John Janaro's Blog, page 171

Remembrance Day 2018

Remembrance Day 2018
One hundred years ago,November 11, 1918,at 11:00 AM,the guns of "The Great War" fell silent,finally.The red poppies grew over the ruined fieldsand the graveyards of a generation.A terrible war was over,but the violence of war still burnedin human hearts,as it does to this day.

Christina Grimmie's Prophetic Tattoo: "All is Vanity"

The tattoo "all is vanity" on CG's right forearm. [Credit
to whoever originally took this awesome picture.]"All is vanity."
Christina Grimmie got a tattoo on her forearm shortly before trying out for Season 6 of The Voice (where she would deliver her now legendary jaw-dropping, four-chair-turning "blind audition," which still frequently makes "top-ten-greatest-ever" lists for these music competition shows).

It was the text of Ecclesiastes 2:1 written in English but using the "Elvish script" invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. This combination exemplifies Christina's way of spontaneously integrating her whole life ("food, music, and video games, all raised up and united in Jesus," she once said).

Her struggle to be in the world without being of the world had many facets. Surely there were times when going to Hollywood, into the heart of the big American music/entertainment industry, in order to share her immense talents while being true to her faith and her humanity must have seemed as daunting as Frodo's task of bringing the One Ring to Mordor to be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom.

But Christina Grimmie knew that life is a fight, in the sense that it engages us in a battle to build up and accomplish the good, and overcome obstacles that thwart goodness or try to destroy it (i.e. evil). This doesn't mean that life has to be grim all the time. On the contrary, life is a challenge, an adventure, a chance for heroism, a responsibility to give and receive love.

Every person is unique, and exists for a reason—to fulfill a calling, to become fully the person that God created them to be. We know that life aims for greatness. Sometimes it can be very hard; other times it can be lots of fun. But in order for life to flourish, it needs to be focused.

That's why Christina put the phrase "All is vanity" on her forearm. She explained it in terms of staying focused. She noted that it was a reminder to her to "keep God first" in her life. It was also to help her remember that she should never allow any kind of fame or success to make her puffed-up, egotistical, or self-absorbed. She didn't want her life to get "out of focus." She didn't want to be distracted by the vanity of merely temporary and superficial things that might make her forget her fundamental vocation to love God through Jesus, to love her family, her friends, and her frands, to give of herself through the gift of music.

No doubt Christina was distracted plenty of times, just like we all are. Her faith (helped by the expression etched on her arm) would help her to put things back into perspective. It served her right to the end, and it still provides us with a chance—beyond our sorrows—to appreciate the enduring achievement of her life, and to stay focused in our own lives.

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Here I would like to share some of my own reflections inspired by this prophetic phrase, and by the way it helped keep Christina Grimmie focused on giving of herself in love and becoming the person God called her to be. She shines on as a bright beautiful light for us all in these times:

The phrase "All is vanity" doesn't mean that life has no value or purpose. But what it means is that ultimately we can't keep anything. Life in this world is not meant to last. It's meant to be given away, to become love. Otherwise its promises fade, they disappoint us, or they get stolen from us.

We're on a journey. It's a beautiful, joyful, magnificent journey, but it's also violent. This is because we have an enemy who wants to steal everything. This enemy has tremendous power—power to deceive us, to connive against us and cheat us, and to take and even destroy everything we have. "All is vanity." But the enemy can't keep us from giving it all away, from turning ourselves and all we have into a gift of love.

Love can't be stolen, because it has already been given away.

All this sounds too painful, overwhelming, inconceivable. How can we possibly love like this? How can we do this, give like this?

But here is the good news: Someone has already come and has done it all.

Everything belonged to Him. He gave it all away. He gave it to those who wanted to take it away from Him. He who is Love, came to be with us, to win the victory of love in our flesh, so that we could become gifts of love in Him.

"All is vanity"... because its value is really (and only) to point us toward the Someone for whom we have been made. In Him we will find, forever, everyone and everything dear to us in this life, and more: we will find all the love we ache for. We journey through this life, with and through limited realities, toward an Infinite fulfillment.

It hurts a lot, this life, because our souls are being stretched for the Infinite.

The One who loves each and all of us never intended for bad stuff to happen in this world, but He lets it happen sometimes. He lets it happen because in order for us to love Him and one another, He had to make us free. We can't be forced to love, and that means we are free to turn away from Him, to become lost in the vanity of things-without-Him, and thus to bring forth violence against one another.

He allows the abuse of freedom and its incalculable consequences and all the seemingly unbearable distress that this entails for life in this world. But He doesn't allow it to prevail in the end. He permits it only because He has a plan to turn it inside out and bring forth something good and beautiful beyond anything we can imagine.

God is good, all the time. But it's hard to see it. We have to be made bigger, so He "stretches" us and it hurts terribly and we feel like we're going to break. He knows what He's doing, but it's hard sometimes and it takes time.

We must be patient with ourselves.

"The House of God is the True House of Humans"

Today we commemorate the completion and dedication in the year 324 of the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist on the Lateran hill, in Roma! (I have many memories of this beautiful place.)

Building a church to bring people together in the presence of God also deepens their unity with one another. "The house of God is the true house of humans," as one famous author puts it.

"Where people just want to inhabit the earth by themselves it becomes uninhabitable," he continues. "Nothing more is built up where humans only want to build by themselves and for themselves. But where...people let themselves be claimed by God,..where they pull back and part with their time and their space [for Him], there the house of the community is built, there...the impossible on earth becomes a present reality. The beauty of the cathedral does not stand in opposition to the theology of the cross but is its fruit. It was born from the willingness not to build one's city by oneself and for oneself" (Josef Ratzinger).

