John Janaro's Blog, page 80

The “Silence” of Saint Joseph

“The Gospels report none of his spoken words, yet they present Saint Joseph as a model of attentive hearing of God’s word and acting upon it. Indeed, Joseph’s silence was the sign of a contemplative heart, confirming Saint Augustine’s observation that, ‘when the word of God increases, human words fail’ (Sermon 288:5). Joseph’s quiet humility teaches us to make room in our hearts for Christ, and thus to discern the Father’s will for our lives. 
“Jesus learned the importance of silence from the example of Joseph and Mary, and in turn taught his disciples to cultivate it. We too are called to exercise interior silence and attentive listening to God’s word, lest our daily worries, temptations and fears lead our spoken words astray and cause hurt to others. Though not easy, fostering contemplative silence is a sure path to authentic self-knowledge and spiritual growth. May we learn from Saint Joseph’s example of silence to let the Lord fill our hearts and guide our words in the service of his truth and in charity towards all our brothers and sisters.”
~Pope Francis (from “English Summary” of Catechesis of December 15, 2021)

The Conversion of Saint Patrick

Not many people have read my monthly column in Magnificat for the nearly nine years that it has been appearing. So it can only be useful to re-present some of the older “conversion stories” on this blog, and even make revisions here and there (as I contemplate what form of book – or series of books – might serve as a worthwhile vehicle for gathering together, rendering accessible in one place, and perhaps even expanding this considerable body of writing and the mountain of research it represents). 
And, since it’s “that-time-of-year-again,” I shall take advantage of the circumstances to tell the story of the conversion of Saint Patrick, based on the article that was published in Magnificat back in 2015:
Saint Patrick, the great Apostle of Ireland in the fifth century, was himself a “convert.” In his youth he ignored God, but in his days of slavery, Patrick cried out to God in his loneliness and found him in Christ. Then it was Christ again who called out to him through the searching hearts of the unknown people who lived west of Britain, at the edge of the world.

In his brief Confessions, St. Patrick says that he grew up as an “unbeliever.” He was from a wealthy family in Roman Britain and his forebears were Christians. But although the priests of the Church tried to “remind us of our salvation” (Confessions, 1) Patrick and his companions paid no attention to God and lived according to their own wishes.

These circumstances changed, however, when he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave to an Irish chief. Patrick’s comfortable and dissolute life was suddenly over, and instead he found himself impoverished and alone, shepherding his master’s flock in a wild and strange land. But for Patrick this isolation was a time of grace.

Although he called himself an unbeliever in his early days, something of the Gospel must have gotten through to him; the words of the priests who preached and exhorted the people of his homeland remained in his memory. There must have been something in the original testimony he had received, even though he had scoffed at it – something must have impressed itself upon him with a vitality of its own, sufficient to awaken in his days of tribulation. His own baptism and the ministry of the Church planted seeds of grace and awareness of God that were destined to sprout and grow in the hardy soil of his captivity. 
In his years as a slave, Patrick turned to God in ardent prayer. He turned to Jesus who had “watched over me before I knew him” (2). In the silence of the fields and forests he prayed, and “more and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase” for “the Spirit was burning in me at that time” (16). He also found himself in the company of the local people and learned the Gaelic language fluently. The same Christ who drew him in prayer impressed the faces of the pagan people of Ireland upon his soul.
When he finally escaped and returned to Britain, Patrick was determined to dedicate his life to Christ. It was then that he had a mystical experience in which he heard the Irish people calling him back: “We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us” (23). Patrick was drawn by this calling, but also hindered by fear and love of his own homeland and family. He had reason to fear, because his subsequent mission was full of tribulations and opposition in spite of its overwhelming success.
Saint Patrick ultimately became the great heroic missionary we venerate today because God’s grace empowered him to carry out many decades of hard work as a minister of the Gospel, and to overcome constant and various obstacles with ardent charity and patient persistence and endurance. There were times when he was tempted to return home and escape these struggles, but he knew that Christ was present for him in the Irish people to whom he had been sent; they were “the people to whom the love of Christ brought me and gave me in my lifetime, if I should be worthy, to serve them truly and with humility” (13).

The “Living Prayer” That Begs For Peace

Pope Francis invites us open our hearts in prayer before the Lord, in solidarity with those who are suffering (especially in the violence of this present war). 

