The 30th Birthday of Christina Grimmie

Today marks what would have been the 30th Birthday of Christina Grimmie. In the 22-years-and-three-months of her brief bright beautiful life that she was given on this earth, she showed us so much: about talent and hard work, success and humility, devotion to her family, using media technology to make something beautiful, opening her heart to people in need, being vulnerable and authentic, and persevering in her vocation all the way to the end. Even with her great musical gifts, Christina was a "regular" young person who made others feel "welcomed" and free in her presence. Moreover, other people felt valued by her receptivity to their love and the gratitude she always expressed. She saw the beauty and goodness and the positive-value in everything, and her faith, passion for life, and love continue to shine on. Ultimately, Christina's life attained a kind of heroism that can be for young people and older people alike a constant inspiration. She inspires us to risk giving ourselves in love in our own days of living — all the way up to the day, the hour, the moment of our dying.💚

Happy Birthday Christina Grimmie! Remembering you always with love!

The Conversion of the Man Born Blind

I should probably assume that all six of the people who read this BLOG probably also subscribe to Magnificat (if you don't, check it out HERE).

Today is "Laetare Sunday" (already!)... If your parish is following the "A" cycle of liturgical readings during this Lenten season (which is an option often chosen in churches with large groups of catechumens and candidates who are preparing to enter the Catholic Church on the Easter Vigil), then you heard the beautiful Gospel of "The Man Born Blind" at Mass (John, chapter 9).

If you read Magnificat, in any case, you will find my monthly "Conversion Stories" column in the pages for today. This Gospel reading—with all of its powerful and universal symbolism about creation, redemption, baptism, and faith—is also the story of the conversion of a particular person.

It is the story of a man who knows nothing of Jesus Christ, who is chosen by Jesus, healed by Him, and led through various stages (and sufferings) to the fullness of an encounter with Jesus where this unnamed man says "yes" to Jesus's revelation of Himself.

It is a story of the grace of conversion as a transforming gift, but also a gift that fully engages the reason and freedom of the human person.

Springing Forward Again…

Don’t forget to SET YOUR COFFEE MAKERS FORWARD one hour tomorrow! 

#SpringForward #DaylightSavingsTime

Living As “Persons-in-Communion:” How Is It Possible?

Humans are both individual and social by nature. And according to the plan of God in Christ we are called to live a great and mysterious reality, to discover the fullness of life in an interpersonal community.

But building genuine interpersonal community is a seemingly impossible task. We seem always to be caught in a violent tension that pits personal freedom against collective security and affirmation.

Though some persons of great pride, unusual strength, and self-confidence might actually attempt to live according to an absolute individualism, most of us are too vulnerable and too drawn to one another to be tempted directly by radical existential autonomy. In today’s world, we pretend to affirm bits and pieces of this philosophy of autonomy to rationalize our selfish choices and habits. Yet the common reality of our humanity is a continual provocation that mysteriously grows in our midst. We recognize our value as persons, and also our orientation as persons toward relationship, to be-with-one-another, to live in community.

We are born into families that are woven together through larger groups devoted to various purposes, and we also build up social groups through our own commitments.

Yet "groups" have their own cumulative momentum, their own gravitational pull, their powerful tendency to generate uniformity. People can surrender their own creativity and sense of identity to the "group mentality," and become increasingly determined in thought and action by those who possess the most power. Or they may become afraid of "losing themselves" to the perceived power of the group, and draw back from sharing life, distance themselves in some measure, and fall into a passive (and lonely) indifference.

The only energy that can transcend this dialectic is love. 

We Christians are confident that love can prevail, because we know that we are sustained in being and called as persons-in-relationship, in community, by the One who is Love. The One who is Love and Communion is the source and fulfillment of everything.

Therefore, if we have a "group," what makes it vitally “communal” is that it is made up of persons who, in the original and radical sense, have been given to us by the mysterious design of Eternal Love, and to whom we have been given in turn, to love and be loved. And a group can only be truly human if it lives as a communion of persons, which means that it must respect and cherish every person within its sphere of vitality, because every person is constituted with an inherent and inviolable dignity. Every person is made in the image of the One who is Love.

Each and every person in a group has a unique and unrepeatable value, and this must never be reduced to their productive contribution to building up the group and furthering its ends. This is true even (especially!) when a group is united in the pursuit of social, moral, or religious concerns. We must never forget this!

Each person is worthy of love for their own sake, above and beyond what they may or may not "do" for the group.

Even when a group is so large that we cannot know every individual person, we must always remember the dignity of every person. We can at least hold that love for every person in our hearts. We must cultivate the readiness of solidarity, the openness that welcomes the stranger and that lives human existence as a great companionship.

