“More Autumn Impressions” (mid-November 2024).
I have been sharing the inspirations of Fall on social media since 2014, via photos, videos, and various explorations in digital art. I’ll never get tired of it!😉
An ordinary man engages the circumstances of daily life, seeking to draw closer to the Mystery who gives meaning to everything.
“More Autumn Impressions” (mid-November 2024).
I have been sharing the inspirations of Fall on social media since 2014, via photos, videos, and various explorations in digital art. I’ll never get tired of it!😉
The “trial” has finally been brought to a conclusion, and the “HONG KONG 47” have all received jail sentences. What this ruling means is that legitimate, nonviolent efforts by the pro-democracy movement to participate in the political process in Hong Kong are now regarded as a “threat to national security.” It would seem that all hope is lost for a “self-governing” Hong Kong free from the harsh and heavy hand of the Chinese Communist PartyState.
But suffering injustice with patience is the hidden strength of nonviolent resistance to dictatorship. I remember in 1983 when Communist Poland declared martial law and put the leaders of the “Solidarity” movement in jail. None of us could have imagined the changes that were soon to come.
Let’s pray for people like Benny Tai and Joshua Wong (pictured above); let’s continue to stand with them, remember them, “co-suffer” with them (in whatever small ways we can). May justice and the dignity of the human person prevail in Hong Kong, Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East, Russia, China, and in our own nations—through the wisdom and goodness and merciful love of God.
Open this LINK to learn more by reading the BBC article cited in the picture.
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, we contemplate eschatology and the ultimate kingship of Jesus Christ who is Lord of history and Savior of the human race, who has poured Himself out in love and mercy so that we might find freedom from sin and its illusions, and fulfillment in sharing His eternal life with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Pope Francis spoke beautifully at the Angelus of November 17 about the words of Jesus in the Sunday Gospel. Death and the end of all things can appear traumatic and terrifying, but Jesus has promised that He will remain with us. If we hold fast to Him, He will lead us through every trial to the fulfillment of the Kingdom where God will be all, in all. In His wisdom and goodness we will find—renewed and transformed—the meaning of everything in this present life that is shaped by His mercy and His companionship, all the mysterious ways by which He draws us to Himself.
Here are some of Francis’s words from the Angelus:
In the Gospel of today’s liturgy, Jesus describes a great tribulation: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light” (Mk 13:24). Faced with this suffering, many might think of the end of the world, but the Lord seizes the opportunity to offer a different interpretation, saying: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mk 13:31).
We can take a closer look at this expression: what will pass and what will remain.
First of all, what will pass. In some circumstances in our life, when we are going through a crisis or experience some failure, as well as when we see around us the pain caused by wars, violence, natural disasters, we have the feeling that everything is coming to an end, and we feel that even the most beautiful things pass away. Crises and failures, however, though painful, are important, because they teach us to accord everything its due weight, not to attach our hearts to the realities of this world, because they will pass: they are destined to fade away.
At the same time, Jesus talks about what will remain. Everything passes away, but His words will not pass away: Jesus’ words will remain for eternity. He thus invites us to trust in the Gospel, which contains a promise of salvation and eternity, and not to live under the anguish of death. For while everything passes away, Christ remains. In Him, in Christ, we shall one day find again the things and people who have passed away and who have accompanied us in our earthly existence. In the light of this promise of resurrection, every reality takes on a new meaning: everything dies and we too will one day die, but we will lose nothing of what we have built and loved, because death will be the beginning of a new life.
Brothers and sisters, even in tribulations, in crises, in failures, the Gospel invites us to look at life and history without fear of losing what ends, but with joy for what will remain. Let us not forget that God is preparing for us a future of life and joy.
Francesca Cabrini (1815-1917) was the first "naturalized" U.S.A. citizen to be canonized (she was born in Italy). Immigrants of those days loved "Mother Cabrini," who took care of them and showed them the face of Jesus.
"Prayer is powerful! It fills the earth with mercy, it makes the Divine clemency pass from generation to generation; right along the course of the centuries wonderful works have been achieved through prayer" (Saint Francesca ["Frances"] Cabrini, feast November 13).
