Christina Grimmie as Seen By the Eyes of a Catholic Christian

November is here again: the month in which we remember in a special way our departed brothers and sisters. My “list” of people I have known and loved who have passed away has gotten a lot longer since 2011, when I began this blog. Above all, it includes my two most faithful readers: my father and mother. There are also many relatives, friends, and mentors. So many people—known and unknown—have died, and so many things have changed.

This is the eighth November since the awful murder of the amazing young singer, songwriter, musician, and pioneering “YouTube star” Christina Grimmie. Images and sounds remain, and this reason alone would be enough to account for why I feel like addressing her in the first person, as if I could “write her a message.” Yet this is not the only reason. Sometimes I have the desire to “talk to” her, and I have reason to hope that she “hears me” within the fellowship we share in Jesus Christ. I’m not referring to anything directly empirical, of course. I don’t “see visions” or “hear voices,” nor would I want to try. I see Christ and hear His voice through His Church, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit that I beg for every day, the gift of faith that renews and deepens our hearts. Meanwhile, Christina has presented herself and all she wanted to say through her videos, in her words and songs and music. It is a blessing that these expressions of her personality and her love remain accessible to us. This accessibility makes me feel like I can say something to her in a seemingly natural way. In any case, I can share my words with my readers, which is obviously my intention and renders this whole exercise a “literary device,” though it is not only a literary device. I love this person, and I endeavor therefore to speak from my heart. Here are my words:

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I have been “hanging out” with you, Christina Grimmie. I see you every day on frand accounts all over social media, as well as in my own virtual art workshop where I labor on digital portraits. With the ongoing explosion of AI technology, your media-iconic image multiplies, acquires greater clarity, and inspires new modes of creativity (screenshots from your videos were the starting points for the three diverse cartoon-style portraits in this blog, which were crafted using technological tools and filters but also lots of detailed work by hand on a virtual screen—I’m improving slowly with this new art form, but I’ve got a long way to go). You remain for me an inspiration and a “muse” in visual arts, poetry, writing, and more. Meanwhile, many people are still encountering you for the first time, being helped by your joyful smile, your gentle affirmation, and—of course—being amazed by your incredible voice and your music.

All of this remains deeply provoking, because you no longer live in this world. Your love, however, continues to resonate all over the audiovisual media that you helped to revolutionize in the second decade of this century. It remains a resonance that is precious, and I can understand why people want to affirm it and emphasize it as your legacy, so that you are remembered for more than being the victim of a shocking and terrible murder. It continues to be awful, scary, and traumatic to think about what was done to you. Still, the tragedy of your being taken from this world seven years and five months ago brings some kind of sorrow whenever we see and hear you, and it reawakens the profound question: “Why?” We find ourselves “suffering” these questions unavoidably: “Why do people live with so much precious, unique vitality… and then die? Why death? Why the ‘absence,’ the apparent breaking off of relationships that mean so much? Why the grief?”

These are questions provoked in us by the experience of an apparent “disconnection” between our hearts’ desire for a limitless goodness and the inadequacy of all the finite, so often narrow, so often disappointing things that preoccupy our lives. Since your death, Christina, I have endured a “season” of facing these hard questions. I never knew until my father died in 2019 that these questions could be so visceral and so disorienting in an almost-“physical” sense of dislocation that makes one feel confused and “dizzy,” like the world has “tilted” and everything is out of balance. That was 2019 for me. My world became strange and unprecedentedly “different” in 2019. 

In the following years between my father’s death and my mother’s in 2021, the whole world actually was plunged into unprecedented strangeness, confusion, and fear. The earth was stalked by a plague, a capricious grim reaper that “picked off” human beings in an unpredictable way, even with all the radical cautions desperately employed by frightened nations as medical experts tried to understand and learn to combat a terrible new disease. The Pandemic! Things eventually “returned to normal,” and no one wants to think anymore about the months of lockdowns, cancelled events, masks, barriers, social distancing. And yet, future pandemics are practically inevitable in the global village. Did the sufferings of 2020 make us more aware, more mature? Did we grow from this experience, or have we just been driven further into distractions, noise, and rootless living as we try to flee from the anxieties that press in on us?

Some people have nowhere to run. Yesterday’s pandemic has yielded to the monstrous wars of today: there are hostage-takings and murder, bombing of civilians, mass graves, crimes against humanity, and a systematic direct attempt at cultural genocide. Death is everywhere, and it weighs heavily in the air. It refuses to be ignored. For me personally, its most direct impact has been the loss of my parents, the deaths of some friends, and the tragic deaths of children of my friends… and your death, Christina. Your death, along with all the violence that surrounds us, provokes another very hard question: “Why do people kill other people?” Why do we kill one another and do violence to one another and ourselves? Why do we sin against God, recklessly driven by our own uncontrolled self-indulgence and covetousness, abusing and poisoning the created world to serve our own cupidity, and desecrating beautiful and unique human persons that God has given to us in His love—persons who bear the image of God, given to us to be our brothers and sisters?”

Even Christians who know that Jesus has conquered sin and death and who journey through this life with hope in His resurrection still suffer these questions and sorrows; our human fragility and vulnerability must follow a long process (through which the Holy Spirit is also at work) and we must trust in the Lord. The meaning of our lives is an unfolding mystery—an adventure that we participate in with all our energy, but that we cannot grasp, dominate, or take control over. Our lives belong to God, who fashions in an ineffable way even the very freedom that we value so much in our times. We try so hard to construct our freedom, to “make ourselves” by our own power, in isolated mastery, in illusions of pride and arrogance. We don’t realize that our freedom is given, and is made to embrace the One who made us, to share His eternal glory. Our freedom is made for love—a love that is real, that does not disappoint, but that exceeds our understanding. We learn more and more that the realization of freedom follows the path of utter dependence on God. This God is not a “big boss” who oppresses us. He is the God who gives us our very selves, who bursts and overflows all the categories we use when we try to describe Him. He is THE Mystery, but we are His children, and He makes us out of love. He is the Mystery who is Absolute Love.

Wow, this “message” to you, Christina, is just going all over the place. But my friends will attest that this is the way I write “real” messages, and the way I wrote letters for many years. I’m a hugely intense, serious person. If I had known you when you were alive on this earth, I probably would have driven you crazy. I surely would have challenged your legendary patience and magnanimity. I don’t know. If you were alive, there would be a little less sorrow for me, and your joy would have lightened my heart. 

But I would still be someone who thinks and talks about all the deep things in life. You had a simplicity, a sense of strong faith that spread light through everything you did, that took the form of kindness and merciful love toward YouTube people and then people in the mainstream music industry and above all your Team Grimmie frands. Your faith and love were amazing because you didn’t try to overpower people with them, but you also spoke in discrete moments—the “right moments”—and just enough to make clear that Jesus Christ was everything to you, that He was the great love that encompassed all your aspirations.

It’s mid-November 2023, and there are so many more “faithful departed” that I know personally than in the earlier eras of my life. Lots of people come to my mind and my prayers this month. 

My dear Christina, I remember you too. 

In the passage from death to the fullness of eternal glory, there is a mystery and a gift of God’s love that most of us need very much, a purification, which is what we Catholic Christians mean by “purgatory.” I know you were not Catholic in this life, but you were a Christian who sought follow Jesus and be faithful to Him according to the ways that had been given to you. Team Grimmie is an “ecumenical friendship,” and an inter-religious friendship that gathers together people from all over the world who have in common a love for your music and a fascination with your “extraordinarily ordinary” personality. You were normal, funny, goofy, down-to-earth while also being a fountain of joy and love that seems to be still flowing and gushing today. We are drawn to that mysterious and beautiful joy, which was so real, so “earthy” and inexplicable at the same time, so vulnerable and yet tenacious, such an unlikely combination of innocence and badassery intent on really being “in Hollywood” but not “of Hollywood,” walking the carpets and doing some of the fashions which was actually possible because you always carried yourself with such dignity, radiating a quality that held off objectification because it was a tenderness that disarmed people with its simplicity while also shining like a Queen, like a daughter of God. Then you would go off to eat junk food and play video games. 

There were no “labels” that could classify you, Christina Grimmie. You weren’t “perfect,” you made mistakes, you worried, you got frustrated. You also bore the sufferings of your Mom’s long struggle with cancer and your heart grew toward people who were suffering from all kinds of afflictions. You were full of goodness. Yet you weren’t “obvious,” and part of that was because you were just a kid (and eventually a 22-year-old woman) and you were still learning many things. You also were the most prodigious musical talent in your generation of pop music, with a spectacular singing voice. And plenty of people in Hollywood knew that. They also knew that they would never be able to own you. You had a strength they didn’t understand. You declared that clearly enough when you said, “Jesus Christ is the reason I can even sing. It’s not my voice, it’s His. And I will use it, win or lose, for His glory.” You knew that your music career and all your ambitions for success were shaped by a vocation, an “impossible vocation” that nevertheless is so desperately needed precisely today. You stayed faithful, did your best, and—above all—you loved and loved and loved and never grew tired of loving “everyone” that God gave you. You said that your frands were “gifts from God” entrusted to you for a reason. 

Because of that reason, because of that love, you opened your arms to welcome them and offer encouragement and a hug. You cherished the opportunity to meet them after your concerts, and would stay late into the night so that you could meet everyone. You marveled that Jesus had placed these people in your life, and you loved them with a gratitude that was almost like veneration. Every artist says they “love their fans” but you really loved them in a poignant and achingly beautiful way. You coined a term for them—not just “fans” but “friend-fans,” frands. This love was ardent and engaging without being possessive, without vanity. Many of the people you met, you “already knew” because you had communicated with them online. Before there was any concept of the “social media influencer,” Christina Grimmie, you had over three million followers on YouTube. You were the original “influencer” without intending to be. You blazed that trail too, but in a way that remains uniquely personal and unrepeatable.

You kept welcoming, hugging, stretching out your arms to people right up to the final moment when a man responded to your great heart by drawing a 9mm semiautomatic Glock pistol from out of his jacket and pumping bullets into your head and chest at point blank range. He then shot himself in the head. This is shocking and horrible. We can’t bear to think of it. But Jesus fulfilled His ministry by being crucified, by loving His Father to the end and imploring forgiveness for His executioners.

In the midst of all the horror and the blood and the evil of June 10, 2016, we see you, Christina, open, defenseless, offering love. Someday, we may perhaps see something of a “sign” in all of this? I cannot presume to declare that it was a sign, a sacrifice, a fulfillment of your great desire to be conformed to Jesus. “His glory” is something we on earth cannot see except with the eyes of faith, and we need to grow in that faith. So I declare nothing, but I do wonder about it.

Meanwhile, I’m a Catholic Christian who has no official authority to say anything, and I’m out of my depth in any analysis of the existential “darkness” of such intensity of love and sacrifice. If there is something to see here, it will become clear at the right time. Many people I knew in this world have died, and I pray for them all. I pray for all the “souls in purgatory,” whose needs are deeper and more essential than anything I can understand, but whom I know that I can help through the communion of the Church. I don’t presume that any of my departed brothers and sisters are beyond the need for these prayers and the constant solicitude of the whole Church (except of course those who have been beatified or canonized), but I trust that communion in Christ’s body endures between those who are still living their earthly journey and those who have “died in the Lord.” 

I know also that the Christian people often have a “sense” (in some cases stronger than others) that among those who have gone forth through death in Christ there are a few whose lives have “already” prepared them to see God in the fullness of His absolute glory and love. We have a sense that these people can “already” help us, and we find ourselves spontaneously relating to them in this way—but we don’t claim any right to “declare them saints.” We may have a desire that they be recognized by the Church, and we might even make a proposal that ecclesial authority consider the “holiness” of their lives. (I’m using lots of quotation marks in this text, not to imply that I doubt the realities within them, but because I don’t want to just breeze by these terms that are so much more fundamental and mysterious than we imagine them to be.)

So, yes, I pray for you, Christina, and for your Mom. May your souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Prayers for the dead are never “wasted.” They can be shared and given over to those who need them. Purgatory is a unique and difficult experience, but it’s also the dawn of victory, the beginning of the reign of Love that never ends. The faithful departed are “with Christ” and in purgatory He is “opening their eyes” and clearing away anything that remains of imperfection and distraction, anything that falls short of the happiness, the beatitude, of the direct vision of God, the fullness of our being-conformed to Christ. Catholic expressions may sound complicated to non-Catholic Christians, but they are all about grace and salvation and the glory of God in Jesus Christ. But you have already come to know all this, Christina. I’m repeating it for the benefit of those “looking over my shoulder.”

Christina, you certainly have a different profile from most “Catholic saints,” even among the recent young people from our own time. In fact, you are not like anyone I have ever seen or heard of in the six decades of my life, but then again these are unprecedented and turbulent times. I wonder very much about you, and I have the sense that there was something “heroic” about your way of loving and your perseverance in offering yourself for the glory of Christ. I am grateful to you beyond anything I can express. Your humanity has changed my life, and I think your witness has strengthened my hope in the face of my own death, which cannot be very far away from now. I’ll say this, for what it’s worth: if you had been Catholic during your brief time on this earth, I would drop all my other projects and devote myself to investigating whether it might be possible to propose your remarkable life and death as worthy of ecclesial recognition and honor. It sounds crazy thinking of you—the funny girl who made the “Lava Lamp” video—being declared a “saint” someday. It appears to be so “outside the box” of anything we’ve ever seen in the Catholic Church. But beneath the surface level of appearances, it’s not so strange at all. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has ever thought about this. 

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Still, as it stands in reality, you weren’t a Catholic, and so there are whole tangles of questions and issues that would arise from ecumenical perspectives. Ecumenism is a historical path that will probably advance in slow steps over the course of many generations. The time is not yet ripe to carry out anything like what I have allowed myself to imagine here. Who knows? God willing, the future might open up new possibilities….

Meanwhile, I know that the Christian people need witnesses and examples like you, Christina, in these days when the world seems to be spinning out of control. It is a simple matter to see the greatness of your love for Jesus and for people of every kind. You still bring consolation and joy to me and many others today. You inspire me to wonder, and to thank the Lord for giving us a glimpse of His glory through you.

“A Tragedy Unfolding” in the Holy Land

“We are sadly witnessing a tragedy unfolding in the very places in which the Lord lived, where He taught us—through His humanity—to love, forgive, and do good to all. Instead we see them torn apart by tremendous suffering that primarily affects so many innocent people” (Pope Francis). 

[digital art image of Francis from JJStudios, crafted from a screenshot from video as a base]

Leo the Great: “The Dispensation of Compassion…”

November 10: Pope Saint Leo the Great, Father of the Church, Bishop of Rome from 440-461.

“It is not enough to know the Son of God in the Father's nature only, unless we acknowledge Him in what is ours without withdrawal of what is His own. For that self-emptying, which He underwent for man's restoration, was the dispensation of compassion, not the loss of power. For, though by the eternal purpose of God there was 'no other name under heaven given to men whereby they must be saved' (Acts 4:12), the Invisible made His substance visible, the Intemporal temporal, the Impassable passable: not that power might sink into weakness, but that weakness might pass into indestructible power… In our nature, therefore, the Lord trembled with our fear, that He might fully clothe our weakness and our frailty with the completeness of His own strength" (Saint Leo the Great).

“Dreams of Water”

With severe drought conditions in the Valley and the Shenandoah River setting record lows for depth, river and creek water flows these days only “in our dreams.” 

So I “dreamed” of water on my “virtual canvas,” beginning with photographs, sifting through many surprising variations offered by AI technology, and then “sculpting” (a term I like to use for digital art) the images manually and with digital filters. Slowly and laboriously, I worked to bring together all these material elements, refining shape, “texture,” color, and shade in search of images that embody an “intuition” (an intelligent, imaginative, practical vision that becomes visible to me only in the process of “making” it). At a certain point, I begin to feel that the work is “coming into focus”… more or less successfully on the humble level on which I engage in these creative endeavors.

I am far from satisfied with these, but I can’t obsess over them forever. This kind of work is, among other things, constructive therapy for my OCD (it really is helpful, though that’s not the only reason I try to be creative).

Anyway, I figured that I have to “let them go.” Here are my Dreams of Water:

Look Who Dressed As Tigger!

I have to share (belatedly) these pics from October 31. On Halloween, SOMEBODY went out for “treats” dressed up as Tigger!☺️ Such fun! 

She went with her mommy as Winnie the Pooh and her daddy as Christopher Robin, and she charmed her way through our neighborhood (not to mention the hearts of her Papa and Nana).❤️

“Autumn Expressions 2023”

I need to update the blog on the digital art creations that I have been working on this past month, as we passed through a colorful stretch of the Autumn season. So here goes:

“Requiem Aeternam”

ALL SOULS DAY.

“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. / Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.”

“Today we remember those who have walked before us, in the hope of meeting them, of reaching the place where we will find the love that created us and awaits us: the love of the Father” (Pope Francis).

[Image: Fra Angelico]

All Saints Day 2023

“I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb’” (Revelation 7:9).

Pope Francis Concludes Synod and Entrusts the World to Mary

This month of October 2023 has been full of events—both foreseen and unforeseen—that have summoned Pope Francis to continue meeting his enormous pastoral responsibilities as Successor of Saint Peter with great love and courage. 

On Sunday, the month-long gathering for Part 1 of the Synod of Bishops was concluded harmoniously and in an atmosphere of fraternal charity. One should recognize the fact that the private nature of the deliberations—and the counsel given to participants not to engage with journalists in individual, day-by-day assessments of the Synod’s work—were intended to help to facilitate an open and frank dialogue within the Synod’s sessions. The Synod needed a communal environment that was free from the distractions and pressures of over-politicized small partisan interest groups whose hopes (or fears) about this or that particular issue tend to dominate press coverage and social media chatter. To accept the need for this privacy was not a capitulation to a lack of transparency, but a gesture of trust in the Holy Spirit to guide the delegates gathered together in the Synod, so that they might grow in faith and love, and engage in prayerful discernment the contributions and concerns expressed by countless people over the past year within the context of local Christian communities. All the questions, listening, dialogue, and discernment are in the service of a deepening of mature faith and a more ardent missionary openness among the whole of the People of God.

We must always remember that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and that He will not lead her astray. Living the Church in a “synodol” way in the 21st century is a daunting but essential task that needs to grow with time in order to allow the truth of the Gospel to shine more brightly and be perceived as truly incarnate in the unprecedentedly vast array of diverse cultures and histories of all the peoples in the now 1.3 billion member Catholic Church throughout the world. For this meeting to be fruitful, it was necessary for everyone to listen and contribute in an orderly way to an experience of “walking together” toward Christ and discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit. It was a matter of recognizing that we share the same faith within a variety of human and personal differences, religious “styles” and cultural forms. 

It was also a matter of making space to encounter people with difficulties and particular problems in their relationship with the Church. This is not easy or comfortable, but here again we need to remember the One to whom we belong. We need not fear listening to anyone, because the Lord is present with His Church, and His mercy will empower us to discern what people are saying from their hearts, what they want to offer, what are their struggles and sufferings, what we share and how we can journey together, how we can accompany them, and guide them to discover more fully the light of the Gospel, and how we can co-suffer with them and enter more profoundly into the freedom of the healing, forgiving, and transforming love of Jesus — the Word made flesh who knows all our wounds from within, and encompasses all our sufferings in His own inexhaustible Crucified Love.

The “miracle” of a deeply faithful Catholic people witnessing the Gospel of Christ’s salvation with a conviction that comes from their own hearts (with its accompanying joy), and living out that conviction in all the environments of this enormous world with the love that comes from God and reaches out with unquenchable ardor and the Spirit’s power to make us “all things to all people” — this is a Church that “walks together,” not only because we can “help one another” but because our identity consists in being one body in Christ. We are Christ’s Church, and we must be faithful to our vocation in Him. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (Lumen Gentium 1). We must pray to remember who we are, and to remain with Jesus in all times and circumstances, in whatever challenges and trials we face in today’s world.  

The Synods of October 2023 and 2024 will be blessed even if they don’t go “smoothly,” even if some methods and procedures are found inadequate, or are improved upon or changed in the future. We must, of course, pray for all these gifts that God wants to give us to meet the particularly intense drama and the urgency of our time; we pray with trust because we know the greatness of God’s love for us, and thus also for our neighbors, for everyone. The effort of the Synod itself is already prayer that seeks to know how the Lord wants to use us, His sons and daughters, in countless ways for serving His burning Heart’s desire to light fires in every human heart.

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Beyond all these challenges, the Pope is being called to stand firm yet again in the face of the latest flare-up of the longstanding violence between Israel and Palestine, and violence and death all over the world. On Friday, the Pope consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Once again he has appealed to the tenderness of the Mother of Jesus. We must all join in (some excerpts below) to pray for these terrible wars to end, for those who are being dehumanized by the violence they perpetrate, and for all who suffer…

Excerpts from Pope Francis’s Prayer to Mary at the conclusion of last Friday’s “Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace”:

“Mary, look at us! We stand here before you. You are our Mother, and you know our struggles and our hurts. Queen of Peace, you suffer with us and for us, as you see so many of your children suffering from the conflicts and wars that are tearing our world apart…. Turn your eyes of mercy towards our human family, which has strayed from the path of peace, preferred Cain to Abel and lost the ability to see each other as brothers and sisters dwelling in a common home. Intercede for our world, in such turmoil and great danger. Teach us to cherish and care for life – each and every human life! – and to repudiate the folly of war, which sows death and eliminates the future.

Mary, how many times have you come, urging prayer and repentance. Yet, caught up in our own needs and distracted by the things of this world, we have turned a deaf ear to your appeal. In your love for us, you never abandon us, Mother. Lead us by the hand. Lead us by the hand and bring us to conversion; help us once again to put God first. Help us to preserve unity in the Church and to be artisans of communion in our world. Make us realize once more the importance of the role we play; strengthen our sense of responsibility for the cause of peace as men and women called to pray, worship, intercede and make reparation for the whole human race.

“By ourselves, Mother, we cannot succeed; without your Son, we can do nothing. But you bring us back to Jesus, who is our Peace. Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, we come before you and we seek refuge in your Immaculate Heart. Mother of mercy, we appeal for mercy! Queen of Peace, we appeal for peace! Touch the hearts of those imprisoned by hatred; convert those who fuel and foment conflict. Dry the tears of children – at this hour, so many are weeping! – be present to those who are elderly and alone; strengthen the wounded and the sick; protect those forced to leave their lands and their loved ones; console the crestfallen; awaken new hope.

“To you we entrust and consecrate our lives and every fibre of our being, all that we possess and all that we are, forever. To you we consecrate the Church, so that in her witness to the love of Jesus before the world, she may be a sign of harmony and an instrument of peace. To you we consecrate our world, to you we consecrate especially those countries and regions at war.”

Chiara “Luce” Badano: Guided by the Radiant Light of Christ

Today, though it’s a Sunday, can still be marked with celebration of Blessed Chiara “Luce” Badano (1971-1990), a very precious “spiritual friend” to me and many others in our time.

Chiara Badano was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at the age of 18. An active teenager full of life and aspirations, Chiara hoped to be cured of the cancer and underwent all the standard medical treatments of thirty years ago. But above all she was committed to God's will, and she knew that in the embrace of the crucified Christ, even her suffering was endowed with meaning for the salvation of the world. She offered her powerlessness and pain in union with "Jesus Abandoned," and endured everything with a transfigured joy in the awareness that the mystery of the Cross was at work in her. 

Near the end, she said, "I have nothing left except my heart, but with my heart I can still love!"

Do We “Get Used To” War?

Most people don’t want to “get used to war,” but it happens. We get used to it in one way or another. There is the temptation to try to protect ourselves from the flood of “information” about the evils in our world by becoming more harsh, more habituated to disappointment, more cynical about the dignity and value of human life. And yet, our hidden sadness only grows deeper.

The truth is that we all have too much war on the frontiers of our own hearts, and we feel powerless in the struggle against it. What can we do?

We can beg for the mercy of God, and ask God for the courage to take the next step toward peace—within ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nations, and among all the peoples of the world.

Antonio Claret: Hunger and Thirst For God’s Love

October 24 is the celebration of the 19th century Catalan bishop and missionary Saint Antonio Maria Claret. Today’s issue of Magnificat offers a rich meditation from his Autobiography, from which I cite this excerpt that especially struck me. 

We can find the “hidden treasure” of God’s love “by asking and longing for love continually and incessantly, without ever failing to ask or without getting tired of asking, even though it delays in the coming. It is necessary to pray to Jesus and Mary for it, and especially to ask our Father in heaven for it through the merits of Jesus and his Blessed Mother, and to be most sure that our heavenly Father will send the Holy Spirit with this love to him who prays in this manner. [We must] hunger and thirst for this love, just as he who is really and truly hungry and thirsty in his body always thinks of how he can satisfy his hunger, and to this end asks anyone who might be in a position to help him. It is thus that I am determined to seek for love with ardent desires and aspirations.”

~Saint Antonio Maria Claret (1807-1870)

Saint John Paul II and “New Media”

October 22 is ordinarily the feast of Pope Saint John Paul II. This year it falls on a Sunday, which takes liturgical precedence. Still, it is a day to celebrate his outstanding legacy, and implore his ongoing intercession.

One of the last major statements that John Paul II published in his 26 year papacy was an Apostolic Letter on the “Rapid Development of Communications Media” (January 24, 2005). Those of us who remember him know the powerful use he made of transportation and communications technology at the end of the Second Millennium. His great pilgrimages all over the world were already further “extended” by means of broadcast television. In his final months, however, he also saw that communications media were on the cusp of further expansion in ways that would form new “spaces” of human interaction, raise new challenges, and offer new possibilities for evangelization and human development.

Without underestimating the magnitude of the changes which few of us foresaw in 2005, John Paul II took the opportunity to exhort us all — one more time — to “be not afraid.” His hope for humanity was always magnanimous, not because he was naive about the extent of wickedness and corruption in the world, but because he knew the always-greater power of Christ the Redeemer, who is the center of the universe and the Lord of history. John Paul II taught our generation to adhere to Jesus Christ, to His love and mercy, and in Him to engage the whole scope of human experience with confidence that Christ is the meaning and fulfillment of everything. His grace and wisdom make it possible to face new challenges in bearing witness to His Gospel and upholding the dignity of every human person in an ambivalent world that continues to change in so many confusing ways.

“The world of communications … is capable of unifying humanity and transforming it into — as it is commonly referred to — ‘a global village’. The communications media have acquired such importance as to be the principal means of guidance and inspiration for many people in their personal, familial, and social behavior. We are dealing with a complex problem, because the culture itself, prescinding from its content, arises from the very existence of new ways to communicate with hitherto unknown techniques and vocabulary.

“Ours is an age of global communication in which countless moments of human existence are either spent with, or at least confronted by, the different processes of the mass media. I limit myself to mentioning the formation of personality and conscience, the interpretation and structuring of affective relationships, the coming together of the educative and formative phases, the elaboration and diffusion of cultural phenomena, and the development of social, political and economic life.

“The mass media can and must promote justice and solidarity according to an organic and correct vision of human development, by reporting events accurately and truthfully, analyzing situations and problems completely, and providing a forum for different opinions. An authentically ethical approach to using the powerful communication media must be situated within the context of a mature exercise of freedom and responsibility, founded upon the supreme criteria of truth and justice.”

How Can We Learn to Give and Receive Mercy?

Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). The need for mercy presses itself upon us in these days, as the clouds of war darken the skies all around us. War should remind us that we are all broken and conflicted within ourselves, and in our daily relationships with one another. Jesus tells us to “be merciful” to one another, but it’s so difficult. How can we learn to give and receive mercy?

Sometimes it seems like we're trying to put "mercy" in a box and dole it out according to our own measure. This is an effort that cannot succeed, and it's just as well because our measure is so meager.

The mercy of other people is at best a sign and an instrument of the ineffable, overflowing mercy of God. We must turn to Him, beg for His mercy, and ask Him for the grace to be drawn by His love so that we will adhere to Him and trust in His mercy.

I beg to remember His abiding love every day, to remain in Him, to trust in His mercy. He knows me. In His mercy He knows the undying thirst of my soul; He knows my heart's longing in a way that I don't even begin to understand. I pray that I might trust in Him to lead me to my destiny.

I want to live this relationship with the God who makes me exist in this very moment, the God who is Infinite Love. I want to live in adoration and gratitude to the God who is all-powerful and all-good beyond my understanding, the God who is “my Father.” I must trust in His mercy to give me what I need (because I don't know what I need — I don't really know my true self). I must trust in His mercy also to break off from me the things that keep me from attaining the real fulfillment for which I have been made, which is nothing else but Him.

I need to trust His tenderness and His gentleness, which endure even when all other affirmations or consolations are absent and I feel abandoned and alone. In this solitude I can only cry out to Him and long for Him in the firm conviction that He hears me, He wants me, and that the darkness and emptiness are the vast spaces of the mystery of His inexhaustible Heart that holds me.

I know that God “wants” me because He has sent His Son (God from God, the Person of the Father’s Son, who is always with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the inexhaustible mystery of the Trinity, the Mystery of Eternal Love, the One God who is a communion of Three Persons). He has loved me—and all of us—in His Son, His “Word” who is not only “spoken to us” but who has become flesh, taken our human nature, born of the Virgin Mary to dwell with us, die for our sins, rise from the dead to create us anew. 

Jesus is God made man, our brother, and He loves us. He came into my life, my own history, first — through an event, my Baptism. And through His enduring presence in His Church, I grow in this encounter with Him—adhering to Him through faith, in the life of faith, hope, and love that His Spirit engenders within me. I believe too that He loves every person, and that this same Holy Spirit is at work in the history of every person, working within the mystery of their own freedom, drawing each of them according to a wisdom greater than our understanding. 

I can trust in God, who has taken hold of my whole life (and who embraces the life of every person) through the humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus knows who I am, and He carries me in my suffering and accompanies me through all the depths of darkness and the experience of feeling abandoned and alone. He has made those depths His own. His mercy is His brokenness on the Cross, which He invites me to share.

The best way we can show mercy to one another is to help bear one another's burdens. We are called to open our hearts—with great humility—to the mystery of the other person's suffering. This is what we need from one another. It is the way that we can discover the presence of Jesus in every person's life, not with condescension but with a great reverence for the person.

I must welcome this person, because this person is loved by Jesus. It is the great Heart of Jesus that gives value and dignity to every person and to all our relationships. Whenever I speak to a person, my words should be shaped by the desire that Jesus come more fully to us both — to heal us in His mercy and draw us together along the paths of His mercy. I beg for the grace of this humility, for myself, for you — my dear brother or sister — for all of us. I am not “naturally” humble or welcoming of others. None of us are, in the measure that God calls us to be. He calls us to be like Him. We cannot make ourselves “like Him” by our own strength; we need the transforming power of His grace that forgives our sins, gives us a share in His life, and empowers us to live in a new way — to love one another and to be merciful to one another. We must all beg for the grace of this adoring responsiveness in love to the God who is Love.

As Pope Francis says, "We cannot trust in our own strength, but only in Jesus and in His mercy." Indeed, our strength is much too small to fathom the mercy of God. Our strength is too frail to bear His weakness on the cross.

Jesus, enable me to be merciful.
Have mercy on me.
Make me an instrument of Your mercy.

Jesus, I trust in You.

Francis: “War Erases the Future”

Words from Pope Francis’s General Audience of October 18, 2023 (courtesy of Instagram):

October 17, 2023: Praying and Fasting for “Justice and Peace”

Catholics and other Christians and people of good will around the world have been praying and fasting on this day for “justice and peace” in solidarity with all those who are suffering: terrorist victims, hostages, and their families; civilians trapped without basic necessities and under bombardment; Israelis and Palestinians; Jews, Muslims, and Christians… Here are some words from my brother and sister Catholics ‘on the ground,’ immediately involved, offering their sufferings and themselves…

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“We have offered our readiness at least to try to bring the hostages back, at least some of them, this is being attempted. It is very difficult because, for mediation, you need to have interlocutors. And at this moment, it's not possible to talk to Hamas… Am I ready for an exchange? [i.e. to voluntarily become a hostage to Hamas in exchange for the release of the other hostages.] Anything, if this can lead to freedom and bring those children back home, no problem. On my part, absolute willingness.”

~Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 

  Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

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“We want peace because war does no one any good. We want this brutal war to end. Many people have lost their loved ones, their homes, and everything they have. We ask for justice: justice and peace. The Palestinian people also have the right to live. We ask not to punish the population because of a fanatic group. And then we ask that you pray for us.”

~Sister Nabila Saleh, 

  Holy Family Catholic Church, Gaza

When We Lose Someone to Suicide, the Wound Remains…

Below is a poem that I wrote over a decade ago and that has appeared on this blog before. I don’t know what to say about it, really. I know that on a beautiful October day, 18 years ago, I learned of the tragic death of a very special friend—a friend from a family that has been close to our family for three generations. He had visited us with his brother fairly recently, and we knew that his depression had turned in a dangerous direction (though apparently he was able to hide it from people in general). 

His depression was different (and much more severe) than anything I have suffered in my “constellation” of mental illnesses over the years. He was very sick. We knew he was struggling, and that there was a danger… but who imagines that these things can really happen?

This seems like it was a long time ago, and I have mourned and grown and have been healed in many ways. It’s a different time in my life. I am passing through the grief of the deaths of my own parents (who were his godparents). I have also mourned together with other friends whose families have been plunged into sorrow over suicide. There have been too many people who have lost their lives, and too many families who have had to endure this suffering.

But it’s been a long time since the death of my friend, and so much has happened since then. I would think that the “emotion” expressed in this poem would be something I would feel only “remotely” at this point, as an attentive compassion to others who go through this, and as a cry to God in prayer that the epidemic of suicide might not be such a scourge in our part of the world—where we have so much wealth, where we think we can be “safe” and secure, where we have so many resources for improving mental health, where we have “awareness” and where much is being learned and put into practice to improve people’s lives and address their many hidden crises and traumas. 

Much good is being done. Many lives are being saved, and many people are being treated successfully for illnesses that were scarcely acknowledged to exist when I was a child. My own medical and therapeutic treatment for depression and OCD, sustained by a supportive environment, must be regarded as a success (my physical health… well, that’s another story, but overall I manage it). Without mental healthcare I don’t know what kind of bizarre husband and father I would have been during the past decade-and-a-half (during the time the kids were growing up and needed a loving and mentally stable father). Instead, it hasn’t been a disaster, and it seems that I have done okay—I now have four basically normal young adults (😉), a couple of great in-laws, and — what a wonder! — grandchildren. (We still have a teenager at home, of course, so stay tuned… the adventure goes on!) I am grateful: for the grace of God, the love and patience of my amazing wife, and access to good mental healthcare in the ways I have needed it.

We need an “army” of mental health professionals today—an army that is strong enough to be compassionate and tender, to bring merciful aid to those who are suffering. Many people don’t get the medical care, the therapy, the counseling, the accompanying that they need for the disorders and traumas and wounds that they suffer in this unprecedentedly stressful and tumultuous world. Humans (especially in the “rich world”—the “West”—the world I know best) live in environments and with powers and possibilities that no human beings have ever had before. We also live with a hyper-vulnerability, being continually invaded by these new forces we think we control. We are exposed and turned inside out by gigantic (sometimes monstrous) collective and interconnected experiences that can dominate our interiority, crowd out self-reflection, and confuse our need for transcendence by overwhelming us with spectacles of material power that are only transitory, that leave us frustrated and hollow.

This is the “front” in our war. It is a strange war. The enemy is opaque. But the explosions are all around us, in the emergence of this ever-evolving artificially-constructed human world—a world of unprecedented power that envelopes us, that we think we are “using” but that we don’t understand (with wisdom). Therefore, it invades everything we do with its own relentless dynamics, shaking us, stretching us, deluding us, exhausting us. We are all at least a little bit “concussed.” We need the place that has been called the “field hospital,” where there are inexhaustible resources of mercy for the whole of our humanity. Mental healthcare needs to be vitally connected to the “field hospital;” it can contribute to bring healing because it is a work of mercy.

Life. It’s hard for everyone. There’s no shame in admitting it. When we recognize our vulnerability and ask for the fullness of life, for true freedom, for an answer to our yearning hearts, then we begin to live in a new way, unmasking the “absolutist” pretenses of every finite power, and beginning to understand with wisdom, begging for the gifts that enable us to engage this gigantic world with a gigantic compassion. Mostly we will fail, we will be overwhelmed, we will be wounded. But it is the begging that matters, the giving-over of our weakness to that “Weakness that is stronger than every strength” (see 1 Corinthians 1:25).

My memory of my beloved friend, and of that day nearly twenty years ago, is full of hope. But it’s not a “cheap hope.” Even though many other needs and challenges have come since then that have “distanced” me from the tragedy, I still know that losing my friend to suicide remains an open wound. It still cries out to be healed. Occasionally its vividness rises up, prompted by this or that circumstance. I can’t really explain. There are tears, and I do not understand them, but they flow… even now… once in a while. They cry for healing, and for a greater love—a love that hopes all things, endures all things… a love that never ends.

We all need healing. We all have wounds that cry for a greater love.

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In Memory of a Friend

"He didn't seem like he was depressed and was always smiling. This is shocking" (Anon).

A bright autumn day
colors 

crisp
sunlight flashing on the windows.
A clear day, blue with painted hues of leaf.

I stood strong and tall
in the breezy wind
and felt life once again
like great power
from my head flowing down through me.

With large strides
I passed over the fields
drinking fountains of expansive air.

And with the red sun playing on my head,
I burst through the door
but her face was bloodless white.
I stopped, and suddenly
the October air froze on my skin.

She searched my face
with a gaze of shiny wet cheeks
and spoke your name,
and this single word
had a weight
that said everything.

Fire arose in my bones
and spread all over me
until it found my eyes.

And the sun flickered in the shadows.

              --in memoriam, jp, +october 17, 2005

Israel and Palestinian Gaza: The Brink of Full Scale War

We wait, holding our breath, as Israeli ground forces mobilize on the border of the Palestinian territory of Gaza, an impoverished, desperately overcrowded, chaotic strip of Mediterranean coastline where most of the population of 2.1 million people live a daily struggle for survival. They are hemmed in together behind Israel’s defensive wall in conditions little better than prison—conditions that have arisen in consequence of the failure and breakdown of previous diplomatic agreements for a process leading to a “two-state-solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the midst of these multitudes of innocent civilians there are also groups of anti-Israel militants who hope to overthrow the State of Israel with help from hostile Islamist neighboring countries and (even) governments. They want all Israeli people to live in fear (including those who have politically opposed the current hard-line government and have actively worked for Palestinian rights); they practice terrorism as a form of jihad (“holy war”), and those who die performing terrorist acts are regarded as “martyrs.” Meanwhile some Israelis would like to drive all Palestinians from the land, and until then impose as many restraints on them as possible. The failure of dialogue between these two peoples has left the field of action bereft of the possibilities for creative and human solutions, and that space has been filled by polarized ideologues who are ready—once again—to place their trust in war. The innocent ones—the Israelis and Palestinians who seek peaceful coexistence, dialogue, real interpersonal and communal solutions—they are the victims and will continue to be the victims as this war escalates.

What can we do? We can stand in solidarity with them. We can pray for them—with real prayer, with the prayer that the Pope calls “the meek and holy force to oppose the diabolical force of hatred, terrorism, and war.” We can also make an offering to God and a gesture of solidarity by fasting. People all over the world will pray and fast for peace on this coming Tuesday, October 17.

Meanwhile, the Pope urges us to continue to remember “tormented Ukraine.” Really, these are not two separate wars. They are related in more ways than we realize. But regardless, we must have hearts and minds that are larger than the trending topics on Twitter/“X”/…whatevah. The suffering of peoples is made known to us in our era by “real time” multimedia. Some follow it as a form of “entertainment” while others feel powerless in front of the weight of all the suffering all over the world, and would prefer not to think about it. 

But seeing and hearing about these events can be an opportunity to pray-with and suffer-with our brothers and sisters in distress. It may seem a small thing, but—like a cup of water to the thirsty or a visit to a sick neighbor—it is prayer-in-loving-action, it is a work of mercy. We are human persons. We are not information collectors. We have hearts. Whatever our circumstances, our hearts can unite in begging for God’s mercy, and can reach out to accompany those who are suffering—we can’t “fix” them, but we can draw near to them, even if only in our hearts, so that they do not suffer alone. Our hearts can extend themselves in mercy, and we must beg God to enlarge our hearts. Mercy is the new reality that is building up and transforming our world. We are called to participate in this work, in this mystery of mercy.

Texts from Pope Francis and the assembly of Catholic bishops of the Holy Land:

“I continue to follow what is happening in Israel and Palestine with tears and apprehension: many people killed, others injured. I pray for those families who have seen a feast day transformed into a day of mourning, and I ask that the hostages be released immediately. It is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves, but I am very concerned about the total siege under which the Palestinians are living in Gaza, where there have also been many innocent victims. Terrorism and extremism do not help reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but fuel hatred, violence, revenge, and only cause each to other suffer. The Middle East does not need war, but peace, a peace built on dialogue and the courage of fraternity” (Pope Francis, General Audience, October 11).

“I continue to follow with great sorrow what is happening in Israel and Palestine. I think again of the many… in particular of the children and the elderly. I renew my appeal for the freeing of the hostages and I strongly ask that children, the sick, the elderly, women, and all civilians not be made victims of the conflict. Humanitarian law is to be respected, especially in Gaza, where it is urgent and necessary to ensure humanitarian corridors and to come to the aid of the entire population. Brothers and sisters, already many have died. Please, let no more innocent blood be shed, neither in the Holy Land nor in Ukraine, nor in any other place! Enough! Wars are always a defeat, always!

“Prayer is the meek and holy force to oppose the diabolical force of hatred, terrorism and war. I invite all believers to join with the Church in the Holy Land and to dedicate next Tuesday, 17 October, to prayer and fasting…

“I am looking at the Ukrainian flags: let us not forget tormented Ukraine” (Angelus, October 15).

A VLOG POST About Autumn, Time, and How We Grow

Here is a short “VLOG POST” from mid-October (filmed 10/13, revised 10/17). Our Shenandoah Valley has begun to “feel” the change of seasons. Sitting along Happy Creek at sunset in mid-October, JJ talks about the season of Autumn… in the year and in his life. Time is given to us to grow and bear fruit.

Here’s the link to “JJProf’s” YouTube channel:

Christina Grimmie: “Wear Your Heart Out…”

It has now been seven years and four months since the murder of Christina Grimmie in Orlando, Florida at an open meet-and-greet after what turned out to be her final concert on June 10, 2016. In her honor, I have attempted to create a cartoon meme.

She remains a luminous witness even today to the truth that the Love of God through Jesus Christ is “all [we] need.”