John Janaro's Blog, page 279

Would Jesus Have Made the Cover of TIME Magazine?

Inside the magazine: Dateline Jerusalem, April 13, 0033

Here He comes! Everyone in Jerusalem is talking about Him.

He was just voted the most popular and the most influential man in Israel for the past year, beating out both the high priest Caiaphas and Herod. He has been hailed as the Son of David, the King of Israel! He is the enormously popular new rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth.

At today's Jerusalem rally, adoring crowds roared, "Hosanna!"

"We really think that Jesus can make a difference. He'll change things around here," said one observer.

"Jesus is great," said another, "We've been waiting for this moment since that time in the desert when he multiplied the bread. Just think what this will do for the economy!"

"And we can stop worrying about affordable health care," said another, "because he can just cure everybody. Problem solved!"

There is still no official confirmation of the report that Jesus is about to declare his candidacy for "Messiah," but his approval ratings in the polls have never been higher. There is no doubt that the Jesus Effect is being felt everywhere. He is the most popular rabbi in the world.

Even the opposition seems to recognize the fact. Leading Pharisees are reportedly saying to one another, "You see that you [i.e. we] are gaining nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him" (John 12:19).

Nevertheless, the opposition coalition of Pharisees, scribes, and priests continues their nightly strategy sessions, and there are some reports that indicate they may have established contact with a disgruntled high ranking member of the Jesus Campaign. So this story may yet contain some surprises.

As of now, Pontius Pilate's office has made no comment.

Blogging: A Small Gift of Love I Offer to You

The Internet "thingy" that connects us.What am I trying to do when I blog? I am trying to give of myself, because as a human being I am impelled by the urgent desire to offer what I am and have--as a human being I want to love. I am also trying to open myself up and show myself and ask to be loved, because I am a human being and I need to be loved. I want to love and to be loved.

So I write because I want to love, to affirm and to give goodness. And I don't want it to be fake. This means I want truth. And I don't want it to be boring. This means I want beauty.

This is what I want to do in my writing. I want it to be a gift of love.

I say this not as a theory, but as a judgment. I know that this is true. I know that the motor of my life is love. It is a judgment drawn from experience. My humanity is alive inside me because I have been loved. The experience of being loved awakens the human heart. The difference between living a human life and living a life of desperation is the awareness of being loved. And this awareness is grounded on, and continually nourished by, the experience of being loved.

It began in childhood. I have had problems, and sicknesses, and mental distress since childhood. But these are the consequence of illness. Beneath them all was the radical security that came from being loved by my parents. As I came to maturity, I met people who loved me--sometimes in very simple ways--and I grew. I finally met a woman who loved me with a love that embraced me in a way I didn't deserve, to which I wasn't entitled, and which I could not earn. It was a gift. Beyond attraction and common interest and sympathy of personality there was that radically undeserved love, a love that could not be grasped, but only received according to the form of a gift, within the space created by a gift in return. And so we were married.

It was the great sign that radical, undeserved, gratuitous love was the foundation and sustenance of my life. And it remains a sign that grows. It is a gratuitous love that overflows and is fruitful.

I need this sign to continually manifest itself, if I am to remain convinced in the reality of my heart that I have been created to love and to be loved. Every day I need to place myself in the position of receptivity to the love of my wife, and my children. I must acknowledge my need, my poverty, and that my capacity to give is founded on the fact that I am a gift. I am loveable. I see it in the simplest things in the day, such as when I am hungry and my wife makes pasta, because she loves me. The kids want me to read them a story, or help them with their work, or have a conversation with me not just because of their own needs because they want me. They love me. Why am I wanted? Why are there these people in my life who say to me, "it is good that you are you, that you exist"?

They are witnesses that I am created by love, that I am given to myself in love, that I am worthy. And this engenders in me the desire to give myself, because goodness wants to be shared, to be given away. It is not afraid of being lost. And so I am writing, in the confidence that these words are a gift, even if only a fragile one. I want to tell you that it is good that you exist. I know that. And I want you to experience it, and be sustained by it.

Let us love one another....

The Foundation of Our Social Problems (Part 1)

Our world as seen by GoogleClearly the world is in a great deal of trouble. Many good people are engaged in practical action, dialogue, and the kind of realistic negotiations that are so often necessary to maintain a fragile peace or to secure fundamental human rights.

