John Janaro's Blog, page 304

Nothing is Wasted

When I am suffering some kind of small and ridiculous problem, what can I do? I can offer it to God, and offer myself to God.

What matters is that, here and now, it is "I" who am afflicted; the circumstances of this situation are calling on me to make a sacrifice, to recognize the mystery of my own life and to say, "Lord, this belongs to you, this moment belongs to you, 'I' belong to you."

The world is a communion of sacrifice. How little we understand of what God can build out of the circumstances we consider worthless. Love does not have to feel sweet. Anyone who has changed a poopy diaper knows that. The power of sacrifice is beyond our measure. Offer everything. When I offer, there is--however faintly it may seem--the recognition that "I," my circumstances, the whole world, belongs to Someone Else, to Christ--the Christ who suffered and triumphed and inaugurated the New Creation. It is His. I am His. Nothing is wasted, thrown away, lost, stupid, meaningless.

Real life is the affirmation of this through sacrifice, through letting go of my idea, through the constant abandonment of my limited perspective, my measure, my attachment to my own expectations, including especially my expectations about myself. I am frustrated with myself. Offer the frustration. Do not cease to love, to aspire, to cherish ideals, to struggle, to do good, but remember that it all belongs to Him and that He shapes everything according to a plan that He knows is right for me.

February 3, 2011

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas, We Finally Took Down the Tree

Very early in the morning, on the LAST day of Christmas, February 2, 2013
When I woke up very early in the morning, as I usually do, I went out into the living room to see the glorious lights glowing one last time. And Mary and Joseph, the manger, the baby Jesus, the wise men spreading out their humble court one last time on the top of the entertainment center (note: that is not an HDTV; that's a flat screen dinosaur from the "aughts" [i.e. 2000s]...true poverty, American style).

I looked wistfully at the ornaments. Some go back to my own childhood and even before. Some are quite fancy, but my favorites are the one with the bride and groom that says "First Christmas, 1996" and the various home made ornaments given to us as gifts by the children when they were very small. I noticed that the star that I made for the top years ago was leaning to one side. It was beginning to fall apart at last. Even durable tape has its limits.

Ah, but the wonders of an artificial tree! It doesn't shed, it doesn't need water, it doesn't die. You can keep it up through January, and then disassemble it and put it in a box and store it away until next year. The human race has lost the tree of paradise, and the trees of this earth must die. The best we can accomplish with all of our arts is an imitation, a plastic copy that does not die because it was never alive.

Yeah yeah, sure. But it works. Its hypoallergenic. It looks good. Its fireproof. What the heck, we use electric lights on it anyway. Stop being such a philosophical grump, JJ. Its our Christmas tree. We love it.

And it has lit up the dark mornings of the whole month of January. A forty day Christmas season helps prevent Seasonal Affective Disorder. And it gives a maximum of procrastination time for getting out those Christmas cards! (Those "what"? What is a Christmas "card"? Haha, obviously we didn't send any....)

Its good to let things last. Christmas is not just a big-bash-and-then-its-over. The light has come into the world. The light shines in the darkness. And He is, as Simeon reminds us again on Candlemas day, "the light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel" (Luke 2:32).

Now, everything is boxed up and put away. Our house is ready for Lent, which begins in less than two weeks. But the desert is not gloomy, because Jesus is there.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).

The Strength of a Woman

"The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way. Of course, God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But this entrusting concerns women in a special way -- precisely by reason of their femininity -- and this in a particular way determines their vocation....

"A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting, strong because of the fact that God 'entrusts the human being to her,' always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them 'strong' and strengthens their vocation....

"In our own time, the successes of science and technology make it possible to attain material well-being to a degree hitherto unknown. While this favours some, it pushes others to the edges of society. In this way, unilateral progress can also lead to a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human. In this sense, our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that 'genius' which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human!"

Blessed John Paul II,
On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, 30

Mothers of the Secret Pain

Today, I would like to tell a story about an event that happened some years ago.

