John Janaro's Blog, page 195

The Land Yields Fruit

"We should always be occupied with praying the Psalms or meditating or raising our mind to God, pondering within ourselves the blazing charity we discover and see in the blood of the Word, God's Son. For he has made a bath of his blood to wash away our sins. When we see and consider that God loves us so much, we cannot keep ourselves from loving...filled with God in holy desire, remembering and meditating on the wonderful blessings we have received from him" (Saint Catherine of Siena).


Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”

~Mark 4:26-29

The Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

Detail, 14th century illuminated manuscript. Road to Damascus.

Since we celebrated the feast of the Conversion of St Paul this week, I thought I might repost the very first installment of my monthly Great Conversion Stories series as it appeared in MAGNIFICAT in the December 2013 issue.

Now it's 2018, my fifth year of writing this column. January 2018's issue marked Great Conversion Story number 50! And there's more to come.

Writing these continues to be a great learning experience for me, and I hope I have succeeded in sharing some of it with you. Click HERE to subscribe for upcoming installments of my monthly feature, along with many other informative and inspiring articles, daily prayer and Mass readings, and much more.

Dolores O'Riordan: Missing You "When You're Gone"

"And in the day
Everything's complex
There's nothing simple
When I'm not around you
But I miss you when you're gone
That is what I do..."

~The Cranberries, When You're Gone (1996)


Dolores O'Riordan was laid to rest on Tuesday by her family after a Requiem Mass in the little parish church in Ballybricken, County Limerick—the same church where she grew up singing and playing the organ. This was after a week of shock, public mourning by all of Ireland (along with the sorrow of fans around the world), and still no news on what caused the sudden death of the 46 year old lead singer and songwriter of The Cranberries. 

Ah, the Cranberries! My wife and I saw them back in 1995 at Wolf Trap. It was packed, but we were (still) young, newly engaged, not realizing how footloose we were. The music will always be part of our lives, part of "the soundtrack" of a precious, unforgettable time. We share the gratitude of the Gen-Xers and early Millennials who were growing up with this special music in a remarkable period of musical creativity.

Poor Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan. What happened!??

She had a very difficult life.

Certainly it wasn't easy being the frontwoman of the second most famous popular music band in Irish history. It would have been simpler for her and the lads from Limerick (Noel and Mike Hogan and Fergal Lawler) if rock-superstardom had never come so suddenly in 1993, if they had spent their music career as a band playing in pubs.

They wouldn't have been disappointed. They never dreamed of massive global success with all its dazzle and attention and its grueling (inhuman, really) demands. It was exhausting for Dolores, and it exacerbated all the deeper problems that no one knew she had at the time.

What made The Cranberries so remarkable? The band laid down a simple mellow rhythmic background and Dolores carried the melodies with her Irish soprano voice, which was a peculiar mix of ethereal Celtic floating, choir girl precision, alternative-rock edginess, and Gaelic-country-folk sounds, all topped off with riffs of yodeling.

That description makes it seem complicated. In reality Dolores blended it organically into her own signature style. The result was a band that made songs that were a little odd, a bit fringy, definitely original but also catchy and accessible. They had the broad appeal not of cheap novelty hits that everyone forgets in 6 months, but of classic songs that endure, that people never get tired of.

They also came on the scene with the kind of creative "kick" that put the "alternative" in the alternative music vibe of the 1990s. It was not unusual in those days to hear for the first time a new song from some hitherto obscure band and have your socks knocked off. I remember hearing Dreams, and thinking "this is nice, yeah" and then suddenly in the middle of the song there's a bridge where she launches into the yodel, like "laahh haa ya hay yah ya hay yah ey ahh haa ya hay yah ya hay yah haah yaaaah!" And I went, "Dang! What was that? That was terrific!"

The entire album was terrific. The second one was even better, with the uncharacteristically loud epic Zombie hitting the nail on the head about "the Troubles" of Northern Ireland in a way that continues to resonate with other conflicts and all the agonizing, ideologically driven, stupid violence of today. The songs on these albums were not complicated, but all the pieces were in the right place....

How is it possible that Dolores O'Riordan died last week!?

For me this hits harder than the increasingly common but still remote deaths of "celebrities" that I remember from my younger days. I kept up with the Cranberries, their periodic reunions, and Dolores's private and public joys and troubles.

