So Many September Changes, Especially in 2026

The "change of seasons" is in the air. For me this time is still touched with melancholy, as school seasons begin to move forward (which is still a big change of routine for my wife and my colleagues and friends). The sense of being "alone" at this time — even if I don't think about it — seems to weigh down my bones. Teaching is at the heart of my vocation. I am moved to try to communicate the truth I am learning, and to “walk together” with others in the search for wisdom and understanding about reality as a whole, human history, and the circumstances that are unfolding before us today. I have always regarded this “professorial” task as the basic mode of my service to the “common good” of my community, my nation, and this world which more than ever requires us to recognize our shared humanity and engage global problems with collaboration and solidarity.

But I am long retired from classroom teaching (for health reasons), and I am finding it increasingly difficult to use the means of communication that remain accessible to me in my present circumstances. I have in recent years been given a measure of strength that allowed me to publish a book over a decade ago and write a monthly column in Magnificat for the last thirteen years. Now I find this relative strength diminishing more rapidly as I grow older and communications media — along with the society as a whole — become increasingly superficial, over-saturated, and chaotic.

With this month’s Magnificat article, I am — regrettably — bringing my long series of “Great Conversion Stories” to an end (I don’t know whether the magazine will continue with the same theme under another author, or introduce another series). I do intend to bring together in an accessible form the entire collection of these stories (over 300 pages). This will be “my next book,” and I hope to bring out longer reflections on some of the remarkable persons I have written about with such brevity in my column.

But that depends on how much my health permits me to continue researching and writing. I know that increasing limitations on “natural” human capabilities open up wider possibilities for “spiritual” action in solidarity with persons (and peoples) whose sufferings I continue to study in my East Asia Project. I still hope to communicate more on these important themes insofar as it is possible. I hope that I shall continue to learn and ask questions for many years yet. But Jesus knows the path along which He wants to draw me to Himself.

The “issues” I noted recently that were holding up my brother’s treatment (and, probably, other issues that we don’t know about) have led to an impasse on the possibility of him benefitting from a new cancer protocol. Therefore, he will begin a more “conventional” course of chemotherapy on September 14th. It’s a mild form of the treatment that doctors hope will slow down the growth of the cancer. This is all that can be hoped for, and we don’t know how long he will remain among us in this present life. This is hard for him and for everyone; we are being led along many new and unfamiliar roads. Everyone please keep praying for him, and for those around him. God’s will be done.

If statistics mean anything, the accessibility of this Blog has cratered since it got cut off from the old domain address. I guess I will have to rebuild an active “following” all over again. I don’t know how those things are done. I know the blog has been helpful to more than a few people through the years. I hope and pray we stay connected or re-connect. The current blog address is < johnjanaro[dot]blogspot[dot]com >.

September brings changes… it would be nice if the weather would change, but so far it remains hot and humid! But the change in weather will come.

Happy Birthday, Mother Mary!

Happy Birthday, Blessed Mother Mary! The Mother of God our Savior and Redeemer was once herself a baby in the arms of her mother Saint Anne. This is the human reality of our faith in a particularly tender and beautiful realization. Mary, the woman who brings Jesus to us, is so lovable in her own history which is entirely shaped for Him. She is the first light after a long night of human misery and longing for the truth of life. She lives “already” the mystery of His grace, the mystery of our salvation that encompasses her whole history and, through her obedience, breaks into our history and changes it by changing us.

Dear Mother Mary, Refuge of Sinners, I am so grateful to you for everything!

To celebrate this feast day, Pope Leo XIV once again visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano (about an hour east of Rome), which is cared for by his own beloved Augustinian brothers. Here are a few excerpts from his homily (emphasis mine):

“I am joyfully here again, to celebrate with you the Vigil of the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin and to entrust to the Child Mary whatever is still being born in this poor yet magnificent humanity: fragile as a sprout, but a sign of God's faithfulness. Yes, Mary is the dawn of a different day, of our world finally freed from evil….

“Dear brothers and sisters, we feel dizzy before this Mystery: it is impossible to get used to it! We celebrate the birth of a child called to become the Mother of her Creator, the Mother of God who saves. And yet, she is born simply a child, like the daughters and granddaughters we hold in our arms. Today we have for her noble and lofty titles, of Lady and Queen, but God's way has been and remains simpler and more silent, yet no less powerful and transformative. It is the way of Jesus himself, ‘the firstborn among many brethren’ (Romans 8:29). Well, like Mary, we too are ‘predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son’ (ibid.): by grace, certainly, but desiring and preferring his path — his choices, his journey — to other ways. In Jesus Christ, God has chosen the humblest historical conditions and the humblest of creatures to manifest the uniqueness of his Kingdom, in which arrogance has no place and omnipotence is creation, service, and care for life.

“Today, in the Collect, turning to little Mary, we asked that ‘the celebration of her birth may increase our peace.’… We want to imagine peace — to broaden the boundaries of understanding and paint it in our souls — to recognize that it already exists, to welcome it and serve it. It is the gift of God, the breath of the Risen One, the work of the Holy Spirit. Let us allow peace to grow within us. It will sprout in the world. And the Mother of Good Counsel will accompany us in this mission.”

Malcolm Muggeridge Encounters “Something Beautiful for God”

In these September days — as we celebrate the holy life and incredibly profound vocation of Saint Teresa of Calcutta — it is good to recall the remarkable story of her good friend Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), a well-known British writer and radio and television journalist whose life was deeply involved with some of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century.

He was baptized Anglican as an infant, but his childhood was shaped by the optimistic socialism of his father. Malcolm grew up thinking that an earthly “utopia” might be built by social engineering, but this idea never satisfied entirely the vast and seemingly contradictory longings of his heart. From an early age, Jesus attracted him with the promise of Eternity. From Scripture, literature, and friendship with some devout Anglicans, he learned the ways of prayer, and would never entirely forget them. At the same time, his heart was pulled by pride, worldly ambitions, and selfish desires. His vivid consciousness of his own inner incoherence frustrated and afflicted him for many years.

