December 17, 2004

Catholic san Francisco

(CNS PHOTO COURTESY ART RESOURCE/SCALA)

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Walk for life . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Truth through Christ. . . . . . . 7 Helping others . . . . . . . . . . . 8

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

December 17, 2004

Christmas Litugies. . . . . . 9-12 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

News-in-brief

Scripture and reflection

~ Page 4 ~

~ Page 14 ~ SIXTY CENTS

Archbishop’s column . . . . . . 15 Movie review . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

NEXT ISSUE JAN. 14 VOLUME 6

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No. 41

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Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

On The Where You Live

by Tom Burke

All Souls Elementary School collected pounds and pounds of food items in a holiday drive for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County.

“We are very happy to receive the supplies and will use them to restock our shelves in this time before Christmas,” said Martin Schurr of SVDP and dad of All Souls fourth grader, Michael. Showing some of the goods to be shared are, from left, eighth graders Cassandra Gonzalez, Juan Carlos Jimenez, Matthew Tayag, and Jessica Bernstein.

YLI Grand President Patricia Fontana and Dorothy Baciocco.

Mighty proud is mom, Marie Malveaux, whose daughter, Antoinette, has been named to the Board of Trustees at the University of San Francisco.

Antoinette holds an undergraduate degree from USF and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Marie has been a member of St. Kevin Parish for 52 years….Christine Mastromonaco, an 8th grader at St. Brendan Elementary School is a winner among thousands of entries in this year’s Holy Childhood Association Christmas Seals competition. Christine’s artwork – one of but 25 designs selected for the honor – is on exhibit this month at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. and can also be found on this year’s Christmas Seals. Her proud folks are Ellis and Pete. Her brother Mark is a 2004 graduate of St. Bren’s and now a freshman at Lowell High School….Woodside Priory is proud to announce students named as Commended Scholars

Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

Most Reverend William J. Levada, publisher Maurice E. Healy, associate publisher & editor Editorial Staff: Jack Smith, assistant editor; Evelyn Zappia, feature editor; Tom Burke, “On the Street” and Datebook; Patrick Joyce, contributing editor/senior writer; Sharon Abercrombie, reporter Advertising: Joseph Pena, director; Mary Podesta, account representative Production: Karessa McCartney, manager; Tiffany Doesken Business Office: Marta Rebagliati, assistant business manager; Virginia Marshall, advertising and promotion services; Judy Morris, circulation and subscriber services Advisory Board: Jeffrey Burns, Ph.D., Noemi Castillo, James Clifford, Fr. Thomas Daly, Joan Frawley Desmond, James Kelly, Deacon William Mitchell, Kevin Starr, Ph.D. Catholic San Francisco editorial offices are located at One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109. Tel: (415) 614-5640 Circulation: 1-800-563-0008 or (415) 614-5638 News fax: (415) 614-5633 Advertising: (415) 614-5642; Advertising fax: (415) 614-5641 Advertising E-mail: jpena@catholic-sf.org Catholic San Francisco (ISSN 15255298) is published weekly except the Fridays after Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas and the first Friday in January, twice a month during summer by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014. Periodical postage paid at South San Francisco, California.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Catholic San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014 If there is an error in the mailing label affixed to this newspaper, call 1-800-563-0008. It is helpful to refer to the current mailing label.

in National Merit Scholarship competitions including Tessa Berman, Jennifer Dhaliwal, Inga Diederich, Lauren Frasch, Peter Giovannotto, Elaine Haegele, Susan Lyon, Stephanie Schultz, Tyler Skinner-Rosenberg, Charles Soong, Humphrey Yang. Thanks to Priory PR person, Carolyn Dobervich, for the good news….To be congratulated is Lagan Institute #52 of San Rafael. The branch of the Young Ladies Institute commemorated its 100th anniversary November 14th with a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Raphael Church. Officers for 2004 – 05 are Dorothy Baciocco, president; Bernice Raffo, 1st vice- president; Marion Grady, 2nd vicepresident; Teresa Dalessi, recording secretary; Marie Selmina, financial secretary; Olivia Dalessi, treasurer; Fillegenie Levasseur, marshall; Barbara Beaulieu,

St. Brendan Elementary School’s annual Christmas Boutique was enjoyed by many earlier this month. Helping make it a success were, from left, Maria Balestrieri, with her children Tori and Nick; Anna Marie Bragg, with her children Tanner and Adrianna; and Maria Brady, with her children Chad and Aidan. Not available for the photo was co-chair, Beverly Baptista.

sentinel; Lenore Cotta and Madeleine Powers, trustees. Jill Soldavini is past president. YLI #52 is named for the late Father Hugh Lagan pastor of St. Raphael’s from 1884 – 99…. Merry Christmas!!!

Remember that Catholic San Francisco will not be published December 24th, 31st or January 7th. See ya’ next year!!!… It only takes a moment to let us know about a birthday, anniversary, special achievement, or special happening in your life. Just jot down the basics and send with a follow-up phone number to On the Street Where You Live, One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109. You can also fax to (415) 614-5633 or email, do not send attachments - except photos and those in jpeg please - to tburke@catholic-sf.org. You can reach Tom Burke at (415) 614-5634.

A freshman Social Studies class at Junipero Serra High School gathered almost 400 food items and $1,000 that will benefit 10 struggling families through San Mateo County’s Samaritan House this Christmas.

“I gave them no extra credit or other bribery,” said teacher Mark Goyette. “I just challenged them to do this.

These guys met the challenge in a big way and then some.” Totals at the school for the adopted families topped 3,800 food items and $3,600. From left: Joe Brunner Cole Jones, Mark Goyette, Andrew Bet, school activities director Patti Ferretti and Adam Stoye.

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1-800-YES-SVDP HELPLINES FOR CLERGY/CHURCH SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS 415-614-5506 This number is answered by Barbara Elordi, Archdiocesan Pastoral Outreach Coordinator.

This is a secured line and is answered only

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415-614-5503 If you wish to speak to a non-archdiocesan employee please call this nunmber. This is also a secured line and is answered only by a victim survivor.

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December 17, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

3

Thousands to Walk for Life in San Francisco on January 22

By Jack Smith The first annual Walk for Life West Coast will be held in San Francisco, Jan. 22, the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which mandated abortion on demand in all 50 states. The event is the first major attempt to make a West Coast showing in support of human life similar to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., which annually attracts hundreds of thousands of marchers.

St. Ignatius parishioner Eva Muntean and St. Dominic parishioner Dolores Meehan co-chair the event. Sponsors include the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Catholics for the Common Good, Ignatius Press, Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life and CatholicExchange.com. Muntean said the idea for the event grew from a feeling that “there is a need to show there is a large group of pro-life people in the West,” and particularly in San Francisco.

The walkers are also showing “support for women who have had abortions . . . and for families who have suffered loss due to abortion.”

Anyone who supports life is invited to participate in this peaceful witness for life, she said. Volunteers have been promoting the event at Protestant as well as Catholic churches throughout the Bay Area and northern California. Muntean says it is difficult to estimate how many people will partici-

pate in this first of its kind event, she is planning for at least five thousand and as many as 15 thousand walkers.

San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada will start the day with 8:00 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral. All priests are invited to concelebrate. The Archbishop will also be among the walkers on their two mile route from Justin Herman Plaza to the Marina Green. Walkers are asked to gather at Justin Herman Plaza at 11:00 a.m. Speakers at the Plaza include Sally Winn of Feminists for Life, Georgette Forney of Silent No More Awareness, and Pastor Clenard Childress of the Life Education and Resource Network The walk begins at Noon and will be broadcast by EWTN’s Fr. Francis Mary who has been publicizing the event on his weekly show, Life on the Rock.

On the previous evening, Jan. 21, San Francisco Interfaith Committee for Life will hold their Annual Ecumenical Prayer Service for Life at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

The evening of prayers, hymns and scripture readings beginning at 7:30 p.m. will include meditations by San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wang, University of San Francisco Philosophy Professor Raymond Dennehy, and Georgette Forney. All night Eucharistic Adoration will also be available Jan. 21 at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco.

Visit website www.walkforlifewc.com for more information.

Post-abortion healing groups to be offered Project Rachel, the post-abortion healing ministry of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, is organizing a small group healing program, to start in late January or early February depending on enrollment.

The program will be an opportunity for women hurting from the pain of an abortion to gather for group support and healing under the facilitation of a licensed Catholic psychologist. The program is open both to women who have experienced a healing process and desire continuing support and to newcomers suffering hurt from a past abortion.

Project Rachel has offered one on one confidential peer counseling for several years. This new program will offer women “the ability to share the pain together with the security of a skilled facilitator and to feel the outpouring of Christ’s mercy while healing with the support of other,” said Mary Ann Schwab, Project Rachel coordinator.

The confidential small group meetings will take place on Saturday mornings in Menlo Park from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. Cost is $40 per session, but scholarships are available. Call confidentially at 415-717-6428 to register or for more information.

Give Catholic San Francisco to others

COVER: The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are depicted in a 15th-century painting by Italian master Masaccio. In the work titled “Madonna col Solletico,” or “Tickling Madonna,” the infant Jesus grasps Mary’s arm as she gently touches his chin. The painting is located at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy.

Share Catholic San Francisco with grown children, parents, and other family members or friends who do not live in the Archdiocese of San Francisco or are not registered parishioners. You can have Catholic San Francisco sent to anyone you choose simply by purchasing a “non-parishioner” subscription to the newspaper.

For addresses within California, the non-parishioner subscription rate is $27. For U.S. addresses outside of California, the non-parishioner subscription rate is $36.

To arrange for a non-parishioner subscription to Catholic San Francisco for someone in your family or a friend, just send their name and full address to us – Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109 — along with a check covering the non-parishioner subscription amount.

Give the gift of HOPE to a youngster in need Hanna Boys Center, a Faith-based residential and school program, has been a haven of hope for troubled boys since 1949. Each youngster who comes to Hanna for help is truly a gift from God. He has struggled in life with his family in crisis, educational and learning disabilities, substance abuse, violence, neglect and abandonment.

A tailored school curriculum, with a student to teacher ratio of 7:1, provides the Special Education help and extra attention these troubled youngsters need to be successful in school. Positive extra-curricular programs like sports, 4-H and community service opportunities help the boys build character and develop a positive approach to life.

Caring role models guide the boys, instill values that support their healing and growth, and help them develop the tools they need to become successful and responsible young adults.

Hanna Boys Center, a 501 (c) 3 which relies solely on donations, is able to help these troubled youngsters through the generosity of donors like you. Hanna Boys Center does not receive funding from the government or Catholic Church and boys are accepted regardless of race, religion, or the family’s ability to pay.

Help a youngster in need. Look for the envelope in this issue to make your tax-deductible donation.

17000 Arnold Drive P.O. Box 100 Sonoma, CA 95476 707.996.6767 www.hannacenter.org

4

Catholic San Francisco

NEWS

December 17, 2004

in brief

WASHINGTON — Catholic editors voted the controversy surrounding Catholics and politics as the top religious news story of 2004, with the related story of the presidential election coming in second and the continuing fallout from the clergy sex abuse scandal third. In voting for top religious newsmaker of the year, Pope John Paul II, who has won the poll most often in recent years, again took the top spot. Catholic voters were the No. 2 newsmaker for 2004, followed by Sen. John F. Kerry and President George W. Bush. Results for the 43rd annual survey of Catholic News Service client newspapers were announced Dec. 14. When the editors’ poll was first conducted in 1962, the overwhelming choice for top story was the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

Lottery winner distributes funds to support culture of life BALTIMORE — A Catholic woman who won $180 million in the multistate Mega Millions lottery last year put smiles on the faces of a lot of Baltimore-area Catholics when she distributed $240,000 to 10 parishes, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and Cardinal William H. Keeler’s Lenten appeal. In a Nov. 27 ceremony, the winner, Bernadette Gietka, a member of Holy Rosary Parish in Baltimore, and her mother, Catherine Gietka, handed out $10,000 checks from Mary’s Fund Foundation, which was formed a year ago with funds from the lottery winnings. Catherine Gietka, also a Holy Rosary parishioner, is president of the fund. Bernadette Gietka matched the foundation awards with her own $10,000 checks to 10 parishes, the School Sisters and the Lenten appeal. More awards will be made to other organizations that promote the culture of life.

New Atlanta archbishop says he is eager to start job ATLANTA — In his opening remarks at a press conference Dec. 9, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, just named head of the Atlanta Archdiocese, said that he was “pleased to become a loyal citizen of Atlanta and a proud resident of the state of Georgia.”

“I enter this new assignment eager to learn about the people of the archdiocese, to listen to their dreams and aspirations, and above all to encourage all of us toward a deeper love for Jesus Christ,” he said. The 57-year-old prelate, immediate past president of the U.S. bishops’ conference and head of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., for nearly 11 years, was named to Atlanta Dec. 9

(CNS PHOTO FROM REUTERS)

Catholic editors name year’s top stories, newsmakers

A member of the U.S. Navy holds a Filipino baby aboard a helicopter during the evacuation of typhoon victims in Infanta, Philippines, Dec. 9. A typhoon and three tropical storms pounded provinces east and north of the Philippine capital, Manila, in the span of two weeks, leaving an increasing death toll that topped 900, with hundreds more missing.

by Pope John Paul II. He will replace retiring Archbishop John F. Donoghue, 76, who has headed the archdiocese since 1993.

Iraqi minister says government will promote religious freedom VATICAN CITY — Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari thanked Pope John Paul II for the help he always has given the Iraqi people, and he pledged that the country’s new government would promote full religious freedom. The foreign minister met Pope John Paul II Dec. 13, exactly one year after U.S. troops captured Saddam Hussein and less than a week after an Armenian Catholic Church and a Chaldean Catholic bishop’s residence were damaged in an attack by armed men. Zebari also met with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state.

“In the course of the meetings, the situations currently existing in Iraq and in the Middle East in general were reviewed,” said a Dec. 13 statement from Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman. Zebari, he said, assured the pope of “the commitment of his government to promote religious freedom and, particularly, the defense of the Christian communities.”

