John Janaro's Blog, page 261

Beyond All You Can Imagine

Here is my first real attempt to design a... well, exactly a "meme" but one of these verbal/visual presentations that are so adapted to Internet platforms.

The capacity to attempt such a design carries its own difficulties. The software has so many options that it's easy to spend hours trying to decide colors and sizes of letters and what blends best against the background. Of course, I'm far from satisfied with the final product.
Still, it's worth struggling and experimenting with a multimedia presentation, because here is a (very small) possibility to create spaces where beauty, truth, and goodness can come together.
What is the best approach, the best way to avoid "greeting card sentimentality" on the one hand and obtuse clashes between words and images on the other? What I have attempted here it simply to put together pieces from my real life, my own pictures and my own words: things that I feel the need to see and hear again and again.

In a way, this is something I need for myself. I need to print it and stick it up next to my bed. And perhaps the Lord will use such projects to open other people's hearts. That is my hope.

Mercy Has the Last Word: Remembering Luigi Giussani

The tomb of Msgr. Luigi Giussani in Milan is visited each day by hundreds of people who
bring petitions and thanksgivings for favors received, which are recorded by the cause for
his beatification. The tombstone reads, "Oh our Lady, you are the security of our hope."
I have been thinking in these days of writing more of the story of the impact that Msgr. Luigi Giussani had (and continues to have) on my life. What he gave me has remained a focus for my life, a vocational commitment, and also the source of a suffering that I have been willing to endure, and -- at times -- even embrace.
But tonight, recalling the tenth anniversary of his funeral, I desire only to represent the compelling words I posted last year, along with the picture of his simple tomb. In an era of so much celebrity worship and personality cult (even in the Church), Don Giussani was something remarkable: he was the real deal.
He still is. I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The municipality of Milan has had to move Giussani's tomb to a more accessible place in the city cemetery to accommodate the crowds of pilgrims.
And I remember the man, the teacher, speaking with such passion in the years when he was still full of physical vitality, surrounded by a pile of dog-eared books on the desk and a bottle of mineral water.
He taught us the truth. He said things like these words:

"This is the ultimate embrace of the Mystery, against which man–even the most distant, the most perverse or the most obscured, the most in the dark–cannot oppose anything, can make no objection. He can abandon it, but in so doing he abandons himself and his own good. The Mystery as mercy remains the last word even on all the awful possibilities of history.

"For this reason existence expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ."

~ Luigi Giussani

Asking For God's "Help"

You're probably wondering what Josefina's gripping hand has to do with God's help, or the scribes and Pharisees or anything else that the post below might address.

First, let me clarify that this is a reflection posted a week ago in Magnificat.

This is not the "Great Conversion Story" for the month (which I'll reproduce on the blog next month, since it's "St. Patrick") but rather a daily reflection, which I also have in the magazine from time to time.

Many people seemed to appreciate it when it came up last week, so I thought I would reproduce it here. If you read all the way through, the graphic might reveal its meaning. (Even though Jojo is older than the child indicated, she is not above throwing a tantrum... and she is certainly looked upon with love.)

An Encounter, A Love Story, An Event

I am remembering once again with gratitude the Servant of God Luigi Giussani on the tenth anniversary of his death. It's hard to believe that it's been ten years already.

Fr. Giussani passed away on the Feast of the Chair of Peter, 2005.
Thus begins the commemoration within the next few months of a momentous series of events that took place a decade ago.
A little more than a month after Fr. Giussani's death, on April 2, 2005, his friend John Paul II joined him in the Father's house.
In fact, John Paul II had been too ill to preside at Fr. Giussani's funeral, and so he sent his most trusted collaborator, Cardinal Ratzinger, as his personal representative. On February 24, Ratzinger celebrated the funeral mass at Milan Cathedral and preached in front of thousands of people at the church and in the square, and countless others who were watching the funeral on Italian national television.
Many heard for the first time the simplicity and the depth of the preaching of the man who was about to become Pope Benedict XVI.
Here are a few of his words on that occasion.

