Cardinal Timothy<br />

Manning, approval to solemnly<br />

consecrate the mission’s<br />

167-year-old church building.<br />

Then-pastor Msgr. Francis<br />

J. Weber, one of the eminent<br />

historians of the Church in California<br />

and the United States,<br />

suggested that the mission seek a<br />

further honor from Rome.<br />

St. Pope Paul VI had just granted<br />

minor basilica designation<br />

to Mission San Diego of Alcalá,<br />

the first mission St. Junípero<br />

established in 1769. Msgr.<br />

Weber felt it only fitting that St.<br />

Junípero’s last mission enjoy that<br />

same status.<br />

But soon after Cardinal Manning<br />

submitted the three-page<br />

application, it came back from<br />

Rome denied. Despite Msgr.<br />

Weber’s request that he make<br />

a second attempt, Cardinal<br />

Manning decided not to push<br />

the issue any further.<br />

The idea of making San<br />

Buenaventura a basilica was not<br />

given serious thought again until<br />

2011, when Father Elewaut<br />

arrived as the mission’s new pastor.<br />

He started going through the<br />

parish records and came across<br />

Msgr. Weber’s original application,<br />

along with the rejection<br />

letter from Rome.<br />

“I thought, ‘I wonder if we<br />

would have the opportunity<br />

to reopen a new request?’ ” Father<br />

Elewaut recalled.<br />

The new pastor approached Archbishop<br />

Gomez and, after some<br />

consultation, in 2014 he gave Father<br />

Elewaut the green light to start the<br />

process anew.<br />

As befitting a former high school<br />

principal, Father Elewaut spent the<br />

next four years studying and researching,<br />

building his case for the mission’s<br />

pastoral and historical importance.<br />

One of Father Elewaut’s main chal-<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>21</strong>


From left: Mission Basilica San Buenaventura pastor Father Tom Elewaut, Deacon Teodoro Landeros, Bishop Robert Barron, and Archbishop José H.<br />

Gomez during the <strong>July</strong> 15 Mass celebrating the mission's papal designation as a minor basilica.<br />