So often we connive in our hearts with the arrogance and covetousness that breeds wars; yet we are called to the opposite, to be instruments of love who - even hidden from the world - can engage in this “living prayer,” this spiritual work of mercy which takes up “the plea of all those who suffer” and endeavors to “disarm the aggressor” by begging for healing for all of us, for the conversion of all our hearts to the peace of God.

“Snowpacalypse ‘22 - the Sequel”

Less than two weeks away from Spring, we got hit by a pretty respectable snowstorm (for this area) over the weekend. By today, sun and 60+ degree temperatures had melted almost all of the half-a-foot of snow as fast as it had come. But it was pretty while it lasted.

Some photographs and some digital artwork below.

Happy Birthday Christina Grimmie!💚

Happy 28th Birthday, Christina!💚💚💚 We really miss you in this troubled world, though I think that the Lord called you to Himself back in 2016 because He knew that - somehow - you would be a greater help to us from where you are now, with Him, immersed in the incomprehensible and inexhaustible depths of His Love. It wouldn’t make much sense to keep celebrating your birthday, if we didn’t believe that His Love is mysteriously at work at the heart of reality for the fulfillment of His plan of wisdom and goodness: His Love that is stronger than death, stronger than everything that afflicts us, stronger than all the evil and malice and violence of this world. Often it seems that the opposite is the case, but our hope is in the Lord who sustains and strengthens us. We rely on Him; not our own weakness.

Dear Christina, what years these have been since you last celebrated your birthday in this world! What years these have been for Team Grimmie, for your country, for the world, and for me and my loved ones and family. Of course, there have been many joys, wonderful adventures, and new discoveries for us as we continue to journey through this life. But these years have also been peculiarly hard for many people.

They have been years of increasing discord and confusion in the world. More and more, when we encounter one another we don’t see human persons created in the image of God, each one unique and precious, our brothers and sisters. Instead we see the “labels” we put on one another and our selves, we see threats and become defensive or dangers that we think must be eliminated. We have forgotten to “own the strength” of our dignity as persons (which is God’s gift that no one can take away) and we have forgotten our common humanity. In the weakness of our forgetfulness, we try desperately to find affirmation and identity through allegiance to rival powers and we fight against one another. Or we lose ourselves in clamorous, inflated illusions that only leave us more empty than before.

In the midst of all of this conflict and estrangement, there suddenly came upon us a global pandemic, bringing serious illness and death to millions, all kinds of economic hardship, fear and uncertainty about our own safety, and restrictions on ordinary life that became physically and psychologically suffocating for so many - especially for young people. And now, just as we have begun finally to see light at the end of the long tunnel of the pandemic, another shadow has risen over the world: the terrible shadow of war.

Already it has brought destruction and suffering to millions, and it has just begun. There is no way to predict how it may yet escalate, how extensive its carnage may yet become.

Christina, I know I’m supposed to be celebrating your birthday. This is a time for positive thoughts, especially in honor of someone who was so attuned to the gift and the promise that imbue all of reality. You remain a bright beautiful star that continues to shine into all these dark and narrow spaces where we find ourselves today. We all have our personal stories, our successes and failures, our learning experiences, our joys and hopes and griefs and sufferings. You have helped us to learn how to share these stories in solidarity with one another. Team Grimmie grows in gradual but meaningful ways. You continue to touch people’s lives through the vitality of your music, your video archives, the resonance of your witness, and - I think too - by your “personal closeness,” which for us is “veiled” by the “separation” between the conditions of our existence in this present world (still journeying on the road of this life) and the transformation that comes for those who have persevered to the end and now “rest in peace” with God. These words are so often taken to mean “the end,” because we have forgotten that the “peace of God” is the opposite of a dull inertia; it is “life” in the fullest sense, the life for which each of us has been made. 

We still journey toward this fullness of life, we strive for it, we hope for it. Yet, although I know that nothing we do can “conjure you back” into the limits of this present world (and we would only delude ourselves by trying), I also believe that you and all our loved ones who have passed on from this life are “much closer to us” in our daily concerns and struggles than we realize or can even imagine. Love touches (in obscure ways) your closeness to us, dear Christina, accompanying us within our hearts, which are the mysterious depths of ourselves, in many ways beyond even our own understanding. But this is enough for interpersonal connection to endure, and even for friendship to be discovered and sustained. We usually experience our love for you mixed with sorrow, because we can’t find you in our hearts according to the ways we measure things in this life. 