I remember Saint John Paul II. I met him personally, but I also heard him address enormous crowds and there too I felt that he spoke to me and loved me personally. Many others who remember him would testify to the same kind of experience. The charism of Saint John Paul II enabled him to speak directly to the heart of each person, to communicate the love of God for the person.

And now Pope Francis, through his words and gestures, exercises a similar kind of gift to touch our hearts personally, to exhort us, to challenge us and awaken us to new dimensions of God's love and new possibilities for courageously sharing that love.

These special charisms illustrate for us the kind of attention to the person that we seek within our own communities, in whatever collaborative efforts we take up, and whatever groups we belong to in society and in the Church.

We all must pray for the grace to be able to accompany every human person who is given and entrusted to us on our vocational path. These are the persons we live with during the course of our daily lives. These are our “neighbors.” Within the love of the Father who calls us in Christ and transforms our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we must love our neighbors with great attention to the gift and mystery of each one of them. We are called to be together, to learn to live as free-persons-in-communion. The Holy Spirit inspires us to be aware of the person, to communicate with the person and to revere, attend to, listen to, and serve each person.

This is how the miracle of “interpersonal community” begins to be born among us, here and now.

Blustery Blustery

A blustery, blustery day.

A World of Suffering: “Dear God, Why is Life So HARD?”

We know that God loves us, and that our very existence in this moment is His gift. We trust that He is faithful, and yet life is so full of suffering—sometimes seemingly unbearable and incomprehensible suffering. 

It is true that much of our suffering is a consequence of our sins. So many people think they can live without God, or—worse—they simply ignore God. They refuse to pray: to worship Him, trust Him, offer gratitude and love to the God who holds us in being. No amount of self-indulgence and distraction, however, can fill the awful emptiness of life without God. So people turn against one another. They afflict one another with terrible cruelty. They bring about an increase in suffering and sorrow.

I ponder all the immense suffering in the world, the agony, the ongoing pain, the vast trauma that rattles the minds of countless human persons: victims of the terrors of war; uprooted refugees who will never return to their homes; persons who are trafficked as slaves and subjected to unspeakable sexual abuse; “political prisoners” (of course, I must mention them in these days) whose human dignity is relentlessly assaulted by their captors; and also victims of religious persecution, prevalent today in parts of Africa and Asia and throughout the world. 

Then there are millions of people who suffer from hunger, disease, and indescribable poverty. What little they have is always in danger of being plundered by gangs, warlords, or corrupt state bureaucrats. Unemployment devastates multitudes of people who long to support themselves and their families by profitable work, and—through their work—to give themselves to others by engaging their talents and following their particular human vocations. They have no resources, no opportunities, no secure places where they can build stable homes and neighborhoods for their families. Wherever they go, the world is on fire. The scourge of war falls everywhere upon them.

I ponder also the sufferings that prevail in the milieu in which I live, a society that prides itself on its peace, abundance, and widespread prosperity. Yet we too have terrible suffering here. We are responsible for much of it. As we grasp for more and more material things to “consume,” we find (if we are honest with ourselves) that they fail to satisfy, and we live in disappointment and desperation. As we search for ways to escape, forget, divert ourselves from what turns out to be the boredom of abundance, or else to numb the pains inside that we don’t understand, many of us turn to alcohol and drugs. The sad tragedy of addiction steals away so many of our loved ones, ruptures families, and leads addicts into lives of crime and degradation.

There is also the suffering of those who are the margins of this prosperous society, those who endure real poverty and those who feel that their human dignity is not seen, that they are treated as second class citizens because of racial discrimination. Many suffer from an array of problems in our society that are difficult to resolve or even to identify properly. Healthcare has advanced tremendously in scientific and technological terms, but people still endure many terrible illnesses. Mental illness is a pervasive, devastating epidemic that is still poorly understood, widely stigmatized, and inadequately treated. People with mental illness are especially vulnerable to the great variety of “stress factors” in modern technological society. These people need the special attention of our love, and our presence through active works of mercy. 

But where is our love? 

There is the agony of young mothers who have been abandoned by those who ought to help them. How often, instead, do such people put pressure on these mothers to undergo abortion, to allow hired medical technocrats to kill the innocent human beings in their wombs? Is this all we have to offer in this society to the women we are supposed to be “celebrating” tomorrow, on International Women’s Day? Are our societies so lacking in compassion, solidarity, hospitality, and friendship that we cannot accompany pregnant mothers and their unborn children in the challenge of a new and precious relationship with a new human person during pregnancy and continuing after the birth of the child? Where are our communities? How did we come to live in such profound alienation from one another that we have no energy even to recognize the needs and suffering of people in our midst? 

