John Janaro's Blog, page 282

Pope Francis: THE VIDEO. You Have to Watch This!

In a recent meeting with the Pope, an evangelical friend used his iPhone to record the message linked below. He asked Pope Francis to say some words to a large Protestant gathering in the United States that was coming up (and has subsequently taken place).
Thus, with the help of a cell phone, a translator, and some basic editing software, Pope Francis addressed a huge conference of non-Catholic Christians last week. And now, thanks to YouTube, he can speak to the rest of us.
I could say so much about this video, but it's not necessary. Please, just watch it:



I am content to let Francis's moving words and expressive face communicate for themselves. This is a beautiful gift from the heart of the Pope.

The technology that made it possible is also a great gift from God that He has given to us through the creativity, ingenuity, intelligence, and hard work of created human persons -- His children.

The Pope has demonstrated how "New Media" technology is a gift from God. It can be means of giving ourselves in word and gesture and expression. Let us be grateful for this gift, and pray very much for the grace to use it well, according to the wisdom and love of God, within the context of our own vocations.

Luigi Giussani: The Embrace of the Mystery

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, "Our Lady, you are the security of our hope."

"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

The Winter Olympics and What Lies Ahead

Indoor Floor Sliding Gold Medal WinnerThe Olympics have come and gone in these past two weeks, and we have seen lots of admirably refined athletic talent, competitive spirit, and well-earned triumphs. The skis and the sleds were a taming of speed, while the skaters amazed us with their elegance, virtuosity, and lightness upon the ice.

While they skated on television, the Janaros had their own "skater" in slippers and a ballet outfit, sliding and spinning across the living room floor to the accompanying music. She won the gold medal in our house (for "slipper sliding," at least).

Meanwhile we rooted for our team U.S.A. in hockey, and for our Capitals stars on other world teams. But the Canadians, once again, showed everyone that they own the game of hockey regardless of how good the rest of the world gets at imitating them.

The Russians do not need to convince anyone of their skill, ardor, and gracefulness. Russian athletes proved it once again in many venues. The political condition of the ancient land, however, is far more perplexing. Sochi, a temperate resort town on the Black Sea, was an unusual place to have a Winter Olympics, and we will never know if the vast sums of money spent on building its infrastructure will improve life for the people there.

Mr. Putin wanted the world to see that Russia was competent as well as vast, but his purposes and those of his regime remain inscrutable, and fail to inspire any sense of trust in anyone who has observed history.

Then there are the people. What does Russia desire to be? How does she desire to rebuild her identity as a nation, a people, and a force for good in the 21st century? It is difficult to take the pulse of a people who are still in part exhausted by the profound alienation of the Soviet epoch. The aspirations they do have arise from conflicting and contradictory impulses that must as yet unfold and perhaps struggle against one another.

Not far from the Olympic games, another contest has begun in Ukraine that holds a far greater significance for the history of the region, and that places again before Russia the necessity of taking a position. Will the words of Solzhenitsyn finally be heeded, and will the Russian nation and her leaders take the road of humility? Will there be the restraint (indeed the spirit of "penance") that must be embraced in order for Russia to be healed and rise up with the spirit of her saints, so as to be servants of peace in the world?

Luigi Giussani: Friend of Popes, Friend of Humanity

February 22 is a feast day in the Roman calendar. It is the feast of the "chair" of St. Peter, the sede in Latin, which we usually render as "the see" in our awkward ecclesiastical English. It celebrates this singular office in the Church which is the bishopric of Rome with all the universal significance it contains.

It is a day to celebrate devotion to (i.e. love for) the office of the papacy, and confidence in how the Holy Spirit works through the flawed men who hold this office.

I would also argue vigorously (and I don't think I'd be alone in this) that the men who have held the office during my lifetime (whatever their flaws) have been exceptional. February 22 is a time to remember and be grateful for these exceptional men.

In the year 2005, however, February 22 gained a new significance for me personally, and quite possibly in the future for the whole Church (if she so judges it). This new significance, however, has a profound and fitting relationship to the present meaning.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani died on February 22, 2005, several weeks before his friend Pope John Paul II. It is well known that he lived a profound and exemplary affection for the popes of his time. He was also a witness who touched the hearts and the understanding of these men, contributing to a distinctive point of focus in the New Evangelization.

Giussani lived and expressed every day the fact that the presence of Christ is the definitive meaning of the whole of human existence, that the human heart's desire for truth, goodness, and beauty finds in the face of Christ the superabundant answer of Infinite Love, in a manner beyond all expectations. Jesus is the gift of God's love that, even as it transforms us by raising us up to a participation in the life of the Trinity, can also be recognized to correspond to the deepest needs of our humanity.

Thus, for Giussani, what is decisive for Christianity is the encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ, who is present now in his Church.

Christ is present in a way that provokes and challenges the human heart in every time and circumstance, and thus in our times, in our world, in all the environments in which humans search for meaning and fulfillment. He is present through the whole mystery of the Church, from her teaching and her sacraments to the concrete gestures of caritas -- the love, understanding, compassion, and companionship -- that build up the relationships between human persons who have been touched by Jesus and who live his joy as a gratuitous proposal of friendship and solidarity with every person.

Luigi Giussani has been a witness for many people in Italy, Europe, and throughout the world. There is much that needs to be said about this, but February 22 calls to mind the way in which his witness has touched in an intimate way the men who have been called to sit in the chair of St. Peter.

Luigi Giussani with Pope Paul VIPopes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis are among those who knew him. Paul VI knew him first, when he was Archbishop of Milan in the 1950s and Giussani was guiding the high school students participating in the episcopally sponsored Azione Cattolica. He encouraged him then, while admitting that he did not understand his methods. Later, in his final years as Pope, he met with Giussani again, and this time he spoke without qualification, saying to him, "This is the path. Go forward on it."

John Paul II recognized immediately the congeniality of the movement that took inspiration from Giussani, that had come to be known as "Communion and Liberation." In a meeting in 1982, he charged them specifically to "go into all the world to bring the truth, beauty, and peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer... Take onto yourselves this need of the Church: this is the task that I leave with you today."

As CL expanded into a worldwide ecclesial movement, the priest who had begun as a teacher in a high school classroom, who said that he had never intended to found anything, relied much on the guidance and wisdom of one of the most important members of John Paul II's curia: a man named Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The great heart of this much misunderstood and under appreciated man grew deeply from this relationship. Ratzinger said at one point that Luigi Giussani had "changed my life."

Cardinal Ratzinger presides at his friend's funeralWhen Giussani died in 2005 after a long illness, Cardinal Ratzinger -- who seldom preached in public -- personally requested to represent the ailing John Paul II and celebrate the funeral Mass in Milan, where he would preach before thousands in attendance and all of Italy through natioinal television coverage. People (and churchmen too) heard for the first time the clear, simple, and tender eloquence of the Cardinal whom they had seen primarily as the Pope's "enforcer." The memorable "funeral oration" of February 24, 2005 was the voice of Cardinal Ratzinger speaking of the witness of faith given to him by his friend.

In less than two months, he was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

For his personal household staff, Benedict chose consecrated women from the CL association Memores Domini. Each week the household held the common reading and meditation, the "School of Community," that challenges those who attend to make a comparison between the proposal of Jesus Christ and their own experience of life. These meetings are held all over the world today, and everyone is welcome regardless of their beliefs or lack of beliefs; they are welcome to come as much as their freedom prompts them. Of course, the School of Community in the Papal household was private, but there was one very conspicuous and faithful participant: Pope Benedict himself.

Benedict's staff has accompanied him in his retirement at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery (they are the "four consecrated women" who are sometimes mentioned as his attendants). Undoubtedly, they continue their small School of Community, and the Pope Emeritus continues to be helped by it to seek the presence of Christ in the unique circumstances of these moments in his life.

Bergoglio presents Giussani's book in ArgentinaMeanwhile, in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was reading the works of Giussani, and gave public introductions to the first Spanish editions on two occasions. He said that he had made a point of reading Fr. Giussani's writings because they helped him "to become a better man and a better priest." Cardinal Bergoglio also became good friends with the priest who helped guide the CL group in Buenos Aires, Fr. Giacomo Tantardini (who was very personally close to Fr. Giussani).

Pope Francis has an affection for many of the new ecclesial movements (as did Benedict and John Paul II). He speaks the language of the new evangelization: the need for personal witness, for bringing the faith into the places where real human life is lived, for building a "Culture of Encounter." If we think the word "encounter" is vague and mushy, Giussani can help us to see its authentic and profound ecclesial and human significance.

But there is nothing particularly "Giussanian" about any of Luigi Giussani's teaching, other than the "charism" of a particular emphasis, as well as the impassioned and sometimes difficult style of the man's words. Giussani only wanted to articulate the reality of Jesus in the Church as he had experienced it in its Catholic fullness. Giussani's challenge to popes and to everyone was to live the intensity of belonging to Christ in every circumstance, to allow Christ's grace to convince us and change us, and to find the joy of Christ in wherever we are and in whatever we do. And let us not be afraid to let others see this joy and be drawn by it.

The Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani was the friend of popes and of humanity. He was, as John Paul II called him, a "teacher of humanity." He was a prophet and a pioneer in the New Evangelization.

Relationships Take Me Beyond Myself

If I try to consider my life in a truly objective way, something is very clear: I am not alone. Insofar as I am an actual human person, I am not an isolated atom who generates the meaning of my own identity. We are habituated to consider ourselves as autonomous, independent individuals who can be entirely self-fulfilled by whatever we choose to be and to do.

It's a very heady philosophy, but it just doesn't correspond to reality. It's certainly not my own experience. I am not the source of myself. I didn't even give myself my own name!
As soon as I look honestly at my real self, I find that I cannot separate that personal self from relationships, concrete relationships with real other persons; relationships that take me beyond myself.

I have never been an isolated, autonomous entity, not for a single moment. The most obvious facts of my life reveal that I have always been a person-in-relationship. I came into existence as the son of my parents, and the dawn of my awareness is full of the memory of being a son, a brother, a grandson, and a nephew. I soon began to discover that I was also a "friend," and as the years have gone by I have discovered the value of this relationship on all of its many different levels.
The original experience of belonging-to-a-family, far from being a prison or a suffocation of my freedom, has been the foundation from which I have grown in the capacity to love others and commit myself to further relationships. In this growth of love, I have not "lost" my original relationships. On the contrary, the depth of these relationships grows even as the circumstances change. It's not a smooth or perfect growth -- there are failures and misunderstandings and setbacks and forgiveness -- but it's real growth.

This is what happened when I became an adult; above all when I became a
husband. Here I have really learned that I am nothing by myself, that I must share myself, share my life, live in communion with a someone else.
I have learned this not by any theory, but by hard human experience, not only by the joys of giving and sharing many blessings, but also through dark and difficult times, through the recognition that the ugliness I found inside myself was a cause of real suffering to another human being, and that we had to give and receive and share our lives together even in these ugly, painful places.
At the heart of love and of all relationships is this mysterious thing called "sacrifice." You really know that you belong to someone when you just give without expecting anything back, you just give because there is this other person who is with you and who needs you in order to keep herself together and move forward.
You know you really belong to someone when you are humbled, when another suffers and makes sacrifices for you, and carries burdens with you because you are together with her in life. You know you really belong to someone when she makes space in her life for your faults, when she treats you with patience and compassion. It can be a grubby business, like digging a trail through the woods, but some new sense arises in the midst of this struggle. You are going somewhere together, and you need each other to get there. Even more so, there is a truth that begins to emerge: you both want to get there together. You sacrifice because you really love the other person, you want her to arrive at her destiny, and it is the same destiny as your own.

And, of course, there are others on the path too.
Bad for my back, even two years agoAt a certain point in my life, "I" suddenly acquired the identity of "Daddy." I tell all the amusing stories, because that is my nature and also because -- by the blessing of God -- we are (usually) a cheerful, funny, openhearted bunch, who have been blessed with much joy together (and also more than a little nuttiness and chaos). Thank God, we are a loving family, even if we do get on one another's nerves every single day.

But these kids have also heard their father's cries of pain and have seen his incapacity and his withdrawal. They have also seen that he loves them, that he struggles to be present to them, and to guide them according to the wisdom and love of God. They know that he prays for a strength that he does not possess by his own power. They also know that he and their Mommy love each other.

These are relationships that are already taking new forms, and will change throughout life. I live each day and try to respond, knowing that the future will bring sacrifices and suffering and also a greater foretaste of true joy.

God, of course, makes everything possible. It is all the story of a fundamental relationship, the one that makes me exist: my relationship with God. I am, at every moment, called-into-being by the personal love of God. God's love is the reason why I exist at all, in the beginning and also at this very moment. The same God draws my freedom into relationship with him, to love him as my ultimate destiny.

I dwell with God in the silent and secret places of my own heart. But in the depths of that heart I find the others that I have been called by God to love. He has brought us together to love one another and serve one another, to lead us all together to himself and to let his mercy shine through us.

Cooking With Josefina and Friends

The "Josefina and Friends" Cooking ShowRecently, I walked into my living room and was surprised to discover that I had stepped onto the set of a live cooking show (just like the ones on TV). The expert cooks were dolls named... oh heck I don't remember; maybe she can tell me later and I'll fill in their names here: Jenny and Laura . The dolls were "assisted" by Josefina. (Got the names, haha!)

Lots of plastic vegetables and imaginary spices cooked and sizzled in pots and pans while the dolls gave very slow and considered explanations of each step. The audience was very impressed.

Jojo loves to watch cooking shows on television  This is a relatively new development for her, although she's been running her pretend restaurant for some years now. It's good because we all like to watch cooking shows. The best ones are very entertaining, and of course they about food, which is one of our favorite things, haha!

I am a person of Mediterranean heritage. That means that I not only enjoy eating food, but I also enjoy... food, period. Food is beautiful. Food is culture. It is the expression of peoples and their histories. Food is art! Good food looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful. A good chef (or even a good recipe) can get you to try new things in your own kitchen.

The cook and her book.Watching a chef like Jacques Pepin beat egg whites while he describes the souffle... well, it's great fun as long as there is some hope that, someday, you might actually get to make it (or at least eat it) yourself.

Josefina certainly has this hope, and she has already begun to realize it in our (real) kitchen, thanks to her Kids Cooking cookbook. She made dinner for us last week, using the spaghetti sauce recipe. She has done a few lunches too, like tuna salad cones.

Lots of fun stuff that kids can do. Great, pre-digital illustrations.

I have great hopes for her future -- amateur at least, if not professional -- as a culinary artist. Yum yum!

Death Becomes Love

No mistake about it, here we have an entry from February 17... 1991. Young Janaro was pondering death in his entry for that day. This may be a bit hard to read, but let's give it a try:

"The fact that I am going to die has been overcome by a deeper fact: that I have already died." Still, I remain in the world because of mission, because I have been "sent" to others, to witness this truth to them.
I also note a few things here about a course I was taking on the Orthodox church, taught by an Orthodox priest. I had already begun to experience the division as a deeply personal pain.

Praying When We Don't Feel Like Praying

More snow. More RED marked "high" levels on the "aches and pains index." O Bother!

Still, I can't blame that for the odd malaise of today. Nor can I blame it on Monday. There are some days when time seems to just plod along, relentlessly going nowhere.
Everything seems to have lost its vividness and texture. It's all reduced to stuff: stuff to do, stuff to move, stuff to say to people, stuff to eat, stuff to read, stuff going on in the world.

I guess I am not surprised that people are materialists. What seems to be their experience -- the appearance of things -- is dull, monotonous, and seemingly beneath the level of their interest. Stuff.
But I have faith. I believe that God became man and dwells in the midst of all this stuff. But today I am not going to do a very good job of explaining why that is important. Today I feel a little stupified by stuff, and I find it very difficult to recognize Christ's presence in the midst of it all (or perhaps what I mean to say is that I lack the energy, and find it very difficult to summon the enthusiasm to write about such things with any insight).

Nevertheless I believe, and I summon myself to pray. Prayer. This is everything. Even when I don't feel like praying.
We have a choice: prayer or the void. Prayer or nothingness. Prayer turns to God and says, "You are here." Emotionally and intellectually the experience of prayer can seem dry and insignificant just like everything else we do. There is a serious temptation here, one that could lead me to think that prayer is just more stuff that I do during the day.
NO! Prayer is, first of all, something that God does in me. He whispers in my heart. If the desire to lift my mind and heart to God stirs within me -- however faint and weak and wretched that desire may seem -- it means that God is attracting my heart, he is drawing me to himself.
God calls us to pray everyday. He has given us the words. "Our Father...." To accept God's words and address them to God in obedience to God is already the beginning of the conviction that the "stuff" of the day is more than it appears to be.
"Hallowed be thy Name / thy Kingdom come / thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
There. I prayed it.

I lacked the warmth of ardor. I didn't pay attention to the words. I begin the words and my mind was immediately sucked back into the stuff that surrounds me and that appears so real, the stuff that is perishing all around me, the void....
Still, an event took place within my heart. Saying the words and just wanting to pray are the beginning of the affirmation of eternity. God will bring the rest: the attention, the conversation, the conviction, the transformation of the way I look at reality. He will do so in his time, according to his plan. But I must be faithful. I must pray. Pray, pray, pray. Even if that means just taking up the words in dryness and believing and hoping in God.
We do not need to fall into nothingness. Jesus. His very name is a prayer. "God saves." God, save me.

Winter is a Hard Time

Weather affects people in many ways.
A winter like this has given me a hard time, and I know it hasn't been easy for others either. We are creatures of soul and body, afflicted by sin and afflicted in so many ways by our complex environment and our mysterious physical constitution.
Ice and snow coat our external pathways even as they challenge our physical and mental health. But with all our pains and turns of mind, something endures that rejoices to see the light breaking forth against the shadows.
We never cease to hope for the warmth of the sun, and all these captive crystals opening up and rushing together as streams of water for our thirst.

BASEBALL: Take That, Mister Big Bad Winter!

In OTHER news, Spring Training has officially opened. Washington Nationals pitchers and catchers have reported to their camp in Viera, Florida, and are working out.

Once again baseballs have begun to thump in gloves, and for thousands of hearts Spring has started!

Snow schmoe! Exhibition games in two weeks.