John Janaro's Blog, page 65

Dorothy Day: A New Way of Looking at the World

Dorothy Day's long labors came to an end on November 29, 1980. After her conversion, she spent half a century bearing witness to Christ and serving Him in the poor.

Dorothy was a radical in every sense: she was rooted in prayer, penance, and fidelity to the Church, while also recognizing that a living faith has radical implications for the way human persons regard and interact with one another.

Her extensive writings are a dimension of her whole personal witness, and her voice was prophetic in that it pointed to a way of looking at the world—the demiurgic, tumultuous, explosive world of the twentieth century (that continues today). She endeavored to give a voice to the poor, to the dignity of the human person and the mysterious workings of God's grace, and to the deep passion and hard realism of loving our neighbor, of loving one another in the here-and-now.

Before she began her powerful apostolate and founded The Catholic Worker, however, Dorothy Day underwent her own long and often difficult conversion experience. The hand of the Lord was upon her from childhood, but she ran from Him in the days of her youth. She ran down desperate roads and into dark places only to encounter the love of God again and again, until she finally surrendered to Him.

Her story is, indeed, a "Great Conversion Story," and though I cannot do justice to this remarkable story in two small pages of a magazine article, I gave it my best shot in the October 2017 issue of MAGNIFICAT.
I have been writing this monthly series called Great Conversion Stories for nearly ten years in this excellent magazine, and there's still more to come in 2023 and beyond. And there are many reasons (besides my column) to subscribe to MAGNIFICAT. It is a wonderful resource for daily immersion in the liturgical life of the Church according to the current Roman rite, as well as daily meditations, articles, and monthly full color reproductions of classic works of religious art accompanied by enlightening commentary. Magnificat is a great resource for people who want to pray daily with the Church even in the midst of a multitude of responsibilities in the temporal world.

The Servant of God Dorothy Day died 42 years ago. In marking this anniversary today, I can only provide the most brief of introductions to the early years of this great and unique, holy and challenging woman of faith:

Advent 2022

For [Christ] assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh,
and so fulfilled the design you [Father] formed long ago,
and opened for us the way to eternal salvation,
that, when he comes again in glory and majesty
and all is at last made manifest,
we who watch for that day
may inherit the great promise
in which now we dare to hope.
(…from the Advent Preface)

Genocide in Ukraine: Never Again!

🇺🇦Pray for the people of Ukraine.🇺🇦 

The last Saturday in November is Holodomor Remembrance Day—marking the beginning of the Winter of 1932-33, the height of Stalin’s brutal program to eliminate the Ukrainian people by man-made famine.

Today, 90 years later, Stalin’s successors are ruthlessly bombing Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure (electricity, water, heat, transportation, hospitals, schools, etc.) as Winter begins once again. Unable to conquer Ukraine, they seem bent on destroying it, and bringing affliction especially to those most vulnerable (children and elderly people, families, the poor, the sick). 

God have mercy on the martyred people of Ukraine!🇺🇦😥

I have “Google-translated” this ardent letter from Pope Francis to the people of Ukraine, dated November 24, which appeared in Ukrainian on the website of the Ukrainian Greek (Byzantine) Catholic Church in Kyiv. It also appears on the Vatican website, but not (yet) in English. The translation is not authoritative (obviously) but it expresses the Pope’s profound solidarity with the Ukrainian people, insofar as the nature of his office permits him to state it publicly. It is a model for all of us, for our prayers, our attention, our hearts:

More “Impressionistic Autumn Scenes”

Even though it now gets dark so early, and some days have been cold, there is a different kind of beauty to gaze upon, and for me to present via photographic originals rendered by digital tools into unique works of “digital art.”

Scenes of late Autumn at the end of November, digitally “sculpted” by JJ.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving 2022 from the Janaros!🙂

We “Beg” God For an “Answer”…

We humans have been given freedom so that we might freely adhere to God— the Mysterious Other we long for, the One who is our origin, sustenance, and destiny. Through freedom, we can love God as persons; we can enter into relationship with God.

Human freedom is profound, but sometimes it seems so complicated, and even overwhelming. The little human being—the bodily person in the world of time and space, who spends a third of his or her life asleep and much of the rest of it eating, drinking, and "going to the bathroom"—the little human being gets beaten down, gets sick, gets old, or just gets exhausted.

How often our freedom is expressed as prayer. When we discover our littleness, it is easier to pray. The Lord always responds to our cries for help, though often we do not understand His ways, and we don’t “see” the ways that His goodness is at work in us. We search for His light in the darkness of our difficulties; we beg to “understand,” we beg for an “answer”….

What is God's answer? How does God answer our begging, when we're just helpless and there doesn't seem to be a way out?
There is no discourse that can communicate this "answer." God's answer is that he comes to be with us, to seek out each one of us, and to stay with us. His "answer" is to love us, and draw us into the experience of the infinite mystery of his goodness, of communion with his very being, He who is Absolute Love.
He created us for this communion, and it corresponds to what our hearts truly seek. To accomplish this fulfillment, to bring us to himself forever, God comes to dwell with us in our weakness.
He is present in this moment of our lives. He is here. Jesus is here.
Jesus is here with us in all our helplessness, our sense of being overwhelmed, our confusion and anxiety. He is with every person on the unique path they travel. Jesus is with us in our weakness.

Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, we gaze once again on the face of our King. Crucified Love measures the depths of all things, and will have the “last word” in history.