COLTON MACHADO/ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES<br />

lenges was separating fact from fiction<br />

about San Buenaventura. He diligently<br />

sought out citations to back up<br />

statements that had been made about<br />

the mission’s history over the years.<br />

His research complete, in 2018,<br />

the application was submitted to the<br />

Congregation for Divine Worship and<br />

the Discipline of the Sacraments in<br />

Rome.<br />

Yet it seemed that history was fated<br />

to repeat itself. Later that same year,<br />

the application came back rejected —<br />

again.<br />

In its denial, the Vatican cited what<br />

Father Elewaut described as a pair of<br />

liturgical “faux pas” that he had made<br />

to accommodate the building’s limited<br />

space. He had placed the baptismal<br />

font in the sanctuary, “a liturgical<br />

no-no” for Rome, as he put it. Also<br />

frowned upon by Rome was his positioning<br />

of the presider’s chair in front<br />

of the altar, instead of off to the side.<br />

Father Elewaut dutifully made the<br />

required changes and sent a new<br />

application to Rome. On June 30,<br />

the vigil of St. Junípero’s feast day, he<br />

received the news he’d spent years<br />

praying to the saint for.<br />

Father Elewaut credits Archbishop<br />

Gomez for helping him persevere<br />

during the long process.<br />

Archbishop Gomez has often expressed<br />

a deep devotion to St. Junípero,<br />

and was instrumental in pushing<br />

for his canonization, something Pope<br />

Francis obliged in 2015, celebrating<br />

the saint’s canonization Mass on the<br />

steps of the Basilica of the National<br />

Shrine of the Immaculate Conception<br />

in Washington, D.C.<br />

“He’s been very encouraging and<br />

supportive all the way through,” Father<br />

Elewaut said of the archbishop. “Even<br />

when I thought ‘Well, if we don’t<br />

receive it, at least we put our best foot<br />

forward.’ He’d always say, ‘We’re going<br />

to get it, we’re going to get it, you just<br />

wait.’ ”<br />

WHAT CHANGES NOW?<br />

In making a church a basilica, the<br />

pope declares the church to be one of<br />

his own.<br />

There are just over 1,800 minor basilicas<br />

in the world, and before the <strong>July</strong><br />

15 announcement, 87 in the whole<br />

United States, and six in the state of<br />

California.<br />

For Bishop Barron, the announcement<br />

had a special significance. Five<br />

years ago, two months after St. Junipero’s<br />

canonization, he was installed as<br />

episcopal vicar for the Santa Barbara<br />

region of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles<br />

in a Mass celebrated at Mission<br />

San Buenaventura.<br />

In an interview with <strong>Angelus</strong>, he said<br />

basilicas are a potent symbol of the<br />

Church’s universality.<br />

The designation, Bishop Barron<br />

explained, binds San Buenaventura to<br />

the four major basilicas of the mother<br />

Church in Rome: St. John Lateran,<br />

St. Peter, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul<br />

Outside the Walls.<br />

“It’s a way of linking churches spread<br />

all over the world to the pope,” he<br />

said, adding, “We put strength in diversity<br />

today, which is great, but we can<br />

sometimes overlook the importance<br />

of unity, what brings us all together as<br />

one community, despite our massive<br />

differences in language and culture.”<br />

<strong>No</strong>w that Mission San Buenaventura<br />

is a basilica, it will receive a series of<br />

symbolic “upgrades”: a cone-shaped<br />

canopy, known as an “ombrellino,”<br />

will now be placed above the church’s<br />

lectern; a bell mounted on a pole,<br />

known as the “tintinnabulum,” similar<br />

to that used during the Middle Ages to<br />

22 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


signal the pope’s approach, will now<br />

be used in parish processions; and the<br />

insignia of the Papal Cross Keys will<br />

appear in banners, signs, and over the<br />

mission’s doors.<br />

The faithful will also now be able to<br />

obtain a plenary indulgence, which<br />

removes the temporal punishment due<br />

to sins, on predetermined “basilican<br />

feast days.”<br />

But for Father Elewaut, who likes to<br />

teasingly remind his fellow priests that<br />

he is St. Junípero’s 30th successor as<br />

pastor of San Buenaventura, the honor<br />

is less about pomp and pageantry and<br />

more about motivating his parishioners<br />

to live and share their faith in a<br />

more authentic way.<br />

“This is going to put a greater responsibility<br />

on the parish leadership and<br />

the people of the parish to discover<br />

new ways of evangelization in the<br />

spirit of St. Junípero Serra and St.<br />

Bonaventure,” he said.<br />

WHAT'S NEXT?<br />

The change in status comes at a difficult<br />

time for the mission on multiple<br />

fronts.<br />

Across the state, statues of St. Junípero<br />

are falling in the wake of angry<br />

protests that wrongly blame the saint<br />

for the historic mistreatment of Native<br />

Americans. Last month, statues to<br />

the missionary were toppled in San<br />

Francisco and in Los Angeles, and the<br />

weekend before the fire, a long-standing<br />

St. Junípero statue outside the<br />

state capitol building in Sacramento<br />

was felled.<br />

On the day the new basilica designation<br />

was to be announced, the<br />

Ventura City Council voted to remove<br />

a St. Junípero statue from in front of<br />

City Hall. And the weekend before<br />

the announcement, a mysterious<br />

overnight fire ravaged the church of<br />

another mission in the Archdiocese of<br />

Los Angeles founded by St. Junípero,<br />

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. While<br />

the cause of the blaze is still under<br />

investigation, many see its timing —<br />

on the same weekend that saw several<br />

acts of anti-Catholic vandalism around<br />

the country — as suspicious.<br />

Two days prior to the announcement,<br />

California’s governor ordered houses<br />

of worship to cease indoor gatherings<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 23<br />

A Mass of commemoration of the canonization<br />

of St. Junípero Serra was celebrated by<br />

Archbishop José H. Gomez at Mission San<br />

Buenaventura <strong>No</strong>v. <strong>21</strong>, 2015.<br />

VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />

for the foreseeable future as part of a<br />

statewide reclosure amid a spike in<br />

coronavirus infections.<br />

The governor’s announcement left<br />

Father Elewaut and parish staff scrambling<br />

to transform the mission’s garden<br />

into a liturgical space to celebrate the<br />

first Mass at the newly named basilica.<br />

Once the pandemic passes, Father<br />

Elewaut looks forward to hosting a<br />

larger, more festive celebration to<br />

mark the milestone. For now, he’s<br />

asking his saintly predecessor to help<br />

him keep things in perspective.<br />

“The famous words of St. Junípero<br />

Serra were ‘always forward, never<br />

back,’ ” he said on the night before<br />

the celebration Mass. “All of these<br />

missions have had destructive things<br />

happen at one time or another, whether<br />

it’s earthquakes, or fires, or even<br />

pandemics, and yet they keep enduring<br />

and keep going forward — that’s<br />

what we do.” <br />

Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of<br />

<strong>Angelus</strong>.<br />

¿Qué Legado dejará Usted?<br />

Es fácil incluír a su Parroquia,<br />

Escuela o Ministerio en su Testamento.<br />

Para dejar un legado perdurable,<br />

llámenos hoy.<br />

La oficina de Planned Giving<br />

(<strong>21</strong>3) 637-7364<br />

PlannedGiving@la-archdiocese.org<br />

www.ADLALegacy.org<br />

1403<strong>2020</strong>_ADLA_<strong>Angelus</strong>__1-3pgH_4-10.indd 1<br />

