Father Joseph Illo, pastor of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco, gave this 17-minute homily on Sunday, June 21.
My father served two years under General McArthur during World War II. He left me a souvenir of the Japanese occupation in the Philippines. Today, 80 years later, American men have lost much of their magnanimity and valor. Most of the evidence is the loss of fatherhood. Most of the young adults I work with in marriage preparation lacked a father at home. The cost of this abandonment by American men is incalculable.
Proof of this loss: The infantile rage in our online discussions, the ad hominem arguments, the anger. Why? Because Dad wasn’t there to teach his boys how to discuss rationally. Another example is the violence on the streets or in the schools. Because Daddy never taught his boys how to manage their anger. The failure of young men to launch, the hopelessness in the eyes of the young women they should have married.
Our Lord describes God as a father. Being a father is that important.
Mothers rarely fail their children. Motherhood is such a naturally compelling virtue. But fatherhood is more tenuous. Even among the beasts. We human beings must look to God. We look to the fidelity of Christ, His self-sacrifice, His endurance, His patience, His godliness to understand the measure of a man.
The priest is a father; many people today wished me a happy Father’s Day. Fatherhood in America began to decline when our spiritual fathers, our priests, began to doubt their vocations.
We as a presbyterate here spent five days two years ago on priestly identity. It was a waste of time and money because the identity of a priest is very simple and very clear. It’s Jesus Christ. It’s self-sacrifice.
But priests began to dress like laymen, and they began to belittle those who called them Father (“Just call me ‘Joe’ “). My first pastor insisted nobody call him Father. When priests and bishops stopped praying the Divine Office, that was the beginning of the end of fatherhood for our priests and the decline of fatherhood generally.
I had a friend in the seminary. I went to visit him in New York. I said, let’s pray vespers. He said, I don’t pray the Breviary any more. A few years later he left the pristhood. It’s always the beginning of the end when a priest stops praying his Breviary – to which we make a vow. The Divine Office five times a day.
In the Gospel today Jesus steps into Peter’s boat.
I was kayaking myself on Thursday, wearing my Roman collar. We got blown off course. We made an unplanned stop. We were lying on the grass exhausted, and a lady came up and said, Are you a priest? She was so happy that there was still a priest around. Last night I went to the symphony. Same deal. A lady said, Are you a priest? I sing in the symphony chorus and we sing all these Gregorian chants. And right here is a priest. Are you a real priest?
Jesus steps into Peter’s boat and his boat becomes the Bark of Peter, the Roman Catholic Church, a few yards off shore.
In the bulletin I mentioned a book by a friend of mine, Father Carter Griffin, rector at the seminary in Washington, D.C. called Why Celibacy, Reclaiming the Fatherhood of the Priest. He points out three levels of fatherhood, biological, spiritual, priestly. In the last one, priests beget spiritual children.
I’m preparing a couple for marriage in the church. The husband-to-be does not go to Mass on Sundays. I asked him why, and he said he works 70 hours a week, so that hopefully they will be able to buy a house in the Bay Area. A man should not have to do this. I said to Jose, are you open to children? The question will be asked at the wedding itself. He said, no children for a few years because we are too stressed out and I want to enjoy my wife. He does not know, and I did tell him that the best way to enjoy your wife is to have a baby with her. Your wife takes on a whole new dimension when she becomes a mother.
So men, do not be afraid at the task before you. Peter threw himself down at the feet of Jesus and said, depart from me, Lord, I am a sinful man, I cannot do what You are asking me to do.
And Jesus said, Get up, Peter, you can. I will give you the grace to be a man, to be a father.
The SF Bay Area is a real killer for good marriages and good family life– and a killer for good values. It is all based too much on money and career success in business. Many people– just young and starting out, or older, with Bay Area job transfers— find out that no matter how hard they work, home ownership is close to impossible– and apt. living (also highly expensive) is what they may have to settle for, for a long time. They may raise their kids in an apt., until they can manage something better. Many married couples may have a child here–but as soon as their kids are past toddler age, they seek to move to a better location, more “family friendly,” and commute to work. They do not want to raise theur children here.
Lovely sermon, a reminder of days gone by. I told my husband today that I had just realized why our neighborhood seemed so much lonelier than it did when we were younger, and now after COVID – few children on the block, no children riding their bicycles or skating down the block or street going from house to house with the few children staying indoors most of the time and not visiting the other neighborhood children. We are elderly but do enjoy seeing the primary school children next door and across the street now and then. Thank God our daughter, her husband and adult grandchildren live close by, and our other daughter and her husband with teens live a little farther away but drivable.