I appreciated her honesty and openness about her suffering, and could relate to some aspects of it. This lady from the countryside of western Ireland—usually reticent, polite (when she wasn't manic), unvarnished, and matter-of-fact in her speech—told the world a lot about her life.

It was a life of physical and mental affliction: bipolar disorder with deep depression episodes, trauma from childhood sexual abuse by someone close to her family, anorexia, alcohol misuse, and (more recently) a very painful chronic back problem. She did love music, though. She also had a marriage that was happy at least for a while and three children to whom she was very devoted. She attempted suicide five years ago, but seemed to be pulling things together. The Cranberries were making new music.

What happened!??

He Helps Us in Our Weakness

Sometimes in this life, people face afflictions that seem to exceed their capacity for endurance. Sooner or later we all find ourselves in these kinds of awful, incomprehensible circumstances. When this happens, everything we thought was strength in us seems to dry up. We gasp and cry out from depths of desperation we never knew existed.

What is going on in our hearts? Have we lost our faith?

Not necessarily. In these dark times, when all understanding seems to have abandoned us, our faith may indeed reach new heights. But we must let our hearts pray.

Our hearts groan, and we don't understand these groanings, but God does.

Let the heart pray.

"The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit..." (Romans 8:26-27).
Grief can be like this, sometimes.

But grief need not become despair. Within this pain, the Spirit is moving our hearts to speak to God in ways that are beyond our thoughts and understanding. Grief is like a deep rupture, an open wound, but it can be poured out. It can become prayer.

God will hear this prayer. He hears the cries of the poor. He helps us in our weakness.

The Dignity of Every Human Life

"God our Creator,we give thanks to you,who alone have the power to impart the breath of lifeas you form each of us in our mother's womb;grant, we pray,that we, whom you have made stewards of creation,may remain faithful to this sacred trustand constant in safeguarding the dignityof every human life.Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,who lives and reigns with youin the unity of the Holy Spirit,one God, for ever and ever." 
~Collect for the Roman liturgy for the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, observed in all dioceses of the U.S.A. on January 22.
"When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities—to offer just a few examples—it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble.... Concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo?... We need to develop a new synthesis capable of overcoming the false arguments of recent centuries" (Pope Francis, Laudato Si, On Care For Our Common Home, 2015).

We Need Jesus

The world needs Jesus.

People need the love and mercy of Jesus. People need the freedom to embrace suffering in a way that does not crush them; they need to know and experience the companionship of Jesus in their suffering. 

People need the freedom to forgive and to let themselves be forgiven, so that wounds can heal instead of being passed through the generations until they become great scars that hinder the life of whole societies and cultures.

The world needs Jesus. We need Jesus. I need Jesus!

The love of Jesus is everything. Through his love and mercy, we can be changed and empowered to live a new life. We can become vessels of God's love. We can make God's love and mercy present in the world.

If we look at ourselves just in terms of what we can generate by ourselves, according to the measure of our own powers, we could never hope to do this. But Jesus loves us, and promises to take us beyond the limits of ourselves, to convert us and heal us of our sins, and transform us by the grace of his Holy Spirit.

He wants to make us real lovers of God and of human beings in the image and likeness of God. We should open our own hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit, give the Spirit "space" to work within us, ask him to change us.

God has created us and called us to share in his eternal life, to become and remain forever his sons and daughters in his uncreated, only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. His Holy Spirit is already stirring up this vocation in the depths of our hearts, within the mysterious reality of our daily lives. He is calling us, inviting us to share his joy, even when this call seems inaudible, confusing, or distant.

It often seems perplexing to me, at least when I regard it as an actual proposal for life.

It's easy to talk about it, or talk around it. I can talk forever about being Catholic. I can talk about God and the Church, all the problems in the world, all the errors of people (the closer they are to me, the more eloquent my critique). I can talk about bishops and politicians, doctrine and social issues, who's "good" and who's "bad."

But actually to change, to love the way God loves? How will I ever reach that point? I can hardly even imagine becoming just a little bit less selfish. I could try, but I'd be more likely to fall on my face and end up feeling more guilty. What's missing from my life?

Jesus Christ. A real relationship with Jesus. I forget about him. I forget to communicate with him, to ask him to pour out his Spirit upon me, to renew me, to come and change me. I forget to entrust everything to him, to listen to him, to hope in him. I forget Jesus.