3/29/20 11:38 AM


A call to<br />

pastoral<br />

conversion<br />

Can a new Vatican<br />

document get parishes<br />

to think beyond the<br />

‘territorial model’?<br />

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. /<br />

ANGELUS<br />

St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican as seen through a window of Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome in this 2018 file photo. On <strong>July</strong> 20, the Vatican issued a new<br />

instruction on pastoral care that emphasizes the role of laymen and laywomen in the Church's mission, but said most parishes must be led by priests.<br />

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/AHMEDJADALLAH, REUTERS<br />

ROME — Frequent bathing, it<br />

turns out, is a bit of a modern obsession.<br />

Historian John Kelly observes<br />

that in medieval Europe, taking<br />

a bath was considered dangerous both<br />

to public morals and personal health.<br />

He believes widespread reticence<br />

to bathe was among the factors that<br />

favored the spread of the Black Death<br />

in the 14th century.<br />

The attitude was enshrined in a<br />

famous remark attributed to Queen<br />

Elizabeth I, to the effect that she took<br />

a bath only once a month “whether I<br />

need it or not.”<br />

Some Church-affairs devotees may<br />

have flashed on that line when they<br />

saw a new instruction this week from<br />

the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy.<br />

At first blush, it may seem a document<br />

brought out for largely bureaucratic<br />

reasons whether it was actually needed<br />

or not.<br />

Yet for Americans in particular, the<br />

document may turn out to be surprisingly<br />

useful, not so much for its<br />

contents, really, as the conversation it<br />

beckons.<br />

Issued <strong>July</strong> 20, the instruction does<br />

not create new Church law or change<br />

existing policies, but more or less<br />

brings established guidelines for the<br />

parish under one roof.<br />

The formal title is, “The Pastoral<br />

Conversion of the Parish Community<br />

in the Service of the Evangelizing<br />

Mission of the Church.”<br />

Perhaps the lack of a clear explanation<br />

as to “Why now?” accounts for the<br />

highly varied ways in which it’s been<br />

reported. When there’s no obvious forest,<br />

it’s tempting to get lost in the trees.<br />

Consider these three headlines, drawn<br />

from English and Italian coverage:<br />

• “Vatican: Laity have a role, but most<br />

parishes must be led by priests.”<br />

• “The revolution of Pope Francis:<br />

From baptisms to funerals, laity can<br />

celebrate the sacraments.”<br />

• “Vatican, new rules for the parish:<br />

Offerings aren’t a tax to collect.”<br />

If you didn’t know better, you’d<br />

scarcely think these three pieces were<br />

talking about the same document. The<br />

first two create almost diametrically<br />

opposed impressions of the spirit of the<br />

text, from a restrictive line on the lay<br />

role to an almost wildly permissive one.<br />

As a fact-checking matter, the document<br />

doesn’t envision nonpriests,<br />

including deacons, religious, and laity<br />

“celebrating” the sacraments in the<br />

same fashion as priests. For one thing,<br />

they can’t say Mass.<br />

It confirms that a bishop may delegate<br />

a nonpriest to lead a Liturgy of the<br />

Word where a priest is not available,<br />

and, with the approval of the national<br />

bishops’ conference and the Vatican,<br />

nonpriests may also lead rites for<br />

funerals and baptisms and also witness<br />

weddings. In many dioceses around the<br />

world, that’s already common practice.<br />

Also in keeping with existing rules,<br />

the document says nonpriests may<br />

preach under certain circumstances<br />

but they can’t deliver a homily during<br />

Mass. With reference to the third<br />

24 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/AHMEDJADALLAH, REUTERS<br />

