John Janaro's Blog, page 229

Saint Bernard: 800+ Years of Witness to God's Love

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux died on August 20, 1153. That's 863 years ago if my arithmetic is correct. Yet he left a mark on Christian history that remains fresh and vital even today, his feast day on the Roman calendar.

Bernard de Fontaines-les-Dijon was a young nobleman who left all his wealth to join a radical new monastic movement. The movement was trying to recover the ancient Benedictine tradition of living in prayer and solitude, in poverty and by the work of their own hands.

These radical monks dwelt in the wild marshland of a place called Citeaux (from the word forcistern), near the border between medieval France and Burgundy. They were ragged and unknown when Bernard first came to them, but they were dedicated to living by the original rule of Saint Benedict. They had gone to work clearing and draining the swamp, and building a humble dwelling place to worship and pray and labor. In and through Bernard, these small seeds planted by the founding monks bore a remarkable fruit.

Though he was not the founder of the great religious order that came to be known as the Cistercians, Bernard's presence, his dedication, his wisdom, and above all his radiant holiness were fundamental to the order's explosive growth in the 12th century. He became counselor to popes and kings, peacemaker, preacher, teacher, and guide along the paths of Christian life.

His sermons, letters, and commentaries remain classics. No one since Saint Augustine had spoken so profoundly and so eloquently about the love of God, and the grace by which He enables us to love Him.

And thus he continues to speak to us today:

If one seeks for God's claim upon our love here is the chiefest: Because He first loved us.

For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love Him are made happy by their love of Him.

I know that my God is not merely the bounteous bestower of my life, the generous provider for all my needs, the pitiful consoler of all my sorrows, the wise guide of my course: He is far more than all that. He saves me with an abundant deliverance. He is my eternal preserver, the portion of my inheritance, my glory.

Therefore what reward shall I give unto the Lord for all the benefits which He has given me? 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. 

He is all that I need, all that I long for.

"My God and my help,
I will love You for Your great goodness;
not so much as I might, surely,
but as much as I can.
I cannot love You as You deserve to be loved,
for I cannot love You more
than my own feebleness permits.
I will love You more when You deem me worthy
to receive greater capacity for loving,
yet never so perfectly as You deserve of me."

In All Things and Above All Things

"O God, you 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."
~Collect for this week (20th week of "Ordinary Time") in the Roman liturgy.
This is one of my favorite prayers in the whole liturgical year. 

Mary: The Beginning of the New Creation

Today the Church celebrates the solemn feast of the "Dormition" (the "falling asleep") of the Mother of Jesus, the Theotokos, at the end of her earthly pilgrimage. The detail from the icon shows Mary "born" into eternal life, assumed into the fullness of glory in soul and body. Here the Mother is portrayed as the infant, carried by her Son, which expresses the mystery of her entire existence from the beginning.

She has always been fully His, and so she remains, glorified with Him entirely, united with His presence before the Father in the Spirit.

Mary, the New Eve, is with Jesus, the New Adam, in the fullness of the New Paradise, the beginning of the New Creation.  The young girl from Nazareth who said "Yes" to God has gone before us and thus remains with us as our Mother, the Mother of Mercy.

Mary's total transfiguration and definitive realization in soul and body with her Son is the dawn of the eschaton. Mary's  splendor is the beginning of the complete realization of God's loving plan for the world.

Today let us remember the Woman who is full of God, 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 know it.

Let us pray that the Mother of God might be gratefully acknowledged, honored, and relied upon by every human person, because her tender maternal love embraces each one. Let us pray especially that all baptized Christians will recognize that she is their Mother, and allow her to lead them to the fullness of Christian faith and life.

Holy Mother of God, protect us. Watch over all your children, especially those who are suffering, those who are poor and persecuted. Pray for us always, that Jesus might draw us all into the final fulfillment of the Kingdom, so that we might dwell forever with the God whose Love renews all things.

August 14th

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. This is a reproduction of a written manuscript of a poem I wrote 27 years ago, on August 14, 1989.

When Kolbe stepped forward to offer his own life in place of another prisoner, he said, "I am a Catholic priest."

Maturity and Forgiveness: Growing in a Great Mysterious Life

I sometimes say that I am "old" or "washed up" but I know it isn't true. All I have to do is reflect upon some of the many experiences I am having together with other friends and colleagues over the age of fifty.

Life is an ongoing journey. Often I still feel like a kid inside, and I think there's something real about that. I don't think we "outgrow" things but rather we "grow into" new things, deeper things. Our whole lives are "still alive"--the good things can continue growing, and the failures can heal because we can find forgiveness if we are willing, also, to forgive.

At our age, we either begin to move humbly toward wisdom or we begin to fall into disappointed resignation, cynicism and bitterness. I'm always trying to sort out these motivations, and, honestly, I think they are usually muddled and mixed up as I live through these days and years in my life.

So I throw myself upon the mercy of Jesus, and I try to remember that I must keep forgiving other people. I must forgive every day.

And surely we have reached the age where we ought to understand concretely the need to forgive people, especially those close to us. We have enough experience to know their limits, to know that they can't give us everything we feel like we need from them. Nor can we be sufficient for the fulfillment of their hopes.

God alone suffices. He alone corresponds to our need. How can we not forgive one another when we are all beggars before Him? We are beggars, but there is no shame in embracing this poverty. We are poor because we are made for an infinite love, and He who is that Love fills to overflowing all the spaces we open up to Him.

In ordinary life it can be hard to be forgiving, but through it we can attain a renewed, mature innocence. Forgiveness generates healing, and keeps alive our hope and our capacity to be surprised by life, to see all the good there is in reality and in other people.

Maturity is a blessing. We're all still "growing up" in this great mysterious life. Time deepens our capacity to love (if we let it). I feel like I'm more aware of people as time goes on, and more aware of how many people are with me on this journey.

I have more empathy for young people with their fresh aspirations, sincerity, and restless energy. How great it is to see them grow. I also have a deeper appreciation for older people, who are wise and beautiful in so many way I never used to notice, and who deserve my attention and, indeed, veneration.

This is a good time to live, these later years of "middle age."

Really, we have so much to be grateful for. And still much to give.

It is our turn to be courageous in taking responsibility for our milieu, to be leaders, and we have to do our very best to rise to this challenge. We can only do this if we continue to grow humbly in maturity and forgiveness.

Maturity and Forgiveness: Growing Up in a Great Mysterious Life

I sometimes say that I am "old" or "washed up" but I know it isn't true. All I have to do is reflect upon some of the many experiences I am having together with other friends and colleagues over the age of fifty.

Life is an ongoing journey. Often I still feel like a kid inside, and I think there's something real about that. I don't think we "outgrow" things but rather we "grow into" new things, deeper things. Our whole lives are "still alive"--the good things can continue growing, and the failures can heal because we can find forgiveness if we are willing, also, to forgive.

At our age, we either begin to move humbly toward wisdom or we begin to fall into disappointed resignation, cynicism and bitterness. I'm always trying to sort out these motivations, and, honestly, I think they are usually muddled and mixed up as I live through these days and years in my life.

So I throw myself upon the mercy of Jesus, and I try to remember that I must keep forgiving other people. I must forgive every day.

And surely we have reached the age where we ought to understand concretely the need to forgive people, especially those close to us. We have enough experience to know their limits, to know that they can't give us everything we feel like we need from them. Nor can we be sufficient for the fulfillment of their hopes.

God alone suffices. He alone corresponds to our need. How can we not forgive one another when we are all beggars before Him? We are beggars, but there is no shame in embracing this poverty. We are poor because we are made for an infinite love, and He who is that Love fills to overflowing all the spaces we open up to Him.

In ordinary life it can be hard to be forgiving, but through it we can attain a renewed, mature innocence. Forgiveness generates healing, and keeps alive our hope and our capacity to be surprised by life, to see all the good there is in reality and in other people.

Maturity is a blessing. We're all still "growing up" in this great mysterious life. Time deepens our capacity to love (if we let it). I feel like I'm more aware of people as time goes on, and more aware of how many people are with me on this journey.

I have more empathy for young people with their fresh aspirations, sincerity, and restless energy. How great it is to see them grow. I also have a deeper appreciation for older people, who are wise and beautiful in so many way I never used to notice, and who deserve my attention and, indeed, veneration.

This is a good time to live, these later years of "middle age."

Really, we have so much to be grateful for. And still much to give.

It is our turn to be courageous in taking responsibility for our milieu, to be leaders, and we have to do our very best to rise to this challenge. We can only do this if we continue to grow humbly in maturity and forgiveness.

Edith Stein: Searching For the Truth, and Finding It

Olympics 2016

It's hard to believe that another four years have gone by and we have arrived, once again, at the Olympics. People all over the world are watching the games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The modern Olympics--whatever may be their flaws--are a remarkable display of so much that is good in human beings, and they remind us of our common humanity and its most basic aspirations.

We cheer our athletes, who build something beautiful and awesome by the arduous work of developing their talents, strength, and skill. This requires intense training, total focus and dedication, and lots and lots of sacrifice. Here, people can clearly see the value of submitting to an objective discipline. People see the value of sacrifice. They are stirred to the experience of a kind of wonder.

But things of deeper beauty are not so evident. Many people don't see these things, and so they don't even understand why they are worthy of seeking, of effort, of sacrifice.

It is here that we must aspire to be champions. We must take the "field" of each day, and keep working hard and making sacrifices in order to live lives of deep beauty, so as to make truth and love shine in the world.

Transfiguration

Transfiguration.

"From the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him'" (Matthew 17:5).

"All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

All is Vanity

Vanity, vanity, under the sun.
All is vanity.
And the day we die is better than the day we are born.

We toil away our days under the sun
while the birds of the air come and go,
filling the dawn and the day and the dusk
with carefree melodies we do not hear.
We do not listen to them
under the sun.

We toil away our blazing days
until vanity swallows us into the dark night,
and then deaf ears strain against the silence.
The birds are gone.
We long to remember the songs they sung
while we forgot to listen.
But we shiver in the wild wind
that passes through us in the night.
Exhausted from the toil under the sun,
our spent frame moves no more.
The dark wind flows freely and disappears.

Vanity.
All is vanity.
And the day we die is better than the day we are born.

We never listened to the birds.
We never listened to their songs.
We were delighted by their colors and cheer.
We watched them soar with free firey wings,
and we loved them.
We toiled under the sun and wrought metal cages for them.
We caught them and bought them
and sold them, two-fifths penny each.
But a few got away,
found sanctuary.
And others flew over our heads,
high and bright and lost in the clear light of the burning sun.
But we never listened.

Vanity.
All is vanity.
All our days under the sun,
grasping for the wind.
It blows through our hand
and we do not understand.
We do not listen.

Everything has its season under the sun.
As it passes away it whispers about forever
and our hearts beat to the breath of this whispering
wind,
yet we know not where it goes.
We dance, we laugh,
we weep, we mourn,
but we do not understand the birdsong.
So we toil and hoard our pieces of time
and we are not satisfied.
We know not quiet until the day we die
when secrets open to blinding light.

The birds are gone.
One day they fell from the sky and we forgot them.
We never understood their songs.
But not one of them is forgotten before God.
Not one of them falls
without being carried by the hand that fashioned it.

~Dedicated to the memory of Christina Victoria Grimmie, songbird, March 12, 1994 - June 10, 2016.



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During an interview, Christina Grimmie displays the tattoo on her right arm with the words "All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2).