It is pertinent to what many of us in the United States commemorated with sorrow, prayer, and penance last week. But it also pertains to a reality that is worldwide.

Its a story about the mysterious and enduring bond between a mother and her child.

Some would have us believe that this bond can be cast aside or terminated by a procedure that in reality is a terrible act of violence. This act, known as abortion, succeeds in killing an innocent human being.

But it fails, utterly, to break the bond between the mother and child, a bond that is more profound than physical death.

The mother remains, in the depths of herself, mother of the child that never sees daylight. She remains a mother, and she lives with this fact no matter how much she may deny it, and even if no one else knows about it. The relationship remains; it is greater than any human power, and it cannot be unmade by any human power.

These mothers are everywhere; they live on your street, they pass you on the sidewalk or in the aisles of the grocery story, they are your co-workers, they are sitting in the subways you ride, they are at the gym, the restaurant, the tennis court, the pool. They are in every crowded room, in the building where you work, they are your doctors, lawyers, teachers, classmates, they are members of your church, they are your friends.

They are often accomplished women; they may be full of warmth, genuine affection, and empathy. They may be social, outgoing, witty, expressive and full of laughter and smiles. They hide from us their dreams and their tears. Sometimes they succeed in blocking it from their own awareness for years. But it never goes away.

Millions of these people wander through all the world: the mothers of the lost, the mothers of the nameless ones. We hear statistics, and we should remember that behind every one of those numbers there is a mother who has failed, and who carries the weight of that failure. It has become her awful burden. But it also remains as a possibility for hope.

The relationship between mother and child remains, and so there is the possibility for reconciliation and healing. Still, the mother needs help. She needs someone to listen to the agony and sorrow that pour out of her soul. She needs to know that she is loved, not in a condescending way, but in a humble companionship that affirms that we all depend on an ineffable and inexhaustible mercy.

I hesitate to tell this story, because it touches upon a kind of suffering so profound and so personal that I do not wish to presume to expose anyone's pain "from the outside." I tell this story only because I am willing to share the burden with them, and walk with them on the road to healing.

There are roads to healing, and I believe that we must devote much energy and sacrifice to building up these roads and being companions with those who are traveling them. We must indeed seek out so many who don't even know these roads exist. There are so many who bury their anguish, distract themselves, and pass through life with a dark sense that their loss is forever, that they carry a deep and excruciating pain that must remain hidden, that they cannot speak about even to themselves.

But there are roads to healing, and places of healing. We must all do what we can to help people find the way. We must invite them to be with us and to walk with us on the path of Love. But there is no place on this path for the self-righteous, for we all stumble, and we all fail in our responsibility to accept and bring to fruition the gifts that have been given to us.

We cannot "help" anyone except out of the awareness that we ourselves need forgiveness and healing for so many things. Our task is not to put ourselves forward as superior to others, but rather to indicate--in poverty and humility, but also with unshakable conviction--where hope can be found.

Who am I to speak of any of this? I'm just a poor man with a blog, a disabled man, still crushed by the fact that he is incapable of doing the job he loves. What do I have to offer? I've tasted the bitterness of life, but I have been healed and wounded (in a different way) by Mercy; I have a heart, I can listen, I am not shocked or surprised by anything, and I condemn no one.

I know that every person I meet is broken and yet loved by an Infinite Love. I haven't always known this. I've had to learn it, and I continue to learn it every day. This story is about a particular moment in this learning process, a moment that has grown deeper with time and the unfolding of events. Here is the story:

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student living in Texas, I used to meet on Saturday mornings with a church group. We would pray the Rosary together in front of the local Women's Health Clinic. It was a small building with a path from the sidewalk directly to the front door. Next to it was a parking lot.