Only Christ gives meaning to the whole of our life. Fr Giussani always kept the eyes of his life and of his heart fixed on Christ. In this way, he understood that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism, Christianity is rather an encounter, a love story; it is an event. [my emphasis]

This love affair with Christ, this love story which is the whole of his life was however far from every superficial enthusiasm, from every vague romanticism. Really seeing Christ, he knew that to encounter Christ means to follow Christ. This encounter is a road, a journey, a journey that passes also... through the “valley of darkness.”

In the Gospel, we heard of the last darkness of Christ’s suffering, of the apparent absence of God, when the world’s Sun was eclipsed. He knew that to follow is to pass through a “valley of darkness,” to take the way of the cross, and to live all the same in true joy.

My Own True Face

Jesus, you have healed me
and raised me up,
filling my life with such undeserved joy,
with the foretaste and the hope of a fulfillment
beyond all imagining,
that is awakened by the smallest
and most humble moments of today.

Jesus, thank you for your forgiveness,
for your mercy, finding me in the deepest darkness,
your tenderness so gentle with my wounds,
your patience, waiting for me to stop running away,
your relentlessness, seeking me
all the way down my own long deluded, distant roads.

Jesus, give me complete and total trust in you.Jesus I believe in your Infinite Love for me.

You thirst for me!

You thirst for me,
Even when I want to be satisfied
with something less than myself!

Jesus, make me the person you have created me to be.
Give me my own true face,
the face that I do not know,
but that you always see,
that you have always loved:

The face of my forever-joy.

Something Has Happened

We are going to die.

Let's just take our human hearts and confront them with this stark fact.

Each of us has a heart, with all its aspirations and desires, hopes and persistence, all its wanting and not yet being satisfied. Where does death fit into the picture?

If any of us were given a choice between death and total fulfillment of the heart -- that elusive thing called happiness -- we know what we would choose.

We want permanent happiness.

But everyone who has ever lived has ended up dead, and so will each one of us. Still, my heart -- that stubborn thing -- insists on wanting and seeking permanent happiness. The whole world lures us with the promise of happiness. But it is as if we are trapped and cannot get there.

Either our hearts and the whole universe are a lie, or happiness does exist, but we cannot achieve it, we cannot find it. As Kafka said, "the destination exists but there is no road."

Is this the dilemma? "Unto dust you shall return" -- is this the final word on human existence?

Is it?

"No," says the human heart. In the midst of conflicting circumstances and no perceivable hope, the heart still expects happiness. And so we keep on going.

Why?

There is a whispering in the depths of every human heart. Something has happened. No living human being has entirely lost the memory of the echo of that secret: Something has happened. Already the heart is hiddenly drawn forth.

Something has happened.

The mystery of grace opens the heart to this hope. And the eyes that look upon reality and history discover the fact that confirms it: A man has risen from the dead. He has himself died and destroyed death for all of us, and in rising has glorified the dust. This fact is called Christianity.

It is not Christianity unless it is a fact. A myth about a dying and rising redeemer to comfort our sentiments or symbolize some vague afterlife is not Christianity. Nor is Christianity the story of an ethical teacher who died for his beliefs and left us a lasting inspiration.

Christianity is a fact: Happiness became a man.

"That-Mystery-For-Which-Our-Hearts-Have-Been-Made" has become a man -- a man who lived and died and rose from the dead.

And this man gathered other men around him and began of movement of life in history that continues to this day -- an identifiable movement of life that can be seen and heard and touched: the "Church," ekklesia, the "gathering," the community of people who adhere to him through space and time unto this very day.

We have entered upon a season of remembering, but also a season of hope. We are moving toward death. We are returning to dust. But something has happened to the dust. The dust has been transfigured by Glory.

The truth, the reality, the fact about the dust is that it has been changed: even as dust, even as weakness and disappointment, even as frustration, even as death, it has been changed. It has become the road to happiness because Happiness Himself has taken it as His own.

My dust. He has taken my dust as His very own.

And I seek to walk in silence, to focus, to withdraw from distraction, to sacrifice ordinary comforts in order to listen more carefully to that heart where the whispering continues: Something has happened. Something has happened. Something has happened.

Remaining in His Hands

Yesterday we began the season of Lent 2015. We seek conversion, to turn away from our sins, to practice self-denial and charity, to pay attention to God.

We need this school in which we learn obedience to God. To listen, to open up, to follow God and to give Him space, to recognize our emptiness and offer it to Him so that He can fill us.

Obedience to God really is the easy yoke (even though it often doesn't seem that way). The reality of "God's will" is the love of our Father, and His gentle hands guiding us toward Him and protecting us from harm.

What do we achieve by escaping from His hands? Where are we going to go?

The Lord is merciful. He doesn't want us to run forever and get nowhere. He wants us to remain on the narrow path that He is crafting for us with His loving hands.

It is a narrow path, because it is the particular love that He has for each one of us, that corresponds to the unique personality that each of us possesses.

Each one of us is a person. Unrepeatable. Unique. Loved.

We are so precious and so profound: we do not know how dear and how deep we are, because we do not really know ourselves.
God knows us. His will is His wisdom and love for each one of us. He knows what is good for us, what will bring us joy.

Let us remain in His hands.

Our Mardi Gras Queen

We just got done with Christmas, and now it's Carnevale!

The "House Chef" gave her expertise to the Mardi Gras dessert, a "choco-flan" cake (Mommy helped "a little," I'm told). It was delish.

Twenty One Human Persons

These are the names of twenty one human persons.
Each name indicates a human face, a human life, interwoven with the lives of other humans: family and loved ones, communities, a people, a history.
These twenty one human persons died on February 13, 2015. I want to devote this space, today, to their names.
They deserve the honor of their names. They are the names of men, of our brothers:
1. Milad Makeen Zaky 

2. Abanub Ayad Atiya
3. Maged Solaiman Shehata
4. Yusuf Shukry Yunan
5. Kirollos Shokry Fawzy
6. Bishoy Astafanus Kamel
7. Somaily Astafanus Kamel
8. Malak Ibrahim Sinweet
9. Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros
10. Girgis Milad Sinweet
11. Mina Fayez Aziz
12. Hany Abdelmesih Salib
13. Bishoy Adel Khalaf
14. Samuel Alham Wilson
15. Worker from Awr village
16. Ezat Bishri Naseef
17. Loqa Nagaty
18. Gaber Munir Adly
19. Esam Badir Samir
20. Malak Farag Abram
21. Sameh Salah Faruq
These men were killed in Libya, along the shore of the Mediterranean sea, because they were members of Egypt's ancient Coptic Christian Church. Their enemies called them, "the people of the cross."

Their killers distributed videos and images around the world of their brutal murder, because the killers want to foment hatred, division, and fear among the peoples of the Middle East and around the world. They want to advertise for their own ideological agenda.
But we don't need their images, and we will not be driven to fear or hatred.

We Christians already have an image for the death our brothers died, and this image assures us that death has already been defeated, that death does not have the last word.
Love has the last word.

Virginia Meets the North Pole!

Oh yes, it was cold today. This is our coldest bout of Winter so far. I think the high temperature today was around 16 degrees with strong winds.

The sudden temperature drop basically means this for me:


Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. This weather bothers my rheumatism! And I'm beginning to realize (not just in the abstract) that it doesn't get any better as I get older.

Things weren't so bad this morning. The sun was shining brilliantly and it was about six degrees or something when we headed out to church. I bundled up for the two minutes or so that I would actually have to spend outside.

O heck, it didn't feel so bad. I decided to take a "selfie" to show off my smoothness in handling the cold.

"Hey, I got this! Six degrees, no big deal..."


"... with wind gusts up to forty miles an hour?! Oh, gosh! Maybe I should just get into the car!"


Okay, Winter, you win this round.

Just remember, I can still take pictures from inside the car, and no matter how cold it gets, evergreens are always GREEN! So there!

Look how beautiful and serene it is... from the passenger's seat, behind the window, in a warm car!