Saint Boniface Church, San Francisco

The Churches of San Francisco

One Man’s Odyssey through the Catholic (and Orthodox) Churches of God’s Favorite City

by Ikaros, The Angel who Crash-Landed

PART VII

Saint Boniface Church

133 Golden Gate Avenue, SF, CA 94102 (The Tenderloin)

Visited Sunday, 9 February, 2014 (Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time) 12:15 mass

ARCHITECTURE:

Germanic Neo-Romanesque?

Strengths:  Triple-Tower Façade, Stained Glass, Murals, Sculptural Stations, Ad Orientum Layout

Weakness:  Orangey Christmas Lights over the Side Altars:  Really?

LITURGY:

Liturgical Style –  Vibrant and Entertaining

Music –  Jazzy Piano

Homily – Mixed (Powerful H4 message with an almost Game-Showy H2 delivery; see homily ratings below)

“The Pope Francis Show”

I intended to begin my spiritual sojourn into the Orthodox churches of San Francisco today (inspired by Fr. Alberto’s homily of January 18^th at Sts. Peter and Paul) until I turned my groggy head toward the clock, heard the banging of our fourth consecutive day of heavy rain against the windows, and opted for a Plan B of something closer to home and later in the day.  Is this becoming a pattern?

So I staggered out of bed an hour later as the sound of rain was fading to a light sprinkle, and decided that a visit to the nearby parish of the Franciscans in the crackhead-laden heart of the Tenderloin was a good choice for a rainy day.  I think I can handle the odor on that block of Golden Gate Avenue after it’s spent four days in Mother Nature’s rinse cycle.

One finds St. Boniface Church directly across the street from St. Anthony’s dining room, where the homeless form a line around the block at lunch and dinner times to receive the gracious gift of a complete hot meal at the loving hands of the Franciscans.  I wholeheartedly recommend making any donations possible to this priceless charity which nourishes more poor and homeless persons than any other kitchen in San Francisco.

St. Boniface strikes me as perhaps the only Catholic church in San Francisco which was deliberately placed sideways on its block (the main entrance through the tower opens into the middle of the nave) in order to preserve an age-old tradition of orienting the church with the altar to the east.  Thus, the sun rises behind the altar to remind us of Christ’s rising from the tomb, utilizing nature to reinforce the story of Easter.  Father was standing at the rear of the church, preparing for the processional, as I took my photos and took my seat.  I had forgotten what hidden treasures of stained glass this church holds, along with its richly-painted walls and beautifully-carved hardwood confessionals (macintosh oak?).

The processional was joyful, contemporary, and electrified by the “Snazzy Broadway Jazz-hands” stylings of a very talented pianist.  It started off on almost too entertaining a note, blurring the line between worship and theater, but toned itself down to something rather more prayerful for the remainder of Mass.

                

It was fitting to be in this, of all parishes, for the reading from the book of Isaiah where God exhorts us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless, which is exactly what these Franciscans have been doing for generations.  It forced me into a critical self-analysis of the pride and repulsion for the homeless which had kept me away from this parish, and so by the time Father started his homily, I was primed to listen and absorb.

Now guess how Father started his homily - with a discussion of the struggle between pride and humility, between righteousness and self-righteousness, between recognizing God’s gifts to us and taking credit for them ourselves - words I knew I needed to hear.  He weaved in messages about taking this nourishment we receive in the sacraments into the world and fulfilling God’s work to help the needy, and the revitalization going on in the church under the leadership of Pope Francis, the turn toward becoming a poor church, of and for the poor.

His homily earned a roaring round of applause which I thought, in my judgmental self-righteousness, had crossed the line between worship and entertainment.  But I had to say that, to prove the accuracy of Father’s assessment of me in his homily, didn’t I?

Mass went on flirting with the division between entertaining worship and prayerful show-business, which, although not my personal taste, was remarkable at least for the vibrant energy it imparted to the scanty rainy-day congregation.  I left mass in a bewildered mix of critical self-reflection and the sinking suspicion that I just left a studio audience, and what that says about my arrogant self-righteousness was not lost on me, thanks to Father’s gripping message.  I would recommend this parish to anyone seeking a revitalization of their spiritual life, and anyone in need of a sobering message in the spirit of St. Francis, and his namesake pontiff.

The "Superman Building" looms over St. Boney Face.

The "Superman Building":  Boarded-Up Beauty

A favorite neighborhood haunt

Urban Oasis

The rain poured down again.  And the ribs of my umbrella snapped off as I opened it, leaving me a wet sloppy mess with a busted brelly.