headline, the document reiterates Pope<br />

Francis’ frequent exhortations that the<br />

sacraments should be offered without<br />

charge, and financial offerings from<br />

those who receive them must be a “free<br />

act” rather than a “tax” or “fee.”<br />

When a new Vatican tome rolls out,<br />

usually the immediate question in<br />

parishes and diocesan chanceries is,<br />

“How does this affect us?” In this case,<br />

the quick answer is, “It really doesn’t,<br />

unless you want it to,” since nothing<br />

in it is binding unless it’s already in the<br />

law.<br />

Yet perhaps the real contribution of<br />

the document won’t be in the details,<br />

but the bigger picture.<br />

During the St. Pope John Paul<br />

II years, I would often speak with<br />

American bishops who met the pontiff<br />

during their five-year “ad limina” (“to<br />

the threshold”) visits to Rome.<br />

More than once, some of those<br />

bishops would ask St. John Paul why<br />

he showed such favoritism to the “new<br />

movements” in the Church, such as<br />

the Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare,<br />

Communion and Liberation, and the<br />

like, which some bishops felt risked<br />

creating a “parallel church” outside the<br />

diocesan and parochial structure.<br />

In reply, St. John Paul would often<br />

tell his American visitors that the<br />

reason they were puzzled is that in the<br />

United States, parishes actually work.<br />

In other parts of the world, he said, including<br />

much of Europe, parishes are<br />

basically sacramental “filling stations,”<br />

where people will come for a wedding,<br />

a baptism or a funeral, but otherwise<br />

they don’t have much contact.<br />

In that context, he said, the movements<br />

are needed for people seeking a<br />

deeper Christian experience, especially<br />

the young.<br />

It’s true that in a global context, American<br />

parishes have long been the envy<br />

of the Catholic world. They tend to be<br />

beehives of activity, with the sacraments<br />

being the beginning rather than<br />

the end. A typical American parish<br />

may have a youth group, a Bible study<br />

group, a charitable operation, a school,<br />

an RCIA program, a music ministry,<br />

and on and on.<br />

Indeed, the centrality of the parish is<br />

both the glory and the Achilles’ heel<br />

of American Catholicism. Americans<br />

tend to be ferociously committed to<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 25<br />

their local parish, but sometimes have<br />

only a notional concept of membership<br />

in a global Church and often resent<br />

higher levels of authority “interfering.”<br />

But today, the remarkably successful<br />

American parish is facing unprecedented<br />

strains.<br />

In the long term, vastly expanded<br />

social mobility is forcing many parishes<br />

to think beyond the territorial model,<br />

San Gabriel Mission pastor Father John<br />

Molyneux, CMF, distributes the Eucharist June<br />

6 during the parish‘s first public Mass after<br />

pandemic restrictions were lifted.<br />

VICTOR AMEMÁN<br />

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in relationship<br />

with Jesus Christ through<br />

the study of the Bible?<br />

The Catholic Bible Institute<br />

is now online with:<br />

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Starting in <strong>August</strong>,<br />

join CBI for a journey<br />

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conceiving of their mission as directed<br />

to a series of communities other than<br />

their immediate neighborhood.<br />

Declining numbers of priests and<br />

religious are fueling greater roles for<br />

laypeople. Parishes are also facing a financial<br />

crunch caused by the coronavirus<br />

(COVID-19), having lost months of<br />

collections in many locations throughout<br />

the country.<br />

Though American parishes tend to be<br />

affluent by global standards, many of<br />

them are going to have to learn to do<br />

more with significantly less in the nearterm<br />

future.<br />

In other words, this actually may be<br />

exactly the right time for a root-andbranch<br />

examination of the mission and<br />

ministries of American parishes. Even<br />

if the new Vatican instruction doesn’t<br />

provide dazzling new answers, just<br />

raising the question may have the same<br />

refreshing effect as — well, as a nice<br />

warm bath, no matter what Queen<br />

Elizabeth thought. <br />

John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.<br />

Go to www.lacatholics.org/cbi<br />

to learn more and to register for<br />

$100 off the registration price.<br />

Use discount code CBI100 at check-out.<br />

0170<strong>2020</strong>_CatholicBibleInstitute_1-3pH_<strong>Angelus</strong>_rev3.indd 2<br />

7/13/20 10:57 AM


IMDB<br />

AD REM<br />

BY ROBERT BRENNAN<br />

Christopher Carley and Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino."<br />