God our Father, who called Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy to serve the immigrants of America, by her example, teach us to have concern for the stranger, the sick, and all those in need, and by her prayers help us to see Christ in all the men and women we meet.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
--Collect, November 13
The popular elections for the President of the United States of America are over. I have carried out my very small task on behalf of the candidate of the American Solidarity Party, a political movement that represents ideals that need to grow—in my opinion—if the United States is to survive as a nation. For all its colossal wealth, power, and influence, the United States is only one of the nations on this great hemispheric continent (north, central, and south) that constitutes the proper reference point for the term “America.” In my opinion, the tumultuous and in many ways transitional times in which we live constitute a challenge for all the nations of “America” to recognize the bonds they share and to live in greater solidarity. Through such a solidarity and communion, “America”—from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego—might one day become “great” in its contribution to the long history of humanity.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of history, and His Mother Mary has taken up a unique kind of “presence” at the geographical center of this “America,” through her astonishing and scientifically inexplicable image on the hill of Tepeyac at the edge of Mexico City: Our Lady of Guadalupe.
In January 1999, I traveled to Mexico for the closing of the “Synod on America,” where Pope Saint John Paul II presented the fruit of the dialogue carried out by bishops from all over the hemispheric continent. He proposed that American solidarity had not only an evangelical significance, but also a temporal significance in its increasing interdependence and in the responsibilities of the rich nations to help their poorer neighbors. I think this event of 25 years ago was a prophetic moment. It is a light for judging the larger context of our particular circumstances, and a great encouragement for prayer. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of America—of all of America—pray for us.
Some words from Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in America (1999):
“I asked that the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops reflect on America as a single entity, by reason of all that is common to the peoples of the continent, including their shared Christian identity and their genuine attempt to strengthen the bonds of solidarity and communion between the different forms of the continent's rich cultural heritage. The decision to speak of ‘America’ in the singular was an attempt to express not only the unity which in some way already exists, but also to point to that closer bond which the peoples of the continent seek and which the Church wishes to foster as part of her own mission, as she works to promote the communion of all in the Lord...
“The Church is the place where men and women, by encountering Jesus, can come to know the love of the Father, for whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father (cf. John 14:9). After his Ascension into heaven, Jesus acts through the powerful agency of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete (cf. John 16:17), who transforms believers by giving them new life. Thus they become capable of loving with God's own love, which ‘has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us’ (Romans 5:5). God's grace also enables Christians to work for the transformation of the world, in order to bring about a new civilization, … ‘the civilization of love’”
Jesus came to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God, and to initiate it Himself by atoning for sin and overcoming the limitations of this earthly life through His death and resurrection. Insofar as we love God’s wisdom and goodness, we will not feel entirely “at home” in this present life.
We are called to follow Jesus, and when we work for goodness, justice, and peace in this world, we do so as instruments of His love and mercy. We are called to show forth the glory of Christ in the midst of whatever circumstances we live in—however difficult and confusing they may be—confident in the Holy Spirit that God will bring to fruition all that He has promised.
To make that comprehensible to the rest of the world, we're talking about 26.7 degrees Celsius.
“Goodbye Evening Sunshine” (November 2, 2024).
See you in… February, maybe? This is the weekend to set back the clocks one hour (or, in most cases, allow your digital devices to do it for you automatically).
This means that #WinterDarkTimeBegins … and cuts off those evening hours when I like to walk. I’ll have to pay attention to the time during the day, otherwise—BOOM!—it’s dark before 5:30 P.M. The clock set-back also signals that time of year when the suns dips rapidly into shorter days leading up to the Winter Solstice. That's okay when Christmas is drawing near, but the sudden "shortening" of days in November is always a challenge to people whose moods are sensitive to the seasons (like mine).
Of course, we do have a few more weeks of colorful leaves coming up. Which reminds me that I should “dump” some other examples of Autumn vistas and impressions—in photography and/or digital art—that JJStudios has created this Fall (including the image featured above). Here are some more examples from last month, in no particular order:
Happy All Saints Day! Welcome to November 2024...
That was not a position I ever imagined I would find myself in. Needless to say, I don’t expect to be making a trip to Richmond in December, nor do I have any other illusions regarding the significance of my vote for the results of this present election. Since 2016, however, I have been a member of the American Solidarity Party (ASP), and have voted for its presidential candidates and participated (virtually) in some of its events. Voting for President of the United States is a way of participating in a vast political process. However, as the practicalities of this process (and the “choices” it offers) become more superficial, unseemly, and remote from our own experiences and opinions and (most importantly) the convictions of our consciences, I think the time has come to be more “creative” in the way we participate.
