John Janaro's Blog, page 53

The Trinity: “God Himself is an Eternal Exchange of Love”

“ Thus the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit testify that they are in no way disunited in power, even though they are distinguished in persons, because they work together in the unity of the simple and immutable substance. How? The Father creates all things through the Word, who is his Son in the Holy Spirit; the Son is he by whom all things are perfected in the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is he by whom all things flourish in the Father and Son, and so these three persons are in the unity of inseparable substance; but they are not indistinct among themselves” (Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias).

Yesterday was the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, and here is Saint Hildegard (the 11th century Benedictine abbess declared a “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Benedict XVI) seeking—like so many others had tried before and would continue to try—to ponder the “luminous darkness” of this most august mystery and find words to speak of His glory that have some meaning for us.

I find the Catechism most helpful here:

“God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC 221).

Tiananmen Square: China Still Censors the Truth

🕯#NeverForgetTheTiananmenSquareMassacre

In 1989, nearly all the vehicles on the streets of Beijing, China were still bicycles. But on June 4, 1989, the streets were filled with tanks and armored personnel carriers. On that dark day, the Chinese Communist PartyState invaded its own national capital to crush defenseless students who were gathered in Tiananmen Square to plead with their government for human freedom and for respect for the dignity of every human person. Thousands died that day, including fleeing students who were shot in the back. Today the CCP still blocks and censors all information related to June 4, 1989 from their own people in mainland China.

Hong Kongers held huge memorial candlelight vigils in memory of the protestors on June 4th every year until 2021. Under the new CCP-dictated “National Security Law,” however, they have been banned. Holding candles in a park, apparently, is now defined as an “attempt to subvert State Power.” Meanwhile Hong Kong’s own protest heroes and heroines remain in jail, and some await final conviction and sentencing for the “shocking, State-subversive crime” of demanding political guarantees of recognition and respect for their humanity and their children’s humanity.

We must never forget. May God have mercy on China, and on the whole world.

The “Special Genius” of Uganda’s Martyrs

June 3rd commemorates the 22 Catholic martyrs of Uganda (Kingdom of Baganda, East Africa, 1886). They were canonized during the Second Vatican Council on October 18, 1964. The original “canonization icon” is hard to find in a high resolution photo. I have a beautiful, large, framed print of this image, and it was on my wall in my office (I think), but that was long ago, and—like so many other things—I don’t know where it is right now. Probably in storage — I have maybe a dozen or so books/icons/objects/etc in storage that are priceless to me; the problem is that they are buried in truckloads of ABSOLUTE JUNK, stored in several different places. In addition to having OCD (which is managed but never cured), I also just like to keep stuff, but I’m also absent-minded and disorganized.

Anyway, the original icon is full of African and universally Christian symbolism, and is very striking. I have attempted to “tune up” an originally tiny photo from the internet; much is lost, but perhaps some sense of the beauty comes through.

At the canonization, Pope Saint Paul VI pointed to the ideal of evangelization that—in bringing people to Jesus— also communicates “a new form of vitality which tends to release the spiritual powers and latent talents of the local population and so set people free, helping to give them a mature power of self-determination, and enabling them to express more fully, in their own idiom of art and culture, the special genius they have.”

Justin Martyr: The First “Christian Philosopher”

By the second century Saint Justin Martyr—whose feast is observed on June 1—had already taken up the exposition of the harmony between reason and faith. As a philosopher, Justin stressed that Christianity was the fulfillment of everything that was true and good in the thought of the ancient Greeks, whose intellectual heritage had been adopted by the Rome of his day.

Justin was born about the year 100 a.d. As a young man he became a seeker after wisdom—literally a “philosopher,”—and he traveled from his native Palestine to Ephesus where he studied under both the Stoics and the Platonists. Fascinated by the Stoic doctrine of the immanent and pervasive presence of the Divine logos giving rationality to the whole cosmos, and also by the Platonist understanding of the natural kinship between the soul and the Transcendent Good, Justin was nevertheless dissatisfied by incompleteness of the philosophic quest. 

He was also amazed by the remarkable courage and joy of the Christian martyrs he had seen dying for Christ while he was still a pagan. This admiration, along with the guidance of a Christian friend, led him to read the Scriptures. He soon discovered that Jesus Christ was the fullness of Wisdom, who had become incarnate in order to communicate the whole truth to man. Christ was the Goodness and Beauty sought by the Platonists, and the Divine Logos sought by the Stoics.

Justin converted to Christianity, but he continued to wear the "cloak" of a philosopher. He traveled to Rome where he opened a philosophical school that attracted numerous disciples. Finally, as his name indicates, he suffered martyrdom in Rome in the year 165.