Of Clint<br />

Eastwood<br />

and<br />

imperfect<br />

priests<br />

The world wags on, despite<br />

everything it has decided to<br />

throw at us, and will surely<br />

continue to hurl in our direction. But<br />

babies are still being born, and people<br />

are still getting to Mass either in<br />

person or virtually, and confessions are<br />

still available, as long as the supply of<br />

plexiglass holds up.<br />

We either count our blessings or wallow<br />

in misery. As I sit here fighting the<br />

urge to wallow away, there really are<br />

more than enough blessings to keep us<br />

all counting on.<br />

Popular culture is probably not one<br />

of those blessings, and its current manifestation<br />

is more curse than blessing<br />

anyway, yet it can still be a source<br />

of inspiration, even though the vast<br />

majority of the entertainment it creates<br />

that involves the Church or her ministers<br />

usually ends badly. The heady<br />

days when Hollywood sent love notes<br />

to the Church in films like the 1940s<br />

“Going My Way” are not coming back.<br />

The 1950s saw more edgy depictions<br />

of the priestly life, like Hitchcock’s “I<br />

Confess” and “On The Waterfront,”<br />

with the latter still being what I think<br />

is the greatest portrait of what a good<br />

priest is all about. But in the past 50<br />

years, give or take a decade, priests<br />

don’t generally fare well within the<br />

confines of popular culture. Sadly,<br />

most depictions of the Church and<br />

its clergy aim to demean, defile, or<br />

deflate.<br />

A lot of the pain is self-inflicted. If we<br />

have a bull’s-eye painted on our backs,<br />

it was put there by sin and scandal. It<br />

is only natural to expect the secular<br />

culture to take its swings.<br />

But just as God permits calamity, he<br />

also shows his light in the darkness,<br />

whether it comes from the flickering<br />

candlelight inside the depths of a catacomb<br />

with early Christians reading<br />

Scripture in Rome circa A.D. 273, or<br />

from the bright fluorescent lighting<br />

in an intensive care COVID-19 unit<br />

in an LA hospital circa now, where a<br />

nurse treating a patient says a silent<br />

Hail Mary.<br />

I found the flickering light of a<br />

profound and positive portrayal of a<br />

young priest in, of all places, Clint<br />

Eastwood’s movie “Gran Torino.”<br />

Eastwood has had a huge career. He<br />

has made a lot of good movies, several<br />

great movies, but all of them seem to<br />

share a modernist nihilism that in the<br />

end leaves an empty feeling.<br />

<strong>No</strong>t so “Gran Torino.” On the surface<br />

it certainly feels, and sounds, like a<br />

typical Clint Eastwood movie. And<br />

when we see his cranky, retired auto<br />

worker character encounter his freshout-of-the-seminary<br />

priest, things go<br />

poorly, especially for the young priest.<br />

In the hands of a lesser director,<br />

and maybe in the hands of a younger<br />

Eastwood, the newly minted priest’s<br />

first scene would have been his last.<br />

He would have served the purpose of<br />

being a fumbling, ill-equipped foil to<br />

26 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


Eastwood’s character and his grizzled<br />

and dour point of view of life, the<br />

Church, and priests.<br />

But as the movie unfolds, the young<br />

priest shows up at critical times, and<br />

at the end, he has grown in some<br />

wisdom. We get the sense that he is on<br />

his way to finding his voice, which is<br />

going to serve his vocation. He has also<br />

had some role in moving Eastwood’s<br />

character toward the light, rather than<br />

continually cursing darkness.<br />

Either intentionally or by divine<br />

intervention, popular culture in the<br />

<strong>21</strong>st century served up the character<br />

of a Catholic priest who is imperfect,<br />

yet moving, real, and something of an<br />

inspiration.<br />

Imagine other energetic young people<br />

with master’s degrees. When they<br />

get that first job with a Fortune 500<br />

company, they are not immediately<br />

escorted to the boardroom to begin<br />

giving advice to the CEO. They start<br />

a lot smaller; some of them, even with<br />

advanced degrees, start in the mailroom.<br />

<strong>No</strong>t so with new priests, like the<br />

fictional Father Janovich in “Gran<br />

Torino.” All priests are expected to<br />

be experts at the first Mass they say,<br />

the first confession they hear, or their<br />

first encounter with an embittered<br />

widower.<br />

And once ordained, all priests serve<br />

the exact same function at the Mass<br />

and within (Centers for Disease<br />

Control and Prevention mandated<br />

protocols, of course) confessionals, as<br />

any bishop, cardinal, or pope. They<br />

are hurled headfirst into the deep end<br />

of the baptismal font.<br />

<strong>No</strong>t many new priests will have<br />

the advantage of being inspired and<br />

mentored by Clint Eastwood, but<br />

with God’s grace and with the prayers<br />

and support of parish communities,<br />

they, too, will find their “voice” that<br />

will serve their vocations and become<br />

sources of light to those they may<br />

encounter who are stumbling in the<br />

darkness. <br />

Robert Brennan is director of communications<br />

at The Salvation Army<br />

California South Division in Van<br />

Nuys, California.<br />

Priest-Elect Michael Mesa<br />

Congratulations!<br />

Priest-Elect Michael<br />

May God Bless you on your Journey.<br />

Love,<br />

Mom & Dad<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 27<br />

0604<strong>2020</strong>_FrMichaelMesa_<strong>Angelus</strong>_4-52x4-9.indd 1<br />