The ASP is far from perfect, and at present it is very, very small. But it is a party in which the “platform” represents in detail a politics that aspires to put the dignity of every human person at the center of its concerns. It is a party that aspires to uphold the rights of persons and relationships as they are given in this wonderful mysterious reality that is our existence in this world: whether the person or persons are the poor on the margins of society who require our special concern, or desperate migrants and refugees who seek mercy from the world’s richest nation, or persons who exist as frozen embryos in a laboratory, or a mother and her unborn child (who both deserve protection and care that also continues after birth), or families which are the organic (“given”) foundation for maturing in the experience of interpersonal communion, or workers who collaborate in what is always a human enterprise, or persons who make up communities and build the institutions of civil society, or the sick and the elderly who need care and affirmation that their lives have meaning, or even criminals who need punishment and correction but also respect for their fundamental human dignity from a merciful society that doesn’t put them to death or subject them to cruelty. Then there are the issues involving war and peace, our responsibility for the environment entrusted to us, an economy on a human scale, and a wisdom regarding “progress” that serves the enrichment of whole human persons who have a transcendent destiny.
The ASP at least tries to be a personalist and communitarian political organization (perhaps this is a better word than “party”). In my opinion the United States of America will either develop toward a personalist and communitarian democracy or it will cease to exist as a nation.I realize that there are many concerns involving this election, and that most people who vote believe it is necessary to choose one of the two “major” candidates that have been imposed upon us by a corrupt and increasingly dysfunctional political system. These voters focus on concrete issues that, in their opinion, will be better served—or at least less imperiled—by electing or preventing one of these candidates from becoming President. I understand and respect people who make this judgment regarding their own vote.
But I do believe that some of us have to begin now the preparation, organization, and procedural requirements for a new kind of politics in this country. Perhaps it’s quixotic to help build the foundations of a “new party,” but we will never know—and we will never even have a chance—unless some of us try to make a beginning. The reasonable way to make this effort is to enter the political process.
If there is to be any hope for moving in the direction of a politics that respects the dignity of every human person, a politics of solidarity, a politics of mercy, then some of us must begin to move in distinctive ways. We must try new approaches, cast votes and commit ourselves to political processes that—for now—are admittedly “symbolic.” Symbols are pedagogical for ourselves and for others, and they can suddenly become very practical in times of rapid change and instability. In my opinion, the ASP is making an effort to begin traveling this path, and I believe that I am called (in my own necessarily limited and very small capacity) to walk with them. For me, it’s worth the “risk” of my “one vote.”
This is an important point: even if we can’t do much, we can do a little. We can take a step. We can detach ourselves a little from the pervasive delusion that we live in a basically “healthy country,” or that our endemic problems can be “fixed” by a few changes in a legal system that has become unmoored from a dependable foundation in human personal dignity and the “common good.” Those whose efforts attempt to ameliorate the dangers of the present system should not place all their hopes in work that is important, but tenuous and all-too-easily uprooted by the inevitable shifts of power politics.
All of this accounts for why I have decided, with much prayer and deliberation, to stand as one of the Virginia “electors” for the Presidential candidacy of Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party, and to vote for him as a write-in candidate in the general election of 2024. I have a conviction that a movement in this direction is necessary for our nation. For me this is a way to be faithful to that conviction, and to the fundamental human needs that inspire it.
Here is a prayer/reflection that I’m jotting down here for my own reference (and, of course, to share with anyone who might find it helpful):
“Jesus, on the cross you wholly embraced every person. You alone have given yourself for us with a ‘totality’ and ‘intimacy’ beyond anything we could possibly deserve or expect, beyond the measure of our understanding, yet supremely “attuned” to the depths of our humanity—our origin, our destiny, and the great desire that drives us to engage with reality in search of the fullness of meaning and goodness.
“Jesus, you alone understand the mystery of every person, because your emptying of yourself has made ‘room’ for every person in your Heart. Guide our steps, Lord. Draw us to yourself. Draw us by the inexhaustible beauty and goodness of your total gift of Love for us.”
Also, I record here more quotations from Pope Francis’s powerful new Encyclical Dilexit Nos on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as I continue to dwell on and study the text, seeking nourishment for my own seeking, begging heart—and for every human heart:
“Our hearts are not self-sufficient, but frail and wounded… We need the help of God’s love. Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfilment to which humanity can aspire. There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and we learn how to love.
“In the end, that Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality, since ‘Christ is the heart of the world, and the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection is the centre of history, which, because of him, is a history of salvation’ [John Paul II, 1998]. All creatures ‘are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things’ [Francis, Laudato Si, 2015].”
~Pope Francis, encyclical Dilexit Nos [“He Loved Us”], 30-31
October 29th commemorates Blessed Chiara "Luce" Badano, an Italian girl who died of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in 1990, a few weeks short of her 19th birthday. She was declared "blessed" in 2010.
