"Cross" no. 2

Here is another finished digital art piece in what is becoming my "series" of "abstract decorative crosses."

It's all I have right now. Everything else has kind of slowed down as we prepare to lay my father's body to rest this week.

A Family, Finally Together Again

There are many aspects to my father's passing away yesterday, many memories that are flooding me, many feelings, sorrows and hope, prayer.

THIS PICTURE is, for me, a particular sign of hope and an ardent object of my prayer. This is the Janaro Family, my father's family, around the year 1943.

It shows a beautiful, still young, happy family. Beginning at top left: Walter Janaro (the First), his wife Lucy, and their oldest son Arnold. Bottom left are daughter Rosemary and son Walter (Jr.), my Dad (at about 8 years old).

I think this is the last picture of all of them together. Tragedy was soon to strike, and it would bring great and enduring sorrow to my Dad and his siblings.

In 1944, their father (Walter Sr.) fell ill and died, as did their mother (Lucy) two years later. Thankfully, there were lots of extended family in their Italian immigrant neighborhood in the Bronx. The three orphans stayed together with a grandmother. "La famiglia" took good care of them, and they raised my Dad well. 

But, though he rarely showed it, I know that he missed his parents deeply for the rest of his life. 

His sister Rosemary and brother Arnold grew up, had families too, and grandchildren, and passed away more recently (my Uncle Arnold just last year). When he heard about his brother's death, my Dad (already debilitated and living at Greenfield) said in an unusual lucid moment, "I'm all alone now." He said this with his two sons right in front of him, but we understood what he meant. We knew of his long sorrow. 

Yesterday, everything changed.

The mysterious and all-encompassing joy of being with God - which is my prayer for everyone in this family and my hope in Jesus Christ - also includes the great healing of all wounds and separations. Praying for their eternal rest and trusting in God's love and mercy, I like to picture this family FINALLY TOGETHER AGAIN after 75 years, henceforth never be parted. 

"Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended" (Catholic Funeral Liturgy). God is good, all the time. And He loves us.❤➕

Rest in Peace, Dad

My father died peacefully this morning, after a lengthy illness. He was three days short his 84th birthday.

➕Grant him eternal rest, O Lord. Jesus embrace him in your mercy.➕

Life, Death, and Solidarity

There is much that I have found helpful in Henri Nouwen's book, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring.

Nouwen has a special gift for helping us to see how Jesus listens to our mental and emotional questions and embraces our weak, small, ordinary bewilderment and sorrow in the midst of our sufferings. The strangeness of living and dying touches the immense mystery of how God's love is transforming us and the world.

Here I quote one small passage, from pp. 32-33:

"People ask for solidarity, not only in life, but in death as well. Only when we are willing to let their dying help us to die well, will we be able to help them to live well.

"When we can face death with hope, we can live life with generosity.

"We all die poor. When we come to our final hours, nothing can help us survive. No amount of money, power, or influence can keep us from dying.

"This is true poverty.

"But Jesus said, 'Blessed are you who are poor, the kingdom of God is yours' (Luke 6:20). There is a blessing hidden in the poverty of dying. It is the blessing that makes us brothers and sisters in the same Kingdom. .

"It is the blessing we receive from others who die.

"It is the blessing we give to others when our time to die has come.

"It is the blessing that comes from the God whose life is everlasting."

Dad's Home for a Year

Here is a panoramic view of Greenfield Assisted Living in Strasburg, Virginia. What a wonderful home it has been for my Dad this past year, and a comfort to him and us amidst many difficulties. 

We are very grateful!❤

Sunday of Joy

Laetare Sunday.

Rejoice! Rejoice in the middle of Lent, this season of prayer, penance, and preparation for the celebration of the event of our salvation, the event that defines who we are and is the source of our hope.

Rejoice, even as we walk with Jesus on the path of our own suffering, offering ourselves and whatever we are called to endure to God our Father, as He draws us by the Holy Spirit into a deeper participation in Christ's "Pascal Mystery" - the Event of His death and resurrection. Here God reveals and gives Himself as Love.

The Mystery who makes us and all things reveals Himself as "the Mystery of Unfathomable Love."

He always remains "Mystery," higher and deeper than our comprehension, but He is the super-luminous Mystery of Truth and Love who gives meaning and purpose to our lives. And He is the Mystery who shows His love for us by coming to dwell with us, the Mystery-made-flesh.

