John Janaro's Blog, page 146

You Are Never Alone

"Know that you are never alone...

"Jesus made himself like us, and for this reason, we have Him next to us, to cry with us in the most difficult moments of our lives. We look to Him, we entrust our questions to Him, our pain, our anger... God our Father has answered our cries and our questions, not with words, but with a presence that accompanies us, that of His Son.

"Jesus on the cross was not alone. Beneath that scaffold was his mother, Mary. 'Stabat Mater,' Mary was under the cross, to share the suffering of the Son...

"We are not alone, we have a Mother who from Heaven looks at us with love and is close to us. Let us cling to her and say to her: ‘Mother,’ as child does when it is afraid and wants to be comforted and reassured.

"We are men and women full of defects and weaknesses, but we have a Merciful Father to whom we can turn, a crucified and Risen Son who walks with us, the Holy Spirit who assists and accompanies us. We have a Mother in Heaven who continues to spread her mantle over us without ever abandoning us."

~Pope Francis

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

"In the first creation He gave me myself;but in His new creation He gave me Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost."
~Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Celebrating Through the Rest of August

The Christian life is full of encounters with real persons who inspire and assist us in so many ways. The observance of the liturgical year gives us the chance to renew these encounters. Every season has its feasts, so that we alays have something to look forward to. Look at what's coming up in the days ahead:

●Tuesday, August 20 - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
●Wednesday, August 21 - Saint Pius X
●Thursday, August 22 - Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (on the eighth day after the Assumption, we honor Mary's unique place as the "lowly servant" exalted by God, who is called "blessed" by every generation).
●Friday, August 23 - Saint Rose of Lima
●Saturday, August 24 - Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle
●Sunday, August 25 - is SUNDAY! (Remember, every Sunday is a holiday)
●Tuesday, August 27 - Saint Monica (mother of Augustine)
●Wednesday, August 28 - Saint Augustine
●Thursday, August 29 - the memorial of the "Passion of Saint John the Baptist" (whose birthday we just honored in June).

Right now it's a busy time for celebrating our heroic brothers and sisters in Christ over the course of two thousand years. These great men and women are our friends in the "communion of saints," and they continue to accompany us on our often difficult journey through this life until we arrive at the fullness of maturity in Jesus Christ and join them in the eternal blessedness of God's kingdom.

May the Lord lift up our hearts and give us joy in these days, and in every day.

Your Promises Surpass Every Human Desire

"O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things we may attain your promises which surpass every human desire. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

This is the very rich, hopeful, profound Collect ("Opening Prayer") for the current week of the liturgical year. The Collect prayer varies from week to week (and also differs for feasts and saint's day celebrations); in the Sunday liturgy the priest prays it after the Gloria and before the Scripture readings.

It's one of the places during Mass that can easily feel like a "commercial break," where we might drift off into thinking about brunch or football or some other thing, but it's worth it to listen, participate with mind and heart, and return to these texts during our own personal prayer time.

These texts - often based on ancient prayers and always focused on the theme of the week or day in the liturgical calendar - can help give focus to our worship and our own meditation. They also shed light on how we live our daily life with Jesus and in communion with one another in the Church.

The truth about life is that we are not alone. We belong to God, and we are "members of one another" in Christ's body and children of God in the human family.

We have a destiny that gives purpose to our life, toward which we journey every day even in the midst of the most ordinary circumstances and concerns. We are made for a happiness beyond anything we can imagine, that everything in life "points to," where every moment finds its real meaning and fulfillment: the Mystery of the God who is Absolute Love, who gives himself to us that we might share his unfathomable, inexhaustible joy.

"Beauty Awakens Us..."

Here is a simple digital design with photograph and text.

Mary Lives!

Wishing everyone a happy and holy and joyful Feast of the Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

Mary helps us in everything. She goes before us in glory, soul and body, already now into the fullness of the New Creation. Her splendor is the beginning of the complete realization of God's loving plan for the world.

Today we remember the Woman who is full of God, and whose "yes" to God has become the acceptance of each one of us as her child.  Each one of us is loved by a real Mother, with a real nurturing tenderness, affirmation, and patience that touches our every day - even if we don't realize it.

We pray that the Mother of God might be gratefully acknowledged, honored, and relied upon by every human person, because in the solicitude of her intimate maternal love she embraces each one.

We pray especially that all baptized Christians will recognize that she is their Mother, and allow her - within the mystery of the workings of the Holy Spirit - to help them attain the fullness of Christian faith and life.

