John Janaro's Blog, page 46

A “VLOG” at the End of September

Happy End of September! 

I have made a Vlog post, in which I reflect for a few moments with you all after my evening walk. I really should make more videos. I should just “get over” my feelings of awkwardness talking to the camera, and my fear of being “boring” or not having a sufficiently pre-packaged “message” or speaking so slowly through my “brain fog.” I have many observations and a little understanding to share, and I’m over 60 so I should just get-it-out-there using all varieties of accessible media but not worrying too much about a “slick show.” As ever, I’m inspired by the immortal words of G. K. Chesterton: “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

I’m in an odd mood in this video, probably because I have been studying too much about Maoist China lately, going through memoirs of political prisoners, etc. (currently reading the prison letters of Wei Jingsheng, former Red Guard and then famous “Democracy Wall” dissident in 1979). 

My life as an invalid can sometimes feel a “little bit” like “solitary confinement” in a prison — but, of course, it’s not like what these guys went through. I’m not being interrogated, tortured, pressured to make false confessions and implicate other people I know in any false “crimes.” It’s not that bad! I’m studying and forming my own mind, and I’m trying to find ways to open up more and share with you the things I’m learning (mostly, I’m learning things that make me realize how little I really know).

Anyway, here’s a chat which is rambly, but stick with me.  It all ends in a very encouraging way:

Archangels

Happy Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael — the angels whose names we know from Sacred Scripture.

Jesus said to Nathaniel, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

Remembering Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement”

Nine Years Ago — On September 28, 2014, police fired tear gas at a peaceful protest in Hong Kong Central. For Hong Kongers, this was an unprecedented act of aggression by the region’s once-highly-respected and up-until-then-independent police force against its own people. In response to police violence, millions took to the streets in the ensuing days and weeks in what became known as the “Umbrella Movement.” 

Inspired by Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests earlier that year, Hong Kongers remained in the streets for more than two months, demanding political reforms as they saw their “guaranteed” special autonomous status being eroded by mainland China’s Communist PartyState. After peacefully disbanding in November 2014, the movement continued to work through the social and political process, only to be thwarted again and again by the increasing encroachment of Beijing’s “Lawfare” tactics, which ultimately led to the struggles throughout the city in 2019. The Pro-Democracy movement won an overwhelming victory in the 2019 District Council elections, but—as we all know—other circumstances soon arose that “cleared the streets” globally. While the world sought solutions for a global crisis, Beijing imposed a new “National Security Law” in Hong Kong on June 1, 2020. The Repression of Hong Kong began in earnest.

There needs to be a dialogue about Hong Kong’s future, but dialogue is impossible if people are forbidden to speak freely. Let us remember this day, and pray for those who have been silenced, and especially for those who are in prison or on trial because their efforts to be heard were met with violence and repression.

Happy Birthday Avril Lavigne: Sing Your Heart Out

Happy 39th Birthday (‼️) to the enormously talented, funny, rowdy, sometimes reckless, always great-hearted Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne. She’s also a fellow Lyme disease survivor who has done much to spread information and awareness about this illness, and support others who are struggling with it.

Avril is currently busy with many things (I can’t keep up with her). Her musical creativity is her greatest gift, and when she reaches down deep she can make powerful songs that seem simple but resonate profoundly thanks to her uniquely versatile and evocative voice. No one in the world sings like her. Two decades ago, she sang with real-life candor about being a teenage girl—about liking boys, of course, but also about the whole spectrum of enthusiasm for life, wondering about the future, dreams, awkwardness, loneliness, searching for human connection, and the discovery of existence as an awesome adventure that is “anything but ordinary.”