He is with us. Our very flesh is akin to His flesh, as we were created - each one of us, and all of us, every human being - to be His brothers and sisters.

And it is Unfathomable Love that takes up all our vulnerabilities and (for the sake of Love) bears them all the way to the end. He reveals the glory of Divine Love by taking upon Himself and enduring our weakness, our suffering, and even our sins by which we have separated ourselves from Him and one another.

God loves us. He is infinitely "deeper" (as Love) than our hatred and violence and selfishness and all the horrible wounds we inflict by sin, and He wants to be with us. He is also deeper than our sorrows, burdens, fears, and infirmities.
   
He is with us in our infirmities. Indeed He has made them His own by love, and has begun even now to transfigure them from within.

We who live an apparently insignificant life in this frail flesh, who grow old and sick and dispossessed of everything we thought we could control as we slip away into the obscurity of death - we are grains of wheat sown deep in the earth with Jesus in His death, and the mysterious power of His resurrection already begins to bear fruit in us.

So, rejoice! There is abundant reason for joy, Jesus is with us.

He is here, carrying us in our infirmities, because He wants to be with us. He does not love our suffering. He loves us. He is transforming our suffering, and He calls on us to trust in Him to continue and fulfill this work of purification and transfiguration He has begun in us.

"Falling Out" (Digital Art)

Here is an image I created that belongs in my "Peace and Security" series of digital abstracts (some of which remain unfinished). The effort that goes into crafting a work like this is actually quite intense.

This piece is called "Falling Out."

My Dad and Beethoven Have Been Good to Me

The image on the cover of this "high fidelity" 33.3 rpm vinyl record is one of the oldest images in my memory.

When I was very little (about four years old) my father and I used to listen to this record and few others he had of Beethoven, as well as Brahms, Dvorak, and others.

This is an early childhood memory, so I can't say how many times we actually listened to it.

But it was one of those archetypal childhood moments that made a lasting impression on me: this experience of being with my Dad listening to this music.

In that memory, both of us were "air conducting" along with the great Arturo Toscanini (who shows us how it's done on the cover of this brilliant recording of a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1951).

For more than fifty years of my life, My Dad and Beethoven have been there for me.

Today all of that came full circle.

I was at Dad's bedside. He was breathing slowly and sometimes opening his eyes. He is no longer responsive, or at least we can't really be sure whether or not he is trying to communicate; he can't speak, his eyes don't move even when they're open, nor does he make any other bodily gestures. But I think he can still hear. Whatever happens, I will never say that he's "gone" as long as he lives in his body, however precariously, with whatever fragility. His remaining with us in these last days is still precious.

He's getting a big boost of supplemental oxygen from a non-invasive tube under his nose. But the ongoing systemic complications of recent illnesses along with the accelerated ravages of dementia exacerbated by encephalopathy are bringing to a close his nearly-84-years-long pilgrimage in this life.

Dad is as comfortable as he can be, and does not appear to be in pain. He is being exceptionally well cared for by the staff at this beautiful home, and by the medical team that gently intervenes when necessary.

We spend as much time as we can with him. John Paul was here in the afternoon and he and I talked with each other and with "Papa" about John Paul's approaching graduation and other things. The "three generations of Janaro men" had some time together.

When I was with him for a stretch by myself, I decided to play some music.

It wasn't hard to find Toscanini conducting Beethoven's 7th Symphony on YouTube. So we listened to it together.

I have listened countless times in my life to this glorious piece of music, as interpreted by a multitude of conductors and orchestras. The music has many facets. But then and there, with my Dad, the brisk, bright, vigorous clarity of Toscanini's interpretation seemed to reawaken that rapport over shared music from my childhood.

I didn't see any dramatic signs from him (or any signs at all) that he was also remembering those days, but I wasn't expecting to.

It was just being with my Dad, and Beethoven, one more time.

Annunciation

HAPPY SOLEMNITY OF THE ANNUNCIATION!❤➕

"Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above, like gentle rain let the skies drop it down. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth; let justice also spring up! I the Lord, have created this" (Isaiah 45:8).

Saint Oscar Romero: A Splendid Crown, a Sure Reward

I have posted some of these words before, these final prophetic words from the homily of St Oscar Romero preached in the hospital chapel where, moments later, he would suffer martyrdom on March 24, 1980.

These last words from this singularly courageous and wise bishop - what resounding authority they possess! These words were sealed with his own blood. They are words that summarize the supernatural heart of all his preaching, his work for the poor, his cries for justice for the people of El Salvador, his conviction that God's love is stronger than death.