Vatican firms up plans for U.S. seminary visitation in 2005 VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is consolidating plans for the much-anticipated apostolic visitation of U.S. seminaries, viewed by church officials as a crucial part of the response to the priestly sex abuse scandal. Officials now expect the visitation to begin in the fall of 2005 with the start of the school year, sources in Rome said in December. The Vatican is expected to publish

soon an “instrumentum laboris” or working questionnaire that is about three pages long. It will act as an outline for the visits to more than 100 seminaries and other institutes of formation, which are expected to take several days each. Already, the names of approximately 75 bishops and 100 priests who will carry out the visitations have been submitted and discussed by U.S. and Vatican officials. A facilitator to coordinate U.S.-Vatican contacts also will be chosen. Sometime before the process begins next fall, the Vatican expects to publish a long-awaited and potentially controversial document on whether candidates with homosexual inclinations should be admitted to the priesthood.

Archbishop urges restoration of Northern Ireland government MAYNOOTH, Ireland — Following the collapse of political talks to restore a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, a prominent Irish archbishop has called on all parties to renew efforts to complete what might be the final stage of the peace process. “I believe that the progress which has been made to date is extraordinary,” said Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland. “That progress shows that the parties are able and willing to work together. But the breakdown just short of the finishing line is disappointing. It tells us that more trust has to be built. The lesson may be, in all of this, that all parties who intend to go into government together need not only to talk, but to listen to each other. Otherwise their governing will not be as effective as it might be and will not necessarily be for the good of all the people,” the archbishop said in a statement released by the Catholic Communications Office in Maynooth.

— Catholic News Service

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December 17, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

5

Catholic Radio Hour Highlights Week of December 20-24 Weeknights at 7:30 p.m. – KVTO 1400 AM Radio Pray the Rosary – hosted by Fr. Tom Daly One half-hour of prayers, reflections and music Monday:

Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary; Sunday Soundbite; Readings for the 4th Sunday of Advent: Loren Dwyer; Bob Krebs report; Fr. Aldelmo Dunghee reflection.

Tuesday:

Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary; Fact of Faith; Saint of Day; Daily Reflections: Bishop Moreau.

(CNS PHOTO BY CHRIS SHERIDAN)

Wednesday: Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary; Ask a Franciscan; Minute Meditation.

Thursday:

Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary; NBC Special “Christmas at St. Matthew.”

Friday:

Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary; Christmas Eve program.

Prayer requests are welcome. You can help keep the rosary on the air by sending a donation to Catholic Radio Hour, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109.

Where Friendships Grow…

Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius C. Wang of San Francisco greets people outside Transfiguration Church in New York's Chinatown Dec. 12. Bishop Wang celebrated Mass at two churches, speaking Mandarin at one and a combination of Mandarin and Cantonese at the other.

He also visited with members of the Chinese community at meals held after the Masses.

Liturgy Schedules of Archbishop, Bishops ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM J. LEVADA Christmas Eve 5 p.m. Mass – Old St. Mary’s Midnight Mass – St. Mary’s Cathedral Christmas Day 11 a.m. – St. Mary’s Cathedral

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Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Marian devotion essential part of faith, says papal envoy

By Agostino Bono WASHINGTON (CNS) — A papal envoy urged U.S. Catholics to deepen their Marian devotion as an essential part of their Catholic identity and as a way of strengthening their faith.

“Maybe, in recent decades, through a wrong interpretation of the teachings recalled in the documents of Vatican II, Marian devotion has not always been assigned the place it deserves,” said Belgian Cardinal Jan Schotte.

“The time has come to revert this course.”

He said Marian devotion strengthens belief in church dogmas and teachings and helps protect against a “pick and choose” Catholicism.

The cardinal gave the homily and was the principal concelebrant Dec. 8 during a Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The Mass commemorated the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the infallible dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Other concelebrants included Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick and Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali.

Cardinal Schotte, 76, retired earlier this year as secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, but he still holds several Vatican posts including president of the Vatican’s labor office, which is responsible for overseeing the city-state’s lay work force.

Pope John Paul II named him as his delegate to the Mass, which also ended a special Marian year at the shrine that encouraged pilgrimages in honor of Mary.

Looking at the filled pews in the shrine’s upper church, Cardinal Schotte said the attendance showed that the U.S. bishops were right in 1846 when they committed the U.S. church “to cherish and to practice unwavering devotion to Mary.”

In 1846 the bishops placed U.S. Catholics under the protection of Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception says that Mary was conceived without original sin.

The bishops that year “had no doubt that the baptized Catholics would honor their baptism in their lives, that they would accept the basic truths of the Catholic faith as proposed in its dogmas, the teachings of the Holy Father and the magisterium,” the cardinal said.

They did not anticipate that “Catholics could become ‘pick and choose’ believers who would call themselves faithful Roman Catholics but who personally would reject some of the basic truths of our faith,” he said.

The cardinal said that “we should revive and strengthen our resolve to be faithful and to express unabashedly our acceptance of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.”

Marian devotion “belongs to our Catholic faith; it is an essential part of our Catholic identity,” he said.

The cardinal said that “the ultimate goal of Marian devotion is to bring us closer to Our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854 in Rome. But it was while he was living in the port city of Gaeta, 75 miles south of Rome, that he confirmed his decision to proclaim the doctrine.

The pope, at a time of mid-19th century political turmoil in Italy, decided to leave Rome and live in Gaeta under the protection of King Ferdinand II of Naples, Italy.

He arrived in Gaeta in 1848 and was attracted to the Church of the Annunciation, which had a well-known painting of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

He also was attracted to a Marian shrine in Itri, about 14 miles north of Gaeta, where he also meditated on Marian theology.

The result of these meditations was a conviction that this belief about Mary being conceived without sin should be formally defined. He decided to gather the opinion of the world’s bishops about the Immaculate Conception, and on Feb. 2, 1849, Pope Pius sent a letter to them asking for their views.

Five years later the dogma was proclaimed in Rome.

CATHOLIC STUDIES INSTITUTE (Formerly School of Pastoral Leadership) HOOL OF PASTORAL LEADERSHIP WINTER 2005 2005 SEMESTER SEMESTER WINTER (January – April 2005) SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO ST. VERONICA SCHOOL (434 Alida Way, South San Francisco, 94080) TUESDAY CLASSES 7:30 – 9:30 PM Catholic Moral Teaching Dr. Michael Torre 12-week course ($100) Dates: Jan 11, 25; Feb 1, 8, 15, 22; March 1, 8, 15, 29; April 5, 12 This course will provide an overview of Catholic moral teaching. Topics to include: the moral life as freedom in Christ; the life of grace; the nature of the human person; natural moral law; the Ten Commandments; the formation of conscience; the practice of virtue; and some contemporary issues in light of Catholic teaching.

SAN FRANCISCO ST. MONICA CHURCH (470 24th Ave, San Francisco, 94121) THURSDAY CLASSES 7:30 – 9:30 PM The Fathers of The Church: An Introduction to the First Six Centuries of Christianity Mr. Stephen Cordova 12-week course ($100) Dates: Jan 13, 20, 27; Feb 3, 10, 17, 24; March 3, 10, 17; April 7, 14 In this course, students will examine the development of the Church from the times of the first successors to the Apostles, up to the pontificate of Gregory the Great. In a combination of lectures and directed discussions of texts, students will discover what the people of the early Church believed, practiced and taught.

KENTFIELD MARIN CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL (675 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Kentfield, 94904) THURSDAY CLASSES 7:30 – 9:30 PM Catholic Apologetics Mr. Mark Brumley 12-week course ($100) Dates: Jan 20, 27; Feb 3, 10, 17, 24; March 3, 10, 17; April 7, 14, 21 This course will provide an introduction to Catholic apologetics, which studies the reasons for Catholic beliefs in order to understand them more deeply and explain them more effectively.

Special emphasis will be placed upon those Catholic beliefs that are most commonly misunderstood. Students will study common objections as well as answers to those objections. Various methods for apologetics will be examined and evaluated. Students will learn how to defend the Catholic Faith without being defensive, how to "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15).

Cardinal Schotte (right) celebrates Mass at National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8.

A Popular History of the Liturgy, Part Two: The Classical Period (4th – 9th centuries) Rev. David Anderson 12-week course ($100) Dates: Jan 20, 27; Feb 3, 10, 17, 24; March 3, 10, 17; April 7, 14, 21

THE AVENUE was developed by and is part of San Francisco Assisted Living copyright 2004, SFAL, Inc. PENDING RCFE#:385600277

This will be the second in a series of three offerings on the history of the liturgy. This course will examine the development of distinct liturgical traditions: Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Alexandria --- with special emphasis on the Roman and Byzantine traditions. Topics will also include: the sanctification of life (the sacraments or mysteries); the sanctification of time (the Liturgy of the Hours and the Church Year); the liturgical expression of the central Christian doctrines; the influence of monasticism; the flowering of art, music, and architecture; and the crisis of iconoclasm in the East. (Note: It is not necessary to have taken the first course in the series --this class will begin with a brief summary of material covered in the first course.)

COURSE REGISTRATION FORM Please complete this form and mail it with a check or money order (made payable to “Archdiocese of San Francisco”) to:

Catholic Studies Institute One Peter Yorke Way #226, San Francisco CA 94109 Phone: (415) 614-5546 ● Email: mccutchend@sfarchdiocese.org

Fax: (415) 614-5543 ● Website: www.splsf.org

Cost: $50.00 for a 6-week course; $100.00 for a 12-week course; $200.00 for a 24-week course Please PRINT: NAME: ADDRESS: PHONE: EMAIL: PARISH/AFFILIATION: NAME OF COURSE:

December 17, 2004

Young adults discover truth through Christ’s love, pope says

By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Young adults can discover the truth about themselves and the meaning of their lives by contemplating the depths of Christ’s love for them, Pope John Paul II said.

“It is possible to discover the whole truth about human life, about us, only thanks to the loving gaze of Christ,” the pope said in his homily at a Dec. 14 Mass with university students in preparation for Christmas.

An estimated 10,000 university students, and not just those studying in Rome, attended the Mass.

The pre-Christmas meeting with Pope John Paul also marked the end of a four-day convention of Catholic university students from across Europe. In addition to hundreds of Rome students, 150 university delegates from 20 other countries participated in the convention.

Pope John Paul presided over the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, while the main celebrant was Cardinal Camillo Ruini, papal vicar of Rome.

In his homily, the pope told the students that the hope and expectation that marks the Advent season should mark their whole lives as well, so that they would “be ready to meet the Lord who comes.”

During the Year of the Eucharist, he said, Catholic university students have been meditating on the connection between the sacrament and the truth about human life.

“Before the eucharistic mystery, we are called to verify the truth of our faith, our hope and our love,” he told them.

A focus on the Eucharist also must lead to a reflection on the meaning of true love, revealed by Christ when he gave his life out of love to save all creation, he said.

The pope told the students that recognizing the extent of Christ’s love leads to the questions: “And my ‘flesh’ — that is, my humanity, my existence — is it given for another? Is it filled with love for God and charity for my neighbors? Or does it remain imprisoned in an oppressing circle of selfishness?

“The Lord comes to meet us in the mystery of the Eucharist,” the pope said. “Therefore, never stop seeking him, and you will discover in his eyes an attractive reflection of the

EDUCATION

Catholic San Francisco

7

obituaries

Sister Jean Agnes Phillips, BVM

goodness and beauty he himself has sown in your hearts with the gift of his Spirit.

“May this mysterious reflection of his love be the light that always guides your path,” the pope said.

At the end of the Mass, delegates from Great Britain handed their peers from Poland an icon of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom. The icon, painted by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, was first given to university students by Pope John Paul in 2000.

Since then, it has traveled throughout Europe, becoming the focus of special prayer services in university chapels.

Close to 60 university chaplains from Italy, England, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Albania and Germany, who also participated in the students’ convention, concelebrated the Mass.

In addition to prayer services, concerts and preparations for World Youth Day in August in Cologne, Germany, the students discussed the pope’s 1998 encyclical, “Faith and Reason.”

The encyclical focused on how faith and intelligence are part of the path to discovering God, how faith should not ignore developments in the sciences and how science cannot ignore the transcendent dimension of human life.

In a separate message released by the Vatican Dec. 9, Pope John Paul II said Christians must help create an open and harmonious world where diverse cultures can thrive side by side.

The faithful must “foster, with active commitment, prospects of hope that will herald the dawn of a more open and supportive society,” the pope said in his annual message for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees.

In the United States, National Migration Week will be celebrated Jan. 2-8.

While the Christian community must still “listen for the cry of help that comes from a multitude of migrants and refugees,” the faithful must reach out with sincere respect and curiosity in learning about the culture and beliefs of others, said the pope.

He said the goal of “intercultural integration” entails firsthand contact with the newcomers, which “leads to discovering their ‘secret,’” or rather, the values and beliefs of their culture.

Being open and understanding of other cultures can result, in the long run, in a pluralistic society that reflects “the multifaceted gifts of God to human beings,” he said.

Former San Francisco educator Sister Jean Agnes Phillips, BVM, 92, died Dec. 10, at Marian Hall, Dubuque, Iowa. Sister Jean Agnes taught in San Francisco in the late 1940s at St. Brigid, Most Holy Redeemer, and St. Paul. She was archdiocesan supervisor of elementary education from 1950 to 1956. She also was a teacher and administrator in Nebraska, Oregon and Illinois. She was born Feb. 4, 1912 in Milwaukee and entered the Sisters of Charity, BVM in 1933. She is survived by two sisters, Sophia Capito and Jeane Smoller; and the Sisters of Charity, BVM, with whom she shared life for 71 years. Memorials may be given to the Sisters of Charity, BVM Retirement Fund, 1100 Carmel Dr., Dubuque, IA 52003.

Rev. Walter Anthony, C.S.P. Paulist Father Walter Anthony, died in New York City on December 11, from injuries sustained in a fall.

Father Anthony was born in Flint, Michigan Oct. 8, 1924. He served in the Navy during World War II, later attending Michigan State University. He entered the Paulist Fathers in 1949 and was ordained May 3,1956.

Father Anthony served at San Francisco’s Old St. Mary’s Cathedral on a number of occasions from 1956 through 1964. From 1972 until 1987 he directed the activities of the Paulist Center and Chapel, an outreach of the Paulists serving the City’s Financial District from Embarcadero Center. A Memorial Mass will be offered for Father Anthony at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Grant Ave. and California St. on January 3, 2005 at 4:00 p.m. A reception will follow in the Paulist Center.

In his written message, the pope said, “Christians cannot give up proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to all creation.” But he said “they must do so with respect for the conscience of others, always resorting to the method of charity.”

Carol Glantz contributed to this story.

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8

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Helping others: St. Vincent de Paul Society, St. Anthony Foundation Saint Vincent de Paul Society is a worldwide organization of lay men and women providing direct and personal assistance to the poor and those in crisis situations.

There are three county councils in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

SVDP San Mateo supports homeless help centers, visits and assistance to the homes of the needy, jail ministry and after-release care, and numerous other services to those in need throughout San Mateo County. To make a monetary donation to SVDP San Mateo call 650-373-0622. Vehicle donations can be made by calling 650-598-9148.

SVDP Marin operates a free dining room for the poor serving more than 80,000 hot meals a year. It also helps more than 1,400 clients each year with limited financial aid, referrals, food, clothing and other services. Call 415-454-3303 ext. 2 for vehicle donations. Monetary donations made online at www.vinnies.org or by mail to Saint Vincent de Paul Society, P.O. Box 150527, San Rafael, CA 94915.

SVDP San Francisco has served the poor for more than 140 years. Among other services it provides a senior lowincome residential community, shelter and care for women

and children who are victims of domestic violence, substance abuse detox and recovery for more than 25,000 people a year, and a homeless shelter and food program.

Monetary donations can be sent to 425 4th St., San Francisco, CA 94107. For vehicle donations call 415-9771270 ext. 4. SVDP San Francisco is also in need of warm men’s clothing. For food or clothing donations call 415202-9955.

Saint Anthony Dining room was opened October 4, 1950

by Franciscan Friar Alfred Boeddeker. More than 30 million meals later, St. Anthony Foundation now also provides a free medical clinic, employment programs, clothing and furniture program, and other services to the poor, seniors and families.

St. Anthony is 100 percent supported by private donations.

To make a monetary contribution, donations should be sent to St. Anthony Foundation, 121 Golden Gate Ave., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94102. Volunteers wearing red jackets will be accepting donations of food and clothing outside 119 Golden Gate Ave. Dec. 18,19 and 25 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and Dec. 20, 21, 22, 24 from 8:00 a.m. to 6: p.m.

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‘Mosaic’ TV program airs Jan 2 on KPIX - Channel 5 A nationally distributed short documentary on criminal justice will be shown and discussed on the “Mosaic” TV program airing Jan. 2 at 5 a.m. on KPIX—Channel 5.

George Wesolek, head of Public Policy and Social Concerns

650-212-5050

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for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, talks with host Maury Healy about the documentary, which brings a Catholic perspective to criminal justice issues. Mr. Wesolek’s office sponsored the film, “Restorative Justice-A Catholic Perspective.”

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Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

9

Music of the Season St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough and Geary St., San Francisco, featuring the voices of the St. Mary’s Cathedral Choir. For more information, call (415) 567-2020, ext. 213.

Dec 19: Organ Recital by Christoph Tietze at 3:30 p.m. Works by Bach, Pachelbel, and Dupre.

Dec 24: Caroling Concert at 7:30 p.m. with the Cathedral Choir of Boys and Girls.

Vigil Mass for Christmas at 8:00 p.m.

Dec. 24: Caroling Concert, Cathedral Choir at 11:30 p.m. with Mass of Christmas at midnight.

Dec 25: Christmas Day Masses featuring Gregorian Chant at 9 a.m.; the Cathedral Choir at 11 a.m. and at 1 p.m. in Spanish with the music of Coro.

Dec 26: Organ Recital by David Hatt at 3:30 p.m.

National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, Columbus and Vallejo St., San Francisco featuring the voices of the Shrine’s acclaimed a cappella ensemble Schola Cantorum. For more information, call (415) 983-0405.

Dec. 19: Christmas in the City, an annual Carol Concert at 4 p.m.

Dec. 24: Festival of Lessons and Carols at 4 p.m. with a music prelude to the Christmas Midnight Mass beginning at 11:30 p.m.

Dec. 25: Christmas Day Mass at 12:15 p.m.

Dec. 26: Mass commemorating the Feast of the Holy Family at 12:15 p.m. with Solemn Vespers at 3:15 p.m. Organist David Schofield can be heard in concert at 4 p.m.

Dec. 31: New Year’s Eve organ recital by John Renke, Shrine music director, with Mass at 11 p.m. and Blessing of the City at midnight.

Jan. 1: Mass commemorating the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God at 12:15 p.m.

Jan. 2: Mass commemorating the Epiphany of the Lord at 12:15 p.m. with Solemn Vespers at 3:15 p.m. and an Epiphany Carol Service at 4 p.m.

Jan. 2: An Evening of Enchanted Music at Kohl Mansion January 2nd benefiting Catherine’s Center, a transitional residence for women leaving incarceration. Program features the voices of Schola Cantorum, the acclaimed vocal ensemble of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. Evening begins at 7 p.m. at Kohl on campus of Mercy High School, 2750 Adeline Dr. in Burlingame.

Tickets $100 per person. Call (650) 345-7021.

Please also consider the following liturgies and events.

Dec. 19: The Mission Dolores Basilica Choir will perform their 13th annual Candlelight Christmas Concert at 7pm. Under the direction of Jerome Lenk, and accompanied by a chamber orchestra and organ, the world traveled choir will perform traditional European and American carols and will conclude with their very popular sing-a-long of familiar carols for everyone to enjoy. A candlelight reception will follow the concert.

Tickets are $25.00 for reserved orchestra, $15.00 general and $12.00 student/senior.

The Basilica is located at 16th and Dolores in San Francisco. Free parking available. For more information call 415-621-8203.

Dec. 20, 21: Do You Hear What I hear?

A Christmas Concert featuring the voices of the Our Lady of Loretto and St. Anthony of

Approximately 3,000 Spanish-speaking Catholics participated in an annual march in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Dec. 4. The group began the march at All Souls Church in South San Francisco and walked more than 12 miles to St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Auxiliary Bishop John Wester joined the group for part of the pilgrimage and celebrated Mass at the cathedral. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was Dec. 12.

Padua parish choirs as well as a children’s ensemble. “The music will be inspiring and joy filled,” said Cathie Peters, music director at St. Anthony. Richard Elliott directs the music program at Our Lady of Loretto.

The curtain goes up on the holiday songfest at 7: 30 p.m. Dec. 20th at St. Anthony, 1000 Cambridge Rd., and Dec. 21st at Our Lady of Loretto, 1806 Novato Blvd. Call (415) 883-2177. A $10 donation is requested.

Dec. 24: Chamber Music and Carols at 11 p.m. with Christmas Mass at midnight at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, California and Grant, San Francisco – this year celebrating its 150th

CHRISTMAS LITURGIES HOLIDAY GREETINGS

St. Anthony

from

1000 Cambridge St., Novato, CA

CHRISTMAS 2004

OUR LADY OF THE PILLAR CHURCH

Confessions at St. Anthony’s

400 Church Street, Half Moon Bay

December 18 December 24

December 20, Reconciliation 7:00 p.m.

December 24, Christmas Eve Mass 5:00 p.m. (English)

4:00 PM to 4:45 PM 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM

MASSES Christmas Eve December 24

December 25, Christmas Day 12 midnight, 7:45 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 11:15 a.m.

12:45 p.m. (Español)

5:00 PM Children’s Mass 7:00 PM Christmas Music 7:30 PM Mass 9:30 PM Chirstmas Music 10:00 PM Mass No Midnight Mass

ST. ANTHONY’S, PESCADERO_ December 24, Christmas Eve 5:00 p.m. (Español)

Christmas Day December 25 7:00 AM 9:00 AM 11:00 AM

December 25, Christmas Day 9:00 a.m.

Mass Mass Mass

New Years Day January 1, 2005

OUR LADY OF THE REFUGE, LA HONDA_

9:00 AM

December 25, Christmas Day 10:45 a.m.

Please let us know of any parishioners that should be visited for the Sacraments.

610 VALLEJO ST. @ COLUMBUS SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133 (415) 983-0405 3:15 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

www.ShrineSF.org Solemn Vespers* “Christmas in the City” Annual Carol Concert by The Schola Cantorum

3:15 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

11:30 p.m.

Solemn First Vespers of Christmas* Festival of Lessons and Carols* Vigil followed by the Midnight Mass of Christmas

December 25

12:15 p.m.

Solemn Mass of Christmas Day*

December 26

12:15 p.m.

3:15 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Solemn Mass, Feast of the Holy Family* Solemn Vespers* Organ recital by David Schofield

December 31

10:15 p.m.

11:00 p.m.

Organ recital by John Renke Solemn Mass and Blessing of the City at Midnight

January 1

12:15 p.m.

Solemn Mass - Mary, Mother of God*

January 2

12:15 p.m.

3:15 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Solemn Mass - The Epiphany of the Lord* Solemn Vespers* Epiphany Carol Service*

December 19

December 24

CHRISTMAS WEEK LITURGIES

Friday, December 24, 2004 8 a.m. Morning Mass 9:30 p.m. Carol Service 10 p.m. Christmas Vigil Mass Saturday, December 25, 2004 8 a.m. Christmas Mass 10 a.m. Christmas Mass There is no evening Mass.

Friday, December 31, 2004 8 a.m. Morning Mass 5:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve Mass

God’s Inclusive Love Proclaimed Here!

CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARY OF THE ASSUMPTION 1111 Gough St., San Francisco, • Tel: (415) 567-2020

Saturday, December 18, 2004 The Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) 4:00 p.m. -5:00 p.m.

Fourth Sunday of Advent December 19, 2004 Blessing of Expectant Parents at all Masses Masses

Saturday, December 18 - 5:30 p.m.

Sunday 7:30 a.m. - Cantor and Organ 9:00 a.m. - Gregorian Chant - Cathedral Schola 11:00 a.m. - Cathedral Choir 1:00 p.m. - Spanish - Coro

Thursday, December 23 The Cathedral will be closed following the 12:10 p.m.

Mass for Christmas preparations

Mass

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year. Features the voices of the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral Choir. Old St. Mary’s will commemorate its special birthday with events January 21, 22, and 23 including a Mass of Thanksgiving with Archbishop William J. Levada presiding. Call (415) 288-3800.

Dec. 31/Jan. 1: Welcoming in the New Year, an opportunity to reflect on the gifts of the past year and look forward to gifts yet to come with Father Patrick Collins at Vallombrosa Center, 250 Oak Grove Ave., Menlo Park. Call (650) 325-5614.

Check with your parish for special liturgies and music programs.

* The Shrine’s Schola Cantorum sings at these services.

Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord Friday, December 24, 2004 7:30 p.m. - Caroling with the Cathedral Choirs of Boys and Girls 8:00 p.m. - Mass - Rev. John Talesfore, Cathedral Administrator, Principal Celebrant 11:30 p.m - Caroling - Cathedral Choir and Brass Ensemble 12:00 a.m - Midnight Mass

Archbishop William Levada, Principal Celebrant

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord Christmas Day Saturday, December 25, 2004 9:00 a.m. - Gregorian Chant 11:00 a.m. - Cathedral Choir Archbishop Levada, Principal Celebrant 1:00 p.m. - Spanish Coro The Cathedral will close for the Day at 3:00 p.m.

10

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Trappist monks win praise for fruitcake — a Christmas tradition

By Kathleen Choi (CNS) — The English call it Christmas cake. Aussies ask for Celebration cake, but whatever the name, and despite the jokes associated with it, fans buy 21 million fruitcakes a year.

And in reviews for the best fruitcakes, one name stands out — Trappist. Fruitcake from Trappist monasteries wins the praises of gourmet food reviewers everywhere.

The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post daily newspapers and Sunset, Newsday, and Gourmet magazines all recommend fruitcake made at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Lafayette, Ore. The Trappists there claim that their fruitcakes are “heavy, rich cakes — not so much dough as there are fruit and nuts. The dough itself is rich, not ‘cakey’ or airy. The fruitcake contains pineapple, cherries, raisins, California walnuts, honey, pecans, and whole fresh eggs from our neighbor’s farm.”

It’s baked for three hours, dipped in brandy, and aged for three months. Reviewers call it rich, nutty, moist and not too sweet.

Trappist Brother Patrick Corkrean said preparing gourmet food “seems to work as a monastic industry, since it seems easy to establish some kind of niche.”

And although the bakers at Guadalupe work hard, they still cannot supply all the fruitcake Christmas shoppers demand. Fortunately, other Trappist communities produce their own versions.

The monks at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va., “unconditionally guarantee that their fruitcake is the best you’ll ever eat or cheerfully refund your money.”

The monks’ fruitcake business at Holy Cross Abbey began when one of the brothers started making cakes for abbey benefactors and friends. In 1985, with income from bread sales dropping, the brothers began marketing the fruitcake. They have steadily expanded their production to almost 25,000 cakes annually. This year they added “fraters” (frater is “brother” in Latin), which are slices of fruitcake dipped in chocolate.

The oldest Trappist community in the United States is the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Ky. Its monks, too, produce a fabulous fruitcake, which can be ordered at www.gethsemanifarms.org. The Wall Street Journal voted it the “best overall” for quality and value in 1998. The Food Network on cable TV spread the news farther. The secret, according to its bakers, is the Kentucky bourbon that permeates the fruit and nuts.

The other Trappist powerhouse in the fruitcake world is

Assumption Abbey in Ava, Mo. The fruitcake is so popular that they no longer even advertise it. Last year they sold 30,000 two-pound fruitcakes steeped in burgundy and rum.

Trappist Brother Chaminade Crabtree from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga., said his monastery recently became involved in fruitcake production as a way to “create income for our growing expenses, particularly in the area of health of our elder monks.

Fruitcakes seemed like the logical choice when we looked at the success of the other monasteries.”

Monks, of course, don’t brag. But he was quick to add that his monastery makes “one of the best fruitcakes on the market.”

