Happy Birthday Eileen Janaro!

My dear wife, we grow older, but indeed we are full of years, somehow, even with all the care and toil and pain. We move forward together, and hope grows stronger. We do not know what lies ahead, and we do not doubt that new sorrows will come along with new and deeper joys, but we are learning about how God's persistence and the patience of His goodness turn even our weaknesses into the strong soil of fresh and surprising growth.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Janaro. I love you with all my heart!

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

We all had fun celebrating Eileen's birthday on March 5, which felt even more like a little holiday in the midst of Lent thanks to the strongest snowstorm of the season. It gave us at least eight inches of snow and kept us, once again, all together and snug in the house with something to celebrate. Snow fell throughout the day.

Here's the house and surroundings getting pelted with snow.

Pine hangs with snowy fruit. The road is around here... somewhere!

Among many things, there was plenty of home cooking. The highlight of the day was the birthday cake that Agnese baked. It was a pound cake with honey liquor and a pineapple sauce. Oh gosh, it was so delicious!

Teresa brings in the glowing cake.

That is a slice with pineapple sauce, and it tasted even better than it looks.

Thank you, Lord, for all Your blessings. Grant that Eileen and I will have many more happy years. And bless all her many labors that make our home everything that it is.

Thank you Jesus, for everything.

Fifty YEARS of a Great and Mysterious Love Story

It is the Lord who shows us the real drama, and the real possibilities and mystery of a human relationship. That is why today I feel it worthwhile to continue my account of a very special and astonishing relationship between a man and a woman, a relationship far more radical and unusual than anything we see or hear about.

Several months ago, in Magnificat, I wrote about the conversion to Jesus and the Church of Jacques and Raissa Maritain, a remarkable young couple whose lives and search for the truth could not be separated.

And indeed, they continued for more than fifty years this relationship of loving Jesus together and bearing witness to Him. It was a passionate love story, deeply personal, and yet also wonderfully fruitful in the world. They touched so many of those around them, and drew them in to share in the "great friendship" with Jesus that they had found and were living.

Meanwhile they also made a great and lasting impression upon the world. Jacques became internationally recognized as a great philosopher (arguably the greatest Thomistic philosopher of the twentieth century), and also as a teacher, a prolific author, a man of public affairs, and an ambassador. Raissa's reflective nature led her to become a notable poet and writer, and though hindered greatly by health problems, she wrote through the years and also continued to be Jacques's most important inspiration, confidante, editor, and critic (when necessary she could be a very blunt critic, and he listened to her when she corrected his thinking).

Raissa's most famous works are the two beautiful memoirs (Les Grandes Amities and Les Aventures de la Grace) about her early life with Jacques, their conversion, and their years of spiritual, intellectual, cultural, and artistic partnership in France before World War II. Of course there's even more to the story after that, and some things were only revealed when Jacques published Raissa's Journal after her death, along with his own notes.

I believe it was one of the greatest human friendships ever.

As a marriage, it was unique... mind blowing, really.

It was a truly great marriage between two people who loved each other really and concretely, in every kind of circumstance and stress. But this marriage had at its core a very special commitment: something that strikes even Christian married people as strange and incomprehensible, and that is positively not recommended by the Church as an ordinary way of life in the married state.

It is a commitment that is possible in extraordinary circumstances and in the light of a very particular kind of vocation, and it must be rigorously discerned in spiritual direction to be sure that it is entirely free of any subtle contempt for the goodness of married life as a real means of sanctification. But Jacques and Raissa were deeply convinced of the God-given goodness and interpersonal beauty of the activity that they both felt called to abandon freely in sacrifice. They wanted to sacrifice this expression of love... for the sake of love. This was not an immature spiritual impulse or a failure of affectivity. This was a desire that had been growing in their hearts for some time, for a very special path they were called to follow.

Many people simply don't understand it, or even disagree with it. Certainly there is nothing "ordinary" about it even for Catholic Christians.

But the Maritains were called by Jesus in a singular, extraordinary way. It is impossible to comprehend, but at the same time the reality of this call for these particular people is evident; it is undeniable, in its fruits.

And this commitment between them was completely unknown to anyone else while they both lived (except those who gave them spiritual direction, who kept it in confidence as was their duty).

Jacques revealed the whole truth about their marriage and their decision only toward the end of his own life, and he emphasized that it was something very particular to their own personal Christian life together, their particular circumstances and the ever-greater love that Jesus continued to draw from their hearts. They believed themselves called to a mysterious love that Jacques called "mad love" -- the love of Jesus that draws people to sell everything and follow Him alone. At the same time, they experienced this as a "common vocation," to love Christ "madly," to sacrifice everything but to do it together and in the midst of the secular world.

After eight years of married life, characterized by an ardent physical intimacy that participated in and expressed, no doubt, their profound growth in faith, they felt called to a great renunciation. No doubt also, this possibility arose in light of the fact that they had no children, and it did not appear that they would be able to have children.

Finally, after much prayer, discernment, and direction, they took vows as Benedictine oblates and included therein something not required for a married oblate: celibate chastity. In their circumstances, without responsibility for a family, they could have chosen to part ways in this world, with Jacques becoming a monk and Raissa a nun.

But that is precisely what they did not choose to do, and herein lies the utterly radical and particular nature of the vocation they had discerned. They chose to live their marriage within this profound and secret commitment, to leap into the mystery of living the bond they shared in new ways unknown to them (and to us). So they consecrated themselves to pursue God alone (but also together) and lived thereafter in a celibate marriage.

They lived together in this way, as husband and wife, for fifty more years!

And everyone who knew them testified that they lived a relationship of profound unity, companionship, and fidelity to each other, while also possessing an openness that drew people from the milieu in which they lived, people of many faiths or no faith: intellectuals, artists, musicians, political activists, poets and writers.

The cultural world of France, and later America, found in them a unique kind of hospitality. Not a few of these men and women of the world converted, and the Maritains became godparents many times over. Clearly Jacques and Raissa lived a companionship that was both personally intimate and full of a humanity that radiated out to many others.

The Maritains, near the end of Raissa's life.

They lived what Raissa called, "Contemplation on the roads of the world."