Full and Lasting Happiness

This week’s Collect prayer: “…it is full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy the author of all that is good …”  Doesn’t this sound simple and obvious? “Goodness” in the reality that I encounter is what awakens my heart. And “engaging the good” brings me a joy that is real, but that also points beyond the limitations of time and space and change that characterize all the various good things of life in this world. All “good” things whisper the “promise” of a Goodness that never ends, the Mystery that originates and sustains all the goodness, the being, the reality of things, the Mystery that is Goodness itself. Only this Mystery corresponds to the desire of our hearts for “full and lasting happiness.” 

But we are broken, distracted, negligent, inconstant people. The “Mystery” is so easy to “forget” —and we choose instead to grasp at limited goods and try desperately to “stretch them” to the measure of our hearts, or “contain them” somehow by our own power, make them not-go-away… so that their inevitable constraints, changes, and dissolution in time leave us in a prison of disappointment, discouragement, and sadness; or our frustration blazes into anger and we plunge deeper into our desperation and cunning, seeking more techniques and greater power to attain mastery over reality, to remake everything into a Utopia of “lasting goodness” even if it means tearing the real world apart by violence. We become monsters in perpetual conflict.

But is it not more reasonable to seek the “Author of all that is good,” to cry out from our ultimate poverty to the One who alone can make us happy? Might the One who is Goodness itself open up a way for us to “serve with constancy” this Mystery here and now, in this world of flesh and blood?

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The “Word” — through whom and for whom all things have been made — has come to be with us on all the roads of this human life. “The Word” became flesh. “Beauty” became flesh. “Truth” became flesh. “Goodness” became flesh.

Maria is an Artistic GENIUS!☺️😉

Earlier this week, I stepped out of my “home office” to get some coffee from the kitchen, and I came upon the Artiste at work. Oh my, excuse me!

Maria wielded the green pencil with an adroit hand, and lines of emeralds poured out of its tip. Something grand was in the making. I decided this process was worth an effort in photographic journalism. [Poor Maria, hounded by paparazzi in her own family!]

But she kept scribbling without regard to my intrusions. I’m not sure what role “Clownie” played in the creative process. Was he a perspectival tool (covering one eye), or was he just there to be snuggled? “Clownie” is a second generation toy who “lives” at Nana’s and Papa’s house (he goes all the way back to her father’s babyhood, as well as her four aunts). Maria expects Clownie’s attendance upon her presence whenever she comes over, and so he’s usually nearby.

Finally, we had the completed work! The artist herself added texture at the end with some folding and… umm… crumpling.😉 However, the smiley face is clearly a different “style” from Maria’s more gestalt approach, and the words “the cat is fat” are obviously added by another hand (Aunt Jo?). These are problems we will leave for future scholarly debate.😜☺️

Gertrude, Enraptured by the Heart of Jesus

Today is the Feast of Saint Gertrude “the Great” (1256-1302) of the 13th century Benedictine monastery of Helfta in Southeastern Germany, which was part of the town of Eislebem (now primarily known as the birthplace of Martin Luther). After the area became Protestant, the nuns were driven out (and did not return until in 1999). But nearly three centuries before Luther, the Helfta monastery thrived in medieval Saxony and counted among its nuns women of advanced education and intellectual refinement, as well as several mystics and visionaries whose experiences are extensively documented. 
The influence of Helfta was such that it could be said to be a “center” for women theologians in the 13th century. (The diverse features of the medieval world, and the measure of opportunities it provided people—relative to their abilities or desire to take them up—remains under-appreciated in historical studies.) The writings of these women drew on the theological foundation of a contemplative life that accentuated the humanity of Jesus, and in particular (especially for the visionaries) the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Their place in sustaining and developing “devotion to the Sacred Heart” hundreds of years prior to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque is crucially important. The Helfta nuns not only prayed, read, studied, and wrote, but they also played a role in advising political and ecclesiastical figures of the time. 
No one was more remarkable than Gertrude, who devoted her early years in the monastery to pursuing a liberal arts education and studying ancient languages. She began to have special experiences of God’s love, however, that led her to a “conversion” from what she saw as vain pursuits in comparison with the overwhelming graces, attentiveness of God, and the ardor of Jesus that filled her soul. Her intense dialogue with Jesus continued to grow and she committed to writing many profound experiences, while she also served in her long life as an exemplary religious and an accessible presence in the community, a counselor to many, and a mystic enraptured by the merciful and loving heart of Jesus.
Personally, I hope that one day she might be given the title of "Doctor of the Church." It seems like a possibility to me. Dear Saint Gertrude, pray for us in these troubled times, pray that the love of the Heart of Christ will touch us too, heal us, transform us, and set our hearts on fire.
“O devastating glowing coal, my God,
You who contain, radiate and brand with living heat!
You exercised Your inextinguishable power on my damp and slimy soul,
first drying up in it the flood of worldly pleasures
and afterwards softening the rigidity of its attachment to its own ideas,
a position in which it had long been completely fixed.
O truly devouring fire, You who wield Your power against vice
so that You may reveal Yourself to the soul gently when the time comes to anoint it!
In You and in none other do we receive this strength,
so that we may have the power to be reformed into the image and likeness of our original state.
O powerful furnace, in the lovely vision of true peace,
by whose operation dross is transformed into refined and choice gold
when the soul, wearied by deceit, at long last blazes with an inner and insatiable desire
to track down what belongs to it, and which it may receive from You alone, very Truth!”.
~Saint Gertrude the Great