I realized I could pass as a New Yorker, or at least as a Manhattanite, when people started asking me for directions. Sure, I dressed...

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find...

The will in people to survive is strong. Last Thursday during my weekly night-walk in the Tenderloin, I stopped in a dive bar on my route...

“Another idol has replaced me…a golden one!”   Ebenezer Scrooge, a young man making his way in the world, was late to meet his betrothed...

† The San Francisco Chronicle  reported Tuesday that 133 people were diagnosed with HIV in our city in 2023 – the lowest number in...

“STFU!” † When asked about the secret of her happiness, one Benedictine sister said her “serenity came when she realized she didn’t have...

There I was, waiting in line at Gus’s market with a few groceries for the evening’s supper, when a man about my age came in, saw me...

“Fuck around and find out”   One Sunday afternoon, a year or two ago, I sat on the front stoop of the rectory, tired after a morning’s...

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet...

“Baptism doesn’t play – but it does promise”   † “ Daddy was an old-time preacher man. He preached the word of God throughout the land....

If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand? – Psalm 130:2   Selective enforcement.   Today on my...

As I write this, it is two days before the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, and I am preparing my sermon for the Vigil Mass of the feast,...

“All guests who arrive should be received as Christ,” says Saint Benedict in the 53rd chapter of his rule. “The superior and the...

She’s homeless, again. Her husband of a decade is a mean drunk and forced her out of the apartment that they shared for a couple of years...

† “Use your imagination, Peter!” The 1991 movie “Hook” starred Dustin Hoffman as the eponymous captain and our beloved...

Last Saturday, as you no doubt know by now, an attempt was made on the life of the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania....

† Theirs wasn’t a match made in heaven, Herod’s and Herodias’s. Like many marriages of the rich and powerful throughout history, theirs...

† “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. I don’t...

I heard a cry of anguish coming from the stairway leading down from Market and Van Ness to the subway. I was beginning one of my...

“If the Eucharist is just a symbol,” said Flannery O’Connor, “then to hell with it.” Flannery O’Connor, a devout Roman Catholic, was the...