John Janaro's Blog, page 31

Come Holy Spirit, Through Mary’s Heart

Prayer for the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

“O God, who prepared a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit in the Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, graciously grant that through her intercession we may be a worthy temple of your glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.” .

The Heart of Jesus Says, “Come To Me…”

Jesus, God the Son, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity (the God who is “one but not solitary,” who is an eternal communion of ineffable love)… Jesus, our God, our Savior, Son of the Father… Jesus is a man.

Jesus is human. He understands us, longs for us, suffers for us in His human heart. Jesus says, “Come to me.”

We poor humans with our sorrows and heavy burdens—God is not far away. He is here. He is Jesus and He wants to stay with us. God has a human heart, and with that beating heart He loves each one of us and every human person. He loves us in a fully human way, and He wants us to love Him. We are His brothers and sisters.

We are also, therefore, brothers and sisters to one another. In the love of His Heart, Jesus longs for us to love one another.

Life as an Invalid Feels Like Prison?

It has been a hard year, a hard Spring, a hard last couple of weeks. I have been hurting a lot. Reading is harder, writing is harder, thinking is harder, remembering things is harder. But Depression isn’t too bad, and OCD is manageable… most of the time. All this stuff is familiar from the past 20+ years. It’s all related to the Lyme disease that went untreated and misdiagnosed for a very long time (read my 2010 book for details about that odyssey and other things too: here’s the LINK). We did everything we could back in ‘04 and ‘05 when I was finally diagnosed for Lyme that I may have first contracted in 1988. Success was only partial. Symptoms recur—call it “chronic Lyme” or “post-Lyme” or “long Lyme” (a new perspective for doctors who have had to deal with “long COVID”). I have had “ups and downs” frequently, and flare-ups of this or that for years. But lately I’m getting hit with a barrage of stuff at the same time.

Is this like being in prison? Sometimes it feels that way. It feels like prison.

I’m frustrated. Stuck mostly in bed these days. I’m able to take a walk most evenings. Prisoners are allowed out for exercise for a half hour every day. Mass on Sunday. Otherwise I rely on technological gadgets, which have opened lots of avenues of wider engagement from home. And, of course, books. But lately, I’m so tired…

I have so many thoughts in my mind, so much I have studied and considered long and hard, but I worry because I can’t “get them out,” express them, share them. Sometimes I can’t even put them together in my own head. Over 30 years ago, Fr Giussani told me, “You will be a great teacher.” I am a sinner, but I think I have tried to follow the way he pointed out to me. When I got too sick to teach in the classroom any more, I kept studying. I have learned much in my years as an “invalid” (or, as I prefer to say, “semi-invalid”), and it’s not just academic stuff.

I’m lazy, proud, and disorganized, but I keep trying. Or I’m trying to try… I want to live, and even if I’m tied up, I want to look at the rope and learn about it, and I recognize that there is something more than its constraints. I know that the meaning of my life doesn’t depend on myself. I’m created and sustained and I belong to the Infinite Someone who moves me. I forget that too often, or sometimes I just cry out “Why? Where am I going?” 

I have been given so many possibilities to learn, to verify again and again that all of this life is a sign of the promise of meaning and fulfillment, and my total need for the One who brings them. With my academic training, I’m listening to the voices of the peoples of recent history, and the tremendous suffering that has been endured. Aspirations and achievements too—great and hopeful things, yes!—but so much suffering, failure, distortion, betrayal, so much crying out in the darkness, so many defenseless human persons being smashed—yet especially here, the image of God doesn’t disappear, and any spark of humanity left unquenched keeps looking for air to burn.

We continue to endure this monstrous storm, expanding our power and riding on the edges of chaos. Admirable achievements, but so much suffering and so much darkness. “Why, God? Where are we going?”

Eh, my “prison”? I’m certainly not alone here. This “place” is full of humanity, of persons. There is so much longing for life here. And of course, Jesus is here. He has come to stay with us, to suffer with us and for us, to suffer for the sake of love. What does that mean, God? What is this “love,” Jesus?

The Mystery dwells among us. Never mind “theology,” I’m too small to understand more than what is given to me. Many saints have reached great depths in the experience of this mysterious love. But millions and millions of people (as far as we can tell) have never really heard His name. The Mystery dwells among us in mysterious ways. Somehow, they encounter Him. But we want to share with them the awareness of Him that has been given to us. We want to share Him, share ourselves… and also we want to discover His love for others—encounter Him through them too. There are surprising “signs” among the poor and suffering peoples of this earth.

Perhaps what really matters for me right now is praying and suffering my incapacities, “offering” them in union with Jesus, especially for my beautiful family and for those who carry heavy burdens, that they might know the Lord’s mercy.

Meanwhile, I work as much as I am able, without trying to overdo it. I thank God for every day.

