The Long Summer at Gallipoli

Western forces invade Muslim country. They expect easy victory, but are surprised to find tenacious resistance, difficult terrain, and high casualties. The invasion goes nowhere.

So what do they do? They try it again.

And again.

And again.

Thus we arrive at the month of August in the year 1915. The night of August 6th saw the start of the last of four concentrated battle campaigns seeking to break the Turkish lines beyond the beaches and the cliffs of the Dardanelles and open the route to the mythical Constantinople.

We generally associate Gallipoli with April 25, 1915. Our friends "down under" observe it as ANZAC Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). The Aussies and Kiwis were heroes that day, and afterward, for their immense bravery and sacrifice in desperately trying to carry out an invasion that was not their idea (and therefore not their fault).

The idea[s] came from the British, and the Gallipoli campaign has attained legendary status as one of history's great military bungles. The failure of the initial spring invasion resulted in a long stalemate and three more attempts to advance. This final August offensive also failed, and forces finally withdrew with nothing but an accumulation of misery and casualties and graves left behind.

ANZAC charging Turkish lines, Gallipoli campaign

Eight months of futility in the Dardanelles became a watershed for British leadership in the early part of the war, bringing down Secretary of War Lord Kitchener and General Ian Hamilton, who both basically exited the world stage at this point.

First Lord of the Admiralty (i.e. Navy Secretary) Winston Churchill also got sacked, but he would return to lead other battles in another war.

Many say that Gallipoli was the foundation of the national identities of Australia, New Zealand, and modern Turkey (although the arrangement of the Middle East that emerged after World War I remains unstable even now). As a military campaign, however, it was a frustrating waste of human lives that pointed toward greater frustrations still to come in the bloody year of 1916.

Hardcore JJ blog fans recall, perhaps, that we counted down the days to the beginning of the World War I centenary last summer. Honestly, however, I had to stop. It was just too depressing.

Nevertheless, I do not wish to neglect these dreadful years. We must remember and mourn the great violence of this war, which shows so vividly the ugliness that human beings can perpetrate against one another—the ugliness that creeps into our own hearts when love grows cold.

Transfiguration and the Grace of New Life

Transfiguration, Russian Icon, 14th century

"On the mountain You were transfigured,

O Christ our God,

and your Disciples saw

as much of your glory

as they could hold,

so that when they should see

You crucified,

they would know

that You suffered willingly,

and would proclaim to the world

that You are truly

the Splendor of the Father"

(Kontakion for the day, Byzantine Liturgy).

Transfiguration.

A glimpse of glory. The voice of the Father: "This is my Beloved Son." How could Jesus have made Himself more "real" for these men? They saw all the miracles. They spent each day with Him, experiencing His tender gaze, marveling at His beauty.

The man who is God: they were with Him. They saw Him. How could they ever falter in their faith? Why, after everything, did they still give in to fear?

Peter. After everything, after the promise of the Keys, after the calming of the storm, after the light of Mount Tabor, after the ardor of a heart that said in the peak of human sincerity, "I would lay down my life for You," how could he deny Him? Yet Jesus drew Peter's heart back to Himself. "Lord, You know that I love You."

Our life is so fragile and our experience so fragmented that we cannot energize ourselves to persevere in fidelity to the Mystery of God's presence and His love for us, even when He dwells with us and breaks bread with us every day and proves Himself trustworthy again and again and again.

And so He offers us the gift of His Spirit and the strength of His grace, the gift that empowers us to receive and to grow in newness of life in Him. We may fail, we may turn from Him, we may forget Him a thousand times a day, but still His grace and mercy call us continually to conversion and renewal. He gives us the capacity and the energy that we cannot generate from out of our own selves.

When we fall or forget His glory, He empowers us to rise up and remember Him again, turn to Him again, and be surprised by Him again. And if we live in hope—if we adhere to Him, cry out to Him, and beg Him for His mercy—He will sustain us on the way and enable us to walk with Him all the way through the end. All the way through death.

In the whole course of our life, He is prompting us, "Turn to Me, listen to Me, let Me draw you to myself, let Me give you what you need to take each step." Without Him we can do nothing. With Him we will have eternal glory.

And He made us to be with Him, He wants us to be with Him.

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.

The Expectation of August

We have arrived at the beginning of August 2015. These are the "dog days" of summer.

In the United States of America, however, August -- notwithstanding its blazing heat, humidity, and haze, and its buzzing cicadas high in the trees -- has become back-to-school-month. Almost all schools start up in August, and kids have to start thinking about cramming in their summer assignments and getting their gear together.

For us, this particular August heralds a great transition in the family. By the middle of the month, we'll be packing John Paul off to college.

Granted, he's going to Christendom College, which is only a few miles down the road from his high school alma mater. He won't be far away, and he will be entering into one of the great formative experiences of his life.

We also know that he will have good companions, and that Jesus will remain at the center of his college experience. I have no illusions about the human fragility and limitations of this college. I also know its value. I devoted years of my life (and quite a bit of my health) to help build it up into what it is today.

What is most important, however, is that at its foundation the college has a charism. Jesus touches hearts and changes them in that place, and the grace of the Holy Spirit nurtures and brings growth to seeds already planted.

It's a bumpy road, with zigs and zags and holes and dust. Of course. It's made by human beings. But it's a road. It's a pilgrimage route and it's going in the right direction. It leads to the juncture of further roads, to the journey of adulthood.

Sometimes people lose their way on routes that lead nowhere (again, human beings). Still they have been given some sense of what the journey of life is seeking, and they have friends who can help them remember.

And Jesus is there.

Christendom College library (see website www.christendom.edu)

The "Colorful" End of July

July began as a colorful month for everybody.

Fireworks filled the air all over the United States as we celebrated the Fourth of July.

We had plenty of good fireworks shows right in the neighborhood. That's one of the benefits of living in a small town.

The month continued to be colorful in surprising ways, such as the blossoming of the Asian Hibiscus in our front yard:



But the end of July was especially "colorful" to the heart. The feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola yesterday brought back memories of Rome, as it always does. I posted about it on social media.



The day was topped off by the rising of the second full moon of the month of July, which is known as the "blue moon." On occasion the moon does look blue (due to atmospheric conditions) but last night it was blue only in our imaginations.

Still it was quite a sight for the end of a colorful month:

The Golden Words of Peter of Ravenna

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

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

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

~Saint Peter Chrysologus (fifth century)

Broken Openness

Relationships and community are so fundamental to being human -- to living fully as a person. Indeed, community and its organic expressions are fundamental to society.

We need community. We need persons and families connected to one another by the common experience of life, the common struggle for life's needs and celebration of its joys. In community, human persons journey together toward their destiny, helping one another. Without community, we cannot hope to find adequate solutions to any of the practical social troubles we face.

But how do we even begin to "build up" networks of trustworthy interpersonal relationships? Community, by its very nature, cannot be imposed by an ideological scheme. Rather, we build community from the ground up, person-to-person, and we can begin now concretely by living in solidarity with those who have been entrusted to us.

Perhaps some of us have been blessed with the very real "riches" of understanding, and we find that amidst much confusion we are among the few who are able to see the truth about certain significant problems. This gives us no grounds for pride, but only for gratitude to God for this gift, and for whatever goodness we find in ourselves.

Let us be determined to share God's gifts, and to receive the gifts of others in turn. We must never forget that the person we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a unique someone, called and blessed and loved by God with an awesome and mysterious love.

Therefore, we must try to help one another as best we can and with the resources we have. We must love one another in the recognition that we are all sinners, we are all broken, and then listen to one another, help one another to recognize reality, and especially be ready to "suffer-with" one another. Since we are all selfish and make mistakes, we must above all forgive one another and bear with one another just as God forgives us and approaches us with such tenderness and patience.

Relying on His mercy, we must take up each day with our "broken openness," our poor expression of friendship and our desire to understand with compassion the persons He has given to us.

Teresa Gives Me a Haircut

Teresa was messing with my hair and got it all sticking up in the back (see The Haircut, top left). I was grumbling about how I really needed a haircut.

But the girls thought it looked funny so I let them take a picture of me as the bald-topped, hairy-headed wild man. Then Teresa offered to cut it, and I couldn't refuse. After all, if she can groom horses she can buzz off a clump of old and tired gray strands from my head.

And so she did. I played shocked, but actually I was glad to have it all off.

Thank you, Teresa. You're such an awesome kid!

She doesn't like to be told this, but as you can see she's very pretty.

The Value and the Abuse of Human Trust

We cannot live as human persons or build human community together if we cannot trust one another. Trust is a normal component of human communication, and it is founded on the basic expectation we have that others are telling the truth. The expectation of truth and the human orientation to trusting place great responsibility on anyone who takes up a position of authority in a community.

One way or another, we must keep the trust that is given to us (especially if we are in a position of authority).  When this trust breaks down, we are forced to live in suspicion of one another and we become increasingly isolated. This is why deception is destructive in human relationships: when it is exposed, trust is compromised, but when it succeeds, trust is abused and becomes the inroad to manipulation of others. When authorities abuse trust, they can cause great damage to persons and communities.

Human beings make daily decisions in many things through a complex and informal reasoning process. And yet we do this spontaneously and with a measure of confidence in our understanding. This is founded not only on common sense realism, but also on the interpersonal context within which we perceive and judge things.

We approach reality as persons-in-relationship with others, and among the crucial relationships in life are the connections we have with authorities. Our method of understanding will not be solid, however, if it merely conforms to an external source through coercion. Rather, the reasonable and personal response to a genuine authority is trust.

Thus we can see that trust is essential to everyday life.

We live by trust all the time, in the most mundane circumstances. For example, I would not embark on a unknown difficult hike (back in the days when I was able to hike) without someone who knew the path. Or at least I would take a map (made by someone else).

Am I being unreasonable in so doing? Certainly not, because often the reasonable thing to do is to trust someone else's authority. People tend to rely on what they perceive to be authority much more than they realize. It's natural to trust, and we do a lot of it every day. This can be simply recognizing that someone has the knowledge we need in a particular circumstance and is willing to convey it (a very basic kind of "authority"). But it also spans over a whole range of relationships and activities right up to the cohesiveness of a political and social community.

It is reasonable to trust others whose authority is a service to us. But it is also reasonable (indeed essential) that we have at least a common sense judgment that an authority is trust-worthy (or if we can't have that judgment, we have a right to know what level of risk we're taking in "lending" credibility to an unverifiable source).

Here is where human pride and ambition can play clever games and use tricks to buy our trust through fixating our fascination, making false promises, and using psychological or emotional manipulation. The result is a pathological, dehumanizing false trust that takes advantage of and distorts this essential feature of human living.

Sometimes the abusers of trust simply want to cheat us. People are thus misled, innocently, to a shakedown. We trust the wrong people, and then we discover that the investment was a fake and our money is all gone. In such cases we experience how deception is a form of violence: it makes a bald, frontal attack on our trust, in order to profit from it.

But the more psychologically complex abuse of trust holds out promises, draws us along, and tangles our own hopes within its web of lies. Soon we begin ourselves to connive in the deception, as we dismiss "warning signs" -- issues that require examination and verification -- because we have become attached to false hopes. When this happens, we are in danger of losing much more than our money.

Trust is a powerful energy within the person, which is why the systematic manipulation and abuse of trust can cause a counterfeit of community. It can lead to an efficient conformity between oppressors and the oppressed based on external fear, or (something worse) the internal subversion of the expectations and desires of people.

Thus it is that the abuse of trust leads to the cult, the fanatical revolutionary or reactionary party, the dictatorship, the all-encompassing conformity, the blind devotion to false duty, the persecution of non-conformists (whether they willfully resist or simply belong to the wrong ideological category), the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the gulag, the "re-education" program.

We saw this kind of abuse of trust on a vast scale in the past century and we continue to see it today, in new and diverse ways. We must especially pay attention to the "softer" forms of the abuse of trust, in which social forces connive to bring about the manipulation and standardization of opinion. Anyone who tries to expose "soft" conformity is threatened not with the death camp, but with social marginalization.

Such soft conformity, however, is not and cannot bring forth a genuine human community. It delivers only superficial sentiments of common affirmation, beneath which yawn great chasms of mistrust, suspicion, isolation, and loneliness.

Without real trust between people there can be no community. And there can be no constructive human society without institutions and authorities that are worthy of people's trust.

Saint James the Apostle: A Model For Today?

"King Herod laid hands upon some members of the church to harm them. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword" (Acts 12:2). 

Today is the Feast of Saint James the Apostle, the first of the Twelve to be martyred. The iconic imagery of the martyrdom of Saint James (who was beheaded around 44 a.d.) is from a window in Lancaster (Catholic) Cathedral in England.

As I pondered this image, I thought, "Hey... this looks familiar. Haven't I seen images like this recently in the news?" Indeed, I have.

Two thousand years later, Christians are still getting their heads cut off for adhering to Jesus Christ. Look, Saint James even happens to have an orange robe in the stained glass window above, not unlike the orange jump suits of these Eygptian Christians from a few months ago. All James's killer needs is a mask, and he could pass for an ISIS executioner.

The blood of Saint James was the seed of the Church, and so too will be the blood of the martyrs of the 21st century.

The Narrow Road of Growing in Love

I'll be the first to admit that I'm lazy. We're all lazy. Let's face it.

But let's also dwell on this fact: if we remain lazy, we will never grow in love.

When we see the smallness of our love, the way that our lives are dominated by mediocrity, we are tempted to just reduce our expectations, or to put off the business of growing in love.

We pretend that we're "okay," that our lazy, mediocre lives are "good enough." But they're not.

We don't want to admit to ourselves that we are made for love, that all the turmoil inside of us is the anguished cry of our being, the cry for love. Even underneath our laziness is a kind of desperation to hold onto what we have, because we don't know if there is anything out there "beyond ourselves" and we don't want to take the risk.

But really, are you satisfied with what you have now. Really?

Still, we don't even know how to begin living the depth of love that stirs within us. We are afraid. How awful it is to face our fragility, our vulnerability, our weakness, our failures, and the deep wounds of our own selves.

And we can become frozen in our shriveled hearts if we give in to discouragement. "I have tried to love before, but all I've done is screw things up. I don't know how to love and I don't want to try. It's too dangerous!"

This is a moment where my freedom is challenged in a critical way. I have a choice. I can give in to discouragement. Or I can begin from my poverty, and beg for help.

When we do cry out for help, it may feel like a waste of time, because help doesn't seem to be coming. There are no signs and wonders, no great miracles. We are still broken and confused. We are begging for help, but it seems that nothing happens, nothing changes.

That is not true.

Look! We are already doing something.

In that begging is already the recognition that we need to love and to be loved. In that begging is already the recognition that there is someone worth loving. If I were really alone, it would never even occur to me to ask. Someone is already here, helping me now.

So I beg for help, I beg for the One who is already helping me, loving me: the One who is with me. And I begin to love. Of course, I'm still confused. I forget. But there are moments when I remember, and I know when this happens that I am not the source of that memory. The One who loves me touches my life. I give Him thanks, and I beg for these moments to increase.

This asking, this prayer, allows Him to open our hearts and draw us, more and more. It allows Him to shine light on our lives so that we might see their meaning, more and more, in relation to Him.

This is the narrow road of growing in love.

The Woman Who Saw Jesus: Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene, with flask of myrrh and egg
symbolizing the resurrection.

Antiphon for Morning Prayer on her Feast Day

Resurrection and Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary of Magdala's feast day is today. She is called ἰσαπόστολος in the Byzantine tradition ("Equal-to-the-Apostles") for her original witness to Jesus's resurrection.

Jesus said to her, "go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord'" (John 20:17-18).

This Great and Deep Longing

Longing, yearning, aching for that ultimate "something"--this is the root of my identity and my actions. It is the way my heart is made.

Most of the day I smother this great and deep longing of the heart, or at least I try. It is so vast, so much beyond my control, so provocative to the dreams of comfort that I fool myself with. But it is what makes for every authentic engagement of life that I manage in a day.

It makes it possible to perceive things as they really are and to recognize that my relationship with reality consists in a recognition of its beauty and a joy tinged with sadness--things are and yet they are not enough.

Being Christian does not take away this yearning. Rather, it intensifies it. It does not remove the sweet pain of my need for the Infinite. On the contrary, Christianity is the revelation that the Infinite One has embraced my life.

Being Christian makes it possible to live life according to its true meaning, without escape or desperation.

Usually I don't live this possibility. I flee every day, into my own schemes and vain imaginings and grasping and blindness. But I have moments when I remember that this is what life is really all about.

They are moments of prayer. They generate hope.

In hope, I truly begin to live.

War of Words

Words are whirling like a storm, like bullets flying, like glass shattered in the wind.

We use more words today than ever before in history, and we have more media platforms to say them, text them, post them.

For all that, so many of our words boil down to people saying things to people about other people.

We classify our discourse as expressing opinion, conveying information, or engaging in journalism, scholarship, analysis, etc., etc., etc. Yet what so much of it really is, in the end, is one form or another of self-affirmation, gossip, unnecessary curiosity, detraction, calumny, or cynicism.

We use words to assert ourselves, or to make war on one another. And our words express what is inside our hearts. We have hearts full of violence.

This has much to do with lack of real communication that displays itself so fiercely in Internet comboxes and social media networks, as well as in human interactions in so many other areas. Here online, it can become a concentrated barrage. Multimedia words and images, comments sharp as daggers, unfounded accusations and personal attacks.

It becomes difficult to remember the topic or controversy, to keep it focused and grounded, much less to embark with others on a journey to find the truth or deepen our understanding of it. I know very well that some of these matters are urgent and that it is necessary to fight for the good. Too often, however, a perceived "expedience" trumps respect for human persons.

We have let the sun go down on our anger. When anger takes over, the first casualty is beauty. If we speak the truth without its splendor (which has nothing to do with fancy words), we fail to communicate, we fail to help others to see reality. We can put the shape of our own desperate anger even on the truth. It's not surprising that others don't listen, or that they strike back. Our words attack them like a knife in the stomach.

The word "hate" is tossed about. All kinds of accusations abound from all sides. Are we really fighting for the good. Are we fighting for love?

Or are we trying to "win" our own victory? Are we lashing out in perceived self-defense, frustration, or to cover up our own problems?

Often it's a tangled combination of all these motives all mixed up together.

I have asked myself, "How often, when I speak or write, are my words aimed at distraction, or at defensiveness, or at drawing attention to myself? And what am I looking for when I listen to or read the words of others?" How many wasted words! Foolish words. It becomes draining and discouraging, this war of words.

I think perhaps we use words foolishly because we are insecure. We are insecure.

Why?

Because we are afraid that we are not loved. Or, rather, we have forgotten that we are loved. We are not nourished by a vital connection with the One who loves us. We need prayer.

And not just more words of prayer. We need silence.

We need to let Him love us.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

"Mother of Christ, let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of hope!" (Saint John Paul II).

Summer "Stay-cation" at the Pool

The closest thing to a "vacation" for the Janaros this summer is this local pool/camping area that we were able to join (no, we're not going camping). There are two pools, and on many afternoons they look like this (above) when we arrive!

The problem is that, on many days this summer, the sky has looked like this!!!

The sky started out looking bright here, but eventually the clouds rolled in. Still, it gave us several hours of good pool weather.

  Josefina had fun making faces. Then she smiled.

I had a good time at the pool too. Here are Jojo and I drying off, looking like monks or desert nomads with our "towel-heads."

We were done and on our way home by the time the rain came. There you see it falling in what looks like fog on the hills.

Saint Bonaventure's Journey

A person should turn his full attention [to Christ],

to this throne of mercy,

and should gaze at Him hanging on the cross,

full of faith, hope and charity,

devoted, full of wonder and joy,

marked by gratitude,

and open to praise and jubilation.

He will experience,

as much as is possible for one who is still living,

what was promised to the thief who hung beside Christ:

"Today you will be with me in paradise."

This is a sacred mystical experience.

It cannot be comprehended by anyone

unless he surrenders himself to it;

nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it;

nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit,

whom Christ sent into the world,

should come and inflame his innermost soul.

Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom

is revealed by the Holy Spirit.

If you ask how such things can occur,

seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine;

in the longing of the will, not in the understanding;

in the sighs of prayer, not in research;

seek the bridegroom not the teacher;

God and not man;

darkness not daylight;

and look not to the light but rather

to the raging fire that carries the soul to God

with intense fervor and glowing love.

The fire is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem,

fired by Christ in the ardor of His loving passion.

Only he understood this who said:

"My soul chose hanging and my bones death."

Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God,

for it is certainly true that:

"No man can look upon me and live."

Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness....

Let us pass over with the crucified Christ

from this world to the Father

so that, when the Father has shown himself to us,

we can say with Philip: "It is enough."

We may hear with Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you."

And we can rejoice with David, saying:

"My flesh and my heart fail me,

but God is the strength of my heart

and my heritage for ever."

~Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274)

from The Journey of the Mind to God, ch. 7

Henry and His Times

Here we are in the early years of a new millennium. History has been quite crazy. People freaked out in '99 and thought the world was going to end.

But it didn't.

Efforts were being made to unify Europe. Islamic militants were on the advance. The Germans were playing a crucial role. Kiev was in the news. So were the Greeks.

I'm looking at the beginning of the second millennium. Yes, as in "a thousand years ago." The eleventh century was a period of complex politics, envy, greed, ambition, scandalous morals, sinners everywhere, and a few saints.

One of those saints was a man known to history as Emperor Henry II. The "Holy Roman Emperor" Henry II the Saint. Today is his feast day.

Henry is dear to me. He loved the poor. He fostered evangelization. He sponsored the "missionary diocese" of Bamberg on what was then the fringe of the Christian world, in order to bring the Gospel to the northeastern Slavic tribes.

And at Bamberg he supported the foundation of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Michael, to which he attached himself as a lay collaborator, living the Benedictine spirit in the midst of the secular world as an "Oblate."

He is the patron saint of Benedictine Oblates. He is also the patron of disabled people, and this is another reason why I love him. He was afflicted with various chronic illnesses, and had a significant limp.

He did his best to use his authority to foster the peace and good of the Church. Nevertheless, religion and politics were deeply interwoven, and Henry couldn't help setting precedents and building up the structures of what would soon become the "investiture crisis" and then blossom into the ongoing medieval struggle between Church authority and civil power.

The best of political solutions can only be temporary, and will eventually be the occasion of new problems. Humans can't be "fixed" by politics. That's why Jesus came.

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Saint Michael's Abbey, Bamberg, Germany

Nevertheless, it's interesting and educational to examine the ways that people have tried to wrestle with the problem of being human.

So let's explore this path a bit.

Allow me to give space to my imagination here, and attempt to describe the situation of Saint Henry's time. Note well, this is an attempt to describe the situation. I am not advocating any kind of RESTORATION of these circumstances or these kind of political aspirations. What I want to do is to understand how people saw things at the dawn of the second millennium --  to try to see "the past" as decisions-yet-to-be-made, experiments not yet tried.

Let us attempt to step into a historical environment without the benefit of a thousand years hindsight. What did the world look like in 1015? What we call "the Middle Ages" didn't conceive of itself as being in the middle of anything. It was an age that looked back and looked forward to a political ideal, a world of peace, a world of unity-in-diversity, of culture, education, and leisure, a world that was known as the Imperium.

Today we think of "Empire" as a word that signifies tyranny and oppression. We associate it with cruel dictators and totalitarian control. Our "Western" ancestors, however, did not regard it as such. Rather, they saw it as a check on arbitrary violence, as an institution that prevented the dominance of raw power and individual whims over the common good, and as the foundation for order and the flourishing of civilized life.

They struggled to realize and renovate what was for them the greatest achievement of politics, the Imperium Romanum: the best kind of government they had ever known, and what they saw as their best hope of fostering justice, equity, fairness, impartiality, constructive activity, and defense against lawlessness and banditry. For these earlier Europeans, the Roman Empire was not looked upon as a distant memory of the past.

In fact, it was not considered a "past memory" at all.

Rather, it was an ongoing project, though admittedly one which had had some significant setbacks. It was the great hope of the second millennials that the Roman order was not only being renewed and solidified. It was being purified and elevated by Christianity.

It was destined, they hoped, to be a real reflection of Christ's kingdom in this world: the Christian people living in peace and united in bringing His benevolent reign to the ends of the earth. It was Christendom.

(In retrospect, we might say, "Christendom 1.0" -- but before we dismiss entirely this piece of primitive, clunky, bug-ridden political and historic software we would do well to attend to the ferocious viruses that have crashed our present global operating system. But I digress....)

All of this sounds quite idealistic, and it was never really more than that. Jesus never promised success in this present world. Second millennials, nevertheless, can't be entirely blamed for being a bit "heady" in those early years.

After all, in the year 1000, there was a Christian Roman Empire.

Actually, that's not quite true, and herein lies the biggest of all the many big problems: there were, in fact, two "Christian Roman Empires" with two "Roman Emperors" in two distinctive (but overlapping) territories.

What we call "the Byzantine Empire" knew itself simply as the Roman Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, the "New Rome" for over 600 years, ruled by Christian emperors, full of Christian churches and monasteries and also plenty of worldly splendor and wealth and corruption. To the west were the vigorous tribes and peoples who, when they became Christians, also identified themselves as "Romans."

At first they had placed themselves in at least a nominal relationship to the Emperor in Constantinople, but increasingly they took their political as well as religious identity from the "Old Rome," the guardian of the ancient imperial mystique but also the church founded on the head of the Apostles, Saint Peter.

The tenth century had been a messy period all over Europe, but the Germanic kings had once again emerged to claim their role as protectors of the Pope and emperors of the Old Rome.

To say this was a tense situation would be an understatement. But there was hope. The churches of Rome and Constantinople were still united at the end of the first millennium. It was a rocky relationship, but it's hard to imagine that anyone foresaw the chasm that was about to crack open.

Indeed, from a political point of view, there were good reasons for hope. The Germans and "the Greeks" both saw "the problem" and they were seeking a solution: marriage.

The beginning of the second millennium saw a rising star: the marvelous Otto III, devout, educated, full of idealism, son of the German Emperor and his wife, a member of the Byzantine royal family. The daughter of the current Byzantine Emperor sailed for Italy in the year 1001. She was espoused to Otto. The wedding of the two Imperial houses would have created a unified succession.

Political unity between Constantinople and Rome, East and West.

And then Otto suddenly took ill and died at the age of 21. The future Empress Zoe returned to Constantinople.

Saint Henry was already married by then, and his successors pursued other courses. By the middle of the century, the Great Schism had begun. No one could have dreamed that another thousand years would pass without healing.

Human plans are fragile things.

"For present glory is fleeting and meaningless, while it is possessed, unless in it we can glimpse something of heaven’s eternity" (attributed to Saint Henry II).

Benedict's Option

Today is the Feast of St. Benedict.

St. Benedict was a man who went off into the desert in search of God. He sought to dedicate himself to God alone.

He had no project.

He did not plan to establish a monastery.

He did not plan to found a religious order.

He did not plan to lay the foundations for the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages.

He did not plan the preservation of classical learning and culture.

He did not plan to feed the poor, care for the sick, found schools, or become a counselor to the great and powerful.

He sought only to give himself to God. He found God in the desert. He found Him in silence and prayer.

He also found Him in obedience, which for Benedict meant responding to the little things that God gave him. It meant loving God in those first followers who sought him out. It meant helping them to live together as brothers. It meant writing his directives down, as a rule "for beginners."

Silence, prayer, obedience, humility, love. These are still the things that really matter. These are the things that build up the heart of the Church. But we must acknowledge all of God's gifts: it is also this radical self-forgetfulness of love for Christ that builds up the world. St. Benedict was not aware of this, but God used him nonetheless, and for centuries in the West he has been known as the "Father of Europe." By seeking God after his example and according to his rule, Benedict's followers would also change the history of the world.

Benedictine monasteries rose out of the ruins of the Latin Roman Empire, preserved and fostered much that was good from antiquity, and inspired and helped shape the institutions of the new peoples who built Western Europe's Christian culture.

Our world today may be on the threshold of a new dark age. Are there, even now in our midst, the "St. Benedicts" whose prayer and sacrifice are sowing the seeds of a new Christendom in the future? Or is this not in some way the calling of each of us? We must go into the desert of daily life, in this world which cannot but be a world of sorrows because we are not yet in the embrace of the God for whom we have been made.

We must go into the desert of our hearts that are so distracted, and we must cry out for His mercy and healing. We must live in the midst of a world that has tried to make God absent, that has obscured the signs of His presence, and we must seek Him and stand with Him as He unites Himself to humans in their loneliness.

This is what makes the world a better place: knowing that we are made for Something greater than this world, and letting that "Something" touch us in the midst of this world and shape our way of looking at everything.

True "Greatness" is Found in Giving Ourselves

"God is not one who wills only greatness. God is love, who gives himself first in the Trinity, and then in creation. And to imitate God means going out of oneself; it means giving oneself in love" (Benedict XVI).

Pope Benedict speaks of "greatness" in the way that we conceive of it, our human conceptions. In our pride, we try to imitate God (or take His place) by making ourselves "great."

And so we grasp for power, whereas God wants to make us like Him by enabling us to give ourselves in love, to share in His love.

Here is a larger quotation from Benedict XVI's homily (I'll date it if I can find the date):