John Janaro's Blog, page 138

Here Comes Saint... Ummm.... Y'know!

Here's the scoop for this day of the year (and, yes, we still do it!

Here Comes Saint... Ummm.... Y'know!

Here's the scoop for this day of the year (and, yes, we still do it!

Here Comes Saint... Ummm.... Y'know!

Here's the scoop for this day of the year (and, yes, we still do it!

Advent is a Time of Expectation

This episode of My Front Porch comes to you from... the dining room table! I take on more of a "lecture style" here (maybe it was the table?) so it's a bit like a combination of theology and exhortation.

But never mind the peculiarities and quirks of the messenger. What matters is that we live these days with an awareness of our hearts' longing for Christ, and his coming to be with us.

The Challenge to Live For God Each Day

What a marvel it is to awaken to a new day!

God holds us, and offers us this splendid gift which is "today." It is a fragile but also tenacious gift, never to be "taken for granted" as though our existence came from nowhere and depended on nothing for its sustenance.

This year, I have had to face death in a way that I never have before. Faith and prayer do bring great and sustaining consolations when a loved one dies, but they do not simply remove the psychological shock, the emotional disorientation, the sense of loss, or the clumsy and strange unfolding of the path of grief.

I can’t even imagine the experience of losing a parent while being a child or a young adult or while raising my own family with small children. Both my parents played such important roles in all those stages of my life, and I thank God for that. But there’s no easy time to lose your own father or mother. All those years of having them with us lead to a different scope and very particular sense of loss. Still, faith brings some consolation and a more profound hope even within these spaces of pain.

One peculiarity of this for me, as I approach the age of 57 (and it may be due in part to my own excessive self-consciousness) is that my experience of the death of my father - and now the increasing neediness of my mother - has stirred up in me some vivid anxiety over my own mortality.

This is in many ways a salutary thing. No one "knows the day nor the hour," and we must “stay awake” and ready for the Lord when he comes. But beyond that, I feel more and more the weight of years of chronic health problems, even if I have reached a certain level of “stability” (in the management of what remains an unpredictable, unstable condition).

And then there are the usual “risk factors” of this season in my life. I can only do my best with the appropriate self-care and the use of available medical resources. All the more reason for me to check disproportionate levels of emotional anxiety, obsessive worries, and the many other possible new tricks my brain may try to play on me.

Nevertheless, even in the proper mode of human reflection, I find that I cannot evade the fear of death. Indeed, I am afraid of death: its inevitability, its uncertainty-as-to-WHEN, its radical finality and darkness in relation to all I have ever known before.

The remedy, of course, is to live in hope of the salvation promised by Jesus to those who follow him. I try to be faithful and to walk in the vitality of an active hope and love. And I also "tremble" (rightly) at the judgment that will come with death.

Judgment is inherent within God's loving gaze upon me when my life is OVER. I will be measured according to the truth, in light of what my freedom could have actually achieved through grace, in response to God's calling - to the unique personal vocation that he gave to me.

If I died today, God would not pretend that my response to his invitation to a liberating and transforming communion with him - offered and empowered by the superabundance of his love - has been anything but paltry, timid, and half-baked.

From my present vantage point, I can only surmise that I have made a rather poor job out of living my Christian vocation, with all the wasted moments of life, the distraction, the laziness, the vanity, the self-indulgence.

For an old sinner like me, "purgatory" can seem in some ways a consoling thing. But I cannot be presumptuous even about that. Today, here and now, I am called and challenged to live. While I still live, and for what still remains my part, I cannot for a moment be content to "settle for" some level of mediocrity in my relationship with God. A slothful quietism very quickly degenerates into worldliness, cynicism, and a destructive envy of those who continue to move forward.

Here I have found sober and useful reflections to help me prepare for the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, which can be specially fruitful during this Advent season. Here too I find important resolutions for whatever remains of my earthly journey. While I live, I shall continue to pray, and ask the Holy Spirit to sustain in me the struggle to refrain from evil, to be attentive, to do good, to be open to the Spirit's grace and inspirations that here and now call me to draw closer to him. Even at the 11th hour, "time" calls me to "labor in the vinyard" of my own heart, and in service to others.

Every breath of this life contains the possibility (and the challenge) to pray, to hope, to do our best, to try to grow in the love of God, and to wrestle with all that still hinders us - all the while trusting in Jesus and abandoning everything to the Father's infinite mercy and goodness.

Emmanuel

It's Advent 2019. Emmanuel. God comes to be with us.

Advent: Finding Jesus in My Life

Advent anticipates and prepares for the celebration of the "epiphany of God" in history, through a man named Jesus, born in Bethlehem of Judea 2000 years ago. Advent also is a reminder to prepare for the final coming of Jesus Christ in glory at the end of history, as its fulfillment.

Finally, Advent is a special time to focus on making our hearts ready for that crucial and often neglected (or undervalued) "coming of Jesus" that happens for each one of us...right now, in this moment - indeed, in every moment of our lives.

Jesus is always coming, because Jesus is the center of my life.

That is not a "pious statement." It is, simply, a fact. It is the truth. It is the truth about my life and about the life of every human being.

When I say this, I'm not just trying to "look at my life from a Christian point of view." It is not a remark expressing the boundaries of my "cultural outlook" or my "Traditional Catholic Ideas" or my "theology."

It is a statement of faith. But faith is an affirmation of reality. It is a way of adhering to the truth.

My life is not meant to be an exercise in trying to "apply my theories about Jesus" to ordinary circumstances, or to measure my life by the paradigm of an abstract Jesus or a mythological Jesus. My life is living with Jesus, really. That is the truth about my actual life, whatever my theories or imaginings may be.

This does not mean I live like a saint. For me, actually living with Jesus means ignoring Him much of the time, or else trying to hide from Him, bargain with him, manipulate Him, use Him to my own advantage, and also trying to love Him, and succeeding in really loving Him a little (too little, and certainly never enough). If this relationship depended on my innate affective coherence, it would be utterly pathetic.

The good news is that it doesn't depend on my power or my measure. Jesus takes the initiative. He comes, and He changes me and shapes my life. I am continually rediscovering again and again that He is really here, now, that He loves me, and that He is the One who is in charge... of everything.

A living faith means "bumping into" Him again and again, finding Him in reality, finding Him shedding light on things, and bringing joy and strength. If this faith has any vitality at all, it comes from Him. He manifests Himself and draws us to Him by His grace which works mysteriously within our freedom, empowering us to recognize Him and follow Him.

This faith means finding Him also in desperation and misery and pain, finding Him with us in our suffering.

I know that it means sometimes feeling like I can't find Him, but still knowing that He is with me in the darkness.
He is with us. He has come to make His dwelling with us, to share with us His inexhaustible life with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the life of the One God who is Infinite Love.
He wants to be with us, to stay with us, to love us. We want to grow in our capacity to welcome Him.

The Everlasting Way

The Lord knows all our thoughts and our ways, our journeys and our rest. He guides us by his hand.

"Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way"
(Psalm 139:24).

His Words and His Mercy Endure Forever

None of us knows when we will die. 

We receive every moment of every day as a gift from God for the fulfillment of our own vocations. Each of us is a unique person, a mystery whose life is held by the wisdom and goodness and mercy of God. 
The moment of death--that final moment in the history of our becoming "who we are"--is also God's gift, designed to correspond to the fulfillment of the unique calling that each of us has received. It is the passage to the whole encounter with the Destiny that defines every moment of our lives.

In Jesus that Destiny embraces our death from within, becomes a presence within its solitude, and transforms it into a moment of hope and self-abandoning love. What might otherwise seem like the loss of "myself" becomes, in union with Jesus, a moment to give myself over wholly to the Father in complete trust.
The inevitable horizon of death encourages us to live every moment in trusting self-abandonment, in union with the One who said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
A meditation such as this can certainly be a great source of spiritual encouragement. But I can't deny that, most of the time, I feel overwhelmed and afraid in front of all this. What can I do?
Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I'm afraid. Jesus, I can only abandon my fear to you. And I'm not sure I even know what it means to "abandon" anything to you, or whether I'm "doing it right." I have to give that to you too, Lord. I abandon the "abandoning" to you.
Take over, Jesus. Carry me. Mother Mary, hold on to me.
Jesus, your words will never pass away. And your word is the promise of the Father's love and mercy. Jesus, I trust in you!

Thanksgiving: Full of Gratitude and Hope

It may be windy and chilly, but it's still Thanksgiving! Storms may come, but when I listen in silence to my heart, I can hear the pulsing tenacity of this immense gift of life, moving forward on its journey full of gratitude and hope. 
I am grateful for all the "signs" - great and small - along this road, those that remind me of my destiny and especially those who accompany me, who sustain me, who have been entrusted to me. May we all be together at the end, with all our gratitude shining bright and all our hope joyfully fulfilled.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!