Happy Birthday to the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of our Lord and mother of all of us who are His little brothers and sisters!
The Byzantine tradition is rich with iconography of Mary’s nativity (often in this form of presentation, with Mary and an attendant on the lower right and her mother Saint Anne on the couch and Nazareth in the background).
Nine months ago we celebrated Mary's immaculate conception — we believe that she was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her existence in view of the saving merits of her Son. She is therefore "redeemed" and "saved" wholly and entirely from the beginning of her life. Her birth, therefore, is a unique and joyful epiphany of grace in salvation history.
Though not presented explicitly in Sacred Scripture, the significance of Mary's birth is handed down from the early Fathers of the Church and ancient sources, and it is entirely consistent with her unparalleled mission as it is recounted in the brief but vivid details of the Gospels.
Mary is the first light heralding the dawn of our salvation through her Son. She is the morning star, full of light, the “Panagia,” the All-Holy one prepared in advance by the grace of her Son to be a pure dwelling place for God the Word who would take our flesh in her womb. Mary is the All-Holy, Immaculate Mother, whose heart is united to her Son, and therefore is “large enough” for each and every one of us. She is our mother who knows our hearts and our sorrows. She draws us together with Jesus our Savior and with one another.
Don’t be afraid to entrust everything to her, because through her you encounter Jesus, the Word truly made flesh, our God and our brother!
“Blessed are you, holy Virgin Mary, deserving of all praise; from you rose the sun of justice, Christ our God" (Gospel Antiphon).
Saint Paul famously declared: "I no longer live; Christ lives in me" which means that "I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
Do we Christians view our lives in this way?
There are times (fewer than I would like to admit) when I really do remember that I belong to Jesus, that the source of my identity and the energy that draws me to seek and build the good is His love and mercy.
Living faith is trust, and that requires me to realize that the source of my life is something more than a man who lived and died two thousand years ago. Jesus is the Risen One, glorified at the Father's right hand. He lives. He loves me and gives Himself to me now. There are moments when I remember this truth, this real fact that defines me and that defines reality right now.
But too often, it slips away from the present. Somehow, the truth of "Jesus loving me in this moment" subtly turns into "the Christian worldview" or "the Christian system of thought." These latter things, of course, have their place as aspects of living with Jesus, knowing and loving Jesus, following Him in the Church, and witnessing to Him in the world.
The problem comes when they become a substitute for the awareness of belonging to Jesus, of being in a relationship with the Person of Jesus who is present in my life, who is working by the power of His Spirit to make me an adopted son of the Father. When "Christian thought" loses its vital connection with the Person of Jesus, it atrophies. It becomes my system, my project, my way of defining myself.
It's so easy to become a member of the "Christian party," to fight for "Christian ideas," or even to discourse on things like love, mercy, and presence (such as I am doing right now) and forget all about the Person of Jesus Christ! I can so easily live as if He doesn't exist, which means, of course, that I live in the presumption that everything depends on me.
Which, means, ultimately, that I am alone...
I am not saying that it is necessary to constantly conjure a picture of Jesus in my mind, or be obsessed with explicitly thinking about Him at every moment. No. This relationship is a living reality, an intimacy, which entails an attachment of the heart, an impetus for love.
He loves me and gives Himself for me: this is what constitutes the real value of my "self." How much do I live this and depend on it? Very little. I live in forgetfulness and distraction.
But He never forgets.
The only way to grow in this awareness is to pray. "Jesus deepen my awareness of Your presence in my life. Deepen my trust in You."
I wanted to take note once again of another very rich "CollectPrayer" from the Church's liturgy (it's too easy to miss the content of these prayers from Sundays and the days that follow during the week).
This is from the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Rite, a week which ends on Saturday, September 5. Here again we find several basic facets of our relationship with God expressed and interconnected in a concise plea for His grace.
We could benefit from praying and meditating on these words personally any time of year, and it might be useful to have a book that "collects" the Collect Prayers, especially the series from the six month-or-so period after Pentecost. This is the longest continuous stretch of Ordinary Time in the liturgical year, lasting until Advent begins the new annual cycle.
The first half of the Church year is strongly marked by preparations and celebrations of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus: Advent and Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter with its season culminating in the great feast of Pentecost.
However, we should not grow inattentive or distracted after the Easter Season ends. The fire of the Holy Spirit continues to illuminate the weeks and months that follow, so that this "Ordinary Time" (which does not mean "down time" or "insignificant time") represents the continuation of Pentecost. In these weeks, especially, we implore the Lord to strengthen and bring to fulfillment His grace that He has given us through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
Consider our prayer over this past week:
This is a prayer full of the awareness of our dependence on God and our confidence in His tenderness and goodness, in His fatherly care for us whom He has made His children.
God is the "giver," the Source of all goodness, and He calls us to know Him and love Him in Christ, to call Him by name - "Abba, Father" - with the love and grateful reverence of children. This is how we begin, even now, to share in God's own life that He has opened up to us through Jesus in the Spirit, the inexhaustible life of the Trinity, of the God who is Love.