4/25/20 3:13 PM


J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM<br />

Poetr<br />

for heaven’s sake<br />

If it’s time for<br />

Christians to<br />

reclaim their literary<br />

heritage, what<br />

does that look like?<br />

BY JANE GREER / ANGELUS<br />

Jane Greer interviewed Anthony Esolen,<br />

Ph.D., by phone about his new book,<br />

“The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord”<br />

(Ignatius Press, 2019, $15.26). Some of<br />

his remarks appear in this review of his<br />

book.<br />

Anthony Esolen, Ph.D.<br />

"David in Prayer," by Willem Vrelant, early<br />

1460s.<br />

IMAGE VIA NYMLF<br />

28 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


suppose you have in your attic 200 original<br />

great paintings by the masters,” says Anthony<br />

“Let’s<br />

Esolen, Ph.D. “Most of them are religious paintings<br />

— by Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Angelico. They’re<br />

up there! Aren’t you gonna go up there and take ’em out<br />

and look at ’em? Wouldn’t you do that? I think you would do<br />

that! Because it’d be crazy not to!”<br />

We have the equivalent of that attic, 2,000 years’ worth of<br />

Christendom’s magnificent poetry, and we seldom visit it.<br />

“Why? It’s all ours, there for the taking,” Esolen says. “I’m<br />

hoping to get Christians in general, and Catholics in particular,<br />

to take back this art.”<br />

Esolen is a renowned Catholic scholar, speaker, teacher,<br />

and author of more than 700 articles and two dozen books<br />

of translation, scholarship, and social commentary. He’s a<br />

tireless champion of scriptural fidelity and imaginative writing<br />

as he takes to task insipid modern hymns and adulterated<br />

Bible translations.<br />

What many of his readers may not know is that he’s also a<br />

gifted poet who for 30 years has channeled his considerable<br />

poetic muse into other work. With this book, he at long last<br />

offers us his own poetry again.<br />

But “The Hundredfold” is not just a book of poetry, and<br />

not just social or liturgical commentary. It’s all that and<br />

more. It actually demonstrates what it encourages: reclaiming<br />

the literary bounty that belongs to us as human beings,<br />

Christians, and Catholics.<br />

Monumental in almost every way except for its physical<br />

slenderness, the book comprises an introduction and a<br />

poem, “The Hundredfold.” The introduction is a gentle<br />

poetry primer. It also explains in detail the poem’s extraordinarily<br />

complex organization, comprising 100 smaller poems<br />

on various scriptural themes.<br />

There are 67 lyric poems, 12 long dramatic poems in blank<br />

verse, and <strong>21</strong> hymns. The organization of styles, stanzas, and<br />

lines as they tell the story of our faith is mathematically intricate<br />

— think “The Name of the Rose,” by Umberto Eco.<br />

<strong>No</strong>t everyone will be interested in admiring the poem’s<br />

architectonics, but any reader can enjoy the meaning and<br />

the sound. Esolen’s scholarship is towering, but it doesn’t get<br />

in the way of goodness and beauty. Still, the complexity mattered<br />

to him: He created the poem’s outline and planned<br />

most of the parts and arrangement before ever starting to<br />

write.<br />

“For heaven’s sake, why?” some might ask, and the answer<br />

is: for heaven’s sake. “Poets in the Middle Ages and Renaissance<br />

— Dante, Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare — wrote<br />

like this all the time,” he says.<br />

“The idea was that God created this cosmos in ‘measure,<br />

weight, and number’ ” (Wisdom 11:20). God made language<br />

but also made math, science, and music. “Artists took<br />

it for granted that they should try to reflect that order. … Art<br />

is a reflection of the power and glory of God.”<br />

But that was then. Today, many Catholics — many Americans<br />

— do not love or appreciate poetry. Schools no longer<br />

teach either poetry or much history, ignoring the marvelous<br />

heritage of poems from the past.<br />

The most recent century is filled with “free verse” that<br />

does little with sound and is almost uniformly secular, even<br />

though, as Esolen writes, “the most exalted themes for the<br />

music of man have always been religious, in a broad sense.”<br />

The result of all this is that for perhaps the first time in history,<br />

many people feel no connection to poetry.<br />

This makes Esolen come undone. “Poetry is dynamite! You<br />

don’t have to spend three weeks reading a 600-page novel.<br />

You could spend five minutes reading a great poem. And a<br />

poem will be with you for the rest of your life, maybe, if you<br />

commit it to memory. It’s concentrated power.<br />

“If you’re trying to form your children’s imaginations and<br />

you’re not using poetry,” he says, “it’s like you’re trying to dig<br />

a tunnel through a mountain with picks and shovels and you<br />

won’t use dynamite. Use the dynamite!<br />

“There’s no reason why poetry has to be so far removed<br />

from the ordinary experience of people. It never used to be<br />

that way. What I really want to do is to write for fairly intelligent<br />

people who would be willing to read a poem — my<br />

fellow believers. I’m writing for them.”<br />

As an example, here’s lyric poem 26, whose epigraph is<br />

Exodus 20:19: “Let not God speak with us, lest we die.” The<br />

Israelites were afraid of the thunder and lightning, and blew<br />

“shofars” (“horns”) from the smoking mountain where God<br />

waited.<br />

They wanted Moses to be the go-between because they<br />

were too fearful of God speaking directly to them. There’s<br />

a vast difference between the “they” in the first line and<br />

the “we” in the second line, between then and now — and<br />

someone is watching.<br />

“They dared not look upon Him, lest they die.<br />

But we go blandly past Him all day long,<br />

Or what we vaguely fable in the sky,<br />

Daddy who shakes his head when we do wrong,<br />

And sighs, and shrugs, and hums a little song,<br />

Something with faith and flowers and heaven in it.<br />

<strong>No</strong>t grandly evil, only small and vile,<br />

We seek our pleasure till the latest minute,<br />

Sinning away in soft assurance, while<br />

Satan observes us with a frozen smile.”<br />

In the U.S. today, Catholic churches are nearly uniform in<br />

limiting their music to 10 or 20 songs written in the past 50<br />

years. From antiquity to the 1970s, a hymn has always been<br />

understood as a song praising the greatness of God. Modern<br />

“hymns” focus instead, to a large extent, on making us feel<br />

happy.<br />

In his book, Esolen calls it “the severe constriction of<br />

mood: the songs at their best and most innocent are fit<br />

for happy children clapping their hands in a kindergarten<br />

jingle. At their worst they are sickly sweet songs of self-celebration<br />

for sinners not desiring reform or the terrible<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 29