I can go around all day saying "I'm a Catholic, I'm a Christian, I know the right way, I'm one of the good people in this bad bad bad world" -- I can say all these kinds of things and still ignore Jesus Christ.

But I need Jesus. The love of Jesus is everything.

I need Jesus, truly God and truly human, eternally with the Father in the Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, dwelling among us, crucified and risen from the dead, our Lord, our brother: not just Jesus in abstract theological terms but a real Person who loves me and calls me to live in his love.

I don't know how to recognize him and live in a relationship with him. I need to change, but I don't know how to change. All I can do is ask, beg him to change me: "Jesus, change what needs changing in me."

We are always forgetting him. But he is infinite mercy. He comes to us again and again. He calls us. He doesn't want us to remain in our forgetfulness.

When we remember him, we should beg from the poverty of our hearts for his mercy. He knows what we need, how to draw us, to change us, to bring us closer to him.

And when we ask him to change us, we have already begun to love. A new energy, a new kind of life has been awakened in us.

"Jesus, make me the person you created me to be."

He Will Destroy Death Forever

"You have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress;
Shelter from the rain,
shade from the heat.

"When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rain,
the roar of strangers like heat in the desert,
You subdued the heat with the shade of a cloud,
the rain of the tyrants was vanquished.
"On this mountain the Lord of hosts
will provide for all peoples
A feast of rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
"On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
The web that is woven over all nations.
He will destroy death forever.
"The Lord God will wipe away
the tears from all faces;
The reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken.
"On that day it will be said:
'Indeed, this is our God; we looked to him, and he saved us!
This is the Lord to whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!'"

~Isaiah 25:4-9

Peace and Security (Digital Artwork)

"Peace and Security...Peace and Security"
(Original digital artwork, 1/18/2018).

Epiphany as Personal Encounter: Andrew and John Meet Jesus

It all began on an ordinary afternoon. "They went and saw where Jesus was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon."
Last Sunday's Gospel reading continues the seasonal theme of God's "epiphany" in the world. But here we have the announcement of a more intimate manifestation, in the form of those personal encounters with Jesus that begin with the two disciples who follow the testimony of John the Baptist. We do not even know the details of what transpired on that afternoon—what exactly they "saw" when they went to the place where Jesus was staying—but it was enough to make Andrew himself into a witness to his brother, Simon (whom Jesus would call 'Peter'): "We have found the Messiah."

On that first afternoon, they met a man whose human face revealed the saving love of God. They experienced something beautiful and new in the time they spent with that man—beautiful, unique, awesome, meaningful, convincing, and worth following."John was standing with two of his disciples,
and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,
'Behold, the Lamb of God.'
The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them,
'What are you looking for?'
They said to him, 'Rabbi' — which translated means Teacher —
'where are you staying?'
He said to them, 'Come, and you will see.'
So they went and saw where Jesus was staying,
and they stayed with him that day.
It was about four in the afternoon.
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter,
was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus.
He first found his own brother Simon and told him,
'We have found the Messiah' — which is translated Christ.
Then he brought him to Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said,
'You are Simon the son of John;
you will be called Cephas' — which is translated Peter" (John 1:35:42).

In his remarks prior the Angelus on January 14, Pope Francis articulates the factors involves in this very intimate and decisive moment at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, and how the same dynamic pertains to each one of us:

"Each one of us, in as much as we are a human being, is seeking: seeking happiness, seeking love, a good and full life. God the Father has given us all this in His Son Jesus.

"Fundamental in this search is the role of a true witness, of a person who first of all has made the journey and has encountered the Lord. In the Gospel, John the Baptist is this witness. Therefore he can direct the disciples to Jesus, who involves them in a new experience, saying: 'Come and see' (John 1:39).

"And those two will never be able to forget the beauty of that encounter, to the point that the Evangelist even notes the hour: 'it was about four o’clock in the afternoon.'

"Only a personal encounter with Jesus generates a path of faith and of discipleship.

"We can have many experiences, do many things, establish relations with many persons, but only the meeting with Jesus, in the hour that God knows, can give full meaning to our life and make our projects and our initiatives fruitful."

Martin Luther King: "I Just Want to Do God's Will."

"...I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!"

Today, the United States of America observes the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The image below presents the closing words of a speech King gave in Memphis, Tennessee, on the night of April 3, 1968.

These were his last words in public. He was assassinated the next day. This coming April 4th will mark the 50th anniversary of his death.