I read. I listen to audio when my eyes are too tired. I can still experiment with digital graphic art, which nevertheless sometimes stresses me out because the new possibilities are growing constantly and exponentially. It takes time to get used to new forms and capacities of media. You can see that I made a strange “self-portrait” above.

Please pray for me as I struggle with difficulties like these. We all suffer with pain that is beyond our understanding. I know that. Let us pray for one another.

The Human Dignity of the Chinese People

Thirty-five years ago (June 4, 1989), the Chinese Communist Party mercilessly crushed thousands of people who had been gathering for over a month in Tiananmen Square to demonstrate peacefully, and to petition their rulers for basic human rights and recognition of human dignity. In Beijing, protesters were joined by people from all walks of life, including journalists from the PartyState-controlled media.

We must never forget the Chinese people or other peoples of the world whose fundamental dignity as human persons is neglected, repressed, or violated by the ideologies and weapons of unjust powers. If nothing else, we can listen to their stories, hold them in our hearts, and pray for them.

Solemnity of Corpus Christi 2024

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.

“For at the Last Supper with his Apostles, establishing for the ages to come the saving memorial of the Cross, he offered himself to you as the unblemished Lamb, the acceptable gift of perfect praise.

“Nourishing your faithful by this sacred mystery, you make them holy, so that the human race, bounded by one world, may be enlightened by one faith and united by one bond of charity.

“And so, we approach the table of this wondrous Sacrament, so that, bathed in the sweetness of your grace, we may pass over to the heavenly realities here foreshadowed.

“Therefore, all creatures of heaven and earth sing a new song in adoration.”
~from the Preface for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Saint Joan of Arc Witnesses to the “Total Love of Jesus”

May 30th commemorates the anniversary of the heroic death of Saint Joan of Arc, who is one of the patron saints of France. The 600th anniversary of her famously unjust ecclesiastical trial and subsequent political execution will be in the year 2031. 

(This same year will also mark the 500th anniversary of the singular gift of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego in Mexico City—and though 2031 might sound like way-in-the-future, it will be here very soon! Start making your pilgrimage plans now. God willing, I’ll still be around on this earth in seven years, and able to participate in some way in these great occasions.)

Pope Benedict XVI spoke some profound and insightful words about Saint Joan of Arc during his Wednesday Catechesis on important figures in the ancient and medieval Church (which is one of many of the rich resources of his papal ministry). Here are some selections from his General Audience dedicated to her on Wednesday, January 26, 2011:

“Beginning at the age of 13…, Joan felt called by the Lord to intensify her Christian life and also to commit herself personally to the liberation of her people”—i.e. the French of the early 15th century, whose people suffered under the invading English military during this period of the so-called Hundred Years War.

Joan grew in the clarity and conviction of her vocation. “Her immediate response, her ‘yes,’ was the vow of virginity, with a new commitment to sacramental life and to prayer: daily attendance at Mass, frequent confession and Communion and long periods of silent prayer before the Crucified or before the image of the Virgin. The compassion and commitment of the young French peasant girl in face of the suffering of her people became more intense because of her mystical relationship with God. One of the most original aspects of the holiness of this young girl was precisely the connection between mystical experience and political mission…

“The Name of Jesus, invoked by our saint up to the last moments of her earthly life, was like the breathing of her soul, like the beating of her heart, the center of her whole life. The ‘mystery of the charity of Joan of Arc,’ which so fascinated the poet Charles Peguy, is this total love of Jesus, and of her neighbor in Jesus and for Jesus. This saint understood that love embraces the whole reality of God and of man, of heaven and of earth, of the Church and of the world. Jesus was always in the first place during her whole life, according to her beautiful affirmation: ‘Serve God first’…

“The liberation of her people was a work of human justice, which Joan carried out in charity, out of love for Jesus. Hers is a beautiful example of holiness for the laity who work in political life, above all in the most difficult situations. Faith is the light that guides every choice, as another great saint would testify a century later, the Englishman Thomas More. In Jesus, Joan also contemplated the reality of the Church, the ‘triumphant Church’ of Heaven, and the ‘militant Church’ of earth. According to her words, Our Lord and the Church are one ‘whole’. This affirmation quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 795), has a truly heroic character in the context of [her] Trial, in face of the judges, men of the Church, who persecuted her and condemned her. In the love of Jesus, Joan found the strength to love the Church to the end, including at the moment of her conviction…

“With her luminous testimony, Saint Joan of Arc invites us to a lofty level of Christian life: to make prayer the guiding thread of our days; to have full confidence in fulfilling the will of God, whatever it is; to live in charity without favoritisms, without limits and having, as she had, in the love of Jesus, a profound love for the Church.”

Twenty Years of Avril Lavigne’s “Under My Skin”

I wish I had the energy to write a long analytical and appreciative article on Avril Lavigne's second album, Under My Skin, which was released 20 years ago this week (on May 25, 2004).

