John Janaro's Blog, page 211

Francis: God Answers Our Prayers in His Way

These "Disorders" Don't Just Affect Your "Mood"

I have been swimming against the current for months. I think it has been worth it. It has been necessary for many reasons, but I am going to drown if I don't find a shore where I can rest, or even just some calmer waters....

Sorry for the metaphors. It's all I've got right now. My friends, I wish I had control over this whole mess.

Depression. Bipolar. They call these things "mood disorders."
The term "mood" is not strong enough. It's tempting to want to change it to something like " losing-your-freaking-mind! " but that would scare people too much. However, the word "mood" makes one think of things like "jazz" ... and that just doesn't carry the weight and the awful nature of what we are dealing with here.
People have to understand that this kind of pain is beyond the range of anything ordinary, but also that it's not uncommon, it's human suffering, and that although there are no easy solutions, there is help and hope.

Sometimes, patience can be very hard. Let's help one another--whatever kinds of trials we face--to keep hope alive.

Kate the GREAT!

Catherine of Siena, Catherine the Magnificent, Kate the Great ...you've been so good to me. Thank you!

The "Written Word" Goes Around the World

There are all these creative possibilities for communication that have developed or have been refined in the past six years, and here I am... still blogging.

Maybe I should do more videos or something.

April Flowers

Here are some up-close looks at a few of the lovely blooming things that we have seen over the past week in our beautiful valley.







And this one wins the best picture award, though I must say that bee photobombed this shot. I didn't even notice it when I was taking the actual picture.

Nature at work:

Persons in Our Lives Who Call Us to Love

It is so easy for us to forget that the human beings we encounter every day are real persons. We easily fall into the habit of seeing them as widgets whose purpose for existing is reduced to fulfilling our needs.

Maybe sometimes we're not so selfish. We try to give and take, to be fair, to be nice and polite. Still, we know that we are not adequate to the reality that they bear; we are numb to the miracle of the unique persons all around us.

Part of it is simply the weight of being human. We're tired. We're in a hurry. We're troubled by our own frustrations, anxieties, fears of being hurt, fears of failure. Sometimes we're hungry. Or we have indigestion or we're constipated.

Many of us are in fact physically and mentally incapable of handling stress. The wiring in our brains is all messed up. We have issues, we have defense mechanisms, we have walls that we have built to protect ourselves, we have genetic predispositions to react in certain ways, we have hormones and endocrine systems that are out of balance. Biotoxins flow through our blood, the environment poisons us, youthful impulsiveness drives us or the relentlessness of getting older wears us down. This is the human environment from which our conscious intentions, thoughts, and desires emerge.

But the fact is that we have free will. We are each responsible for ourselves and our own actions. Our human material limitations may decrease our culpability for particular acts (or failures to act) in various instances, but they don't take away our freedom entirely. Whatever problems we may have, our freedom is still summoned to grow in love. Every encounter with a person is an opportunity to love, however small. The call to love is greater than all our weaknesses.

We must learn to adhere to this greater reality that is love. Yet we remain weak and wounded. Where will we find the strength for this adherence?

The call to love is a grace, and it is drawing us toward healing. Healing comes from grace. The capacity to recognize the human person comes from Jesus, whose presence we must learn to recognize. How? We must pray. We must ask for Him to heal us and transform us. We must receive Him in the sacraments. We must follow those who have already grown in the art of living. We must listen, and be humble.

We all have "neighbors," people who have been placed beside us in the circumstances of life and who are therefore in some way entrusted to us. They are spouses, family members, coworkers, friends, people we serve, people who care for us, people in our communities, people who are in front of us with particular needs.

How do we treat these people every day?
The need to recognize the person in front of us, and the possibility for love, penetrates the whole day. But this call of love is blocked by our evasion, impatience, words ill-spoken, the subtle workings of our drive for power and manipulation, or just plain distraction.

There is material for an examination of conscience right there: one that brings humility, and sorrow, and a memory that commits us again to the vocation of love and the work that it requires.

Of course we fail again and again. But Jesus is present in our lives by the grace of His Spirit who works in our hearts and through the life of the Church. We have a Father who loves us, who sent His Son to save us. Jesus has conquered our weakness. We must never be discouraged. We must keep going to Him, seeking Him, asking for Him, letting Him build us up through the instruments of His grace, and learning more and more to recognize Him in other persons, in every circumstance, asking for our love.

The Gratuitous Wonder at the Heart of Life

Our being, our life, and everything we have belong to God. 

At the same time, we truly belong to ourselves because He gives us to ourselves. This is the gratuitous wonder at the heart of life.  I am who I am because I am His creature. 
Everything that is “me” is the effect, here and now, of his direct and personal creative and sustaining love. 
This is what matters, even without professional honors, or a job, or even the ability to do much of anything. His love is everything. Outside of that love there is “nothing.”
Our hope is to live entirely in Him and for Him. And it's a real hope, because He has made it possible. He has made a way for us.

Our Sorrows Will Be Turned Into Joy

Here we are in the midst of Easter Week, and many among us are facing serious trials. Even in my own local community, people have endured the death of loved ones or the onset of serious illnesses, as well as that vast, ineffable galaxy of sufferings that fills everyone's days.

The proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus does not make our pain go away. Does it really matter to the sorrows we experience right now? Or is it just an abstract religious truth, or something that only has meaning for people who don't care about life here and now?
I went for a walk in the woods and took pictures of the wildflowers (whose appearance is beautiful but brief, fragile, inconsequential). Then I made this video. I put it in the "Front Porch" series, even though it's longer (and not on my porch, obviously).
I believe we have reasons for the hope that is in us:

The Living One

Happy Easter 2017 From the Janaros!

The Janaro Family. Front row: Agnese (18), Teresa (14), Josefina (10). Back row: John Paul (19), John (aka
"Daddy"), Eileen (aka "Mommy"). Insert right bottom corner: Lucia Janaro (16 - currently out of the country
participating in a student exchange program... we miss her this year, but more on her story another time). After Mass, we had a picnic with some friends and their families at the beautiful Virginia Arboretum. We brought with us a hamper full of prosciutto and strawberries and cheeses and olives and wine. Then we came back home and had dinner in the evening: Rigatoni with Corsican beef and more wine.
Christ is risen, alleluia!
He is risen indeed, alleluia, alleluia!