Trappist Brother Basil Arsenio, who worked on the recipe for the fruitcake and manages the bakery at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, said this particular cake is not “typical or traditional.”

“When people taste it, they get that warm taste in the throat and then they get a warm aftertaste,” he added.

That taste is not reserved solely for the customers either.

As Brother Chaminade put it: “We know self-denial, but we also know celebration.”

Visit website www.monasterygreetings.com for a selection of monastery-made gifts.

CHRISTMAS LITURGIES ST. TERESA OF AVILA CHURCH

ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH

Confessions: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Children’s Mass: 5:00 p.m.

Christmas Carols at 9:30 p.m.

Evening Mass: 10:00 p.m.

First Mass of Christmas December 24, 2004 10:00 PM

Mass: 10:00 a.m. & 5:00 Vigil Mass for Sunday, Jan. 2.

New Year’s Day Mass

Traditional Christmas Music at all Masses

Please feel free to call us at 415-285-5272 if you have questions.

St. Francis of Assisi Church Mass Schedule For For Christmas and New New Year Confessions Friday, December 24, 2004 From 10:30 am to 12:00 pm and from 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Masses

Saturday, December 25, 2004 Masses 7:30 am English 9:30 am Spanish 11:30 am English 1:30 am Spanish

Saturday, January 1, 2004 Masses 7:30 am English 9:30 am Spanish 11:30 am English 1:30 am Spanish 6:00 pm Spanish For Sundays regular schedule

880 Tamarack Avenue San Carlos, CA 94070 650-591-7349

St. Gabriel Church 2559-40th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116 (415) 731-6161

ONE NOTRE DAME AVE. SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA

Advent/Christmas 2004

Christmas Schedule 2004

Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confessions) Monday, December 20, 7:00 pm Communal Reconciliation

Daily: 5:00 – 5:30 p.m. in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel

6:00 pm Bi-lingual Children’s Mass Midnight Bi-lingual

12:00 midnight English Mass 7:30, 9:00, 10:30 a.m. English Mass 12:00 noon Cantonese Mass

ST. MATTHEW

CONFESSIONS

Friday, December 24, 2004

Feast of Mary, Mother of God Saturday, January 1 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Join us, for the Nativity Celebration of our Lord...

Come Home for Christmas!

Friday, December 24:

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon; 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

MASSES Christmas Eve, December 24: 5:30, 7:30 p.m. (Spanish) and Midnight Christmas Carols begin at 11:30 p.m.

Christmas Day, December 25: 6:30, 7:30, 9:00 (Spanish), 10:30a.m. and 12:30p.m.

NEW YEAR’S DAY Masses will be offered at

6:30, 8:15 a.m. and 12:05 p.m.

ST. THOMAS MORE CHURCH 415-452-9634 1300 Juniperro Serra Blvd.

San Francisco, CA 94132

CHRISTMAS SCHEDULE International Christmas Novena: (Simbang Gabi): 7:00 PM December 15th to the 24th

Thursday December 16th: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Confessions

Friday, December 24th: 5:00 PM Children’s Mass 7:00 PM English Mass 9:00 PM Arabic Mass 12:00 English Midnight Mass

Saturday, December 25th: 10:00 AM English Mass 11:45 AM Arabic Mass 8:00 PM English Mass

Sunday, December 26th: 8:15 AM Portuguese-Brazilian Mass 10:00 AM English Mass 11:45 AM Arabic Mass 8:00 pm English Mass

Family Mass Choir Concert

Christmas Day, December 25

CATHOLIC CHURCH

1425 Bay Road, East Palo Alto 650/322-2152

Masses on New Year’s Day

5:00 p.m.

11:15 p.m.

New Year’s Day, Saturday, January 1, 2005

January 1, 2005 10:00 AM

Saturday, December 25 7:30 a.m. – Cantors 9:00 a.m. – Adult Choir 11:30 – Cantors

Christmas Eve, December 24

Masses: 8:00, 10:00, and 11:15 a.m. (Spanish at the convent chapel)

Christmas Day

Mass on Christmas Day

Friday, December 17, 7:30 - 8:30 p.m.

Christmas Day, Saturday, December 25

December 25, 2004 10:00 AM

Friday, December 24 5:00 p.m. – Children’s Choir 7:30 p.m. – Contemporary Ensemble 10:00 p.m. – Adult Choir

Community Penance Service

Christmas Eve, Friday, December 24

Wednesday December 15, 2004 7:30 PM

Mass on Christmas Eve

2004 Christmas Schedule

Friday, December 24

Advent Penance Service

Christmas 2004

850 Judah St., S.F., 415-665-1600

CHRISTMAS SERVICES 2004

CHRISTMAS 2004

St. Charles Church

St.Anne of the Sunset Church

725 Diamond Street 415-282-0141

On Potrero Hill 19th at Connecticut Sts. San Francisco

Christmas Masses Christmas Eve (Wednesday, December 24) 4:00 pm Christmas Vigil Mass. Guitar Accompanist.

5:30 pm Christmas Carols with Children’s Choir.

6:00 pm Family Mass. Children’s Choir 11:30 pm Christmas Carols with Adult Choir.

12:00 am Christmas Midnight Mass.

Adult Choir and Brass Ensemble.

Christmas Day (Thursday, December 25) 7:00 am Christmas Mass at Dawn.

8:30 am Cantor.

10:00 am Adult Choir and Brass Ensemble.

11:30 am Adult Choir and Brass Ensemble.

No evening Mass.

CHRISTMAS AT ST. CECILIA Seventeenth Avenue and Vicente Street

Live Broadcast www.stcecilia.com CHRISTMAS EVE MASSES 5:00 P.M. - MSGR. MICHAEL HARRIMAN 8:00 P.M. - FR. JOE LANDI AND CHILDREN’S CHOIR 11:15 P.M. - SINGING OF CAROLS MIDNIGHT - MSGR. MICHAEL HARRIMAN AND CLERGY WITH CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA

CHRISTMAS DAY MASSES 7:30 A.M. - FR. VITO PERRONE ANNA MARIA MENDIETA, HARPIST 9:30 A.M - FAMILY MASS - MSGR. MICHAEL HARRIMAN 11:00 A.M. - FR. JOE LANDI WITH CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA 12:30 P.M. - FR. JOE LANDI WITH THE GOSPEL JUBILATION SINGERS NO EVENING MASS ON CHRISTMAS DAY WITH

December 17, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

11

Holy Days of Obligation – 2005 – The following feast days will be observed as Holy Days of Obligation in the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2005.

November 1 – All Saints Day December 8 – Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary December 25 – Christmas

Good Shepherd School in Pacifica was honored recently by the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County for its efforts on behalf of the hungry. The student-based program provides 100 lunches weekly for Café St. Vincent in South San Francisco. The school also gathers supplies for SVDP’s homeless help centers including socks, underwear, blankets and toiletries. Shown with members of the school community are Jeannine Ratti, program coordinator, and Patricia Volan, principal.

Related notes: January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, falls on a Saturday and is not a holy day of obligation.

According to the 1992 general decree of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the precept to attend Mass is dispensed when this solemnity falls on a Saturday or Monday.

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is observed on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 8, as approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and confirmed by the Congregation for Bishops for the San Francisco Metropolitan Province.

August 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, falls on a Monday and is not a holy day of obligation. According to the 1992 general decree of the USCCB, the precept to attend Mass is dispensed when this solemnity falls on a Saturday or Monday.

Mater Dolorosa Church

Catholic WISHES YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS san Francisco AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

307 Willow Avenue, South San Francisco, CA 94080

CHRISTMAS 2004 Sacrament of Reconciliation Individual Confessions Saturdays – 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.

FAMILY PENANCE SERVICE Monday, December 20th, 7:30 p.m.

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

CHRISTMAS LITURGIES

ST. BARTHOLOMEW PARISH COMMUNITY Corner of Alameda and Crystal Springs Road San Mateo Ca. 94402 ● Office: (650) 347-0701 Tuesday, December 21st: Advent Reconciliation Service – 7:30 pm

Friday, December 24th: Christmas Eve Children’s Mass – 4:00 & 6:00 pm Midnight Mass with Festival Choir – 12:00 am (Please bring a bell to all the Christmas Eve Masses) Christmas Day – 8:00, 9:30, 11:15 am

St. Dominic’s Catholic Church

December 26: December 31: January 1: January 2: On Steiner at Bush (parking available)

415-567-7824

Saints Peter and Paul Church

Confessions Saturday, December 18 – 3:30-4:15 p.m.

Friday, December 24 – 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Christmas Eve Masses Friday 4:30 p.m. “Family Vigil Mass” 12 o’clock Midnight Mass – Carols and choir music at 11:30 p.m.

Christmas Day Masses Saturday 8:00, 9:30 & 11:30 a.m. – Carols and choir music at 9:15 a.m.

There is no evening Mass on Christmas Day Sunday Dec. 26 Masses – 8:00, 9:30, 11:30 a.m. and 6:45 p.m.

www.stdominics.org

New Year’s Day Mass – 9:30 a.m.

601 Eucalyptus Drive (at 23rd Avenue)

Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church 1721 Hillside Drive, Burlingame Capuchin Franciscans 650-347-7768

Christmas Eve 4:00 to 5:00 PM 5:00 PM 11:15 PM Midnight Midnight

Confessions Mass (English) Christmas Carols Mass (English) Mass (Chinese)

Christmas Day Masses 7:30 AM 8:45 AM 10:15 AM 11:45 AM 1:00 PM

English English Chinese Italian English

Please Note: First Sunday of every month 11:45 Mass in Latin with Gregorian Chant.

Parking is available.

666 Filbert St. at Washington Square 421-0809

2005 NEW YEAR 2005

ST. STEPHEN CATHOLIC CHURCH

December 24: CHRISTMAS EVE – MASSES

5:30 p.m. - Family Mass 11:15 p.m. - Christmas Carols followed by MIDNIGHT MASS CHRISTMAS DAY – MASSES 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. (español) FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY Regular Sunday Mass and Confession Schedule NEW YEAR’S EVE – MASSES 6:00, 8:00 a.m., 5:30 p.m.

NEW YEAR’S DAY – MASS 9:30 a.m.

EPIPHANY OF THE LORD Regular Sunday Mass and Confession Schedule

Christmas Eve, Friday, Dec. 24th 5:00 p.m. and 12 midnight Christmas Day, Saturday, Dec. 25th 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12 p.m.

NO evening Mass on Chirstmas Day New Year’s Day, Saturday, January 1st 10:00 a.m. Solemnity of Mary

Saturday, December 25th:

December 25:

MASSES

We gather to worship in the Christmas Season:

St. Dunstan Church 1133 Broadway Millbrae, CA 94030

2004 Christmas Schedule

650-697-4730

Christmas Eve 5:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m. (Children’s Mass) Midnight Mass

Christmas Celebration at St. Dunstan 2004

Christmas Day 8:00, 10:00 and 12 noon Confessions Saturday, December 18, 3:30-4:45 p.m.

Friday, December 24, 3:00-4:00 p.m.

New Years Day Masses at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.

The Capuchin Franciscans & Parish Staff wish our Parishioners and Friends Peace, Love and Hope for Christmas and the New Year

Christmas Eve Masses 4:00 pm 11:00 pm 11:30 pm

Children’s Mass with Pageant Parish Christmas Carols with Scripture Readings Mass with Carols

Christmas Day Masses 7:00 am, 8:30 am, 10:00 am, 11:30 am 5:00 pm Vigil Mass

Sunday, December 26 7:00 am, 8:30 am, 10:00 am, 11:30 am No 5:00 pm Mass

12

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Year of the Eucharist

Christ-Mass As we do our best to stem the tide of commercialism in this season, many Christians strive to “put the Christ back into Christmas.” The year of the Eucharist invites us to put the Mass back into Christmas. Many people, and not all of them Catholic, come to Mass on Christmas. What is the connection between the birth of Jesus and the celebration of the Eucharist?

It is a matter of memories. But if we are to understand something of the power of the liturgy, we must examine what we mean by “memory.” Christmas conjures up recollections of childhood, and the vivid images and customs of the season resonate deeply in our hearts: Christmas trees and carols, bright lights and festive presents, the manger scene … all these things bring us back to our past. Human memory is a gift of God, and is sacred.

But the “memory” of the Eucharist is something different: it does not carry us back to the past, it brings the past into the present. A clue to this mystery is a tiny word sprinkled throughout the liturgical prayers for Christmas: “today.” Today Christ is born! It is not “as if” we were transported back to Bethlehem two thousand years ago; rather, the event of His birth is made present here and now. To understand what this means, we need to employ a somewhat technical word: anamnesis.

The Greek word can be translated “remembrance,” but it means far more than its English translation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the anamnesis is a proclamation of the mighty works of salvation God has accomplished for us in Christ, and that “in the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real.” (CCC 1363) The whole mystery of Christ’s life and work becomes present here and now, so that we can enter into it. The roots of this kind of “remembrance” are found in the

HOLY NAME OF JESUS 39th & Lawton, San Francisco 2004

CHRISTMAS SCHEDULE CHRISTMAS EVE Friday, December 24 MASSES 5:00 p.m. (Family/Children’s Mass) 7:00 p.m. (Vietnamese Mass) 11:30 p.m. Christmas Carols with Holy Name Choral Ministry 12:00 MIDNIGHT Pontifical High Mass Most Rev. Ignatius C. Wang, Main Celebrant CHRISTMAS DAY Saturday, December 25 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m.

NO VIGIL MASS AT 5:00 P.M. ON DEC. 25 Sunday, December 26 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m.

5:15 p.m. Vietnamese Mass NEW YEAR’S DAY Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God (Not a Holy Day of Obligation) Saturday, January 1 – 11:00 a.m.

5 P.M. VIGIL MASS FOR SUNDAY CONFESSIONS Saturday, Dec. 18, 2004 4:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004 1/ before 7:30, 9:30 & 11:30 a.m. Masses Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 7 – 8 p.m.

2

Passover celebration. When the Jewish people gather for this feast, they are not simply commemorating their deliverance from Egypt three thousand years ago: they are taking part in the event. All the more is this true for us in regard to Christ who by virtue of His death and resurrection has broken through the limitations of time and space.