Loneliness is a great poverty in our world. We have gadgets and social media and big t.v. screens and we build palatial homes that become prisons surrounding our isolation, anxiety, fear, and our mourning of losses of loved ones or of broken relationships with family and friends. There is so much hidden suffering here. And then there is incapacitation and sickness, and the loss of physical strength and the increasing vulnerability of old age (so often lived alone). Increasingly, our society has nothing to offer but—once again—death for the elderly who struggle alone with their infirmities—death administered and “supervised” by medically trained technocrats. Euthanasia. Another crime against human dignity.

The world is full of so much suffering, and we all share some responsibility for it. We also must endure it in various ways. Then, there is some suffering that is enigmatic and inscrutable: the suffering of little children and 'innocent people' who are burdened far more than they seem to deserve or are able to carry. Why?? Why does God permit us to build such a world of pain? Why does He give us so much freedom? We might be tempted here to discouragement or even resentment against our afflictions, our enemies, even God. God is Infinite Mystery, and His ways are beyond our comprehension. But He is the Mystery who loves us, the Father who loves us even with all our brokenness. He loves us first. These questions come forth from the original wound that we all share (i.e. original sin and its effects). We are wounded by sin, and we are “wounded” by the greater call of Divine Love that invites us to let the wounds of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ overcome our sins, sorrows, and sufferings, so that God’s love might be glorified as His inexhaustible mercy.

Where is “our love”? It is given through the gift of God’s mercy, the healing and transforming love of Jesus Christ—God the Word-made-flesh who dwells among us. He loves us first. We need Him. Our poor suffering world needs Him.

We are led through our wounds to an awareness of our real “helplessness” and total dependence on God, and are "turned toward Him" with a dramatic and desperate openness that cries out to Him, that might include the temptation to discouragement or resentment, but that instead must be "offered" as prayer. 

We may feel overwhelmed with sorrow, but we believe in the God of all consolation, the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It can be hard to pray, but if we give that sorrow to the Lord, He hears within it the "sighs too deep for words" of the Spirit, who helps us because we don't know how to pray as we ought. The Lord draws our relationship with Him more and more into that "hope" for things we do not yet see, the inward groaning which is not doubt or discouragement, but the deepening of hope which feels like it's breaking us with a longing for the fulfillment of God's plan. 

We trust Jesus, and in the dark places in life we have this hope, and the help of the Spirit who enables us to endure, to "wait with patience." In our sorrows and sufferings we grow in the experience of what Saint Paul is teaching in Romans 8:18-27. 

We who are the pilgrim Church on earth are called to witness to God's saving love in words and actions, in speaking the truth and in works of mercy. But we also journey together in hope, in the "co-suffering" by which we bear one another in difficulties and sorrows, and endure together whatever comes in this life. We wait together in patience. We wait together in hope for God's renewing all things in Jesus Christ.

Total Dependence on “Another”

If we look at our real selves, at the motivations and hopes of ourselves-in-action, this truth becomes clear:

"Man depends, not only in an aspect of his life, but in everything: whoever observes his own experience can discover the evidence of a total dependence on Another who has made us, is making us, and continuously preserves us in being" (Luigi Giussani).

Russians Remember Alexei Navalny

"Eternal Memory." Alexei Navalny was buried on March 1, with the full rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church that had been the vital inspiration for most of his adult life.

After his death was announced on February 16, his mother undertook the long and difficult journey to the Gulag-built town of Kharp beyond the Arctic Circle to ask for her son's body. She persevered for nine days in her demands, while security officials stalled, made excuses, and then began to negotiate (shamelessly!) the "conditions" that she would have to accept in order to receive her son's body for a proper Christian burial in Moscow. They insisted that she agree to hold a "private" burial, because the government feared that his funeral might be the occasion of massive anti-Putinist demonstrations.

Even after killing him, the regime was determined to persecute Alexei Navalny. But in fact, this is not Stalin's Soviet Russia. Social media and Navalny's exiled wife made sure to broadcast this final disgrace around the world, and his body was finally released to his grieving mother without conditions, and the government permitted the funeral to be held at a small church south of Moscow.

Thousands of people did gather at the cemetery under heavy police guard. They waited many hours on huge lines in order to honor the grave of their hero, even though they were only given a few seconds each by the police.

They have continued in these recent days to visit the grave and to lay flowers before the cross.

Are We Ready For War?

