John Janaro's Blog, page 143

Thérèse and the Mystery of Love

Well... wow! Thérèse is way beyond anything I can understand here. Surely, our lives are a great mystery. A great mystery of love... 

Happy Saint Thérèse Day!

God is good, all the time. And He loves us.

As China's "Partystate" Turns 70, Hong Kong Dares to be Free

Hong Kong people sing and flash phone lights.October 1st has dawned in China and Hong Kong. 

This day marks the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party Dictatorship and its rule over the world's most populated country. One-fifth of the human race will be expected to "celebrate" (and most of them will at least pretend to celebrate). But major public festivities in Hong Kong have been cancelled. Meanwhile, the Protest Movement held peaceful demonstrations overnight, continuing to call for "the liberation of Hong Kong," and loudly singing their new civic anthem.

Journalists who were among them shared reports, pictures, and videography. Ordinary people spoke of their love for Hong Kong, their hopes for future generations, and the firmness of their determination to continue their protest, come what may.

It was awesome. These people are making real history.

"Liberate Hong Kong. / Revolution of Our Times"They will be in the streets again on this day, demanding respect for their dignity as human persons. They have not given up, and they are not going to give up.

Let's not forget these astonishing, brave human beings! Their tenacious persistence in refusing to live by lies and in struggling for their own freedom already deserves to be celebrated.

"In Your Light We See Light"

"O Lord, how precious is your love.
My God, the sons of men 
find refuge in the shelter of your wings.
In you is the source of life 
and in your light we see light" (Psalm 36:7, 9).

Sacrifice, Relationship, and Personal Fulfillment

In society today, it is commonly thought that the meaning of life - the secret of becoming a mature human person - is found by achieving independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency.

For most poor struggling human beings, this all seems rather incomprehensible or overwhelming. Not surprisingly, people feel isolated, lost, and frustrated.

But for those who are intelligent, strong, energetic, and idealistic this kind of thinking can become tempting. The goal of life appears to be self-possession and self-definition, a kind of radical power over ourselves. This leads us to view relationships as merely useful interactions with other autonomous persons that serve our needs or please us or are otherwise subordinated to our ultimate purpose of self-affirmation.

When we have this attitude, nothing seems more alienating than sacrifice. Indeed, the claim of Jesus that our vocation consists in the sacrifice of self-giving love for God and our neighbor appears incomprehensible, if not insulting or threatening to our human dignity. The idea of losing-myself-in-order-to-find-myself appears to be a self-negating paradox.

And yet this "losing of myself" in self-abandonment to God is not something that demeans my freedom or results in the loss of my dignity as a person. On the contrary, it is the realization of freedom and of the person. For God Himself is Infinite Self-Giving Love. The Trinity reveals that total self giving is at the very root of what it means to be a person.
Jesus says, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:11). And we will fulfill the true meaning of ourselves as persons, we will achieve the destiny and fulfillment for which we have been created, by abandoning ourselves to Him and trusting in Him: "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). We don't "lose ourselves" into nothingness. We lose ourselves by belonging to God and to other persons in Him.
We have been created to become gifts, to realize our freedom as love, to live in relationship as persons, and to "find ourselves" forever in relationship to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Giussani on Power and the Boundless Impetus of the Heart

I know I have been doing lots of quotation posts lately, but this text from Luigi Giussani is very pertinent to the circumstances that many people face today (even though it's taken from a talk he gave more than thirty years ago).

The legacy of Monsignor Giussani - unlike so much of what was written, spoken, and broadcast by fashionable experts during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s - has not faded into irrelevance or nostalgic trivia. He belongs among the truly great people of the last century whose recognition of the perennial drama of human existence gave them important insights for their own time and also regarding the new epoch that is still emerging today.

Giussani saw that it was in the interests of worldly powers to distract human persons from the recognition of their own dignity, the scope of their freedom, the "boundless impetus of the heart." We don't need to fear the powerful if we are awake to the fullness of our destiny. The trouble is that too often we are asleep:

"We don’t [refer to the influence of] the powerful because we are afraid; we speak of them because we have to wake up from our slumber. The strength of the powers-that-be is our impotence.... We do not fear the powerful; we fear people who sleep and therefore enable them to do what they want with them. I say that the powers-that-be make everyone fall asleep, as much as possible. Their great system, the great method is that of sending to sleep, anesthetizing, or, better yet, atrophying. Atrophying what? Atrophying the heart of the human person, our needs and desires, imposing an image of desire or need different from that boundless impetus of the heart. And thus it raises people who are limited, enclosed, imprisoned, already half cadaver – that is, impotent" (Luigi Giussani).

A Renewed Encounter With Jesus

"I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them: I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since 'no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord' (Saint Paul VI).

"The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms.

"Now is the time to say to Jesus: 'Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace.' 
"How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us, we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy... 

"No one can strip us of the dignity bestowed upon us by this boundless and unfailing love. With a tenderness which never disappoints, but is always capable of restoring our joy, he makes it possible for us to lift up our heads and to start anew. Let us not flee from the Resurrection of Jesus, let us never give up, come what will. May nothing inspire more than his life, which impels us onwards!"

~Pope Francis

Hello Autumn 2019!