Justin taught that Christianity was the fulfillment of philosophy and the correction of its errors. The philosophers had discovered portions of the truth, on account of the Divine Logos who enlightens the intellect of every man. But because they did not perceive the whole of the Logos—the whole of the Divine Wisdom—they contradicted one another and fell short of the full truth. Jesus Christ, however (said Justin) is the "Whole Logos" incarnate, manifesting in his flesh the fullness of the Divine Wisdom and making this Wisdom accessible not just to philosophers but to everyone. 

Thus, Saint Justin concluded, Christian revelation is "more noble than all human teaching." It alone is the complete truth. In his Second Apologia, he states, "Whatever has been spoken aright by any men belongs to us Christians, for we worship and love, next to God, the Logos which is from the unbegotten and ineffable God... For all those writers were able, through the seed of the Logos implanted in them, to see reality darkly. For it is one thing to have the seed of a thing and to imitate it up to one's capacity: far different is the thing itself, shared and imitated in virtue of its own grace" (II Apology, ch. 13).

Justin the Christian philosopher also emphasized something that no philosopher had ever stressed before: the meaning of history. Since the fullness of Divine Truth had become incarnate as a man in history, Justin concluded that the whole of human history had been a preparation for Him. This was clear enough in the case of the Jews; one could demonstrate that their prophecies were fulfilled in Christ. However, Justin was equally certain that philosophy had been given by God to the Greeks in order to prepare them for the Gospel. Justin saw the Incarnation as the center of God's plan for all of history, a plan that was destined to be fulfilled in the resurrection of the body and the renewal of all creation.

In presenting Christianity as the fulfillment of the philosophic quest of the Greeks, Saint Justin Martyr did not invent new speculations of his own, but sought to convey faithfully what God had really accomplished in history. We should not be surprised, therefore, that even in the middle of the second century Saint Justin would place great emphasis on tradition.

Because Christianity is an adherence to a man in history—to the things he said and did and to the society he constituted—it was crucial from the very beginning to receive and hand-on faithfully the authentic testimony of those He sent forth to bear witness to His name. Thus the measure of genuine Christian thinking and the anecdote to every poisonous distortion of the Christian message could only be fidelity to the apostolic tradition. In his famous account of early Christian liturgical and sacramental practice, Justin indicates that it was already common practice in the middle of the second century for the "memoirs of the Apostles" to be read at the Eucharistic celebration (See I Apology, ch. 67).

It is beautiful to begin the month of June by commemorating the “first Christian philosopher”—the first of a long line of philosophers who acknowledge that human reason (and all of reality) finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 2023: “Holy Spirit, Heal Our Wounds…”

.Sequence of Pentecost:.Come, Holy Spirit, come!And from your celestial homeShed a ray of light divine!
Come, Father of the poor!
Come, source of all our store!
Come, within our bosoms shine.
You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;
In our labor, rest most sweet;
Grateful coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.
O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill!
Where you are not, we have naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
On our dryness pour your dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away:
Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.
On the faithful, who adore
And confess you, evermore
In your sevenfold gift descend;
Give them virtue’s sure reward;
Give them your salvation, Lord;
Give them joys that never end. Amen.
Alleluia.

The Gift is Ever Greater…

If we sacrifice the gifts that have been given to us—if we “give away” all we have and all we are, for the love of God—it can sometimes feel like we are leaping into the abyss of the Mystery, beyond anything we can comprehend. The faith that assures us, the hope that guides us, the love that impels us sometimes seem so faint and small. We feel that we are on the verge of being overwhelmed.

But we are never abandoned. The signs of the Lord’s steadfast love renew themselves on the journey of our lives. Even in this world, we catch glimpses of the miracle of endurance of God’s love, and the fruitfulness of our participation in His giving. Sometimes we see this through recognizing the simple ways that goodness grows within history through our sacrifices. In the measure God knows we need to persevere on the path toward our destiny in Him, He allows us to experience along the way something of the human richness of this truth that “in giving we shall receive”—that His gift is ever greater.

I am grateful for being blessed—as I grow older—to see anew the wonder of all existence through the eyes of a child. 

Maria! 

What a total, unique, gratuitous miracle she is! I could never “fabricate” through my own power, through all the efforts of my mind to control reality, anything like this new little person. 

Now she is nearly two years old. She is learning new words every day (and she loves to chatter). She knows the different colors of the crayons. She can recite her “ABCs” and count to at least twelve (or at least she knows the letters and numbers, more or less). And so many other things….

