John Janaro's Blog, page 35

The Risen Body of Jesus Heals and Transforms Us

Jesus is Risen!

This is not a metaphor. He is risen in a true human body, His body. This fact is central to our Christian faith.

We need to be saved by the Word Incarnate, because we are bodily beings. Jesus makes it very clear to the disciples that He is not a ghost. He is transformed but totally, concretely human. He is a man with a body—the same man the disciples knew before—who has conquered sin and death and evil. He is glorified in His humanity, which is a mystery, but one that gives “more weight” to this real humanity rather than detracting from it. Here it is important for us to see that the Risen Lord does not “undo” His crucifixion; He rises with His wounds (hands, feet, side) in His glorified body, wounds transfigured by Divine Mercy, to be forever signs of His forgiveness. 
His glorified wounds are a constant and particular invitation to us. We all have wounds and we all hurt one another. The consequences of the violence we carry out against one another are real, and the disfigurement, the pain, the bitterness, and the anger may last long after the wounds become scars. But we who have been wounded must not allow ourselves to be reduced and defined by these afflictions so that they diminish the truth about our lives in our relationship to our destiny, the fulfillment of our true selves which has already begun, and is already shaping us in the present moment.

The Risen Jesus shows us His wounds, and reveals to us that our own wounds have meaning. The Kingdom of God manifests itself, the world begins to be transformed into the New Creation, when—in union with Jesus crucified and risen—we forgive those who have injured us, we love our enemies, we pray for our persecutors.

This does not mean we ignore justice, trying to pretend the wounds are not there. What we seek is the conversion of our enemies—not only that in their sorrow they might try to repair what they can of the damage they have done to us—but fundamentally that our enemies might become our friends, together with us in the Body of the Risen Lord, united in His forgiveness that brings new life—eternal life.

Jesus Christ is Risen, Alleluia!

Mors et vita duello
Conflixere mirando:
Dux vitæ mortuus regnat vivus.

Death and life have contended
in that combat stupendous:
The Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal.

~Easter Sequence, Victimae Paschali Laudes

Prayer Overcomes the Darkness of Death

In his Good Friday meditations for “The Way of the Cross,” the Pope gave us much to ponder, even as we await the mystery of the resurrection. In particular, he reminded us of prayer as essential to life and death, to the whole horizon of our humanity—prayer as trust in Jesus who saves and fashions anew our humanity.

Trust, trust, trust, in the greatest darkness, beyond the most awful of tragedies, beyond the blackest holes of incomprehensibility that open in front of us, beyond all we accomplish in toil and struggle, and all our sins, failures, incompetence, weakness, all the pain that never goes away… Trust, hold onto Jesus, pray and never give up. The Holy Father says, “persevering prayer bears fruit and overcomes even the darkness of death. Love never goes unanswered, but always grants new beginnings.”

Elsewhere in yesterday’s meditations, Pope Francis prays to Jesus in reference to the moment on the Cross when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—“Jesus, this prayer of yours is unexpected: you cry out to the Father in your abandonment. You, the eternal Son, dispense no answers from on high, but simply ask why? At the height of your passion, you experience the distance of the Father; you no longer even call him ‘Father’, but ‘God’, almost as if you can no longer glimpse his face. Why? So that you can plunge into the abyss of our pain. You did this for my sake, so that when I see only darkness, when I experience the collapse of my certainties and the wreckage of my life, I will no longer feel alone, but realize that you are there beside me. You, the God of closeness, experienced abandonment so that I need no longer fall prey to feelings of isolation and abandonment. When you asked the question why, you did it in the words of a Psalm. You made even the utmost experience of desolation into a prayer. As we too must do, amid the storms of life. Rather than keeping silent, closed in on ourselves, we should cry out to you. Glory to you, Lord Jesus, for you did not flee from my pain and confusion, but tasted them to the full. Praise and glory to you, for you bridged every distance in order to draw near to those who were farthest from you. In my own dark night, when I keep asking why, I find you, Jesus, the light that shines in the darkness. And in the plea of all those who are alone, rejected, oppressed or abandoned, I find you, my God. May I always recognize your presence and turn to you in love.”

