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 IV
Church of Saints Peter and
Paul
666 Filbert Street (no, really) at Columbus Avenue (North
Beach)
Visited 19 Jan, 2014, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time,
11:45 mass in Italian
ARCHITECTURE:
Somebody’s fanciful idea of Lombard Romanesque
Strong Point: Towered
Façade, Marble Altar, Stained Glass Windows
Weak Point: None,
really.
LITURGY:
Liturgical Style – Dignified and serene
Music – Choir
chanting from the loft
Homily – H5, Off-the-Charts (see homily ratings, end of page)
“The Most Beautiful Church in
San Francisco”
I woke up this
morning after a late night at a family birthday party, not exactly hung over,
but not not hung over, either.
It was 10:30, and my ambitious plans for today had involved a long trek
across town and back-to-back visits to a few different churches, the first mass
of which was starting as I lay groggy in bed.
I looked again at the clock, breathed a sigh of disgust with myself, and
came up with a Plan B. ALWAYS have a
Plan B.
“What’s nearish
and noonish?” I wondered to myself as I pored through my directory of parishes, settling on an 11:45 mass, in Italian, at the Italian
National Parish of Saints Peter, Paul and Mary.
Okay, its real name is SS. Peter and Paul, but I grew up in the
Puff-the-Magic-Dragon era of San Francisco, and have called it that ever since
I was a teenager, driving by with my family, when my sister’s high school bff
pointed out the window and exclaimed “Look – it’s Saint Peter, Paul and
Mary!” I still laugh about that.
But I digress.
A lifetime ago
when I worked in the area, I would attend the Italian Mass which,
at the time, fit snugly into the hour before my Sunday shift. The priest would mumble his way through mass
so unintelligibly that, even if he were speaking English, I would have
understood little. This will be my first
time back to the Italian Mass since, maybe, 1994, IF I make it in time. And I’m running late. Dragging my not-quite-hungover kiester over
and around the hills of my Great City, bumping into unsuspecting buildings and
lamp-posts at every turn, I finally reach the SIM-card shaped lawn of
Washington Square, and glancing across its verdant midwinter green, I could see
the green vestments of a priest in the vestibule, waiting for his cue to begin
mass. I glanced at the time: 11:42. I made it!
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The priest greeted
me with a warm, firm handshake and a “Good Morning”, followed a moment later by
a “Buon Giorno” (as he realized which mass it was that he was about to
celebrate?). My Italian half was
enthusiastically awaiting this Mass, in the language of my great grandparents,
in the parish of my great-grandparents, in the neighborhood of my
great-grandparents on that side of my family.
I took one quick photograph of the impressive altar (attracting that
condescending “tourist!” look from the other locals) and took my seat near the
pulpit.
Mass began with
Father Alberto’s welcome to “The Most Beautiful Church in San Francisco”, and
an apology for all the empty seats, which he blamed on those staying at home to
warm up their TV sets for this afternoon’s 49ers game. (I’ll spoil the surprise: the Seahawks won,
and the red-and-gold floodlights on City Hall will revert to plain white lights
by tomorrow).
The music was
hauntingly beautiful. This is the first
church I’ve been to in DECADES which makes proper use of the choir loft, so that
rather than watching “performers on stage”, we are treated to the angelic
chants emanating from a point invisibly above and behind us, embellishing the
liturgy without detracting from it. This
was, as every mass is intended to be: heavenly.
What I wouldn’t give for my OWN parish to trump the agendas of its
world-class choirs and make use of our choir loft at mass!
When it came time
for the homily, Father Alberto repeated his welcome to San Francisco’s most
beautiful church (I would argue that 5 or so churches in this town rightfully
vie for the title), and begins his four-point homily, synopsized from the notes
I not-so-furtively took at mass.
Point One: What a beautiful day; pray for rain (we’re in
the grip of the worst drought on record; thank you, father, for reminding us to
pray for water).
Point Two: Let us remember, on this weekend of Martin
Luther King, Jr. Day, that every race, creed and color is God’s creation and
deserves our love and respect.