"I offer everything, my failures, my pains and joys to Him, starting again every time the Cross makes me feel all its weight. The important thing is to do God’s will. I might have had plans about myself but God came up with this. The sickness came to me at the right time... [and] now I feel like I am wrapped into a wonderful design that is slowly unfolding itself to me."
We live in a world of poverty.We can see the desperation of the materially poor. But we do not see the immense inner poverty that afflicts so many of us who live in what are supposed to be the "rich nations" of the world.
When I began this blog in 2011, Jojo (Josefina) Janaro was a little over four years old. If you’ve been here since the beginning, you’ve watched her grow up. There are lots of stories about her little kid adventures, especially in the earlier years of the blog. You know how cute she was in those days. (I think she’s still “cute,” but I’ll get in big trouble if I tell her that, because she thinks I’m looking at her like a child if I say “cute.” That’s not what I mean, but… whatever. I can tell her she’s pretty, which is true.) Jojo still looks a bit young for her age, but she has grown a lot. She has reached the 5’ foot marker, and may yet pick up a couple more inches. She no longer stands out in a whole family of short people (I was once 5’10” but I’ve shrunk a bit over the years).
I’m amazed that she’s 18. She made it! I need not tell again the story that has been repeated on the blog many times and is also recounted in my 2010 book—that Jojo was a “pre-mie,” who spent the first seven months of her life in the NICU. It seems so long ago. Before she turned two, my days as a classroom teacher came to an end. So I had (and still have) a lot of time at home with her since I went-on-long-term-disability / “retired” in 2008. I have watched her grow up, and she has had a lot of special attention from her Dad. We’ve always gotten along really well, even during her adolescence. Jojo has tried to explain to me what “goes on inside the head” of a teenage girl, while I have tried to help her “interpret” the chaos that is the mind of a teenage boy (I still remember, and it hasn’t changed that much). For at least the past dozen years, Jojo and I have been watching TV together and having discussions of the themes that come up. We’ve had some really good conversations, and I hope we will continue for years to come.
Daddy and Jojo, from a long time ago (2017) |
Happy Birthday Josefina! We love you!
I have begun to read what promises to be a monumental encyclical letter that Pope Francis issued this morning, which aims to renew our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The encyclical Dilexit Nos locates the significance of the Heart of Jesus in the context of the mystery of the human heart, of each of our hearts. Here are some quotations and notes from the first part of the text, which I cite here—if for no other reason—for my own benefit as I study the encyclical. Perhaps they might be useful to others as well. Among other things, I want to quote sections of the text that struck me in a way that provokes my desire to “go deeper…”
In the first part of Chapter One, Pope Francis takes up the question: What do we mean by “the heart”? He tries to lead us to appreciate the existential centrality of the heart for the human person. “In classical Greek, the word kardÃa denotes the inmost part of human beings, animals and plants. For Homer, it indicates not only the centre of the body, but also the human soul and spirit. In the Iliad, thoughts and feelings proceed from the heart and are closely bound one to another. The heart appears as the locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape. In Plato, the heart serves, as it were, to unite the rational and instinctive aspects of the person, since the impulses of both the higher faculties and the passions were thought to pass through the veins that converge in the heart. From ancient times, then, there has been an appreciation of the fact that human beings are not simply a sum of different skills, but a unity of body and soul with a coordinating centre that provides a backdrop of meaning and direction to all that a person experiences. (DN 3)
[The heart can be concealed or ignored, but it ultimately reveals the truth of who we are as persons.] “Mere appearances, dishonesty and deception harm and pervert the heart. Despite our every attempt to appear as something we are not, our heart is the ultimate judge, not of what we show or hide from others, but of who we truly are. It is the basis for any sound life project; nothing worthwhile can be undertaken apart from the heart. False appearances and untruths ultimately leave us empty-handed. (DN 6)
“Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? Who do I want to be for others? Who am I for God? All these questions lead us back to the heart. (DN 8)
“The heart has been ignored in anthropology, and the great philosophical tradition finds it a foreign notion, preferring other concepts such as reason, will or freedom. The very meaning of the term is imprecise and hard to situate within our human experience. Perhaps this is due to the difficulty of treating it as a ‘clear and distinct idea’, or because it entails the question of self-understanding, where the deepest part of us is also that which is least known. Even encountering others does not necessarily prove to be a way of encountering ourselves, inasmuch as our thought patterns are dominated by an unhealthy individualism. Many people feel safer constructing their systems of thought in the more readily controllable domain of intelligence and will. The failure to make room for the heart, as distinct from our human powers and passions viewed in isolation from one another, has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others. (DN 10)
“If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry. We also lose track of history and our own past, since our real personal history is built with the heart. At the end of our lives, that alone will matter. (DN 11)
[The heart is is the vitally integrated center of all our faculties, the core of our whole person from which we give and receive love.] [My faculties of the] “mind and the will are put at the service of the greater good [of the heart] by sensing and savouring truths, rather than seeking to master them as the sciences tend to do. The will desires the greater good that the heart recognizes, while the imagination and emotions are themselves guided by the beating of the heart. It could be said, then, that I am my heart, for my heart is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people.” (DN 13-14)
This is a very special day in our family, because of the great grace we received at the very beginning of our married life. Eileen and I met this tremendous Pope on our honeymoon, on July 3, 1996.