Those of us who live in the Americas ought to become more familiar with the very special gift Mary has given us in the middle of this continent, a gift that "mediates" the "presence" (somehow) of her glorified humanity.

We have seen many pictures of the mysterious cactus cloth cloak worn 500 years ago by an indigenous Mexican man. He was a simple, ordinary man. If it were not for this cloak, history never would have noticed Cuauhtlatoatzin, the man called "Singing Eagle" among his own people, who took the names "Juan Diego" at his baptism. He lived an obscure, humble life until that morning of the Winter Solstice - December 12, 1531 - when she found him on a hillside and gave him a sign of herself, impressed upon his cloak. It endures, undiminished, to this very day.

Look at one of the pictures of the image on Juan Diego's garment. There she is...not a myth, not a "mother-goddess," not a scientifically unusual painting by some anonymous brilliant artist, but the wonderful miraculous icon of the Woman who lives in all her humanity, and carries us through all our days.

She is the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God - the true mother of the God who came to dwell among us, to share our humanity, to save us and transform us. She is the Woman who crushes the ancient serpent under her feet, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. She who is alive in every way communicates her tender love to us, especially to all of us who "dwell on this land." She brings healing.


Mary is the New Eve.  The New Paradise.  The beginning of the New Creation. The young girl from Nazareth who said Yes to God.  She is the Mother of Mercy.

She is our mother. And we are the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, children of God, destined to share His glory forever.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe: The Inner Conflict

"The real conflict is an inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?" (Maximilian Kolbe, writing shortly before his arrest in 1941 - he died in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941).

We Are Already a New Creation in Christ

The journey of faith makes you a new creature, who has "the dignity, the certainty of your destiny and the capacity to operate in a new and more human way."

This new humanity means "a different experience of the sentiment of yourself, a different perception of things, a different emotion of the presence of others, a different impetus and density in relationships, a different gusto in the troubled dynamic of work, an outcome that was inconceivable, unimaginable before" (Luigi Giussani).

According to Luigi Giussani (who is essentially reminding us - with certain emphatic notes - of the teaching of the New Testament), our belonging to Jesus Christ transforms us in a way that already begins in this present life. We change in a way that impacts our experience of reality and ourselves, while not ceasing to be mysterious. We are changed in the depths of ourselves and in our engagement of reality, especially in the realm of interpersonal relations with others and with God.

In our "journey of faith," in this life, we glimpse "signs" of God's power working in our lives, and such indications can bring consolation and encouragement. But in this life - as classical Christian spirituality has always said - we are not meant to seek the consolations of God but the God of consolations, He who is the Source of all that renews and transforms us. 

These signs are not meant to cause us to "pause in life" (so to speak) and attempt to "capture" the transfiguring power of God in some sort of analysis that we could then "possess" (conceptually or imaginatively) as the source of our confidence. God's plan for us remains a mystery always beyond us. We journey toward Him, and He who is Mystery carries us in this journey, He who in Jesus reveals Himself as the Mystery of Love drawn ineffably "close" to us.

We are a "new creation" in Christ, even in this life, not because we adhere to our conception, our own securely mastered definition and self-referential criteria for measuring "new creaturehood." We are a new creation because, in the living and journeying of all of life - everything we go through, everything we feel, everything we suffer - we adhere to Him, we trust in Him, we love Him who has first loved us.

Christina Grimmie: "Why Gain the World...?"

Three years, two months. Christina Grimmie, thank you for not losing yourself. Shine on, bright beautiful star!⭐♫  

Ground Zero August Ninth

Ground Zero August Ninth

by John Janaro

It was a single bright blazing 
luminous moment,
an instant, a foamy speck of wave 
cresting on the ocean of time.

I did not intend to turn my head, 
but I could not help it.
I thought I saw something; 
my eyes fixed against the edge of the sky.

I looked, and there was a flash on the horizon,
not like the dawn that comes every day, 
mild and sweet and seldom noticed.
No, there was a flash 
like the convergence of ten thousand suns.

As eyes, ears, bodies spun through the air,
the clouds roared and white hot light 
swallowed the earth.

There was no time to dither or complain, 
to flee or to be afraid.
Everything disappeared; everything changed.

Everything, and yet...
there is a strange space of passage, still, 
inside this flashing moment.

For who calculates the division of an instant; 
who can fathom the depth of its duration?

Who knows how to measure the distance 
between the beginning of the end
and the end of the end?
What we know is that the moment has come, 
the time is at hand.

A moment of time burns us away
as fire rages in the wind.

~August 9, 2019