Each human life, with all of its stages and divisions, possesses an organic unity: you and I are the same persons we were ten years ago, or eighty. The human life of Jesus began at His conception (and His pre-history as the Son of God stretches back into eternity), and continues after His resurrection. Since Christ is truly present in our liturgical “remembrance,” it is the whole mystery of His life which is present: birth, childhood, preaching, death, resurrection, ascension, return in glory.

In her liturgy, the Church contemplates the broad sweep of Christ’s life and dwells lovingly on the details.

A difference in emphasis has found expression in two diverse traditions which gave shape to the Eucharistic Prayer. In the East, the tendency was to have a variety of Eucharistic Prayers, but to commemorate all of the major events of Christ’s life in each of them. (A good example is our Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, which is based on the Anaphora of St. Basil.) In the West, the Roman practice was to have one Eucharistic Prayer with changeable elements which highlight different aspects of the mystery of Christ throughout the liturgical year.

Primarily this variable element comes toward the beginning of the Prayer (the section called the Preface), but on major feasts other references to the feast are woven into the text, as at Christmas in the prayer which begins, “In union with the whole Church…”. In either form of Eucharistic Prayer, it is the whole mystery of Christ which is made present, and the liturgical year in both

Worship with us in Westlake!

Our Lady of Mercy Parish 5 Elmwood Dr., Daly City Between South Mayfair and Southgate Avenues, with plenty of free parking!

❄ Mon., Dec. 20 to Thurs., Dec. 23: Simbang Gabi celebrations all four nights!

7:30 p.m. Simbang Gabi Masses, 8:30 p.m. Reception in our Church Hall.

St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus – Giudo Reni, 1635.

East and West invites us to celebrate one facet or another of that mystery.

Some years ago a priest preached one Christmas: “There is no baby Jesus, there is only the risen Lord.” One supposes he was trying to move his congregation from sentiment to faith, and what he said is certainly true. But it is also true that, had there been no baby Jesus there would be no risen Lord; and the reality of that birth is part of who the risen Lord is. Through the anamnesis of the liturgy, Christ is born for us today. Come, let us adore Him! Part of a series presented by the Liturgical Commission of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

CHRISTMAS LITURGIES

❄ Friday, December 24: 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass with our Children’s Choir 5:30 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass with our Young Adult Guitar Group 11:30 p.m. Sing-Along Christmas Carols with our Parish Choir 12:00 a.m. Midnight Mass with our Choir

❄ Saturday, December 25: Christmas Day Masses at 7:30 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m. with Parish Choir, and 12:00 p.m.

St. Monica Parish Geary Boulevard at 23rd Avenue, San Francisco CHRISTMAS MASS SCHEDULE 2004 CONFESSIONS Saturday, December 18th

CHRISTMAS EVE – December 24th 5:00 p.m.

Family Mass with Children’s Choir & Nativity Play 11:30 p.m.

Choral Concert and Carol Singing 12:00 Midnight Solemn Mass

CHRISTMAS DAY – December 25th 8:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Adult Choir – 12:00 Noon No evening Mass Sunday December 26th 8:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon

NEW YEAR’S DAY 10:30 a.m.

Catholic San Francisco wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Saint Agnes Invites you to celebrate the

Sacrament of Reconciliation Wednesday, December 22nd 9:00 AM until 7:00 PM If you have been thinking about going to Confession, this may be the day for you. In preparation for Christmas, St. Agnes Parish provides an inviting environment for all who wish to celebrate this Sacrament. Confessors will be available throughout the day. All are welcome.

(Parking is available in our lots on Oak Street, just west of Masonic Ave)

1025 Masonic Avenue San Francisco, CA (415) 487-8560 www.saintagnessf.com

Inclusive ✝ Diverse ✝ Jesuit

3:30 – 4:45 p.m.

No 8:30 a.m. Mass and no evening Mass

FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY – Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. (Cantonese) – 10:30 a.m. Adult Choir – 12:00 noon Evening Prayer and Benediction – 4:00 p.m.

December 17, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

13

Guest Commentary

Time and Newsweek put the Gospels to the test

By George Sim Johnston The newsweeklies discovered long ago that Jesus Christ sells magazines. So it is not surprising to find him on the covers of Time and Newsweek a few weeks before Christmas. The Time cover promises the “secrets” of the Nativity, thereby beckoning “Da Vinci Code”-hunters; but fortunately the article itself, an earnest attempt to sort out what happened in Palestine 2,000 years ago, is not quite so silly as Dan Brown’s best-selling novel.

What are we to make of the Gospel accounts of the Nativity? For a Christian, of course, they are true, an article of faith. But faith does not preclude looking at them as historical and literary documents. If God is the author of Scripture, he nonetheless makes full use of the habits of mind and expression of the men writing these accounts. Luke, for example, was a highly educated Gentile, and he used some Roman literary models to tell his story. But that does not mean he made it up.

Since the late 18th century, there has been a scholarly assault on the four Gospels, and some of the “experts” quoted

by Time and Newsweek are simply bringing up the rear of this cultural offensive. Enlightenment intellectuals like Voltaire and Diderot could not accept Christ as a divine person. But since he is clearly presented as such in the Gospels, the idea was to deconstruct the texts themselves. Scholars accordingly came up with a storyline that goes something like this: There was this charismatic religious teacher—an itinerant rabbi, a political revolutionary—who wandered about first-century Palestine saying some wonderful things but who certainly was not God. After he died, his followers

took the sayings of Jesus and put them in a book. Later, the so-called Gospel writers took this document (which we don’t have) and added a lot of mythological material about miracles and claims of Christ’s divinity. The role of the scholar, then, is to strip away these mythological elements to get to the “historical Jesus”—who ends up bearing a curious resemblance to the scholar writing the book.

Needless to say, these critics pare down the Nativity story until there is nothing left. If you read the Gospels with the assumption that miracles do not happen, then the Annunciation, the Virgin Birth and the angels’ appearance to the shepherds will end up on the cutting-room floor. While they’re at it, these scholars question some purely historical details, such as the place of Jesus’ birth. Time claims that a “majority” of scholars now favor Nazareth as the scene of the Nativity.

But these scholars don’t even bother to look at certain ancient sources. In the early third century, for example, Origen, one of the most brilliant men of his age, could write: “In Bethlehem you are shown the cave where he was born. . . . These things which they show you are recognized in the district.” This is not perhaps clinching evidence; but people back then did have long memories, so why not accept this as corroboration of what the Gospel writers calmly report to be true?

Mark and John give no details of Jesus’ birth, so that leaves Matthew and Luke. While the ancient Roman historian Livy makes it clear that he does not take the story of Romulus and Remus seriously, Matthew and Luke are writing of events, angels and all, with the conviction of truth. Luke in particular gives the impression of being a meticulous fact-gatherer. So where did he get the details of the Annunciation? Twice he says

that Mary “kept in mind all these things, pondering them in her heart.” An indication, perhaps, of his best source. Some early Church Fathers write that Mary outlived her son by many years.

In the end, it is more profitable to contemplate the Gospels than to make them the sport of learned suspicions.

We find around the crèche (a Christmas devotion more or less invented by St. Francis) the shepherds and the Magi of the Gospels. These were real people, which does not preclude their representing something much larger than themselves.

From plastic tableaux under Christmas trees, we tend to have an idealized image of those shepherds. But one historian writes: “To the right-minded in high places, mountain shepherds were the very scum of Israel, men of violence, thieves, perjurers, scorners of the Law.” As would be the case with Mary Magdalene, Christ is reaching out especially to people whom everyone else has written off.

As for the Magi, who arrive on the scene a few days late: I rather like the prayer that Evelyn Waugh writes about them for the heroine of his novel “Helena”: “You are my especial patrons,” she says, “. . . and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation. . . . For his sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.”

May we not include among the learned and oblique a few biblical scholars?

Mr. Johnston is a writer in New York. The article originally appeared in Wall Street Journal Online.

Family Life

Do you see what I see?

I hope I don’t get in trouble for telling you that my family is a big bunch of cheaters. We love to play games and we watch very carefully to see who’s stacking the deck; who’s sneaking a peek at the cards or moving the little Monopoly shoe just over into the next space?

You should also know I’m a big fan of Christmas.

(Recently I posted a poll on our family website about favorite Christmas characters. All the usual suspects were there, Rudolph, Santa, Jesus, Ralphie. My sister responded that her favorite Christmas character wasn’t in the list. She meant me.)

So, when a well-meaning soul tells me I should really be present to Advent and not jump right into the Christmas spirit, I suspect they think I’m cheating.

I remember a Christmas in the early 70’s. I got Battleship, the classic naval game of seek and destroy. “You sunk my battleship!” The refrain from the commercial echoes as I remember playing this game with my older brother, Pete.

Pete and I were, um, how to say this, arch-enemies, for the most part during our childhood. Three years older than me, we were perfectly separated by age, if by perfect you mean that he had the upper hand and I was an annoying little sister! This is how we were: he’d punch me; I’d tattle. He’d punch me for tat-

tling; I’d call him a creep. Then he’d punch me and I’d, well, you get the picture.

Anyway, so there we are playing Battleship together: a perfect game for the two warring kids. Sitting on the floor near the tree, we’re wearing blue t-shirts with our first names emblazoned on the front and our last names on the back in white. A classic photo has all six of us lined up against the faux wood paneling wearing these t-shirts from our Great-Aunt Anne. This is what I love about Christmas. For one day, at least, we all try to get along. Pete and I playing a game lounging on that shag carpet surrounded by wrapping paper remnants and empty shirt boxes.

That was also the year my Mom got a Polaroid Instamatic camera. It was magic, a photo developing right before your eyes.

This was high technology! Mom snapped photo after photo that day. Well, there they are sitting on the bookcase and Pete gets up, periodically, to check out the new ones. I don’t realize until I’ve lost my last two-peg patrol boat that something fishy has been going on. Uh, huh, there’s a picture of my side of that board up there! It’s Christmas, however. So after the brief storm, we laugh and go on to play another game. I still love this memory.

We sing “O Come, Emmanuel” and pray for Jesus to return with justice. Still, Jesus was already born. As we celebrate this

season of expectation, I also celebrate that Christ has been born already. I celebrate Advent in the midst of preparing for Christmas. I listen to Christmas music from Thanksgiving on, and I pray with Advent reflecSister tions. I put up my Great Grandmother’s shiny alu- Christine Wilcox minum tree and I light the advent candles.

When my brother and I played together that Christmas, no matter how imperfectly, we were living Christmas. And that is a treasured moment in my collection of holiday memories. Living Christmas helped us to move on from our sibling animosity; we found a way to laugh and play the game again.

I don’t think it’s cheating to celebrate Christmas everyday.

Dominican Sister Christine Wilcox is engaged in post-graduate studies at GTU in Berkeley.

The Catholic Difference Why is the Solemnity of Christmas followed immediately by the feast of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr; then by the feast of St. John the Evangelist, who suffered the living martyrdom of exile; then by the feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs; and then by the commemoration of St. Thomas Becket, martyr? Because martyrdom is part of the logic – the “theo-logic,” if you will – of Christmas.

The angelic announcement of Christmas rightly promises “peace among men with whom [God] is pleased” (Luke 2:14).

But old Simeon, who lived in the borderland between the Old and New Covenants, knew that something else, something foreboding, was afoot in the birth of the Holy Child: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also)...” The “salvation...prepared in the presence of all peoples” would come through a sign of contradiction that lacerated a maternal heart (Luke 2:34-35, 30).

With Christmas, the contest between God and all that rejects God is joined in history. For the world’s salvation, the Son of God, the eternal Word, takes flesh, is born of the Virgin Mary – and is immediately thrust into the lists against the principalities and powers: in the first instance, Herod, who slaughters children to protect a shaky throne. But Herod’s wickedness is just the beginning. For this Holy Child will become the man of sorrows, the embodiment of the suffering servant, shattered

and almost unrecognizable, “without beauty, without majesty” (Isaiah 53:2). That is what was required to complete the work of salvation for which this Child was born. Christmas contains Good Friday – and, to be sure, Easter. But Good Friday first.

The Christmastide martyrs are a helpful reminder of this deep truth of Christian faith. As I’ve written in this space before, Christianity is not man’s search for God; Christianity is God’s search for us – in history, where we live – and our learning to take the same path through that history that God takes. That path leads to Calvary. “Calvary” can be lived in many ways, of course: St. John’s living martyrdom was different than the martyrdoms of St. Stephen and St. Thomas Becket, as theirs was different from the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents. Still, the cave at Bethlehem opens, symbolically, to the north, where the hill of Calvary waits.

Over the past twenty-six years, Pope John Paul II has lifted up the witness of hundreds of modern martyrs, reminding us that martyrdom is not just something from the past, but is very much part of the living experience of the Church. This past August, at his Angelus address on the day the Church commemorates the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the Holy Father noted that, while “there may be relatively few who are called to make the supreme sacrifice,” all of us “must be ready to give consistent witness each day, even at the cost of suffering and serious sacrifices.” Our commitment, the Pope continued, must be “heroic,” if we are

“not to give in, even in daily life, to the difficulties that urge us to compromise.”

So it’s not inappropriate – in fact, it’s necessary – to remember our modern martyrs during this Christmas season.

George Weigel Throughout the world, thirty-one Catholics died for the faith in 2000; thirty-three more made the ultimate sacrifice in 2001, as did twenty-five in 2002 and fourteen in 2003, according to a Vatican agency that monitors these things. (The numbers exclude North Korea, from which information cannot be obtained.)

Some were bishops and priests, others were religious sisters, lay catechists, ordinary members of the faithful. Some died because of religious hatred, primarily Islamic but also Hindu; others were killed by drug lords or thuggish soldiers.

Whatever their state in life or the circumstances of their deaths, their witness reminds us that the Child of Bethlehem and the crucified Jesus are one and the same savior.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

JOHN EARLE PHOTO

Christmas and the martyrs

14

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24 A READING FROM THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH (IS 7:10-14) The Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying: Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the netherworld, or high as the sky!

But Ahaz answered, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the Lord!” Then Isaiah said: Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM (PS 24:1-2, 3-4, 5-6) R. Let the Lord enter; he is king of glory.

The Lord’s are the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it.

For he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

R. Let the Lord enter; he is king of glory.

Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? or who may stand in his holy place?

One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain.

R. Let the Lord enter; he is king of glory.

He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, a reward from God his savior.

Such is the race that seeks for him, that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.

R. Let the Lord enter; he is king of glory.

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO THE ROMANS (ROM 1:1-7) Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised previously through his prophets in the holy Scriptures,

the gospel about his Son, descended from David according to the flesh, but established as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness through resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Through him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles, among whom are you also, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ; to all the beloved of God in Rome, called to be holy. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

A READING FROM THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW (MT 1:18-24) This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.

CHRISTMAS DAY – MASS AT DAWN Isaiah 62:11-12; Psalm 97:1, 6, 11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20 A READING FROM THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH (IS 62:11-12) See, the Lord proclaims to the ends of the earth: say to daughter Zion, your savior comes!

Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him.

They shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called “Frequented,” a city that is not forsaken.

of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM (PS 97:1, 6, 11-12) R. A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.

The Lord is king; let the earth rejoice; let the many islands be glad.

The heavens proclaim his justice, and all peoples see his glory.

R. A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.

Light dawns for the just; and gladness, for the upright of heart.

Be glad in the Lord, you just, and give thanks to his holy name.

R. A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.

A READING FROM THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE (LK 2:15-20) When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO TITUS (TITUS 3:4-7) Beloved: When the kindness and generous love

Scripture FATHER GERARD O’ROURKE

A sign and promise fulfilled It is already the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Probably, you are caught in a flurry of hyperactivity, of preparation, of buying sprees, card sending, and somehow desperately trying to get it all done. Well, the Fourth Sunday of Advent is a moment to stop, to halt, to hold back, to wait, to linger, or as a spiritual master once put it, “to wait for your spirit to catch up with you.”

If you don’t pause, you might miss out on the huge possibility given to us in the Isaiah Reading for this Sunday. Listen to it as if Isaiah was addressing you and not Ahaz with the question to “Ask for a sign from the Lord?”

Are you ready for that kind of a challenge?

At least it should quiet you down for a moment to reflect on the immense possibility in the question. I would hate to be accused by a great prophet like Isaiah of “wearying my God,” or of annoying God as it were by carelessness or heedlessness or of putting God on hold.

We might also miss out on the great promise in the reading that focuses on the central point of Advent: “The Virgin shall bear a son and shall call him Emmanuel.”

That’s not something to miss or take for granted or delude ourselves that we heard it all before. As we go onto the great Feast of Christmas it is vital to open our hearts in new ways to deepen our relationship with God. In the Gospel, we have Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, a contrast to the more familiar Gospel of Luke’s version. The Gospel of Matthew features the place of Joseph in the Christmas story. As Matthew puts it, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.”

It is an amazingly frank account. We, in today’s world of pre-marriage and marriage problems can easily resonate to Joseph and his concerns about the pregnancy of Mary. How would he handle such a surprise? He was really perplexed. He even considered divorce.

The story reminds us of Joseph the Patriarch in the Book of Genesis. Both of them were dreamers and were spoken to by the angels in their dreams. In the Gospel story, Joseph is reassured by an angel and empowered to accept Mary as his wife and to accept her child as the action of the Holy Spirit.

Joseph is told that Mary’s child will be a son and he, Joseph, is to name him Jesus. Thus Joseph is fully brought into the great plan of God for this new family. No doubt about it, he is designated as the father of this family. When he awoke from his dream, Joseph took charge

as the father in the family. The sign and promise of the first reading is fulfilled. Mary is the Virgin Mother. Jesus is the son. Joseph is the designated father and guardian of the family.

So all is ready for the great Feast and Birthday. We are ready once again to be filled with the great light and hope of Christmas and the possibility of a renewed Peace in our world.

Let us hope that now we are ready for “our spirit to catch up with us” as we wait in anticipation of the abundant blessings of a God who loves us all with an everlasting love now and always.

CHRISTMAS MASS AT DAWN Once again Isaiah the prophet speaks to us. He speaks of the events as a Proclamation of God to the ends of the earth with the words “Your Savior comes.” So for all of us humans, today is special. It is especially so for any of who feel alienated, excluded, on the margins, outside, violated, demeaned, shaken by events out of our control. For all of us, this birthday promise of a Savior is Good News.

St. Paul reminds us that this Savior comes to us with the kindness and generous love of God. He came to us humans not because we deserve it. No, he came because of God’s Mercy. He came with the renewal of the Holy Spirit in us.

He came so that we could become heirs in the hope of eternal life.

Turning to the Gospel Reading from Luke, we find the shepherds going in haste to be with Mary and Joseph and the Infant Jesus in the manger. It is a touching and moving scene to see the lowly shepherds – the most despised class in a hyper-hierarchical world – be the ones to represent all of us humans at this awesome moment in our human history. They were the first witnesses of this amazing event today celebrated in every place where humans live.

With Mary, the Mother of Jesus, may we reflect on these moving happenings in our hearts. Like the shepherds, may we praise and glorify God. May we do so as people who are blessed with Faith. May we allow this Faith to inspire us to be open and generous in sharing with others, especially anyone who might feel left out or an outsider.

And as we celebrate the Birthday of Jesus, may we be inspired to give thanks. To give thanks for the miracle of the unconditional love of God manifested for us as a little infant child called Jesus!

In His name, a happy and blessed Christmas to all.

December 17, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

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ORDINARY TIME

Christmas in the Year of the Eucharist “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we intoned a few days ago at a pre-Christmas party. The weeks of Advent have at least turned our attention to the coming celebration of Christmas, and seen us busy about many preparations. If they have prepared us to welcome the God-man, Jesus, Emmanuel into our lives with new hunger and meaning, then Advent will have been a great success.

The word Bethlehem, the Judean town where Joseph led Mary for the Roman imperial census, and where she gave birth to the promised Messiah, means “house of bread.” How fitting it is for us to adore the “Word made flesh” — literally, the “incarnate” One, and reflect on his double presence “in the flesh”: the years of his life and ministry recorded in the Gospels, ending with his ascension into heaven; and his years of abiding real presence in the Eucharist, under the appearances of bread and wine.

Our Holy Father has designated this time in the Church’s salvation history the Year of the Eucharist. From this past October’s International Eucharistic Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, until next October’s Plenary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, whose theme is “The Eucharist,” this Year of the Eucharist is a great opportunity for the Church. In his Apostolic Letter Mane Nobiscum Domine (“Stay With Us, Lord”) proclaiming the Year of the Eucharist, Pope John Paul said he wanted to “offer some reflections intended to help us all to experience it” more deeply and fruitfully.

After the first of the new year it is my attention to publish a Pastoral Letter describing the ways in which the Holy Father suggests we spend this Year of the Eucharist and apply them to our Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Now, as we approach the feast of Christmas, when we contemplate the infinite love of God who took on our flesh, our humanity – we recognize what a great gift we have

received. The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, is a gift that redeems the world from sin, and transforms it from the path to eternal death into the path to eternal life.

Christmas leads us to the stable of Bethlehem, there to adore Him and to return his love. Bethlehem, the “house of Bread,” became on that holy night the house of the Bread of Life! We recall Joseph’s dream in which the angel of the Lord said to him: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew’s Gospel goes on to say, “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet [Isaiah]: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel,’ which mean, ‘God is with us’.” (Mt. 1:20-23) Jesus means “God saves.” Emmanuel means “God with us.” God saves us by sending his Son to be “with us.”

No wonder the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the very evening of the Resurrection, spoke in the name of every one of us when they said, “Stay with us, Lord.” Luke’s Gospel tells us “So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” And when they returned to Jerusalem, they told the other disciples “how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (Luke 24:29-31,35) Jesus – Emmanuel, God with us – chose to “stay with us” in the breaking of the bread, the Eucharist. No wonder “Christ’s Mass” is the center of our Christmas celebration.

But the story of Bethlehem is not a story of a distant encounter over space and time. It is the story of our encounter with “God with us” at Christ’s Mass and at every Eucharist.

Archbishop William J. Levada

So Bethlehem is not just a little town 8,000 miles and two centuries away. The promise of Bethlehem, “house of bread,” is this: Jesus makes every church a “house of bread” – of the “Bread of Life,” his own Body and Blood in the Eucharist. The question of humanity throughout the ages – Has God abandoned us? Where can we find God? – was answered on the first Christmas: Emmanuel! God is with us!

Every Sunday our church buildings of wood and stone become houses of the Bread of Life, who has heard his people cry out “stay with us, Lord.” O come, let us adore him – at Christmas, 2004, and at every Eucharist, for it is there that we can learn life’s most important lesson: to recognize Jesus our Savior in the breaking of the bread.

During this Year of the Eucharist, Merry Christmas indeed!

Most Rev. William J. Levada Archbishop of San Francisco

Feast of the Holy Family

Joseph’s true fatherhood

By Father Paul Scalia Poor St. Joseph. If religious art is any indication, his role in the Holy Family was almost useless. Most of the time he is shown as an old man, sitting in the shadows, trailing behind Jesus and Mary, sleeping on the flight into Egypt. Not exactly an inspiring example of leadership.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, however, has no doubts about Joseph’s role. “Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety,” she says to the child Jesus in the Temple. (Lk 3:48) “Your father.” She, who knew more than anyone else about our Lord’s heavenly Father, does not qualify Joseph’s fatherhood at all.

Joseph was not our Lord’s pretend or “make believe” father. By way of his marriage to the Blessed Virgin, Jewish law afforded him true paternal responsibility and authority over her child. To be sure, Christ’s divine nature comes from God the Father alone and His human nature from Mary alone.

Yet God entrusted to Joseph the headship of the Holy Family.

For that reason Mary gives Joseph the title “father” of Christ.

He, who was neither the eternal nor the biological father of our Lord, nevertheless demonstrates true fatherhood.

To understand the importance of St. Joseph’s example, we must take seriously the crisis of fatherhood today. Our culture has little use for fathers, except perhaps as the butt of jokes on sitcoms and commercials. (Can you name one respected father in popular culture?) In fact, there exists a deep hatred for fatherhood, as demonstrated by irresponsible men who abandon their families, and radical feminists who proclaim that fathers are unnecessary. We see the father’s legitimate headship betrayed by both extremes: on one hand, a father abuses his authority by using it for his own desires; on the other hand, a father neglects his authority and leaves his family without a leader.

Therefore, we look to St. Joseph, the “foster-father” of our Lord, for the example of a true father. His paradoxical situation calls attention to the truth about fatherhood. First, because he stood as father to a boy who was his son only in the legal sense, he was keenly aware — as every father should be — that he served as the representative of God the Father.

Second, because he was the least of the three members of the Holy Family in personal dignity, he exercised his authority with the greatest humility — as every father should.

St. Joseph understood that he, a mere man conceived

and born in sin, had been entrusted with the headship of the Holy Family. He was to rule over the Incarnate Word and the Immaculate Conception. He neither neglected this authority, nor used it for selfish gain. Rather, he exercised his headship in perfect humility, in the service of his family. Joseph protected and provided for Jesus and Mary. He named Jesus, taught him how to pray, how to work — how to be a man. This “foster-father” reveals that fatherhood is more than a mere fact of biological generation. A man is a father most when he invests himself in the spiritual and moral formation of his children.

Several years ago, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger remarked that, “the crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity.” To recover the true teaching on fatherhood — this most important element of humanity — let us take St. Joseph as our unfailing example on earth and our powerful intercessor in heaven.

Then, Eskew explained, the driver called her UPS supervisor to ask if she could open the envelope to look for some clue as to the recipient’s whereabouts. All she found inside was a money order and a handwritten note: “Make me happy. Come home for Christmas. Love, Mom.” The driver figured it out. The money order was there to pay for the soldier’s trip home. But where was he? She drove to the on-base house of a Marine officer. He didn’t recognize the name but agreed to open his office and run a computer search. Sure enough, he located the Marine and identified his barracks.

So, accompanied by a Sergeant-at-Arms, the UPS driver entered the barracks, but her man wasn’t there. One of his buddies said he had gone to the rec center on base.

Off went D’Agostino to find him.

He was there, sitting on a couch, surrounded by a stack of rented movies. Apparently, a movie marathon was going to get him through a lonely Christmas.

“I’ve got something for you,” said D’Agostino, and handed him the opened envelope. He read the note, smiled,

sprang off the couch, hugged the driver and started for the door when he remembered the videos. He turned back to D’Agostino and asked her for one more favor — could she drop those movies off at the rec center rental counter for him? She delivered.

All of us are delivering all sorts of things to all sorts of people all of the time. Not so dramatic as this UPS delivery, perhaps, but we deliver. Sometimes it is just a smile or a word of greeting.

Each of us is a link in a chain. Christmas is a time to think of the connections, even passing connections we make with one another. Thank God for the Rene D’Agostinos of the world, who in meeting their ordinary workplace responsibilities use some imagination and expend some extra effort to make the kind of connections that make Christmas the warm and wonderful experience it should be for everyone.

Reaching out or handing on to others at this time of the year is a small but not insignificant delivery that celebrates the unique and genuinely special delivery of Christ to us more than 2,000 years ago.

This article originally appeared in the Arlington Catholic Herald.

The Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated Dec. 26.

Christmas Season

Special delivery

By Father William J. Byron, SJ This story possibly could have come from the U.S. Postal Service, Fed Ex or any one of a large number of organizations that deliver greetings and packages at Christmastime. It happens to come from United Parcel Service, the company that runs those big, boxy, brown trucks on highways and streets all over the country and around the world.

This is a Christmas story about a UPS driver, Rene D’Agostino, making her routine rounds just a day or two before Christmas on a military base known as the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Michael Eskew, chairman and CEO of UPS, tells the story with pride. The base was fairly empty that day several years ago, he said, because most of the military personnel were on Christmas leave. D’Agostino found herself trying to deliver an overnight letter with no specific address, just a name on the envelope. She asked a few people on that sprawling base if they recognized the name; no one did.

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Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Book on missions combines beauty and grace THE MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA, Third Edition, 2004, Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, 135 pp., $20

Review by Maurice Healy This review of The Missions of California, with photographs by Melba Levick and text

by Stanley Young, stretches over two issues of Catholic San Francisco. The beautiful pictures of Mission Dolores, which appeared in the Dec. 10 issue of the newspaper came from this very accessible, attractive and informative book.

The narrative by Stanley Young provides an accurate picture of Alta California in 1769, when Spanish Franciscans, led by Father Junipero Serra, founded the first mission in San Diego. The Franciscan padres accompanied Spanish soldiers pursuing a Spanish imperial plan to settle and occupy Alta California.

The Franciscans, however, were not motivated by imperial designs; they were devout followers of St. Francis of Assisi and looked to God for their authority. In founding the missions, the padres sought to save souls.

Historian Jeffrey Burns, author of The History of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, notes that despite the solicitude and good intentions of the Franciscan missionaries, the Spanish presence bore disastrous consequences for the native people.

By 1810, only a small remnant of the native people survived; the majority of the Indian population having been decimated by European diseases, for which they had no immunity.

Following the secularization of the missions by the Mexican government in the 1830s, many structures fell into disrepair. Two decades later, the U.S. government returned several of the original mission locations and remaining buildings to the Church. While most of the missions have been restored or reconstructed, the original

purity of heart that the Franciscan padres brought to new Spain is evident in the simplicity and beauty of the missions.

Following an introduction to the mission era, the book’s narrative and photographs give loving attention to each of the 21 missions in California, from Mission San Diego de Alcala in the south to Mission San Francisco Solano in the north. The reader comes away from the book with an understanding that the missions have enriched California, and even the nation, to a degree that would have astonished their Spanish founders.

The excellent photography, eye-pleasing layout, and well-balanced narrative make the book a welcome addition to the library of works on California Missions. We found the book in the gift shop at Mission Dolores, but the portfolio-size, paperback volume is available at many bookstores.

Interior of the replica of Mission San Rafael Arcangel built in 1949.

‘Thérèse’ opens in Daly City Thérèse, a movie portraying the ordinary life and extraordinary soul of the lat 19th century Saint and Doctor of the Church, Thérèse of Lisieux, opens Dec. 17 at Century 20 Theater in Daly City. Call 650-994-7469 for show times or group bookings. Visit website www.theresemovie.com for info on additional local screenings.

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December 17, 2004

Advent Opportunities Dec. 16 – 24: Simbang Gabi a cooperative Advent worship opportunity by St. Brendan, St. Finn Barr, St. Emydius, St. Gabriel, St. Anne and St. Stephen parishes. Prayed daily at 6 a.m. at St. Stephen’s, 451 Eucalyptus, SF. Reception follows. Call (415) 681-2444, ext. 26.

Dec. 18: A Christmas Play in St. Boniface Church Theater, 135 Golden Gate Ave., SF at 2 p.m. Free admission. Call (415) 447-9860.

Dec. 19: The Mission Dolores Basilica Choir will perform their 13th annual Candlelight Christmas Concert at 7pm. Under the direction of Jerome Lenk, and accompanied by a chamber orchestra and organ, the world traveled choir will perfrom traditional European and American carols and will conclude with their very popular sing-a-long of familiar carols for everyone to enjoy. A candlelight reception will follow the concert. Tickets are $25.00 for reserved orchestra, $15.00 general and $12.00 student/senior. The Basilica is located at 16th and Dolores in San Francisco. Free parking available.

For more information call 415-621-8203.

Dec. 20, 21: Do You Hear What I hear? A Christmas Concert featuring the voices of the Our Lady of Loretto and St. Anthony of Padua parish choirs as well as a children’s ensemble. “The music will be inspiring and joy filled,� said Cathie Peters, music director at St. Anthony.

Richard Elliott directs the music program at Our Lady of Loretto. The curtain goes up on the holiday songfest at 7: 30 p.m. Dec. 20th at St. Anthony, 1000 Cambridge Rd., and Dec. 21st at Our Lady of Loretto, 1806 Novato Blvd. Call (415) 883-2177. A $10 donation is requested.

At St. Mary’s Cathedral The following events are taking place at or are coordinated by the cathedral of the Archdiocese located at Gough and Geary St. in San Francisco. Call (415) 567-2020 for more information.

Jan. 3: Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament every First Friday after the 8:00 a.m. Mass Friday and continuing throughout the day and night until 7:45 a.m. Saturday with Morning Prayer and Benediction. (Exposition is suspended during scheduled Masses at 12:10 noon, 7:00 p.m. and 6:45 a.m. according to liturgical norms.) For more information or to volunteer please call (415) 5672020 x224.

Dec. 18 – 25: St, Anthony Foundation Curbside Donation Drive, 119 Golden Gate Avenue. December 18, 19, 25 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. and December 20, 21, 22, 24 from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. Special needs include Warm clothing especially socks and men’s coats Canned soups, fruits and vegetables and non-perishable food, such as whole grain cereals, instant potatoes and pastas.

Hygiene items. Staff and volunteers, wearing easily identifiable red jackets, will receive food and clothing donations. Monetary donations should be delivered to 121 Golden Gate Avenue, 2nd floor.

Call (415) 592-2792.

An Evening of Enchanted Music at Kohl Mansion January 2nd benefiting Catherine’s Center, a transitional residence for women leaving incarceration. Program features the voices of Schola Cantorum, the acclaimed vocal ensemble of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi.

Evening begins at 7 p.m. at Kohl on campus of Mercy High School, 2750 Adeline Dr. in Burlingame.

Tickets $100 per person. Call (650) 345-7021.

Catholic San Francisco

17

evening retreat includes two conferences and Mass followed by ringing in of the New Year.

Datebook

Single, Divorced, Separated Dec. 18: Annual Potluck Christmas Party and Ornament Exchange sponsored by Separated and Divorced Catholics of the Archdiocese at St. Mary’s Cathedral Conference Center, Gough and Geary St., SF at 6:30 p.m. Call Vonnie at (650) 873-4236.

Separated and Divorced support groups meet 3rd Sat. at 6:30 p.m. at St. Mary’s Cathedral, call Pat at (415) 492-3331; and 1st and 3rd Wed. at 7:30 p.m. at St. Stephen Parish Center, SF, call Gail at (650) 591-8452.

Catholic Adult Singles Assoc. of Marin meets for support and activities. Call Bob at (415) 897-0639 for information.

Consolation Ministry

Students from Marin Catholic High School visited recently with Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger in Sacramento. The more than 40-member group included 23 exchange students from Graz, Austria, the governor’s hometown. Marin Catholic principal Martin Young joined the journey.

January 9: 3:30 p.m. Archdiocesan RCIA Cathedral Pilgrimage. A reception will follow in the Cathedral Center. This annual event brings catechumens and candidates from throughout the Archdiocese for a prayerful visit to the Cathedral, the Mother Church.

Sundays: Concerts at 3:30 p.m. Call (415) 5672020 ext. 213. Open to the public. December 19: Organ Recital by Christoph Tietze. December 26: Organ Recital by David Hatt. Jan. 2: Epiphany Lessons and Carols with Cathedral Choir of Boys and Girls and Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bell Ringers

Food & Fun Dec. 31: Ring in 2005 with old and new friends at St. Anne of the Sunset’s New Year’s Eve Celebration 8 p.m. – 12:30 a.m. in new Moriarty Hall. $40 per person. Music by Alex and the Tradewinds. Call (415) 681-6939 or (415) 661-7378.

Respect Life/ Family Life Jan. 22: Inaugural Walk for Life West Coast, 11 a.m. from Justin Herman Plaza to the Marina Green. Call (415) 586-1576 or visit www.walkforlifewc.com.

Are you in a troubled marriage? Retrouvaille, a program for couples with serious marital problems, might help. For information, call Tony and Pat Fernandez at (415) 893-1005.

Information about Natural Family Planning and people in the Archdiocese offering instruction are available from the Office of Marriage and Family Life of the Archdiocese, Chris Lyford, director, at (415) 614-5680.

Reunions Archbishop Riordan High School is in search of alumni moms! Call (415) 586-8200, ext. 217.

SF/East Bay Chapter of Kappa Gamma Pi is seeking members with whom it’s lost touch. Call Betty at (925) 284-2028.

We are on a Star Search! We’re searching for graduates of Star of the Sea Academy, Class of ‘55.

A 50th Reunion is in the planning stage. Let us know where you are. Contact Patricia Lawless Sack at 415-472-5732.You won’t want to miss this one!

Prayer Opportunities/Lectures Jan. 11: Notre Dame de Namur University Catholic Scholar Series with Notre Dame Sister Sharon McMillan on Life-Giving Liturgy at 7 p.m. in Ralston Hall Mansion on the campus of Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. Call (650) 5083713. Future talks include John Haught April 5th on Deeper than Darwin.

Young Adults Office of Young Adult Ministry: Connecting late teens, 20s and 30s, single and married to the Catholic Church. Contact Mary Jansen, 415614-5596, jansenm@sfarchdiocese.org. Check out our website www.sfyam.org for a list of events around the Bay Area.

2nd and 4th Mon.: St. Vincent de Paul Young Adult Group meets. “Just show up and be part of our community.� Meetings take place at SVDP, Steiner and Green, SF at 7:30 p.m.

Thurs. at 7:30 p.m.: St. Dominic Adult Formation Series in the parish hall 2390 Bush St. at Steiner, SF. Explore the skills needed to understand the bible and help it inform daily life. Join at any time.

Contact Scott Moyer at scott@stdominics.org.

Retreats —— VALLOMBROSA CENTER —— 250 Oak Grove Ave., Menlo Park. For fees, times and details about these and other offerings call (650) 325-5614. Presentation Sister Rosina Conrotto, Program Director.

Dec. 31: Welcoming in the New Year, an opportunity to reflect on the gifts of the past year and look forward to gifts yet to come with Father Patrick Collins. The

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Groups meet at the following parishes. Please call numbers shown for more information.

San Mateo County: St. Catherine of Siena, Burlingame. Call (650) 344-6884; Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame. Call Louise Nelson at (650) 343-8457 or Barbara Arena at (650) 344-3579. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Redwood City. Call (650) 366-3802; Good Shepherd, Pacifica. Call Sister Carol Fleitz at (650) 3552593; St. Robert, San Bruno. Call (650) 589-2800.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Belmont. Call Ann Ponty at (650) 598-0658 or Mary Wagner at (650) 591-3850.

Marin County: St. Isabella, San Rafael. Call Pat Sack at (415) 472-5732. Our Lady of Loretto, Novato. Call Sister Jeanette at (415) 897-2171.

San Francisco: St.Gabriel. Call Barbara Elordi at (415) 564-7882. St. Finn Barr in English and Spanish.

Call Carmen Solis at (415) 584-0823; St. Cecilia. Call Peggy Abdo at (415) 564-7882 ext. 3; Epiphany in Spanish. Call Kathryn Keenan at (415) 564-7882.

Ministry for parents who have lost a child is available from Our Lady of Angels Parish, Burlingame. Call Ina Potter at (650) 347-6971 or Barbara Arena at (650) 3443579. Young Widow/Widower group meets at St. Gregory, San Mateo. Call Barbara Elordi at (415) 5647882.

Information about children’s and teen groups is available from Barbara Elordi at (415) 564-7882.

Returning Catholics Programs for Catholics interested in returning to the Church, have been established at the following parishes: St. Gregory Parish in San Mateo announces Catholics Returning Home, a program welcoming nonpracticing Catholics back to the Church Jan. 11, 18, 25 and Feb. 1, 8 and 15. Topics include Why People Leave the Church and Return, The Sacramental Church and The Christian Moral Life, Call (650) 574-8716.

Datebook is a free listing for parishes, schools and non-profit groups. Please include event name, time, date, place, address and an information phone number. Listing must reach Catholic San Francisco at least two weeks before the Friday publication date desired.

Mail your notice to: Datebook, Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, S.F. 94109, or fax it to (415) 614-5633.

Our History is Your Future The historic Shriners hospital — known to its newest residents as BridgePoint at San Francisco — is fulfilling “I tell my doctor its promise of integrating every time I see a place of history into him how much I current realities. love my new home at BridgePoint offers BridgePoint� independent and assisted living in a fully renovated Willard Spencer, community, with services BridgePoint resident and Mason and amenities designed in the best interest of residents and their families.

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18

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

Music TV

Books RADIO Film

Stage

‘Hotel Rwanda’ challenges

By David DiCerto NEW YORK (CNS) - “Hotel Rwanda” (United Artists) is, at times, hard to watch, but it is even harder to forget.

The film tells the inspiring real-life story of Paul Rusesabagina (portrayed in an Oscar-worthy performance by Don Cheadle), an “ordinary” man who, at great personal risk, saved the lives of thousands of his countrymen during the nightmarish days of the Rwandan genocide.

Well-written, directed and acted, the emotionally riveting, profoundly moral movie deals with an extremely dark chapter of history but is a powerful testament to hope, courage and the nobility of the human spirit.

Set in 1994, the film tells the back story of the Rwandan conflict with effective economy.

Following the assassination of Rwanda’s president in a suspicious plane crash, age-old tribal tensions between the nation’s indigenous Tutsi and Hutu peoples boil over, as frenzied mobs of machete-wielding Hutu militants — incited by inflammatory local radio broadcasts — erupt into orgies of genocidal violence. Fueled by ethnic hatred of their Tutsi neighbors, whom they disdain as “cockroaches,” roaming Hutu militias known as the Interahamwe systematically massacre more than a million Tutsis in little over 100 days.

Well-respected and level-headed, Rusesabagina is the manager of the fourstar Belgian-owned Hotel Mille Collines in

the Rwandan capital of Kigali. A Hutu himself, he opens the hotel’s doors to Tutsi refugees and moderate Hutus, offering them sanctuary from the wholesale slaughter taking place outside. He starts off by sheltering just family and close friends — including his Tutsi wife (Sophie Okonedo) and three children — but the number of those flocking to the tenuous safe haven of his hotel-style Noah’s Ark swells to more than 1,200, among them Tutsi children from a nearby Catholic orphanage.

Echoing the grace-under-pressure pluck and quick-thinking resourcefulness of Oskar Schindler, Rusesabagina — thrust into the position of reluctant hero — staves off the escalating fury of the bloodthirsty Interahamwe, buying time and protection with wiles and bribery.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the atrocities, much to the dismay of a Canadian U.N. peacekeeper (Nick Nolte), who watches with disgust as — in a galling act of organized racism — white nationals are evacuated with armed European escorts, while he is left with only a skeleton force to protect those left behind.

Rather than sensationalize the butchery occurring outside the walls of the hotel compound, writer-director Terry George keeps his story soberly and intimately focused on the personal heroism of Rusesabagina, resulting in a more emotional than political piece of social conscience filmmaking.

S E R V I C E

Don Cheadle stars in a scene from the movie "Hotel Rwanda."

And while some might argue that the movie provides only a superficial treatment of the root causes of the conflict, it does effectively capture — in a very visceral and unsettling sense — the madness which unfolds, as well as the fear of those trapped in it. The film does not wallow in the gory or graphic details of the carnage — conveying the mostly off-screen horrors in the haunted faces of witnesses. There are, however, some disturbing scenes, including one where Rusesabagina’s jeep navigates a road paved with human corpses.

In April 2004 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement mark-

ing the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, calling it “a blow to heart and soul of humanity” and challenging the international community to face up to its moral failure to act to stop the killing. Perhaps, in some small way, this film is a first step.

Due to disturbing violence and images of mass slaughter, fleeting shadowy background nudity and some brief rough language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Hotel Rwanda opens in theaters Dec. 22.

D I R E C T O R Y

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REPAIRS & PRESSURE WASHING Leaks, Dryrot, Decks Mike: (650) 355-8858 Lic #: 778332

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HANDYMAN All purpose: Painting, Fencing, Carpenter, Small Roofing Repairs, Skylight Repairs, Demolition Work, Rain Gutter Repair & Cleaning, Landscaping, Gardening, Hauling, Moving, \Janitorial.

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PLUMBING HOLLAND

Plumbing Works San Francisco ALL PLUMBING WORK PAT HOLLAND CA LIC #817607 BONDED & INSURED

Interiors Exteriors Kitchens Baths

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Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting

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PARISH CD’S “Have you ever wanted to make a recording of your choir, band, orchestra, conference?

Were you overwhelmed by the thought?”

Since 1997 Splendid Productions has been working with schools, churches and businesses around the Bay making professional, affordable recordings.

Go to www.splendidsound.com and read what our customers are saying and listen to audio clips or call Stephan Duffy at 510-329-7020.

For Advertising Information Please Call 415-614-5642

HANDYMAN Carpentry, Cabinetry, Painting,Refinishing Floors and Furniture, Door & Window Instal.,Cement Work.

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December 17, 2004

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Classifieds For Information Call: 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 Email: jpena@catholic-sf.org

Catholic San Francisco

NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION HUMANITY FOR CHERNOBYL NEEDS CONTRIBUTIONS To help Chernobyl victims in Ukraine.

For more details about our organization please review our website http://www.humanityforchernobyl.com All donations are tax deductible.

Help Wanted ADVERTISING SALES For The Largest Publisher of Catholic Church Bulletins This is a Career Opportunity!

Please make check payable to: Humanity for Chernobyl They can be sent to: Our Lady of Fatima Byzantine Church, Attn: Gene Zoudilov 101 20th Ave., San Francisco CA 94121

Help Wanted

19

• Generous Commissions • Excellent Benefit Package • Minimal Travel • Stong Office Support • Work in Your Community

Call 1-800-675-5051 Fax resume: 707-258-1195

diabetes study Gift Ideas ISN: IGNATIAN SOLIDARITY NETWORK SEEKING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

GIFTS FOR THE SPIRIT

Do you have Type II Diabetes?

• Do you have type II Diabetes?

• Have you had Type II Diabetes for at least three months?

• Are you currently treating your diabetes with two oral medications?

• Are you 18 years of age or older?

You may be eligible to participate in a research study that tests new treatment.

You will receive at no cost: • Study medications • Glucose monitor & supplies • Study-related medical care & testing • Education on how to manage your diabetes For more information call:

650-259-9754

Logos, books, and icons at Our Lady of Fatima Byzantine Catholic Church 101 - 20th Ave. San Francisco, CA 94102 Holiday Hours: Saturdays Only Nov. 26, Dec. 4th, 11th & 18th 12 Noon to 5 p.m.

Organist ORGANIST WEDDINGS • FUNERALS Worship Services, Catholic Experience Marie DuMabeiller 415-441-3069, Page: 823-3664 VISA, MASTERCARD Accepted Please confirm your event before contracting music!

Clothing Alterations high blood pressure study CLOTHING ALTERATION AND REPAIR.

Do You Have

High Blood Pressure?

If so, you may be at greater risk for stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

O

ur physicians are participating in a research study for those with high blood pressure. This investigation study will use two different combinations of different medications already approved to lower blood pressure. The study is designed to see if these medications may reduce the occurrence of future health complications associated with high blood pressure.

You may qualify if you: • Are 55 years of age or older • Have high blood pressure • Have or had heart problems, circulation problems, kidney problems, stroke or diabetes All study-related care and investigational medication will be provided for those who take part.

TO LEARN MORE, PLEASE CALL:

WILLIAM D. ZIGRANG, MD 1750 EL CAMINO REAL RD., SUITE 202 BURLINGAME, CA 94010 ● PHONE: (650) 259-9754 Volunteer For Your Future

PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Cost $25

If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call 415-614-5640

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assist me in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need. Oh Mary, conceived without sin.

Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days.

A.V.

Hemming pants, skirts and jackets.

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Apt. for Rent 2 bed, 1 bath.

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Call 415-585-5099 for information: rent, location, other details

Prayer to St. Jude

Select One Prayer: ❑ St. Jude Novena to SH ❑ Prayer to St. Jude

❑ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin ❑ Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Please return form with check or money order for $25 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

Oh, Holy St. Jude, Apostle and Martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, near Kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke your special patronage in time of need, to you I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg to whom God has given such great power to come to my assistance. Help me in my present and urgent petition. In return I promise to make you be invoked.

Say three our Fathers, three Hail Marys and Glorias. St. Jude pray for us all who invoke your aid. Amen.

This Novena has never been known to fail. This Novena must be said 9 consecutive days. Thanks.

A.V.

The ISN Board of Directors is seeking an Executive Director to fully operate, develop and implement the mission, program, and policies of the ISN. The director must have a comprehensive understanding of the Society of Jesus and Ignatian spirituality, and further, grasp the workings of other related institutions in order to serve as an effective communication source for the network.

Qualifications include: Master’s degree; comprehensive knowledge and facility of Catholic social teaching; demonstrated leadership skills; excellent written, oral and interpersonal communication skills; experience with fundraising; administrative experience and supervisory capability.

Salary commensurate with education and experience. Office and position located at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. Applications due January 7, 2005.

For more information please contact Bill Masterson, Provincial Assistant for Development and Communications, at wmasterson@calprov.org.

To apply for this position, please send a cover letter, resume, and writing sample to Bill Masterson at wmasterson@calprov.org.

Special Needs Companion Services We are looking for you.

House Sitting Mt. Carmel parishioner wishes to housesit to be near grandkids in Mill Valley or houseswap (San Deigo). Free/loc ref

415-888-2047

Prayer to the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, you who make me see everything and who shows me the way to reach my ideal.

You who give me the divine gift of forgive and forget the wrong that is done to me. I, in this short dialogue, want to thank you for everything and confirm once more that I never want to be separated from you no matter how great the material desires may be. I want to be with you and my loved ones in your perpetual glory. Amen. You may publish this as soon as your favor is granted.

A.V.

Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

Name Adress Phone MC/VISA # Exp.

The purpose of the Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN) is to support and further the social justice and advocacy efforts of Jesuit affiliated universities and colleges, high schools, parishes, retreat centers, independent organizations and lay individuals across the nation. The Network serves as a means for communication, strategic focus, sharing of best practices and important information in order to "advance the service of faith and the promotion of justice" (GC32, D2).

Prayer For Motherhood O good St. Gerard, powerful intercessor before God and Wonder-worker of our day, I call upon thee and seek thy aid.

Thou who on earth didst always fulfill God’s design help me do the Holy Will of God. Beseech the Master of Life, from Whom all paternity proceedeth to render me fruitful in offspring, that I may raise up children to God in this life and heirs to the Kingdom of His glory in the world to come.

Amen.

T.D.

• Honest • Generous • Compassionate • Make a Difference • Respectful

Work Full or Part-time in San Francisco – Marin County • Provide non medical elder care in the home • Generous benefit package Fax your resume to: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN 415-435-0421 Send your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Special Needs Nursing, Inc. 98 Main Street, #427 Tiburon, Ca 94920

Special Needs Nursing, Inc. RNs or LVNs We are looking for you.

Work FULL or PART time while your children are in school.

Nurses are needed to provide specialized nursing care for children in the San Francisco Public School setting.

Generous benefit packages for generous nurses.

Fax your resume to: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN 415-435-0421 Send your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Special Needs Nursing, Inc. 98 Main Street, #427 Tiburon, Ca 94920

20

Catholic San Francisco

December 17, 2004

In Remembrance of the Faithful Departed Interred In Our Catholic Cemeteries During the Month of November HOLY CROSS COLMA Olga J. Aiello George M. Amezcua Lula B. Armstrong Virgilio M. Arreza Marilyn J. Baker Genevieve C. Barrelier Ralph Barsotti Mary T. Boylan Isabel Camacho Nancy L. Cameron Pio Camilo Jesus Phillip Canedo Charles H. Carlin Grace Carrere Joseph M. Cassetta John E. Castagnetto Humberto Castenetto Elijah Carmel Castro Bertu Chetcuti

Michael J. Chukov Lucille (Sue) D. Cronin Genevieve C. Daveggio Jerome G. DeFilippo Eduardo del Rosario Jeanne I. DeLemos Irma D. DeMaria Percy Despanie, Jr. Lois Blair Dohrmann James F. Donlan Frances Andrews Doyle Leah S. Dryer Dennis James Dwyer Ann McCrea Eaneman Katherine Erlach Faailoga M. Esekielu Victor Anthony Falgiano Louis Fazio Tony Armando Ferrando Esther T. Flemister Linda C. Flores Lena M. Furiosi John B. Gegan Gloria Gignoux Lillian Giles

Luree M. Goggins Michael Gomez Adeline Hazel Gosano Ruth R. Gotelli Rose M. Greene Dolores Guerrero Louis L. Guffanti Dorothy V. Hale Robert M. Hollandsworth Tetsuko Hori Mary L. Houlihan Said Boulos Jaber Maxine H. Jacobs Ruth E. Johnson Thomas L. Johnson Mary F. Johnston Margaret Mary Kealy Harry C. Keller, Jr. Lewis B. Keylon Ramona Kiros Roy A. Knadler Eleanor K. Koski Feliza T. Labao Joseph D. LaMancusa Dorothy Larson Iris Han Yin Lee Solomon J. Lim Carolina D. Lopez Mary E. "Betty" Mack Lorraine Edna Mahoney Charles Mannina Josephine Lucido Mazzoni Mary L. McCaffrey Jay D. McEvoy Claire T. McNaboe Carmen M. Mikell

Stanley E. Mohr Casimira Montiel Hazel L. Mulkeen Cecilia H. Murphy Angeline V. O'Conner Kathleen O'Keefe Samuel Ortiz Lucia Ortiz Bertha Osorio Margaret Palos Alice M. Paton Aleck A. Pearre Lourdes R. Perez Paul Richard Pesce Brian K. Phillips Rocco Picone Lena M. Pieretti Mary S. Premenko Marquez Preston Antone M. Puskas Manuel A. Quintanilla Adelina A. Ramos Avelina V. Ramos Joan M. Reynolds Emelino M. Rimanido Xochitl M. Salvatierra Joaquin Lon Sanchez Ann Marie Schott Pauline M. Speranza Edward L. Spichtig Eugenio Tanfani Dorothy M. Tiffer Jerome L. Turay Carolynn M. Tusch James J. Tyrrell Viola Vasquez Catherine Terresa Velarde Assunta "Susi" Vellucci Florentine J. Verdugo Remigio Verili Warren R. Weidinger

Rose M. Wheeler Gloria Yates Homer V. Yeary Luz T. Zabala

HOLY CROSS MENLO PARK Dorothy M. Brunsmann Geronimo Carlos Cherie Ann Elam Donna Skrabo Gaetano Leslie Gallagher Paul G. Gilles Dermod Edward Houweling Maria Christina Martinez Camily Olmos Frances Elizabeth Scarlett Reginald H. Wiltz, Jr. Mary Worrell

MT. OLIVET SAN RAFAEL James K. Abbey Mary Virginia Baker Pat Colberg Ray Colberg Charles L. G. Deleuze Robert A. Laflamme Nellie Lucchesi Lawrence Mazza Frank O'Connell Shirley Jean Scheller Barbara B. Tognoli Lenoir H. Valente Rodney C. Williams

HOLY CROSS CATHOLIC CEMETERY, COLMA First Saturday Mass – Saturday, January 1, 2005 11:00 a.m. – All Saints Mausoleum Chapel Rev. Thomas Seagrave, Celebrant – St. John of God Parish

Transforming Grief A spiritual day of retreat for those who are grieving the loss of a loved one.

Saturday – January 8th

Saturday – March 5th

Saturday – April 9th

Our Lady of Mercy, Daly City

St. Veronica, South San Francisco

St. Anselm, San Anselmo

Saturday – June 11th

Saturday – July 16th

Saturday – October 1st

St. Catherine, Burlingame

St. Gabriel, San Francisco

St. Dominic, San Francisco

All retreats are from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Please RSVP Barbara Elordi, 415.564-7882.

The Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of San Francisco Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 1500 Mission Road, Colma, CA 94014 650-756-2060

Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Intersection of Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-6375

Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery 270 Los Ranchitos Road, San Rafael, CA 94903 415-479-9020

A Tradition of Faith Throughout Our Lives.