John Janaro's Blog, page 12

Christina Grimmie is a Sign of Hope in the Resurrection

It’s not Easter 2025 yet, but it is the 10th of April, and so I share these Easter greetings Christina Grimmie posted long ago as I remember and honor her legacy 8 years and 10 months after her death. 

Holy Week and Easter are approaching, and Christina lived her life, loved with great love, and died in the hope of the Resurrection. Her witness and example continue to shine for us, pointing to the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ that wins the victory over death and even the most incomprehensible violence.

I Denounce the U.S. Deportation Policy

El Salvador. The Savior.

I cannot set this aside and ignore it. Not on any day. Especially not in these days.

Here are the shaved heads and constrained bodies of men in an enormous prison. It is a small glimpse of a much bigger picture. These are human persons, created in the image of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ crucified. They are my brothers.

Some of them are also probably dangerous gang thugs that none of us would want walking around our neighborhoods. We would be terrified if we knew the things that some of the men in this prison have done. But are they all criminals? Who knows? Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele and his collaborators have suspended all reasonable forms of "due process" for these men.

This is El Salvador, the land of Saint Oscar Romero, who was martyred by a different kind of "gang" in 1980. Today, this land and many other places in its vicinity are still afflicted by a "cycle of violence."

In these days when we enter liturgically into the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, I cannot ignore the suffering of my brothers. Nor can I ignore the fact that the “executive branch” of the government of my own country is authorizing an unaccountable federal police force to pull people off the streets, put them in chains, fly them to El Salvador — without charges, without recourse to legal assistance, without trial — "discarding" them in this unregulated concentration camp, ignoring repeated federal court orders for due process, and bragging about it.

So far, it has only been a few hundred people. They are "the worst of the worst," we are told (even though most of them have never been charged with a crime, much less convicted of anything). We have also been told that this administration intends to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. By what methods? These are human persons. They are not garbage. They have a right to be treated with dignity.

I denounce and reject these deportation policies and the means by which they are being carried out. I do not applaud. I refuse to shout "hail, victory!" to this administration. There is not much I can do. I'm virtually a prisoner of my own afflictions. I write only with great difficulty these days. But that doesn't mean I have to shut up altogether. What the party in power is doing is wrong! And, to the party not-in-power at this time, I'll repeat (again and again) that when you say there is a "fundamental human right" for anyone to kill unborn children in their mothers' wombs, you LIE!

That's all I have the energy to say right now.

Jesus suffers in the poor and vulnerable, in victims of violence, and also in us (and for us) who are sinners. All of us. We are all sinners. May God open all our hearts that we might be converted and begin to be transformed by the inexhaustible mercy of the Crucified Jesus, who longs to draw every person into the depths of His wounded and forever open Heart.

Lord, Direct Our Hearts Aright

Saturday's COLLECT is a powerful prayer that reminds us of our total dependence on the mercy of God, and also the power of His grace to heal, renew, and transform our hearts.

His mercy is always "working" to "direct our hearts aright." His merciful love anticipates our freedom, working even in deep dark spaces of our soul, offering healing and forgiveness, renewing our freedom and opening up new possibilities for reconciliation and growing in love, awakening and sustaining our free cooperation with His plan to save us, change us, and make us His sons and daughters through His Son Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

Remembering My Father, Six Years Later

My father passed away six years ago on this day, April 3, 2019. (Requiem Aeternum...) Here he is in this picture sometime around the year 2011 - the O.G. "Papa" (for the Virginia Janaros) hugging his youngest granddaughter, who was then around four or five years old (she's 18 now!). It's striking for me to realize that I am now the "Papa" and my oldest granddaughter is almost four years old!!

So much has happened in these past six years. My grief has "turned a corner" and is finding its place within the ongoing, ever-changing, not-always-easy but ultimately beautiful history of our family. 

But there are still times when I miss him (for example, looking at this picture🥹). I want to talk to him about this new stage of my life, about "elderhood" (i.e. "growing old," but not just in the negative sense). I want to talk to him about the wild winds that are blowing through our nation and the world in this present moment (which are beyond anything he could have imagined while he was still living on this earth). 