soul-cleaving power of love; or they are political slogans, as<br />

ephemeral as last week’s newspaper, though not so good for<br />

lining a bird cage.”<br />

The old hymns, from the early Fathers of the Church to<br />

the early 20th century, “were always talking about the Trinity.<br />

They were always talking about the Word made flesh,”<br />

Esolen says. “It’s pretty high theology. It never focuses on the<br />

feelings of the singer. That would have struck them as kind<br />

of beside the point.”<br />

Here’s hymn IV, for which Esolen suggests the tune<br />

“Picardy.” (You may know the tune as “Let All Mortal Flesh<br />

Keep Silence.”) He writes his hymns to fit the tunes, and<br />

once you’ve read — or sung — this hymn to this haunting<br />

tune, any other way will feel wrong.<br />

“From the desert came the sages,<br />

Crossed the Jordan in the cold,<br />

With the star of Judah gleaming,<br />

Making straight the way foretold;<br />

Found the Child and gave in homage<br />

Frankincense and myrrh and gold.<br />

From the desert of Judea<br />

Came the prophet’s piercing cry,<br />

Calling sinners to the waters<br />

Of the Jordan rushing by,<br />

That they might be found preparing<br />

For the Savior drawing nigh.<br />

Unto John then came our Savior,<br />

In the fire of righteousness;<br />

Dove-like, brooding on the waters,<br />

Fell the voice from heaven to bless;<br />

Then the most beloved Messiah<br />

Fasted in the wilderness.<br />

Come to us then in the desert,<br />

Where Thy sheep have lost their way,<br />

Lost the pasture by the river,<br />

While the lion stalks his prey;<br />

In the trackless night, O Savior,<br />

Be Thyself our break of day.”<br />

In the Bible, a<br />

hundredfold refers to<br />

receiving in return<br />

much more than has<br />

been given, sown,<br />

or invested. Esolen<br />

wants us to rediscover<br />

our powerful birthright<br />

of poetry — that<br />

dynamite! — and<br />

experience the hundredfold<br />

return of joy<br />

and faith. He wrote<br />

this book “as a first<br />

salvo in the Christian<br />

reclamation of the<br />

land of imagination<br />

and song.”<br />

“I am not so much showing what I can<br />

do as showing what can be done, and<br />

what might be done by people with<br />

greater skill than mine. I want not emulators<br />

and imitators but people who will<br />

charge past me in blood and triumph.<br />

I am a battered old soldier on bad knees,<br />

who knows that the hill must be charged<br />

and who knows of one or two ways it<br />

might be done. He takes up the torn<br />

standard of the cross and hobbles up<br />

the first reaches of that height, crying<br />

out instructions that he himself has not<br />

the strength to fulfill, teaching more by<br />

audacity and exposure than by success,<br />

willing to look like a fool, to be shot<br />

down in the first volleys, but knowing<br />

that unless he or someone like him does<br />

this, the hill will remain always in the<br />

fist of the enemy.<br />

So he goes.” <br />

Jane Greer edited and published “Plains Poetry Journal” and<br />

is author of “Bathsheba on the Third Day.”<br />

T<br />

NE<br />

30 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


TWO<br />

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Candid conversations.<br />

Sharing stories that<br />

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<strong>No</strong>w, that’s relevant.<br />

Bringing Christ to the world<br />

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<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>31</strong>