Congregational Congregation, dodging raindrops between the hallelujahs.

The Old Federal Building, and the Whitcomb Hotel (lower left), which served as City Hall for 13 years after the Great Quake while the new City Hall was constructed. They say the Whitcomb holds the last ballroom in San Francisco with original parquet floor intact.

Ordinarily, the restaurant flanking this lobby would have called irresistibly to me for a Sunday Brunch, but after hearing Father's homily resounding amid the poor and downtrodden of our city, I had a change of heart, stepped out into the deluge, and took a second look at the cheesy, almost scary-looking exterior of the dive across the street.

Tailgate to Sam's

The rain was coming down so hard that my camera couldn't find the distance to focus on.

Inside, this place was kind of chic (if they knew I was blogging they might have moved The Cone).

As it turns out, Sam’s Diner has a stylish theater-district-meets-brew-pub décor, great food, and reasonable prices.  I enjoyed a brief chat with Alex, the manager who was serving me, and ended up discovering this new hang-out, to which I’ll be returning for a Sunday Brunch, or late night snack with my eye open to spotting cast members of whatever’s playing at the Orpheum.

My Souvenir Bulletin Pic

City Hall is never the same view twice.  Here it is, lovely as ever, on this rainy day.

*   *   *   *   *

My “Hurricane-System” of Homily Ratings

H5: Transformative

The priest said or demonstrated something which altered my perspective, so profoundly, that I leave the church a different person than when I entered, and remain so.  The priest has not only challenged me toward growth but provided me with the tools or information I needed to accomplish and sustain that growth.  I have heard just a few such homilies in my life, so don’t be surprised if there aren’t (m)any times you see this rating come up.

H4: Challenging

The priest has made it clear that we are not complacently at the end of our journey, but in need of Christ to bring us closer to where He is calling us.  I feel challenged and encouraged to move beyond where I am now.

H3: Inspiring

This is a category of many beautiful and moving homilies, in which the priest has painted with words an image of spiritual fulfillment toward which we are all striving, but not necessarily mapped out the process for me to get there.

H2: Feel-Goodie

Everybody wants a homily that makes us leave Mass feeling good about who we are, but will we ever grow in faith if all we get is a spiritual pat on the back and a candy bar?  Too often, these homilies blithely side-step any church teachings that confront us directly with that sobering message we all need to hear to overcome our pharisaical smugness.  Happily, I have heard very few homilies of this nature in the city of San Francisco. 

H1: Negative

The only thing worse than a priest making me feel good about being the unrepentant sinner that I am, is a priest who makes me feel bad about it.  Gladly, I have heard so little fire-and-brimstone negativity in my lifelong practice of Catholicism that I can honestly expect not to use this rating at all.

H0: Heretical

Let’s hope that this is another category I can safely expect not to use.  I have, in my travels, heard views from the pulpits of Catholic churches which contradict Catholic teaching, but I don’t expect to happen across any contrary teaching here in my City and County.  If I think I have, I'll check with an authority first, then letcha know.

Misión San Francisco de Asís, San Francisco (Mission Dolores)

The Churches of San Francisco

One Man’s Odyssey through the Catholic (and Orthodox) Churches of God’s Favorite City

by Ikaros, The Angel who Crash-Landed

PART VI

Misión San Francisco de Asís

(Mission Dolores Chapel)

3321 Sixteenth Street at Dolores, SF, CA 94114 (The Mission District)

Visited Saturday, 1 February, 2014 (Vigil of the Presentation) 5:30 mass

ARCHITECTURE:

Not just “Mission Style”, but an actual original mission church, hardly modified in nearly 225 years

Strengths:  Original three-foot thick adobe walls & roof tiles, imported Spanish Reredos & statuary, Indian geometric painting

Weakness:  If any, the incongruous Neoclassical side altars added in the mid-1850’s

LITURGY:

Liturgical Style –  Appropriately humble and minimal

Music –  Cantor and Organ

Homily – Mixed Reviews (H3/H2; see homily ratings below)

“Mission-Style Mass”

Bear with me as I begin with a history.  Mission Dolores is more than a parish, less than a parish, having sat in one place while the land underneath it changed hands between three foreign countries.  It bears a long and storied history which attempts to makes sense of the confusion.  And so I begin with a trip through time.