Note again that not only does God give us this vocation. He also gives us the power, the expansion of freedom, which carries our response to His calling and our cooperation with it as we journey in faith, hope, and love to our fulfillment. He gives us His life, His goodness, in which we are destined to share.
In this prayer, we ask for Him to work the great mystery of His wisdom within us. We ask Him to "put into our hearts" the love of His name, and to "deepen" our awareness of His awesome and wonderful reality, His infinite goodness. Then we ask Him to "nurture" the goodness that is this new life in Christ, to watch over, care for, and "keep safe" this life that has been poured forth into our hearts through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
We ask the God who is Love, with what is truly "filial" (childlike) confidence and affection, to continue to foster - through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit - the growth of that new life in the Risen Jesus Christ which is the "beginning" of our eternal destiny. We ask Him to strengthen this "belonging-to-Him" which is our good, to draw us and care for us along the mysterious journey of our growing-in-Him, and to "keep safe" this life He has nurtured, until it reaches its fulfillment.
God is so good! He wants so much to love us and give Himself to us. Even if we feel dead as a stone, He wants to transform us into His sons and daughters, and heirs to the Kingdom where His love will be all, in all (see 1 Corinthians 15:28).
And when we begin to ask Him to give us what we can't give ourselves, it is because His love is already at work in us.
At the beginning of September 2020, the world continues to pass through various kinds of unusual and uncertain situations in the ongoing effort to control the spread of coronavirus, treat those who suffer from it, and learn more about it.
Some places have loosened restrictions (e.g. careful attempts are being carried out in Virginia and other U.S. States to reintroduce at least some measure of in-the-classroom education). Other places (such as parts of Latin America) are seeing a return of restrictions due to a flare-up of new cases.
Meanwhile industries and patterns of employment have changed, people have lost jobs, businesses, livelihoods, and it's difficult to imagine how the longer term impact on human society will unfold. And people continue to lose loved ones, compromise their own health, or at least live with an ongoing anxiety about health problems and the continually shifting practices judged necessary to stay safe.
People are afraid. They are battered (physically and/or psychologically) into exhaustion and traumatized by this ongoing vivid experience of their own profound vulnerability.
This overextended fear keeps people in a state of tension, always aware of the threat of great personal losses if the objects of these fears were suddenly to come upon them. Indeed, at this point, every scenario for the resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to entail one form or another of loss, diminishment, and suffering for at least some people. We may become sharp and belligerent, or obsessive beyond all practicality, in our efforts to protect ourselves from being among "those people." Underlying these aggressions, howerver, is fear and anxiety fueled by the recognition that we don't have the power to guarantee, absolutely, our safety. The fear of loss, and the experience of loss, are traumatic to our human frailty.
No doubt this trauma is intense for those who see their horizon of attainable happiness as limited to the empirical world that they can measure - to a world that holds no promise for transcendence. Indeed, it is terrifying to be helpless and alone and losing something (or someone) into the void of a meaningless universe that is not held in the hands of Infinite Love. So many people are afraid that life has no meaning, that love doesn't win in the end, that everything is swallowed up by nothingness.
But we who believe in and worship God are hardly strangers to this fear and sense of helplessness (and if we are honest, the fact that faith doesn't simply take away our fears and the experience of our human frailty can be unsetting in itself). But this really isn't so surprising, because faith does not replace or eliminate our humanity. Ultimately we walk by faith in the One who is true, good, beautiful, but also the Infinite Mystery. Faith does not "resolve" the mystery of God or of reality; rather, it brings the mystery closer to us, yet in doing so it also gives us a path and a reason to hope even in the valley of the shadow of death.
The Mystery has entered the history of our lives. Jesus didn't say He had come to explain the often difficult ways and obscure challenges of our lives. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He said, "follow me" not to form an exclusive club, but (among other things) to draw us more intensely into the experience of being human, all the way to the Cross.
So even in faith we feel this great fragility of being human, this "helplessness" - but we learn that it is rooted in our need to live in dependence on something greater (on the One who lovingly holds our destiny and accompanies us and every human being). Even in the anguish of our lives and the feeling of fear and loss, He is opening a path for us and a "space" inside us so He can lead us and shape for us a good and beautiful fulfillment that we cannot yet "understand."
We live in the world with a HOPE for a transcendent fulfillment in which everything is transformed but "nothing is lost." Often we can't see what this means for our concrete aspirations, circumstances, and relationships and why there is frustration and loss (or "sacrifice").
But Jesus sees; He has endured it all and He is risen. He lives (indeed He IS) the fullness of being human and He stays with us.
In this crisis, and in every human crisis, the power to rise above fear and desperation, the power to find courage, comes from the fact that He has raised up our humanity and (whether we are explicitly aware of it or not) He is with us and He is drawing us to Himself.
Lord, you alone know this mystery, this disjointed and jarring death, this ending of life that is happening for some of us now, for others soon, for others later.
Death is entirely mundane, scarcely noticed in the world, but supremely significant and utterly personal for each one of us. Lord, this event that will finally establish who I am, forever... its coming seems like a rolling of the dice!
I know nothing of the day nor the hour. Perhaps I shall die tonight, tomorrow, or next week, next month, next year, or in five years, or ten, or fifteen, twenty, thirty...
I pray for my life and safety and health, I try to take good care of myself, I avoid dangers that I know, and yet I hold no power that guarantees a single moment beyond the present that you, O Lord, are giving me now. You alone hold the span of whatever life remains for me, but my confidence is in you, for I know that you are good.
Father, you love me, you know me, you want what is good for me. You ask me to find my peace by trusting in you for whatever comes, for whatever remains.
Indeed, these may be my final words, my epitaph, my last labors, the utterance that precedes the unexpected sudden stillness of my breath.
Or perhaps years of new, vast, and arduous work are still ahead of me. Maybe a road of venerable old age stretches before me, with an abundance of joys, with unimagined new cares and responsibilities, with - finally - achievements I have dreamed of all my life.
Years may yet remain for memory and discovery; years with harsh miseries too: a terminal illness to break my nerves, or a slow decline, new unremarkable infirmities, quiet suffering, powerlessness, humiliation...
One way or another, however, I will have to face the end. I will die.
Dear God, my poor faith tells me that I am in your loving hands, that your mercy shapes (especially) this last moment for me, that your Holy Spirit is here to guide my remaining steps with infinite wisdom and utterly personal love, to lead me into your embrace, where I will find the only enduring joy.
Still, death is strange. I don't know what it is like, when it will happen, what trials it will require me to endure, what temptations might rise up in that unparalleled last second (Lord, grant me perseverance to the end!) or what period of purgation, what intensity of ultimate refining fire I must pass through to reach you, my Father, when you come rushing forth lovingly to meet me.
My only recourse is you, who are so full to overflowing with love for me. I trust in you.
Whether that final day be near or far, I host fast to you, my God, in firm hope, I entrust everything to your goodness and mercy. I pray for the grace of a good death, through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the resurrection and the life, your Word made flesh who has made his dwelling with us, who in dying wins the victory over sin and death, who has risen from the dead that we might live forever in the glory of a New Creation.
So we have come to the end of August in the year of 2020. The human race has not yet become extinct. That's good news!!
And the Janaros had our main event of the year. Everything went off as well as we could have hoped. It was a fine wedding ... with a few distinctively "corona" peculiarities, of course. Perhaps I should use that masked man with the boutonniere as my "Self Portrait 2020."
Actually, people have been grumbling a lot about how awful the year has been, but I don't think any of the problems we are dealing with today will be gone by 2021. It could be frustrating for those who are counting on things eventually getting "normal" (whether it's through a restoration of "the old normal" or an adjustment to the all-to-frequently proclaimed "new normal"). This year is actually just bringing into greater focus the chronic abnormality most of us have living in for our entire lives.
Many of us are still affected somewhat by the lingering "atmosphere" of utopian scientism, the presumptuous prejudice that was the motivating (though illusory) aspiration driving "the modern world." It formed in humans (at least in the "first world") the expectation that science and technology could solve, or would very soon be able to solve, all our problems. This was, in fact, an abnormal way of living. Clearly, we are coming to see that the reality of things is "more complicated." We are now living through a traumatic period of transition, in which utopian scientism is simultaneously reaching the peak of its material achievement and being unmasked as a profoundly inadequate set of tools for fixing and perfecting humanity.
New powers and new techniques open up constructive possibilities, but they can also give rise to new problems. As long as freedom exists — wounded freedom, vulnerable to distraction, negligence, and malice — we will have an ongoing flow of human crises and problems that cannot be ended simply by the application of technology, the "forward march" of science, or any kind of social engineering.
Still, we are right to continue to try to make our external circumstances "better," and in this we have good hope of some real success. Sometimes, however, this kind of progress or reform is "messy," with inevitable mistakes, disagreements, and conflicts that arise not only from our failures in relation to one another, but especially from the dramatic character of life itself. This is the real "normal" in human existence: living with the awareness that we are engaged in a drama, with ongoing and sometimes unexpected challenges, and that in order to grow and thrive as human persons we must face these challenges together.
One source of the increasing interpersonal violence we direct toward one another in so many facets of life may be linked to the dizzying speed and power we have become accustomed to exercising over places and things. All this power has exacerbated our (utopian and self-deceiving) tendency to demand that every problem, every obstacle, be resolved quickly and completely or else ignored or denied. But other people come along and make things "messy." These other people who come from different perspectives, with different methods for approaching a problem, people who think and act out of their own experience of life and their own suffering, become intolerable obstacles to us as we seek to implement our (efficient, thorough) solutions and programs.
Thus our ideas become ideologies and "the other people" become enemies. We then feel free to heap contempt upon them.
Of course, it is sometimes the case that "the other people" are wrong. They still deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to be approached with a genuine compassion (that does not condescend, but truly sees the other as a person). Without allowing ourselves to be tricked or used, we should work together with them as much as we can.
We don't owe respect to discredited movements, ideologies, theories, or prejudices. We don't owe respect to Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Racism, Obscurantism, Oppression, the Chinese Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, etcetera. We are not saying that we have to work with people who identify with these groups or their views. [In some cases, such as the CCP, we may be forced to deal with them because of the extensiveness of their power, but even then we must not compromise our moral principles, we should do whatever we can to help the victims of their violence, and in all cases we had better keep both eyes wide open].
But human persons are always worthy of love and respect. And in crises of worldwide proportions, we need to work together as much as possible. We need to cultivate the art of realistic collaboration, with patience in the face of complex circumstances and compassion for one another in our differences.
In the crises of our time, the way forward is messy. But it is possible to go forward if we do it together, as neighbors, as brothers and sisters.
Too often, however, we continue to fight against one another, smear one another with dirt, condemn one another, "cancel" one another, exclude one another from the status of being human persons with dignity and intrinsic value, and try to humiliate one another. This is not only just plain wrong. It is a "luxury" we can no longer afford.
The consequences of factionalism and strife in the global village will be catastrophic at levels far beyond what we have experienced thus far.
Here is a video, where I don't develop these points. I listen to the river and talk about the fading sun and the shadows of the leaves, and then I talk about the need for cooperation and community. And I say that I don't have "solutions" to offer. I'm "doing a lot of thinking" — not to be evasive but to be thorough.
I'm a plodder. In a world full of InstaOpinions, someone has to plod. Even where I have strong and well-founded opinions that I venture to present, I still continue to plod — thinking things through in different ways, as events unfold, revising or following up on my presentation where necessary. This is what I have to offer: perhaps it will yield, in the end, a few insights, a few words worth saying.
August 28th was Birthday number 20 for our dear daughter Lucia Janaro.🌹🍰 Happy Birthday Lucia! We love you!❤ (Sorry... you gotta let silly Dads do things like this, but not too often.😉)
This means we have "only" TWO teenagers left in the family. Which, of course, means we've still got plenty of basic "parenting" ahead of us.
Of course, we'll always be "Mom" and "Dad" to each and all our "kids" (even after, God willing, we acquire another set of names in the small voices of a new generation).
Indeed, as I have learned myself through the years in so many different ways (beautiful, dramatic, and even painful ways), you never stop being somebody's kid.
There's no end to what we could say about his life, his holiness, his wisdom, his importance as a theologian, philosopher, teacher, and writer.
Here is one particular thing (among many others) that amazes me about him: Saint Augustine is a special example - a witness for the whole world and the entire history of human culture - of what Jesus calls "the hundredfold" (Mark 10:31).
Jesus says that if we follow Him, we will receive eternal life... but also, we will receive a hundredfold in this life (along with "persecutions"). He also says "seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added as well" (see Matthew 6:33).
What does Jesus mean?
He does not mean the we should follow Him in order to get stuff in this life. That would be to reduce Jesus to our own measure. Jesus wants to transform us according to God's wisdom. He wants to give us a new mind and a new heart. He promises eternal life, which is the mystery toward which everything in this life points, and which is therefore the real meaning of everything in this life.
If we follow Jesus, if we trust in Jesus, we will attain the fullness of salvation - we will live forever in communion with God, in that transcendent joy that God has promised to those who love Him and remain faithful to Him. This is what corresponds to the longing of the human heart, and is the fulfillment that everyone seeks (whether they realize it or not). To amplify this point, Jesus also assures us that if we follow Him, our lives even in this world will be enriched in value and significance beyond anything we could aspire to according to our own measure.
Luigi Giussani often said something that resonates deeply with me, and corresponds to my own experience. He said that if you really follow Christ, you will also discover that you love your wife a hundred times more than you ever could have imagined; that you love your children a hundred times more, your work a hundred times more, your friends a hundred times more. You will discover the real greatness of this life, and you will even be able to embrace suffering.
There is a particular way in which Saint Augustine's life indicates this pattern. Here was a man who set out to be a great rhetorician, a master of articulation and persuasion, an all-around "artist with words." He pursued this ambition with relentless passion, but without understanding its true value. And then he found Christ, and he gave up all thought of being a rhetorician. He gave up the desire to be known for his speeches and writings and works in this world. He longed for Christ, followed Christ, and kept his heart fixed on Christ.
And from out of his singular passion for Christ - without even thinking about it, or caring, or noticing it - he wrote an amazing book. Desiring only to praise Christ, he wrote a book (his Confessions) that was not only the greatest book of its epoch, but one of the greatest ever written in human history. He gave the world inimitable and unforgettable Latin prose, soaring and poetic diction, and timeless, soul-penetrating insight into the heart of the human being.
Aurelius Augustinus the rhetorician and scholar, had he followed his own ambition, might have become a teacher with some following, or even perhaps a minor provincial statesman of his period. Students of late antiquity might have known his name. But Saint Augustine, by following Christ, became also a hundred times more in the history of this world. He wrote books that speak to every time and in every language, and he gave us words that ring out through the ages - words that rival any that have ever been uttered in human speech.
There is something of the hundredfold here, even if he himself didn't perceive it or concern himself with it - even if it has been more for our benefit than for his.
"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace" (Confessions X:27).
Christian life is a path of conversion from an egocentric posture to an ever deepening habit of authentic charity - an attitude of mind and heart that truly loves other persons for who they are, and for how Jesus makes Himself present to us through their own personal uniqueness. Our Christian vocation takes concrete shape in the Lord's call to love, addressed to us in daily life, in our families, in work and social environments, and on the internet too. And Jesus shapes our lives in such a way as to draw us along the path of loving Him and loving others. Our sufferings, too, are encompassed within this particular plan of healing and transforming love that Jesus has for each one of us as a unique person, whom He embraces in His infinite wisdom.
In answering the call of the vocation to charity, we must have great trust in Jesus, for without Him we can do nothing. But He is with us, working in our lives and teaching us through His Spirit how to grow in genuine self-giving love. We must not become discouraged by our persistent imperfections and selfishness, but continue to work toward cooperating with God's grace and growing in love.
Saint John Paul II speaks of the Christian life as an ongoing conversion, a work-in-progress through which God's love is integrated into every aspect of our lives, bringing personal and social healing and transformation:
"What is needed is a continuous, permanent conversion which, while requiring an interior detachment from every evil and an adherence to good in its fullness, is brought about concretely in steps which lead us ever forward. Thus a dynamic process develops, one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of His definitive and absolute love in the entire personal and social life of man. Therefore an educational growth process is necessary, in order that individual believers, families and peoples, even civilization itself, by beginning from what they have already received of the mystery of Christ, may patiently be led forward, arriving at a richer understanding and a fuller integration of this mystery in their lives" (Familiaris Consortio, 9).
In the midst of this year, with all its confusion, I have had much occasion to remember what happened to me 30 years ago, and how important those days remain for me. I have been struck by this in spite of many distractions (or, rather, it has proven resilient and vital again and again in response to what would otherwise be nothing but frustrating distractions).
Thus I have recognized and relied on the ongoing relevance of an essential and formative encounter that began for me in those days, and that continues to grow even with my stubborn and complicated character, my strange and peculiar life, and all the resistance of my pride.
It was in the year 1990 that I "first became involved with" a group of Catholic Christians on the campus of CUA (where I was studying theology as a lay student at the Dominican House of Studies). At the time, I saw this involvement primarily as a rather clever choice that I was making to associate with like-minded young people.
Yes, young people. I was 27 years old in 1990.
In spite of the campus meeting place, not many who belonged to this group were students. It was mostly Catholic young urban professionals, men and women in their 20s, well-educated, intellectually inclined, and (with a few exceptions) single.
"Joining this group" was an intelligent choice, one of the few I have really made in my largely hesitant, mediocre life. But it was so was much more than "my choice." It was a gift given to me, a crucial event that happened to me. It was a whole beautiful and mysterious path that opened up for my life — a path that was to shape profoundly the ensuing 30 years (though I have often wandered off to the side or moved very slowly during that time).
Every week, the group met for Mass, then gathered in a classroom for what seemed like a disorganized and free-wheeling discussion about how we were experiencing and living our faith. Afterwards we would go out for pizza. On weekends and at other times we would also hang out, not just for fun, but also to explore the awareness we were trying to cultivate that we were a community in Christ. The discussions at the weekly meetings were loosely based (often very loosely) on a reading for the week from an intriguing and difficult text, a book by an Italian priest that had only very recently been translated into English.
The priest was Monsignor Luigi Giussani. The book was The Religious Sense.
But I have forgotten another very important reality. In the midst of the large weekly meeting there were always a few Italians. They were students or professionals working in the Washington D.C. area who also participated in Giussani's movement in Italy. They didn't try to take over the group, or put on a show of being "experts in Giussani-ism" (😜). They had not come with a "plan" to "start the movement in the USA." But they were active and engaged with the rest of us, and they had a kind of groundedness and freedom which shaped them as very distinct, self-possessed, confident personalities who were also some of the most open people I have ever known.
We were pretty clueless as to what this "movement" was all about or what the heck we were doing. But the Italians didn't really try to "explain it" to us, and they certainly didn't try to impose anything on us. Rather, they befriended us with what I later realized was tremendous confidence in the grace of Jesus Christ and His presence among us. And they shared their own experiences with us of "Comunione e Liberazione," the immense Catholic movement in Italy (and elsewhere in Europe) through which they had discovered that Christ was real, that He was the meaning of all of life.
Being with them and with one another (and studying this seemingly incomprehensible book), we encountered Jesus Christ in a particularly vital way, a way that corresponded to the depths of our own humanity, and a way that called us to be incorporated more profoundly into His Body, His Church, with a greater attention to reality, a deeper charity, and a passion to be witnesses in the world to Him. An ecclesial movement called Communion and Liberation thus began to be (and continues to be) a small but tenacious and fruitful gathering of people who live their Catholic faith with the "accent" of this particular charism, fully and faithfully inserted within the whole Church and in the society of the USA.
Two people I met in those early years of belonging to CL stand out immediately for me. One of them was Msgr Giussani himself. I have written already about his particular counsel and encouragement for me in my professional vocation as a teacher. I didn't meet him until 1991. But the other person is someone I met on the first day, when I went into that classroom for my first experience of the "School of Community." It was more than an "occasion" — the fact is that everything that happened to engender, build up, and sustain my companionship with this person over the years remains rooted in that friendship with Christ that we both began to experience in those days, 30 years ago.
That person is sitting here with me in the same room as I write these words. Her name was different 30 years ago; it has long been changed to what it is today: "Eileen Janaro."😉
This is a sliver of the moon in the evening sky from last week. The "crescent moon" is lovely, and this composition (in the early evening, near the horizon) definitely got my attention.
We ask the Lord our God, our Father, to fill our hearts with His love, to change us, to give us a new life that is beyond anything we could ever have imagined if He hadn't made us for it and called us to it. We ask Him to fix our hearts on that place where true gladness is found.
I want to point out some of the really profound "Collect" prayers that we have on the Roman rite liturgical calendar around this time of year. Last week's and the current week's prayers (i.e. the twentieth and twenty first weeks of Ordinary Time) are great examples.
Here is the prayer from last week:
Here we acknowledge the transcendence of God, and also the transcendence of our own destiny. Our God is "above all things" and has destined for our fulfillment "good things which no eye can see," the joys of communion with Him. We have a supernatural destiny which is beyond ourselves while also made accessible and intimate to our humanity by God's loving initiative, His grace in Jesus Christ.
Grace engenders a relationship of love: God loves us in such a way that we are empowered to love Him and "attain" His "promises." He reveals and gives this new life to us through Jesus, who is the meaning of our existence and all of creation. Here "we pray" to God our Father, we ask Him to "fill our hearts" with His love so that we are moved and changed and transformed that love. His love "warms" our hearts, engages them, forges within them a new way of experiencing and responding to reality and to Himself. Grace enables us to love Him "in all things" as well as "above all things," so that in this world in which we live we already begin to find Him and be drawn by Him.
Jesus who has taken our humanity wants to transform the depths of our hearts so that through His love our "human desire" will surpass itself. We are called to 'lose ourselves' not in some nihilistic way, but with the confidence that in communion with the Trinity we will enter into a mysterious 'beyond' in which nevertheless we will also 'find ourselves' and the goodness of all things in a super-eminent way.
God's grace has already called us and prepared this destiny for us, which we can only attain through a loving and hopeful faith in Jesus. In the Church's prayer we ask for the grace that enables us to grow in this living faith, to move forward in the journey to our fulfillment.
The prayer for the current week is similarly rich in the way it touches upon the essentials of freedom, grace, and destiny:
There is a beautiful reference here to the communion of the Church, in the sense of the unity we share in moving forward together toward a "single purpose," a unity which God has already given us through baptism into the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. Here too, we are asking to grow on the path toward fulfilling His purpose. We ask God to give us a greater measure of love for His will and desire for His promise, so that faith and hope may also be strengthened and focused on "that place where true gladness is found."
Again and again we see that the "hinge" of the Collect each week is found in words such as "grant us, we pray" or some similar form of asking God - in His love and mercy for us - to give to us that which is the foundation and the vitality of our gift of ourselves to Him, in love.
This corresponds to His grace working in us, His Holy Spirit transforming us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
On the feast day that one might call the "Octave of the Assumption" - the celebration in which we honor the "Queenship" of Mary - I have found myself drawn to to an icon that is little known in the West, but that represents an important "meeting place" for Baltic peoples and Slavs, for Latin Catholics and Byzantine Orthodox.
Some years ago, I obtained an inexpensive print of the icon of the Virgin Mary called "Ostrobramska." The image was fascinating and distinctive, but the accompanying description - unfortunately for me - was in Russian.
Today that wouldn't be too much of a problem; I could just scan it with my phone and use the app of my choice. The English that popped up wouldn't be pretty, but I'd at least be "in the ballpark." But this was long before Google Translate. In fact, it may have been before "Google anything"!
I probably used "the World Wide Web" to search for information, with the dial-up modem and the dong-dong-bidong noises and the waiting and waiting... and hoping no one else needed to use the phone (because there was only one "phone line" in the house, but... never mind: kids, ask your parents and they'll tell you what it was like😉).
One way or another, I found out more about this beautiful icon. It was (only) about 500-or-so years old, and was in a chapel in the eastern gate of the city of Vilnius... or Wilno... or Вiльня(Vilnya) depending on what language you are speaking (Lithuanian, Polish, or one of the Eastern Slavic languages - with variations that I can't go into here). It was probably originally painted (perhaps on commission) in a Western European Renaissance style for this important city in a remarkable kingdom that flourished for several hundred years, but that we don't learn much about in school: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The "original" painting
This was the golden age of Polish culture and political power, when the Jagiellonian dynasty - who ruled as Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania - consolidated the dual monarchy into a confederation.
Like most "golden ages," it didn't last very long (historically speaking) and by the end of the 18th century, Russia, Austria, and Prussia - through a series of partitions - had removed it entirely from the map.
Nevertheless, although the population of Vilnius was diverse and existed under various political regimes, the icon was always honored. Popular devotion had long credited the Virgin of Ostrobramska with intercessions that brought miracles. At some point (18th century) it was "clothed" in the gold and silver exterior it has today - in the fashion of Russian Orthodox icons.
A miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary, not visibly holding the child Jesus, but in a more "Apocalyptic pose" - with the the sun, the moon, the stars ... then the crowns (at various stages worked into the iconography). Here is Mary, at the crossroads of peoples and cultures, responding to the needs of all her children, gently working for peace and reconciliation.
Does that sound "familiar"? No wonder I loved this image. Obviously it's not the same as "La Madrecita" (nothing is quite like Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe) but there are some symbolic correspondences. Above all, there is the fact that Mary - being a good mother - is never far from her children, especially those who have great need of her.
Here she has been honored in a popular pilgrimage destination for Lithuanians, Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians - both Catholics and Orthodox. Let's just say, these are not peoples who have been inclined to like one another under ordinary circumstances over the past several centuries (or more). But Mary is Queen! And she brings peoples together and makes peace.
And not just any kind of peace: She bears God's gift of himself to the world, God's peace, God's compassion for our brokenness, who comes to save us in his mercy.
Painted Russian Orthodox icon
When the smoke of the early 20th century's "Great War" finally cleared, the Ostrobramska icon was for a couple of decades in "Wilno" in a temporarily independent Poland. Once again, Poland was a borderland for "Western" Europe. Just as they had once held back the imperial ambitions of the Swedes in the north and (crucially) the Ottoman Turks from their south (think 1683), so Poland had kept the Bolsheviks and their revolution confined to Russia... at least temporarily.
Meanwhile the devotion to the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Gate of Dawn had spread among the peoples of the region (with copies of the icon "written" in various styles) and was taken by emigrants to the rest of the world.
In 1927, the Pope gave special recognition to the icon, giving it the title "Mother of Mercy." This is particularly striking, given the fact that on April 28, 1935 - the Second Sunday of Easter (the Easter Octave) - Mass was offered in the Ostrobramska church for the first time in the presence of a new image (not of Mary, but of her Son), which was presented through the collaboration of three relatively unknown people: there was an artist and professor at Wilno's Art Academy who painted it, then there was the priest who said the Mass, and finally there was a sister from a convent in Wilno of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Not much note was taken of this event at the time.
This new icon of Jesus with the luminous rays of red and white coming forth from his side was destined to become much more widely known than Wilno's/Vilnius's Ostrobramska, the Gate of Dawn, the Mother of Mercy. For it was an icon of him who is "the Divine Mercy," painted by Eugene Kazimierowski according to the precise directions of the sister whom we now honor as Saint Faustina Kowalska. The Mass was offered by her spiritual director, Blessed Michal Sopocko, who guided Saint Faustina in the following and the written expression of her singular, extraordinary charism, and who later himself became its faithful promoter.
It was the Mass of the Octave of Easter, which today is known as "Divine Mercy Sunday." And today, in the city of Vilnius in the small but independent country of Lithuania, the original image painted by Kazimierowski has been restored. It is the model for all the essential elements of the many stylistically varied icons of the Divine Mercy, through which the merciful Jesus is presented throughout the world.
The Mother of Mercy leads us to... Mercy. That's what Mary's Queenship is all about.
Bernard lived from 1090-1153. This energetic monastic reformer, theologian, advisor to popes and kings, prolific writer, contemplative, witness to the love of God, and Doctor of the Church is one of the giants of early medieval history. The first half of the 12th century saw the continuation of movements of ecclesiastical renewal as well as the growth of new and complex problems that had emerged in the Second Millennium after the birth of Jesus. While Christians from the West held the Holy Land for the first time, the breach between Eastern and Western Christendom continued to widen. Meanwhile the first sparks of rationalism flashed through the minds of European philosophers (e.g. Abelard) as Aristotle and other Greek philosophers were "rediscovered" through Arabic sources.
Amidst the many affairs of Church and society in his days, Bernard stood larger than anyone else because of his holiness, wisdom, and fairness. But more important than any of these things, he was a monk of Clairvaux, dedicated to prayer, lectio divina, labor according to the primitive ideal of Saint Benedict, and above all caritas, the love that God empowers us to have for Him because He has loved us first. Bernard represents the golden age of the Cistercian reform, and for me personally - nine centuries later - he evokes memories especially of my many visits over the years to the monastery "down the Valley" in Berryville, Virginia. Like the brightness of the "sparse" spaces in the Abbey church on a sunny morning, he "lights up" Cistercian simplicity with the ardor and warmth of Christ's incarnate love.
Here are some quotations from the Saint Bernard:
"For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love Him are made happy by their love of Him."