We were gathering in a public space in front of the clinic to pray. We also brought literature from a nearby Crisis Pregnancy Center, where some of us had connections. The brochures of the center were not shocking or upsetting. They offered other possibilities, concrete possibilities for pregnant mothers facing all sorts of difficulties. They offered committed personal support, as well as financial and other life-situation support, real support for the mother and her child.

Many pregnant mothers are driven to desperation because they don't know that there are people who will stand by them and help them. And it can be very difficult to reach these mothers to offer this kind of help. For us, the only practical way was to approach, gently, the women who were walking on the sidewalk from the parking lot to the clinic entrance, listen to them and talk with them if possible, or at least hope that they would take the brochure and consider it.

What we had to offer was real help, from a network of good and loving people. Its sad this offer was sometimes misunderstood, and that it was necessary to present it in such an awkward manner. But here were these women, these pregnant mothers, wrestling with so many pressures and influences: the pressures of insecurity and self-image, of society's expectations, or even the pressure of those who were supposed to be loving and taking care of them. Or perhaps they were ashamed, or angry, or afraid, or simply allowing themselves to believe the lie, and falling into the abyss of violence that opens up under the thin veneer of apparently easy solutions offered by this brutal and manipulative society. In such circumstances, one must risk offering help, even at the price of being awkward or misunderstood.

Not many women came to this particular clinic on Saturday mornings, as I remember. Still we prayed. Sometimes our turnout was small too. On this one Saturday morning, it was just myself and a little Hispanic woman who barely spoke English. After a little while, she told me that she had to go.

It would just be me, alone, with the brochures. It hardly seemed worth staying. But before she left, the woman held out a card to me and said, "take this."

The card had a picture of Jesus on it, patterned after the painting of St. Faustina, with the inscription "Jesus I trust in You." There were prayers on the back of the card.  The image was of the blood and water pouring forth from the heart of Jesus. The image of the Divine Mercy, the inexhaustible fountain of forgiveness and healing. Mercy.

Today, this icon, its prayers, and the chaplet of mercy are central to my life. But back then I did not know much. I thought, "Oh, another one of these cards; I have some of these at home and I really don't need...." But I took the card and thanked her. I wanted to be polite. After a moment of fiddling with the card, I stuck it in my back pocket and forgot about it.

Really, I just wanted to go home. I was not an experienced "sidewalk counselor" and I am not confrontational by nature. As I mentioned before, offering this literature was awkward. It was a gesture all to easily misunderstood.

Then a car pulled into the lot and parked. A woman got out of the car and began walking towards the clinic. I was terrified. "Why am I here by myself!?" I thought. But somewhere in the midst of all this I remembered that I was not alone. I represented the Pregnancy Center; I was there on behalf of a community of people who cherished the mother and her child, and were dedicated to fostering this relationship--with friendship and with material assistance--from the beginning. So I held out my trembling hand....

The woman was smartly dressed, and walked with a confident stride. She was probably in her thirties. I felt a certain relief just looking at her. And then she gave me something like a smile, and said, "Oh you don't need to worry about me. I'm just here for a pregnancy test." She looked at me with a bright, benevolent face and nodded to me.

I won't deny that I breathed a sigh of relief. She seemed kind, and very self-assured. A few minutes later she came out the door, and seemed to nod and smile at me again. I smiled back as she walked toward the parking lot. And I remained standing there, with my brochures and my rosary beads, looking at the clinic and thinking about how I really should be going home. The place was closing soon and there wasn't any reason to hang around....

"Excuse me," I heard suddenly, from the parking lot. "Excuse me, I want to ask you a question."

I looked over at the parking lot, and there she was, the nice woman who had come for a pregnancy test. She was sitting in her car with her window down. She must have been waiting in the car for several minutes, but I had not noticed.

"Sure," I replied.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

 I was taken aback. "Sorry, what?" I replied, a little confused.

The kindness and the smile were gone. Instead it was controlled (but very strong) anger and confrontation. "Who the hell do you think you are?" She yelled from the car.

Oh boy, I was thinking. This lady sat in the car for five minutes and then decided to have an argument with me? As I said, I'm not the confrontation type, but I knew my facts and I was ready to have an argument if that's what she wanted. So I walked toward the car in the parking lot and said something like, "What do you mean?"

The woman's features had changed. Her expression was full of righteous anger, and she was positively intimidating to this graduate school kid who spent most of his time reading books. Still, I went right up to the window of her car.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" She roared at me. "Trying to impose your beliefs on other people!"

I can't really explain what happened inside me at that moment. Part of it, frankly, was that I didn't want to get into a verbal slugging match with this lady. She was angry with me, I thought. But there was also something else; something inside me gave me the sense that this frequently hashed out "argument" that seemed about to begin wasn't really an argument. It was something else.

Who do I think I am? I wondered. Not much, but I am here to represent the pregnancy center. I don't  even work at the pregnancy center, but I'm here to deliver their invitation, their offer of love.

And then some very gentle, unpremeditated words came out of my mouth. I spoke without any tint of argument, and I realized that I was speaking sincerely: "We are here to offer opportunities for the mother and the child. All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

She was not impressed, and continued to speak angry and confrontational words that I don't remember. Again and again I said (as if I were somehow being moved to say it), "All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

Her anger began to abate slightly. "Well," she said, "You don't sound like most pro-lifers I run into!"

I was not going to go down that road. I only had one thing to say, and every time I said it, it came straight from the heart and filled with some mysterious compassion that was not my own. Love.

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

"Well," she said, "if more pro-lifers talked like you, maybe people would listen." She had calmed down, and was making an effort to continue her remonstrative tone.

I didn't know anything about who she may have encountered in the past. I just kept listening to her, and spoke quietly about giving help and love and support to the mother and the child. I was just a kid barely out of college who didn't know much about life, whose own heart was crying out for mercy, leaning at the car window of a professional, accomplished woman who looked like she could have been any of the women that I see every day.

It seemed like she was having a burst of temper about issues and people who bothered her. But she was cooling off. It was clear that, really, she was a nice lady.

She was just a human person. 

I was someone who gave out literature for the pregnancy center. I didn't work there. I was someone who read (and occasionally wrote) articles, and voted pro-life. I also prayed and carried signs. I'd prayed at many clinic buildings, but someone else was almost always giving out literature, trying to communicate with the women, the mothers. All of these were worthwhile activities.

I knew the issues. I had read many things. I certainly had empathy for the poor women, in a kind of abstract way. 

But I had no experience whatsoever to prepare me for what was about to happen. I had no idea.... 

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

The falling water came suddenly, like the bursting of a dam. The water gushed. Suddenly this woman was crying and sobbing, crying with a deep sadness, weeping, sobbing. I was stunned. What was happening? I had never in my life seen a person weep with such desperation and pain and sorrow.

I said nothing, but I found that I was not "uncomfortable" or embarrassed. I simply stayed there with her, present to her, a companion to her anguish. At some point I had begun to realize that grace was at work. This was grace. I was a stupid sinner, but it didn't matter. The Holy Spirit wasn't being picky. God wanted this woman to know that she was loved.

She slowly struggled, attempting to regain the control that she had practiced for so long. She struggled, kept weeping, then breathed and tried to speak to me.

"When I was... ... ... in high school... ... ... ... ... I had... ... ... ... I had an abortion."

And she wept more. And with the tears she continued, "my parents... I was so afraid... I just couldn't tell my parents... I couldn't...."

Then she looked at me with her great wet eyes and asked, "What can I do?"

I didn't know anything about the beautiful ministries that help women to find healing after abortion (see links below). This was many years ago; I'm not sure what was even available for something like this. I certainly didn't know about it. I stood in front of the unimaginable pain of another person who was seeking something from me. Where had it all come from?

"Love the mother and the child."