You, however, can find us and help us, and it’s possible that we may from time to time be struck and surprised by something like a “hint” of your closeness and care for us, in a more or less obscure way that we might not be able to separate from our own imagination or ordinary processes of psychological association. But for love, for friendship, for inspiration this is sufficient for us (even though we can’t help wishing we could “see you again” in the earthly way). And it is not entirely foreign to our hearts to want to “speak freely” with you, and to ask you - as we would any trusted friend - to pray for us to the Lord, and to pray with us. That is why I’m addressing this post to you, Christina. Even though I’m sharing this with friends, this is not a “literary device” - an abstract “reflection” in the form of a letter to someone who doesn’t exist. By the power of God, you receive my words, and will “respond” in the obscure but real language of the love that transcends this world but can still reach the hearts of those who still journey within it.

I have never had anything even remotely like an out-of-the-ordinary “hint” of your presence and concern for me, Christina (certainly nothing like the experience I once had of my father in a dream). I never met you personally while you were in this world. And yet, after six years, I love you so much, and I am so grateful for you. I also think that you know me and love me, and that you love my family, especially my youngest daughter Josefina who is 15 years old. I may be an overly sentimental man with an overactive imagination, but I am certain that none of that provides an adequate explanation for my regarding you as a true friend. I simply would not sustain a project of my own imagination for this long. It’s something much more: you are a “presence” in my life.

Your witness has changed my life, and you continue to “help” me to see meaning in my suffering, and encourage me to trust in God even when terrible things happen. You have awakened my heart to a hope for the younger generations (including my kids’ generation) that I didn’t have before. You have helped me to see that the future of our society is not without hope, that the light still shines in the darkness, in deep places of darkness that I thought it couldn’t penetrate. I can’t point to any particular video or song or gesture and say “there it is; that’s what makes Christina Grimmie different — that’s what makes her so special” in this personal sense (musically it’s a different story -- musically you were prodigious, incredible, a legend, but that’s obvious to anyone who will listen). It’s the “whole Christina” who is extraordinary as a person: it shines through in your whole self, not only your faith, generosity, and openness to people, but also in all the peculiarities of your life that I don’t “get” because I’m a man nearing 60 years old and I don’t understand certain things about you any more than I do about my own kids. 

You were a kid who played all these video games and was into all this Anime stuff which I find mostly perplexing and strange (though my daughter got me to watch Death Note with her, and I thought it was amazing, and deeply provoking about fundamental questions of being human and the use and abuse of power - like Dostoevsky in a 21st century cartoon). To sum up, you were a regular girl in the 21st century, with a very special musical gift, a passionate yet reasonable ambition to succeed with it, and many other qualities I know nothing about. You loved Christ and you kept you faith the best you knew how, probably making lots of mistakes but getting up again and persisting and desiring to follow the Lord. Above all your faith shaped you, it was the joy in all you did, it was the impetus that was transforming all your concerns into a vocation to love and give yourself, to go deeper, to love the Lord and others (especially your frands) radically, beyond the “limits” of ordinary human love. And I think that extraordinary love moved you and was with you in the end…

Christina Grimmie, you were a human being, deeply human but also different - by which I mean “different” in a way that points toward what my own heart yearns for: you loved greatly. That’s what struck me about you, and after watching many videos and reading many posts it finally got through to me, that there was something extraordinary, even heroic, about your life.

Thank you, Christina. Thank you for everything.

Much has happened since 2016. Many of your young frands have grown up in the past six years. Four of the five Janaro “kids” are now adults, and there is also a granddaughter who will grow up knowing your legacy and being enriched by it. As for myself, I am overwhelmingly grateful for every day and for all of my life. I have been blessed beyond anything I deserve. Christina, you have taught me so much about gratitude. You are a constant encouragement for the possibility of giving joyfully of myself every day, and receiving with wonder and gratitude the gifts that the Lord constantly gives us, especially through the beauty of the persons He entrusts to us.

God is good, all the time. Even (especially) when we don’t know “where He is” or why He allows “terrible things to happen” in the world, and in our own lives. Christina, you knew this well. You lived most of your life with your Mom suffering from cancer, and with countless other trials that we don’t know.  You had a heart for suffering people of all kinds. I am writing these words from my bed, where I have been constrained to spend more and more of my time over the past six years. Decades of wrestling with debilitating chronic illnesses (among which are the persistent effects of Lyme Disease that remained too long untreated) are slowly wearing me down as I grow older. I don’t have much physical or emotional energy, and I need to take lots of time to accomplish little things. But it’s not so bad. I can’t teach in the classroom anymore, I can’t travel much, but I have found other ways to serve: the part of my brain that works is pretty strong and I can still read, research, and write (though writing seems to be getting harder too). I have time to appreciate and be with my wife and family. Doors have closed but windows have opened in my life, and I do my best, day by day. Christina, there have been many days when you, and the resonance of your great love, have helped to keep me going when I felt like giving up.