Vladimir Putin gave a speech today. He mocked the West’s lack of resolve. Is he right? 

I'm sure the entire Duma applauded loudly and long. When Stalin used to address the Politburo, no one wanted to be the first person to stop clapping. The story was that the first person to stop clapping would be arrested and never seen again.

Someone was arrested yesterday in Moscow because she had donated 50 rubles to an anti-Putin organization. And yet, in a few weeks the world will witness the outrageous charade of Putin's "reelection" for six more years as "President" of the Russian Federation.

Everyone knows this is a fake election.

The frozen blood of Alexei Navalny cries out to heaven from the ice of northern Siberia against all the lies of Putinism. As does the blood of Ukrainian women and children, victims of war crimes, and the blood of the poor Russian conscripts used as human weapons thrown recklessly at Ukrainian positions by a nihilistic military that has no regard for theirs or anyone else's lives. And Ukrainian soldiers who are running out of ammunition to defend themselves... who can account for that?

The Western world—in particular my own nation—is constituted by the most materially wealthy, powerful, and physically comfortable people in the history of the human race. Does this entail no responsibilities in regard to the rest of the world?

Western Europe and the United States of America are already effectively "co-belligerents" with Ukraine: ironically, Putin is right about this. In a 21st century war, money, weapons, and training are more than "virtual boots" on the ground. But the West's contribution to this war is weak and cowardly. Eastern Europe—Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia—cannot afford to be weak. They are preparing for war. As Russia shifts to a "war economy," it will need to continue fighting wars. The ex-KGB clique that has effectively centralized the Russian Federation will find plenty of pretexts to visit destruction upon its other neighbors if it succeeds in Ukraine.

It has been verified that North Korean weapons are being used by the Russian military in Ukraine. North Korea can only do what China permits it to do. China defines itself by politics, and unlike Russia's mafia-state, the Chinese Communist Party is pervasive and continues to refine methods and systems for managing a materialist consumer society. They are constructing the ideals and methodological “tools” that will look more and more like “political wisdom” to those who want to live in a technocratic society that ignores the existence of God.

China is sharing its "methods" on every continent in the world. They take material risks and sometimes fail but they seem to "learn" (according to their own criteria) and keep going. Their influence will continue to grow.

In the West (in the United States) we expect to "win" without really risking anything. Both parties and several American Presidents have played different kinds of games since 2014, when Putin first seized and annexed Ukrainian territory and threw down the gauntlet at the structures of international law. 

Ours is the strategy of a decadent civilization. Our political leaders are reckless, narrow, and ignorant—and the ones who claim to represent morality (especially on points that I myself believe are necessary to human dignity) bring disgrace to the advocacy of human dignity by pretending to champion it. They trivialize these sacred things by their craven political ambition and slavish adherence to an irresponsible and vindictive partisan leader. 

Do we really want to foster awareness in our society of the dignity of every human person created in the image of God? Or do we just want our side to “win” ugly political battles shaped by a vulgar will for power? If we think these people can fix our society, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I don't advocate war. I hate war. Initiating and sustaining dialogue on every possible level—not capitulation, not surrender, but dialogue even in the midst of a fight—is essential for moving beyond conflicts and overcoming the perpetuation of the cycle of violence. Meanwhile, self-defense is also necessary, and the Ukrainian people are fighting against the ongoing invasion, occupation, and oppression of their country by a ruthless enemy force that has effectively trampled on the basic structures of international law and has thereby constituted itself a Rogue State. 

Certainly, the world needs better ways of restraining and containing these “Rogue States” that are controlled by lawless political cults (like the neo-Stalinist cult in Putinist Russia and the war-mongering, obtuse, idolatrous Kim-Dynasty cult in North Korea). Right at the present moment, however, the Ukrainians are alone in this effort, depending on fickle and feckless Western “aid.” They are running out of bullets, while the American Congress has adjourned itself for a “vacation”—a shameless ploy by its leading party to “extend the chaos” for the political benefit of a profoundly disturbed man who admires Putin, and has a fetish about becoming President of the United States again. This Fall, both parties (in what some have called America’s “Duopoly”) will once again present voters with two ridiculous candidates for President. There is nothing surprising about this, and in itself it doesn’t mean we should give in to cynicism. What we need is patience: the work of building up the USA’s dysfunctional politics is going to be long, laborious, and lacking in the glamor to which we are presently addicted.

But there is a more immediate problem. We have been (more than) helping the Ukrainian military in a here-and-now real-live-action “shooting-war,” and at the present moment they need more help. Perhaps there are better ways to help Ukraine defend itself and eventually rebuild its ravaged nation. We should find better ways. But right now, they depend on the pattern of assistance we have been giving them, and to cut them off in the midst of their need would be a betrayal. It would be dishonorable. 