Love. Was it really so powerful, after all? Was this what was at the root of everything, this starvation for real love? What would we discover if we could all see behind the faces of one another for a moment? How poor we are in front of each other. We want to love and be loved, but the hunger seems overwhelming. Its not surprising that we are so afraid of life, so afraid of love, so afraid of one another. Such a vast hunger. How can we be fed? What do we have to give?

"Ask God to forgive you," I said, "pray to God and ask Him for forgiveness." The words came very simply. Ask God.

And then I suddenly remembered. The little Hispanic lady. She gave a card with the image of Divine Mercy. The image of Jesus. It was in my back pocket. I grabbed it.

"Here," I said. "Take this. Pray to Jesus. Ask Jesus to forgive you."

"I will," she answered, looking at the card, at that Face. "Thank you."

"I'll pray for you," I said.

"Thank you." And she drove away. I don't remember, but its possible that the motor had been running all along.

She drove off into the enormous city, so many years ago. I never saw her or heard anything about her again. I am ashamed to say that, over these many years, I have too often forgotten to pray for her, for this woman, this broken mother whose name I never knew. I pray for her now.

Since then I've come to know quite a few women who have had abortions. They are among my friends and family. I probably know many more than I realize, because there are so many, and it remains such a secret pain in a society where "everything is permitted but nothing is forgiven."

I've also learned about the tremendous healing work done by ministries such as Project Rachel and Rachel's Vineyard (please click these links, look at them, and go to them if you or someone you know has need). Forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing really can happen for mothers, and also for their husbands or boyfriends (i.e. fathers), or anyone else who has shared in this kind of trauma.

Please pray for my friend in the parking lot on that day long ago, and for all mothers of the secret pain.

What is Really Worth Living For?

Any claim about God and the great merciful events of His incarnation and redemption become very difficult to propose in a social milieu that exalts subjectivism and personal relativism regarding the meaning of things. Realism is the presupposition for Christianity. A realist attitude affects in a very basic way how we approach questions in life and evaluate things.

Realism looks at a thing according to every aspect that it “evinces.” Realism seeks constantly for and attends to the evidence that the thing itself presents regarding the things own inherent significance and value. A realist does not, therefore, bend the evidence manifested by things and situations within the circumstances of life in order to support his ideology or his subjective desires. He does not ignore pieces of evidence that contradict his pre-established view or wish about how something ought to be.

Because he is interested in the objective truth that is indicated and manifested by things, he is willing to follow these indications, to discover new truths, to have his vision of reality increased and deepened. And because he is obedient to the truth, he will embrace the truth that is thus manifested to him even if it seems inconvenient or makes demands upon him. He will not try to rationalize, explain away, or ignore anything that is made clear to him by the evidence. He will embrace the conclusion that follows naturally from the evidence rather than exaggerating the importance of unessential points that perhaps remain obscure in order to have a pretext for evading this conclusion.

Many people might still agree today that the realist attitude described above represents the ideal for how a human being ought to live his daily life. Nevertheless, it is singularly difficult for many people today, especially in the affluent West, to be genuinely realistic in their attitude in front of anything that might require them to change their way of behaving.

Certainly it is always difficult for frail human nature to accept the challenge of personal (i.e. moral) maturity. The realistic attitude about man is richly aware of the fact that man is a sinner, and that his personal resources are fragile and in need of both internal and external supports. The problem today, however, is made much more acute by the fact that people today are systematically mis-educated in the relativist, subject-centered attitude and in the pride and rationalization that go with it.

We are taught and are surrounded by a culture that constantly impresses upon us the idea that our human fragility is actually strength, our foolishness is wisdom, our instinctual whims are genuine judgments regarding what is good. Moreover, this attitude reigns almost without opposition in the highest realms of human perception, namely the realms of ontology and religion, where man must grapple with the most fundamental truths about the world and about his own personality.