“Dear Avril, there are still songs not yet written that no one but you can sing. Give your great voice to those songs that express the whole range of struggles and joys and questions of your life today. Don’t give in to cynicism, but find the wonder and fascination and urgency of what life offers you now. Ask that question, ‘is it enough?’, and then sing your heart out. You can sing these songs like nobody else. And not just power ballads (of which you already have some of the best ever); go ahead and rock ‘n roll it — make some “noise,” not just in anger, not for vengeance, but with the energy and enthusiasm that will help the rest of us to wake up. Your voice has a strength and a clarity and a quality that shapes words so that they stick in our heads.

“Wishing you many more happy birthdays…”

The Thousand Days of Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai

“If I suffer for the right cause, it only defines the person I am becoming. It can only be good for me to become a better person. If you believe in the Lord, if you believe that all suffering has a reason, and the Lord is suffering with me ... I’m at peace with it” (Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong democracy activist, former publisher of the Apple Daily, Prisoner of the Chinese Communist Party-State).
Today Jimmy Lai marks 1000 days in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Hong Kong. He is presently serving a sentence of five years on trumped-up charges regarding his newspaper supposedly violating a lease agreement, but that’s just a warm-up for whatever Beijing is really planning to inflict on this courageous 75-year-old whose newspaper published the truth about Hong Kong’s struggle for freedom over the past decade.
He still faces charges of “subversion” under Beijing’s “national security law” which the CCP imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 in order to crush the further advance of its popular Pro-Democracy movement. The Brave New China of Xi Jingpeng uses different tactics to smash those who refuse to conform its agenda of building a neocolonial, neo-fascist commercial empire. Rather than the tanks and guns of 1989, China’s current Party-state wages “Lawfare.” Beijing has invaded Hong Kong with the implacable hydra-headed monster of its bureaucracy. When the CCP speaks about the “rule of law” what they really mean is that they rule using their “laws” administered by their unaccountable system. Its a 21st century version of old Imperial China’s “death-by-a-thousand-cuts.”
Jimmy Lai has spent nearly three years in prison, waiting for a trial that continues to be delayed—a show trial that is guaranteed to produce another prison sentence that will last the rest of his life. He waits along with hundreds of other political prisoners, including Joshua Wong—the 26-year-old activist who has been fighting for the freedom of his city since he was a teenager in 2012 —and others who may disappear into the notoriously inhuman Chinese prison system that has tortured and brutalized many dissidents in the past. The world must not forget them.
They will not suffer alone. The young ones, if they embrace the call of interior non-violence—if they refuse to hate their captors, their torturers, and those who hold power—they will be shaped by a freedom that is irrepressible when it lives by love, and one day they will emerge as men and women prepared for leadership, prepared to change their beloved city and all of China. They must endure in hope that China will change, that the nightmare of repression will end. Their suffering will not be in vain. Indeed, the many Catholics and other Christians among them (including Joshua Wong and 2014 Umbrella Movement leader Benny Tai) know this by their faith in Jesus. May He sustain them, and all their compatriots who in suffering for the sake of what is right are carrying out a great work of mercy.
Then there are the elders. Jimmy Lai escaped from Chairman Mao’s dystopian reign when he was a boy, and took refuge in then-British Hong Kong. He worked hard and used his creative energy to build a successful business in the British colony and became a full British citizen. Long a supporter of his wife’s Catholic faith, Jimmy Lai was finally baptized in 1997, within a week after the colony was handed over to mainland rule under an agreement that was full of promises of “autonomy” for Hong Kong. But we know only too well that Leninist fascism puts the iron grip of Party control first, that it lives by lies and broken promises.
As a British citizen, Jimmy Lai could have easily left Hong Kong when the persecution began in 2020. But he chose to stay, to continue the fight, knowing that for him it might well end in suffering. He finds the grace of courage, he sees the meaning and value of the road ahead, in faith that “the Lord is suffering with me.”
[*Digital portrait of Jimmy Lai (above) based on news photograph. Credit to original photo owner—used for educational purposes only in this personal weblog. Art by JJStudios.]

“Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry”

“Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”
~Padre Pio (September 23)

Autumn is Here, and It’s Wet!