Is there any sense of honor left in the USA? Have we sold it all to satisfy our greed, our lusts, our grasping cupidity, our aimless curiosity, our insatiable urge for comforts and living-standards the likes of which the world has never known before, and our endless anxiety about our own security?

I rarely speak about my country's politics, but many reasonable voices are speaking these days (i.e. voices other than the usual ones of the spectacle-chasing, flattering-and-condemning, entertainment-driven American mainstream media). So I'm not entirely a fool here.

And I cannot be silent as G.U.L.A.G. opens its horrible jaws once again…in 2024! How is this possible? In 2024, Stalin’s GULAG is back, and it has not even a semblance of shame, operating right out in public view with cynical incompetence—arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and killing (in one way or another) people condemned not only for their dissenting opinions, but for speaking the truth. 

I cannot remain silent as the frozen skeletal remains of Alexei Navalny's body are (finally) buried in the earth tomorrow.

February Art From JJStudios

February 2024 was not very dramatic in terms of the local weather, but I was able to work up a few of my “digital sculptures” from photographs. I experimented with a few different styles and color patterns. Here are the features from beginning to end of the month.

Two Years of “Martyred Ukraine”—Dare We Forget?

FEBRUARY 24th is here once again. With my prayers and my tears and the anguish of my heart, I cry out to the Lord for the suffering Ukrainian people… and also for the suppressed and broken Russians and the minority peoples who live under an iron yoke, and also for Eastern European nations that are still on high alert against dangers that they once thought were left in the past. This day reminds us that we live in a world at war. In particular, war rages in the lands on the inland seas from Europe to the Middle East. It has been a decade since Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution of Dignity represented that ancient nation’s decisive turn toward Europe and what was left of the best ideals of Western civil society (which they may well understand and appreciate much better than we do). They knew only too well that the alternative was submission to despotism. Ten years ago, the despotic regime began seizing Ukrainian territory, and two years ago today, it sent its armies in full force to conquer and subjugate the entire nation in violation of international law and the regime’s own prior solemn agreements.

Two years later, Ukraine continues to defend itself and fight to regain its rightful territory. Meanwhile, war seethes slowly like fire that may yet spread to places we cannot imagine. No one can predict the course of war. Many times in the past, history has approached the “threshold” of a “world war”—an intractable multi-national conflict of tumultuous destruction. We don’t know what decisions and/or chance events might push us over that threshold. For Ukraine, “tumultuous destruction” is already a present experience. It is intolerable. Dialogue must be carried out wherever possible, with whoever is sincere and might—at present or in the future—be able to bring the war to a responsible conclusion that respects international law. 

Not only does the safety of the Ukrainian people depend on respect for its borders, but the common good of the whole world requires fraternal solidarity between nations on this fundamental, “structural” level of physically defined and politically independent entities, even if this system is not perfect or doesn’t seem to account for regional complexities or the mobility of 21st century populations. There must be ongoing sincere dialogue on these issues. But one country (or the corrupt regime that controls it) cannot simply decide that its smaller neighbor has no right to exist and that its military is thus authorized to invade it and perpetrate violence and mayhem with impunity. Nor can nations invade to cut off pieces of other nations and claim authority over them. If Putinist Russia’s violent seizure of Ukrainian territory is permitted to stand, it will set a precedent that will threaten the territorial integrity of nations everywhere. 

And Ukraine has endured and fought against this horrible invasion for two years, with tremendous loss of life and wanton wreckage and destruction of its territory. There are no easy ways to “end the war” without setting the stage for other wars if Putinist imperialism is rewarded in any way. Right now the Ukrainians seem to bear the burden of this violence alone, and some think Ukraine is “a far away country” whose problems ought not to concern us. But the Russian invasion not only threatens the wider region and allies that are pledged to defend one another (i.e. NATO); it threatens to legitimize a new level of savagery in international relations everywhere, a new pretext for the strong to prey upon the weak. The fires of war may suddenly fall upon those who thought themselves safe and secure.

Where will we all be on February 24, 2025? Or 2026 or 2027? Wherever we are, however dire the circumstances, I hope we are not brought there from lack of courage and/or preoccupation with our own comforts. That would be to our shame.

I don’t think I can say anything on my small blog that will make much difference on how people perceive these events. But saying a little is better than nothing at all.

I stand with the people of Ukraine, unjustly and brutally invaded two years ago by the shameless Putinist Oligarchy that controls Russia, that continues to perpetuate violence and oppression against Ukraine, suffocates all opposition in its own country, and murders those who speak out against it.