Nevertheless, some aspects of the attitude of realism remain alive in any person who possesses any measure of sanity. Human beings by nature are so “attuned” to reality that even the subjectivist attitude cannot assert itself as a social proposal by appealing to raw selfishness. Rather, it inevitably seeks to justify itself theoretically--in other words, to say, “it is objectively true (i.e. it is proper to the objective reality of how man’s intellect and will operate) that man determine for himself the meaning of things.”

This implies that there is at least one thing that man does not determine for himself, namely, his alleged power to determine the ultimate significance of everything for himself. This power is universal; it is the “right” of every man, and indeed a “given” of human existence. Thus even the relativist, self-centered view of life is led inexorably to give some objective account of the nature of the human person.

It is inevitable that human beings, whether they admit it or not, will affirm at least something to be real, to be an objective meaning and value for which it is worth living. The question, then, cannot be escaped: "What gives meaning to our lives? What is really worth living for?"

St. Thomas Aquinas: A Tribute to an Enduring Wisdom

Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is no obscure medieval monk. The appearance of St. Thomas on the landscape of the university of Paris in the middle of the thirteenth century was nothing less than the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Church. He was the great expression in the West of the essential harmony of faith and reason.

As he taught and wrote his famous theological treatises, he drew upon Aristotle and reoriented Plato and Augustine so as to build a philosophical foundation of metaphysics and epistemology that remains fundamentally important today.

One can indeed say that in his articulation of the metaphysics of Esse and in his integrated epistemological realism that does justice to the interplay of sensation and spiritual intelligence, St. Thomas has laid down the foundations for authentic philosophical as well as theological development. Although Catholic theology is far from monolithic, the best and most coherent contemporary efforts to understand the human being, the world, and the mystery of God have as their touchstone the metaphysics and epistemology of St. Thomas. He insures that thinking, no matter how adventuresome it may be in its unfolding, does not lose its bearings.

For a time after the Second Vatican Council, it seemed as though this great Catholic Doctor was destined to be forgotten, drowned in a sea of secular humanist ideologies, moral relativism, and psychoanalysis. But St. Thomas is making a strong return. His greatest twentieth century follower recognized in Thomas's principles a fountain of creative insight that made it possible to engage contemporary issues. Jacques Maritain predicted, in the midst of the post-Conciliar turmoil of 1968, that Thomas's foundational contribution would endure:

"St. Thomas..., humbly and without putting in a claim, brought metaphysical wisdom to the most basic and universal degree of intuitive grasp possible to reason. A metaphysics of 'esse,' a metaphysics born from the intuition of the act of existing--and whose primary object is this primordial and all-embracing intelligible reality--has the capacity to welcome, recognize, honor, set to rights all that is" (from The Peasant of the Garonne, 1968).

Young Man, Do You Want My Advice?

Lots of people who used to be boys have turned into bonafide grownups. These guys have degrees, and growing families, and professional accomplishments. And they still have all their hair!

Its inspiring to see the enthusiasm and dedication of the younger generation. Its a great thing, this energy. I remember the nexus of youthful energy and budding maturity. This is a great time of life.

Thank God for this life, young man. Spend it well, engage reality, build up the good. Be full of gratitude for each day, each moment, for your wife and your little children. Be engaged, but don't get lost in mere activism. Lift up your heart to God in prayer and ask Him to shape you into the person He wills you to be.

So you are turning 27, 28, 29 or even 30, and you think you are "old"? Ah well, you have reached an important mark in your maturity, but the coming years promise to be great and constructive steps in the formation of your own personality, and your development into someone who helps to form others, to pass on the experience of your own life to your children and their generation.
The next twenty-some years, God willing, will be constructive. But that does not mean they will be successful in the sense you may now imagine. I say this not to discourage you, but to assure you that you can live and endure many difficult things and still be enriched, and remain young at heart.

I don't know if I can give you "advice," my young friend. I hope you have your aspirations, love for your wife and family, and a strong commitment to your work. Make sure to be there for your kids as they grow up. And get ready to have some twists and turns--some adventures--over the next twenty-some years.

