I got a phone call a while back to tell me that the theme of Christ the King Parish, the theme for these days before Christmas, the season of Advent, is “Come, O Lord. We want to see your face.” Come Emmanuel. (That means “God with us.”) ...Come, O Lord. We want to see your face. And the subtext is supposed to be to see Our Lord’s face in all the other faces, which Our Lord Himself told us we have to do. Remember? “If you give a cup of cold water to somebody in my name, you give it to Me.” If she is in jail and you visit her, you are visiting Me. If he’s hungry and you give him something to eat, you are giving it to me.... That’s tough. Seeing Our Lord’s face in all the faces around, especially, of course, the needy. And we have been hearing that since we were little kids: “See Christ in the poor and the needy.”

Now, when I got the phone call, I sat there and I said, “Well let me think of some faces.” What are the first faces to come to mind, excepting of course, Our Lord and Our Lady and family. Faces...faces.... Let’s see if we can find Jesus in some of these faces.... So, I came up with a few.

The first one is the face (These literally are the ones that popped into my mind in this order.) of a man named “Raymond Brown.” He was a great Catholic Bible scholar, and I took a course with him a decade ago in Menlo Park. Great Catholic Bible scholar, very solid and smart and a good teacher! When we got to this gospel in St. Luke, he noted parenthetically (And I love the parenthetical stuff the best.) that Victor Hugo, the great French novelist who wrote stacks of books including “Les Miserables ” said that the gospel of Luke is the single most beautiful book ever written on the face of the earth. And Luke’s gospel is full of faces. (It is also my favorite.) It is full of faces of people who are needy and messed up and suffering and sick and sinful. And then the face of Jesus looming over them with mercy and strength.... great, great gospel!

And, when we got to this part (I was always taking notes.) I remember Father Brown saying, “The main point of today’s gospel is ‘Look up!’ “ And the word should be “face,” not “head.” The Greek word is “face.” Raise your face. It’s kind of scarey. It’s a long haul. Whether Our Lord is talking about Jerusalem being smashed to rubble in 70 A.D. or, more probably, the end of the world. It’s scarey and it’s a long haul, and things are tough and scarey. But look up! You are going to see Christ in the face. Your redemption is at hand.

But it is a long haul.... It’s a long haul to see Jesus when you’re scared and I know that word sounds like a little kid word, “scared.” But it is the most accurate I can come up with, to keep on seeing His face in the faces around you when you are scared.

OK. Second face.... Well they are really two. They are kind of metaphysical twins. Pete the Pandhandler and Harry the Handout. Pete the Pandhandler (And these are the faces that came to me!) used to sit on the steps of Old Saint Mary’s in San Francisco. He may still be there. When I would come out every summer to visit my brother, who lived out here, on my summer holiday, Pete the Pandhandler would be there. He was a young guy, kind of needed a shave, disheveled, but young. There he was with his little can. I remember a few summers ago, standing on the corner. And when you leave Old Saint Mary’s you have to stand on the corner when the light changes. And there was a man, evidently a tourist, and he had his teenage son with him. The man was saying, “Did you see that clown back there? He looks young and healthy to me. I have heard about these jerks. What they do is they sit on the steps you know and they go home to their apartments on Nob Hill, with all the acoustic equipment. They make a fortune.” Now, the kid, on this particular summer afternoon, darted back, back behind us. And then he came back again as the light switched. And the father says to the kid, fortissimo, as they are crossing the street, “What did you go back there for?” The kid said, “I gave him some money.”..... “How much?” ....”Ten dollars.” ...”Ten dollars???” And then the kid said, and I could hear, snoopervising, in my usual way, “Yeah. Dad, did you see his face?... Dad, did you see his face?” (I’ll never forget.)

Pete the Panhandler has a metaphysical, metaphorical cousin on the Upper East side of New York City, my last year there which was ‘99. Very classy neighborhood and very expensive stores, and I was in the parish up there. I was going into this very expensive delicatessen, not knowing it was so expensive. Harry the Handout was sitting there, you know, looked like a “bum.” “OK...All right...” I said, “Well, sir, I have to get change. I am going to get some soup and then I will have change to give you.” He said, “OK. All right.” So, I went in and got the soup, and came back out. Now, I had a twenty and several singles. Reluctant to surrender the twenty, I dropped the singles, with a beneficent gesture, like Lord Bountiful, into his hand, at which point he looked at and said, “That’s it?” I thought, “Wow! On the upper East side, even the bums are snooty.” The silly point for me, and maybe a few of you is, it’s hard to see Christ in the face when you have tried to do some good and you get resentful anger. Far from the lisped “Thank you,” resentful and anger and ingratitude... but we have got to go on, looking for the face of Jesus in the needy. Dorothy Day said it. Theresa of Calcutta said it. And Christ says it all through the gospel of Luke.