As a young adult, Malcolm was an ardent admirer of the Bolshevik Revolution and the international Communist movement as it emerged in the 1920s. He became a journalist and, in 1931, a Moscow correspondent for a British newspaper. There, Malcolm’s socialist dream shattered against the hard reality of Stalin’s brutal reign of terror. Without authorization, he traveled to Ukraine and saw the horror and devastation of a politically engineered famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. He also came to a crowded Ukrainian church in Kyiv on a Sunday — crowded with hungry desperate people singing the Liturgy, begging for the mercy of a God who had suffered on the Cross. In this church, Malcolm began to realize that suffering (only made horribly worse by Communism, and in one way or another tragically unavoidable for all of us) didn’t have to be the ultimate frustration of human existence. Malcolm caught a glimpse of the God he had not entirely stopped seeking: the God who had come to dwell with us and to take our sufferings upon Himself. In that Ukrainian church, he sensed the closeness of Christ and His love to these suffering people who were beyond all earthly hopes.

Still, Malcolm wrestled for decades with his fickle, divided heart. He also became famous in postwar Britain as an editor and writer, television personality, and pioneering international documentary maker. This work would bring him to Calcutta, India, in 1966, to make a documentary about a Catholic nun who had founded a religious order dedicated to serving “the poorest of the poor.” In some ways, Malcolm Muggeridge “introduced” Mother Teresa to the affluent Western world through this landmark documentary, Something Beautiful for God.

He also came to know Mother Teresa as a concrete witness to Christ and a friend who cared about him. She amazed him as someone who was eminently practical, who lived “in the world,” but who did not depend on human powers or human success. Instead, she saw and loved Christ in everyone, especially the poorest people, the street-dwellers of Calcutta, the abandoned sick and dying, those she found who had no other hope. Malcolm recognized in Mother Teresa a sign of the love of God that alone could give meaning to the whole of human existence, the love that transforms even suffering and death. He knew that human projects and political powers were too small (and too tainted) to produce a joy that was eternal. But in Mother Teresa’s witness Malcolm saw living faith in the Incarnation, in the God who chose to humble Himself out of love.

Around this time, Malcolm publicly professed adherence for Christianity, and worked more openly with Christian themes in the remaining years of his life. He still felt intellectually alienated from the Catholic Church by some negative aspects of the Church’s historical profile and often flawed leaders. But through the encouragement and prayers of Mother Teresa and many others, he was slowly falling in love with the Church. This love finally prevailed, and he was received into the Catholic Church in 1982.

Mother Teresa's "Outstanding Charity"

Collect Prayer for the Memorial of Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta, who died on September 5, 1997:

God, who called the virgin 

Saint Teresa

to respond to the love of your Son thirsting on the Cross 

with outstanding charity to the poorest of the poor, 

grant us, we beseech you, 

by her intercession, 

to minister to Christ in our suffering brothers and sisters.

Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Sunset in September 2026

I’m always doing sunsets with my “digital, photo-based art” because I always take my walks in late afternoon or early evening (so that’s when the original pictures get taken). I’ve had a rough summer, but I have not ceased to be the “three-legged adventurer,” although my walks have become a bit shorter with the heat and humidity. Anyway, in my part of the Shenandoah Valley, we’re up on a hill, facing West, looking at the Massanutten ridge (where I used to love to hike when I was younger, and where I probably picked up lots of ticks without caring, back in the late 1980s and 90s). 

But even from the valley here, this ridge dominates the edge of the horizon and provides us with beautiful sunsets all through the year. I don’t have to walk very far from my house to see them. I still take many photos of the sunset. Sometimes I try to (digitally) “sculpt” them into images that are little more “evocative.” My digital art is an ongoing “adventure” of its own, a long experiment in media I will probably never master, but I might be able to place a small part on the ever-expanding canvases of “the New Art,” searching for genuine human insight, creativity, and technique by using digital tools on photographs. I suppose the much promoted and much feared elements of “AI” can be useful (I’m not sure I know how to distinguish them from tools I’ve used for many years — everything these days, it seems, claims to be AI). 

Some of these tools I can recognize because they seem to “think they know better than me” about the effects they create. So I wrestle with trying to “correct them” to give me what I want in the picture. My experience is AI tools (like, for example, “magic erasor”) is that they create a whole bunch of new problems for an artist who tries to use them as tools for his own creativity rather than as “shortcuts” for turning ideas into “visuals” for some practical communicative process or just for “fun.” Of course, all these digital techniques keep changing, and becoming “more powerful — sometimes in strange and chaotic ways.

The sunset also changes, but it follows the same reliable path, year after year. In a few weeks, it will be the Autumn Equinox.

Who Thinks of "Praying for Water"?

The Pope's Prayer Intention for the month of September 2026 is a simple one, but it is something that we in the rich nations of the world rarely think about, even though we bear great responsibility for many of the problems related to this fundamental human resource. 

We Christians say we want to "do the will of Christ" but when we are asked to have even a prayerful awareness of God's creation and the physical needs of billions of our brothers and sisters, some of us are tempted to think, "this is just ecological politics." No! The Gospel renews our whole humanity, and in Christ we begin to see everything in this world in a new way, and through the grace of the Holy Spirit we rediscover our vocation to be stewards of the created world, to be grateful for all of God's gifts - which are given to everyone and therefore must be shared with every person. 

The Pope's intention is no "Vatican foray" into the brutal game of power politics with all its ambitions, intrigue, and vanity. Rather, it proclaims our Gospel vocation to participate in the justice and mercy of Christ's redeeming love for the whole person and all of creation. The transforming love of the Heart of Jesus "already" penetrates the reality of the here-and-now, because every moment of time and space finds its true meaning in Him, and in the light of His promise to "make all things new."

Watch The Pope's Video every month. I find these YouTube videos useful for fostering a more conscious solidarity with Pope Leo in my daily prayer "for the intentions of our Holy Father recommended for this month." Open this link to see and hear his meditation for September: PopeVideo

Pope's Prayer Intention: "For the Care of Water"

Lord of Life,
You have given us the gift of water,
source of fruitfulness, freshness, and hope.
It quenches thirst, nourishes the earth, and heals wounds. 

We thank You,
because it is also a symbol of your grace and love
that renews us through Baptism. 

Today we ask You to teach us to safeguard it
with gratitude, justice, and responsibility.
Forgive us for turning it into a commodity,
forgetting that it is a universal gift,
a right without borders, meant for all your children. 

We see with pain so many brothers and sisters
who lack clean water,
who walk for miles to find it,
who become ill due to its scarcity. 

May your Spirit make us pilgrims of the essential,
able to live with simplicity,
denouncing waste and pollution,
defending the right of every brother and sister
to drink without fear and without inequality. 

May our care for water
be a sign of love for the Creator
and a commitment to the lives of the poor,
educating new generations to value
and protect the Earth’s resources. 

Amen.

Prayer for the Care of Creation 2026

"Although the challenges before us are enormous, God does not leave us without the means of healing and transformation. In place of the weapons of war, the God of peace grants us the strength to heal, to reconcile and to build a civilization of love. In this way, we are called to safeguard the many ‘ecosystems’ entrusted to us: the ecosystems of creation, of human relationships and of the human heart itself.

"Let us imagine a world in which the energies currently invested in war are directed toward integral human development, to overcoming poverty, protecting human dignity and reconciling divided peoples. Such a vision reflects faith in the coming of God’s Kingdom.

"The true tools for building peace are not weapons of destruction, instead they are truth, dialogue, patience, goodness, justice, mercy, understanding, care and love. These flow from hearts shaped by the Gospel and sustained by God’s grace. Only these qualities possess the power to transform individuals, renew communities and heal the wounds of our world."

~Pope Leo XIV

Message for "The World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation," September 1, 2026 (excerpt).

The Blog is NOT Broken, But…

…but the links that I have used for nearly 15 years no longer work. My proprietary “domain address” no longer works, and I don’t know if I will be able to restore it. None of the links to individual Posts that I have shared so often — links that are all over the internet — can be used. Open any one of them and you get a message like the one pictured here. The Blog and all of its posts are still online, but the address has defaulted back to the free “Blogger” address which is http://www.johnjanaro.blogspot.com — a situation which I find quite frustrating. Even though most of what I share of my own writing here is “rough,” I had built up a modest readership, and many of these readers may not be able to find this site anymore. The traffic on the Blog has plummeted to a fraction of what it was just a few weeks ago.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Dear people, I don’t know anything about Internet technology. Every effort to fix the problem only seems to make it worse.

I shall continue to post here, sharing the talents I already have been given as best as I can. But I don’t know what it will take to recover my readers. Really, it’s a mess, and I am at my wits end. I have no energy for any of this.

I will henceforth use the originally provided “blogspot” address. Please let me know if there are further problems with finding the blog and its posts.

Dear God, help me.

Saint Augustine’s Day

SAINT AUGUSTINE'S DAY.

“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You” (Confessions I:1).

Pope Leo Visits the “Meeting For Friendship Among Peoples”

Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV visited the 47th annual “Meeting For Friendship Among Peoples,” a weeklong cultural festival hosted by the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation in Rimini, Italy. We were able to watch a livestream of his afternoon speech. It was a beautiful moment. It also brought back memories from 35 years ago, when I attended the 1991 “Meeting” during this same week in August. I have some things written about that experience in an old journal I kept in those days, which I should try to find.

Here is a selection from the words of Pope Leo yesterday afternoon:

“I invite you, both within the Communion and Liberation Movement and within the particular Churches to which each of you belongs, to undertake this experience of walking together. It involves each person listening, allowing himself or herself to be transformed by the faith of others, and together, discerning new insights, taking further steps and responding courageously in obedience to the Holy Spirit. Synodality is not the name of a process, but the very nature of a people who, through friendship and encounter with others, come to recognize that they belong to God alone. In this way, authority is transformed into service, one that honors differences and fosters their harmony. In these troubled times, such a way of life constitutes a true sign of the times. Let us bear witness to the fact that every charism is given for the common good, that every gift increases when it is shared, and that every fear can be overcome. We must make this tangible, credible and desirable. You will know how to do this, dear friends, by following in the footsteps of your founder: by cultivating unity among yourselves, with those called to guide the Movement, with the Apostolic See that has recognized you, and with the Successor of Peter. May the Holy Spirit teach us the practice of communion. May he grant us a love for it, an appreciation of its beauty and the hope that sustains it.”

Mary Queen and Mother

“You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, / a royal diadem held by your God” (Isaiah 62:3).

August 22: Feast of the Queenship of Mary. It is the "glorious mystery" of the exaltation of the incomparable maternal love of the Woman who bore Christ in her womb, that maternal love that reaches out to each of us who are called to be God's children, brothers and sisters of her Son, her children.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, lowly servant, heavenly Queen, Mother of the Lord, our Mother. Salve Regina!

[Image: detail from an 18th century Mexican painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe includes the addition of a crown, according to the customary style of inserting details not present on the original image.]

Jacques Maritain on the Future of "Civilizations"

While leafing through the great twentieth-century Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics (a collection of essays based on lectures he gave in 1938), I came upon this lucid paragraph about 'civilization,' written during a time when 'rival civilizations' seemed to be on the threshold of a destructive conflict. 

Maritain addresses the aspirations of those who build human societies, and the ideals and attitudes that drive them. What he seems to say is that a civilization that 'makes room' for the transcendent Mystery of God will be transformed by God's gift of Himself in the Incarnation. In the discovery of the ultimate meaning that pervades the lives of persons and their distinctive histories and cultures, human civilizations will fulfill and discover their true and particular richness — mysteriously 'opened to eternity' even in this world, and eminently fulfilled in the transcendent coming of the Kingdom of God. 

If, however, they glorify themselves and close themselves off from God's presence and grace, they will turn to the darkness of oppressive power and be devoured by the idolatry of their entirely self-referential 'ideals.' 

There is much to ponder here for anyone who is concerned about the profound and perplexing drama born of the encounters and clashes of various cultures in our time. Maritain was writing in 1938, on the threshold of an unprecedented global crisis different from the one we face today. Nevertheless, his words resonate in our own present circumstances and address priorities that remain relevant for us today:

"This is, indeed, the wonderful and terrible alternative which faces the world, in the West as in the East. Either civilizations,—in the grasp of inexorable internal oppositions,—will seek to rise up and to defend themselves without penitence of heart, according to the energies of this world and its prince, and in keeping with the law of darkness and sin which is that of politics separated from the gifts of Him who enlightens every man who comes into the world; then the temporal community, or race, or nation, or State, or Liberty itself, will become a devouring idol for man (in fact, they are that already). Or else in allowing themselves to be penetrated by the holy forces of the Kingdom of God, civilizations will be transformed, and will receive into the core of the social and temporal order itself, the life-giving influx which comes down from Uncreated Love and which is promised to men of good will. And thus,—but after what settling of accounts,—they would finally enter into the fullness of their age and would aim at an heroic ideal of brotherly love and an understanding of the dignity of the human person, which may most appropriately be called, it seems to me, the ideal of an integral humanism."

~Scholasticism and Politics, chapter IX (1938)

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on God's Love

AUGUST 20: Happy Feast of the incomparable SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX! His preaching about God's love is as compelling today as it was 900 years ago:

"In the first creation He gave me myself; but in His new creation He gave me Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost. [Therefore] God deserves exceeding love from us, a love that has no measure… The reason is that He was first to love. He who is so great loves us so much; He loves us freely, little and poor as we are. 

"That is why I said there should be no measure of our love for God. For since love given to God is given to the Infinite and Measureless, what measure or what limit could it have? He, the Unmeasured and Eternal God, He who is Love beyond all human knowledge, whose greatness knows no bounds, whose wisdom has no end, loves. 

"Shall we then set a limit to our love for Him? 

"I will love you, O Lord my strength, my rock, and my defense, my Savior, my one desire and love. My God, my helper, I will love you with all the power you have given me; not worthily, for that can never be, but to my full capacity. Do what I will, I never can discharge my debt to you, and I can love you only according to the power that you have given me. But l will love you more and more, as you see fit to give further power" (Treatise On The Love Of God, VII).

“With You, I Can Do All That Lies At Hand…”

This is an old meditation from a (now) old book, but it got new life in the pages of Magnificat for August 18th. I’ll share it here too:

Summer Flowers

“Hibiscus, August 2026.” 

There are lots of bushes with these lush, droopy flowers that bloom throughout the summer.

Mary's Glory and Our Hope

Today is the celebration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the All-Holy Theotokos who followed Christ her Son from the moment of His Incarnation in her womb to the foot of the cross, then on to the resurrection, Pentecost, and her unique participation in the fullness of her Son's risen glory after completing her earthly pilgrimage. The Mother of our Redeemer has become the mother of all His brothers and sisters, caring for each one of us with the tenderness of her maternal solicitude and helping us along the way to our final and true home in the inexhaustible loving embrace of the Triune God. 

The Catechism expresses the truth of this "glorious mystery" of Mary's Assumption: "The Most Holy Virgin Mary, when her earthly life was completed, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. There she shares in the glory of the Resurrection of her Son and experiences the resurrection of all the members of his body as a forerunner" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 974).

In his homily today, Pope Leo exhorts us:  "Let us follow the light of the Risen Lord... especially today, by looking to Mary, whom God has crowned with glory in body and soul, and whom he has given to us as Mother, guide, companion on our journey, and protector on the path to Heaven" (Homily, August 15, 2026). 

And thus our hearts pray in union with the priest's words in the Liturgy: "For today the Virgin Mother of God was assumed into heaven as the beginning and image of your Church’s coming to perfection and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people; rightly you would not allow her to see the corruption of the tomb since from her own body she marvellously brought forth your incarnate Son, the Author of all life" (from the Preface for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God).

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Sacrificial Love, and Takashi Nagai

************************************************************

Happy Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe! 

The story of his martyrdom in Auschwitz’s concentration camp on August 14, 1941 is well known. Less known is that Kolbe was a missionary in Japan for much of the previous decade, living in Nagasaki and much loved by the growing Catholic population there. He carried out his profound apostolate of Marian devotion leading to greater intimacy with Jesus, along with his media apostolate, helping to establish the first Japanese Catholic newspaper. 

During this time, Kolbe’s tuberculosis flared up seriously (after being in remission) and he was treated at the hospital of Nagasaki. Needing frequent X-rays, he became acquainted with the chief radiologist, a recent Catholic convert named Dr. Takashi Nagai… a relationship that later took on great and wondrous significance (see my recent post of August 9). Kolbe’s impact undoubtedly strengthened Nagasaki’s Catholic community for the enormous sacrifices they would be called to make when their district of Urakami became GROUND ZERO for the second nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945.

And, as we learn about Takashi Nagai’s mysterious “dream” and his prayer as he lay dying in a nuclear wasteland in the days following the bombing, we should ponder the possibility that Franciszek Gajowniczek (the Polish prisoner whose place Kolbe took in the starvation bunker) was not the only “father pleading for his children” that Saint Maximilian Kolbe rescued from death in the midst of the inhuman horrors of the most destructive war in history. Who knows how many others he aided, from the radiance of his fulfilled love dwelling in God and in the Communion of Saints?

Saint Clare: a Love of Poverty

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"O God, who in your mercy led Saint Clare 

to a love of poverty,

grant, through her intercession,

that, following Christ in poverty of spirit,

we may merit to contemplate you

one day in the heavenly Kingdom.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

Amen."

~Collect, Memorial of Saint Clare of Assisi

Takashi and Midori Nagai: a Story of Faith and Love

The whole life of Takashi Nagai was one of continual conversion and growth in wisdom and knowledge. Here we will outline the beautiful story of his coming to Christian faith and baptism. This Japanese scientist and professor of radiology at the University of Nagasaki faced his greatest challenges after the atomic bomb turned his city into a nuclear wasteland. One of the most difficult of those challenges was the loss of his beloved wife Midori, who was such an important person in his conversion.

Takashi Nagai was born in 1908 in the rural Shimane Province, to a Shinto family. His father was a Western educated doctor. When Takashi himself entered Nagasaki's medical college in 1928, he considered himself an atheist and scientific materialist. Though he had high aspirations, something seemed to be missing. He tried to numb his dissatisfaction with intensive study and occasional drinking and carousing. But at his mother's deathbed, he was struck with the sense that she had not been simply annihilated; her spirit somehow lived on. And on hospital rounds, he saw that medical techniques were not in themselves enough to care for the whole suffering human person.

Then there was one Western scientist he greatly admired — Blaise Pascal — who was also an intense Christian believer. Takashi wrestled with the provoking and compelling aphorisms of Pascal's Pensées, and he decided to see for himself what actual living, praying, loving faith was like.

Nagasaki presented him with a unique opportunity: it contained the only significant Catholic population in all of Japan. Here martyrs had shed their blood and ordinary Christians had handed down the Faith secretly for three centuries without priests. When Japan opened to the West, Nagasaki's Christianity flourished anew.

Takashi took lodgings in the Urakami district of the city with the Catholic Moriyama family. Here he had the most decisive encounter of his life. Their adult daughter Midori befriended him, and in her he saw a conviction and a purity of soul unlike anything he had ever known. When Japan invaded Manchuria, Takashi was drafted and Midori promised to pray for him every day.

In Manchuria, he endured the horrors of scientific warfare for the first time, treating wounded from both sides under appalling conditions. Meanwhile Midori prayed for his safety and for his conversion. She wrote to him and sent him a Catechism, which he read. He began to realize that this devoted, beautiful woman and her faith held the answer to the meaning of life, and the brutal degrading military grind of the invasion — with its battles, prostitutes, and drunkenness — only served to make it clearer.

He survived the tour of duty, and returned safely. Midori's prayers were answered. In June of 1934 he was baptized, and soon after they were married. Takashi's faith grew stronger through the companionship he and Midori shared from 1934 until that awful day of August 9, 1945. Later, he found — in the wreckage that had once been their home — only her bones, ashes, and an object fused together into a metal lump in the skeletal remains of her hand. At the moment of the fiery atomic explosion, she had been praying the rosary.

Although Takashi himself survived the bombing and the immediate injuries that nearly killed him, his overall health steadily degenerated. He lived seven more years, raising their children, and witnessing to what he had leaned from their mother Midori and the faith they had shared. Even after he became totally bedridden (he was slowly dying from an aggressive leukemia, one of the consequences of overexposure to radiation) he wrote extensively. 

He observed and recorded daily the medical details of his bodily condition, hoping to contribute “data” toward the scientific investigation of the many issues raised by the dawning of the “Atomic Age.” He also prayed, offered his suffering, and wrote books about his experience on August 9, 1945 and its aftermath. He called for peace and cooperation among the many peoples living together in this world of unprecedented power and danger. He also wrote about the love of God that is greater than all the violence of this world, and is our hope for peace.

Takashi Nagai: Bombs, Bells, and Miracles in Nagasaki

Dr. Takashi Nagai (1908-1951) was a Japanese medical doctor, a scientist and pioneering researcher who specialized in radiology, a highly respected professor, a beloved husband and father, and a convert from atheism to Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church. I wrote about his conversion in my monthly printed column in Magnificat eight years ago.

But there is another story, the story of a more profound conversion, a radical change in Dr. Nagai's whole life that set him on the road to a greater faith, but also involved his passing through an almost unimaginable horror that began at 11:02 AM on Wednesday, August 9, 1945.

I can only say that the story of this great man, his wife, his family, his colleagues, and his community is one of the most intense and heart-wrenching and terrifying and beautiful stories I have ever come across in the twentieth century Church.

It is a story he lived long enough to tell, in a book called The Bells of Nagasaki. 

The Catholics of the Urakami district of Nagasaki, the disciples of Francis Xavier, the survivors of three centuries of persecution, were not specifically the intended target of the second atomic bomb. But because of various circumstances including weather conditions and wind, the very heart of Christianity in Japan - home to some 30,000 Catholics and their cathedral - became, literally, Ground Zero.

Many thousands of people were immediately reduced to ashes, including an estimated 8,000 Christians at the epicenter who were going about their morning routines, living, working, and praying. The cathedral was packed with worshippers praying for peace when the bomb exploded in the air above it. People in the vicinity of Ground Zero died where they were standing, sitting, or kneeling, in a flash.

The Nagai children were outside the city with their grandmother on that day. But their mother Midori Nagai was in the kitchen of their home in Urakami near the cathedral. The old home was built over a cowshed where her ancestors, the secret Christians, had gathered to pray and pass on their faith for seven generations without any priests, with only a basic catechism and the sacrament of baptism.

Days later her husband found remnants of her skeleton in the midst of the ruins, and some melted metal in the remains of the bones of her hand where he could barely make out the outline of a crucifix. Like so many of the Christians at Ground Zero, Takashi Nagai's wife had a deep devotion to Mary. When the awful fire fell, she had been praying the rosary.

Dr. Nagai was working at the Nagasaki University hospital on that morning. He was pinned under the wreckage of his laboratory, seriously injured but alive. Eventually the handful of doctors, nurses, and students who survived were able to reach him, stop the worst of his bleeding, and bring him to his feet. They formed a team that for several days worked heroically to treat whomever could be rescued from the flames and the scorched ground where there had once been a city.

As doctors, they did what they could to help the wounded, without medicines or supplies. As scientists, they discussed among themselves with horror and wonder the phenomenon that had occurred. They didn't know of the attack on Hiroshima, but they were able to see that this was a wholly new kind of bombing. Dr. Nagai and his colleagues were aware of the trajectory of atomic research, and had heard rumors that efforts were being made to use that research to make a horrible weapon, a nuclear bomb.

Their experience convinced them that these efforts had succeeded, and that they were living through a nuclear holocaust. And it wasn't over yet.

In the hours, then days, then weeks that followed, many people who had survived the blast developed strange and often fatal illnesses from radiation poisoning. Still others would succumb to their injuries. After a month of exhausting labor caring for the wounded and struggling to stay on his own feet, Dr. Nagai himself collapsed and was on the verge of death. His colleagues gave up hope of saving him as he moved in and out of a coma.

He recalled that he was prepared to die, but felt the desire and the need to live for the sake of his children (who had already lost their mother). Then he had a very unusual experience, which he reported to be something like a voice prompting him in a very specific way. In order to understand the significance of this prompting, we should note that Saint Maximilian Kolbe had lived in Nagasaki from 1930-1936 and was well known and much loved by the Catholic community. He had even been one of Dr. Nagai's patients. Father Kolbe had, of course, returned to Poland where the final act of his own drama awaited, and all news of him was blocked by the war.

But as Dr. Nagai lay dying, a voice seemed to urge him to "pray to Father Kolbe" for healing. No one in Japan knew that Father Kolbe was even dead, much less that he had died a martyr, but Takashi Nagai prayed for the intercession of the beloved friar. Soon after, he emerged from the coma, and the injury causing immediate danger to his life was inexplicably healed.

His fellow doctors said it was a miracle.

Unfortunately, his overall health was broken by radiation-induced leukemia, which eventually rendered him an invalid. From his bed, he turned to writing. In the light of his deepening faith, he wrote about the events he had experienced and their implications for the future. He wanted to record all he could for the sake of his native Japan and its reconstruction, for future scientific research, and as an advocate for peace in the world. He lived until 1951 and wrote 20 books, including The Bells of Nagasaki.

He is held in great esteem in Japan by Christians and non-Christians, and his story deserves to be more widely known. It is a profoundly Catholic story, a sorrowful and mysterious story, a story marked by the distinctively Japanese cultural character that the whole world needs to understand better.

I am a Tortoise in a World of Hares

You know the old fable about the race between “the tortoise and the hare”? The hare (which looks like a large rabbit) is very fast, but he is distracted and overconfident and strays frequently from the path. He even falls asleep. The tortoise plods along slowly but consistently, and eventually wins the race. This story is the origin of the metaphors I use in this blog post.

I have always been a plodder. Not only because I’m an incurable procrastinator; I think some of my “laziness” is methodological. I have always felt the need to pay attention to the many complex facets of a problem and listen to different perspectives before expressing my own attempt to form an assessment that is (I hope) guided by reality and worthy of consideration by others. This pertains particularly to writing. I can make rash judgments in conversation with others (especially when the opportunity to be witty presents itself, or the urge to complain when cynicism gets the better of me). Writing is different. Often my considered but far-from-perfect opinions and reflections change or acquire various nuances and distinctions as further knowledge and new circumstances occur. An ongoing blog has a “temporal arc” where written thoughts grow and change (even if no one else notices this except me). It has the characteristics of an open “diary,” an ongoing chronicle that stretches out over time and permits reflection and the development of understanding.

I have always plodded like the tortoise, observing and ruminating on what I see and hear, and articulating myself slowly — often first within my own mind, taking slow mental steps. I appreciate repetition (as you know if you read this blog) because remembering truths and expressing them “again” amplifies conviction and widens its depth and capacity for insight.

And for nearly two decades now, I have not only plodded. As a disabled person, I have “limped” through most things. I have become a sick old tortoise that inches its way along the course even as the increasingly “manic” hare of today’s global communications media runs faster and faster all over the field of opinion with little concern even for staying on the track. We sometimes benefit from the energy of these hares because they quickly (even if not always fairly) perceive strange intrusions on life that call for immediate attention.

I can appreciate the hares, as long as they don’t presume that speed alone wins the race. Perseverance in moving forward is more fundamental. I have found that “slowing down” doesn’t necessarily shrink one’s possibilities to discover and give one’s self while living a rich, engaging, challenging life. Vast spaces open up that would not otherwise be noticed. Compassion and empathy can become larger in one’s heart. There is time to wrestle with and ultimately find peace with one’s own peculiarity “uniqueness” as a person. One must pay attention, however, and seek out fresh possibilities when they present themselves. This means limiting distractions, moving step by step, slowly, steadily and focused toward the goal.

As the world ramps up further its engines of material “productivity” (and destructiveness), as well as the overwhelming volume, speed, and friction of “information” and its technologies, I can’t keep up with it all. But I’m not going to worry. Many people have the gifts needed to run in these fast lanes (and God will give them the grace to remain focused on what matters, if they remember Him).

I must continue on a slow and careful path, searching for and (I hope) finding those “two small coins” that will embody the gift I can give for the common good of my brothers and sisters, and to the One who gives me everything.

A Hiroshima Story

Toshiko Sasaki had a busy day in front of her. As the eldest daughter, she always helped her mother get the family ready every morning before going to work herself. But this time, her baby sister had taken ill during the night, and her mother was with the baby at a hospital in the city. On her own, she made food for her father and two younger siblings before commuting to the city and beginning her day’s work as office clerk at the East Asia Tin Works. She opened her record books and turned her head to say something to a coworker. But she never had the chance.

It was 8:15 AM on the morning of August 6, 1945 at Toshiko’s office in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Seldom in all of history has a single moment in time been so decisive and destructive for so many people in one place. Tens of thousands died instantly (including Toshika’s parents and infant sister). Many more would die in the coming days, weeks, and months of the hideous effects of radiation poisoning. For those who survived, their lives would never be the same.

In a remarkable two-part book Hiroshima by American journalist John Hersey, six of the survivors of the world's first nuclear bombing tell their personal stories of endurance. They are difficult stories of people often permanently injured and afflicted with recurring strange illnesses. But the story of Toshika Sasaki stands out as a witness of grace and redemption, thanks to her encounter with another of Hersey’s six survivors, the Jesuit missionary Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge.

First, however, Toshika would endure many months of gruesome suffering, medical neglect, and near despair in the chaos of the obliterated city. The infamous “blinding flash of light” at 8:15 on August 6 was followed immediately by the unimaginable explosive devastation of the city. As her office building collapsed, Toshika was buried within the wreckage under shelves of books with the terrible pain of a compound fracture in her left leg. Nearly left for dead, she was eventually found and removed, only to be placed in the street with countless others who were horribly injured, waiting as improvisational medical stations were desperately thrown together with abysmally inadequate equipment. Eventually Toshika would be moved five times while she endured a broken and severely infected leg, some signs of radiation sickness, and dangerously high fever. When treatment finally began, the bones had fused, and the twenty-year-old girl appeared permanently disabled.

In February 1946, a mutual friend asked Father Kleinsorge to visit Toshika. The Jesuit priest — along with his confreres at the nearby mission church — was spending all his strength visiting the sick (when he wasn't himself hospitalized). Toshika, however, was not comforted by his words. She cried out, “How can a good God allow such a horror as this?” Kleinsorge tried to explain to her that sin — human rejection of God’s goodness — led to the evils of violence.

After her infection healed, Toshika returned to her home in a suburb, outside the blast range, where her brother and sister had remained unharmed. Father Kleinsorge, weakened by his own illnesses, continued to visit her, walking now from a great distance. She wasn't yet convinced by the things he said, but she was touched by his consistent concern for her whole person. Then one spring morning, she saw the sun beautifully glistening on the dew, and her soul was filled with an incredible joy and peace. She spontaneously prayed the “Our Father.” Suddenly, it all “fit together” and she desired to follow the religion of her Jesuit friend.

Toshiko was baptized in September 1946. A few years later she joined a religious congregation as Sister Dominique Sasaki, and served with great compassion the poor and sick for the rest of her life.

Transfiguration: Memory and Hope

August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration. 

God grants a unique grace to Peter, James, and John as witnesses to His luminous Transfiguration on Mount Tabor prior to His going up to Jerusalem to accomplish the redemption of the world. But an abundance of grace also flows out to all of us who encounter Jesus in the Scriptural account and liturgical celebration of this great sign, which we receive "through faith" in the testimony of the Gospel, given by the Holy Spirit and sustained through two millennia within the life of the Church. 

Here is a sign of eternal glory, the promised fulfillment of the Father's plan to renew all things through His Son Jesus and all those who "listen to Him" and follow Him and trust in Him. It is a sign for our memory, so that even in the midst of the greatest darkness and the ruins of sin and death, we can have confidence that evil does not have the final word! 

Thus, we remember the glory of Christ — the resurrected Christ who has conquered death — and we live in hope and offer all our days in union with Him.

Ukraine is a Land of Heroes

I thought I should say something about these two young Ukrainian heroes that have come to my attention in recent days.

It's hard to believe that in August of the year 2026, I still find myself writing in the present tense about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia that began in 2014 (with the "annexation" of Crimea) and took current full-scale form in February 2022. The fact that I haven't written much about it recently doesn't imply that I am any less concerned about the ongoing suffering of Ukrainians and their nation. Nor have my objections and concerns about many other current events that I have written about in past several years undergone any change. (Anyone who wants to know them can find my thoughts sufficiently articulated in previous posts.) 

Rather, I’m devoting more of my very limited energy to further research on the “big picture” that contextualizes current problems (in Russia and elsewhere). It’s a picture with many facets that are obscured by conflicting myths engendered (in part) by the technological revolution that has simultaneously “united and divided” peoples of the world for over 150 years.

Recent images in the news give the impression that Ukraine may have turned the tide in the war they have been forced to fight in order to survive. Strategic drone strikes that reach deep into Russia are slowing down the enormous and extensive military-industrial war-making system that enables Putin to continue the aggression. The front line in Eastern Ukraine is virtually stalled, but it remains bloody and costly for both sides. Meanwhile Russian ballistic missiles continue bombing major Ukrainian cities relentlessly, with increasing intensity. Civilians continue to be killed or wounded every day. There are many painfully tragic losses, and in some cases there are people who lose their lives while courageously serving others and trying to rescue them from damage already inflicted.

Apparently, the aggressors have stuped to the egregious ruse of "double tap bombing," whereby a site is bombed once to cause initial casualties and damage, and then bombed a second time shortly afterwards, in order to inflict more casualties among those caught up in the crisis and chaos of the first bombing. So it happened on the night of July 31/August 1 in Kyiv.

The two young people I wanted to honor and remember in the above illustrations (based on photographs released post-mortum) are in a special category. Both were killed by "double-tap" Russian bombings while serving in rescue missions. 22-year-old Yehor Terekhin, a Kyiv police officer, rushed in to help those wounded from a first-bombing in a residential area, and was killed by the cruel second bomb moments later.  Then there was Vitalina Yarovenko, a university student and volunteer with a military medical battalion, who also died in similar circumstances while engaged in rescue work at another bomb site.

The admirable heroism of these two young people on the same night captured the attention of Ukrainians and people all over the world who follow with grave concern the bloodshed of this awful war. Though their courage is inspiring, their deaths remain poignantly tragic. Their youth is enough to take away our breath. It stands as an inescapable symbol of all the barbarism, the waste, the cruelty visited upon good, self-sacrificing people, young people, "ordinary" people, people who live their daily lives in the cities of Ukraine, people who have no intention of inflicting harm on anyone.

I hope that Ukrainians who survive this violence will always honor the soldiers who have defended them at such great cost in a war they never wanted, and the heroism of all their compatriots who have sacrificed their lives to protect Ukraine, each of whom had a face and a name like Yehor and Vitalina. May the people keep this heroic inspiration in their hearts, especially the young, who — God willing — will help Ukraine in the near future to take the exemplary place it deserves in the community of nations.

The “Spiritual Communion” Prayer of Saint Alphonsus

The month of August begins with the Memorial of the 18th century Italian Bishop and Doctor of the Church, Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). He was a prolific theologian and spiritual writer, preacher and shepherd of souls. Six years ago, a brief prayer he composed became crucially important for 21st century Catholics. The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic kept ordinary Catholics from attending Mass in their parish churches for many months. Instead, we connected with our churches on Sundays (and weekdays, if we wanted) via live-streaming while our priests offered Mass there.

On those Sundays, we were not able to receive the Eucharist regularly. For many of us, however, this crisis provided the occasion for us to learn (or become more familiar with) the practice of “spiritual communion.” Saint Alphonsus’s concise prayer (posted on the screen after the priest’s communion) became for us a way to maintain a vital relationship with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, long after the churches have reopened, the widespread practice of live-streaming Mass each day has continued, to the great benefit of the sick and homebound and anyone who finds it helpful. The ministry of Saint Alphonsus in this way continues to touch the lives of Catholics, so that Jesus might sustain us and draw us to Himself.

Saint Ignatius and Ludolph of Saxony's "Life of Christ"

There are many wonderful stories from the life of Saint Ignatius Loyola (July 31) as he followed the Lord’s call (together with his earliest companions) to found and foster the emergence of a singular missionary charism in the life of the Church: the Society of Jesus.

It all began within the heart of Ignatius, as the Holy Spirit drew him from the ambitions of a worldly life to a total commitment to follow Christ. The main features of the story of Saint Ignatius's "conversion-of-life" and the beginning of his vocation are well known. An element that deserves more attention, however, is the vital human connection between the wounded soldier destined to found the Jesuits and a medieval Carthusian’s witness to the Person of Christ.

Born in 1491, Ignatius was the youngest son of a noble family in the Basque region of Spain. With a passion for earthly glory, he became a soldier in the armies of Castile, and was seriously wounded by a cannonball in May of 1521. During a long recovery, he became bored, and asked for books of chivalrous tales to pass the time. But the only books available were “saints’ lives” and “a life of Christ.” Having nothing better to do, he began to peruse these books. It was there, in his bed, that he encountered Jesus Christ, and the extraordinary change in his life began.

The saints inspired Ignatius. He found his Catholic faith incarnated in the stories of heroic men such as Saint Francis and Saint Dominic. His ambition began to change, slowly, as he felt the aspiration to “compete” with the saints for this new ideal of holiness. The witness of the communion of saints began to shine for him. Most importantly, however, he read and pondered for the first time the events of the life of Jesus. Ignatius did not read the New Testament in 1521, for it did not exist in Spanish translation. What he was given to read was a most extraordinary four volume “Life of Christ” by a 14th century Carthusian hermit, Ludolph of Saxony.

Ludolph takes up the Gospel stories methodically, following the events from the Annunciation to the Nativity and infancy, to the Baptism of Jesus, His Public Life and ministry, His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, and onward to the Final Judgment. Each event receives copious attention with Ludolph drawing on Scripture and the Church Fathers to illuminate its meaning. Ludolph’s method is to lead the reader to place himself “inside” the particular events. He gives rich imaginative descriptions and exhorts his reader to “look” at the details, consider their significance and embrace the grace of a prayerful encounter with Christ. The fruit of his own contemplative life became a written witness to the Person of Christ that could be shared.

But Ludolph’s image-rich meditations were destined to have an audience he could never have imagined. A century after his death came the printing press. Suddenly, the hermit was translated into several vernacular languages (including Spanish, at the express request of Queen Isabel) and widely distributed among pious people all over Europe (including the sister-in-law of Ignatius, who brought it to his bedside in 1521).

Ludolph’s witness led Ignatius to grow more and more in love with Christ. Ignatius took some three hundred pages of notes on the text, and there is no doubt that this medieval monk inspired Ignatius in the formation of his own great instrument for bringing people to a deeper relationship with Jesus, the Spiritual Exercises.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola had many other encounters that shaped his own vocation, but it was on his sickbed that he met Christ, and it was the witness and work of saints and holy people that originated his own witness with its enormous fruits for the coming epoch.

Saint Peter of Ravenna: "How Much God Loved Humanity"

"As resplendent as the excellence,

power, and magnificence of the Creator were
when one contemplated His works,
all the same the love of God was concealed,
and the charity of God kept hidden.
To give to his subjects,
to bestow things on servants
is what usually characterizes a donor;
to suffer for one's subjects, to die for one's servants,
this is a sign of immense charity
and evidence of a love that is unique....

Anyone can grant favors, anyone can bestow gifts,
any prosperous benefactor can love
those who are deferential to him;
but will he be comparable to Him
who took the adversities of His own people onto Himself;
who puts Himself forward
to block dangers threatening His own;
who hands Himself over to punishments for His own,
who confronts death face-to-face
in order to remove them from destruction
and preserve them for life?
Love is proved by adversities,
the weight of affection is determined
by the dangers endured,
perfect charity is confirmed by death....

That dominion is true
which commands by love, not by fear;
which subjects both bodies and hearts to itself
by means of affection;
which by loving furnishes servants for itself
who are not unwilling, but willing.
[Jesus died because] He wanted it to be known
how much God loved humanity,
since He wanted to be loved rather than feared."

~Saint Peter Chrysologus (380-450 A.D.)

   Archbishop of Ravenna, Doctor of the Church

   Feast, July 30th