I believe he remains "close" to us. We carry on his legacy in this world. I feel like he is "encouraging me" - from his resting place within the Heart of Jesus - to remain faithful, to trust in God, and to love my family. He was a quiet but deeply dedicated example of all these things throughout his life.

I love you, Dad. May the Lord reward you in His eternal joy.

Twentieth Anniversary of the Passing of Saint John Paul II

April begins with anniversaries of people who have passed from this life into the infinite embrace of the Mystery of God - people who played fundamental roles in the formation and sustenance of my own life's journey.

Twenty years ago, April 2, 2005, Pope Saint John Paul II came to the end and the fulfillment of his singular vocation as a global witness to Jesus Christ: the Living One who calls each person to eternal life. John Paul was the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter, and a great teacher for more than a quarter of a century. His papacy began when I was 15 years old and ended when I was 42. His witness of preaching the Gospel — the Word made flesh who reveals God's love and the full truth of what it means to be human — reached me personally as an encounter with Jesus that was decisive for my life as a young person. My whole generation of Catholic Christians shared in this experience and found the strength and contours of our Christian vocation through the light of the Holy Spirit that shined through John Paul II at the dawn of the third millennium.

Now we are growing older and the world shakes once again with the explosions of war and great winds of change that carry us we-know-not-where. But we have his enduring friendship in the Communion of Saints, from which Saint John Paul II reminds us: "Be not afraid."

John Paul had prepared and released the written text of his final Angelus message, which was read at noon on Sunday, April 3, the day after his death, Divine Mercy Sunday. Here is a section of those words:

"As a gift to humanity, which sometimes seems bewildered and overwhelmed by the power of evil, selfishness and fear, the Risen Lord offers his love that pardons, reconciles and reopens hearts to love. It is a love that converts hearts and gives peace. How much the world needs to understand and accept Divine Mercy!

"Lord, who reveal the Father's love by your death and Resurrection, we believe in you and confidently repeat to you today: Jesus, I trust in you, have mercy upon us and upon the whole world."

The Current Regime “Trumps” JJ’s Mental Health

Woof! It’s exhausting! Maybe writing about it will help.

In the Spring of the year 2025, JJ finds himself in a rare and peculiar situation: I am 62 years old; a born U.S. citizen who is a third generation descendant from Italian immigrants; a person who grew up in the 1970s in the Northeast where I came to know people with vastly diverse opinions and to appreciate them as persons (and sometimes friends) even if we had ardent disagreements about important issues. I am a man of advanced education and wide connections that include Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans (some of whom live here on various kinds of work visas, and who have serious concerns about their future in this country). I myself am a former expat, living in Italy 1993-1994 and gaining much perspective on my own homeland as seen by others. I am a husband, father, and grandfather who cares about the future of my country and the world, who hopes his grandchildren can grow up in a society that is both decent and generous.

I am also a physically and mentally disabled person for the past 17 years who has sometimes lived “on the edge” of a frightening health condition, and a beneficiary during that time of Social Security Disability and Medicare for myself and my five children as they were growing up. I am a teacher by profession married for nearly 30 years to another teacher – my dear wife who is singularly dedicated, who works harder and cares more deeply for her students than anyone realizes. Between the two of us, we have barely managed to scrounge up enough income to run our idiosyncratic, funny, book-cluttered, small and (in the old days) crowded but cozy and — on the whole — happy home. I don’t mean to sound irresponsible or pietistic when I say, “We trust in God” to be provided with and sustained by what matters most for our common life. And God has been good and generous to us. 

Both of us regard education as a vocation, a calling to serve others by sharing the gifts we have been given (which means that I continue my involvement in this service in whatever ways I can within the limitations of my condition). Some of you have read my 2010 book Never Give Up, or you've read at least part of my ongoing (over a decade) monthly column in Magnificat on conversion stories. It costs me more energy than you can imagine to write that two-page column every month. I also have ongoing “study-projects” on China and East Asia, on the significance of technological advances in media, and on the life and work of Luigi Giussani.

Above all, I am a follower of Jesus Christ in His Catholic Church. I belong to Jesus, the Redeemer of all human beings and all creation, the One who answers my cry from the depths of what I often feel to be the disaster of my own life, my abysmal failure in everything, and most importantly my sins. I am a sinner. I try to listen to the voice of Jesus through the living reality of His Church, which makes it possible to encounter Him in today’s world and in my own daily life. I travel through this life together with a particular friendship that I have been entrusted to by Christ and that lives fully from within the Church: from Word and Sacrament and a confident following of the teaching and pastoral guidance of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. "Following" is not an abdication of my own reason and freedom. Quite the contrary, for here I find Jesus speaking to our reason enlightened by faith, stirring up the gifts of the Holy Spirit who gives us a new way of seeing reality; Jesus making gentle but convincing appeals to our freedom. Those who are called to be “shepherds” in the Church have their flaws (sometimes terrible flaws), but they pass on something greater than themselves – they witness to the One who was crucified and is risen, to the tradition that sustains His saving presence through history and demonstrates that He is the answer to our times as well. Everyone is seeking Him (whether they know it or not). We seek Him in our silence, our words, and our actions. Concern for the common good of our globally interconnected world – especially for the poor and those who suffer injustices and oppression – is for us a work of Christian love (agape, caritas), a “work of mercy.”

Belonging to Jesus Christ in the Church has sustained in me a fascination for the whole scope of human existence, a rich intellectual life focused on reality as well as a particular tenderness toward the struggles and problems of human persons. I still restlessly search for the human face in all its expressions, because these are the faces of my brothers and sisters, the face of Jesus. This is the deep-down joy of my sometimes difficult life — a joy deeper than the stormy winds of illness and pain, or of psychological and emotional states that afflict me.

That being said, I am a bit depressed these days. I find myself disoriented by the wildness that has been unleashed in my native country. Of course, I know that as Christians we are “strangers and sojourners” in this world (see 1 Peter 2:11), who seek our ultimate fulfillment beyond this present life, though not “disconnected” from the significance of the goodness we encounter and engage on earth. I do “love my country” (perhaps more than I realized), but how do I “fit in” to its peculiar and presently bizarre drama? What am I called to offer, here and now? How can I say anything (or even remain silent) without being misunderstood?

The fact that I am burdened with a sense of “patriotic disenfranchisement” is not a new problem. I have grown up in a world that is undergoing earthquakes of change. Meanwhile, rich nations (including my own) endeavor as never before to organize and govern themselves as if God does not exist, as if the mystery of being created persons called by the Infinite One to a transcendent destiny is irrelevant to our common life. Even if we make loud references to God (or to “Jesus”) in our politics, we are speaking largely empty words about a “God” whom we have “tamed” to the exigencies of our own agenda. We can easily place this “God,” this “Jesus” that we have reinvented in our own minds, on the edges of the altars we have raised up to our other “gods” — money, power, self-assertion, “success,” self-indulgence, envy. A God who demands justice is irrelevant to our criteria for “justice,” which means that the God who is merciful — who loves us, forgives us, saves us — has also been exiled from our public life and our understanding of the foundations of human dignity.

The result is that we find ourselves strangers to one another, searching desperately for our own “identities” without foundation, without guidance. No wonder we fail to hear the cries of the poor. When we marginalize God, we marginalize the poor, we ignore the most vulnerable among us. I agree with Mother Teresa who said [here I paraphrase], more than thirty years ago, “If we kill children in the wombs of their mothers, what is to stop me from killing you, or you from killing me.” Nevertheless, political parties that aspire to champion the “rights of the poor” refuse to attend to the poorest of the poor. On the contrary, they positively trample upon the human dignity of the mother and the unborn child in her womb — two persons who both have the need and the right to be loved and supported by those around them, by their families and communities and if necessary with the assistance of public resources. I am bewildered by these would-be idealists who try to cover up prenatal homicide by calling it a “fundamental human right”! How can I trust anything these parties say?

Many other problems in my own country are similarly steeped in a blind and deadly ignorance. I grew up in a time when “peace” was secured by the recognition of a common enemy (the Communist world) that was more deeply and evidently sunk in human degradation, but that in many ways was a strange mirror image of the so-called “free world,” enshrining in its ideology and brutally enacting political violence that we restrained among ourselves more by hypocrisy than rooted conviction. There was “peace” among the great powers while both sides waged proxy wars among the poorer nations, but above all because both sides built stockpiles of obscene nuclear weapons and mutually threatened to bomb the human race into extinction as a response to a first strike by the other. We were spared this total catastrophe by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the opportunity for a more genuine form of peace quickly became obscured by the ensuing aimless fragmentation that gave rise to new sources of violence. We learned nothing of our need for the wisdom of God and plunged more deeply into our own self-obsession — into new “extensions” of the power of our own narcissism by the amplification of media technology, into delusions of satisfaction that exhausted the human senses and imprisoned the human heart, into sexual chaos, the cheapening of life, greater exploitation of the natural world, ignorance of any kind of meaningful humanism, and — of course — greater deafness to the cries of the poor.

And we still stand under the horrific shadow of nuclear weapons, perhaps not to danger of extinction but still subject to the possibility of a war that might bring “fire and fury like the world has never known” (as the American President threatened in 1945 and accurately predicted of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — it is disconcerting to hear such threats repeated in more recent days).

I could reflect also on much that is good in human affairs, and I always prefer to seek out the good. Even if we have forgotten God, the fact remains that God has not forgotten us. The Mystery of God remains at work among us in unfathomable ways, bringing good out of evil, drawing us with love and mercy.

But right now, I’m depressed, and I might as well put my depression to good use. In these days, my depression is being “triggered” by events that should be called out, by further incoherence in our public life, by things that — notwithstanding my own complex neuropathological profile — are genuine sources of confusion and apprehension that cannot be ignored.

It’s not surprising that I find myself increasingly disoriented and disturbed by the recent actions of our new government. The problem in the United States today is not simply that our leadership is being aggressive and radical in its actions; it is also the way in which the leadership dictates forceful measures without any interest in building a reasonable level of credibility or respect for the “authority” it claims. On the contrary, it disregards the law and its courts, tramples on longstanding government precedents, threatens its opponents, and – in the name of ridding us of “terrorists” – unleashes an extrajudicial police force to arrest people without charges, without access to lawyers, without trial, without any accountability, and sends these people to a prison of cruel and unusual punishment run by a for-profit private company in El Salvador.

There is a lot of evidence — to say the least — that innocent people who came from Venezuela to the USA through a legal path of asylum-seeking established by the previous administration (and reneged on by the current regime) have been “disappeared.” We don’t know who they are, or how many they are, or what crimes the guilty may have committed. No doubt there are also (mostly) violent criminals among this deported group. There are many more violent criminals who are U.S. citizens. Violent crime is an awful and ever-expanding problem in our land. Scapegoating undocumented immigrants and hauling them off to lawless prison colonies in other countries is just compounding crime with more crime. When we respond to violence with violence, society only becomes more destructive. When respect for the dignity of the human person vanishes, no one can live in peace. “Safety” is an illusion when we allow violence to become the principle of our government, when we decide that some human persons among us ought to be stripped of their most basic human rights and treated like garbage, when we no longer care if the innocent suffer with the guilty and no one has recourse to any means of rectifying injustice.

Meanwhile, our current national leadership has discarded even the pretense of civility, descending into verbal warfare as a substitute for reasonable explanation. This regime openly insults neighboring nations and threatens to absorb them against their will. It seems intent on losing the trust of former allies and isolating our country from everyone except dictatorships and rogue states. Not surprisingly, the head of our current leadership — while demanding more power — never acknowledges any mistakes, never apologizes, rarely even attempts to explain the regime’s behavior in a reasonable way, and never takes responsibility for the negative consequences of anything that is done.

I cannot see any long-term constructive good coming from this illegal, offensive, dangerous, and dishonorable behavior coming out of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. But what does the "other party" have to offer? They pretend greater coherence and refinement of speech. They talk about “human rights,” but they have dug in their heels to insist upon the public promotion of “freedom” as individualistic anarchy that extends to the point of affirming a “right” to kill defenseless human persons. 

I am not the only U.S. citizen who sees the current “duopoly” as an intractable problem. I have already given a detailed account of my own political decisions elsewhere [see HERE]. To be presented with a choice between “two evils” hardly constitutes a meaningful participation in the political process. In my opinion, we need different kinds of elections, but that is not the only thing — or even the most important thing — we need in politics today, much less in life.

Rather, I have a different kind of hope, which pertains to eternal life but also sheds light on this current life in ways that can be “sketched out.” I don’t have ready solutions to specific problems, but I see some part of the outline of a more human world that might emerge insofar as we open ourselves to the cultivation of wisdom and a new kind of loving attention to the Source of all wisdom. But I will save my reflections on that theme for another post.

The “Greatness” of Pope Francis

Pope Francis, March 26, 2025. I’m so grateful that he is still with us, that his ministry will continue among us for as long as God wills. This quotation is from the text he published for what would have been yesterday’s “Wednesday General Audience.” Though he is not yet ready to resume public appearances, he continues to exhort us, console us, and stir up hope within us.

Pope Francis—with his pastoral style, his extraordinary gestures, and his fidelity to the Holy Spirit’s wisdom in guiding the continuing reform of the Church—has indeed become another of the “Great Popes” of our time. He stands with Benedict XVI, Saint John Paul II, Blessed John Paul I, Saint Paul VI, and Saint John XXIII as vivid witnesses to the Gospel, each in his own distinctive way. Certainly, each of them can be “criticized” for “this and that,” for particular moments in which they fell short (although rare is the true and faithful “critic,” who has the requisite scope of knowledge, humility, and wisdom to set forth constructive and collaborative insights in this regard, with the appropriate discretion, for the good of the Church and the world). In contrast to their unsurprising human inadequacies, look at the miracle of their diverse-but-unified shining witness to the truth and love of Jesus Christ! The Popes of my lifetime have been a common beacon of light in this world of darkness, anxiety, suspicion, confusion, and falsehood—this world of unprecedented human power that seems to make us dizzy, reckless, and violent when it should be directed to serve the dignity of the image of God in every human person.

They have been prophets of Christ’s saving love in a world that now approaches unprecedented chaos. Pope Francis continues this prophetic mission in the deepening darkness of our present time, reminding us to adhere to Jesus whose love has “overcome the world” and who is therefore—in every moment—the hope of the world, and especially of those who have been cast aside, those who are lost or overwhelmed by the darkness, those who have been oppressed, dehumanized, forgotten, treated like garbage. Jesus “finds” us, heals us, renews us, leads us on our journey to our ultimate fulfillment in the Triune God, and impels us to reflect His glory even in this world, in works of mercy that seek to build up a culture of life, a civilization of love, a revolution of tenderness.

The Annunciation

Happy Solemnity of the Annunciation! (Coptic Ethiopian icon.)

Saint Oscar Romero: A Model Bishop For Our Time

Today is the feast of Saint Oscar Romero, Archbishop and Martyr. He was assassinated by El Salvador’s “Death Squads” while saying Mass at the altar, forty-five years ago on this day, March 24, 1980. 

Romero publicly denounced the sins of oligarchs and politicians who oppressed the poor, and called on them to repent and to “stop the repression.” May he inspire bishops today to imitate his humility, his courage, and his love for the God who gives ineradicable dignity to EVERY human person. 

Saint Oscar Romero, pray for us, pray that Jesus will enlarge our hearts. Protect us from following those who serve false prophets and idolators of money.

Pope Francis Released From Hospital

Pope Francis has been released from the hospital. He has sufficiently recovered from a difficult battle with double pneumonia. He made a brief public appearance for the Sunday  Angelus. Further therapy, rest, and recuperation will continue at his residence at Casa Santa Marta.

Thanks be to God!

During his illness, the Pope has been communicating through writing, and has expressed his gratitude for our prayers and his offering of his suffering in solidarity with the sick throughout the world.

I found consolation in his accompaniment, and encouragement to live and offer my own strange and debilitating illnesses in union with Jesus, in the Communion of the Church. Suffering is not "worthless." In Christ and through His grace, it can become a way of loving.

Lord have mercy on this poor world, in the gathering darkness, the violence and inhumanity, and in all the incomprehensible sorrows that so many endure.