As I have said before, I have a special place in my heart and in my prayers for Avril—a global superstar in popular music in the first decade of the twentieth century who seemed to "disappear" at the end of her fifth world tour in 2014. I knew nothing about her before she agreed to be interviewed in 2015 on Good Morning America and was reduced to serious tears as she tried to describe her ongoing battle with Lyme Disease. 

Three years later, she released her first new music: a prayer to God called "Head Above Water" that was raw and moving and beautiful in a way that—I would eventually learn—was characteristic of the kind of power ballad that only Avril Lavigne could make. She is so much more than just the “pop-punk princess,” more than the angry, weird, chaotic perpetual teenager that critics would like to dismiss. She not only has the chops to “rock out” (or “rock ouwt,” as the Canadians would say) in solid and “classical” style; she is also capable of putting into her songs a sense of her vulnerable, “needy” humanity, her wounds, and her desire—her plea—for something more in life.

There are lots of things about Avril's career that I don't understand or recommend, but she is an enormously talented singer, songwriter, and performance artist who can express special joys and touch dramatic human depths in some of her songs. I wrote about this at some length in my article in 2022 marking the 20th anniversary of her extraordinary debut album Let Go (see HERE). The simplicity of her lyrics takes on a surprising vitality through her unique (and critically under-appreciated) singing voice and stylized vocalization.

With Under My Skin, Avril got to make an entire album of hard rock as the setting for her clear and agile voice. Musically, old-timers from my generation would find much in this album that resonates with their era. 

The few ballads carry the most depth, with "How Does It Feel," "Fall To Pieces," and "Slipped Away" being three of my personal favorites. Here simple words meet brilliant vocal artistry, innovative pronunciation, and freeform syllable extension (Avril adds "ah-ah-aah-ah" to the "yeah, yeah,"  "la la la" and "na na na na" that worked so well for her in the first album).

But I can't explain this on the written page. It has to be heard—and moreover it should be heard by a sympathetic ear and not by a critical one looking for something else to use as a reason to put down Avril as unsophisticated.

Under My Skin was another huge success that reached number 1 on the US Billboard 200 album charts and in many places around the world. Perhaps I'll have more to say later in the year about some of the songs. But I didn’t want to let the present time go by without at least a shout out to the 20th anniversary of this great album.

“Portrait of the Professor as an ‘Older’ Man…”

In grappling with chronic health problems over the past two decades, I haven’t had much of a chance to notice that I really am “getting old” (I’m not there yet, but I’m getting there). Occasionally the visage in the mirror does strike me with the details I have listed in my brief “limerick” above.

But what really brings it home to me are some of these old social media memories that the internet serves up unexpectedly. Thus I was reminded of these pictures of “the kids” that I posted on Facebook on May 26, 2009 — which was 15 years ago:

So much time has passed, so many events have taken place, so much life has been lived since I posted these pictures. There is a whole “level” of memories in the history of my journey in this world that builds up from those days to the present. There have been some sorrows, many joys, and the ultimate gift of it all.

These days, “the kids” in our lives (I mean the little ones) are the grand-kids, the new human persons beyond the horizon of our imagination—impossible to “assume” in their concrete, unique realities—back in 2009.

It’s remarkable to think that Maria, today, is already older than her Aunt Josefina was in the picture above. Here she is recently hamming it up with her “Papa.”

Then there is the already-six-month-old Anna Rose, who usually has lots of wide-eyed smiles for her Papa and Nana. Not always, of course. I wanted an updated Papa and Anna picture, but Anna was being fussy here. Usually I can get her to smile, but I think she had more important things on her mind (like milk, or maybe she was just tired and wanted her Mommy).

But Anna was a good sport. Even with her sad face, she still tried. Anna is cute even with her sad face:

Praying for China and the Chinese People

May 24th—the feast of Our Lady of Sheshan—was a very important day for the Chinese people, and this year in particular it was associated with the 100th anniversary of the first (and thus far the only) full Synod of Chinese Catholic Bishops in Shanghai, May-June 1924. Many initiatives were taken up at that Synod that helped Chinese Catholics to endure the waves of persecution that were soon to come after the Communist takeover and—especially—during the fanaticism and mayhem of the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976).

I have been studying the history and culture of China and East Asia every day for the past eight years. Other than a substantial collection of Asian "conversion stories" in my Magnificat column, I have published very little on the East Asian "world" even though I am convinced that it is particularly important for Westerners to learn more and appreciate more the values and experiences of the East. Media, transportation, and technology have brought us all suddenly, and in some ways uncomfortably, into the same global village during my own lifetime. We are all neighbors now, and we ought to know one another better.