Third face, Joanne the Junkie. This was the summer of ‘68. Every summer vacation from teaching, I would come out to California and visit my brother in Santa Monica. And he was in a drug rehab, first, as a patient, and then, running it. I was invited to join what was called a seminar. It was really group encounter. It started at six at night and it went for seventy-eight hours, non-stop. When I walked in on this thing (It was going all week long and here were my hours.) at six at night, everyone was paying attention to Joanne the Junkie because she was about to get an abortion. She was single and she was sick and disgusted and lonely and she was going to “terminate the pregnancy,” as the elegant nomenclature has it. And all these ladies were yelling at Joanne, “Don’t do it.... Don’t do it. We have resources here. We have money and sheets and towels. We have our own nursery. And lots of women here have been mothers. Have the baby. You will be safe here, safe and clean.We will take care of the child if you don’t want it.... Don’t do it.” That started at six in the evening. At four in the morning, I fled! The last thing I saw was her face, seeing the face of Jesus in the faces that you face. Joanne had very delicate bone structure. Her skin was almost translucent. In any other setting she would have been lovely. And she was smoking away. Her face was savage in its rage and its pain and its stubborn refusal to listen.... to these ladies, who themselves were prior hookers and junkies. “Don’t do it. We’ll take care of the kid. Don’t do it.” That was Easter vacation of ‘68. I went home, back to teach.

In the summer, I went back again, and I didn’t see any of these people. We were in a different facility, but the last day of my summer holiday, early September ‘68, the jitney was taking me to the airport, past the beach. And there she was, holding up, as I found out, her child. The child is gurgling with joy, the breeze and the surf and the wind. And Joanne is there. It is a different Joanne. And she had a few other kids. She was in charge of these kids, including her own, for two hours. It wasn’t hard to see the face of Jesus in that face. But to see it before, as so many of you have, stubborn and savage and angry and hurt, and you wonder, “Will we ever break through? It’s a long haul.” I remember that phrase kept popping up in Father Ray Brown’s disquisition on Luke’s gospel, this one. “It is a long haul,” Jesus is saying. “Things will be rocking and planets spinning. It’s a long haul. Hang on.” You look for His face, and we have got to look for it in each other’s.

Number four was Thanksgiving...many Thanksgivings of mine when I was a young priest. I had one relative, living relative, out here, and I was on the East Coast. So people would say, “Poor little priest. Let’s invite him for Thanksgiving dinner.” And I went for a few years and then I never went back because.... Here is an example. This is the number four face that flooded into me as I was sitting back in my house. Face number four..... It was Thanksgiving dinner, and the very devout parents, very devout mom and dad, nice, easy-going, loving, affectionate, funny, nice. And they had spent a lot of cash sending their kids to the Catholic school and relatives were there, uncles and cousins by the dozens. We are all sitting there. The eldest child was a son who had just spent his first few months in a prestigious east coast college, a college freshman. We are sitting there and we had just gotten past the tomato juice when the boy announced, “All right, everyone in the family is here. I have got to make it clear to all of you that I am an atheist.” And I thought, “That’s why I was invited!” And he went on. Now I am bunching this together very quickly. “I am an atheist. I discovered Deism in October.” Dad looked up, so tired, nice guy. “What’s Deism? I dimly remember....” “Deism, Dad, is a philosophy formulated by the great French philosopher Voltaire, and Voltaire in the eighteenth century, the time of the Enlightenment, explained that since the cosmos does seem to have a great pattern and regularity to it, it must have been set up by an intelligent, creative mind. But, it is like a watch-maker. God is a watch-maker, and as a watch-maker makes a watch (Tick...tick...tick....and all the little cubes are going and all the little wheels.) but then the watch-maker puts the watch on the shelf and goes to lunch. Ever since God created the Universe, he has been out to lunch. So, in effect, there is no God.”