So here we are "again," it seems. The seasons are changing.

It’s the beginning of Fall for Northern Hemisphere people. The days are obviously shorter, the nights are cooler, but it can still get pretty hot during the afternoon. 

That will change soon, and we will begin to enjoy mild weather and weeks of pleasant and increasingly colorful days.

In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s a different story. It's Springtime for my Aussie and Argentine friends. Flowers and more daylight and warmer weather are ahead for you.

But we are all approaching the end of a most eventful and peculiar decade. So much has happened in the past ten years (from 2010 - 2019). But the "teens" decade of this century is almost over. The “20s” will soon be upon us!

Announcing an Engagement

This post will be short and sweet. 

I have joyful news. This was not unexpected, but it's still awesome.

John Paul is engaged to the wonderful young lady he has been seeing over the past couple of years, Emily Farabaugh.

They are planning the wedding for August 2020 (i.e. next Summer, hooray!). Eileen and I and the whole family couldn't be happier. John Paul, you're a lucky man!

Here on the left is a picture of our son and his fiancée from last year, during the "Rome Semester" (although they were in Venice for that picture). On the right is a picture from last May's graduation.


God willing, many more pictures will be posted as this new chapter opens in the history of our family.

John Paul and Emily, God bless you!

Tax Collectors and Sinners

"As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him" (Matt 9:9).

Happy SAINT MATTHEW'S DAY!



Here's a picture some guy painted in Rome. One of those long Eye-talian names, "Pastafagogio" or somethin' like that. It's pretty good, huh?

Love Overcomes the Vanity of All Things

I have been asking lots of questions within my soul in these recent years. So much has happened that it's bewildering, so much secret pain has been revealed - in others more than in myself.

Dear God ... ...

I know these are not the kinds of questions that can be adequately answered with words. They are the kind of questions that can only be endured. They are more than compatible with the unreserved assent of faith... but they are not comfortable.

Lately, I often feel the weight of the fragility, the temporary nature of every thing in this life. And this does not come with some kind of stoic resignation. There is a great sorrow in it.

Getting old means I see it in myself in so many ways. And I saw it especially over the past year, watching my once vigorous father slowly die.

We have had several tragic deaths in our community this year. There are larger problems in the world and in the Church that have shaken us up. Of course, there have been joyful moments, inspiring moments too.

It's taking its toll on me. I'm trying to hold on, but more and more I just feel like I'm gasping for air, like I'm nearly out of gas, I'm spent. Emotionally more than physically. There are things I can do for this, therapeutically speaking, up to a point.

What remains is the struggle to keep saying, "Yes" every day, and to say it with love. I'm not giving up. Sometimes, when I write, it helps me to remember who I am, why I exist, what moves me to say "yes" to today, to engage life in this world even if "all is vanity" - because "all is gift" too! Here's where "the questions" stand in front of the Mystery.

There remains a hope in me, not one that I can generate from any effort to be optimistic, not one that comes from me or from anything bound to this world that is passing away.

It has its source in that man who rose from death, who transforms death into the beginning of a new world, a new creation, whose love renews all things. That man: Jesus Christ.

For me it's a difficult, sometimes desperate hope, sometimes obscured by so many anxieties; yet still, I remember that I have been loved by this love that is greater than death. I have been loved by Jesus.

Here is something that ought to be an especially convincing and compelling feature of living in the communion of the Church.

In many places in the Church this witness to Christ's amazing love has been obscured, and this points to some basic problems that we must all grapple with regarding our relationship with God and with one another.

Overall, for me, however, I have been very much blessed by the witness of others. I have known people who, even with all their problems and their fragile humanity, have a joy, a passion, a love that reaches me and speaks to me of a new kind of life, a new world where all the goodness and beauty of things is transformed, renewed, and fulfilled.

It is the love greater than death, that shares itself and begins to change everything, even our sorrows, even our mourning over the vanity of all things.

The Church living in history means that we have been loved, concretely, by other persons with this kind of love, the risen love of Jesus. Sometimes they let us down too, but really there is nothing surprising about that. Humans are flawed and weak. What strikes us is that, in the midst of an ordinary, peculiar, often frustrating human community, there is something else. It is this human, yet different, love that embraces us.

And the love remains, continues, endures our efforts to frustrate it, and even grows! The Church is a place where we can encounter the Source of this new, radically dynamic love and be changed by it. It shapes us even when we don't feel it and this perishing world seems to have swallowed it up.

Sometimes love may "seem" absent from our psychological experience of being "in the Church." Perhaps we are closing ourselves off, holding onto our pride or resentment. But perhaps it is because love has gone deeper, to work secretly in the hidden depths our ourselves.

If we feel like we can't "find" that love, we need to "ask" and "seek" and hope and endure the darkness with eyes and heart open.

For me, I know that I am loved by God. He has touched me in Jesus Christ, through his Spirit, in his grace, through baptism and the sacraments, and through the love of others.

I feel like I would be betraying myself if I denied such a fundamentally important factor of my life, no matter what may obscure it in a given situation, no matter what hidden paths it takes. I have seen enough to know that this mysterious love is present and always worthy of my trust. I can still say, "look, here is a sign, a light, a reason for hope."