THE CRUX<br />

BY HEATHER KING<br />

The kindness of strangers<br />

Since 2016, I’ve lived in a large<br />

Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena<br />

that’s been divided into eight<br />

apartments. All we residents, of course,<br />

have our own space, but we also constantly<br />

see and run into one another.<br />

Our property manager lives next door,<br />

the landlord also owns three more<br />

houses around the corner, and we all<br />

share a giant backyard.<br />

This makes for an extended community<br />

of adults and children.<br />

Recently, I conducted a mental<br />

inventory and realized that together we<br />

have roots in Puerto Rico and Santa<br />

Barbara, Venezuela and New Hampshire,<br />

Indonesia and Orange County,<br />

Africa and West Virginia, Mexico and<br />

the Bay Area, El Salvador and Florida.<br />

We’ve spent the last three months<br />

together in what basically amounts to<br />

lockdown. Harmony has reigned. The<br />

time has been marked by innumerable<br />

acts of kindness, generosity, good<br />

cheer, and forbearance.<br />

“Hey, I just made a bunch of masks<br />

— do you want one?” “Hey, I picked<br />

up this sun hat the other day — I<br />

thought of you in the garden.” “Hey,<br />

I made a huge batch of cauliflower-cheese<br />

soup — can I give you<br />

some?” “Hey, I just got back from<br />

Costco and bought this six-pack of<br />

antihistamine spray — I’ll never use it<br />

all. Ya wanna couple bottles?”<br />

Stan brings my packages upstairs<br />

when the FedEx guy leaves them by<br />

the wrong door. Jenny stops to report<br />

that the day before she saw a mother<br />

and six baby skunks in the side yard.<br />

Roberto offers me a couple of big<br />

garden pots he scored at a construction<br />

Heather King in her backyard garden.<br />

HEATHER KING<br />

32 • ANGELUS • <strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong>


HEATHER KING<br />

site. Ruby, 2, shows off her new canary<br />

yellow Reeboks.<br />

Hortensia, my next-door neighbor,<br />

is some kind of saint who works as a<br />

special education teacher, lives in a<br />

small studio, and is helping put her<br />

daughter through college. She texts<br />

me on liturgical holidays with Virgin<br />

of Guadalupe emojis, gave me a lovely<br />

Christmas cactus last December, and<br />

more recently, returned home from<br />

Target with her mask and shield and<br />

presented me with a bag of fancy,<br />

individually wrapped chocolates. “For<br />

you, mija! You let me know if you need<br />

anything, OK?”<br />

Attending daily livestream Mass in<br />

my bedroom, at the sign of peace I’d<br />

silently greet these neighbors by name,<br />

bless them, and wish them well. At<br />

dusk, I often sit in the garden and pray<br />

a rosary, again silently including the<br />

people with whom I’m surrounded.<br />

Introvert though I am, I love our little<br />

ecosystem. My role at the compound is<br />

unofficial groundskeeper.<br />

A crew comes in once a week and<br />

does the heavy lifting, but I’m constantly<br />

puttering around weeding, picking<br />

up litter, clipping, repotting. I’ve also<br />

taken it upon myself to plant and care<br />

for a large backyard California native<br />

plant garden. The upshot: If I croak<br />

alone in my apartment, I’m not going<br />

to lie there till mummification sets in.<br />

If I didn’t show up for a day or two,<br />

someone would definitely notice.<br />

The quarters are somewhat close and<br />

that leaves room for trespasses, too.<br />

“Whoops, I forgot my clothes in the<br />

washer and you were waiting to use it,<br />

so sorry.” “Yikes, I watered the plants<br />

on my balcony and some dripped<br />

down to your patio below: That was<br />

clumsy of me, so sorry.”<br />

That’s how real life is lived: not in<br />

op-eds and Twitter feeds, but rather<br />

in a thousand tiny exchanges, acts of<br />

forbearance, and forgiveness. Real<br />

life is the new tenant asking, “What<br />

day do they come for the recycling?”<br />

It’s shared wonder: “Look, there are<br />

already tiny green fruits on the persimmon<br />

tree!” It’s the small sacrifice: “I’m<br />

going to Trader Joe’s, can I get you<br />

anything?<br />

Real life is a hurried hello in the<br />

morning, a shared moment out in the<br />

driveway at dusk. A “What’s up?” and<br />

“Good Lord, it’s hot today!” and “Did<br />

the mailman come yet, do you know?”<br />

That’s how real life is lived. And I<br />

wonder as well if this isn’t the way real<br />

change takes place, because what do<br />

we really have to offer one another<br />

except a welcome, a lovely garden, a<br />

place at the table?<br />

As Binx Bolling says in Walker Percy’s<br />

novel “The Moviegoer,” “There is only<br />

one thing I can do: listen to people,<br />

see how they stick themselves into the<br />

world, hand them along a ways in their<br />

dark journey and be handed along, and<br />

for good and selfish reasons.”<br />

Ideology — the imposed groupthink<br />

that increasingly marks our culture<br />

— is one-dimensional, has no sense<br />

of humor, and is boring. Reality is<br />

tragicomic and human.<br />

The other day I ran into Brandon and<br />

little curly-headed 3-year-old Leo in<br />

the backyard. The kid gazed lovingly<br />

up at me, pointed a chubby finger<br />

and burbled a word that sounded like<br />

“Huchhhga” and that I took to be<br />

“Heather.”<br />

“Oh cute!” I exclaimed. “He knows<br />

my name!”<br />

“Unhh,” Brandon replied. “I think<br />

he’s saying ‘Granny.’ ” <br />

Heather King is an award-winning author, speaker, and workshop leader. For more, visit heather-king.com.<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>31</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 7, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 33


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