Why is Christmas So HARD?

Dear Santa Claus: It would be a lot easier if you REALLY DID do this job!

It's Christmas Eve.

Many of us are stressed out. There are all these things to do, and we are all running around to fix every detail "just right" and to meet every expectation. We are determined that we are going to make our Christmas MERRY!

We may be troubled, broken, confused people; we may have dysfunctional families, or families separated by distance or rife with division, but we are going to do what we think we're "supposed to do" in order to construct a kind of ritual happiness. We will have gift-giving, and a big meal, and we will try to hold our tongues and not fight with one another.

Or when relationships have been severed beyond our hope, or when loved ones have died and are painfully missed, we will struggle to build new Christmas happiness rituals, holding back the tears as best we can.

We stress out and work so hard to make Christmas happy, or at least to make it look happy.

This is understandable. We want so much to be happy. And this time of year can feel like a weight, an obligation to be happy even if we don't know how, or don't think we can be happy. Still, we try so hard!

We try to make Christmas joy happen. Or, at least, we try to make something happen that feels like joy.

Why is it so hard?

We must take time to remember that the real happiness, the real joy of Christmas, does not have its source in anything we make.

The joy of Christmas is a gift. It is a gift freely given to us. A wonder. An utterly surprising, amazing, unimaginable gift that has been given to each and every one of us without exception.

Of course we work hard, make sacrifices, and try to set aside our disputes for the sake of a celebration. It's human to seek happiness, to hope for it, and to celebrate it.

But let us remember that our celebration is not a desperate, exhausting, confusing effort to build a great tower that will somehow reach and grasp that mysterious happiness that always eludes us.

This effort always leads to disappointment. Even if we have vacations and smiling pictures and fun and great memories, we will still -- in the end -- find ourselves empty when the lights come down and the long nights of January stretch out before us.

Disappointment. For some it triggers or exacerbates illnesses of mind and body. Others find ways to forget it, suppress it, or return to the (always temporary) truce that human beings make with boredom and mediocrity in their daily lives.

Christmas is not meant to lead us to disappointment. We must remember, again and again, that we are not trying to build a tower reaching up to an unattainable happiness.

We are preparing a place to welcome a gift that has already been given to us, to celebrate this gift, to rejoice in it. The gift belongs to each one of us, and nothing can take it away from us.

We can ignore it. We can run away from it. But the gift remains. It waits for us. It promises joy if we will only receive it. And the gift is so great that it will heal and open our hearts and enable us to receive it.

Whatever we may be suffering, the gift of Christmas is a triumphant Joy that opens for us a path and gives us the steps that lead from joy to joy, so that we can walk the road of joy and learn how to give ourselves in turn to this gift of Joy that never ends.

Let us remember: The Joy of Christmas is a Gift.

Let us welcome this Gift in a celebration of wonder and gratitude.

Joy is More Than a "Feeling"

Rejoice! The Lord is near.

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, known as Guadete Sunday. The birth of Jesus is near at hand.

Light breaks through the long Advent of our lives too. We are on a mysterious journey, but we are sustained by the One who accompanies us, whose Father's house is our destination.

We can lose sight of joy if we confuse it with a mere feeling. Joy comes from a place more profound than our temperament or emotional makeup, or our psychological "personalities," so frail and subject to affliction.

The joy of the Holy Spirit is an affirmation of the heart (in the sense of "the whole person"). It is the affirmation that says, "God is good! God loves us!"

Joy affirms here and now that this present moment is a gift from God through which I am being shaped and drawn to the fulfillment of my destiny in Jesus Christ.

This is a moment when Jesus comes to be with me. All the more when it is dark and painful, full of suffering. Jesus is with me here, in these places of affliction. And I can affirm His presence even in the experience of sorrow. I can affirm that He is with me, that He is sharing my sorrows, that He is redeeming me through His presence herein.

Remember the love of God in Jesus, in all the places of our lives. Believe in Him. Trust in Him.

Rejoice!

Asking for the Joy that Endures Forever

The sloping valley, the ancient hills, the blue sky streaked with clouds all speak to me of joy.

"Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit" (Psalm 51:12).

Joy is the fruit of that secure relationship of love with something or someone good. But as St. Augustine pointed out so many centuries ago, every good in this world whispers, "I did not make myself. I was made by Someone Else...." It is only in that Someone Else that lasting joy can be found, the joy that encompasses and fulfills the promise contained in created things.

O Lord, give me the joy of your salvation! What am I asking of God? I am asking for the joy that endures because it is the fruit of a relationship with the One who is worthy of all my love because He is Eternal Love. He is the only One who can exhaust and engage fully and finally the love that has been awakened in my heart by the mystery of life itself.

Can There be Joy, Even in Pain and Tribulations?

"Joy is like the seal of a Christian. Even in pain, tribulations, even in persecutions" (Pope Francis).

I don't think we can stress this too much, as long as we know what we're really saying. Joy is not the same thing as "always seeing the bright side," or always maintaining a constant smile or a good mood or good feelings. It's not merely a good disposition or an energetic manner.

External cheerfulness and a peaceful, confident, positive internal feeling or state of mind are not the same things as Christian joy. Indeed, joy often coexists with all sorts of apparently contrary dispositions of a complicated human personality, ranging from bad digestion to intense physical or psychological suffering. "Even in pain, tribulations, even in persecutions" the Christian person possesses joy.

The obvious appearances and feelings of joy may be signs and expressions of real joy, or some of its elements. But in and of themselves, they may indicate nothing more than natural realities such as a certain personality type, a cultural expression, a physical and psychological equilibrium, or a response to a satisfying experience. They can even be a fake dress worn by hypocrisy, or a facade that hides an agenda of violence, abuse, and personal manipulation.

Real joy, however, is deep and foundational. It is an underlying reality of the new humanity that we receive from Christ, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The heart of Christian joy is a participation, already begun here and now in the life of grace, in the very mystery of God's own infinite joy, of His life, of His glory. No experience in this life can simply be objectified, analysed, and classified as "joy-in-the-radical-sense," because it is God sharing His joy with us -- the joy that is God Himself.

God elevates and purifies our affections, draws us through them, and gives us much help that passes through our psychic experiences and strengthens us. But even when we cannot "feel Him" in any way, we still believe in Him by faith and cling to Him in hope. We know that the source of our joy is with us, and that if we love Him, then we possess that invincible joy even if the world rages at us, even if sorrow overcomes us in the face of earthly loss, even if neurotransmitters in the brain or hormones in the body go bonkers, even if incomprehensible pain fills our entire conscious awareness.

It is for our encouragement (not our discouragement) that the grace of the Spirit touched some of the martyrs and saints, so that they embraced gruesome death "as if going to a wedding feast." But God's Kingdom is overwhelmingly made up of saints who probably went through their deaths with considerably less enthusiasm. Many lived their lives with temperaments that would not be classified as "joyful" in the mundane sense.

The joy of God is lived within the love of God, and it realizes itself vitally within our personality in the measure in which we love God and our neighbor. The resonance within experience and the external signs of joy have different forms, different levels of intensity, and variations that correspond to the secret ways in which the grace of God is at work transforming mysteriously the particular person according to his or her own history, wounds, and suffering.

If we are patient and loving with people, we will be surprised by their joy as it peeks through like the sun on a cloudy day. And a glimpse of it will enrich us.

In sum, smiles and good feelings may arise from true joy, but the joy that is the gift of the Spirit is always deeper and "beyond" any of these expressions. If life becomes more happy and "fun" in general for those who love God (and it does), it is because God's presence brings healing to the whole person... but in different ways and in different measure, always mysteriously and personally, not always obvious and evident.

After the resurrection, Jesus didn't ask Peter: "Simon son of John, do you feel good about me...."

He asked, "Simon son of John, do you love me...."

It is in God that we have joy, and nothing can separate us from this radical joy: neither principalities and powers, nor the present or the future, nor the kings of the earth and their designs, nor persecutions, tribulations, pains, nor the tragedies of life, the loss of loved ones, the oppression of harsh task masters, nor sufferings, nor piercing screams from some horrendous cancer treatment (whether it is us who scream, or the person we love most in the world as we stand by their bed), nor the harrowing abysses of psychiatric disorders, the darkness and deadness of depression, the anxiety and obsessions that rage like fire in our brains, nor the implacable daily unseen torture of a chronic illness that no one else seems to understand, nor any of the countless ups or downs of life -- extraordinary or ordinary -- that we can imagine.

When we hear the words of Pope Francis, we shouldn't say, "Oh, I don't feel joyful, so I guess I'm not a real Christian." Rather let us say, "No matter how I feel, my joy is in Christ and in belonging to Him."

When we say this, let us examine ourselves, and seek forgiveness for all our sins (which never bring true joy in themselves, although our sorrow over them is already the beginning of joy). And let us live in hope, because the life of God is our joy, and His love is stronger than our suffering, our wounds, our frailty.

We have confident joy because He has reached down to our deepest need. God has joined Himself to us in the most desolate places of our pain and tribulation. Jesus is with us, and our wounds belong to Him; they are His wounds, forever. Joy is the revolution of transfigured open wounds, open forever in His resurrected body, because of His love which He gives to us.

The joy of this love becomes mysteriously radiant even within all the moments of this present life -- this often arduous journey -- because love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). In His love we keep going, we hope, we desire, we offer, we trust, we cry out for God, we never give up.

Christmas Day at the Janaros

Merry Christmas from the Janaro family!

Jesus Christ is born. Come, let us adore Him!

We went to the beautiful Midnight Mass, and finally got home around 2:00 AM. But Christmas and Easter pictures are a tradition, so we had to take one quickie while we were still wearing our Christmas duds. Then the kids went to bed so that "Santa" could put the presents under the tree.

Shortly after I awoke in the morning, John Paul was peeking in the room. "I have been sent as a scout," he said in his increasingly deep voice. I was bleary-eyed. Who was that at the door?

Was it this guy?

Or was it THIS GUY?

I had to shake my head so I could see clearly. "Okay John Paul," I said, "we need ten minutes."

We soon came out to the living room and saw a bunch of kids ready to open presents:

What? Who are these kids? We'd better have some coffee!

(Really, that's Christmas 2003, with (LtoR) Teresa, Lucia, Agnese, and John Paul. Josefina is not in the picture because...there was no Josefina. Indeed, the universe once existed without Josefina, or any of these other monkeys.)

But seriously, the kids who opened presents yesterday looked like this:

John Paul (these days he brings down most of
the heavy boxes from the attic for Christmas)

Agnese, who is always a challenge to photograph

Lucia, a lovely young lady

Teresa! (She's the one year old baby in the 2003 picture)

                     And FINALLY....

Josefina (who is a year older than John Paul was in the 2003 picture)

Here's something interesting: Look back at the picture from 2003. Do you see the pajamas that the 3 year old Lucia is wearing on that Christmas morning? Now look at the 6 year old Josefina. Yup, same pajamas. Obviously our kids wear hand-me-downs, and Jojo is still working her way through her sisters' old toddler clothes!

After presents it was time to get ready for the arrival of Uncle Walter and "Papa and Gramma" (and more presents). I've celebrated many Christmases with these precious people, who still take care of me after all these years. The first one that I can remember was in 1966, when I was just short of 4 years old. I don't remember much, other than the fact that Walter got a cowboy. I liked his toy cowboy better than anything I got. And I drew lots of pictures.

[Later in the evening, thanks to the distance-bridging technology of Skype, we were able to "visit" with the other grandparents too, who are three thousand miles away in California. Woo Hoo!! Hooray for Skype!]

I want to say how much I love my wonderful wife. Eileen made it a great day for everyone, with delicious food and hospitality, and an inexhaustible patience in managing a crew of kids-who-were-supposedly-"helping" (really, they were a great help).

I am so grateful for the affection that permeates everything she does. She makes Christmas at our home beautiful and merry. She helps me to remember the Joy, which is sometimes hard for me. I can't have joy alone, but Christ is born into the world and He is the One who has woven our lives together, that we might know His joy and thus come out of our own solitude. Thank you, Eileen. I love you.

Merry Christmas!