John Janaro's Blog, page 22

The Event of Love Gives Us Hope

We live in a world of poverty.

We can see the desperation of the materially poor. But we do not see the immense inner poverty that afflicts so many of us who live in what are supposed to be the "rich nations" of the world.

We live under so much ruthless pressure. The relentless demand to obtain "results," the constant changes and the resulting ruptures of place, routine, employment, and relationships, the enormous, unprecedented power that enables us to construct the material world but also to escape problems and isolate ourselves: an environment so intense, so stressful, so overwhelming has never existed before in the history of the human race.

And we wonder why so many people suffer from debilitating physical and mental illnesses?

Some people succeed in managing all the power and possibilities placed in their hands, or they fail and get up and try again and again. But they sustain wounds and sometimes they try to hide them or ignore them. Being wounded and vulnerable are obstacles to success.

But many people are simply crushed.

Perhaps they can't be "fixed" by any of our techniques. But they still deserve to be loved. Indeed they, especially, remind us that every human person deserves to be loved simply because they are a human person.

When I say "Never Give Up," I mean never give up on the human person. And never give up on God, on Jesus.

Love people. Start with this love and maintain this love. In an environment of love we will be able to appreciate the real possibilities of a person. In this way our love can become many different kinds of "help" without becoming conditional or just another project measured by the criteria of power.

But people who are beyond any of this "help" — people who have been crushed  — can still love, even if their love doesn't "produce" anything we can see, even if their love is hidden deep inside their brokenness.

Love awakens the possibility for love in others, but this is not something we can keep tabs on. We don't know the "success rate" for "producing love" because we don't produce it. We have to just throw away our measure, and replace it with hope and trust in the God who is Love.

Jojo Turns Eighteen Years Old!

When I began this blog in 2011, Jojo (Josefina) Janaro was a little over four years old. If you’ve been here since the beginning, you’ve watched her grow up. There are lots of stories about her little kid adventures, especially in the earlier years of the blog. You know how cute she was in those days. (I think she’s still “cute,” but I’ll get in big trouble if I tell her that, because she thinks I’m looking at her like a child if I say “cute.” That’s not what I mean, but… whatever. I can tell her she’s pretty, which is true.) Jojo still looks young for her age, but she has grown a lot. She has reached the 5’ foot marker, and may yet pick up a couple more inches. She no longer stands out in a whole family of short people (I was once 5’10” but I’ve shrunk a bit over the years).

I’m amazed that she’s 18. She made it! I need not tell again the story that has been repeated on the blog many times and is also recounted in my 2010 book—that Jojo was a “pre-mie,” who spent the first seven months of her life in the NICU. It seems so long ago. Before she turned two, my days as a classroom teacher came to an end. So I had (and still have) a lot of time at home with her since I went-on-long-term-disability / “retired” in 2008. I have watched her grow up, and she has had a lot of special attention from her Dad. We’ve always gotten along really well, even during her adolescence. Jojo has tried to explain to me what “goes on inside the head” of a teenage girl, while I have tried to help her “interpret” the chaos that is the mind of a teenage boy (I still remember, and it hasn’t changed that much). For at least the past dozen years, Jojo and I have been watching TV together and having discussions of the themes that come up. We’ve had some really good conversations, and I hope we will continue for years to come.

Daddy and Jojo, from a long time ago (2017)We are so grateful to God for her. She has been a mysterious and wonderful gift entrusted to us by Christ along with our other four grown-up “kids,” and now—of course—the grandchildren too. So many great gifts! 

Happy Birthday Josefina! We love you!

What Do We Mean By “The Heart”

I have begun to read what promises to be a monumental encyclical letter that Pope Francis issued this morning, which aims to renew our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The encyclical Dilexit Nos locates the significance of the Heart of Jesus in the context of the mystery of the human heart, of each of our hearts. Here are some quotations and notes from the first part of the text, which I cite here—if for no other reason—for my own benefit as I study the encyclical. Perhaps they might be useful to others as well. Among other things, I want to quote sections of the text that struck me in a way that provokes my desire to “go deeper…”

In the first part of Chapter One, Pope Francis takes up the question: What do we mean by “the heart”? He tries to lead us to appreciate the existential centrality of the heart for the human person. “In classical Greek, the word kardía denotes the inmost part of human beings, animals and plants. For Homer, it indicates not only the centre of the body, but also the human soul and spirit. In the Iliad, thoughts and feelings proceed from the heart and are closely bound one to another. The heart appears as the locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape. In Plato, the heart serves, as it were, to unite the rational and instinctive aspects of the person, since the impulses of both the higher faculties and the passions were thought to pass through the veins that converge in the heart. From ancient times, then, there has been an appreciation of the fact that human beings are not simply a sum of different skills, but a unity of body and soul with a coordinating centre that provides a backdrop of meaning and direction to all that a person experiences. (DN 3)

[The heart can be concealed or ignored, but it ultimately reveals the truth of who we are as persons.] “Mere appearances, dishonesty and deception harm and pervert the heart. Despite our every attempt to appear as something we are not, our heart is the ultimate judge, not of what we show or hide from others, but of who we truly are. It is the basis for any sound life project; nothing worthwhile can be undertaken apart from the heart. False appearances and untruths ultimately leave us empty-handed. (DN 6)

“Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? Who do I want to be for others? Who am I for God? All these questions lead us back to the heart. (DN 8)

“The heart has been ignored in anthropology, and the great philosophical tradition finds it a foreign notion, preferring other concepts such as reason, will or freedom. The very meaning of the term is imprecise and hard to situate within our human experience. Perhaps this is due to the difficulty of treating it as a ‘clear and distinct idea’, or because it entails the question of self-understanding, where the deepest part of us is also that which is least known. Even encountering others does not necessarily prove to be a way of encountering ourselves, inasmuch as our thought patterns are dominated by an unhealthy individualism. Many people feel safer constructing their systems of thought in the more readily controllable domain of intelligence and will. The failure to make room for the heart, as distinct from our human powers and passions viewed in isolation from one another, has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others. (DN 10)

“If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry. We also lose track of history and our own past, since our real personal history is built with the heart. At the end of our lives, that alone will matter. (DN 11)

[The heart is is the vitally integrated center of all our faculties, the core of our whole person from which we give and receive love.] [My faculties of the] “mind and the will are put at the service of the greater good [of the heart] by sensing and savouring truths, rather than seeking to master them as the sciences tend to do. The will desires the greater good that the heart recognizes, while the imagination and emotions are themselves guided by the beating of the heart. It could be said, then, that I am my heart, for my heart is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people.” (DN 13-14)

Saint John Paul II Helps Married People and Families

Happy Feast of Saint John Paul II !!! 

This is a very special day in our family, because of the great grace we received at the very beginning of our married life. Eileen and I met this tremendous Pope on our honeymoon, on July 3, 1996. 

We spoke to him and told him that we were from the Communion and Liberation movement in the U.S.A.—which seemed to please him very much—and we hugged him and told him that we loved him. He was by this time at the beginning of his long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, and it also seemed like he carried in his heart all the profound sufferings of the Church and the world. I sensed the powerful and vulnerable reality of his humanity, and his own need for love and solidarity. I wanted very much to “stand with him” in that moment, when I said, “We love you, Holy Father.” He responded very deliberately and personally in English, “Thank you.” We then asked him to bless our marriage, and he traced the sign of the cross on our foreheads and said, “God bless you.” 

Thus he blessed our marriage from the beginning, some 28+ years ago. Since then we have felt the strength of his accompaniment and the great compassion of his humanity as a sign of the closeness of Jesus Christ in all our trials and our joys. This became something new and greater after his death in 2005, and we are grateful now that we can call upon him daily as a saint in the Church. 

And every night, before we go to sleep, Eileen and I still bless each other by tracing the cross on each other’s forehead. We did the same with the kids when they were growing up and we still bless Jojo, our youngest, who lives with us. 

John Paul II is a saint who intercedes especially, I think, for the strengthening of the Christian and human vocation of families, for their living communion in Christ. He also helps married couples to grow in love, to forgive each other every day, to persevere through trials, and to live together the grace of the sacrament of marriage through all the stages of married life, so that we can experience the many changes in our married life and in each other as persons as a continual “calling” from Jesus to remain in Him together, to trust in His merciful love, and to be open to each other in such a way as to be “surprised” by renewed and deepened affection, understanding, and gratitude to God and each other. .
I want to encourage people—especially young people—to take up this vocation of marriage, especially in a society that fears permanence, where people think they want to “keep their options open” forever, to “hold on to their freedom” even though freedom is meant to be used for the good. Freedom is made for love. Freedom is the capacity to give one’s self away, to take the risk of love of an “other” person, to move beyond ourselves and bring us to find ourselves again in relationships and communion. We can be sure that Saint John Paul II continues to say “Be not afraid” to commit yourselves to the lifelong human adventure of walking together with Jesus in the fundamental human companionship of marriage, which the Lord “supernaturalizes” by the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony into a sign of His healing and transforming love. Be not afraid to get married in Christ, who remains with you and whose grace is stronger than all your inadequacies, and who will bring you sustenance and joy in the Holy Spirit all through your married life. He will never abandon you and will give you the grace to endure together, with love, the many sacrifices and sufferings that come, building you up in His wisdom even when life feels like a whirlwind and you’re confused and you think you’re doing everything wrong. You will mess up a lot, which will humble you and teach you to ask for forgiveness and to give and receive forgiveness.

Dear young people, young married couples and those discerning marriage, be not afraid. Jesus has a strong hold on you; He embraces you in His crucified and risen arms and He won’t let go. Trust in Him, pray together, and never give up. Marriage is a step toward eternal life and a commitment to the continuation of human history—the history that belongs to Jesus, the history in which He has chosen to dwell. We also have the friendship of the saints on this journey (as we do in every state or circumstance of life). John Paul II is truly one of the great ones. He is a great help to anyone who seeks the presence of Christ in their lives, in the humanity of themselves and others, in the truth and beauty that draws them, in the suffering that Christ has taken upon Himself.

Saint John Paul II, pray for us, pray for married people, and for families! Pray for us all, for the Church, for the whole world. Pray for us to experience the mercy of God our Father who really loves us and wants us to live forever; to experience the mercy of Jesus Christ His Son who took our human nature to become one of us so that He could save us and transform us and dwell with us because He wants to be with us now and forever; to experience the mercy of the working of the Holy Spirit who transforms our way of seeing reality, so that everything reveals itself as a sign of the mystery, gratuity, and purpose of God who draws all things to Himself. The One God—a Trinity of three persons in ineffable communion—pours out gratuitous love so that we come into being and exist and seek the fullness of life, and pours out a greater gratuitousness in the grace that calls us, stirs up our hearts, gives us the desire for God, and draws us into a participation in Divine life, now and forever.

Begging For Abandonment to the Love of Christ

We all have this place where we suffer, where we face our own inadequacy, where we discover the smallness of our hearts and the pettiness of all our deeds.

And it is here that Jesus asks each one of us, in the most penetrating and poignant way, to believe in Him, to trust Him.

I do believe that He loves me with an infinite love, giving Himself for me on the Cross, pouring Himself out in the Eucharist, and drawing me to Himself through His ongoing companionship with me in the Church. He summons me from within the relationships entrusted to me, and the cries of the poor and the powerless whose afflictions wound my heart, whose need I recognize as my own, whose desire awakens me to share their struggles and their patience.

The love of Jesus is within the fabric of my life. It is mysterious and yet I know it constitutes “who I am” and draws me toward “who I want to be.” The love of Jesus gives meaning to everything and opens up the possibility for hope in every moment.

Why do I fail to entrust everything to this Great Lover? Why am I afraid? What more could He possibly do to deserve my trust?

Jesus, I entrust to You what seems so often to me to be such a complicated business, namely the abandonment of myself to You, the giving of everything over to You, the surrender of everything to You...even my weakness.

Jesus, I entrust "my-entrusting-of-myself-to-You" TO YOU! 

That's an awkward way of putting it. But I'm sure He knows what I mean.

I will not give up. Even if I am broken, God is still God, and still Glorious – even more clearly so, for He takes my brokenness upon Himself. Here, more than anywhere, it is clear that He is worthy of all my love. He has proven Himself. Thus, in every circumstance – even in the face of the prospect that I have nothing to give, that I am worthless, that all my aspirations in life may end in failure – the only reasonable possibility for me is to love God.

So even if I am nothing, I still have the desire—the need—to love Him. I beg that I might be able to love Him.

From nothing, God creates, God brings forth life. Jesus I trust in You. Convert me. Conquer me. Recreate me in Your merciful love. Give me a new heart.

Saint Luke, Apostle and Evangelist

Happy Feast of Saint Luke, Apostle and Evangelist. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he was the human author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. He was also the companion of Saint Paul on some of his missions.

“I handed on to you first of all what I myself received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried and, in accordance with the Scriptures, rose on the third day" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

The Radical Trust of Ignatius of Antioch

Today we celebrate Ignatius of Antioch, a man who was killed violently over 1900 years ago. We have the texts of his last letters, in which he expressed his love for Jesus Christ, whom he believed would bring him to a fulfillment beyond anything he could attain in this world, and beyond anything that could threaten him in this world. 

He understood his death as the gateway to eternal life, his martyr’s death in union with Jesus who was crucified and is risen, whose love conquers sin and death and gives meaning to all of life. Ignatius, reflecting on his approaching martyrdom for Christ, said, “Then I shall truly be a man.”

"Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ" (Saint Ignatius of Antioch, while heading to the Colosseum for martyrdom, 110 AD).

Countless others from every nation and people have faced death with the same confidence, the same hope, surrender, and love for Jesus Christ. On this very day, Jesus is transforming peoples’ lives. Even today, the Holy Spirit is giving people the faith, hope, and love for God that enables them to experience suffering and death in Christ—the One who reveals that God is our Father, that He loves us, that He wants us live forever.

October 17: Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr, circa year 110.

Saint Teresa of Avila and Bernini’s “Ecstasy in Stone”

HAPPY FEAST OF SAINT TERESA OF AVILA (the "O.G. Teresa" of all the Teresas).

Here is a glimpse of the incomparable art of the baroque-era sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680): a detail from "Saint Teresa in Ecstasy" (just so you notice: that's made out of stone, everybody). This is in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, which is, of course, in Rome! The sculpture is inspired by Teresa's account of a mystical experience in her autobiography, of being wounded by the love of God.

But Teresa was very “down-to-earth” in much that she said, and she offers words of hope for all of us. She reminds us that the Lord is “never weary of giving and never can [his] mercies be exhausted. Let us not tire of receiving” (Saint Teresa of Avila).

The Grandkids Are Growing and Growing!

In this picture you can see how big Anna is getting. She likes to pull my beard and squeeze my nose. In fact, after this pic was taken she tried to bite my nose. She does have a couple of teeth, but that doesn’t matter. Still, I don’t want her to put her mouth over my nose, because my nose is full of “old man germs” or whatever. And what if I sneeze? So I told her, “no, Anna, we don’t put Papa’s nose in our mouth.”

Anna doesn’t quite walk yet, but she gets around—oh boy does she scamper. And she is purposeful when she’s on the move. If Papa puts down his coffee mug, he’d better keep an eye on it. She will lock in on that mug like a target and start to move in for “exploration.” But she is a sweetheart, full of smiles and cheerfulness (except when she’s hungry / tired / etc etc etc… all the usual caveats for a nearly 11 month old baby).

Then, of course, there’s Maria. This Fall is a bit different because Maria has begun going to Montessori School at the “Primary level” (for 3-6 year-olds) on weekday mornings. Montessori Primary is a serious enterprise, where “preschool” children learn through guided interaction with an environment specially structured for them. I am amazed when I remember Josefina starting her first year of Primary in 2009, i.e. fifteen years ago. Now Maria has embarked on her Montessori adventure, and I know she will benefit from this remarkable pedagogy—which I have written about numerous times on this blog over the years (see, for example, HERE)—a pedagogy that educates the child’s whole person.

Maria communicates pretty well, and she also has quite a sense of humor. Thank God for both of these precious grandchildren! Here is a recent video (accessible only through this link) of Papa and Maria hanging out in the afternoon. More and more, we are having “two-way conversations.” Watch below:

True Wealth is Being Loved By God

The Gospel reading for Sunday, October 13, 2024 challenges us to remember that being loved by Jesus, belonging to Jesus, and following Him are our true wealth. And since the Father has sent Jesus as the gift of His love to bring us to salvation, we must never lose hope. If we allow Him to free us from our illusions of mastery over reality—from all the ways we grasp at things and seek to wrench some sort of (ultimately always inadequate) "happiness" from them—then our arms will be free to adhere to Him every moment, every day, every step on the road to the Kingdom of God. In hope we have confidence in Him for whom all things are possible.
Consider the opinion held by some biblical scholars that this rich man who encounters Jesus and goes away "sad" doesn't necessarily stay away from Him. He remembers Jesus's "look of love" and eventually does become a disciple. In fact, he may be Saint Mark the Evangelist himself, the author of this Gospel, the only one of the evangelists who mentions in this story that "Jesus, looking at him, loved him."
God loves us, and all things are possible to Him. Never give up hope. Trust in Jesus, always.

"As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus answered him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.'

"He replied and said to him, 'Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.'

"Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, 'You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

"Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, 'How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!' The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, 'Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.'

"They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.'"

~Mark 10:17-27