And the father said, “Could you pass the candied yams?” But the boy was not to be deterred. He said, “Now I have embraced Ayn Rand, the Russian atheist novelist. I have read all of her material and God is now, if we are honest...” (I love it when the young look around the table, and say, “...if we are honest.”) “....Our God is money, not the Trinity, but the dollar sign.” “Pass the cranberries.” At that point the father put down his fork, very gently, wistfully really. He said, “Tony, I love ya. I love ya and I have been through those stages where God set things in motion and doesn’t care. And, of course, if anyone is having a bad time on Planet Earth, they wonder where is He.... Is He? Is He?....Of course. But I have made a decision a while back that Jesus Christ is God, is God, and that the God He portrays as the Father is the Father in the beautiful story Jesus told of ‘The Prodigal Son.’ That’s my God, Poppa, the Prodigal Son’s Poppa. And the son goes off and spends his money on loose ladies and liquor and then finally stumbles home and Poppa is waiting on the balcony. You remember the story Our Lord told. It is a masterpiece. And the Poppa sees the kid stumbling down the road. The Dad runs down from the balcony and grabs the kid, hugs the kid, and throws a party.” I can see the father’s face now at the Thanksgiving dinner. He says, “That’s my God. I love ya, kid.... Apple or mince?” I swore then and I kept my vow. I never went to Thanksgiving Dinner again.... No. Stay home. Get a can of soup and a video.

It’s a long haul when somebody you love pops up into your heart and face, in your face, and says, “I don’t believe any of that stuff you taught me.” Long haul. Hang on. My one claim to fame is I taught those people for almost forty years. So many come back as long as you look them in the face with love....That’s corny! Look them in the face with love..... That’s weak! Look them in the face with love. You put a lot of Jesus into them all those years. So, hang on for the long haul.

And the last face was mine. Yesterday morning, I was shaving. I said I ought to have six faces. I only have five. OK. Me, the last face.I was shaving and thinking of the faces and looking for Our Lord in all the faces, as he asked us to do. Then I thought, well, honestly, I wish we Catholics looked at each other with love. I mean the world outside yawns at the concept of God, dismisses Jesus and patronizes Jesus, a nice ethical teacher. And our sacraments are kind of farcical superstitions, and the teachings of the Church on morality are so dated. Then why are we at each other’s throats? It’s just a personal thing. We have to see each other’s faces as part of Christ, the sacraments. Liberals and conservatives and one group saying, “You’ll go to hell if you don’t agree with everything I am saying.” St. Augustine said it long ago, and Augustine was no hipster liberal. Augustine said, “In essential matters, you must be firm. In things that aren’t essential, lots of liberty, and in everything love, charity, forgiveness. Augustine!

At that point, I nicked myself and had to put one of those little papers on it. Then I thought, “I am going to retire.” .... And then I thought, “I have retired!” Many years back, I came to Christ the King, when I was still teaching in New York. I asked to see the pastor. At that point, Msgr. Wade came into the room. I guess this was a decade ago. I said, “Good afternoon. I am a Catholic priest. I have been teaching full time and now I am going to retire. Could you use me here in this parish when I move out to California when I retire?” He looked at me with those huge eyes, shook his head with pastoral dismay. He said, “Oh, Father. Priests don’t retire.” And I thought, ‘Wrong man!” So, basically I am now retired. But shaving yesterday I thought, “I would like to move deeper into the woods with my dog, deeper.... deeper.... deeper.

And then I remembered the Pope who retired.... Have you ever been asked that? “Has the Pope ever retired?” Yes. There was one. His name was Morone, Peter Morone. It was the end of the thirteenth century. The College of Cardinals got together to elect a new Pope. The old Pope died. They looked around the room at each other. They said, “None of us should be Pope. None of us is holy enough.” (Read Church history. There is not a boring page on it!) They said, “OK. Let’s see. We’ve got to get someone..... Who is respected by all of Europe as a saint? Let’s get a saint as pope for a change.” And there was one, Peter Morone. He lived in a cave. He was a hermit. Occasionally saw him when the moon came out. Noted for his sanctity. So the College of Cardinals clambered up the cliff, and they grabbed Peter Morone and they said, “We are going to make you Pope because all of Europe respects your personal spirituality.” Morone said no and they said, “Si!” and they dragged him back to the Vatican. Morone set up a tent in the middle of the Vatican and he lived in the tent. When they had to bring a document for the Papal signature, Morone’s skinny arm would extend through the tent, put an “x” down and go back. True story. After several months, the College of Cardinals came back and said, “Um-m, would you mind retiring?” And Peter Morone who was called Pope Celestine V said, “Si. Bono.” He went back to the cave. By that time, another cardinal had arrived who was smart and holy, and they made him Pope Boniface. So, retirement has a certain pedigree to it! And then, of course, with the particular temperament inherited from my father, I thought, “Why not see Jesus in the face by dying, praying to die?” Not self-pity and not feeling depressed particularly, but dying, “see Him in the face.” Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Sunday’s gospel.... the long haul, “Hang on for the long haul.” And I thought of the letter. I read it to you on Mother’s Day. Remember? Children’s letters to God. This was written by a kid who is eight years old.

Well, if she is willing to go for the long haul and you are and I am, it won’t be so long if we keep seeing Christ in each other’s face.