We spoke to him and told him that we were from the Communion and Liberation movement in the U.S.A.—which seemed to please him very much—and we hugged him and told him that we loved him. He was by this time at the beginning of his long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, and it also seemed like he carried in his heart all the profound sufferings of the Church and the world. I sensed the powerful and vulnerable reality of his humanity, and his own need for love and solidarity. I wanted very much to “stand with him” in that moment, when I said, “We love you, Holy Father.” He responded very deliberately and personally in English, “Thank you.” We then asked him to bless our marriage, and he traced the sign of the cross on our foreheads and said, “God bless you.”
Thus he blessed our marriage from the beginning, some 28+ years ago. Since then we have felt the strength of his accompaniment and the great compassion of his humanity as a sign of the closeness of Jesus Christ in all our trials and our joys. This became something new and greater after his death in 2005, and we are grateful now that we can call upon him daily as a saint in the Church.
And every night, before we go to sleep, Eileen and I still bless each other by tracing the cross on each other’s forehead. We did the same with the kids when they were growing up and we still bless Jojo, our youngest, who lives with us.
John Paul II is a saint who intercedes especially, I think, for the strengthening of the Christian and human vocation of families, for their living communion in Christ. He also helps married couples to grow in love, to forgive each other every day, to persevere through trials, and to live together the grace of the sacrament of marriage through all the stages of married life, so that we can experience the many changes in our married life and in each other as persons as a continual “calling” from Jesus to remain in Him together, to trust in His merciful love, and to be open to each other in such a way as to be “surprised” by renewed and deepened affection, understanding, and gratitude to God and each other. .Dear young people, young married couples and those discerning marriage, be not afraid. Jesus has a strong hold on you; He embraces you in His crucified and risen arms and He won’t let go. Trust in Him, pray together, and never give up. Marriage is a step toward eternal life and a commitment to the continuation of human history—the history that belongs to Jesus, the history in which He has chosen to dwell. We also have the friendship of the saints on this journey (as we do in every state or circumstance of life). John Paul II is truly one of the great ones. He is a great help to anyone who seeks the presence of Christ in their lives, in the humanity of themselves and others, in the truth and beauty that draws them, in the suffering that Christ has taken upon Himself.
Saint John Paul II, pray for us, pray for married people, and for families! Pray for us all, for the Church, for the whole world. Pray for us to experience the mercy of God our Father who really loves us and wants us to live forever; to experience the mercy of Jesus Christ His Son who took our human nature to become one of us so that He could save us and transform us and dwell with us because He wants to be with us now and forever; to experience the mercy of the working of the Holy Spirit who transforms our way of seeing reality, so that everything reveals itself as a sign of the mystery, gratuity, and purpose of God who draws all things to Himself. The One God—a Trinity of three persons in ineffable communion—pours out gratuitous love so that we come into being and exist and seek the fullness of life, and pours out a greater gratuitousness in the grace that calls us, stirs up our hearts, gives us the desire for God, and draws us into a participation in Divine life, now and forever.
We all have this place where we suffer, where we face our own inadequacy, where we discover the smallness of our hearts and the pettiness of all our deeds.
And it is here that Jesus asks each one of us, in the most penetrating and poignant way, to believe in Him, to trust Him.
I do believe that He loves me with an infinite love, giving Himself for me on the Cross, pouring Himself out in the Eucharist, and drawing me to Himself through His ongoing companionship with me in the Church. He summons me from within the relationships entrusted to me, and the cries of the poor and the powerless whose afflictions wound my heart, whose need I recognize as my own, whose desire awakens me to share their struggles and their patience.