He speaks of the Christian and human vocation, and the mysterious but ultimately enduring value of our efforts to build up the good in this world when we seek to do God's will, when we work with faith, hope, and love of God.

Death does not define us and need not defeat us. The Spirit of God will bring to fruition in the kingdom all the seeds of goodness we sow in this present life, when we live and act with the hope that holds fast to the Risen Jesus:

"This is the hope that inspires us as Christians. We know that every effort to improve society, especially when injustice and sin are so widespread, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God requires of us....

"Of course, we must purify [our ideals and efforts] in Christianity and invest them with hope for what lies beyond because in that way they become stronger. For we have the assurance that we will never fail in all the work we do on earth if we infuse it with Christian hope. We will find it purified in that kingdom where our merit will be according to what we have done on this earth....

"I ask all of you, dear brothers and sisters, to view these things that are happening in our historical moment with a spirit of hope, generosity, and sacrifice. And let us do what we can. We can all do something and be more understanding....

"If we illuminate with Christian hope our intense longings for justice and peace and all that is good, then we can be sure that no one dies forever. If we have imbued our work with a sense of great faith, love of God, and hope for humanity, then all our endeavors will lead to the splendid crown that is the sure reward for the work of sowing truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth.

"Our work does not remain here; it is gathered and purified by the Spirit of God and returned to us as a reward."

Saint Camillus is a Great Help to Us

Saint Camillus has quite a "Conversion Story" - somebody should write an article about him.⭐

But that will have to wait until next year.

Right now, we are getting a lot of "help" from this courageous servant of the sick and dying, founder of hospitals, pioneer in the development of compassionate health care, and above all lover of Jesus present in those who suffer.

He has become our friend in the midst of trials.

The Universe is Changing...

I don't seem to have much energy to write. The universe is changing. My father is dying. I love you, Dad!

Lately I have been designing abstract decorative crosses. It's my mental exercise and expression. I don't know what else to say.

With Dad on Saint Joseph's Day

This Solemnity of Saint Joseph, we find ourselves in a hospital taking care of our own father, whose physical condition has rapidly declined this past week.

It's three weeks short of Dad's 84th birthday and he is very gravely ill.

What is there to say? We have been blessed to have him with us for such a long time. I don't have any more words. He is in God's hands. We are all in God's hands.

Please pray for him, and for us his family. Good Saint Joseph, pray for all of us.

March 14: First Feelings of Spring

Some real hints of Spring in the air. It even felt like Summer, though the "look" is still mostly Wintry bare.

We got lots of pics from a day by the Happy Creek:

Yes, the water is pretty low, the sun is unusually warm, and the vegetation is hibernating.

But wait! Somethings are waking up!

The big trees still sleep, like the Sycamore with its white bark so noticeable in Winter and so lovely in its own way.

Not many places to find shade on this day here in the Valley. I had to duck under a pine tree. The horse field nearby is bare but bright. Everything is showered in sunlight.

I am grateful to God to be alive. Lord, help me always to remember your goodness.

This was originally an Instagram video that made it to my YouTube channel. Reporting from "on the scene":

Without You We Cannot Exist

Bestow on us, we pray, O Lord,
a spirit of always pondering on what is right
and of hastening to carry it out,
and, since without you we cannot exist,
may we be enabled to live according to your will.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you 
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, for ever and ever.

~Collect, Thursday, March 14

Happy Birthday Christina Grimmie, With Love! 💚

On this day, March 12, we remember Christina Grimmie and celebrate her 25th Birthday, with gratitude and so much love.💚

Jesus says, "You Did It For Me"

Today's Gospel reading is a witness to the ultimate significance of every moment of every ordinary day of our lives. 

I dwell below upon the first portion of "The Final Judgment" in hope, to focus the light on the real, fragile, human neediness of the persons with whom Jesus has identified Himself, and through whom He offers Himself to us, asking for our love. 

I want to be one of those who are called "blessed of my Father."

My prayer is that, by His mercy and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, I might love Him in others by serving Him in their poverty, weakness, and needs. I beg for His forgiveness because I fall short and fail in this love every day. 

I am well aware of the corresponding judgment of vv. 41-45 upon those who have failed to love.

What is at stake here is nothing less than our identity for all eternity.

Obviously there is a teaching here on the necessity of social mercy as well as social justice, on the Church's "preferential option for the poor." We often talk about "helping the poor," but we who have an abundance of riches don't really do very much. We have agencies and bureaucracies to handle the complex business of poverty, and - like everything else in these times of epochal upheaval - "poverty" has become a gigantic, appalling, complex, and dangerous reality.

We have become so accustomed to an atmosphere of trauma, change, instability, and fear that the "wall of poverty" makes us terrified of the possibility of encountering real physically and deperately poor people. This is an alienation we must want to overcome, whatever the real practical possibilities may be for external actions in light of our actual circumstances.

But this "fear of the poor" is a consequence of a deeper problem. Our relationship with God is so weak (mine certainly is, at least) that we don't know how to live the most fundamental human interpersonal connections right in front of us. If we cower before the prospect of having anything to do with the needy "out there," it probably means we are isolated from one another.

I know that the "hungry," the "thirsty," the "sick," and even "the stranger" are not first of all some "scary people" far away and seemingly inaccessible to me. "Going out to the margins" begins at home. It begins with the persons who have been entrusted to me, who are under my roof, my wife, my kids, and also my parents and the many ordinary people whom I encounter and who hope to find something vitally human in me - kindness, attention, affirmation, encouragement, empathy, humble guidance, or any gesture of self-giving love, however small the moment might be.

Mother Teresa was very earnest when she invited us in the context of family life to smile at one another. She wasn't advocating a forced or artificial cheerful mood, but rather a chosen gift of one's self even when it is difficult.

"When, Lord, did we see you in need...?" If I may insert a bit of 21st Century "Midrash" here, then I'll illustrate a particular point like this: "'When did you see me in need?' replied the King. 'Well, for starters, how about EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. You woke up next to me every morning for 25/30/40/50/more YEARS. We lived together all those days. We raised kids. We spent almost ten cumulative years watching T.V. together. Were you aware of me? Did you love me the way you promised you would? That was me, in need of your love, all that time.'"

We are all "poor" in front of one another. We must love and care for one another, not in sentimentality and illusion, but in reality: real person to real person. If we truly love those entrusted to us, our "neighbors," we will also be drawn (together) to the "margins" in the sociological sense. A real "Communio," in which we serve Christ in one another, always engenders a passion for mission.

If there is no desire in us, no sense of solidarity, no sorrow that opens our hearts to the needs of the poor, no impetus toward engaging in works of mercy, then it is likely that we are a group of Christians who are failing to live in communion with one another. We easily substitute comfortable mutual conformity, ideology, or superficial activism for real love. Imperceptibly, we put limits on the attentiveness of our love. Then some measure other than the heart of Christ creeps in and subtly defines our being-together. If we don't wake up and return to God's love, eventually we will lose the sense of that communion-in-charity (caritas, agape) that vivifies our ecclesial life as brothers and sisters. It will be replaced by disconnection, or else there will arise among us the idolatrous and violent instincts of the post-modern tribe.

May God preserve us from such a forgetfulness of the face of Christ. Rather, let us worship and give glory to Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And let us serve Him in one another, and seek Him out and serve Him in every person, especially the poor who endure the most dire hunger and thirst, who wander the earth as strangers, who are cold, sick, troubled and in need of so many things.

By this loving service He strengthens us and draws us closer to Him.

"The king will say to those on his right,
'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.'
Then the righteous will answer him and say,
'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
And the king will say to them in reply,
'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of these least brothers of mine, 
you did for me.'"

~Matthew 25:34-40

Opening Our Hearts to the Lord

No matter what condition we are in or what evils we have done, God can still reach us. No sin is too great for his forgiveness and mercy. "Ask, and it will be given you" (Matthew 7:7).

What a simple promise! But do we really take Jesus seriously? Do we really believe that he is the gift of the Father's love and mercy, that he has the power to heal and transform our lives?

There is no human person in the world who cannot ask God for mercy. No human predicament, no degree of moral and spiritual disgrace, is beyond the reach of God’s mercy.

In fact, God knows all our sins and our sorrows and our deepest need for healing, and he wants to save us. He loves us first, and when we seek him it is because he has already called us, mysteriously, in the depths of our hearts. But he wants us to seek him and "ask" for him, because this is the way we open our hearts to him. He respects our freedom. Indeed, he loves our freedom; he creates and sustains us as persons and wants us to be free. Still, his love is greater than our hearts. He anticipates us, awakens us, draws us, and showers upon us his mercy, not to the demand of our measure and expectations but in response to our recognition that we really need him.