You have to test your strength, because that's how you learn its limits. I hope you will achieve some things, but I know that you will discover that the horizon of your own life is greater than anything you can reach.

Above all, be faithful to God. Things may get downright crazy. That's one thing that I know from the last  twenty-some years that are now behind me.

My experience shows that pieces may fall into place...and then fall apart! And then come together in a different way, and then there are new challenges.... It's God's plan for your life: follow it, or hang on to it, or crawl in the dark through it, or even get frustrated and say (pray) to God: "What kind of a plan is this? What's the deal here?" Just keep going. Stay with Him. Don't give up.

I hope you enjoy the fruits of your labor, but the seasons will vary, and there will be storms. My wife and I are both academics; we got married later than you (but going on 17 years ago) and still had five kids. I prayed, worked hard and established my career as a college professor, a writer, and an editor. I accomplished many goals. And I loved my work.

Then I got sick.

No matter how we may feel in advance, none of us are ready for a train wreck. We must trust in God, and that can be difficult. Trusting in God is a life-long learning process.

Sometimes you lose the career you love most. Its humiliating. Period. You've been flattened, and its not your fault. But its gonna be along time before you stop blaming. yourself. every. single. day.

And even if, like me, you get to keep your nice fancy professorial title, it doesn't help much, because you're disabled. That's that. You can't do what you want. You have to depend on other people. Humbling.

But God really is at work in you. Even if that brings ZERO consolation, its a fact. Never give up.

And you can't go through this alone. If you suffer, she suffers. But your marriage and family can be (and are meant to be) strengthened by these difficulties. New dimensions of marriage open up, and you both need to work hard, make sacrifices and forgive each other every day for a lot. But if you are faithful, you will discover that the sacramental bond is real, it is inter-personal, it is the grace of Christ's Spirit and it keeps you together, and it is a very tough thing. The sacrament of marriage is strong; it is built to last. You have to depend on it.

Spousal love means so many things that have never even entered your dreams. It will humble you. You will find that there is no place to be selfish in marriage, and this too is a life-long learning process.

Of course, when doors close, windows can open. My wife became a Montessori teacher, she loves it, and (of course) she's really good at it. The "death" of my "established career" ended up being the "birth" of hers. Our kids go to (or have been through) the school. I am well enough right now that I go to the office and help with the students and also do my own work (I refer to myself sometimes as "writer-in-residence" and other times as "interactive media consultant").

You may even surprise yourself by what you do, and where it leads you.

When I got sick, I did was was "natural" for me; I wrote about it. Some friends circulated some of what I wrote, and it eventually landed at a publisher who said, "can you give us more of this?" It ended up being a popular book, published in 2010, that continues to sell and seems to help a lot of people.

I had written academic things, and I had (still have) projects in the works. But I never planned to write a book like Never Give Up, and I almost didn't. It was slow, one step at a time, and "not my idea." I just had the sense that it was God's will, and I just took a step and then another and then another.

The irony is that the book is perhaps the most important work I have done in my life thus far. It turns out that God doesn't believe in "disability." But we have to do things His way.

And we don't know much about that "way". We don't know what's coming. We may all get dumped off the fiscal cliff. We may be washed away by a hurricane, or caught up in a war, or just pushed in new directions by the dramas of children and adolescents becoming young adults. We still have to "plan ahead" as best we can (that's human nature and human responsibility), but the grain is never safe in the bins.

The way this plays out in our circumstances is how God teaches us to trust in Him. But my words about this are not worth much. Trust is a relationship with God that must be lived. It is a relationship that you are able to live.

So live it. Trust God in everything that comes.