The love of Jesus is within the fabric of my life. It is mysterious and yet I know it constitutes “who I am” and draws me toward “who I want to be.” The love of Jesus gives meaning to everything and opens up the possibility for hope in every moment.
Jesus, I entrust to You what seems so often to me to be such a complicated business, namely the abandonment of myself to You, the giving of everything over to You, the surrender of everything to You...even my weakness.
Jesus, I entrust "my-entrusting-of-myself-to-You" TO YOU!That's an awkward way of putting it. But I'm sure He knows what I mean.
I will not give up. Even if I am broken, God is still God, and still Glorious – even more clearly so, for He takes my brokenness upon Himself. Here, more than anywhere, it is clear that He is worthy of all my love. He has proven Himself. Thus, in every circumstance – even in the face of the prospect that I have nothing to give, that I am worthless, that all my aspirations in life may end in failure – the only reasonable possibility for me is to love God.
So even if I am nothing, I still have the desire—the need—to love Him. I beg that I might be able to love Him.
Happy Feast of Saint Luke, Apostle and Evangelist. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he was the human author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. He was also the companion of Saint Paul on some of his missions.
“I handed on to you first of all what I myself received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried and, in accordance with the Scriptures, rose on the third day" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
Today we celebrate Ignatius of Antioch, a man who was killed violently over 1900 years ago. We have the texts of his last letters, in which he expressed his love for Jesus Christ, whom he believed would bring him to a fulfillment beyond anything he could attain in this world, and beyond anything that could threaten him in this world.
He understood his death as the gateway to eternal life, his martyr’s death in union with Jesus who was crucified and is risen, whose love conquers sin and death and gives meaning to all of life. Ignatius, reflecting on his approaching martyrdom for Christ, said, “Then I shall truly be a man.”
"Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ" (Saint Ignatius of Antioch, while heading to the Colosseum for martyrdom, 110 AD).
Countless others from every nation and people have faced death with the same confidence, the same hope, surrender, and love for Jesus Christ. On this very day, Jesus is transforming peoples’ lives. Even today, the Holy Spirit is giving people the faith, hope, and love for God that enables them to experience suffering and death in Christ—the One who reveals that God is our Father, that He loves us, that He wants us live forever.
October 17: Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr, circa year 110.
HAPPY FEAST OF SAINT TERESA OF AVILA (the "O.G. Teresa" of all the Teresas).
Here is a glimpse of the incomparable art of the baroque-era sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680): a detail from "Saint Teresa in Ecstasy" (just so you notice: that's made out of stone, everybody). This is in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, which is, of course, in Rome! The sculpture is inspired by Teresa's account of a mystical experience in her autobiography, of being wounded by the love of God.
But Teresa was very “down-to-earth” in much that she said, and she offers words of hope for all of us. She reminds us that the Lord is “never weary of giving and never can [his] mercies be exhausted. Let us not tire of receiving” (Saint Teresa of Avila).
In this picture you can see how big Anna is getting. She likes to pull my beard and squeeze my nose. In fact, after this pic was taken she tried to bite my nose. She does have a couple of teeth, but that doesn’t matter. Still, I don’t want her to put her mouth over my nose, because my nose is full of “old man germs” or whatever. And what if I sneeze? So I told her, “no, Anna, we don’t put Papa’s nose in our mouth.”
Anna doesn’t quite walk yet, but she gets around—oh boy does she scamper. And she is purposeful when she’s on the move. If Papa puts down his coffee mug, he’d better keep an eye on it. She will lock in on that mug like a target and start to move in for “exploration.” But she is a sweetheart, full of smiles and cheerfulness (except when she’s hungry / tired / etc etc etc… all the usual caveats for a nearly 11 month old baby).
Then, of course, there’s Maria. This Fall is a bit different because Maria has begun going to Montessori School at the “Primary level” (for 3-6 year-olds) on weekday mornings. Montessori Primary is a serious enterprise, where “preschool” children learn through guided interaction with an environment specially structured for them. I am amazed when I remember Josefina starting her first year of Primary in 2009, i.e. fifteen years ago. Now Maria has embarked on her Montessori adventure, and I know she will benefit from this remarkable pedagogy—which I have written about numerous times on this blog over the years (see, for example, HERE)—a pedagogy that educates the child’s whole person.
Maria communicates pretty well, and she also has quite a sense of humor. Thank God for both of these precious grandchildren! Here is a recent video (accessible only through this link) of Papa and Maria hanging out in the afternoon. More and more, we are having “two-way conversations.” Watch below: