Autumn

 

Autumn arrives at precisely 8:05 p.m. tonight with the Autumn Equinox. This will be the moment when the sun is positioned directly above the equator. Daylight and night will be equal in length (hence "equinox"). After the equinox, however, the sun's position will gradually move southward. Here in the northern hemisphere, the daylight hours will grow shorter, and the night hours will grow measurably longer. Meanwhile, while summer temperatures may linger for a longer or shorter period of time, sooner or later cooler weather will prevail until by the date of the December solstice (December 21) cold winter weather will, at least normally, be firmly predominant. I eagerly look froward to the day when I will routinely require a coat to go outside! It is this intermediate season, starting warm, ending cold, gradually getting darker, that we call Autumn or Fall.

The word "Fall" highlights one of the more attractive features of this season, as the leaves of deciduous trees change in color from their chlorophyll-induced spring-summer green to bright variations of yellow, orange, and red, and then literally fall to the ground. 

The culturally promoted, elite perspective on the change of seasons is, of course to deplore all this, to lament the fading of summer and the proximate approach of winter. I dissent from all of that. In climates where there are distinct rainy and dry seasons (like the ancient Middle East), the return of rain in autumn represents a renewal of nature in a dry, weary land without water [Psalm 63:1] after the deadly dryness and heat of summer. There are places (California, for example), which (like Israel) have a Mediterranean desert climate and are dependent on the winter rainy season for sufficient water to sustain human and animal life and agricultural production for the summer dry season, when no rain is normally expected. Hence, it is no surprise that autumn is treated as the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar. (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish "New Year," was celebrated 10 days ago.)

I have lived most of my life in places with predictably regular rainfall, where in most non-drought years it rains on-and-off all year long. So autumn's new beginning for me has usually been more social than meteorological - associated with the beginning of the new school year in the academic calendar, a calendar which has tended to set the tone for much of society even for those whose school years are long behind them.

When I was a student (and likewise when I was very briefly a professor) the beginning of the academic year represented for me the much anticipated resumption of normal social activities. Since this pattern likewise largely dominates American parish life, the school calendar and its autumn beginning have been a focal point for me for almost my entire life. Inevitably, September elicits in me an enthusiastic response and the promise of a new start - probably the way the annual seasonal resumption of college football plays a similar role in many more people's lives.

Nothing is ever quite so simple, of course, or so univocal. Autumn is indeed a new beginning, a bright start. But it also, for obvious reasons, has a certain end times feel about it, as the annual dying of the natural world is vividly enacted before our eyes. (That beautiful foliage is in fact dying foliage!) 

The dying of the natural world inevitably acquires more significance for those of us who are old and acutely aware that the sum of our years is seventy, or if we are strong eighty, and most of them are toil and trouble, for their quickly pass and we vanish [Psalm 90:10]. As I said one Advent some years ago, what we see is the end of the natural world, but what we feel and fear is the end of ourselves. So the same season that gives us football tailgate parties and a multitude of variations on the theme of Oktoberfest also sends sobering signals both big and small.

Both autumnal themes symbolically represented both by dead leaves refreshing autumn rains, and are united in the paradoxical language of faith. "Our weakness bears us down, but our faith bears us up. We sorrow over the human condition, but find our healing in the divine promise." [Saint Augustine, Sermon 172].

Festa!

 

This week, legions of tourists and others with money to spend have been pouring into the downtown Manhattan neighborhood which is still somewhat anachronistically labelled "Little Italy" for the  Festa di San Genaro. In the traditional Roman Catholic calendar, September 19 has long been observed as the feast of Saint Januarius (San Gennaro, in Italian), Bishop of Benevento, martyred c. 305 along with six others during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian, the last serious Roman persecution prior to the conversion of Constantine. His relics eventually made their way to Naples, where for centuries, San Gennaro's body has reposed in the Cathedral of Naples. As patron of that city, he continues to be invoked for protection from fire, earthquakes, and the ever-present threat from Mount Vesuvius. 

In the early 20th century, the massive wave of Neapolitan immigrants from one of the poorest regions of the newly created Kingdom of Italy to America made devotion to San Gennaro a popular part of immigrant Italian life in New York City - in the neighborhood that then really was "Little Italy" (and where my mother was born 104 years ago). 

The still popular street festival originated on Mulberry street on September 19, 1926. By 1930, there were 440,250 Italian-born New Yorkers - including all my grandparents and several of my aunts and uncles. As strangers in a foreign land, Italian immigrants faced all the challenges - and opportunities - inherent in immigration. As Catholics, they faced the added challenge of being perceived primarily as a problem by an unwelcoming, predominantly Irish ecclesiastical establishment. As much as anything else, the New York Italian street festivals celebrated an alternative quality of community experience. While the establishment lamented what the immigrants didn't do, the festa demonstrated who they were at heart.

The one-day festa eventually expanded into today's 11-day street fair and a major tourist attraction - New York's biggest and most famous street festival and a great place to go for sausage and zeppole - a combination carnival and charity fundraiser. Operated by a not-for profit community organization, the contemporary festa distributes donations to various charitable organizations. Today's money-spending, sausage and zeppole consuming tourists may know little and may care even less about San Gennaro and his miraculous intercession against volcanic eruptions, but  even now the festa still features a religious procession on the actual feast day, an authentic expression of an immigrant community's heart and the spiritual strength that sustained the struggle of the Italian immigrant experience.

Meanwhile, back in Naples on his feast day, a silver bust containing the head of the saint and a glass reliquary containing a solidified sample of the saint's blood are exposed for veneration. Led by a group of women, called zie di San Gennaro,  the people pray for the famous miracle of the liquefying of his blood. When that happens, the ritual announcement is made to the great joy of all, Il sangue si è sciolto, Il miracolo e fatto ("The blood has liquefied. The miracle has happened"). The Te Deum is then sung, and the reliquary is made available to be kissed by the people. San Gennaro's blood traditionally also liquefies on the Saturday before the first Sunday of May to commemorate the transfer of his relics to Naples and again on December 16, the anniversary of the day in 1631 when a flow of lava from Mount Vesuvius miraculously bypassed the city - thanks, it was believed, to the saint's intercession.

The presence of Mount Vesuvius - a mere 9 miles from the center of Naples, highlights the paradox of Naples, a vibrant, exciting city, on a beautiful bay, in a setting of of incomparable natural beauty, blessed with fertile volcanic soil, but forever threatened by one of nature's most dangerous and unpredictable destructive forces. In a sense, Naples is like a parable of life itself - the blessings and dangers of ordinary human life on earth as well as of the spiritual journey through life on earth to the kingdom of God. How fitting then that the Neapolitans turn so regularly to a saint who has already passed through the blessings and dangers of this life to assist them as they struggle to do the same! 

Image: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy, 1861-1946.

The Uprising (The Movie)

 

The Uprising is a 2026 action film written, produced, and directed by Paul Greenglass and starring Andrew Garfield as the "Ploughman." It is a cinematic dramatization of the 1381 English "Peasants' Revolt" (historically more accurately termed "Wat Tyler's Rebellion") which occurred in the aftermath of the Bubonic Plague ("the Black Death") that had killed off half the country's population, starting in June 1348. The violent events of 1381 have long been considered a major crisis moment in English history.

In 1381, England's king was the 14-year-old Richard II, too young to rule on his own, although he did in fact play a prominent part in the rebellion's actual events. In the film he (Woody Norman) is haunted by terrifying nightmares, which in some sense reflect the haunting of the entire realm in the aftermath of the plague (referred to in the film as "the sickness"). He has an ambivalent relationship with his aristocratic council, which governs in his name, as does his mother, Joan of Kent (Katherine Waterston). Meanwhile, in addition to the economic dislocations caused by the plague, England is engaged in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) with France and desperately needs more revenue, requiring an increase in taxes. Unable politically to tax the Church or the rising merchant class in London, the royal council (composed apparently of nobles and bishops) increases taxes on the peasants, who complain to the local tax collector that they can no longer survive if they have to pay higher taxes.

Enter a "Ploughman" (Andrew Garfield), a widowed farmer whose wife and children had died in the plague. The collector demands that the Ploughman pay death taxes again on his family since he lacks documentary proof of their death seven years prior. The enraged Ploughman accosts the tax collector, and kills a soldier who tries to arrest him. This inspires peasants' revolts across the country, led by the Ploughman and actual historical characters from 1381 - a former soldier Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), and a previously imprisoned, apparently apocalyptically inclined priest, John Ball (Jamie Bell). The rebels march on London, where complete chaos erupts, while the rebels (mainly the Ploughman) negotiate with the King, whom the rebels treat with the veneration that his sacred status confers and that somehow sets him apart from the hated rich. Richard apparently gives in to the rebels and seems to betray his Council. In the end he seems to ally with the rising merchant class, represented by the Lord Mayor of London. The King then betrays the peasants and has Wat Tyler killed. Many of the rebels are massacred, but the Ploughman and a handful of associates escape.

One year later, the king and his mother are traveling through the forest when they are ambushed by the Ploughman and his fellow outlaws. Ultimately the Ploughman spares the King's life, leaving him to live in fear. The film ends with the King haunted as he was at the beginning. This fictional ending seems to evoke the legend of Robin Hood, who, however, historically predated these events by almost two centuries. (Historically, Richard II was ultimately deposed in 1399 by Henry IV, which remotely set the stage for the later Wars of the Roses)

The 14th-century aftermath of the plague was a period of economic dislocation and political transition. The merging merchant class were perhaps the prime beneficiaries (as the film suggests), although historically the peasants also benefited since their reduced numbers increased their power as an economic class, despite repeated legal efforts to keep them in their previous subordinate status. Their violent revolt was a long-remembered component of the chaos that occurred at that time. It continues to fascinate historians (especially those given to class analysis). The film avoids overt references to contemporary populist responses to today's economic and political conflicts, and the rebels' veneration of the sacred person of the King keeps the film firmly situated in its medieval ambience. On the other hand, the setting of the story in a haunted world traumatized by plague perhaps gives it a certain resonance in today's traumatized post-pandemic society, similarly haunted by its own versions of elite corruption and populist rage.

The Only Bridge to Heaven

 

Twenty-five years ago today, this church was filled to overflowing, following the infamous terrorist attack which we had experienced in this city just three days before. Even more than Christmas Midnight Mass, this was the occasion when I saw this great church so completely filled to capacity - filled incidentally as it was originally designed to be. But, on that unforgettable September day, when we assembled that day for Mass, we did what the Church always does on September 14. We celebrated the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the symbol of our salvation. As our first pastor, Paulist founder Servant of God Isaac Hecker, expressed it, The only bridge to heaven is over the cross.  The gates of paradise are only opened with the key of the cross. [Unpublished Spiritual Notebook, 1854]

Historically, this feast commemorates the dedication, on September 13, 335, of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem – built by the Roman Emperor Constantine over the traditionally recognized sites of Christ’s crucifixion and of his burial and resurrection. The next day, the relic of the True Cross (which had been discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Saint Helena in 320) was publicly venerated in the new basilica. Eventually, September 14 became the feast celebrated today throughout the Universal Church.

On one level, this feast was a celebration of Christianity’s triumph over Roman paganism. The date for the dedication of the Jerusalem Basilica may have been chosen to counteract the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome (the god known to the Greeks as Zeus, the Father of gods and men). That Roman site is, ironically, now the site of the Vittoriano, Italy’s 1911 monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy. It was a monument to the triumph of modern secularism over religion and of the power of the rising state over the power of the declining Church.  In the vicissitudes of history, such short-term triumphs clearly come and go, part of our perennial political noise and our overwhelming obsession with power, domination, and control.

In contrast, however, what we celebrate today is Christ’s triumph over our sad history of cosmic evil and human sinfulness  – now transformed, once and for all, through the triumph of Christ’s cross.

Evil and sin do not happen simply by accident – and neither did the cross. It didn’t just happen to Jesus one day, like some inexplicable misfortune – like various sufferings and setbacks, which, when they happen in our own lives, we sometimes all too glibly refer to as “crosses.” Christ’s cross was a direct consequence of his confrontation with worldly power, domination, and control and became the means by which he overcame cosmic evil and human sin.

In Jesus, the cross has become our doorway to salvation. A dreaded instrument of disgraceful death, the cross is now, thanks to Jesus, our gateway to freedom and new life, a triumphant sign of glory. And that is why we celebrate the Cross. As Saint Augustine said in a sermon somewhere around the year 400, You’re a Christian, you carry on your forehead the cross of Christ [Sermon 302, 3].

In the familiar story we just heard, [Numbers 21:4b-9], God punished his perpetually complaining people with serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. But, when Moses interceded on the people’s behalf, he was instructed to make an image of a serpent, mounted on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at it, he lived.

Like the people in the desert, we experience all sorts of sufferings and setbacks and are prone to discouragement. But the mystery of the cross invites us to see our situation differently. It invites us to turn away from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves, and to turn instead to Christ – to delight, as Saint Augustine said in that same sermon, not in the sign of the wood, but in the sign of the one hanging on it. 

The mystery of the cross invites us to turn away once and for all from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves – from both our constant competition for power, wealth, status, and whatever else seems to excite us, and from the seemingly endless sufferings and setbacks that continue to break our hearts - and to turn instead to Christ, so that we may journey through the desert of this treacherous life with hope instead of fear, under the sign of the cross, which alone can conquer in our conflict-ridden, war-torn, terrorized, and religiously and politically polarized world.

Homily for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 14, 2025.

 

A City United in Memory

 

On September 11, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of that morning's horror, Cardinal Edward Egan, New York's Archbishop at the time, celebrated a hastily arranged special Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Later, highlighting the extraordinary bravery, selflessness, and sacrifice of firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical workers (now recalled in a mural near the cathedral's main door), Egan highlighted how that terrible tragedy had revealed "New York at its best."

New York was at its best again, 25 years later, as the city came together this week to remember. The usual ceremonies took place at Ground Zero recalling that day's almost 3000 victims, and various commemorations took place around the city on the anniversary itself and in the days leading up to it. All four living former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — and their First Ladies attended the Ground Zero ceremony, along with Vice President JD Vance. Former mayors attended along with the city's current mayor and other public officials.

On the eve of this anniversary, Saint Patrick's Cathedral again served as the city's spiritual heart. New York's new Archbishop, Ronald Hicks, flanked by concelebrating priests, bishops, and a cardinal (Tobin of Newark), celebrated a special Memorial Mass for families of those lost on 9/11, members of the city's uniformed services, and public officials (present and former). Seated in the very first row were former President Biden, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Watching the livestream, I was especially moved to see how the Archbishop pointedly stopped to greet the three of them as the procession arrived at the entrance of the sanctuary.

The presence of the three of them together in the front row, along with many other present and past public officials, was a vivid reminder of how united this city was in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and how united we could still be. Archbishop Hicks himself highlighted how in this city people of every religion and way of life "stand together, pray together, listen together, and seek the common good together." 

Another very important New Yorker, the present President of the United States, had also been invited, as was his Catholic-convert Vice President. Their absence added additional symbolism to the presence of the former President and of the state and city's current leaders. According to one published account of the evening, President Biden remained for an hour after the Mass, talking to members of the congregation who were there to remember their dead family members. Meanwhile, the presence of the city's first Muslim mayor was a powerful reminder of how this city has especially embodied the unique American experience of immigration (recalled and celebrated artistically in the murals at the cathedral's entrance) - the great American experience of diverse nations and religions coming together here to form something new and special. As Archbishop Hicks noted, one of the lessons from the events being remembered, is how "we need each other."

Needing each other is what causes fragile human beings to come together in families and civil society. Needing each other is the glue that holds a fragile society together and in the end its ultimate strength - something that sadly some of those who were not present at the cathedral Thursday night seem to have forgotten.

Photo: 9/11 Memorial Tablet at Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.