John Janaro's Blog, page 47

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Mid-September brings the ancient liturgical celebration of the “Exaltation of the Holy Cross” (September 14), which is linked to the fourth-century reclamation and first public development of Jerusalem as the center of Christian pilgrimage.

The locations of the death and resurrection of Jesus became accessible for the first time to pilgrims from all places thanks to Emperor Constantine’s official tolerance and increasing public favor of Christianity, along with the work of his mother Saint Helena, who found the original sites and the relic of the True Cross that had been preserved over several centuries of pagan Roman administration of the city.

These places matter to us because God entered human history, died on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead there, not thus becoming restrained by these places and moments, but rather establishing Himself as the Center of the fulfillment of history and the radical origin of a new creation, as the Redeemer and Lord of all times and places, of each and every one of us.

The Cross of Jesus is exalted, not with a merely worldly glory, but with the glory beyond anything we can imagine, the endless glory of the God who wants to give Himself to us, the God who is Infinite Love.

September 11: “Hatred of the Human”

"It was not Jews, it was not Christians,
it was not Westerners, it was not Easterners.
There were all of these people at the World Trade Center.
What did they have in common?
Their humanity.
That was their offense. That was the object of their hatred.
This was hatred of the human."
.
~Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, commenting on 9/11 in an interview with Frontline, 2002.

Christina Grimmie: Held Up “With Love”

In addition to my nature scenery, faces like this one make me want to persevere in working hard with digital graphic art, in the possibilities it offers for portraiture. As I mark seven years and three months honoring Christina Grimmie, I’m inspired and grateful for all the music she shared with us.

We recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of Christina’s second album, With Love, and its beautiful title song. May the One about whom she sang this song “always hold her up” in the presence of that Love which overcomes every evil and all forms of violence.

The “Russo-Ukrainian War” Must Not Be Forgotten

The “Russo-Ukrainian War” (as it’s being called) is more like the First World War than anyone expected a major clash in Europe in the 21st century would look like. There are many exceptions, of course, like drones. Death and destruction fall anonymously from the air often enough to keep ordinary Ukrainian people constantly anxious and alert. But the front lines of battle are on the ground, and they move slowly and at great cost. 

What else are we witnessing here in addition to Ukraine’s struggle to reestablish its territorial borders? Are we still in “the early days” of an as-yet-unimaginable global war? It has gotten no easier to predict how military conflict may yet escalate, or what future geopolitical problems might emerge from the current situation. These are some of the many obscurities of “the fog of war.”

With an estimated 500,000 killed and millions driven into exile, the present war in Ukraine has more than enough carnage to distinguish itself as a significant historical phenomenon (how awful it sounds to classify so much suffering in academic terms!). 

Not surprisingly, it is becoming more difficult to package the news about the war for the typical Western “information consumer.” But no one should forget or make light of this awful war and the suffering it is causing. We must continue to pray, to reform our own lives, to follow Jesus, to make reparation for sin through unity with His most compassionate Heart, to beg for peace for all the peoples and places that cry out from the pain of violence.

May God have mercy on Ukraine and its people, and on us all.

The “Flood” of Digital Graphics: HELP!!

Among many developments in “AI” technology, the graphics revolution is one that I see happening day-by-day, week-by-week. New ways to digitally create and manipulate images are continually becoming more accessible to the public. 

I have been trying to use digital technology to be artistically creative, but the flood of new things is overwhelming right now. Electronic media do not set “natural limits,” and at present they are pushing in the opposite direction. If digital artists do not set their own limits, they will not succeed in being creative—in actually making a work that is finished. They will be caught in the vortex of an endless video game. 

That is one reason why I like to post my work online (even if I’m not satisfied with it). It’s one way of giving finality to a project. Perhaps I should start aiming for a “print,” ultimately. Even open a shop to share my work concretely. There’s no substitute for three dimensionality—something you can hold in your hand. 

It should be noted that all this is a current weird extension of the perennial struggle of the artist in any medium. Piles of unfinished canvases, sheets and recordings of unfinished or half-finished music, fragments of poems—there’s nothing new about any of that. What’s new (and an added stress for the nervous system) is the additional “layer of mediation” that electronic technology opens up, which apparently increases power and versatility but also increases “distance” from the created object(s). Even the clutter of your not-entirely-discarded efforts can be “stored” in the digital cloud.

This is marketed as making creativity “easier.” It certainly facilitates banality, frustration, self-deception, vanity, and wasting time. But it cannot substitute for attention, focus, patience, intense effort, or discipline. To create a work of beauty—an analogous expression of Beauty (however humble)—is never easy.

Mother Teresa: “To Love and To Be Loved”

Saint “Mother Teresa” (September 5), pray for us.

September is Here Again

The month of September 2023 has begun.

The new academic year is already well launched, but in the USA and other countries the “Labor Day Weekend” brings the vacation season to a close. Eileen and Jojo are back to school. And once again I feel a bit “lost” to the transitions and changes of routine that for many years set the rhythm of my life.