Happy Fall 2023. (…or Spring, if you’re Down Under.) We have arrived at another equinox.

Unlike the rest of the planet, here in “The Valley” we had what seemed like an unusually mild summer. 

But it has been very dry. Thunderstorms came like splashes of water on thirsty ground, but they didn’t help the water levels. The lawns have hardly needed mowing all summer. Then, after surprisingly bearable temperatures throughout July and August, we finally had a big heat wave at the beginning of this month.

Now we have arrived at the nearly three-quarter-mark of the year. The temperatures have plunged and the skies have opened. The seasons are “shifting gears” again.

My joints ache. Arrgh! They hurt!—which is not exactly “news,” although getting older is not helping.

They will trouble me especially until the brisk air of October comes in to stay. Wet weather is the worst for the old “rheumatism,” but I shall manage as best as I can while we finally get relief from the drought.

I love Autumn. I’m not too thrilled about the shorter days, especially the earlier evenings. Still, the best weather of the year (at least in my opinion) comes to our area in the next three months. Fall colors are not usually dramatic, but they vary throughout the season and combine with the changing angles of sunlight to create many colorful vistas.

I shall post some “natural” photographs (is there even such a thing?—that’s another question for another day). But photos are a form of media that seem best suited for “catching” nature as she puts on her own show.

But I shall also permit those Autumn colors to inspire my art. It will be fascinating to watch where they lead me.

Jesus Calls Matthew… and Each One of Us

Happy Saint Matthew’s Day! It’s time once again for our annual contemplation of “The Call…” painted in 1600 by that Master of Shadows and Light, Michelangelo Merisi da CARAVAGGIO! I am still “shook” by this painting as much as when I first saw the original in Rome, 30 years ago.
The painting expresses something of that great mercy that Jesus brought into the world, that healing mercy, that inexhaustible mercy, God’s mercy. He calls Matthew to follow Him, to stay with Him, to trust in Him. Christ’s mercy penetrates the darkness of Matthew’s life of sin and engenders something new within Matthew’s heart, an attraction that awakens his true desire and draws him to Jesus. In following the call of Jesus, Matthew is converted. 
The Pharisees’ condemnation of their behavior didn’t change sinners or give them hope. What changes them is the presence of Jesus—Mercy incarnate—the Divine Physician, the Savior who calls sinners to follow Him and be freed and made new by His love. 
He calls Matthew the tax collector to be one of the Twelve Apostles, His chosen witnesses for the foundation of the Catholic Christian people. 
He calls each one of us—no matter how messed up we are, no matter what our sins are, no matter how impossible it may seem to us that we might ever change our lives—He calls us all through our time in this world, every day, every moment. With infinite love and mercy, He implores us, He begs us, “Follow me, stay with me, trust in me.” He wants us so much, because He loves us with an immeasurable love. We who wallow in our sins, fixated on ourselves and tying ourselves in knots—what if we allowed ourselves to hear His voice? What if we looked up to see His face? Why not follow Him? He is the One for whom we have been created. He is our happiness and fulfillment. And He is here.
If we stay with Him, we will change, we will be healed and transformed. Mercy opens up within the depths of our souls a new “space” of desire, a hope that He will save us, that we can be with Him forever because He has come to be with us. The more we follow Him, the more He draws us to love Him, and the more we see all of reality in a new way, the true way. The “conversion of Saint Matthew” is the fruit of his encounter with Jesus Christ who calls him. It is enough to say, “he got up and followed Him” (Matthew 9:9).
Thus we read in today’s Gospel:
“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ He heard this and said, ‘Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners’” (Matthew 9:9-13).

The Birth of the Church in Korea

Today is the feast of the 103 Korean martyrs canonized by John Paul II in 1984. The remarkable story of the beginnings of Christianity in Korea—along with an account of the conversion of one of them, Saint Mareuko Jeong (in older transliterations “Mark Chong”)—appears in my column in this month’s Magnificat. Here is the text:

Saint Mareuko Jeong Eui-Bae is one of the 103 Korean martyrs whose feast we celebrate on September 20. He is among some 10,000 Koreans who gave their lives for Christ during multiple fierce persecutions in the mid-19th century. Most were ordinary lay men and women, but some were also from the educated classes and the nobility. We know enough about the high-ranking nobleman/scholar Mareuko Jeong to appreciate the particular drama of his conversion.

Korean cultural life flourished for many centuries, creatively appropriating ancient Chinese literary and religious traditions into its own independent society. But by the end of the 18th century, the 500-year-old Joseon dynasty was in deep decline, and dependent on Qing-dynasty China. Meanwhile, the Joseon Neo-Confucian State had become a religious/political structure of rigid social hierarchy, with the monarch at the center, followed by the noble and scholarly classes, and with many of the common people reduced to a status of virtual slavery.

It was the scholar-officials who began searching for ways to reform this ossified society. In frequent diplomatic trips to Beijing, they met “Westeners” (including Catholic priests) and obtained books on developments in Western science, technology, philosophy, and religion translated into Chinese. Thus arose the “Sohak” movement—groups of scholars who studied “Western learning” and discussed its possible value for reforming Korean society. For most, it was mainly an intellectual examination of various Western ideas, but a few were drawn specifically to the Catholic faith. Yi Sung-hun was baptized in Beijing in 1784, returned to Korea, and baptized a few of his compatriots. By the time the first priest arrived in 1795 there were 4000 baptized lay Catholics waiting for him.

There was also aggressive opposition to the new teaching. The Joseon royal house and their Neo-Confucian supporters viewed Christianity as a threat to the Korean social order. Worship of One God in Jesus Christ undermined the religious/superstitious system of rites offered for the monarch and the hierarchical continuity of clan and family. Christianity preached that God was the Father of all people, who were brothers and sisters with a common destiny in Christ regardless of their origins and social status. Among the scholars who abhorred the new Christian teaching was (Mareuko) Jeong Eui-Bae.

Born in 1794, Jeong was an established professor of Chinese literature and defender of the status quo when persecution broke out in 1839. By that time the French Foreign Mission Society had sent a bishop and two priests to Korea. In 1839, Jeong Eui-Bae witnessed the brutal mutilation and execution of Bishop Laurentius Imbert, Father Peter Maubant, and Father Jakob Chastan. (They are also among the 103 martyred saints.)

The 47-year-old scholar had seen death many times. But in these three men Jeong saw something completely new: an astonishing joy in the face of torture and death. Jeong was growing old in a society where death was covered with shadows. His studies gave no hint as to how to face death, much less to embrace it with the joy he saw on the faces of those missionaries that day.

Disregarding his honorable station, Jeong obtained and read forbidden Christian books and met the people who believed in the One written about in those books. Glimpsing there the Source of hitherto unknown joy and hope, the long-cynical old professor was totally converted. He was baptized Mareuko (Mark) and devoted his newfound zeal and intellectual skills to working as a catechist and caring for the sick. The poor humble people whom the former aristocrat had once scorned he now served with love until his own martyrdom in 1866, at age 72.

San Gennaro

Happy "Janaro Family Feast Day"! Buona Festa di San Gennaro! 

Today is the Feast Day of the Great Ancestor of the Janaro Clan, the original Saint Januarius, fourth-century bishop and martyr. I'm sure he must, somehow, be related to us, what with the "Benevento" and "Naples" regional traditions and all... or there must be some connection, because "Janaro" (with the "J") is a variant in old Neapolitan dialect of "Januarius." Both of which are derived from the mythical Roman god "Janus," the "guardian of the gateways" and all places where people come in and go out (note that "January" is the first month, the end of one year and the beginning of another).

Thus I hypothesize. 

In any case, according to Legend (and I should know, because I made up the legend) he is the patron saint of the Janaros. 

SAN GENNARO, PRAY FOR US!!