But sometimes, we ask for him and we don't feel like we're getting a response. He seems to delay. Why?

God is good, all the time. If we ask for his mercy and healing with a true desire, he works to change us according to his wisdom and love for us. He is Love. If his "timing" seems slow to us, we know that he wants us to keep asking; he wants us to experience our total need for him, our total dependence on Infinite Love.

Ask, keep asking, and never give up. You shall receive; it is a promise from God. “Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22).

"Before Jesus, no sinner is excluded... because the healing power of God knows no infirmity that cannot be healed; and this must give us confidence and open our heart to the Lord, that he may come and heal us" (Pope Francis).

The Journey Toward Easter 2019

We have finally begun the journey toward Easter, which is on April 21 this year. That's almost as late as Easter can be in a calendar year.

The date is fixed each year for the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox (always regarded as March 21 in this process). Full moon this month falls on March 20; thus the first full moon of Spring is April 19, which sets Easter for Sunday the 21st.

I prepared this graphic for the Latin Rite observance of "Ash Wednesday" yesterday. May everyone have a fruitful preparation over the next six weeks as we prepare to encounter Jesus in the annual observance and celebration of his redeeming death and resurrection.

A Time of Conversion from the Destructive Power of Sin

Pope Francis has emphasized the connection between new life in Christ and our stewardship for all creation in this year's Message for the Lenten season.

I am struck by the very accurate way that he points out how the sincerity of our love for God shows itself in our attitude toward the world, its resources, and its beauty: Do we see created things as gifts to be received with gratitude and used for our authentic good and the common good of present and future humanity, or do we see them as materials to be exploited and dominated for selfish ends, with no real regard for the needs of others or the future.

Here the Pope points out aspects of our sinful dispositions and actions that we so easily fail to notice, and underlines the need for repentence and conversion in relation to these sins.

Francis notes that the celebration of Christ's Resurrection "calls us yearly to undertake a journey of preparation, in the knowledge that our being conformed to Christ (cf. Rom 8:29) is a priceless gift of God’s mercy.

"When we live as children of God, redeemed, led by the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 8:14) and capable of acknowledging and obeying God’s law, beginning with the law written on our hearts and in nature, we also benefit creation by cooperating in its redemption...

"Yet in this world, the harmony generated by redemption is constantly threatened by the negative power of sin and death.

"Indeed, when we fail to live as children of God, we often behave in a destructive way towards our neighbours and other creatures – and ourselves as well – since we begin to think more or less consciously that we can use them as we will. Intemperance then takes the upper hand: we start to live a life that exceeds those limits imposed by our human condition and nature itself."

The Pope expresses powerfully how our sins impact the natural created world as well as destroy others and ourselves: "The root of all evil, as we know, is sin, which from its first appearance has disrupted our communion with God, with others and with creation itself, to which we are linked in a particular way by our body. This rupture of communion with God likewise undermines our harmonious relationship with the environment in which we are called to live, so that the garden has become a wilderness (cf. Gen 3:17-18). Sin leads man to consider himself the god of creation, to see himself as its absolute master and to use it, not for the purpose willed by the Creator but for his own interests, to the detriment of other creatures.

"Once God’s law, the law of love, is forsaken, then the law of the strong over the weak takes over. The sin that lurks in the human heart (cf. Mk 7:20-23) takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself. It leads to the exploitation of creation, both persons and the environment, due to that insatiable covetousness which sees every desire as a right and sooner or later destroys all those in its grip."

Francis then exhorts us to embrace the Lenten penitential preparation in light of this integral vocation which Jesus brings about by His power at work in us. He gives us a larger perspective on the significance of Lent and the classical practices of this season: "Lent is a sacramental sign of th[e work of] conversion. It invites Christians to embody the paschal mystery more deeply and concretely in their personal, family and social lives, above all by fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

"Fasting, that is, learning to change our attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation to 'devour' everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts. 

"Prayer, which teaches us to abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego, and to acknowledge our need of the Lord and his mercy. 

"Almsgiving, whereby we escape from the insanity of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure a future that does not belong to us. 

"And thus [we] rediscover the joy of God’s plan for creation and for each of us, which is to love him, our brothers and sisters, and the entire world, and to find in this love our true happiness."

The entire text of the Pope's Lenten Message for 2019 can be found HERE.