This work is necessary, and indeed heroic because it requires immense energies and creativity to find ways to patch up a crisis or bring some measure of relief or protection in situations that require continued vigilance. Social problems are never solved once and for all. They must be grappled with again and again.

The human ideal remains elusive in this world, and yet the human quest for justice and compassion must press forward here and now, placing its ultimate hope in something greater than our capacities.

It is important to reflect upon the roots of the particular social malaise of today: roots that are as old as human history and yet have a particular significance for our times because our society has obfuscated these roots in unprecedented ways. This is a challenge to us to look explicitly at what so many are trying desperately to evade, and make sure that we ourselves do not forget these roots and the urgent need to address them.

Beneath so many of the problems of our society it is possible to recognize a foundation (or, rather, the profound sense of an absence of foundation). Human beings have no sense of the ground upon which they stand. Often today this is evident in the most basic circumstances. People are disconnected from the human foundations of their own families, and they lack the experience of social stability or of any traditions or customs. They lack any strong human investment in a particular place or a community, and it is difficult to find sustaining motivation for constructive activity or commitment.

Underlying all this human instability is a more radical, existential insecurity. Our society feeds this insecurity insofar as it pretends that the human world is a self contained entity filled with inexplicable yet also autonomous human beings. Our social environment says that human persons come into existence from nowhere and live for nothing, and at the same time that they are invested with the power to act and the freedom and responsibility to define themselves.

It is a bipolar vortex between insignificance and urgency. The human person feels as if he or she is just "here" in time and space, hanging onto existence by a slender thread, and yet wanting to be here, to be and to be more, although the person does not know how or why. There is no foundation, and it is terrifying to just hang here swinging one's legs over an abyss of extinction. Not surprisingly, the person looks for something, anything, that has the appearance of security; something that feels like solid ground on which to stand.

Of course, people don't often feel consciously the naked terror of having no identity, no foundation, no reason for existing. It's an unbearable experience, and most of the time the survival instinct kicks into gear and people quickly find some reason, some seemingly solid reality in the world that will give them a purpose for existing; something they can belong to. Or else they bury themselves in external distractions. But even with the wildest distractions, the feeling lingers subconsciously and so people feel compelled to say things like "I'm trying to find myself."

The presupposition in this society is that your own bare self exists in radical solitude and lack of definition and value. You have no value unless you have found something or someone (or some cause or group) that gives value to you.

No wonder we are so desperate.

No wonder we sink ourselves so readily into factions and ideologically driven groups that wear labels. They give us a sense of belonging. They "validate" our existence.

And no wonder we are willing to wage ruthless war against any idea, group, or person who opposes our faction, or questions its adequacy. We have become convinced that it's a matter of survival, that our identity is at stake -- the very meaning of our existence.

But wait. Do I really belong to nothing in myself? In this moment, am I simply "here," scrambling to assert myself into a self-defined meaningful identity?

Let me, JJ, consider what I experience about myself right now. I would say that I'm here in this moment trying to write something coherent, trying to communicate with others, so as to serve them (and to be appreciated by them -- haha, let's be honest). I want to be "in union with other people," or rather to deepen my union with them.

I find myself "here," in this moment, in a way that can seem frightening but in reality is challenging and dramatic. I am here with a need. I need goodness, love, and not only appreciation but also self-giving. Yes, there is a profound anxiety and lack of self-confidence in me, a fear of nothingness, a sense of insignificance and an impulse toward self-assertion -- but that is not all there is to my being. There is also the fundamental desire to give myself, the intuition of a richness that want to share itself. I know that my existence is good. No matter how obscure it may seem, I know that I am grounded in something fundamentally, radically good, and that I am responsible to that good, which is the root of me and at the same time "other" than me.

We live in such fear. But what is fear? It is the response to the possibility of losing something. This implies that something is already there, something more fundamental than our fear. It is goodness, truth, and beauty: fundamentals of existing that we do not define.

It is the fact that we are given to ourselves by Another, that our existence is rooted, firmly, in the love of Another. But this Other is beyond anything in the world. The world everywhere points to this Someone, and opens up a journey to seek His fullness, and to belong fully to Him and thus to everyone and everything else.

I exist as "gift" of this Someone, and so I am truly myself by being a gift, by giving myself, by loving.

Our society needs to grow more into an environment that affirms the value of the human person as created by God and called to give his or herself in love ever more fully to God and to others according to God's wisdom. Foundational human experience is complex and ambivalent because human persons have a brokenness; they are burdened with an affliction. They are overwhelmed by anxiety and a desperate sense of the need to create their own identity, because their connection to the transcendent Mystery, the creating, sustaining, infinitely loving Other, so often seems shrouded and obscured.

And this obscure ambivalence in our self understanding is rooted in the whole of human history and its origins, the "original sin" which is the cause of the divided heart that we all experience within ourselves. We cannot pretend that we can ignore these basic truths about the human person and still find real solutions to social problems or make the world a more human place. This is the basis of the human problem, and we must not forget it. No theory or political or economic system is going to make it go away. We need to be aware of it, and as much as possible help others to be aware of it. Of course, we also want to remember and witness to others the answer that God Himself has provided, the miracle of His presence among us.

We do not need to make ourselves or find something that gives value to our being. We have been made, we have value, we are loved. We need to be healed and to grow into our true greatness, to attain the likeness in love of the One who loves us.

The Realization of Freedom

"It is in the total dimension
of our fulfilment
that freedom will be realized,
according to its entire nature,
as capacity for total satisfaction.
Freedom is the capacity for the infinite,
the thirst for God.
Freedom, then, is love,
because it is the capacity for something
that is not us:
it is Another."

~Luigi Giussani

Spring is "Springing"... Sort Of

Well, they are not very peppy, but here they are: forsythias  at long last! They are weighted with morning dew here, and there are still spots on the bush that have yet to bloom.

But we're so happy that the month of March has finally come to Virginia. (That's not a mistake; it's a joke.)

Nature is emerging in a cagey way, as if she wants to make sure that this is not another trick. I think we're okay this time. There are even rumors of cherry blossoms coming.

Our Children are Made For God

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and children. Ah yes, the children. The vocation to participate in God's creative love for them extends to the "raising" of these children.

It’s hard enough to provide them with food and the needs of daily life. But our task as parents is greater than this. Each child is a person—a developing and expanding spiritual universe of understanding and love, of creativity, of searching and questioning and hunger. Their hunger is not just for bread, or for education, or for human affection. It is all these things, but—within and beyond all of this—it is a hunger for God.

How can my wife and I give them God?

The awareness that we are called to be instruments through which our children discover and experience the love of God as Father is truly overwhelming. Nevertheless, we see in the gospel that Jesus is always asking His disciples to do the impossible. After He finishes preaching to five thousand people, He tells His disciples to give them the food they need to eat for their journey home. "Feed these five thousand people!"

What do they have to give? They have seven loaves and a few fish. They have something, but it is clearly not enough.

We too have something: our own poor, selfish, struggling humanity. But there is something else we have, and—like the disciples—we keep forgetting it! We have Jesus!

My wife and I have Him in a particular way, precisely in the way that our children need to come to know Him, through the grace of the sacrament of marriage. Our marriage is the foundation for a communion of persons, and Jesus is at the center of that communion, so that we and the children can grow in the ways of self-giving love.

We need to ask for faith to recognize that He is with us as husband and wife, as father and mother, as two fragile, limited people, so that He can take us, and (yes, like the loaves) break us, and give Himself through us to our children and to everyone He entrusts to us.

Lord Jesus, give us faith to recognize Your presence in our lives every day, and increase our confidence that with You, nothing is impossible. In Your hands, may our poor humanity be transformed into the gift of Your love for each other and for our children.

The Most Important "Work" of Marriage

Lately there has been a lot of talk about marriage in the blog world (especially among Catholic Christians). Young couples enter into Christian marriage, perhaps, with starry eyes and optimism and even a bit of forgivable "overconfidence." We've been there, and felt that way. We know that time will teach them the hard work of married life, of unity and fidelity, of the experience of discord (even the Pope recently mentioned how "throwing plates around" is a normal experience of spousal argument).
But, above all, time (and their openness in faith and love) will allow them to experience the inexhaustible power of the grace of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus in the sacrament of marriage. The hope, of course, is that Christian newlyweds are prepared in such a way that they truly believe in this grace from the beginning. Nevertheless, the whole of married life is an ever deeper verification of the reality of the grace of marriage and it's superabundant adequacy to endure and to grow through a vast array of unimaginable circumstances.
All of this is very true. Older married couples can list circumstances of good times and bad, sickness and health, a million awkward things about sharing life right down to who hogs the blankets every night. We can talk about the importance of nurturing our unity through these circumstances and through communication and trust and forgiveness.
All of this is very true.
But there is something lacking in this conversation. Maybe we take it for granted because it's so obvious. Or perhaps because it's so unique, and so seemingly "beyond us" when we think about ourselves as married couples that it gets left out when we theorize about marriage.
Eileen and I would say after almost 18 years -- and through many trials involving work, money, my disability, illness, and such -- that the experience of our marriage is marked overwhelmingly by five very precise, very unique circumstances that unite us deeply and personally, in wonder and prayer, in fear and trembling.  
Their names are John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina.

In the old days this was called the primary end of marriage, articulated in what may seem to be less than soul stirring language as "the procreation and education of offspring" (I've never been keen on the word offspring. It makes me feel like we're bugs or something. How about another word, like children.)
Of course, husband and wife must love each other. But this unity is inseparable from the fruitfulness it engenders; it exists within that fruitfulness. The sacrament of marriage is the fountain of that most basic community of persons, the family. Even if spouses cannot procreate physically for some reason, their unity has an intrinsic fruitfulness of radical constructive hospitality that God will reveal to them (whether it be adoption, foster care, or some other special charism of giving to the larger community).
So marriage is about building up the relationship, the "two-becoming-one-flesh," the friendship, the mutual help, the fidelity. It's a relationship between two people, a husband and a wife. And yet, precisely insofar as it succeeds in really being a genuine spousal unity, it will transcend these two persons, it will "take flesh" in life -- and not only in the agreements about things like leaving the toilet seat up or down -- but above all in other living human beings, which means that if nature is unhindered these will be new human beings, new persons created by God within the radical openness to Him that spousal love entails.
Let me put it simply: marriage is about children. That doesn't mean reducing an interpersonal relationship to a mechanism for "reproduction," for cranking out offspring. It means that married love is radically at the disposal of God's creative action. Married love is procreative; it is God's instrument for engendering and fostering human community. It is interpersonal love, and that is why it includes the possibility of human reason discerning the will of God regarding all the NFP stuff, because married love must always be radically at the disposal of God's creative action, even when a given expression of love is not seeking to result in a child. After all, men and women don't produce babies. Rather, their love creates a space of psychosomatic unity within which God creates new human persons.
Thus marriage is the stuff of families, of children and then of grandchildren, of communities and eventually of peoples who encounter one another. And the sacrament of marriage in Christ builds up God's people, who go out into all the world bringing the gift of his love.
When we speak about married life, let's not forget about family, about our children, or (as the nuptial blessing puts it) our childrens' children. The family is not in competition with the unity between the husband and wife; rather it is the place where that unity is most profoundly expressed and lived.
And children are never abstract. They are the history of the husband and wife loving each other in God. Eileen and I don't just have some anonymous "offspring." We have been given John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina. Each is loved uniquely by God, is uniquely His image and likeness, and is destined to live and love and share in His glory.
As Eileen and I journey together toward the Lord, our children remain the great, astonishing, incalculable surprises, the mysteries, the primary expressions and concrete engagement of our unity, and our most profound "common interest." In front of each of them, we remain in awe of God, and of each other.

John Paul II's Death and His Continued Presence in Our Lives

Today is the nine year anniversary of the entrance into eternal glory of Blessed John Paul II. He died on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, a few minutes after the Mass for the feast day was celebrated at his hospital bedside.

How well I remember that vigil, and the days leading up to it. The last lesson he gave us was showing us how to die. We wept, and yet we also knew that although something great had come to an end, another greater and more wonderful thing was just beginning. John Paul II, having entered fully into the heart of Jesus, took up a new place as a powerful advocate for us in the communion of saints.
He seems more accessible, more close personally since his death, more aware of me and Eileen and the lasting value of the blessing he gave us on our visit to Rome in 1996 and the few brief words we shared. His blessing of our marriage on that day seems to open up into an assurance that in God's Kingdom he has a great solicitude for us and our family. I rely on his powerful intercession.
Later this month, on Divine Mercy Sunday, he will be officially canonized as a saint of the universal Church. What a blessing it was to grow to maturity in his days, to see him and hear his words, to witness his struggles, to find again and again in every kind of circumstance his passionate love for Christ.
The central grace of my life was 25 years of learning to follow Jesus through the teaching and witness and courage of this man. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy, for giving us this living icon of your Son.
Blessed John Paul II, pray for us!

Baseball at Last!

Adam LaRouche with a two run shot O happy day! The baseball season has begun.

And the Washington Nationals staged a thriller against the Mets, beating them in a come-from-behind win at Citi Field by the score of 9-7. This was one of the most exciting opening games I've seen in a long time. There were tense duels between pitcher and batter, two out clutch hits, homers aplenty, and one final attempt by the Mets to come back that fell short.

It had the intensity and excitement of a playoff game in March. Yet it was only the first game of a long season. During this baseball season, John Paul will turn 17. How about a world championship for this faithful, long-suffering kid?

The weather here was pleasant, but New York had snowflakes in the morning and cold sunshine and wind during the game. But no lingering winter can remove the aroma of baseball as it begins its long run through the spring and summer months.

I've lived through more than forty baseball summers. I've seen the game get more complicated, more corrupt, and much more expensive. But the magic is still there. It still takes me back to spring days in 1972 when I was a child, or spring days in 2005 when John Paul was a child.

The child still lives, and is surprised by himself in these moments of wonder.

John Paul (age 8) and Daddy, ready for baseball, Spring 2005

I Was Just Teasing. Please Don't Be Offended.

I'm always teasing. It's my disposition, and sometimes my effort to show love. Sometimes it's just a bad habit. It's just sloth: fear of the seriousness of life.

Often when people are expressing their frustrations with the ordinary problems of the day (either in conversation or in a post online) it seems natural for me to find something of the humor that runs like a current through all these things. So I tease a little; I try, perhaps, to "make light" because I see some lightness that's really there.

I also know that there is always the temptation to be flippant or dismissive or cynical. There is the temptation to twist humor into a way of evading or denying the impact of another person's suffering on myself. This temptation is strongest with people I know the best, with those who are -- in the most immediate sense of the term -- my "neighbors," my brothers and sisters.

I'm so sorry for all the times I've done this to my loved ones: to Eileen first (who is always quick to tell me to cut it out, thank God) and to my children. I'm sorry when I let amusement (or analysis) become a pretext for a lack of attention. I'm sorry. My dear loved ones, Eileen, my children (especially my quiet daughters), sometimes you may feel put off, but don't be... I love you all so much.

I'm sorry, my friends. I know that the burdens of the day are real. A moment of suffering is beyond measuring, and worthy of offering with Jesus. Precisely that one moment holds a mystery of suffering that encompasses your personal pain and your own cry for God. I always want to respect you, and live in compassion, to join with you in the loneliness of pain.

Humor would seem rather awkward here, but that is because I am awkward. I want to be compassionate, but I am powerless to help you by my own power. I can't reach you, because suffering (in itself) is incommunicable. How easy it is for words to bend in the direction of a dark cynicism or even a veiled rejection. Sometimes even mutual laughter is just noise to distract us from the silence of a resignation to the cheapening of life, or even to despair.

I'm sorry, my friends. I am a fallen human being. I am afraid of suffering. It is so easy to forget, in the moment, and to see nothing but the limitations of everything.

Only in Jesus can we share our sufferings. Jesus bridges all the distances and overcomes the limits of all things. He rises from the dead. I must remember Him and dwell with Him more deeply in my heart. There I shall find the strength for compassion and the healing salve of good humor.

I'm sorry to you also, my friends on the Internet. Especially in a combox, it's so easy to crack a joke that comes off the wrong way because you can't see my face. Winking and smiling emoticons are a poor substitute for a human face that wants to say, "We are together in Jesus. I don't know how to help, but we are together. Your suffering is my suffering, in Him. I joke because I feel awkward, because it's beyond my understanding, but also perhaps because the Risen Jesus already hold all of us and He doesn't want us to be gloomy."

I tease all the time, and it comes naturally. Life can seem melancholy but there's a line of humor through it all that remains like a glimmer of the irrepressible glory of creation, and the surprising miracle of redemption and the undying hope that comes from it.

I see in humor a reflection of God's mercy, and the utter gratuity of everything. Existence is a gift, and we will never be its masters. But the recognition of this restores innocence and awakens joy, and I just want to rejoice in the irony and the beauty of how we all exist, and we are all together, and we are each so peculiar, so ...unique.

And how we are, each and all of us, so dear to God.