May God have mercy on them, on their oppressors, on me, on all of us.

Jesus, Only You Can Work This Miracle in Me

There are peculiar problems that can arise for people with my type of mental illness to make a “healthy” (and realistic) examination of conscience, but we must find ways nevertheless (if necessary with help from others who can be trusted). We are no less sinners than anyone else, and we must repent, be converted, deny our egotistical self-centeredness, and open our hearts to the working of the Holy Spirit.

It is thus possible for me to examine my daily life, to gaze reasonably on my actions, to recall this, and that, and this, and that, and all the fruits of my negligence and entrenched habits. It is with sorrow that I see—in all my circumstances—selfishness, grasping, and pride nipping away at so many earnest and good aspirations and efforts, and defining so many others.

Yet Jesus and His mercy are here, and so I’m not beating up on myself (as I’m so often tempted to do). I repent, and place before God my "desire for the desire" to recognize Him and love Him well, and to offer everything... even the pride.

Take me, Jesus, in all this mess; love me especially in those places in my heart where I don't even know I need You.

"God resists the proud" — I know this is true, Jesus, but I'm begging You to take me with all my pride because I don't know what to do with it. Make me humble and true. It will take a miracle, but I come to You as the blind man did, begging You to give me my sight, with faith that You—and only You—can work this miracle in me. And I also know that even with my repeated forgetfulness and failure, the miracle is still happening. Jesus I trust in You.

The Chair of Saint Peter and Father Giussani

February 22 is the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (the “chair”—cathedra—is the bishop’s “seat” in his diocese, indicating his authority as successor to the Apostles). White is today’s liturgical color and the “Gloria” is sung!

So this means that some celebration is appropriate. The ministry of the Papacy is a great gift to us all.

This day is also the nineteenth anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Monsignor Luigi Giussani. We have only begun to benefit from the great wisdom that the Lord gave him:

“Here is the paradox: freedom is dependence upon God. It is a paradox, but it is absolutely clear. The human being – the concrete human person, me, you – once we were not, now we are, and tomorrow will no longer be: thus we depend. And either we depend upon the flux of our material antecedents, and are consequently slaves of the powers that be, or we depend upon What lies at the origin of the movement of all things, beyond them, which is to say, God” (Luigi Giussani).

Alexei Navalny: The Russians Also Have Their Heroes

One of the most implacable Russian critics of Putin’s neo-Stalinist regime, Alexei Navalny died “inexplicably” on February 16, 2024 at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic Penal Colony. +Memory Eternal. May the Lord receive him in Peace. It’s tragic but hardly surprising to learn that the infamous Gulag is back in business.

Navalny had already survived the Russian secret services’ attempt to poison him in 2020 with a toxic nerve agent. During months of recovery and extensive rehabilitation in Germany, Navalny worked with independent investigators and a documentary team to identify the Soviet Russian undercover operatives who tracked his movements and ultimately doused his underwear with what was meant to be a fatal dose of “Novichuk.” But he survived, and the originally independent documentary Navalny was picked up for distribution by major networks including CNN and HBO. This documentary’s significance unfolds in the process of its being made, portraying the tentacles of espionage, the actual unmasking of vast secret surveillance and murderous plots against peaceful citizens whose only “crime” is telling the truth, and the moral bankruptcy of a legal system that brazenly engages in “disappearing” Putin’s opponents.

This great documentary (see trailer HERE) tells the compelling story of how Alexei Navalny—a lawyer from Moscow, a husband and father, a man of no particular political ideology who simply loved Russia and wanted a life of basic freedom and human dignity for Russian people—led an anti-corruption movement that used then-still-accessible Russian media platforms to expose the massive criminality of the Putin-Inner-Circle’s unscrupulous kleptocracy.

Navalny did not cast himself as a Western-style liberal. He has been criticized by Western media for his past outreach and strategic alliance with Russian “right wing” nationalist groups (although he sought to connect with people all over the political spectrum). Navalny also didn’t oppose Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but he soon changed when he saw the unfolding of the Putinist plan for the subjugation of Ukraine, and he condemned the regime’s neo-Stalinist expansionism.

Three times they tried to poison him, and they nearly succeeded in 2020. No one would have blamed Navalny for accepting the refuge offered by numerous countries in 2020—the chance to live in greater safety but also in exile. He chose instead to return to Russia, to carry on his work as much as possible or at least to live in solidarity with the suffering of his people. But he was immediately arrested upon his arrival in Moscow in January 2021, and soon after was convicted of “extremism” and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Transported numerous times through the prison system, he finally ended up at Polar Wolf, built on the site of a Stalinist gulag camp far above the Arctic circle. We have as yet no way of knowing whether he died from the effects of slow and tortuous treatment at the hands of his captors over the past three years, or whether he was finally dispatched in a more direct fashion.