I continue the pattern of life that chronic illness has set for me — a kind of surreal form of “house arrest” that is not terribly burdensome. I have my books and access to information and communications technology on a massive scale. Aside from battling a bit of depression, my mind remains very much alive and engaged on many things. Almost every day, I have a segment of outdoor activity, where I walk the grounds around our house and in the neighborhood. I have not tired of our little patch of earth. I work with digital art for a portion of each day, and read and write during another portion. We watch some television in the evening. I pray, and try to “participate remotely” in one of the many live-streamed Masses available on YouTube throughout the day. Then, each Sunday, I go to Mass — my big outing of the week — and family usually gets together on Sunday afternoons.

I get tired easily, and then things are not so clear. Usually I have to nap every day.

I’m beginning my 60th September (I can’t possibly be 60, can I?). Half a lifetime ago, I was in the process of moving to Italy. Yes, that was 1993 … that’s what 30 years ago feels like. Ah, Roma! You will forever be “my home.”

Exhausted. But there is so much to do, so much that I want to do. I have spent a lifetime refining my ability to understand and share my gifts. What will become of those efforts? Something still burns within me — something that, it seems, still needs to grow and be cultivated to bear fruit.

I pray and pray, knowing that everything is in God’s hands.

Pope Francis in Mongolia, Knocks on China’s “Wall”

I don’t know an 86-year-old man does it. 

The pope has undoubtedly natural reserves of energy, notwithstanding the knee problems, the sciatica, and other internal problems. But grace builds on nature, and the animating force that has driven Francis into one of the world’s great deserts is an evangelical love for the people of Mongolia.

There are only a few thousand Christians among three-and-a-half million Mongolians, many of whom still lead nomadic lives but also carry the memory of their forebears who built an immense empire throughout China and Central Asia in the 13th century. It was a starkly ambivalent empire, bringing total destruction upon those who resisted its conquering armies, but also a measure of peace and civil and religious tolerance to places that that submitted and became tributaries.

While it flourished, the Mongolian empire made relatively safe the vast East-West overland trade route, a long and perilous way held together by an archipelago of oases. For a time in the Western Middle Ages, a “line” of communication and exchange was opened that stretched from Venice to Beijing.

This memory, however, was not the purpose of Francis’s visit. Today Mongolia is a scantily populated “periphery” of the global landscape. It’s people are easily ignored. But they are people, human persons, each one of them loved by God and redeemed by Jesus Christ. This is enough for the Holy Spirit, to whom Francis is committed to listening.

It also happens to be the case that Mongolia today shares a border of some 2000 miles with the north of the Peoples Republic of China. The possible significance of this border in the playing-out of events in the 21st century and beyond is impossible to determine today. But Pope Francis walked through the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar he came closer than any of his predecessors to the soil of the historically great, currently enigmatic “world” that is China.

China is also much loved by God, and destined to play a pivotal role in the emerging epoch. Like his confrere Saint Francis Xavier, Pope Francis reached the threshold of China. He “knocked” on the doors of its metaphorical “Great Wall” (not far from the remains of the actual Wall on classical China’s northern frontier). May the Lord grant that others will follow, building bridges of communication and understanding, opening up the paths of the Holy Spirit, the way of evangelization. We hope that the next encounter between East and West will be marked by an enrichment of the fullness of Catholicity, rather than by an explosion of another cataclysmic war.

“…A Different Perception of Things…”

It is so easy to become divisive, belligerent, and self-imposing (individually or “tribally”) in a fragmented society. It is also easy to become fatalistic, cynical, apathetic, withdrawn, or confused and afraid. How can we live in a true way, true to our own humanity, our freedom, our “selves” here-and-now, today?

We waste so much time trying to define ourselves by limited proposals and perspectives, by human ideologies that insulate us from facing our own radical vulnerability; our need to ask the question that pervades everything in life and that is infinitely deeper than ourselves.

The foundation for engaging reality is not an ideology we have to construct, or membership in the “right party” among all our ever-more-divided and exclusionary partisan factions. The foundation is a Person to whom we belong in a relationship of abandonment and trust — and we are empowered to belong to Him (within the depths of our freedom) because He has given Himself to us in His infinite Love, and He is with us now. It is okay if we don’t “understand” things, or feel “overwhelmed” by things. We can ask Him, stay with Him, follow Him — an He will change us and cause us to grow in new ways, into the inexhaustible spaces of His wisdom and love.

Adherence to the Person of Christ makes you a new creature, who has "the dignity, the certainty of your destiny and the capacity to operate in a new and more human way." This new humanity means "A different experience of the sentiment of yourself, a different perception of things, a different emotion of the presence of others, a different impetus and density in relationships, a different gusto in the troubled dynamic of work, an outcome that was inconceivable, unimaginable before" (Luigi Giussani).

One More “Summer Sunset”…

One more “Summer Sunset” as August 2023 comes to an end. The weather was unusually pleasant this month (but we still need rain).