Holy Spirit, come. Open my eyes every day to the wonder of your ever-greater gifts, to confidence that the Risen Jesus is renewing all things, and that every pain and struggle and sorrow will bear fruit beyond all measure.

“They Grow Up Fast”—Family Life (& All of Life) is “Sacrifice”

This is from a Facebook post on May 26, 2009. If you are as old as I am, you think “2009 … wow, that was fourteen YEARS ago?!” But, in fact, a lot has changed since 2009. These faces have certainly changed!!

They have changed, and we have changed. The noise level in the house has changed into a kind of “silence” that Eileen and I are still trying to “get used to.” Four of these kids are adults now (and two of them are already married!), and each one of them has a unique personality and vocation. Each one also has the fragility of the human condition. Each has their own problems and sufferings too. Life is hard. 

Don’t envy the people with smiling pictures of their smiling families on social media. Everyone is suffering, everyone is wounded. And human parents who love their children still “worry” about them and suffer-with them, no matter where they are.

The Lord gives us gifts, so that we in turn can give them. We journey toward our destiny through sacrifice, by which the gifts we have been given mature and realize themselves. And along the course of our journey—especially as it approaches its end—we must give everything, or else learn to give by the mysterious process of being divested of everything. Every person is utterly poor at the moment of death. 

It is only through sacrifice that we can “store up treasure in the Kingdom of God” — the ultimate fulfillment that is hard for us to picture to ourselves in this present life. We know “in part” (an often obscure “part”) through faith, hope, and love for the One who has already begun His reign in His Father’s Kingdom, who gives us His Spirit to keep the light of joy and trust burning even in the “darkness” of this giving-everything-away, this losing-ourselves-in-order-to-find-ourselves — in our journey toward that ultimate, transfigured fulfillment of our true selves and of everyone and everything in the unveiled glory of the Mystery who is Infinite Gift and Infinite Love. 

We glimpse all of this now through faith in the testimony that has been handed down to us and the Spirit who dwells in us, who reminds us that sacrifice is not despair, or alienation, or nihilism; sacrifice is love that abandons everything into the embrace of the One who has loved us first. Thus, sacrifice holds fast to hope in the promise of the ultimate meaning and fulfillment of our poor human lives. We know that sacrifice is vindicated, because we follow a Man who is Risen from the dead!

A Dim Yellow Sun in the Evening Sky

There were lots of what appeared to be thin clouds and haze on the horizon this evening. This is a photograph of THE SUN over the tree line at 7:48 PM (some 40 minutes before sunset). I know, it’s not good to stare at the sun even when you “can,” so mostly I took snaps on my phone. But even these glimpses struck me as very unusual.

Later I learned the surprising explanation. Wildfires in Western Canada have been going on for several weeks. Changing weather conditions drew the smoke down through the USA, all the way to the East Coast today (May 24, 2023).

The world is intrinsically interconnected, indeed.

���The One Who Fills All Things���

What we believe in, hope for, pray for, is a mighty thing. Because we are distracted, and because it is not the kind of ���might��� that fits the pattern of power as we conceive of it in this life, we easily forget about the transcendent and all-present omnipotence of Infinite Love who creates and redeems us. It is a mysterious ���power,��� which is beyond our comprehension���even though we yearn for it, and are made for it.
But our hope is not in the power of an ideology that we have to draw from within ourselves and measure by our own thoughts. The ���power��� we depend upon is a Person, a person we encounter, a person we love, because He has come to be one of us, to share our life and death that we may share the fullness of His resurrection. We are ���His body,��� united with Him, and���let us never forget������members��� of one another in Him. We belong to Him who loved us first, and will love us to the end. This mystery reduces me to silence, and to an attention and gratitude I cannot express.
���May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way��� (Ephesians 1:17-23).

“The One Who Fills All Things”

What we believe in, hope for, pray for, is a mighty thing. Because we are distracted, and because it is not the kind of “might” that fits the pattern of power as we conceive of it in this life, we easily forget about the transcendent and all-present omnipotence of Infinite Love who creates and redeems us. It is a mysterious “power,” which is beyond our comprehension—even though we yearn for it, and are made for it.
But our hope is not in the power of an ideology that we have to draw from within ourselves and measure by our own thoughts. The “power” we depend upon is a Person, a person we encounter, a person we love, because He has come to be one of us, to share our life and death that we may share the fullness of His resurrection. We are “His body,” united with Him, and—let us never forget—“members” of one another in Him. We belong to Him who loved us first, and will love us to the end. This mystery reduces me to silence, and to an attention and gratitude I cannot express.
“May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Ephesians 1:17-23).