"He who will not submit to God’s sweet rule shall suffer the bitter tyranny of self; but he who wears the easy yoke and light burden of love will escape the intolerable weight of his own self-will."
If human beings could become "masters of all in heaven and on earth, they would soon find all insufficient, and discover that they were forced to seek Him who is wanting still. They must seek God Himself... the soul must cry out...'What besides Thee have I in heaven, and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth?'"
“If we wish to have Christ for a guest often, we must keep our hearts fortified by the testimony of our faith in the mercy of him who died for us, and in the power of him who rose from the dead... Christ died for our sins and rose again from the dead for our justification. He ascended to heaven for our protection, sent the Spirit for our consolation, and will someday return for our fulfillment.”
"In dangers, in doubts, in difficulties, think of Mary, call upon Mary. Let not her name depart from your lips, never suffer it to leave your heart. And that you may obtain the assistance of her prayer, neglect not to walk in her footsteps.... While she holds your hand, you cannot fall; under her protection you have nothing to fear; if she walks before you, you shall not grow weary; if she shows you favor, you shall reach the goal."
Ideas, by themselves, are not enough to change our humanity.
We really learn how to be different and more profound human beings when we encounter other human persons who are already living this difference, right before our eyes.
What I'm referring to here, generally speaking, is the importance of "good example" in the development of human life. I want to suggest, from an interpersonal and relational perspective, some aspects of how we grow through the good example of others.
Of course, we should note that "bad example" subverts our humanity by hijacking the dynamic of interpersonal relationships under false pretenses, distracting and manipulating it in distorted ways that violate and enslave the human person. As is usually the case with evils, the decadence and corruption of persons through "bad example" and toxic pseudo-relationships require a more complex treatment, even if we're only trying to outline their dynamics in broad terms. I will address these problems in another post. In this post, however, I want to focus on the good example of persons and the ways it can "reach" us.
We need examples of people who live rightly and well, but also (and this is important) such people will have an impact on us to the degree that their actions move us and engage our lives in a concrete way.
The full measure of human engagement, of course, calls for humans to be present to one another in time and proximity, in the immediate physicality of literal "elbow-to-elbow" companionship that characterizes the sharing of deep friendship, healthy family life, and the local "togetherness" of community. Even here, there are different degrees and different ways of this kind of concrete sharing of life.
Moreover, external proximity to a beautiful and inspiring person is not enough; in order to learn from them and grow from their example, we need to see them with our hearts. We need to be awakened and drawn by their remarkable actions, and by the "resonance" of their goodness with the fundamental needs and questions of our own humanity, so as to enter into the more profound and convincing perception of reality they possess, from which they draw motivation.
Ordinary circumstances provide the paradigm for the environment in which these constructive encounters can (and should) take place. The immediate, physical conditions of human life are foundational and irreplaceable for full, healthy human relationships. But we can still encounter human persons, be engaged by them, and be moved and changed by the goodness and beauty of their lives even when they are not "with us" directly, or even if we have never "met them" in a proximate physical way. Humans engage one another through communication, and real communication is one of the ways that the impact of a human life can be "extended" beyond their immediate place and even down through the generations who come after them.
People who lived hundreds, thousands of years ago can still touch us profoundly through communication: that is, through their words or other modes of expressing themselves, and by the fruits of their actions that continue to shape history. We also "meet" them through stories of their lives that are rooted in what has been handed down about who they were and how they lived.
In these current days, our ordinary circumstances have been shaken up in so many unexpected and unpredictable ways, and we have been thrust into awkward and peculiar situations and strained experiences of both proximity and distance from one another. Old and new forms of communications media (from reading classic books to ZOOM) have been both a source of sustenance and a context for frustration as we try to find provisional ways to stay connected, navigate "spaces," and find a healthy solitude that is not swallowed by loneliness or anxiety.
Whatever restrictions we face, and whatever means are available to us, we can grow by encountering the good example of others. Communications media can help us "meet" one another, in normal circumstances and in times of crisis, if we stay faithful to our own humanity as our hearts reveal it to us, and if we remember the real person who is at the origin of every kind of expression in every form of media.
Giving good example, and following good example, are always necessary, but we can and will find ways to help one another even in the midst of the greatest trials.
This is a "verbal hug" from Christina Grimmie. She posted this on her Facebook page eight years ago.💚 The words, and the love behind them, are still on her page, offered to anyone who needs them. Christina proved, again and again, and with her whole life, that when she said "anyone" she really meant ANYONE - the particular person in need, the person reading this post, or seeing her videos, but especially the person in front of her in the particular moment. She always had sincere words, posts, jokes, songs, or hugs - whatever she could give in the circumstances - for persons who needed to be welcomed, to experience their value, to know that they were loved. That's part of the reason why she still speaks so powerfully even today. She still "reaches" people, with love.💚
Maximilian Kolbe offered to take the place of another prisoner designated for reprisal execution in Auschwitz concentration camp.
He gave his life on August 14, 1941, as a witness to the Love that is greater than the most hideous violence, the Love that redeems and saves the world.