The Mission began as an answer to a dare between a Mexican Viceroy in La Paz hungering for strategic port locations along the largely-uncharted coasts of the north, and a poor friar in tattered robes asking permission to name his next mission after Saint Francis, the founder of his humble order.  The pompous viceroy’s reply went something like this, “If your saint wants a mission, tell him to show us his harbor and he’ll get one.”

Imagine the look on both of their faces when little Padre Serra returned a couple of years later, after Portola’s land expedition happened across this vast sheltered bay which the galleons had been passing without notice for decades.  And thus, five days before the Declaration of Independence was signed on foreign American soil a continent away, the Franciscans got their mission of "San Francisco de Asís", named for the poorest-of-the-poor founder of their order, on the shores of the Laguna de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Lagoon of Our Lady of Sorrows), and the Spanish got their port, called “Yerba Buena”, with its military garrison (The Presidio of San Francisco) completing the third point of this triangle at the entrance of the bay.

The same summer fog which had concealed the narrow entrance to the bay had also chilled the bounty out of the mission’s summer crops, and the laguna which looked so promising in the spring had run brackish when the creeks dried up in summer.  The little mission of the poverty-loving saint had lived up to Francis’ reputation, coming in last place, year after year, in its production of crops and the livestock that fed off of them.

The mission padres exchanged the graces of sacraments and the shelter and meager crops of the Mission for the Indians’ skills in procuring the harvest of the bay and their labor within the mission, in a relationship which seemed to have benefitted both parties in a mutually tentative, intermittent and almost begrudging way.

Times passed slowly in this catatonic outpost of the Spanish Empire.  The War of Mexican Independence passed the mission, port and presidio from Spanish to Mexican hands.  The drowsy port of Yerba Buena was renamed “San Francisco” to merge its identity with those of the outlying mission and presidio, and just in time for it all to change hands once again as John Fremont raised the American Flag in our dusty town square.  There was barely anyone around to notice.  Maybe a dozen scruffy guys looked on and shrugged.  And then, just months later, gold was discovered near Sacramento in the waning months of 1848, and the Golden Gate (named after its biblical counterpart in Jerusalem?) got the chance to earn its name.

A sleepy crossroads erupted into an overcrowded tinderbox of shacks built from the wood of the argonauts’ abandoned ships, as the trading post grew from 45 people to 4,500 almost overnight, and to 45,000 in a year, and to 450,000 by 1900.  The mission courtyard had been carved away by the street grid of the new city, a sprawling quadrangle giving way to an imposing gothic church which seemed to scoff at the humble mission chapel by its side.  Then the city was levelled in the earthquake of 1906, reducing the gothic church to rubble while the little adobe chapel of Poor Francis lost only a few roof tiles.  The fire triggered by the quake roared through the city, engulfing what little the quake had spared, and Francis’ little chapel looked on as the wall of flame gasped to halt right across the street.

Over the rubble of the old gothic church rose a Spanish Baroque Basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows (to whom was named the old Laguna which had long-since been filled and housed-over by the greedily growing city).  So today, the little mission chapel and cemetery sit anomalously within the heart of a big gritty city, overshadowed by a towering basilica, to form a unique double-church.  Mission Dolores is the historic remnant of a mission, the subsidiary chapel of a larger and more recent church, and a soaring basilica which belongs as much to the pope as to the local bishop or pastor.  Its adobe bricks were molded by the Ohlone, built into a church by the Spaniards, handed over to Mexico and, finally, claimed by the United States at a time when the California Missions had already spent 150 years providing Holy Mass, in a Catholic faith which was still struggling to be legalized in the “Land of the Free” back East.

And so, in the context of this lengthy local history, I walk through heavy wooden doors to attend Mass in what is now referred to simply as “The Old Mission”.

The music began, and immediately I was stricken by its simplicity (a small electric organ accompanied by a wavering voice), and I couldn’t help but to imagine an era of dusty trails traversed by local Indians on their way to mass.  I wondered how it would have sounded to hear the chant of Ohlone converts straining to produce hymns in Latin while still struggling with Spanish, to an accompaniment of untrained fingers on unfamiliar foreign instruments.  And I felt very lucky to be in this holy little place, the poorest of the poor missions, attending this humble and beautiful liturgy.

They made the right choice of hymns: older, more traditional music which, were it pumped out through an overblown pipe organ, could sound pompous and stuffy, but in the gentle imperfect hands of this simple music ministry, presented a moving image of church history cradled and carried forward in loving arms.

The first reading from Malachi focused on God’s use of purification by fire for a pleasing sacrifice; harsh-sounding words, but a reminder that the Feast of the Presentation (also known as Candlemas) was once called the feast of the Purification.  Father’s homily side-stepped the purification angle, and focused on the themes of Candlemas – of the triumph of light over darkness, of hope against despair, of God’s Light appearing to Simeon and Anna in the form of a helpless newborn child, of us in our suffering being embraced by the light of God in Christ.

Personally, I found more “meat” in today’s readings than what came through in the homily, and well-charred, deeply grill-marked meat at that, but we don’t come to mass to be reminded of the trial-by-fire we all need to grow in faith, and father’s homily delivered a solid, heartily-sauced pasta course.  And I appreciated his warm and genuine welcome to me after mass.

This liturgy perfectly embraced the simplicity of St. Francis, and the directness of Pope Francis, in a way that should make Padre Serra proud.  I would recommend it to anyone, like me, who is seeking to return to a simpler and more genuine expression of liturgy, and to do so within the historic walls of a sacred and meaningful church.

I had an errand to run in The Mission District today before mass, a rare treat for me to do business in this part of town, and made it from there to the Mission in good time.  I have always loved this neighborhood, and never tire of seeing and photographing it with new eyes.

I can never walk past this place without wondering what our Mother is being thanked for.  A humble immigrant's prayer to earn and save enough capitol to open a business in this city, perhaps?  If you let The Sign speak for itself, what does she tell you?

I just noticed the Barbie Head on the roofline of this über-kitsch watering hole and had to laugh.  Who drinks at a place like this?  I bet they sell a lot of Skinny-Girl cocktails here at the "Bar Bie", anyway.

Great markets around here, great food.

Isn't this the Comic Book bank where Superman, Batman or Underdog always caught the bad guy?

This outdoor neon sign is new, but the oil painting of the zoot-suited immigrant on Baker Beach, with someone's heartfelt "I love you man" scrawled across the bottom, has hung behind the cash register forever.

This trio of churches was immortalized by Greg Kihn's 1983 video "Jeopardy".  Don't take another step until you've relived this gem of 80's culture at:
Mission Dolores and neighboring Lutheran Church in 80's video


...and for the REAL 80's die-hard fan, the brilliant comedic remake:
Wierd Al's Re-make

The fig trees in front of the Basilica have grown since that 1983 video, haven't they?

Tailgate:

Pícaro Tapas Restaurant:

Just the bread and mojo rojo sauce alone were gorgeous!

Manchego, Morcilla, tortilla, Sangría:  Sheer Heaven!

The name of this band, playing Saturday at Mission and Duboce, cracked me up

*   *   *   *   *

My “Hurricane-System” of Homily Ratings

H5: Transformative

The priest said or demonstrated something which altered my perspective, so profoundly, that I leave the church a different person than when I entered, and remain so.  The priest has not only challenged me toward growth but provided me with the tools or information I needed to accomplish and sustain that growth.  I have heard just a few such homilies in my life, so don’t be surprised if there aren’t (m)any times you see this rating come up.

H4: Challenging

The priest has made it clear that we are not complacently at the end of our journey, but in need of Christ to bring us closer to where He is calling us.  I feel challenged and encouraged to move beyond where I am now.

H3: Inspiring

This is a category of many beautiful and moving homilies, in which the priest has painted with words an image of spiritual fulfillment toward which we are all striving, but not necessarily mapped out the process for me to get there.

H2: Feel-Goodie

Everybody wants a homily that makes us leave Mass feeling good about who we are, but how will we ever grow in faith if all we get is a spiritual pat on the back and a candy bar?  Typically, these homilies ignore our church teachings, blithely side-stepping them, rather than outwardly contradicting them. They can be harmful “Pharisee-makers” in boosting our smugness and self-righteousness when what we need is a stern correction.  Happily, I have heard very few homilies of this nature in the city of San Francisco. 

H1: Negative

The only thing worse than a priest making me feel good about being the unrepentant sinner that I am is a priest who makes me feel bad about it.  Gladly, I have heard so little fire-and-brimstone negativity in my lifelong practice of Catholicism that I can honestly expect not to use this rating at all.

H0: Heretical

Let’s hope that this is another category I can safely expect not to use.  I have, in my travels, heard views from the pulpits of Catholic churches which contradict Catholic teaching, but I don’t expect to happen across any contrary teaching here in my City and County.