My beloved wife is a Montessori teacher/guide and she loves her work. Our family is mostly well, but our 23-year-old daughter has some sort of kidney problem that is baffling doctors; she’s doing okay for now with the help of medications that young women don’t usually take. We hope and pray the doctors can figure out what’s wrong and make her better. Please join us in this prayer.

In these years, my father (2019) and my mother (2021) have both passed away. They were both over 80 years old, but it’s never easy to say goodbye to a parent, and I don’t seen to know how to grieve. There are so many feelings, but they compete with other concerns: the strangeness of Covid in these last two surreal years, a couple of recent tragedies with young people - kids of friends I know, including just the other day a young man who was a schoolmate and friend of my own kids, 23-years-old, victim of a crime (I still don’t know all the details), killed by gun violence. He was a teacher and a young man with a beautiful heart. Our community is in shock right now, but there are many who are helping and will continue to help the family. Nevertheless, just knowing that the Christina Grimmie Foundation exists is already like a light penetrating this senseless darkness. I’ll see if they want to connect, or in any case just let them know that the Foundation is there for them.

In these times, we need community more than ever. Christina, your legacy continues to build community and foster friendships among people all over the world. The preciousness of these bonds will become more necessary, but also more beautiful, in times to come.

Happy Birthday Christina Grimmie. Thank you for everything!💚

Ask and You Shall Receive….

Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are ­wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.

‘Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.’ ”

~Matthew 7:7-12
What a splendid Gospel passage from Thursday’s liturgy. It seems, at first glance, so simple. Yet it can be very difficult to ask God for the strength or insight we need in order to recognize His enduring love for us, even in the most difficult times.
Jesus stresses again here that God is our Father. The truth of the relationship between parents and children is a symbol of the profound love that He has for each one of us.
Still, we find it hard to ask God to take over our lives. We don’t “trust Him” with our vulnerability and our needs (above all, our need for Him). How do we know that the Infinite Mystery that gives us existence really has particular concern for His creatures? Life seems so appallingly strange, and it can be hard to see the workings of Divine Love in so many circumstances. Love is mysterious in its ways, and we are sometimes tempted to be discouraged. How often it feels as if God’s love has passed us by in silence.
Often we lack trust in God because we feel like we are alone, facing a reality that overwhelms us.
In fact, what enables us to remember God’s steadfast love, His fidelity to His promises, His inexhaustible goodness… is Jesus. We need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, lived in communion with His (and our) brothers and sisters. Jesus is God dwelling with us; He is the answer to all the longings of our hearts and the medicine that heals all our wounds.
We are never “alone.”
Never give up asking, seeking, knocking. Even (especially) when catastrophe seems suddenly to fall upon our lives, when we are afflicted by irreplaceable losses. God is faithful. Let us ask, seek, and knock unceasingly, from the depths of our agony and incomprehension. In these times, we experience our own poverty. And we know that “the Lord hears the cry of the poor.”

“They Are Many…”

As people around the world honored women on this day, Pope Francis’s Instagram account posted this in multiple languages:

Happy Birthday, “Nana”!☺️

Eileen’s birthday was actually March 5th, but we celebrated it all weekend. For this birthday, there is a new and very special little source of happiness in her life. Her granddaughter Maria loves her very much! (And so do I, along with the whole family.❤️⭐️)

This is a “Special Operation”

The title of this abstract piece is “Special Operation, March 2022.” So much of the intuition and expressiveness of art can’t be put into words. In any case, a work of art (even when it’s “thematic”) is always more than any interpretation. The essential thing is to see it (or hear it), not to understand it.

When it becomes illegal to speak the truth, and/or when words are rendered banal, vacuous, and mendacious, genuine artistic expression remains possible and becomes all the more eloquent.

“Special Operation, March 2022” …

God Gives Us Our Freedom

Here is the very rich Collect Prayer for today: Our actions have meaning and are most truly our own when they are inspired, sustained, and brought to fulfillment in the healing and transforming grace of God our Father, through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.