But it is clear that Alexei Navalny was killed at the age of 47 by the ruthless Soviet Russian regime led by Vladimir Putin. He was murdered for speaking the truth.

This may seem a rather beguiling quotation from a man facing death (although it was known that he never lost his sense of humor). What does Navalny mean by this text? Perhaps he echoes the words of another famous Russian dissident who said, “Live not by LIES!”

Pope Francis Begins His Twelfth Lenten Journey in Rome

On Wednesday February 14, Pope Francis began his twelfth Lenten Journey as Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, Servant of the Servants of God. 

I remain grateful for his ongoing apostolic ministry, and I pray for him. May the Holy Spirit continue to sustain, strengthen, and guide him in his papal mission until it is fulfilled.

“Catholic Saints”: The Coptic Martyrs of 2015

February 15, 2024 marks the first public liturgical commemoration of the 21 Coptic Martyrs of Egypt in the Roman Catholic Church since their insertion into the official Roman Martyrology last year by Pope Francis. This is the ninth anniversary of their being brutally beheaded on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea by ISIS Islamist Terrorists for refusing to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. 

Who can forget how ISIS recorded this murderous act and posted the video to YouTube and distributed it to media outlets all over the world? Many of us saw at least parts of this video, where flesh-and-blood men—ordinary Coptic Orthodox Christian working men doing migrant work in Libya—repeated the name of Jesus as a prayer during the last seconds of their lives. In this world of global interactive media, what was meant to be a propaganda video instead allowed millions of people to see the faces of their fellow human beings giving their lives for their faith. It was terrifying in many ways, yet the truth being lived before our eyes was compelling and convincing. 

Twenty of the martyrs were Egyptian, but one was from Ghana (listed here as unidentified "worker" but I'll revise it when I find his name). He was not baptized Christian, but had been arrested with the others. When commanded to convert to the ideology of his violent Islamist oppressors, he pointed instead to his brother workers and said, "their God is my God." Thus dying for his faith in Jesus Christ, he obtained what the ancient Christian tradition called "the baptism of blood."

These martyrs were members of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, which has not been in full communion with the Catholic Church since the year 451, but which has retained valid apostolic succession through the ("monophysite") Patriarch of Alexandria, and therefore has the sacraments, the Divine Liturgy, and the Eucharist. Last May, Pope Francis decided to recognize the holiness of these 21 martyrs of 2015 who were already being celebrated as saints in the Coptic Church. They are now officially honored as saints in the full sense of the term by the Catholic Church.

We should remember them and prayer for their intercession, especially for Christian Unity, which their sacrifice embodies as a "beginning" and stands as a sign for all who believe in Jesus and profess His name—the name they loved more than earthly life.

1. Saint Milad Makeen Zaky, pray for us.

2. Saint Abanub Ayad Atiya, pray for us.

3. Saint Maged Solaiman Shehata, pray for us.

4. Saint Yusuf Shukry Yunan, pray for us.

5. Saint Kirollos Shokry Fawzy, pray for us.

6. Saint Bishoy Astafanus Kamel, pray for us.

7. Saint Somaily Astafanus Kamel, pray for us.

8. Saint Malak Ibrahim Sinweet, pray for us.

9. Saint Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros, pray for us.

10. Saint Girgis Milad Sinweet, pray for us.

11. Saint Mina Fayez Aziz, pray for us.

12. Saint Hany Abdelmesih Salib, pray for us.

13. Saint Bishoy Adel Khalaf, pray for us.

14. Saint Samuel Alham Wilson, pray for us.

15. Saint [Worker from Awr village], pray for us.

16. Saint Ezat Bishri Naseef, pray for us.

17. Saint Loqa Nagaty, pray for us.

18. Saint Gaber Munir Adly, pray for us.

19. Saint Esam Badir Samir, pray for us.

20. Saint Malak Farag Abram, pray for us.

21. Saint Sameh Salah Faruq, pray for us.

The Miracle of “Reconciliation”

“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

As the season of Lent begins, I want to give special attention to this text from today’s liturgy. This is how much God loves each one of us; this is how close He draws to each of us. Jesus “carries the burden” of our sins and opens the way to something new: a new life that overcomes sin and death, and that begins now—a transformation, a New Creation, that begins now, in Him.

Reconciliation… beyond anything our sinful humanity could have imagined. Reconciliation with God, and with one another. What a miracle! God finds me, though I had turned away from Him. He carries me on His shoulders and brings me back to the Father’s house, if I let Him, if I recognize my poverty and brokenness and let Him heal me.

And what a miracle! The persons whom I regarded as obstacles to my ambition, as objects to be manipulated for my own purposes, as enemies—I now call them “my brothers” and “my sisters.”

Reconciliation is a new beginning, and we must return to it again and again, because we fail every day, and because we must grow in this new life.

But it is an inexhaustible wellspring of mercy, “deeper” than the inertia of our weakness and forgetfulness, “deeper” than all our sins. “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

The “Papa and Anna Show”

Here is a video (link is not visible on YouTube but only through this post). Recently, I had a few minutes to chat with my younger granddaughter Anna Rose, chubby-cheeked and wide-eyed and lovable at two-and-a-half months old.

It’s a bit of fluff. Obviously, I talk TO her (and the viewers) while she fusses a little and smiles a little and scrunches up her face in various ways and sucks her passy. Nana was with Maria in another room, and Maria was not happy about something, so you will hear her “complaining” from time to time in the background, toddler-style.

Well, Lent begins tomorrow in the Roman Rite, and of course I am not ready. That, I suppose, is one of the reasons why it’s good that we have this annual season of penance, charity, and preparation to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We enter this time together, as the communio of the Church.

Here is the actual link to the video. Happy Mardi Gras!

Christina Grimmie is a Daily Inspiration

Remembering Christina Grimmie for seven years, eight months. I am grateful for her inspiration every day.💚

This is a Digital Portrait by JJStudios:

Walking With Jesus in the Midst of the World

As Christians we place our hope in the mercy of God who has become our companion in Jesus. Jesus wants to be with us, to remind us that we are not alone in front of the enigma of existence. We struggle every day with life, its joys, its suffering, its mysterious and inescapable destiny, but we know that He is here to respond to our poverty with His divine and human compassion.

And as we experience this compassion, we are called to proclaim it, to share it with one another and everyone in need. The call of God's love and mercy extends beyond ourselves; He burns with love for every person, and He longs to enkindle that flame in our hearts. For this reason the Christian is called to live and to manifest something new in the world.

This is our world, full of sin and violence, ugliness, stubbornness and willful ignorance. But God loves the world and wants to save the world through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus, whom He has given for everyone. He brings forgiveness of sins. If by the gift of God we have encountered Jesus and experienced His forgiveness, we are called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to participate in Christ’s mission, His giving of Himself. He doesn’t take us out of the world, but calls us to adhere to Him in the midst of the world, to walk the roads of the world along with every human being who is entrusted to us on the path of our daily lives, accompanying them with the richer and more joyful, more hopeful humanity that Jesus gives us as we follow Him. We know that Jesus Christ is the only hope of the world.

This is our poor world, confused, struggling and seeking, full of human persons who have been created in the image of God and redeemed by Christ, and who travel along obscure and winding paths searching for the One who loves them and calls each of them by name.

It is a world in which so many do not yet know Him, or do not know Him enough, or perhaps hold onto Him mysteriously in the depths of their hearts but without knowing all of the beautiful ways He wants to help them, strengthen them, and be a light to their steps. It is also a world of many who have rejected God or who ignore God, even as He continues to passionately seek them out and draw them to Himself. God's mercy works secretly in their hearts, but it also works through us and wants to manifest itself and give itself through us.

God wants the beauty and the glory of His mercy to shine through us, so that those who are weary and heavily burdened by the riddle of life's meaning may see that God Himself has brought something new into history that answers and indeed overflows superabundantly all the depths of the human question.

Here we are, poor earthen vessels of His love. We ourselves are so much in need of healing and of experiencing His love and mercy. Our mission is not one of winning over the world to our party, as if the fulfillment of human existence somehow came from our own selves, our ideas, our projects—as if it were the construction of our own brilliance and coherence, the assertion of our own power.

No. Being Christian means knowing that we are weak and broken, that we depend upon His mercy in every moment, and that we must beg for His mercy to change us and make us grow in the newness of life He gives us in the Spirit. This new life is a participation in His risen and glorified humanity that begins even now, as we journey through this present life. Christ is the meaning of human life and brings everything that is truly human to fulfillment in Himself. In following Him, we don’t become “less human.” Quite the contrary, we become more human! 

We are sinners. We are not called to be disciples of Jesus by isolating ourselves and condemning the rest of the world. Our mission is to let Jesus win us, and win the world with us and through us.