The Seasons Give Rhythm to Life

I got out for a bit on this beautiful sunny November afternoon. Wind and cool weather have been stripping the leaves off many of the trees that were so full of color just over a week ago. We are left with a carpet of leaves on the ground and more wide open sky above us.
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Here is another 60 second video that I made this afternoon from my ongoing series. This is Episode 6 of My Front Porch. I'm in a bit more of a lively mood than the last time. The post is on my YouTube channel:

Every Knee Shall Bend

Where Has My Life Gone?

It's getting dark as I lay here in bed typing this out on a tablet. I can't avoid a sense of melancholy.

Where has my life gone? What have I done with it all? How could I have wasted so much of this tremendous gift?

God has been so good to me. He has carried me like a little child. He has shielded me from so many dangers. He asks so little of me, and even that is only so that I might grow in likeness to Him, and find fulfillment in Him.

Instead, I sleep in His hands, and then wake up and run in little circles on His huge palms, ignoring Him as much as I can, begrudgingly giving Him little bits of time and some half-hearted attention.

I know I'm messed up. My humanity is skewed, tilted, off balance, cracked. I'm an emotional infant. I have an immense mind so full of aspirations and so prone to devouring itself. I'm driven by great desires and hindered by a strange paralysis.

I want to love other people. I do, but I'm also afraid of them.

Sometimes I am so angry at space and time and limits. I am angry with my own weakness. The great wound in my life, beneath it all, is something that I don't understand. It seems deeper than myself. Will I ever find healing?

"Why then do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God" (Romans 14:10).

I have no grounds for condemning any person or for "looking down on" any person. I must remember to forgive so that I might be forgiven, to be merciful so that I might obtain mercy.

As the day draws to a close, as the night of life's end draws near, God's mercy is my only hope.

Days of Brilliance

     And suddenly, Autumn bursts out everywhere!

The Fullness of Joy

All Souls Day.

In November we remember the faithful departed.

We are deeply connected to one another, all of us who dwell upon this little earth, and all those who have come and gone before us—from whom we have our lives and who contributed to the cultures and environments that have formed us.

For all their failures, frailty, and weakness, they have planted the seeds of goodness in our hearts. May we all rejoice forever in the harvest with its unending fruition.

Lord, grant eternal rest to all our beloved dead, and bring them into the fullness of your joy.

"If we have died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also
live with Him.
We know that Christ, 
raised from the dead, 
dies no more;
death no longer has power over Him"
(Romans 6:8-9).

All Saints and All Souls

Today is All Saints Day. Tomorrow is All Souls Day. So I have posted this graphic text:


I can think of a few that I've got a "pretty good feeling" about, though it won't prevent me from praying for them tomorrow (and every other day). May all those who have gone before us be brought by the arms of God's merciful love to the eternal joy of His embrace.

October 1918: A World at War Longs for Peace

Our present times with all the violent events in the world and the many difficult challenges we face in daily life can easily make us forget the past. And yet historians have the important task of helping us to remember, not simply for the lessons to be learned but above all because it is natural for human beings to commemorate the past.

We are linked to our ancestors whose circumstances and decisions in the past have had a fundamental impact on our world today, on who we are and how we live. It is good to remember, to celebrate what has been accomplished and mourn what has been lost.

It may seem ironic that the conflict that was nearing its end a hundred years ago was known at the time (and for a short period thereafter) as "The Great War." But its immense destructiveness had no prior parallel in human history.

In the Fall of 1918, the forces of Britain, France, the United States, and many other allies were engaged in what would prove to be the final campaign in Europe (known as the "hundred days"). At the time, however, there was little hope of the war ending in 1918. Though the Western Front was finally rolling back, the allies didn't know how desperate the situation was in Germany itself (where social disorder was increasing and government change was imminent). So the fighting continued, and the fighting was fierce.

Indeed, October 1918 was when United States military forces were finally engaged extensively in combat. The U.S.A. had done much already since 1917 to support its allies economically and militarily (by providing armaments and enlarging the ranks of allied soldiers). For the Americans, however, the great massive bloody brawl of combat didn't start until September 26, 1918, with 22 divisions and 1.2 million soldiers in the north of France taking up a 47 day "battle" known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Reckoned as a single event, it remains the deadliest battle in U.S. history, with more than 26,000 killed (nearly half the death toll of American military in the entire Vietnam War).

It was a small number compared to an entire generation of millions of European men who had been thrown against one another month after month for four years. The huge U.S. army pushed back the German line in this region until political collapse at home led to a rapid capitulation by Germany to Allied terms for the Armistice of November 11.

The immediate problems facing Europe, of course, were far from over.

The unprecedented scope, the sheer numbers of those involved, the magnitude of the events of 1914-1918 stretched over the whole world. Soldiers came from all corners of the earth to fight in Europe, Africa, Asia Minor and the Middle East.

People had already begun to speak of this unique drama as a "world war," though it was not common to assign it a "number" in 1918. People hoped that it would be the only war of its kind, that the human race would find ways to ensure that this nightmare would never return.

In fact, in only took twenty years for this "Great War" to acquire the more prosaic designation of "World War I." Future historians may look on this whole period (the 20th century and beyond) as the era of violence, tumult, and tireless technological invention that introduced for the first time in history a "fully interactive" world.

We know only too well today that this instantaneously interactive, globally interconnected world is a dangerous place. At the same time we know that it can be the source of much enrichment, leading to a deeper awareness of our common humanity expressed in a multitude of physical differences, ethnic traditions, styles, and cultures.

For better or for worse, the destinies of the earth's peoples are woven together in ways far more intricate than anyone could have imagined 100 years ago. For better or for worse, our responsibility for one another is greater than ever.