In the overall research of my East Asian Studies Project, I continue to discover magnificent cultural heritages and profound and ancient achievements in literature and philosophy, poetry and pictorial art. I do not understand the miasma of the often-violent politics and the gigantic and jarring leaps of technological development in the Asia of my own time. This is especially true of China, controlled by a One-Party-State that has driven over a billion people through a blizzard of changes in living conditions, environment, and means of measuring wealth and human success.

The decade of the "Cultural Revolution" is the primary focus of my study. This is the "Red China" that was unknown and inaccessible during my time growing up in the '60s and '70s (except for the vague sense, which was never discussed, that my best friend and his family had somehow escaped from this dystopia and were living what appeared to me to be an "ordinary" American family life—more on this topic soon). But the historical landscape of the Cultural Revolution era is emerging through a flood of "memoir style" accounts that now-elderly Chinese are writing (or their children and grandchildren are writing from the accounts of their elders).

One overall impression strikes me: the period of Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution” and its after-effects up to Tiananmen Square and the wild ride of economic transformation that followed it have—I don’t know how else to put it—traumatized several generations of one-fifth of the world's population. Modern Chinese people, however much they might excel in particular areas of expertise—are ultimately “dazed and confused” and don't know what they really want in life. Needless to say, this is also true of the multitudes who still struggle to survive or find ways to “get ahead.” Yet they all live under a control-obsessed regime that prevents them at every turn from asking the questions they need to ask.

The Chinese are enduring an epoch of suffocation. Yet in the past 30 years, many are finding the opportunity and courage to tell their stories. They are stories of immense suffering and dissatisfaction. Women are among the most articulate and brutally honest of the memorialists (Jung Chang's Wild Swans from 1993 still grabs you by the throat). Most of these memoirs are not written by Christian believers, and they carry an apparently irresolvable pain.

I'll list some of the more striking memoirs that I have read soon. There are a few of these works that are almost unbearably hard to read. They are not always "edifying" or representative of a morally healthy response to suffering. But they are reflective, and they struggle with the path they have been forced to travel. They are not only the primary "archives" of a historical period in which a vast people were subjected to unparalleled chaos. They are also "appeals" to Westerners (consciously or unconsciously); they are "bridges" between East and West that we must also help to build. We must accompany them in their suffering and "co-suffer" with them in the compassion that the Lord makes possible in our hearts.

Maybe we are stuck in bed with our own pains and will never be able to teach, write, or make more widely known the suffering and need of these brothers and sisters. Maybe all we can do is grow within our own souls in compassion and solidarity with them. We can pray for them and co-suffer with them. Who knows what God might fashion out of our own weakness and incapacity, if we attend to the experience of others, hear their miseries, trust God, and struggle, long for, ask for ways to love?

So during this time, when I pray for the Church in China, I want also to move forth to pray for the whole of the Chinese people. I don't want to forget them.

Our Lady of Sheshan, China's Merciful Mother

The feast day of Our Lady of Sheshan celebrates the Shrine and Catholic pilgrimage site in Shanghai, China, where the Catholic faith has been present for 400 years. In 2007, Pope Benedict established this day as the World Day of Prayer for the Church in China.

Here is Pope Benedict's own prayer from 2008 to mark this occasion:

“Virgin Most Holy, Mother of the Incarnate Word and our Mother, venerated in the Shrine of Sheshan under the title 'Help of Christians,' the entire Church in China looks to you with devout affection. We come before you today to implore your protection. Look upon the People of God and, with a mother's care, guide them along the paths of truth and love, so that they may always be a leaven of harmonious coexistence among all citizens.

“When you obediently said 'Yes' in the house of Nazareth, you allowed God's eternal Son to take flesh in your virginal womb and thus to begin in history the work of our redemption. You willingly and generously co-operated in that work, allowing the sword of pain to pierce your soul, until the supreme hour of the Cross, when you kept watch on Calvary, standing beside your Son, Who died that we might live.

“From that moment, you became, in a new way, the Mother of all those who receive your Son Jesus in faith and choose to follow in His footsteps by taking up His Cross. Mother of hope, in the darkness of Holy Saturday you journeyed with unfailing trust towards the dawn of Easter. Grant that your children may discern at all times, even those that are darkest, the signs of God's loving presence.

“Our Lady of Sheshan, sustain all those in China, who, amid their daily trails, continue to believe, to hope, to love. May they never be afraid to speak of Jesus to the world, and of the world to Jesus. In the statue overlooking the Shrine you lift your Son on high, offering him to the world with open arms in a gesture of love. Help Catholics always to be credible witnesses to this love, ever clinging to the rock of Peter on which the Church is built. Mother of China and all Asia, pray for us, now and for ever. Amen!”

~Pope Benedict XVI (May 24, 2008)

The tradition begun by Pope Benedict continues today. Here is Pope Francis conveying a brief message to a conference, with a statue of Our Mother of Sheshan next to him: