John Janaro's Blog, page 75

I Ask… I Seek… To Live…

The Communion Antiphon in the Roman Liturgy for the 11th week in Ordinary Time:

Saint Anthony's "Brilliant Sparks of Light"

Today we celebrate Saint Anthony, the great medieval preaching Franciscan, who is still much beloved today not only because he helps people to find things, but also because of his outstanding witness to the Gospel and his ongoing "closeness" to people through the ages, especially in Italian and Ibero-hispanic cultures.
I ask Saint Anthony to pray for the eternal rest of my father Walter Anthony Janaro II. My father took "Anthony" as his confirmation patron saint, and - although (like most men of his generation) not one to speak much about his own spiritual life - I know that he had great affection for and reliance on the saint who was born in Portugal in 1195 and ministered in Padua, Bologna, and other parts of Northern Italy until his death in 1231. His sanctity was so evident that he was canonized in 1232.
Saint Anthony was one of the bright lights of the renewal of Christian life - the "new evangelization" - that swept over thirteenth century Europe. Here are some words from a sermon quoted in Magnificat for today's meditation:
“Today Christ stands at our door and knocks in the person of his poor. It is to him that we open when we give aid, when we give ourselves to those in need; for he tells us plainly, When you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.
“When a crystal is touched or struck by the rays of the sun, it gives forth brilliant sparks of light. When the man of faith is touched by the light of God’s grace, he too must give forth sparks of light in his good words and deeds, and so bring God’s light to others.”
~Saint Anthony of Padua

The Trinity and Our Vocation to Interpersonal Communion

In his Angelus Message for Trinity Sunday, Pope Francis preached vividly about how the mystery of the Trinitarian God reveals also the mystery of what it means for us to be persons, created in God’s image, created to love and to be loved. It is worthwhile to meditate on and live these profound and essential truths:
"Celebrating the Most Holy Trinity is not so much a theological exercise, but a revolution in our way of life. God, in whom each Person lives for the other in a continual relationship, in continual rapport, not for himself, provokes us to live with others and for others. Open.
"Today we can ask ourselves if our life reflects the God we believe in: do I, who profess faith in God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, truly believe that I need others in order to live, I need to give myself to others, I need to serve others? Do I affirm this in words or do I affirm it with my life?
"The One and Triune God, dear brothers and sisters, must be manifested in this way – with deeds rather than words. God, who is the author of life, is transmitted not so much through books as through witness of life. He who, as the evangelist John writes, 'is love' (1 John 4:16), reveals himself through love.
"Think about the good, generous, gentle people we have met; recalling their way of thinking and acting, we can have a small reflection of God-Love.
"And what does it mean to love? Not only to wish them well and to be good to them, but first and foremost, at the root, to welcome others, to be open to others, to make room for others, to make space to others. This is what it means to love, at the root.

"To understand this better, let us think of the names of the divine Persons, which we pronounce every time we make the Sign of the Cross: each name contains the presence of the other. The Father, for example, would not be such without the Son; likewise, the Son cannot be considered alone, but always as the Son of the Father. And the Holy Spirit, in turn, is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. In short, the Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other.
"We are not islands, we are in the world to live in God’s image: open, in need of others and in need of helping others. And so, let us ask ourselves this last question: in everyday life, am I too a reflection of the Trinity? Is the sign of the cross I make every day – the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – that Sign of the Cross we make every day, a gesture for its own sake, or does it inspire my way of speaking, of encountering, of responding, of judging, of forgiving?"
~Pope Francis (from Angelus, June 12, 2022)

Christina Grimmie After Six Years

I don’t need words today.

Here is a human face. She needs no commentary from me. Six years after her death, I still see this face every day. New “fan [frand] accounts” keep appearing on Instagram and other platforms all the time, and graphics technology continues to open up new ways to see the clarity of her face, and new possibilities for creativity with video and artistic representations that draw on the legacy of all the love and all the music she gave us.

Christina Grimmie’s presence on the Internet remains unique among all the things I have seen online over the past 15 years. Indeed, she remains unique and special in relation to all that is good and bad and ugly in pop music and pop culture today.

In fact, I have never found anyone else like her in my more than five decades of experience with music, media, or… anything.

Amidst so many forces that try to drag us down and debase us in our society and in the entertainment world, Christina does the opposite. She brings healing, she edifies, she allows our hearts to open and be free and aspire to adhere to reality courageously.

I have only become more grateful as the years pass for Christina Grimmie, for her person, her brief life, and her enduring witness that continues to “vivify” all the images and music and even my own poor artistic efforts.

June in the Valley, With Roses

June in the Valley, with roses.🌳🌱🌹 

A Blog About Nothing!

Writing. I hate it!

I am supposed to be “good at it,” but lately I don’t feel like I’m good at much of anything. I can write this and that on the blog, but every project I’m working on right now is STUCK. That includes the article that was due… yesterday… hmmph….

Writing is hard, even when one thinks one knows what to say.

So, this famous writer’s block - I have endeavored to “picture it” (first of all, to myself) in this cartoon.

Sorry, I am staring at the screen trying to think of more things to write in this blog post. Surely I can “pad this” with some fluff. I have written so much fluff over the years, it should be easy to churn out more words.

I’ll churn out my article, because it’s needed by people, and I’m the only person - here and now - who can write it. But the “fluff” of words that I used to be so be so proud of? It’s vanity. It’s just a waste of time. 

When you’re young, you can do so many things without even realizing the effort and energy they require. And you end up wasting effort and energy on things that are not worth it, and worrying about things that are not important or are not within your power to control. Young people today can even “burn out,” but then they usually recover quickly. They easily forget whatever lessons they might have learned.

I guess I was forced to learn sooner than many, because of the limitations of chronic illness. I used to have buckets of energy, and I carelessly poured them out on the ground. But I know that - if I were rejuvenated now with all that energy - I would soon forget what endurance and patience have begun to teach me, and I’d run out and be stupid all over again.

It isn’t so bad to have to face limitations, or to endure frustration and weakness. It is one of the paths by which we learn patience, and patience is a long lesson. A long, hard lesson.

There is consolation, however, in remembering that patience has resources that can sustain it. Because we are not alone. And patience creates the “space” within us for listening and - ultimately - responding. Patience is the school of love.

A Living Relationship…

Pope Francis reminds us that the Holy Spirit leads us to “a convinced, joyful relationship with the Lord…, to personal knowledge of Jesus, who enters the heart.”

Pentecost: The Spirit Intercedes With Inexpressible Groanings

This year, at Pentecost, I find much to dwell upon in this passage from Romans, chapter 8. There is much here that resonates with my own personal struggles, as well as with the sufferings in our world so full of desperation and violence and yet so immensely loved by God. I find hope here in the midst of the inexplicable cries of my own soul, and the often-confused, obscure, sometimes hesitant, sometimes ardent longings of people all over the world who seek the truth, who seek healing.
We must offer our “groaning within ourselves” in solidarity with those who search for light in the darkness - a search that the Spirit mysteriously stirs in the depths of their hearts. Thus we can share our hope for salvation, knowing that the same Spirit who works with us is calling and drawing every person. In the Spirit, our patience, our endurance, our sufferings will bear fruit in Jesus Christ, according to the wisdom and love of God.
“We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.
“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit ­himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.”
~Romans 8:22-27

Never Forget Tiananmen Square 1989

From the night of June 3rd to the morning of June 4th 1989, the Chinese Communist PartyState deployed the overwhelming force of the “People’s Liberation Army” for an aggressive offensive invasion of a city.

How strange that they thought it necessary to wage war against their own capital city, Beijing. The forces they sought to overcome were… their own people who lived in the city! 

The people had succeeded in preventing armed units from entering Beijing after the May 20th declaration of martial law; they made their stand in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of students who had occupied Tiananmen Square in peaceful protests over the previous seven weeks. Under the broad category of “Democracy,” the students were calling for the freedom to ask the fundamental questions of human existence, to express the ineradicable desires of the human heart.

These young people were not satisfied with the bread and circuses of the previous decade’s “Reform and Opening” engineered by the PartyState. Many didn’t have a clear idea of what they actually wanted. But they wanted the freedom to search for it. And their desire spread like fire in the Spring of 1989.

This was enough to mark them as enemies of the State power that had arrogated to itself the right to define, and ultimately remake, human beings according to its own suffocating ideology.

But countless citizens of Beijing - ordinary people, workers, vendors, bus drivers, restaurants, even the local media - stood with the students. Finally, the 27th Division of the PLA was ordered to force its way into the city and “clear the Square” of the protestors.

The full story of that horrible night remains in part obscure, but only because the repression was so inhuman, so brutal, and so thorough in “clearing” Tiananmen Square of the protestors and the evidence that they had ever been there. First the army took the city itself by indiscriminate force in its streets, with tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) shooting down civilians frequently and at random.

Then the 27th Division, known for their efficiency and unquestioning obedience, headed for the Square, where the student protestors maintained their non-violent resistance surrounded by guards (not carrying lethal arms) of the Shenyang Military Region. What happened next? Many voices with diverse agendas give different accounts. The Chinese Communist PartyState, not surprisingly, praised the 27th Division for quelling “counterrevolutionary riots” on that night, and put the death toll at about 200. The general consensus is that “thousands” died in the city and in Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilians and students. Their may have been some success, at some point, by mediating faculty members - including the at-that-time young professor Liu Xiaobo (for whom Tiananmen was a decisive turning point in his becoming a radical public dissident) - to open up “corridors of evacuation” for some of the students to escape with their lives.

But there were no iPhones in 1989 (or even video cameras small enough to escape confiscation) or Twitter live feeds to record and/or broadcast the carnage in the Square, and no possibility of a “body count” before  the PLA’s 27th had finished their grim assignment. If the citation below is accurate, we are not likely to find “mass graves” anywhere. Not that an atrocity of this magnitude depends for its universal condemnation on how many people were murdered. Yet the Chinese government forbids all discussion of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and vigilantly roots out any mention of it in the educational and social communications of its 1.5 billion people.

There is one report, only recently made known, that deserves our attention. Documents declassified by the British government in 2017 include a secret diplomatic cable from Britain’s ambassador to China in 1989, Sir Alan Donald. Information was relayed to him by a consistently reliable intelligence asset who received it directly from a member of the highest organ of central government, the State Council.

This excerpt from the asset’s report - as presented in the BBC news - speaks for itself. I should note that this text describes some very disturbing - frankly, just plain sick - behavior. Apparently, when the army arrived, a deceitful announcement was made:

“Students understood they were given one hour to leave square but after five minutes APCs attacked.

“Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains.

“Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted.”

Today, thirty three years later, the Chinese Communist PartyState has nothing to say about this crime against humanity, which not only crushed untold human lives, but also tried to crush the human heart’s aspiration for something beyond material prosperity, that deep and mysterious awakening of the core of the human personality that people seek to express when they use the word “freedom.”

Freedom can be distracted by false and superficial promises. It can be deluded, misdirected, discouraged, and even turn toward destructive behavior. Those of us who live in the “Free World” have demonstrated all this beyond any reasonable doubt.

But the fundamental impetus of freedom cannot be crushed. Its “crying-out” cannot be silenced.

By the time Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, he had spent 21 years in and out of prisons and labor camps in China, struggling for freedom, for recognition of the dignity of every human person. In part his efforts were sustained by a sense of obligation toward the students who died on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square. His relentless testimony is eloquent, enduring, and in many ways shattering. Again and again he gives words to the indestructible cry of freedom, of the heart, of suffering - the question that begs for an answer.

“Ten years ago this day

dawn, a bloody shirt

sun, a torn calendar 

all eyes upon

this single page

the world a single outraged stare

time tolerates no naïveté 

the dead rage and howl

till the earth’s throat

grows hoarse.”

~Liu Xiaobo

excerpt from the poem Standing Amid the   Execrations of Time (June 4, 1999)

The Martyrs of Uganda: Discovering Their Heroic Witness

The Uganda Martyrs are commemorated today, the anniversary of the burning-to-death of Saint Charles Lwanga and his fellow royal pages on June 3, 1886. There are also other martyrs during this period who are grouped into today's feast. Each one has an awesome story that was carefully recorded from eyewitness testimony for the Beatification proceedings in the 1920s. They are the heroes of the new Catholic churches and peoples of East Africa who have emerged within the past 150 years. If you want to read a vivid, “page-turner” narrative of these events - with deeply human portrayals of many of the 22 Catholic martyrs, who included not only the court pages, but also adults, husbands and fathers, pillars of the community - then read THIS BOOK which is on sale for Kindle for $2.99! 

The original 1962 print edition by Mill Hill Missionary Father John Faupel used to be difficult to find “in the olden days.” Cheers for electronic media, for making rare out-of-print books widely available. An inspiring account of inspiring witnesses to Christ!

The martyr pictured here (not a picture from the book) is Saint Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe. 

He was the King's personal attendant and head of the royal household. He was able to obtain religious freedom for Christians, and his teaching and example strengthened the faith of many converts. But he also fearlessly rebuked the King for his superstitious and immoral life and in particular for the execution of a Protestant missionary bishop. Joseph Mukasa was brutally executed for teaching the Christian faith and for his defense of Christians, November 15, 1885. 

He is a patron saint of politicians.