Point Three: Christian Unity. Let us remember the divisions which have divided
the once-wholeness of our Holy Church. That’s
when Father Alberto held up a chartreuse-colored sheet of paper with the
numbers ‘1054’ and ‘1560’ magic-markered onto the right side of the page. One day at the onset of the last millennium,
Father reminds us, the Patriarch of the Roman church went on a rampage of
excommunication and severed our ties with the Eastern Patriarchs. As I listened, the Greek half of me cried
tears of ouzo. Father tore the ‘1054’
quadrant from his chartreuse visual aid as my cheeks were striped with
tears. Then one day in the 1960’s,
Father reminds us, Pope Paul VI made the first-ever papal airplane visit to Jerusalem, where he voiced an apology to
Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople, for the sins we have committed
against our brothers in the Eastern Church, in a sincere gesture of
reunification. My Greek half cried again,
this time with joy. Then Father reminds
us, on the occasion of this holiday weekend, that long before Martin Luther
King, Junior, there was an earlier Martin Luther, whose reaction against the
pope had separated untold numbers of the faithful away from the Church. The German half of me cried (are you keeping
track of how many ‘halves” I’ve recorded? I may be Two and a Half Men by the end of this blog). Fr. Alberto poignantly tore away the ‘1560’
quadrant from his chartreuse paper, and showed us a sloppily-torn metaphor for
our sloppily-torn Church, exhorting us to pray, not for a “unity” of
compromise, but for the True Unity of reconciliation and return to
wholeness. It was interesting, moving,
that in his homily he accepts the blame on the side of our popes for the Great
Schism of 1054, while on the part of the Reformation he prays for their
conversion and return to the Sacraments.
Unity without Compromise: preached, perhaps, for the first time I've heard in San
Francisco, by Father Alberto.
Point Four: Remember our responsibility to the weakest
and most vulnerable among us, the unborn, in the Walk for Life, next Saturday.
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Altar to the Sacred Heart
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A Gathering of Italian Saints
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(Update: It is now 16 February as I finally get this blog going, and I have just returned from Divine Liturgy at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation - thank you, Padre Alberto, for inspiring me to this)
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Tailgate:
Sorry about such a long list of photos. The walk home from North Beach with a detour up Telegraph Hill is the most photogenic part of The City, and every picture here has a memory behind it. I couldn't resist.
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There's little I enjoy more than a sunny day to wander around the neighborhood of my family’s
first foothold in the Great City and County of San Francisco. But first, a beeline to fuel up at my favorite caffè,
“A. Cavalli & Co”, home of everybody’s favorite Surly Barista. The guy is a gem.
The great A. Cavalli & Co
Sorry to see it closed today (pout)
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I love the "Open" sign behind a very NOT open gate
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Twin Bulletins: One for each language.
After fueling up,
I hiked the near-vertical, stair-stepping sidewalks of North Beach’s slopes, up
Telegraph Hill, to revisit the homes where a dapper, bright-eyed bootblack and
his solemn, stern-eyed wife had struggled to raise nine children on the nickels
tossed into a shoe-shiner’s hat. Worlds
apart, but no less beautiful, than the hilltop home they left behind in their
poignantly earthquake-riddled corner of Southern Italy.
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The home of a poor immigrant was often up the steepest hills. Imagine Great Gram hiking up this one with enough groceries to feed nine children.
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Today, there's a brilliant view of Coit Tower from Gr-Gramps' old house, but back then, no tower. Just a steep hike up this street at the end of every day.
There's always an improbable-looking piece of property in this neighborhood.
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In SF, this is what we call a view............................................and this is what we call a street
A lot of bloomin' goin' on for January
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This is the 1200 block of Montgomery Street.
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From the top, looking back down Montgomery Street, and up to Coit Tower
Looks like Coit Tower is wearing braces today
Another example of what we call a street: Vallejo Street from McGom'ry.
Garibaldi Hall used to host the Italian Union meetings. I'd rather not know what kind of club it's hosting now.
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The "Wall Street of the West", a nice walk home.
My Irish half was aching for a refreshing draft after that hike, but the loud roaring of the fans kept me away. This is the quaint little block where I once got mugged with a gun to my head (to be honest, it looked like one of the kid's props from his drama class, but tell that to my shaking knees). I somehow finagled my way out of it without losing a dime (or limb). Ahhhhh, memories!
Caffè Zoetrope is Francis Ford Coppola's gift to The City, and the perfect spot for that relaxing drink I was craving. One glass of the "Director's Cut" Zinfandel and I could sing like Enrico Caruso.
The Zoetrope sits right at the crossroads of Chinatown, Italian North Beach, and the Financial District.
FFC's corner booth is kept roped off in case the Director drops in.
A Señorita enjoys the view of Chinatown and the cuisine of Italy.
The last leg of the walk home is this stretch of Market Street, looking like winter but feeling like summer.
Home at last, through the Sunday Produce Market.
* * * * *
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
we’ll never 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 by blithely side-stepping them, rather than
outwardly contradicting them. 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.
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