In its particular sacrifices and as a form of married life, it is not a way that people should try to copy (really, people, don't try this out...).

It was simply something extraordinary, a unique grace that they were given.

For us married people it seems strange, like a distancing, a coldness, a breaking off of spousal love, an attempt to turn marriage artificially into a kind of religious life. And that is what it would be (and worse) if any of us presumed to take it up.

It was not meant to be a "form of life" that could be proposed in a general way to the Christian people. Rather it was a profoundly personal and interpersonal grace given to transfigure the lives of two particular people. As such it is, really, incomprehensible; it touches on the mystery of particular human persons and their relationship.

We can't really understand it.

But the more we "get to know" the Maritains from their own writings and the testimony of others, the more we can "see" the fruits of their "mad love" for Jesus (and for each other!). There is in them, unmistakably, something both awesome and tender, great and humble, incomprehensible and approachable.

We see the Mystery within the human. We see humans being transformed and at the same time becoming more profoundly human, more attractive with a love that reaches out to us and accompanies us.

Even though we are not called to imitate the dramatic life and relationship of the Maritains, it remains a witness to a Love that can change us even when it surprises us, a Love that can be trusted and followed because it leads to the depths of God and the realization of our own personal identity.

Scenes From a Wedding Anniversary

Here are a couple of the pink roses that my wife found when she awoke on June 22

The blog has been a little short on words recently. The stats indicate that it's been short on readers too, haha, although it's difficult to assess how many "hits" on a post actually constitute thoughtful reading of its contents. I still have my faithful "core readership" (Hi Dad, hi Mom! ... and others too) and I don't think they will object too much if I post more pictures and less dramatic thoughts.

Eileen and I celebrated our eighteenth anniversary on June 22. Lots of folks on social media already saw this picture from outside the church, after the wedding on that hot day in 1996. I need to make a better digital reproduction, but meanwhile this captures the happy feeling of that day in a better way than any of the professional photographs:

We were young and cheerful, running on adrenaline and a hundred concerns about the reception that had not even started yet, which was good because underneath it all we were both completely exhausted. Eileen had been up almost all night finishing the veil for the wedding dress (she made the whole dress herself -- well, actually with some help from her mother -- and it hangs waiting for our daughters if and when they should have need of it).

Pink flowers, but red wine

My wife has amazing energy now. Eighteen years ago she was a phenomenon (i.e. she's actually slowed down over the years, a little). Then and now, she does everything out of a simple and very rich contemplative soul. She is not a scattered person. My wife has always devoted her energy to things that take time, things that require patience and tenacity. Whether it's getting an education, making a wedding dress, raising a bunch of kids, nurturing friendships, caring for (and suffering with) a sick husband, cooking a Christmas dinner, or preparing the environment of a Montessori classroom: Eileen just does it, and sticks with it until it's done as well as it can be.

It was God's will that she should marry me. He knew that she needed a challenge for a husband. I'm joking, of course. Well... not entirely. I'm a challenge. But I have a pretty good mind (when it's working) and a big heart, and I am grateful to fill it by cherishing her, supporting her, and working with her in living a mysterious common life: a common mission to form and educate our children, and to extend this educating vocation into the wider community. We collaborate as teachers, with our children every day, and then in our works, even though we are usually in different environments using different pedagogical instruments.

I think if Eileen and I were shipwrecked with a group of people on a deserted island, we would probably start some sort of school.

I love her, and I just can't say it enough. In eighteen years we've been through so much hard stuff. When we got married we were "older" than many couples: I was 33 and she was 29. We had lived and traveled and worked and seen a thing or two about life (though not nearly as much as we -- or at least I -- thought at the time). I was a professor, a publisher, and an editor. She was an experienced teacher and had been the headmistress of a private school. We really liked each other and just enjoyed being together (we still do, very much). It was a good solid foundation from which to start.

But we have needed much more than anything we could have imagined back then. Above all we have needed the grace of Jesus in the sacrament of marriage in order to persevere together through the arduous and painful circumstances that life has presented to us. We walk together with a calmer but stronger confidence, because we have experienced the faithfulness of Christ's love. It strengthens our fidelity to have seen that He really is faithful. And yet we will be stretched and tested more in the future, and we will find Him again in new ways as long as we still have need to grow.

With all this we have also found much joy, peace, and trust, and with God's help we will continue to do so for many years to come.

I love you, dear Eileen.

We went to a quiet Italian restaurant at the end of the day: this was a joy!

One+One=Three? Something Happened!

Life is a mysterious and wonderful thing. On June 1, 1997, a baby was born. A baby boy. A child. A human person. We named him. John Paul Augustine Janaro.

John Paul Janaro, obviously not a newborn here, but still pretty new.

Everyone is always talking about relationships and feelings and compatibility and men and women and marriage and who should get married and who has rights to what, and on and on. We want to know how we can maximize the mutual satisfaction of this unique physical, emotional, interpersonal bond between two people who love each other so profoundly.

Marriage. We go into it crazy, thinking that nothing could be deeper than our love, and all we want to do is hold onto the deepness and make it even deeper. "Me and you. You and me...." So what happens?

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS!!!

Oh, you mean "children"? People think, "Oh yes, we'll have children too. Of course." But here's the thing: we didn't "have a child" on June 1, 1997.

Saying that is just not enough. Life is mysterious. It wasn't just "a child." It was John Paul. It was him -- this person, unprecedented, unrepeatable, unimaginable, his own self, John Paul Janaro.

Nine months before that day, a universe was created. The Word spoke, and this person -- this "someone," unique, unfathomable, lovable, destined to know and love and exist even after all the stars and galaxies have burned themselves out, to live forever -- this person was created. One day there was me and Eileen and our love for each other, and the next day there was this person.

And then, on June 1, after making himself known in many ways as he grew under the heart of his mother, he was born. He came forth into the light and breathed the air and screamed his head off.

It's a moment when you realize that this "love" thing is a total revolution. My gosh. You make choices. You get swept up in emotions. You love each other and you open your hearts, but you don't "make" anything. Something happens: you don't deserve it, you can't earn it, and when this someone is given to you, it becomes clear that you have been given to him.

Yes, it's "cute"! It's also a friggin' MIRACLE!

Birth is a milestone. It's not the beginning, and it's not the end, but it's a milestone in which a human person says, "Here I am!" Soon it becomes virtually impossible to imagine a universe in which this person did not exist.

Love seems to overthrow mathematics. Mathematics says 1+1=2. Love says 1+1=3. (I'm probably plagiarizing G. K. Chesterton here. Surely he said this somewhere, but I've seen the truth of it for myself. And he would agree that my words, therefore, are not a quotation but a happy coincidence. It 's not about his or my silly writings, but about the fact that life is amazing.)

Love says 1+1=3. Eileen+John=Eileen, John, & John Paul. And Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, Josefina, and the love that continues to shine in the world through them. Are numbers really good enough for what we're talking about here? Sure, you can count children, but real love keeps going on. It keeps being a surprise and a gift that we can't measure.

We don't deserve any "number" of children; each one of them is a gift to us, and we in turn become gift to each one of them. When John Paul became my son, I also changed: I became his father. And this happens again, in a unique way, with each child. We grow in the giving of love, we become gifts of love when we receive the gift of a person.

Not everyone has children. But the miracle of children and families is a sign that the nature of love is the gift. We become ourselves by giving ourselves. This call to love is vivid in the family, because there is this other person who calls me "Daddy" -- I didn't make him, he is a mystery, but he claims me as his father and I want to belong to him in this way; I want to be this gift to him. So it is with each and every child. A family is persons given to one another in this very particular way, through the self-giving love of a man and a woman who commit to each other so radically that they open up a space where new human persons might be created (not on demand, not "made to order," but as the free gift of the One who has fashioned and designed marital love with wisdom and goodness). This mysterious Freedom does not always give children to spouses, but the Gift is always being poured out in ways that are beyond them, their own ideas, and their plans. Spouses who love each other truly open a place, and we must believe that in each gift of spousal love "something happens" that is more that their love, and that makes their love grow.

Families are the sign that this Love is being poured out, everywhere. They are called to manifest in a particular way that we are all gifts to one another. The family is a place where I learn that every human person can say to me, "You are my brother." We are all given to one another in circumstances that we do not control -- circumstances that call upon us to give ourselves in specific ways, with works of love that always have mysterious fruit.

Not everyone has children. But children are a sign for all of us that if we open up our love it will be shaped into an unfathomable gift that is always beyond our calculation. Whatever our circumstances may be, if we truly give ourselves in love, even the most simple gesture is carried in the hands of the One who can do all things, and who always does what is good, who always brings forth beauty, who brings everything to fulfillment.

This life we live is a mysterious and wonderful and strange thing. Sometimes we don't understand it at all. Sometimes it seems unbearable, and we suffer. On the other side of suffering, however, we see (or we will see) that through it all we have been loved.

Our son John Paul has grown in ways we can see and measure. My gosh, he has grown! But the deeper things are beyond our measure. What we see is something that prompts us to entrust ourselves to the mystery that we are all loved, and to move forward in the desire to see the face of the One who loves us.

Wishing you many more Happy Birthdays, John Paul. Thank God for you!

So what grade should I give this paper?

Baseball at age seven.

And then age 12.

And today, at 17 and growing UP.

Have We Allowed the Seeds of Betrayal to Enter Our Hearts?

Giotto (14th c.), detail of Judas

Judas clearly chose to betray Jesus. This was no sudden impulse. It was a premeditated decision to sell his Master for money.

But why? Surely, Judas had once loved Jesus. He left everything to follow Him. How did this love die?

It probably began slowly. Perhaps what happened to Judas, in the beginning, was the same thing that happens so often to us.

As the fervor of his first love was tested, and as he began to realize that Jesus and His plan were not like his initial hopes, Judas allowed disappointment to creep into his love. Over time, his love for Jesus grew cold, even though he continued to “go through the motions” of discipleship.

As disappointment grew into bitterness, his heart turned to other loves: money, personal ambition, independence, perhaps even the desire to follow someone else. We don’t know.

But we face the same temptation to betray someone we love. Consider our commitment to our marriage. Time inevitably reveals that our spouse is different, and that God’s plan for our marriage is different than we first imagined. Here we are challenged: Will we trust in God, be faithful, and allow love to grow? Or will we give in to disappointment, begin to seek other loves, and slowly betray the other person (and God) even as we still “go through the motions”?

Father of love, protect our hearts from the disappointment that leads to betrayal, and grant us the faith to follow your mysterious and loving plan, rather than selfishly clinging to our own expectations. We ask this in the name of Jesus your Son, who has loved us to the end. Amen.

[Published in Magnificat Lenten Companion, 2014, p. 60]

Our Children are Made For God

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and children. Ah yes, the children. The vocation to participate in God's creative love for them extends to the "raising" of these children.

It’s hard enough to provide them with food and the needs of daily life. But our task as parents is greater than this. Each child is a person—a developing and expanding spiritual universe of understanding and love, of creativity, of searching and questioning and hunger. Their hunger is not just for bread, or for education, or for human affection. It is all these things, but—within and beyond all of this—it is a hunger for God.

How can my wife and I give them God?

The awareness that we are called to be instruments through which our children discover and experience the love of God as Father is truly overwhelming. Nevertheless, we see in the gospel that Jesus is always asking His disciples to do the impossible. After He finishes preaching to five thousand people, He tells His disciples to give them the food they need to eat for their journey home. "Feed these five thousand people!"

What do they have to give? They have seven loaves and a few fish. They have something, but it is clearly not enough.

We too have something: our own poor, selfish, struggling humanity. But there is something else we have, and—like the disciples—we keep forgetting it! We have Jesus!

My wife and I have Him in a particular way, precisely in the way that our children need to come to know Him, through the grace of the sacrament of marriage. Our marriage is the foundation for a communion of persons, and Jesus is at the center of that communion, so that we and the children can grow in the ways of self-giving love.

We need to ask for faith to recognize that He is with us as husband and wife, as father and mother, as two fragile, limited people, so that He can take us, and (yes, like the loaves) break us, and give Himself through us to our children and to everyone He entrusts to us.

Lord Jesus, give us faith to recognize Your presence in our lives every day, and increase our confidence that with You, nothing is impossible. In Your hands, may our poor humanity be transformed into the gift of Your love for each other and for our children.

The Most Important "Work" of Marriage

Lately there has been a lot of talk about marriage in the blog world (especially among Catholic Christians). Young couples enter into Christian marriage, perhaps, with starry eyes and optimism and even a bit of forgivable "overconfidence." We've been there, and felt that way. We know that time will teach them the hard work of married life, of unity and fidelity, of the experience of discord (even the Pope recently mentioned how "throwing plates around" is a normal experience of spousal argument).

But, above all, time (and their openness in faith and love) will allow them to experience the inexhaustible power of the grace of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus in the sacrament of marriage. The hope, of course, is that Christian newlyweds are prepared in such a way that they truly believe in this grace from the beginning. Nevertheless, the whole of married life is an ever deeper verification of the reality of the grace of marriage and it's superabundant adequacy to endure and to grow through a vast array of unimaginable circumstances.

All of this is very true. Older married couples can list circumstances of good times and bad, sickness and health, a million awkward things about sharing life right down to who hogs the blankets every night. We can talk about the importance of nurturing our unity through these circumstances and through communication and trust and forgiveness.

All of this is very true.

But there is something lacking in this conversation. Maybe we take it for granted because it's so obvious. Or perhaps because it's so unique, and so seemingly "beyond us" when we think about ourselves as married couples that it gets left out when we theorize about marriage.

Eileen and I would say after almost 18 years -- and through many trials involving work, money, my disability, illness, and such -- that the experience of our marriage is marked overwhelmingly by five very precise, very unique circumstances that unite us deeply and personally, in wonder and prayer, in fear and trembling.  

Their names are John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina.

In the old days this was called the primary end of marriage, articulated in what may seem to be less than soul stirring language as "the procreation and education of offspring" (I've never been keen on the word offspring. It makes me feel like we're bugs or something. How about another word, like children.)

Of course, husband and wife must love each other. But this unity is inseparable from the fruitfulness it engenders; it exists within that fruitfulness. The sacrament of marriage is the fountain of that most basic community of persons, the family. Even if spouses cannot procreate physically for some reason, their unity has an intrinsic fruitfulness of radical constructive hospitality that God will reveal to them (whether it be adoption, foster care, or some other special charism of giving to the larger community).

So marriage is about building up the relationship, the "two-becoming-one-flesh," the friendship, the mutual help, the fidelity. It's a relationship between two people, a husband and a wife. And yet, precisely insofar as it succeeds in really being a genuine spousal unity, it will transcend these two persons, it will "take flesh" in life -- and not only in the agreements about things like leaving the toilet seat up or down -- but above all in other living human beings, which means that if nature is unhindered these will be new human beings, new persons created by God within the radical openness to Him that spousal love entails.

Let me put it simply: marriage is about children. That doesn't mean reducing an interpersonal relationship to a mechanism for "reproduction," for cranking out offspring. It means that married love is radically at the disposal of God's creative action. Married love is procreative; it is God's instrument for engendering and fostering human community. It is interpersonal love, and that is why it includes the possibility of human reason discerning the will of God regarding all the NFP stuff, because married love must always be radically at the disposal of God's creative action, even when a given expression of love is not seeking to result in a child. After all, men and women don't produce babies. Rather, their love creates a space of psychosomatic unity within which God creates new human persons.

Thus marriage is the stuff of families, of children and then of grandchildren, of communities and eventually of peoples who encounter one another. And the sacrament of marriage in Christ builds up God's people, who go out into all the world bringing the gift of his love.

When we speak about married life, let's not forget about family, about our children, or (as the nuptial blessing puts it) our childrens' children. The family is not in competition with the unity between the husband and wife; rather it is the place where that unity is most profoundly expressed and lived.

And children are never abstract. They are the history of the husband and wife loving each other in God. Eileen and I don't just have some anonymous "offspring." We have been given John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina. Each is loved uniquely by God, is uniquely His image and likeness, and is destined to live and love and share in His glory.

As Eileen and I journey together toward the Lord, our children remain the great, astonishing, incalculable surprises, the mysteries, the primary expressions and concrete engagement of our unity, and our most profound "common interest." In front of each of them, we remain in awe of God, and of each other.

John Paul II's Death and His Continued Presence in Our Lives

Today is the nine year anniversary of the entrance into eternal glory of Blessed John Paul II. He died on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, a few minutes after the Mass for the feast day was celebrated at his hospital bedside.

How well I remember that vigil, and the days leading up to it. The last lesson he gave us was showing us how to die. We wept, and yet we also knew that although something great had come to an end, another greater and more wonderful thing was just beginning. John Paul II, having entered fully into the heart of Jesus, took up a new place as a powerful advocate for us in the communion of saints.

He seems more accessible, more close personally since his death, more aware of me and Eileen and the lasting value of the blessing he gave us on our visit to Rome in 1996 and the few brief words we shared. His blessing of our marriage on that day seems to open up into an assurance that in God's Kingdom he has a great solicitude for us and our family. I rely on his powerful intercession.

Later this month, on Divine Mercy Sunday, he will be officially canonized as a saint of the universal Church. What a blessing it was to grow to maturity in his days, to see him and hear his words, to witness his struggles, to find again and again in every kind of circumstance his passionate love for Christ.

The central grace of my life was 25 years of learning to follow Jesus through the teaching and witness and courage of this man. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy, for giving us this living icon of your Son.

Blessed John Paul II, pray for us!

On Parenting and Encounter

It's particularly hard to be a parent in the secularist culture of the Western world today. But Eileen and I have been blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends who support one another in the task of giving their kids a complete education.

We see all the dangers and frustrations and dead ends in our society; some of us have been down these paths in the past. But we also see many possibilities for goodness and beauty and solidarity in our society -- many perennial human possibilities but also many new possibilities opened up by all that is genuine in this emerging new epoch.

The forces of corruption are pervasive, as is the tremendous damage that is being done to persons, relationships, communities, and the civil order. It's only human for us to want to be "protective" of our children.

So we protect them, certainly, by setting certain prudent "boundaries," but also by living so as to build an environment, together with our friends and their children, that allows them to grow and develop through the normal stages of childhood and youth. We thus engage life not with a reactionary ideology, but from inside the positive dynamic of human nature and redeeming grace: the life Jesus generates among us because he is present with us.

We live with Jesus, within the context of the family, supportive institutions, and the sacramental life of the Church. From this context we introduce our kids, in a pedagogical way, to the great potential, the challenges, and the struggles of adult life in this society.

Do I mean something more here than simply that "we want to raise good kids"?

Well, certainly we want to raise good kids.

With the right pedagogy, we hope to help our children cultivate a generous personality, an authentic understanding and empathy, and a sense of responsibility based on the truth -- a solid moral character.

These are all realistic and admirable goals.

But there is a problem that might arise. I might be inclined to take as a "given" the very purpose of everything else in life, to assume it in such a way that I forget about it or it loses focus. I want an intellectual and moral formation for my kids. But as the Pope said, "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ." (And this is not Pope Francis speaking. This is Benedict XVI, and he says this over and over.)

I want to help my children to be open to the love of Jesus. I want them to encounter Jesus, to be drawn by his love, and to follow him in the paths of their vocations.

It's especially easy among us Christians to focus on raising good, morally strong kids who have the right ideas. It's easy for us to talk about Jesus and the Church and faith, but forget that he is present with us, that he is drawing the hearts of each and every one of our children and shaping their destiny according to the mystery of his wisdom and love.

Our children belong to God. It's easy to forget that as parents our vocation is to have stewardship over them, and the environment in which they awaken to life and hear his voice.

Of course we want our kids to be moral, but why? It is because we want them to respond in love to the God who gives himself to us in Jesus. This is what life is all about. Our primary task as parents is to prepare our children to encounter Jesus and follow him.

And I have failed so often (in 17+ years of parenting) to be the instrument of God's love to my children, but I pray and I beg Jesus to shine through even my weakness, to touch the hearts of my children and draw them to him, to enable them to know that he loves them personally and calls them to share in his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.

Our children have been created for this and given to us for this. How do we truly succeed in our task as parents?

I can only humble myself before the Lord and ask for his grace for my own life, for my wife and our marriage, and for our family. The infinite mercy of the heart of Jesus is my hope. May all our children encounter him in his mercy, and place their trust in him.

Dear Young Adult Singles: Some Words About Marriage (link)

Yesterday, I posted about marriage as a guest blogger on the excellent blog of Arleen Spenceley. You can read the post by clicking HERE.

As a college professor, I feel in my element getting to know young people and encouraging them as I see their talents and creativity unfold. Blogging and social media have opened up new possibilities for collaborating with the next generation and learning from them too. I have made the acquaintance of some terrific people who are doing a great deal of good both on the "digital continent" and beyond it. It is a privilege to contribute to this good work and to support it.

Arleen Spenceley is a remarkable young lady who has education and experience in the mental health field, and who is a journalist with the Tampa Bay Times. She blogs on human sexuality, relationships, and the true meaning of love, and she's bringing the wisdom of Blessed John Paul II out there, into the dialogue with evangelical Christians and also the secular media. Presently she's writing a book that will be coming out next year.

I was glad to do a guest post from the perspective of some older folks (but not that much older) who can relate to the experience of many of her readers, but who have also gone somewhat further down the road.

My wife Eileen and I both know what it's like to be young twenty-something singles in graduate school and working, and also what it's like to be married for a decent stretch and to struggle with difficult circumstances that have taught us much. One thing we've learned is just how real the marriage vows become in life, and how great is the strength of the sacrament.

But there is no need to rewrite the whole thing now; if you haven't already done so above, go ahead and read the piece (and check out Arleen Spenceley's blog) by clicking HERE

The Person You Will Me to Be

Father in heaven,
through the merciful heart of Your Son Jesus,
crucified and risen from the dead for our salvation,
and by the grace of Your Holy Spirit,
make me
the man,
the husband,
and the father
that You will me to be.

Bless my wife and our marriage,
our children,
and our home.

Bless my whole family,
my work,
and all those You have entrusted to me
in various ways.

Make me
the son and brother,
the teacher,
writer,
friend,
and mentor
that You will me to be.

Give me the grace to see
that every human being I meet
and interact with this day
is a person,
created in Your image and likeness,
created for love,
and deserving of nothing less from me
in every circumstance,
in whatever forum;
a person whose dignity is worthy
of recognition and reverence,
honor and service,
openness and respect,
solidarity and compassion.

Lord, have mercy on me.
Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Newlyweds in Italy: Meeting Blessed John Paul II

"This was a day of a truly incredible blessing."

Travel Journal, Wednesday, July 3, 1996 

On the previous day, my new wife and I had obtained "Sposi Novelli" tickets to Pope John Paul II's Wednesday audience. The first several rows in front of the hall were reserved for various groups, including newlyweds. We thought we might have a close look at the Pope, from those front rows.

But as we boarded the bus back from the Vatican on Tuesday afternoon, we saw an old friend of mine, Fr. Sylvester Catallo, a Capuchin priest who could have been Padre Pio's twin, and who had been pastor of St. John the Evangelist in Woodstock, Virginia years ago, when I was in college. I had taught CCD there in 1982. He and his pilgrimage group were getting off the bus, so we spoke briefly. We told him about the tickets, and he said something very important: "Go and get on the line first thing in the morning. Get there as early as you can. If you get seats in the front row you can meet the Pope!"

We arrived on Wednesday morning before 9:00 AM, and the Swiss Guards took us through a special entrance. Thus we found seats in the front row of the Paul VI Audience Hall, right behind the famous waist-high barricade that one always used to see in pictures of the Pope greeting people at the General Audiences. In time we would see how right Fr. Sylvester had been. The area was soon packed with people as was the rest of the hall. Only those in front, scrunched against the barricade, had any chance of touching the Pope much less speaking with him personally. But we would make the most of our chance.

The Pope arrived at noon and spoke to the crowded hall. He received delegations and greeted pilgrims from different nationalities, who responded in the crowd with cheers and the waving of flags and banners. And here we take up the travel journal:

Finally, the Pope began to make his way along the front of the crowd. We were crunched on every side. When he came close, there was something that I sensed for the first time (after having seen the Pope so many times from a distance) -- the simple human warmth, the affectionate nature, and also the human vulnerability, the enormous vulnerability of this man who is not a "religious superstar," but who is a man, created with a need to love and to be loved.

When he stood before me and Eileen, we touched him and embraced him (burying face, lips, anything available, against his hands and arms) as though he were our Grandpa. Without any loss of reverence, we were filled with an overflowing and spontaneous affection, a familial affection.

We had a brief conversation. We told the Pope that were were from America, that we were newlyweds on pilgrimage to Rome, and that we desired his blessing on our marriage. And so the Pope placed his hand on each of our heads and traced the sign of the Cross while pronouncing his benediction.

We spoke for a moment. We gave him one of our wedding cards with the verses from John 17 ("that they may be one..."). Above all, we told him that we loved him. He looked tenderly into Eileen's eyes, and then he patted me on the cheek (as shown in the Vatican Press Office photograph, one of several we were able to purchase later on).

Finally, he began to move on, greeting others who stuck their hands out next to us, speaking again in Italian. [But I couldn't suppress my overflowing, excessive nature, and for once I'm glad I didn't.] I shouted to him one last time, "We love you, Holy Father!" And as he continued down the row, he spoke again very distinctly in English, "God bless you."

And so our marriage was blessed, personally, by the Pope. Also, I believe, we gave something to him; we were able to express personally to him the affection we have for him on account of the love and the suffering that shape his whole mission, and through which he has given us so much. And I think that we gave him comfort -- we stayed with him, even if only for a moment, and our companionship with him in Christ was evident, and was a source of strength for us and also for him.

We believe we received a great grace on this day, seventeen years ago. And now with our five children and many years of joys and trials, we have seen this grace continue to unfold in our marriage and family life. For his part, Blessed John Paul II (now on the threshold of being declared a canonized saint) offered his sufferings for the Church and for every human being during the rest of his life, and in the remaining eight-and-a-half years of his long Way of the Cross he carried us along with so many others. Then, almost from the moment of his death, I sensed with confidence his intercessory closeness, his new way of continuing a companionship with us.

This picture is now a uniquely personal icon in our dining room. The greatest saint of our times -- and this great apostle of the sanctity of marriage and the family -- seems to be holding me and Eileen in his strong arms, and I know that his prayers accompany us in suffering and many trials. Every day I pray for his intercession: "Hold on to us, keep us always together, and obtain for us God's blessing."

His intercession is powerful before God, and I know that he will pray in the same way for any couple who invokes his aid, or any person.

Newlyweds in Italy: Remembering Our First Adventures Together

We were here... a week after our wedding

June 29, 1996.

I am reading the journal of the trip that my bride and I took seventeen years ago. I'm glad that I kept a travel journal; it revives the inner experience of places and times in a way that can only be done by the written word. Or perhaps that's just my personal bias, because I am a writer.

In any case, I think that this year we will review the journal in detail, and hopefully dig up some of the bulky old "photo albums" full of pictures.

As I have said before, Eileen and I are both "Romans" by virtue of the (different) times we each lived and studied there in our youth, and by our great excursion together at the beginning of our married life.

We spent three and a half weeks in Italy for our honeymoon back in 1996. We were able to make this trip because we didn't seek a "lovers' solitude" experience; we spent all but five nights at the homes of friends. It was a real trek, from Rome to Assisi to Florence to Ravenna to Milan to the Italian Riviera. I'm so glad we did it then, when we had the time and the energy of our youth. I'm glad that, while we were still able, we rode trains and buses, slept on floors or (worse) the infamous Italian "letto," and hauled bags that got bigger and bigger as we accumulated loot along the way! I recommend this kind of honeymoon for you young folks, especially if you are humanities buffs like us. Trust me, you will never be able to throw yourselves about with such freedom as in these early days of marriage. Soon come the babies, and then come the bad backs and the arthritis. Youth is the time to explore, to rough it, to have an adventure, especially with your spouse. Go somewhere beautiful and fascinating, full of human history and aesthetic richness. Or go on pilgrimage to the places where God's love has touched the world. You will build a foundation of common experience that will stay with you forever.

In Rome we spent a week and a half at an apartment not far from the Vatican, with a friend's mother. This lovely old woman cleared a room for us, made coffee for us every morning, and often fed us abundantly in the kitchen at night (even if we had already eaten). I have never found a restaurant that can match the culinary magic that happens in the simple Italian kitchen. Oh, my my!

We went to all our favorite spots in Rome and shared them together. We brought our newly married life to the tomb of St. Peter, and prayed a long time. We explored churches and ruins and great art. June 29th sticks in my mind because we went to St. Peter's basilica for the ceremony in which the Pope (then Blessed John Paul II) invests new Archbishops with the pallium, a woolen band worn as a sign of their particular responsibility and their communion with the Pope.

It was a beautiful ceremony, very crowded of course, so that we barely had a glimpse of the Pope. But we were so happy just to share in this beautiful event with him. Afterwards, in the midst of the crowds, we bumped into a little bishop from Malaysia and struck up a conversation with him. He was the first bishop to bless our marriage.

I wonder where he is today. We never did get his name.

Among many things, Rome is also a place of unusual meetings and unexpected changes in plans. It is a place where all the cultures of the world gather, dialogue with one another, and celebrate together the One who brings true unity to the whole human family.

Some wonderful surprises awaited us, as well as one of the singular graces that would shape our whole married and family life. I hope to share some direct excerpts from the travel journal in forthcoming blogs.

Our Happy Anniversary

The beautiful bride, and the groom at their wedding reception

It is June 22, 1996. Here's the happy, youthful, energetic newly married couple. Well, they're a bit "mature" -- he's 33 and she's 29. Both have pursued advanced academic study and are professional teachers. But they are younger than they realize, and have yet to learn many amazing, beautiful, and difficult things in life.

A few days after the wedding, they'll go to Rome and Italy for a three and a half week honeymoon. Both of them have lived in Italy before (at different times), and they intend to revisit sites, get together with old friends, contemplate great works of art, embark on religious pilgrimages, and eat lots of good food.

Cellphones in 1996!
Did you have one?

Indeed, they would do all these things and more in the coming month. Above all, they would also have a most unexpected personal encounter in Rome. (I'll write more about that later.)

After 17 years, looking at the old wedding pictures (none of which are digital) is a funny experience. Everybody looks "soooooo nineties." And sooooo young. I could scan the wedding album and tag all kinds of people and they would say, "Whoa, is that me?" But that would be more work than I'm up to now (aren't you glad?), and probably not worth the effort anyway.

When we got married, Eileen's father was only three years older than I am now. Wow!

It was almost a generation ago, and frankly it really does feel that way. I'm always musing about how strange a thing is time, but I feel the growth of those years, the many labors, the suffering, and the joys.

Today, I can't imagine life without Eileen at my side. I also can't imagine that there was ever a time when our five children did not exist. And its hard to believe there was ever a time when I had no beard, or actually even cared about the hair on my head (haha).

But there we were, newly married in 1996. Many new experiences awaited us. The deepest things were circumstances we could not possibly have dreamed. We knew enough to commit ourselves irrevocably to each other and to going through together "whatever might come."

We still don't know what's coming. Nor does any other married couple. There are challenges at every stage of a lifelong commitment. What we learn more and more, however, is how Jesus has consecrated that commitment with His love, through the sacrament of marriage. Christ crucified and risen has placed Himself at the heart of our commitment to each other, and made it a superabundant source of grace so that we might grow together in His likeness. And His presence is a guarantee that we can make it through anything, that our commitment is not based on our weakness but on His faithfulness.

One thing does not surprise me: she's still a beautiful lady. And she always will be.

"The Janaro Family" Turns Sixteen Years Old

John Paul at maybe three or four months old.

So do you have a little baby in the house? On June 1, 1997 we had our first little baby at three o'clock in the morning. I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "Gee, it feels like it just happened yesterday!"

Actually, no. It doesn't feel that way at all. It was, in fact, sixteen years ago. Since then, I've lived half my adult life (note, I said "adult" life, which was preceded by 18 years of "pre-adult" life... you don't need to do the math). Four daughters have come after him, and many things have happened since then.

Sometimes I'll come across a book and realize that its been 16 years since the last time I read it. That feels unusual. Light in August by William Faulkner... I just read that recently, didn't I? No, actually, I was reading it while we were waiting for John Paul to be born. That seems like "yesterday."

John Paul at the age of sixteen.

But with my son there is a relationship. There has been a certain intersubjectivity* (n.b. *large philosophical word) between father and son, and with the other members of the family. It is the history of a relationship and a larger context of relationships that has grown and changed from year to year. My own childhood years seem very long in my memory. In a way, his years seem long too, at least when I think of the time in terms of our relationship and the subsequent development of our family up until the present.

John Paul was born like a little boxer, shaking his fists and wailing but also looking me straight in the eye with what appeared to be a sense of awareness and intelligence. Smart little feller.

He was the beginning of our family. He was the one who made me look at myself for the first time and say, "I'm a father." It put fear and trembling into me.

We're all growing together. At every point, I feel a more profound sense of helplessness: "How am I going to be a father to this (these) child (children)?" Somehow, Eileen and I have found the resources for every stage thus far. We are flawed parents raising flawed children, but we are also blessed and lifted up by grace and carried all along the way.

What does a father do? I don't have a clear "formula;" its a gift that keeps unveiling itself. A father loves his wife, and is grateful for her. He spends a lot of time on his knees begging God for help. He tries to teach and love and discipline with a trust in the grace of vocation and the providence that makes a family, as well as a healthy awareness of the "organic" reality that nurtures, in time, both interrelationships and the individual uniqueness of each person in a family. He never gives up on paternal tenderness, even when he fails every day. He prays together with the family. He prays alone, for the family. He prays and works with his wife, and trusts above all in the grace of Jesus present through the sacrament they share in marriage.

He is aware of the failures of his children, he is patient, he instructs, he corrects, but always he forgives. He does his best to be a man, but doesn't try to prove his manhood in some artificial way, and doesn't get insecure about his own weaknesses, because everyone is weak... (and fathers will be confronted with their human weaknesses in so many ways). He doesn't withdraw or hide. He just keeps getting up again, and keeps working on it.

Young Man, Do You Want My Advice?

Lots of people who used to be boys have turned into bonafide grownups. These guys have degrees, and growing families, and professional accomplishments. And they still have all their hair!

Its inspiring to see the enthusiasm and dedication of the younger generation. Its a great thing, this energy. I remember the nexus of youthful energy and budding maturity. This is a great time of life.

Thank God for this life, young man. Spend it well, engage reality, build up the good. Be full of gratitude for each day, each moment, for your wife and your little children. Be engaged, but don't get lost in mere activism. Lift up your heart to God in prayer and ask Him to shape you into the person He wills you to be.

So you are turning 27, 28, 29 or even 30, and you think you are "old"? Ah well, you have reached an important mark in your maturity, but the coming years promise to be great and constructive steps in the formation of your own personality, and your development into someone who helps to form others, to pass on the experience of your own life to your children and their generation.

The next twenty-some years, God willing, will be constructive. But that does not mean they will be successful in the sense you may now imagine. I say this not to discourage you, but to assure you that you can live and endure many difficult things and still be enriched, and remain young at heart.

I don't know if I can give you "advice," my young friend. I hope you have your aspirations, love for your wife and family, and a strong commitment to your work. Make sure to be there for your kids as they grow up. And get ready to have some twists and turns--some adventures--over the next twenty-some years.

You have to test your strength, because that's how you learn its limits. I hope you will achieve some things, but I know that you will discover that the horizon of your own life is greater than anything you can reach.

Above all, be faithful to God. Things may get downright crazy. That's one thing that I know from the last  twenty-some years that are now behind me.

My experience shows that pieces may fall into place...and then fall apart! And then come together in a different way, and then there are new challenges.... It's God's plan for your life: follow it, or hang on to it, or crawl in the dark through it, or even get frustrated and say (pray) to God: "What kind of a plan is this? What's the deal here?" Just keep going. Stay with Him. Don't give up.

I hope you enjoy the fruits of your labor, but the seasons will vary, and there will be storms. My wife and I are both academics; we got married later than you (but going on 17 years ago) and still had five kids. I prayed, worked hard and established my career as a college professor, a writer, and an editor. I accomplished many goals. And I loved my work.

Then I got sick.

No matter how we may feel in advance, none of us are ready for a train wreck. We must trust in God, and that can be difficult. Trusting in God is a life-long learning process.

Sometimes you lose the career you love most. Its humiliating. Period. You've been flattened, and its not your fault. But its gonna be along time before you stop blaming. yourself. every. single. day.

And even if, like me, you get to keep your nice fancy professorial title, it doesn't help much, because you're disabled. That's that. You can't do what you want. You have to depend on other people. Humbling.

But God really is at work in you. Even if that brings ZERO consolation, its a fact. Never give up.

And you can't go through this alone. If you suffer, she suffers. But your marriage and family can be (and are meant to be) strengthened by these difficulties. New dimensions of marriage open up, and you both need to work hard, make sacrifices and forgive each other every day for a lot. But if you are faithful, you will discover that the sacramental bond is real, it is inter-personal, it is the grace of Christ's Spirit and it keeps you together, and it is a very tough thing. The sacrament of marriage is strong; it is built to last. You have to depend on it.

Spousal love means so many things that have never even entered your dreams. It will humble you. You will find that there is no place to be selfish in marriage, and this too is a life-long learning process.

Of course, when doors close, windows can open. My wife became a Montessori teacher, she loves it, and (of course) she's really good at it. The "death" of my "established career" ended up being the "birth" of hers. Our kids go to (or have been through) the school. I am well enough right now that I go to the office and help with the students and also do my own work (I refer to myself sometimes as "writer-in-residence" and other times as "interactive media consultant").

You may even surprise yourself by what you do, and where it leads you.

When I got sick, I did was was "natural" for me; I wrote about it. Some friends circulated some of what I wrote, and it eventually landed at a publisher who said, "can you give us more of this?" It ended up being a popular book, published in 2010, that continues to sell and seems to help a lot of people.

I had written academic things, and I had (still have) projects in the works. But I never planned to write a book like Never Give Up, and I almost didn't. It was slow, one step at a time, and "not my idea." I just had the sense that it was God's will, and I just took a step and then another and then another.

The irony is that the book is perhaps the most important work I have done in my life thus far. It turns out that God doesn't believe in "disability." But we have to do things His way.

And we don't know much about that "way". We don't know what's coming. We may all get dumped off the fiscal cliff. We may be washed away by a hurricane, or caught up in a war, or just pushed in new directions by the dramas of children and adolescents becoming young adults. We still have to "plan ahead" as best we can (that's human nature and human responsibility), but the grain is never safe in the bins.

The way this plays out in our circumstances is how God teaches us to trust in Him. But my words about this are not worth much. Trust is a relationship with God that must be lived. It is a relationship that you are able to live.

So live it. Trust God in everything that comes.

A New Kind of Hope

Yesterday was the great feast day of St. Agnes of Rome, a twelve year old girl of noble family at the beginning of the fourth century. She openly professed her Christianity and died a martyr, which is certainly extraordinary in itself for a young girl. But there is another reason why Agnes is regarded as one of the great saints of the Church.

Carved statue of St. Agnes from the shrine at St. Agnes Catholic church in Arlington, Virginia.
Agnese Janaro was baptized in this church over 14 years ago. Was it really that long ago?!

The earliest accounts praise St. Agnes's heroism and her purity. Clearly she made an astonishing impression on those who witnessed her martyrdom and communicated her story. The traditions that come down from various sources, and that are reflected in the ancient liturgical texts for her feast, indicate that even before her martyrdom this young girl had already given over her life to Jesus in a total dedication--one that would inspire and shape the personal identity of countless women over the next 1700 years.

Agnes had consecrated her virginity to Christ, not for a term of service like the vestals of pagan Rome, but forever. She sacrificed her natural vocation to be a wife and mother in this world and embraced a life of virginity as a witness that God alone was the love of her heart. Christ would be her true husband, and as His bride she would begin to reflect the glory of the life of the resurrection by remaining a virgin, by being entirely for God and God alone, offering Him her entire identity as a woman.

But this was not her idea. It was He Himself who had called her. In the liturgy, Agnes says, "My Lord Jesus Christ has espoused me with his ring; he has crowned me like a bride."

There is no disparagement of earthly marriage here. Marriage itself serves as a sign of what she found, and finds its own fulfillment in being this sign.

Rather, something happened to this twelve year old girl, Someone revealed to her a new kind of life, an eternal life that was already dawning in that moment of her heart, a life and a love worthy of all she had and all she was, worthy of following exclusively, a life greater than any human hope even as it fulfilled the promise hidden in all hopes, a life that could not be broken by all the power of the most powerful Empire the world had ever known, a life greater than the whole universe: eternal life in communion with the God who is Love.

"I am espoused to him whom the angels serve; sun and moon stand in wonder at his beauty."

It was this Beauty that made her utterly fearless. It was a Beauty that so filled this child that all the connivance and energetic cruelty of the powers of this earth could not prevail against her freedom, even when they dedicated all their deception and all there brute force to crushing that freedom.

They did not prevail.

Now, Agnes of Rome sings in glory, in the company of a multitude of women who followed as she did, into martyrdom, into the prayer and silence that seeks Him alone and in so doing lifts up the cry of the whole world, into an exclusive devotion to Christ wherever He is found, seeking to bring comfort to His heart, seeking Him as missionaries, teachers, care-givers, companions and servants of the poor, workers of mercy. St. Agnes leads the song that brings sweet breezes of consolation to the weary, and the strength of a new kind of hope for all of us in the face of every danger and every kind of violence:

"What I longed for, I now see; what I hoped for, I now possess; in heaven I am espoused to him whom on earth I loved with all my heart."