Death Opens To Something Completely New

But how do we Christians respond to th[e] question of death?
We respond with faith in God, with a look firm with hope founded on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So death opens to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite doubling of the present time but something completely new. Faith tells us that the true immortality to which we aspire is not an idea, a concept, but a relation of full communion with the living God: it is being in his hands, in his love, and becoming in him one with all our brothers and sisters that he has created and redeemed, with the whole of creation. Our hope, then, rests in God’s love which shines on the Cross of Christ.... This is life that has reached its fullness, life in God; it is a life that now we can only glimpse as one glimpses calm skies through the clouds.

Benedict XVI (Homily, 11/4/12)

A New Kind of Hope

Yesterday was the great feast day of St. Agnes of Rome, a twelve year old girl of noble family at the beginning of the fourth century. She openly professed her Christianity and died a martyr, which is certainly extraordinary in itself for a young girl. But there is another reason why Agnes is regarded as one of the great saints of the Church.
Carved statue of St. Agnes from the shrine at St. Agnes Catholic church in Arlington, Virginia.
Agnese Janaro was baptized in this church over 14 years ago. Was it really that long ago?!
The earliest accounts praise St. Agnes's heroism and her purity. Clearly she made an astonishing impression on those who witnessed her martyrdom and communicated her story. The traditions that come down from various sources, and that are reflected in the ancient liturgical texts for her feast, indicate that even before her martyrdom this young girl had already given over her life to Jesus in a total dedication--one that would inspire and shape the personal identity of countless women over the next 1700 years.
Agnes had consecrated her virginity to Christ, not for a term of service like the vestals of pagan Rome, but forever. She sacrificed her natural vocation to be a wife and mother in this world and embraced a life of virginity as a witness that God alone was the love of her heart. Christ would be her true husband, and as His bride she would begin to reflect the glory of the life of the resurrection by remaining a virgin, by being entirely for God and God alone, offering Him her entire identity as a woman.
But this was not her idea. It was He Himself who had called her. In the liturgy, Agnes says, "My Lord Jesus Christ has espoused me with his ring; he has crowned me like a bride."
There is no disparagement of earthly marriage here. Marriage itself serves as a sign of what she found, and finds its own fulfillment in being this sign.
Rather, something happened to this twelve year old girl, Someone revealed to her a new kind of life, an eternal life that was already dawning in that moment of her heart, a life and a love worthy of all she had and all she was, worthy of following exclusively, a life greater than any human hope even as it fulfilled the promise hidden in all hopes, a life that could not be broken by all the power of the most powerful Empire the world had ever known, a life greater than the whole universe: eternal life in communion with the God who is Love.
"I am espoused to him whom the angels serve; sun and moon stand in wonder at his beauty."

It was this Beauty that made her utterly fearless. It was a Beauty that so filled this child that all the connivance and energetic cruelty of the powers of this earth could not prevail against her freedom, even when they dedicated all their deception and all there brute force to crushing that freedom.
They did not prevail.
Now, Agnes of Rome sings in glory, in the company of a multitude of women who followed as she did, into martyrdom, into the prayer and silence that seeks Him alone and in so doing lifts up the cry of the whole world, into an exclusive devotion to Christ wherever He is found, seeking to bring comfort to His heart, seeking Him as missionaries, teachers, care-givers, companions and servants of the poor, workers of mercy. St. Agnes leads the song that brings sweet breezes of consolation to the weary, and the strength of a new kind of hope for all of us in the face of every danger and every kind of violence:
"What I longed for, I now see; what I hoped for, I now possess; in heaven I am espoused to him whom on earth I loved with all my heart."

One Great Fellowship of Love

In Christ there is no East or West.
In Him no North or South,
But one great Fellowship of Love
Throughout the whole wide world.
This is the only way.

[The Cross] is a telescope
through which we look out
into the long vista of eternity,
and see the love of God
breaking forth into time.
It is an eternal reminder...that love
is the only creative, redemptive,
transforming power in the universe.

...let us join together
in a great fellowship of love
and bow down at the feet of Jesus.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
November 17, 1957