John Janaro's Blog, page 140

God's Love is Here For Us

O Lord, you are not a distant God who lays impossible burdens on us and then condemns us when we fail.

You are the God who loved us before we ever thought of you, whose love is the very Source of all our life in you and obedience to you. You are the God who took our sins upon yourself and died for us. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, have mercy us sinners.

Jesus.

He offered Himself for us. His heart was opened for each one of us on the Cross, and His heart remains open, calling out to us. 

He longs for each of us, and His desire to be with us pours out like a flood through all of history, to every time and place, from that moment when He dies on the Cross for our sins. 

He does not withhold His love from us because of our sins. His love is here for us and offered to us who are sinners, so that we can be changed by it and saved by it. 

On the Cross Jesus wants to win our love, by giving Himself totally for us.

Christina Grimmie Still Looks Upon Us With Love

This day marks three years and five months. Has it really been so long? Yet the stature of her short life grows steadily (albeit mysteriously and quietly), and her witness more convincing.

Christina Grimmie was someone who looked right at you through the screen. She wanted so much to see you, personally, and somehow - through that ardent desire in union with Jesus Christ - her gaze would find you, and me, and anyone who needed to be seen, encouraged, affirmed, valued.

Today, living in the heart of Jesus, she looks upon us still. She sees us more deeply than ever... with love.

Thirty Years Ago: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Above: the Berlin Wall, as it looked in the 1970s and 80s. / Below: the Berlin Wall on the night of November 9, 1989.

Before that day thirty years ago, anyone trying to climb the wall to escape Communist East Germany would have been shot. But after months of demonstrations in Soviet bloc countries, and unprecedented changes in Eastern European governments, this "front line in the Cold War" in Berlin finally gave way and it all turned into a massive spontaneous celebration. (By the way, those lights in people's hands are not cell phones. They're cigarette lighters. That's how it was done in the old days.) 
In the West we watched these scenes on TV news and we were astonished, wonderstruck. It was like a miracle.

The "Spiritual Company of the Church"

From the Pope's Instagram:

Three Generations of the "Virginia Janaro Men"

Here is a "Throwback Thursday" collage featuring some fathers and sons (and uncle and nephew, older brother and younger brother, and grandfather—i.e. "Papa"—and grandson). 

Top left: me with Dad, 1978 (I'm 15, he's 43). Bottom left: me with Dad, 2015ish. Top right: me, Dad ("Papa"), and "Uncle Walter" with John Paul, 1998 (John Paul, obviously, is the little kid). Bottom right: John Paul, me, Dad, and Walter, 2014 or 2015 (last picture of the "three generations of Virginia Janaro men"). #TBT #AllSouls #November #EternalRestGrantUntoHim #RememberingDad

God Remembers His Children

God never forgets you. He loves you.

Bright Short Afternoons

On a bright, short November afternoon, red and yellow and even some stubborn green all glitter in the waning sunlight.








Pretty? Yes. Gorgeous!! The problem is that the sun is setting and it's 5pm in the afternoon, which is rather early for my preference. But, well, it's November... #NoComplaints

The Faithful Departed

ALL SOULS DAY.

Thinking about and praying for Dad especially today, and all those who died during this difficult year.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. 

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.”

“Today we remember those who have walked before us, in the hope of meeting them, of reaching the place where we will find the love that created us and awaits us: the love of the Father” (Pope Francis).

All Saints Day: "We Shall Be Like Him"

HAPPY ALL SAINTS DAY!

“Beloved, we are God's children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

WE WIN!! ⚾ 2019 World Series Champions ⚾

What a bunch of hootin-n-hollerin we let out in this house in the early hours of the morning of the last day of October.

The Washington Nationals did it! They won it all!!

I won't pretend that we "never gave up" on the 2019 Nationals. We weren't "believers" in May, when the Nats were 19-31. We'd been through this before. And now, after a mediocre 2018, with new injuries, with all the problems in the bullpen? Nope, nope, nope. Ain't gonna happen.

But as the Summer wore on, hopes awoke ... maybe we could salvage a halfway decent season. At some point we realized that this was a pretty good team. A persistent team. A spirited team, a fun team, a clutch team, a comeback team.

Winning 8 straight games to finish with 93 wins and a "wild card" spot in the playoffs made us proud. With "Baby Shark" and all that pizazz, the Nats were a memorable and admirable ball club. They kept things loose and had a great attitude, but they also played hard and they played to win. They were an exciting team. Way to go, Nats!

It had turned out to be an excellent season. Of course, in the playoffs they were just wild cards, but really we figured that whatever winning they did in the playoffs would be "icing on the cake." We wouldn't have blamed them for losing to the Dodgers or the Braves or the Yankees or the Astros...


Anything can happen in baseball, after all. And, boy, did it happen. They made things happen.

They were down to the Brewers, down to the Dodgers, and down to the Astros, and they came back every time. All those comebacks were more than luck, more than coincidence.

These guys proved that they're winners.

So many players deserve credit: Strasburg, Scherzer, Rendon, Soto, Zimmerman, and more. One player stands out for me: an old school ball player, a veteran, who had a great season, and then hit the division-series-winning grand slam against the Dodgers and what proved to be the winning run in a game seven homer in Houston. Howie Kendrick.


The 2019 Washington Nationals are World Series Champions. It's the first World Series win for a Washington baseball team since 1924. It's the first championship for our own Nats, who came here in 2005.

John Paul was 8 years old when we started rooting for the Nationals. He grew up with the Nats. We went to games, and we watched game after game after game, year after year after year on television. There were some hilariously awful teams, quite a few mediocre teams, and then some division winning teams that couldn't get past the first series in the playoffs.

John Paul finally got a local champion in hockey when the Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018. Given the years of frustrating playoff drama and failure with the Caps, that was profoundly satisfying.

But we really needed one for baseball.

Eileen and I were happy to be with our son and his fiancée Emily and other friends at our own Game Seven TV watching party, and to see the Nats win it all. WooHoo!!