Good Friday 2024

Good Friday, March 29, 2024. Two images by Georges Rouault (1871-1958). 

Above [1] “Crucifixion” (1914). 

Below [2] “Golgotha” (1938).

He Washes Our Feet

"When [Jesus] had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, 'Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me "teacher" and "master," and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.' "

~John 13:12-15

The Cross is Suddenly in Our Midst

William Congdon, Crucifix no120 (1974)

Holy Week has gained a sudden and specific weight in our community due to the tragic death of one of our young people. (May the Lord grant him eternal rest, and bring consolation to his family and friends.) 

I don’t have any words to address such sorrow. I have spent all of my pretenses to be able to say anything about this kind of grief on previous occasions—too many previous occasions. It is an incomprehensible suffering. Yet it is filling up the world especially in these times, weighing down the human shoulders of all those it leaves behind.

None of us can bear it. It is an anguish that cries and cries to God, and endures what seems like the silence of God. It opens an abyss in front of us that we don’t know how to bridge or circumvent. 

We must confront the truth that we are powerless. We cannot save the world. We cannot even save ourselves. We have no power to “undo” our own sins. We cannot raise the dead to life. Still, we long for life, forgiveness, and healing beyond the abyss of death. Why does this longing remain in us, with all of our weakness, in the depths of darkness? “My God, my God, why…?”

This week, and in all our days in this world, we place our hope entirely in a greater abyss of a mercy which we will never comprehend, but which has “space” for all our sorrows and suffering, for all that we think is irretrievably cut off, impoverished, botched, or “left unfinished” in our worn and ragged lives—the unfathomable abyss of the pierced Heart of our Crucified God.

Holy Week: All is Grace!

These words from Pope Francis in my archive came up recently. This point is fundamental and we must remember it. Grace is the fruit of the Paschal Mystery that we are praying and living in these days.

We Begin Holy Week With the Memory of St Oscar Romero

[Credit for detail from iconic mural: The Claretians/Cerezo Barredo]

This year Palm Sunday falls on March 24th — which supersedes what would ordinarily be the feast day of Saint Oscar Romero. Therefore, many churches in Latin America moved the celebration of the martyred Archbishop of El Salvador to Saturday March 23rd this year — one day prior to the 44th anniversary of his being gunned down at the altar while saying Mass in the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador.

In fact, Saint Romero’s funeral was held on Palm Sunday in 1980, the week after his death. In the midst of the vast crowd that had gathered in the cathedral and out in the piazza on this profound beginning of Holy Week for Salvadorans, multiple gunmen opened fire, killing forty people and turning the ceremony into a scene of violence, havoc, and terror for the people.

Soon, the long and brutal civil war would begin in full force. But the people kept the courageous witness of the Archbishop in their hearts.

Today Romero’s testimony speaks to our own time. The search for a genuine and just peace must remain the formative purpose and guiding light even in the midst of conflict. Even those who take up arms to defend themselves against unjust aggression need to keep this light burning in their hearts. They must never forget that even the aggressors and their leaders are human persons with ineradicable dignity; a vigorous self-defense can (must) also be an honorable self-defense. Maintaining a spirit of “inner non-violence” is very difficult in these circumstances, but the Christian and human vocation requires it, promises the grace to make it possible, and gives it a supernatural efficacy to extend the influence of God’s Kingdom within the realities of the temporal world—which are signs (that can be imbued with the foretaste and anticipation) of the Father’s House toward which we journey in this life.

Romero expressed it in this way: “Peace is a product of justice. But justice is not enough. Love is necessary: the love that makes us feel that we are brothers and sisters is properly what makes for true peace.” How can living with this love, looking upon everyone as a brother or sister (including the enemy who attacks you and compels you to fight to protect yourself and the rights of your people), generate new possibilities for peace in the midst war or any of the other forms of struggle among human beings?

We will only find out by actually living this way. Insofar as we adhere to God with obedience and love through His crucified Son Jesus, and love every human person as brother or sister, children of the same Father, called in the depths of their hearts by Holy Spirit to eternal life in Jesus who is the “firstborn” of the New Humanity through His cross and resurrection—only insofar as we live this way will we realize the possibilities it opens up for a more just and peaceful world. Saint Oscar Romero reminds us that the vocation to eternal life confers on us responsibilities regarding this world and its concrete circumstances. Our life of faith, hope, and love touches whole reality of the here-and-now “so that, illuminated with the vision of eternity, we make this earth what it was meant to be, a foretaste of heaven.”

But let me quote this entire segment from a homily in 1979 where Saint Oscar Romero encapsulates his understanding of his own calling as a bishop of an unimaginably impoverished and ruthlessly oppressed people, of the Church’s calling, of the calling of every Christian and every human person.

As we follow the “Way of the Cross” during Holy Week 2024, let us not forget what Romero taught us about the scope and the radical risk of living the Gospel, the totality of Christ’s love for which Romero gave witness in his words and actions, and ultimately in the shedding of his own blood:

“The voice of the Church continues to be known and wants to be the voice that preaches the eternal message of the Lord. Despite the distortions and ill-will and slanders and defamation the voice of the Church wants to be that voice that from the heights of heaven draws all things unto herself so that we can speak about the meaning of death and life, the meaning of government and the struggle for just demands, the meaning of well-being and misery and living on the margins of society and the meaning of sin. The Church wants to speak about all these realities so that, illuminated with the vision of eternity, we make this earth what it was meant to be, a foretaste of heaven and not a war zone or a place where passions run wild. Indeed, as sisters and brothers, as children of God, we are all on a journey toward heaven, toward [Christ] the head of the body.”

Christina Grimmie and "the Band"

“What is my favorite memory of a Christina Grimmie concert?” —Question-of-the-day for Team Grimmie Frands all over the world as we continue to celebrate the “thirty days” before Easter in this month of March, in honor of Christina’s 30th birthday.

I never attended a live concert or performance of Christina, but I do have my favorites. Thanks to the Internet, I have some connection with the live show experience thanks to a large audiovisual archive of countless recordings made by people… mostly with their phones from ten years ago.

I really want to thank everyone who made videos (whole or in part) of her concerts, especially—and these are my favorites—the concerts of the 2015 European Tour. I have watched this footage over and over... Christina and THE BAND (Marcus, Jonathan, Bobby) — I love these concerts, especially, because I'm "old school" and I love when there is a real guitar, a real bass, and real drums on stage. 

And Christina had the stuff to be a "front woman"—her voice, of course, was great, and the chemistry with the band was great. 

Let's never lose those precious videos. 

Christina had a terrific stage presence: she was awesome, she was a princess, a rock star — she was passionate, innocent, wise, sweet, and badass all at the same time. I’ve never seen or heard anyone like her in over 50 years of listening to (and playing) every kind of music on many stages at many venues.

Watching the videos is my "concert experience," but I wish I could have seen "Christina and the Band" live. It was a beautiful tour!

Christina in concert: (credit to original owner of any of these images, modified and presented for personal and educational purposes on this blog.)

Prayer of Friday, March 22nd

Good Friday is a week away. As the liturgical year reaches its apex in the annual celebration of “the Paschal Mystery” of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Church’s prayer focuses with a greater intensity on the redemption He won for us.

Our faith is founded on the Person of Jesus, who makes present and enacts God’s “goodness” in “set[ting] us free from the bonds of [our] sins.”

This is not a project to make ourselves “worthy” of God’s love by our own power. God loves us already, and so His grace stirs up in us the awareness of our own “distress,” our need for “mercy.” The Holy Spirit moves our hearts to seek Him with confidence in His promises and His goodness.

And He answers our crying out to Him in our distress. He “deliver[s]” us in a manner beyond anything we could have imagined, by dwelling among us and transforming our history through His Son’s salvific sacrifice on the Cross. Our hope for forgiveness is a response to God’s love and mercy revealed and given in Jesus.

United with Him, we find pardon for our sins, and our “weakness” is changed into “space” for His Spirit to give us new life—we live not only in the hope of “eternal life” with God after death, but in the beginnings of that life that takes hold of us even now, giving meaning to our lives in the present moment, empowering us to worship and love God and to love one another.