The Risk of Being Vulnerable

So I have presented in two parts the text of Young JJ's "State of the World Address" from September 1990. I have reflected a bit on how Old JJ might talk about the "State of Now" September 2015. It seems a bit overwhelming at this point in my life to issue manifestos like this.

The theme of power, however, is one that I return to often enough in my own reflections. "Power and responsibility" is perhaps one of the defining challenges of the emerging epoch. There is much to say about it, but let me see if I can make a start:

"How can we shape the use of our vast technological power so that it serves the good of the human person, families, communities, society, the environment entrusted to us? I see this question everywhere. Of course we need Jesus, but He will not give us cheap answers. He deepens the question in us, because in Him human persons and all of creation become more dear to us, and we become more "vulnerable" to their suffering. He calls us to live in that vulnerability -- to take the risks of loving those entrusted to us in our lives, those whose needs and anguish cry out to us. He even calls us to seek them out, accompany them, suffer with them, while placing all our hope in Him."

. . . . 

Wait. Stop. Hold it!

That sounds good in words. But honestly, I don't understand what I'm talking about. Or perhaps there is a very small, very fragile place inside me that has begun to understand a little bit. A really, really tiny little bit.

But who am I kidding? I don't really "live love." I live an aesthetic appreciation of the idea of love. Okay, maybe there is a little love in me, but it's nearly always mixed together with self-admiration and fakery. Ah yes, "the ambivalence" of human beings. "Man is an insoluble dilemma to himself," says Young JJ.

Twenty five years later, Old JJ says, "I am ambivalent. I am an insoluble dilemma to myself!"

Am I willing to become more vulnerable, more tender toward others, more honest (really), more willing to "take the risks of loving...?" Risks? Seriously, me take risks? RUN! HIDE!

Dear friends, I am terrified of taking risks. I am afraid to love.

Yes, friends, I am afraid of you.

And so I'm always hiding from you: hiding behind my intelligence, hiding behind humor, hiding behind my illnesses, hiding behind a thousand fibs, hiding behind sentimentality, hiding behind my reputation, hiding behind my writing, hiding and protecting places in myself even as I try to have real empathy and share my life with you.

I'm so sorry. I wish so much to be more, to be courageous, to be honest. I wish with an aching desire but I remain in this bottle of fear. I'm so sorry, friends. I'm struggling and trying, I think, but sometimes it comes out so awkwardly. Forgive me.

Eileen, kids, Mom, Dad, Walter... I'm afraid.... I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm a poor human being. Poor in love.

So what, then, is this "very small, very fragile place," this "really, really tiny little bit" of understanding and desire in me?

Theologian JJ would like to intervene here and say, "That is God's work in you; the work of His grace. That is the hope that is beginning to transform you, the place from which you pray, the light of His love that leads you and in which you see the faces of others."

But Old JJ replies, "Why, then, is it so small?" Why, O God, is it so small?

And no one has any more words. There are already far too many words.

What I have is silence. And solitude. Sometimes it feels like loneliness, but underneath all of that there is the solitude. And there is the wanting that burns and burns and burns, and bursts through beyond all that I know.

The World of 25 Years Ago, Part II

Before the month comes to a close I should finish posting the "Statement" that young John Janaro wrote in September of 1990 as he began a journal that would cover the next two years of his life and times. (See HERE for the first part.)

I began by speaking of how we human beings, even as we developed our power for accomplishing great good, always seemed to find ourselves using that power for greater evils. The tension at the heart of the profound ambiguity of human existence was growing greater.

Twenty five years later, that tension has pushed even further. It has grown exponentially, and in many ways that we could not have imagined in 1990.

If I were writing such a broad survey of the times today, however, I would do it differently. I would write more from the perspective of my own suffering and also my own gratitude. I would place my own weakness and my need for healing more in the center. I would write perhaps in a less sophisticated way.

In any case, this is what I wrote a quarter of a century ago. It is a recognizable theme that I still ponder: the problem of human beings living without God. But I believe now (more than I did before) that God still draws us on His mysterious paths by the often-hidden workings of His grace -- even in our ignorance and incoherence and failure and in the apparent insignificance of our lives.

Even if we try to live without God, He still dwells with us. He has made His dwelling among us and He is not going away.

God wants to empower us to build up the good in this world, but first and above all, He wants us. He made us not only for this world, but also to share His eternal life.

And He is Love.

He knows our weakness and our selfishness, and that we play with our own spectacular (and often dangerous) toys without even thinking about the reason why we exist. He sees our poverty and loneliness in the midst of all our riches, and it cannot be any other way because He has placed His signature on each or our hearts. Our hearts will always be greater than our power, and so "it's never enough" and yet we don't know where to go.

God knows we are a mess. But He hasn't given up on us, and He wants to meet us with His compassion.

I still see the problems of human existence but my perspective has grown, and what are "my words" below have become more my life and my suffering. In strength and in weakness, I am more aware that what matters is fidelity to the Mystery of God and His opening-up of my life to my brothers and sisters, in love.

For the record, then, let us listen to the Young Janaro of September 1990. Maybe he was smarter than I am today. He was learning and thinking about many things, and then -- as now -- he was so much in need of mercy.

We Can Make a Difference in the World!

We're all so worried about the world, about its evils and injustices. These are evil times, we say. People are full of selfishness and violence, and our political leaders are driven by destructive agendas.

It would not be realistic to deny any of these points. And indeed, we are all called to do what we can to build up the good, and to struggle against the evils that afflict our society, our communities, our families, and our own lives. There are many things we can do.

Here is something all of us can do: Pray the Rosary! Every day.

Some more specific gestures involving the Rosary are proposed at various times and places: e.g. right now many in the United States are praying a 54 day "Rosary Novena" (which began on the Solemnity of the Assumption, August 15, and will end on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, October 7). We are praying for marriage and family, peace, the recognition of the sanctity of human life, and respect for religious freedom. (Click HERE for more information about this gesture.)

This is genuine, dynamic social action. The Rosary is a powerful prayer, because Mary is our Merciful Mother and she cares about our whole lives as human beings, including our living together in society. When we present the needs of our world to her heart, and through her to Jesus's Sacred Heart, we are performing an important work of mercy.

Praying for people, praying for the needs of the world, is a vital, crucial "spiritual work of mercy," and "spiritual" does not mean unreal. Its effort and its fruits are often hidden, but by faith we know that if we pray from the heart our prayer is every bit as real and concrete as the bread we give to the hungry. In all its forms, mercy is a way of looking at reality, at others, with compassion. The world desperately needs the touch of mercy through the works of mercy.

So let's pray the Rosary!

I'm not suggesting that "piety" is a substitute for grappling with specific human problems, or a pretext for hiding from them. We must engage the circumstances of our lives. But as Christians we should know that if we don't pray, we'll be neglecting the most important dimension of our circumstances...and our lives.

Whatever our "intentions" may be, when we pray the Rosary we are first of all praying for ourselves; we are always lifting up to Jesus through Mary our own profound need for mercy and healing, and our heart's cry for the Mystery who is Eternal Love.

Pray the Rosary! Pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is something Our Lady of Fatima asked us to do. She often asks for simple things: "Build me a church...." "Make this medal...." "Say this prayer...."

"Yes," we reply, "but the Rosary is not simple. It's hard!"

Not really. It's not so hard. What's hard is to be confronted, day after day, with the smallness of our love. We always make a bad job of the Rosary, because we don't love God very much.

So let us ask the Lord, through His loving Mother, to give us the grace to love Him more, and the grace to say the Rosary better. That won't make us perfect tomorrow. But the daily Rosary will teach us to be humble and to be faithful in one small thing. And thus we take little steps, with trust.

Let us entrust it to Mary's heart. Let us entrust everything to her, and through her, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I think one reason Mary asked for the Rosary and devotion to her Immaculate Heart at Fatima is because she wanted to draw our faith into sharper focus.

It simply won't do to turn "being Catholic" into an ideology or an abstract program, even if we have every doctrine memorized backwards and forwards. The faith must be recognized as reality, and adhered to with affection--because what we believe in is the Love of a Person. Jesus.

Mary makes things concrete. The Rosary is a way of joining with Mary in the "pondering of her heart." If we pray it, we will grow. It is an extraordinary, healing, miracle-working prayer.

Jesus calls us through Mary's heart, through this prayer. As we try to dwell on the mysteries of His life, we may find ourselves quite distracted. Still, we are searching for Him with our small hearts. We want to look at Him.

And we can depend on this: He is looking at us. He is with us in Mary's heart. He is our brother. He draws us closer to Him, and He changes us.

We Affirm Human Dignity and Yet We Are So Cruel... Why?

Two living human persons

Recently the news and (especially) the Internet have presented for us some unbearable (but, sadly, not surprising) instances of human beings attacking other human beings.

There are many features of the events we've seen that are especially awful (but, once again, not surprising): the defenseless victims, the callous and ruthless dismissal of their humanity for money, and the pretense that the whole gruesome assault is being carried out in the service of human dignity and human freedom.

What we see here is also a problem that is peculiar to our time. Since the beginning of history there have been violence, murder, cruelty, and human trafficking. The distinctive mark of our emerging epoch, however, is the way we try to cloak all this nasty business under the mantle of "service," of "doing good," of human rights. 

We want to affirm human dignity. We have this sense that it is crucially important to recognize and uphold the value of every human person. This is a tremendously good intention, which has washed up on the shores of the 21st century like a plank from a shipwreck. It is a strong plank. Much can be done with it. But it is not made to float by itself, in the midst of stormy seas.

The dignity of human persons is founded upon—indeed consists in—their being created in the image of God, and their eternal destiny in God.

It is the image of God that gives the human person a real inviolable status. Being "someone" means being in relation to the One who is the transcendent origin, sustenance, and fulfillment of all things. It means being a person who can know and love, who can freely give his or herself and who is called to belong freely to God. Ultimately, God alone is worthy of the human person.

Without this foundation, the term "human dignity" becomes subject to all kinds of subtle manipulation. Indeed, even terms like "good" become oblique when they have no roots beyond our own intentions and determination.

And this is the problem. Contemporary Western culture has inherited and in some ways deepened a profound and mysterious crisis about God. In the midst of the titanic explosion of human power over the natural world, God seems to disappear.

Our rationalistic ancestors pushed God to the margins of the universe, and eventually declared His "death." They bequeathed to us not only what they thought to be His "powers," but also the gigantic and perplexing responsibility of His goodness. Now we look at the 21st century and our power is dazzling indeed. We have found it difficult, however, to declare that our works are good.

When God created the world, He saw that it was good (see Genesis 1). We, however, with all our amazing power and its fruits, live in our world without the awareness of God's existence. Not surprisingly, we are racked with anxiety regarding what is good in all our achievements (and there is a great deal of good—wonderful, magnificent good—in the achievements of our time). In fact we are haunted by the ambivalence of what we've done, and we search desperately for some kind of perspective that will allow us to distinguish and foster the good while correcting our failures.

In recent times we have also given great attention to the human person. We have learned so many good things about human life and human aspirations. We have discovered real ways to help people to live with greater dignity, and we want to affirm and build up human persons and communities. But with the eclipse of God and its corresponding dark cosmic solitude, we face this strange paradox: even as we become more knowledgeable about the workings of the world, and more sensitive to various aspects of the dignity and value of the person, we have no way of bringing it all together, and no sure criteria for how to apply our knowledge and our power in complicated and difficult situations.

The result is that—without even realizing it—we gradually but inexorably submit to the "logic" of power itself, which "builds" by dominating and ultimately destroying anything that resists it.

Of course, this is terrifying. No one wants to acknowledge that we are lost, that for all of our good intentions we do not know what is good. Thus, we adopt the intellectual apparatus of power: ideology. We simply affirm the goodness of what we do. We use a veneer of weak argumentation, obfuscation, and deception (especially self-deception).

When all else fails, we assert and define that our way is good even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. This means that we also refuse to listen to those who would remind us of our blindness. In any case, it has become especially important for us to feel good about what we do. In the social realm, we want to feel that we are empowering human persons and serving human dignity.

We would like to think we are building a kinder and gentler world. But violence pours in upon us from every side. Even as we become more attentive and more skilled in the art of saving lives in some places, we completely disregard the value of human life in others. We are divided against ourselves: wanting peace but waging war, wanting community but building walls of isolation, seeking healing yet constantly hurting one another. We want to build something beautiful and what emerges from our hands is a grand and spectacular monstrosity.

Such is the world in which God is obscured, and even the most sincere and ardent assertions and feelings about human dignity lose their bearings and cannot engage real life, real human situations, sufferings, and frailty.

I look at myself. I know that God exists, that He is the Source of my very being, and the foundation of my dignity as a person. I know that I am made in His image: He who transcends the whole universe and by this very incomprehensible transcendence is nearer to me than I am to myself. Still, I see how much I fail to remember Him, to live my own life with gratitude, and to love the human persons He has entrusted to me.

It is not enough to acknowledge God. We must open our hearts and let ourselves be loved by Him, so that by the power of His love we are enabled to love Him in return. And still the path is narrow, the path that leads to God and passes through the relationships He gives me with the real human persons who are in my life. Yet I know that here is His gift; here is where I find His face.

With all of this, my life is still full of violence, full of the daily failure to recognize the dignity of the human person—the image of God—in my wife and children, family and friends, and in all the people He places in my path (especially the ones I don't like, or who are inconvenient to me or against me—my "enemies").

My life is full of the forgetfulness of God.

My own attitude is still largely shaped by the common mentality of our times that views the world without God, and conditions people to live as if God did not exist. I must first of all recognize this fact about myself. I have no grounds to boast in front of my third millennial brothers and sisters. We are all sinners. I am all the worse, because I have done so little with the understanding that has been given to me.

I am a sinner. I must beg forgiveness for my own sins and resolve to take up once again the arduous struggle for healing and renewal. I do so, however, with confidence, because He offers Himself to me in His mercy. My hope and my strength is in Him.

With penitential hearts, we can (and we must) face the reality of our time: people are trying to build up the world without God—they are desensitized to the need for God by the illusion of spectacular human displays of material power. Whatever may be their good intentions, they conceive a world in which power is the ultimate reality.

How can anyone expect such a world to respect human life?

Still there is something in the confused hearts of people; there is this desire for a better world, and a better, truer life for themselves. The eclipse of God in our time has only rendered more desperate the ineradicable longing of the human heart, however much people try to bury it. People carry this desire in them along with all their violence that weighs them down; it endures, perhaps as a cry for help, a cry that recognizes the need for something else.

We must also take this cry into our own hearts and turn it toward the love of God. We must beg for His mercy and do the works of mercy through which He shows Himself even in the greatest darkness. He defeats violence by answering it with an unconquerable love, and such love resonates even in the places where all the most desperate and most neglected human longings try to hide.

His mercy is our hope, and living the love that reveals and communicates His mercy is our task.

Death, Taxes, God, and Caesar

And so, it's April 15th. Happy American Tax Day. Blah! Boooo! Help!!!

Of course, not everyone waits until the last minute. Maybe you filed weeks ago. Maybe you're getting a refund.

Still, today is a day that we all must remember the fragility of our lives at the hands of the powers of this world. Even those who benefit from the system know that it is a ponderous, ambivalent, and sometimes capricious patron.

They say that there are two things that cannot be avoided in this life: Death and Taxes. It seems to me not insignificant that the One who embraced death for us all began His life by being enrolled in the census.

The Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem with the help of the Roman imperial bureaucracy and its tax system.

Joseph the Builder paid taxes. Jesus paid them too, in the many years of His quiet labor. When God took human nature, He became one of the multitude in the empire of Caesar. He Himself bid us to pay lawful taxes, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17).

So today, even as we recognize Caesar's authority to tax our money, we remember also that we must render to God what belongs to God, our consciences. Yet God seems so far away when the forces of the world loom over us. It would seem like nothing for worldly power to crush the human conscience if it runs out of ideas for how to corrupt it.

And if there were nothing but worldly power and then death, what hope would we have? Where would we, who sin for the sake of convenience, find the strength to adhere to truth at all costs?

Only Jesus has defeated death, and in so doing has affirmed that the relationship of the human person to God is greater than every earthly power.

Our strength is in Him.

The Gaze of Love That Makes All Things Possible

I call this "21st Century Still Life."
Anyway, these are my riches, haha!

Jesus looked upon the rich young man, and loved him (see Mark 10:21). Then Jesus told him to sell all his riches, and follow Him.

If only the rich young man had not “turned away, sad, because he had many possessions.” If only he had cried out to Jesus: “Lord, how am I going to do that? I really like all of my nice stuff! How?!” That would have been the beginning of everything for him.

Jesus could have worked miracles out of that “how?”

Even a frustrated, confused, angry “how?”—as long as it is a real question and not a put-off or a self justification—carries within it a glimmer of awareness that Jesus is worth giving up whatever He is asking of me, or bearing whatever burden He has laid upon me.

I want to stay with you, Jesus. How? Help! I do not want to turn away from the face that “looks upon me and loves me.”

Of course, we do not know what happened in the end to the rich young man. Maybe he forgot about Jesus and joined the Pharisee party—after all, they claimed to love the commandments that he kept, and he only had to sell ten percent of his stuff and could still impress everybody by dumping sacks of money into the temple treasury.

Or, maybe one day he remembered the face of Jesus, and that look of love, and went out again in search of Him. How could he forget it? Jesus's “look of love” corresponded to the reason for which he was made. It corresponds to God’s gaze within the depths of the hearts of each one of us, which stirs us to enter into the dialogue of prayer, and which is the quiet light and gentle flame of the vocation to eternal glory given to each of us.

The rich man had turned away from Jesus, but Jesus had not turned away from him. “With God all things are possible,” Jesus told His disciples.

Maybe the rich man remembered the face of Jesus. And maybe he found Jesus again, later—during those wondrous days in Jerusalem after Pentecost. Maybe He experienced Jesus's loving gaze again, in the faces of His disciples.

More Than a Silver Lining

It's difficult to see things through the window in weather like this!

Rain, rain, rain.

My old bones don't like it much. But their complaints seem small as I look through the window and try to make out what's happening in the fog and the squall.

There are floods, and they are getting worse. And not just floods of rainwater in the Valley.

These are some hard days. The news is hard. Clouds keep gathering on so many fronts. What is happening in our poor world?

Perhaps we are going to learn in a more immediate way how much we all really do depend on one another.

The "human family" is not a cozy, tame little idea. If someone hurts, we all hurt. We can't escape this fundamental fact, no matter what happens in the crises that have gained our attention. Even if the immediate circumstances are resolved on all fronts, the human family already shares a profound bond of suffering. We all share a common affliction.

We also share a common hope.

We share a source of unity that is greater than everything that divides us -- greater than every fear.

I pray that I might remember this fact, and that it will change my mentality and transform my way of looking at the world and all of the problems and the dangers, and all the evil that has already been judged and vanquished.

Free as a Bird?

Wouldn't you like to be free as a bird?

I wonder where that expression came from. As I write this, we are watching one of those BBC nature videos. The erudite voice of some distinguished British gentleman is telling everyone about the glorious life of animals, which basically consists in sleeping, seeking food, mating, and avoiding predators. And it is a wonderful thing, in its own way, the multitude of diverse ways in which animals all over the world -- in all their many colors and shapes and sizes -- use their remarkable instincts to seek food, to mate, and to avoid predators; in a word, to live. But it takes a bit of the romance out of my lonely black bird. There is surely much poetry in his sturdy vigil, perched atop a fence post. All the splendor and spontaneity of his instincts are focused on the task of living. For him it means spying the worm, the grub, tending the nest, avoiding the cat.

But he is not free.

He is bound to this labor. He comes forth from his shell, struggles into flight, searches for food, perpetuates his species without even knowing what he is, searches for more food, and one day dies. But the whole sky is full of birds. Flocks of birds in full flight. They give no thought to their freedom, or their burdens.

It is we who find the image of freedom in their flight.

It is we who are melancholy at the recognition of their passing lives.

The animals, in their unreflected innocence, remind us that the whole world is passing away. And perhaps too, there is an echo in animal life of the sadness at the heart of creation, a sadness that reflects something irretrievably lost.

Yet we do not get caught up in the mourning of this loss. Our gaze upon the natural world and our poetry are full of hope. We yearn for the freedom of the birds. We watch them in flight and we sense the promise of freedom. For the eager longing of creation awaits the revelation of the children of God. There is another mystery at work at the heart of creation, and it whispers in our hearts a restlessness, an expectation, a promise.

The birds will return to the earth and be joined to it. And one day, the earth will be transformed. The mystery of this is hidden from us.

But we will fly. We will be free.

Benedict: Following the Hunger for God

Below these reflections, I have reproduced a post from one year ago on "secularization". The problems it addresses are still very much with us.

Pope Benedict knows this very well. He is not quitting in the face of this crisis. Rather, he is resigning his office in order to follow the call to seek God in prayer, to offer the sufferings of his present physical condition in humility and silence before God.

It seems appropriate to revisit a point central to the eight years of Benedict's pontificate, because the secularized world cannot really understand why he has made his decision. A world without God does not understand the value of prayer, and therefore has no understanding of what Benedict means when he says he desires to "continue to serve the Church" by offering himself to God in prayer. Benedict lives a relationship with Christ in the Church, and he is now turning to prayer not simply for "practical" reasons. These constitute some of the circumstances he faces, of course, but at its core his decision is motivated by the conviction that this is the path of his vocation, the next step in a lifetime of hungering for God and seeking to know Him more intimately in an ever deeper personal encounter with Jesus Christ. He knows too that this hidden life is not an escape, but a profound way of entering into a deeper communion with his brothers and sisters, a way of offering himself to Christ in the communion of the Church in the context of his present sufferings, after a long life of dedicated pastoral service.

I am confident that his prayers will sustain his successor so that he can give a strong and attentive witness to the truth about God and His love for us in Jesus Christ--the truth that is everywhere attacked, ignored, or falsified with cheap substitutes.

My "introduction" has turned into a post of its own. Nevertheless, let me present the thoughts of last year, given in the context of the words of the Pope. Here is the post of February 17, 2012, which was called Secularization, Transcendence, and Love:


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Sometimes we throw around terms like "secularism" and "the secularized West." It is important to be precise about what this means. Terms like these are not intended to cast "the secular world" in a negative light. Rather they are intended to express an ideological and practical attitude that limits the human person to the life of this finite world. Pope Benedict XVI explains it very concisely:

"Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness."

Secularism imprisons the human person within the confines of "the world." Sometimes it restricts itself to the world as human beings immediately perceive it (e.g. materialism). But it can allow for the affirmation of "deeper realities," and for the development of human beings and the universe under the influence of "mysterious" natural powers (e.g. the many kinds of spiritualisms that flourish today, as well as a reductionist view of religion).

Secularism is a proposal of life "without reference to Transcendence." The essence of secularism is its effort to smother the deepest reality in the life of every human person, that thirst for the Infinite that shapes every human heart. The "transcendence" that Pope Benedict speaks of here is not just any kind of "going beyond" the surface of things. It is the Beyond-all-things, that Mystery which energizes the human person and is the ultimate goal of every human aspiration. Secularism seeks to suffocate this "restlessness" of the human heart.

It does not forbid a person to be "religious" (provided that "religion" is reduced to a human system, or a set of rules that rest on human contrivance, whether ancient or new). It does not have a problem with "spirituality" as long as the "spirit" remains in the finite prison of its own idealism, or of the occult. Secularism is even compatible with talk about God. But it wants to eliminate the search for God, the hunger for God, and of course, love for God.

Above all, however, secularism cannot abide the amazing fact that the Transcendent God --the Mystery that every human heart yearns for--has entered history and dwells among us in the very midst of our world. In the end, this is why secularism is doomed to fail: because God wills to make Himself known, because He loves us. He loves every human person, even the most determined secularists who appear to have forgotten all about Him.

The witness to Jesus Christ as God's loving gift of Himself is difficult in our secularized culture. But let us never forget that His grace is at work.

"In the World...." Remembering Michael Schwartz

Mike Schwartz was a remarkable man, and it was with surprise that I learned of his recent death on February 3, at only 63 years old, after struggling for a year and a half with ALS. I didn't even know he was sick.

Its probably been more than twenty years since I last spoke with Mike. I knew him from my student days, and then from my brief stint as a policy analyst on Capitol Hill (yeah, I did some time on "the Hill," back in the '80s...days of my youth, almost forgotten).

I have many happy memories of those days. I remember lectures he gave on political philosophy at our college. The man was brilliant. He was a philosophical and theological man in the best sense, in that he was always seeking to understand the most important things even as he kept both feet on the ground. I want to say, "He could have been a scholar" but in fact he was a scholar. He was a rare bird in America (or anywhere else): a well-read, deep-thinking, truth-seeking political activist.

He also knew how to connect with people, from homeless people to mothers and their unborn children to sexual abuse victims to media personalities to the big men who drove the engines of power. And he knew how to connect with and motivate young people. He cared about all of us newly winged butterflies: interns, aspiring journalists, idealistic office workers, coffee-brewing Hill staffers, think-tank hacks. He was prematurely gray and he dressed like "the older people," but he was upbeat, encouraging, enthusiastic, and always full of schemes.

Once he got asked to be part of a panel for a local daytime television show discussing the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality. Then he found out that there were three other panelists who ranged from "not helpful" to red-hot hostile. Mike rounded up a few of us, explained the situation and told us he couldn't do it "alone." So he asked us to get on the phones to our friends and pack the audience with bright, hip young Catholics (yes, there were some of us around, even way back in the 80s).

And we did it! We got a big bunch of people together for that show. He inspired us, somehow, and we made it happen.

Mike had a hard time with the panel, but he did very well. Then they asked for audience "participation." It was amazing. For once the Church didn't get plastered. On the contrary, we made all the comments. Whoever watched that show must have been shocked to see normal young people (even some very pretty girls) intelligently defending the Catholic Church's teaching on sex and marriage. But it was live television; there was no way to stop us!

[Someone reading this was in the audience that day, I'll bet. Do you remember?]

Mike Schwartz gladly gave the limelight to a bunch of kids, so that truth might have a witness on a daytime TV talk show. That's the kind of man he was.

The obits have been pouring out on the internet, rightly extolling his unique combination of political savvy, ardor, kindness, humility, dedication to principles and willingness to fight for them, and also his real love for all people, even those who opposed him. He was a central figure in America's pro-life movement from the very beginning. He worked on social issues with conservative groups, while also being a member of the Democratic party for a good part of his life.

Mike was beyond stereotypes. He was one of those great Catholic activists who appeared in the second half of twentieth century America: courageous, good, and impossible to dismiss with any of the categories of our common political discourse. He was a man who was immersed in political work, but always at the service of others, and never interested in drawing attention to himself. He was dedicated and energetic, but he wasn't sucked into an ideological program; he was not fooled by the glitter of Washington power. He valued politics for what it was, and he knew that politics couldn't solve all our problems; he knew that there were greater things....

It was because of his Catholic faith. His faith really did penetrate his whole life. I was blessed to know several people like him in the days when I was growing up, people whose understanding was totally outside the box...because their focus was on Christ. For me it put flesh and bones on the saying that "Christians must be in the world, but not of the world."

How are we supposed to know what that saying means? By paying attention to people like Mike Schwartz.

Here are a few words from his last public appearance in November 2012. Mike knew that the way to respond to the violence of the abortion plague was to recognize a call to a greater love, a greater prayer and a greater service, a greater affirmation of the true dignity of women, a concern and an attentiveness to the needs of that most fundamental and most vulnerable of human relationships--the relationship between mother and child.

"The service and support network for mothers...is the best and most important part of our movement, but we should realize that pregnancy services are not a stopgap measure until some political victory is achieved. We will always need such services, and perhaps the reason why God allowed the evil of abortion to fall upon us was to awaken us to the need to stop trying to affix scarlet letters to women with untimely pregnancies and begin helping our sisters when they need us most."

May God reward you greatly, Mike. Thanks for everything.

...I have a video of that TV show somewhere. I've got to dig it up and watch it again. :)

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."

The Hidden Faces Gathered at Our Christmas Crib

Our "traditional" Nativity Scene

May God bless the people in China who made it, wherever they are, and the men who accompanied it on ship across the ocean (along with thousands of exact copies), and all the anonymous Stuffmart employees who trucked it, unpacked it, and shelved it, and everyone else who worked with it...all so that we Americans could buy a decent looking and cheap nativity set. I mean this really: God bless you. Each of you on the gigantic chain of global commerce is a real human person. And you are part of our Christmas, by virtue of whatever role you played in the process of bringing this artifact to us. Your work, however "insignificant," is an expression of your human dignity. Every thing in my house is the fruit of human work--the application of the human energy of countless persons I will never know. But it is fitting, as I look upon the image of God Incarnate, that I remember you all; that I remember that things don't just fall out of the sky; that I remember how much we all depend on one another. There is much injustice in how all of this goes into effect, and I have no idea what would be necessary to unravel it all. But at least, I can acknowledge my gratitude to you. At least I can pray for you, that the Child many of you don't know, but who loves each one of you with an infinite love, might embrace you, and all of us, in His great mercy.

Children, Do What I Say....

I exhort my children to strength of virtue and feats of courage that I do not myself possess. Just think of what the world would be like if grown ups behaved like this:

Don't be afraid.
Stop complaining.
When you say something you know is not true, that's called a lie. You should never lie.
Clean up your mess.
Be careful!
Pay attention!
Stop fighting. Now I want you to forgive each other.
Remember that God loves you so much.
You can't just ignore your sister. If she needs something, you have to take care of her.
I know it's hard, but you still have to do it.
God loves you. Pray for the strength to know and do His will.

If I could manage to do that much each day, in my own circumstances, I would be in a lot better shape than I am now. Still, I must tell my children the truth, and then ask God to make me more of an example of the words I speak. After all, they learn more by example. And of course, I must never forget that God loves me too.

It is very humbling, to be a parent.

(post from 12/22/11)

We Are Not Left to Ourselves

God has left His Heaven and come down to earth for man...

taking on human flesh and becoming man like us.

Advent invites us to follow

the path of this presence

and reminds us again and again

that God is not removed from the world,

He is not absent,

we are not left to ourselves,

but He comes to us in different ways,

which we need to learn to discern.

And we, with our faith, our hope and our charity,

are called every day to see and bear witness to this presence,

in an often superficial and distracted world,

to reflect in our lives the light

that illuminated the cave of Bethlehem!

Benedict XVI

November 29: Dorothy's "Day"

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day has been on the blogs in honor of the anniversary of her death (the day that many hope will eventually be her "feast"). Not surprisingly, she has also lit up comment boxes. It somewhat misses the point, however, to cherry-pick statements from her many writings on political and social topics in order to enlist her as an ally, condemn her as an extremist, or commence upon a long episode of head-scratching.

Dorothy Day's holiness does not depend on her being correct in all her judgments. She was trying to articulate things from the perspective of a profound life, a life in which her real Catholic faith was immersed in circumstances and places where most of us would rather not go.

In these times, however, many are discovering the fact that living our faith seriously in contemporary Western society is very difficult. Now more than ever, Dorothy Day presents a provocative witness--a woman of heroic faith and burning charity who stood throughout her life as a sign of contradiction to the dominant mentality of our culture, in all its manifestations.

Dorothy Day with Mother Teresa

But what strikes me (and challenges me) in a compelling way is her radical awareness of Christ. Her daily work was simple: she lived with Christ, she fed Christ, she clothed Christ, she gave Christ a place to sleep. She built houses where Christ would be welcome. She did this for over forty years. She was drawn to the presence of Christ in the suffering of people. This was always the focus of her attention.

It would do all of us some good to practice a bit more those works of mercy that require us to get dirty and uncomfortable. But even here Dorothy Day does not want to be "dismissed so easily." Like her personal friend Blessed Teresa (who gave her the crucifix of the Missionaries of Charity when she visited the sisters in Calcutta), she knew that this is something we all have to do at home. We want to recognize Christ and love Him more in those broken and needy people we live with every day.

Here is what Dorothy Day has to say about life:

We face the situation that there is nothing we can do for people except to love them.

We continue in our fourteenth year of feeding our brother and clothing him and sheltering him and the more we do it the more we realize that the most important thing is to love.

There are several families with us, destitute families, destitute to an unbelievable extent and there, too, is nothing to do but to love. What I mean is that there is no chance of rehabilitation, no chance, so far as we see, of changing them; certainly no chance of adjusting them to this abominable world about them, and who wants them adjusted anyway.

There is nothing that we can do but love, and dear God–please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.

If one loves enough one is importunate, one repeats his love as he repeats his Hail Marys on his rosary.

What does the modern world know of love, with its divorces, with its light touching of the surface of love? It has never reached down into the depths, to the misery and pain and glory of love which endures to death and beyond it.

We have not yet begun to learn about love. Now is the time to begin, to start afresh, to use this divine weapon.

Time Flying? Not So Much.

Most of the trees are bare now,
but the weather has been brisk!

Its November 18 already. The month is flying by. Some people say the year has flown by, but it doesn't seem that way to me. So much has happened this year! I read back over the old blogs and I think to myself, "that was a long time ago."

We've got our top two growing teenagers, and the middle girls changing too, and even Josefina has gained like three pounds since January! (Haha...although that may be about right. She is still so hilariously little, but they've done tests and nothing is wrong with her. She certainly has plenty of brains and energy.)

Teresa's mind is growing in new ways. She has discovered that Daddy actually has some interesting things to say. She has started to shoot questions at me, with the full awareness that she's going to get long answers.

Meanwhile, as we go along with our busy days, the world makes its orbit, and the Church lives another liturgical year. We've had trips, and hurricanes, and the Washington Nationals (who saw that coming?), and Agnese joining John Paul at Chelsea Academy, and Eileen's work at the Montessori school (and me being well enough to be with her each day and make a contribution). We've had celebrations, and new friends, and discussions about so many things, and politics and an election, and hand wringing about the future, and lots of prayers, and the Year of Faith, and the synod on the "New Evangelization," and our bishops taking an inspiring and courageous stand--together.

On this last point, people shouldn't think that "the Church lost." Something grew this year, something small perhaps, but important nonetheless. It is a deepening of awareness of what it means to live our faith as citizens of this country. Catholics and other Christians too are starting to be pushed closer together in a way that forces us to talk to each other and, even, to disagree (although some disagreements are more constructive than others).

As this push continues and we find ourselves stuck with one another, we may discover that we are brothers and sisters, and that we have something unique to give to the world.

Well, this post is "stream of consciousness." Its early in the morning, and we're going to Mass now.

Sunday is always a beautiful day. Have a blessed Sunday!

Conversation: He Talks, But Does He Listen?

Everyday conversation. What do I have to say for myself? Well, for starters, I don't really know how to listen to a person.

I'm not saying that I'm a boor, or that I never let others talk. I do plenty of listening in a conversation. I listen to people's words and give a lot of attention to what they are thinking.

But I don't listen to people.

Sometimes, when people speak to me, my mind works hard to organize their expressions into the form of some coherent problem, and then respond in a way that helps them to resolve their problem. I assume that this is "communication," and I am sincere, because I really do want to help people--which, of course, means finding the right ideas to advance their ways of thinking.

This is not so bad, of course. It can be useful if the person is asking a question, or seeking information.

But often, when people speak, that's not what they want.

Of course, I know that, and I'm very flexible. I don't just belabor people with advice. In fact, I can be useful in variety of different conversations.

Sometimes people just want to banter. Well, I'm good at bantering. Jokes? Even better. Or talk about the weather, or whatever else. I try my best to be agreeable in conversation. After all, I like people. I come from an Italian heritage--of course I like people! I like people and food even better.

And of course, I want people to like me. So what's wrong with that?

Nothing, I suppose. There's nothing wrong with it...well, a bit of vanity here and there....

But am I paying attention to this human person who is speaking to me?

If the person is really giving something of himself or herself to me in a conversation, am I listening? As long as its articulate, informative, or entertaining, or I can be helpful, or I can get the person to like me more? Sure, I'm listening.

But what about those insoluble, inexplicable things, the cries of the heart, those words that are not asking for a solution but are trying to share a suffering? What if the person wants nothing from me? He or she just wants me to listen, to be receptive.

I will try, but my mind starts to wander pretty quickly. My effort is rather weak.

Too often, my desire in human interactions is for me to experience affirmation. I want to come out of a conversation with the sense that my value has been recognized and appreciated. This desire can even be a motivation for "helping" people. It feels great when I receive the recognition and gratitude of people who have been helped by me.

Of course, I'll say, "Oh really, nothing, nothing at all" and "its God's work" (funny how I'm willing to toss a few crumbs to God) and "I'm just a poor man who knows nothing," etc., etc. but don't be fooled by that! A vain person always has a "humility routine" to conceal his vanity from others and especially from himself.

I know that there is something psychologically complex at work here. I really want to recognize and love the other person. I want to see and to rejoice in the gift of God that is the mystery of this other person. I want to receive what he or she has to give. I want to do "what's right." After all, I'm a "good Catholic"! I won't violate God's commandments to satisfy my vanity.

Uhhh...well...not consciously, anyway. Ah...heh...okay, okay, in little ways, yeah...I'll fib sometimes, or I'll diss somebody (just a bit), or I'll play to other people's cynical tendencies because that's always good for a laugh! And I'll buff and wax everything you see and hear (and read) so that you will admire me (hypocrisy? Oh yeah!).

But its not just that. Really, my motivations are usually a complex mixture of self-seeking and other aspirations. There is the desire and the will to seek something more, to find the "you" at the other side of the conversation, to discover communication and community. And then I've glimpsed many times the Beauty that is so much greater than my grasping ego, and that Beauty is always drawing me.

Yes, I'm a mixed bag. A real muddle.

There are so many problems in the world. And I don't have to go anywhere to find "the world." The world beats beneath my ribs.

A real muddle. And also this Beauty, that draws mysteriously, works miracles, changes things. There is the muddle...and then Something Different.

Something has happened in me, in the world. Its changing everything....

People notice it even when I try to hide it. And, really, I don't want to hide it.

Learning New Things, and Finding New Places

Another October is passing by. It brought the bursting color to our leaves and now is taking them away. The mornings are dark, and the days are shorter.

College students are back from their Fall break, and it is time to begin to get serious about thinking about those term papers that are due at the end of next month. Of course, you'll wait till the very last possible moment to write them, and they'll arrive in your professors' boxes at 11:59.9 PM on the due date.

Then the next day in class, we shall have the sleepy, and the scruffy, and those who are begging for extensions and trying to lose as few of those precious *POINTS* as possible.

Please, write a good paper.

Seek the truth. Try to understand something. Yes, I know, the professor is obtuse and you don't know what the class is supposed to be about...but just look at what's there and find something real and grab hold of it.

Its your education. Stop blaming circumstances and other people. Roll up your mental sleeves and work with what you have. You will learn many things, and also you will begin to learn how to live. Wherever you are in life, reality is your teacher, and circumstances are the resources that are given to you so that you may grow as a person.

Circumstances can be strange and painful, but there they are, every day. So we engage them. We often do badly, but we learn from our mistakes too.

Right now, this "retired" professor spends his days in the office at the John XXIII Montessori Children's Center, where his wife directs the elementary program. One might say he's a sort of "writer in residence," although he does his own research and writing at his laptop (and he is working on developing some "new media" platforms for the Center...eventually).

He is also a kind of "resource person," who gives small lessons on religion or history, helps students with research, works with maps (he's always loved maps), reads stories to the primary level kids, answers the phone, fills in wherever an adult is needed, etc.

The most important thing he does is just be there, frequently going out of the office and into the "classroom" (oops, wrong word; the word is environment--and that's exactly what it is). He sits in a chair, reads a book, and lets the children "bother" him. They find ways to learn all sorts of things from him.

These are not the circumstances he expected for himself at this period of his life. But they are good.

The professor is learning about what it means to learn...and to teach.  He sees his own children, and others, in a learning environment, where they look at what's around them, find real things, grab hold of them, and discover paths of understanding--ways of seeking the truth.

If they want to learn about plants, they can read about them. But they can also plant something, tend it, and watch it grow. Math is involved with tangible things. Numbers are strings of beads that they can see and touch and combine. Shapes are...actual shapes! And there are spheres, and cubes, and cones of various sizes.

There are rocks, and there are jars with minerals and all kinds of things to compare and contrast tangibly, visually, engaging the senses. They learn how something smells by actually smelling it! Maps are of every sort: maps that show terrain, maps in puzzle form with pieces corresponding to country borders, and many globes that model various facets of topographic or political geography.

One thing cannot be found here. There are no grades. There are no *points* to be accumulated as external rewards. Progress is monitored according to the interests and capacities of each child. Learning is not about discovering and mastering the tricks necessary to win a prize. Learning is about reality; its about experiencing and understanding reality.

The children grapple with real projects, using their hands and their minds. They make mistakes and learn from them. All of this happens in an exquisitely organized environment in which everything has its proper place. The directress guides individuals and groups of children in the various works, gives lessons, and "keeps order"--not with a stick, but by helping the children to learn what is required of them if they are to work together.

And they also do plenty of reading and writing. They even learn handwriting, with pens and pencils, on real paper.

The Montessori environment is a rich and beautiful place, where children are guided in a learning experience that engages the senses, imagination, mind and heart. The environment is realistic for the child. This method actually works! Discipline is built into the order and the ethos of the place, and that includes a healthy awareness of fallen human nature, but not a morbid preoccupation with it.

It is a beautiful place, and there's room in it for anything interesting...

...even an old, rheumatic, "retired" professor. :)