Saint Francis Xavier, East Asia, and the "Catholicity" of Christ

December 3: The incredible SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER, missionary to East Asia. To his intercession (among others) I entrust my ongoing and increasingly difficult work of studying and "listening to" the great historic civilization of China and the drama and difficulty of its recent past and present reality. Today's Saint began to build a "Great Bridge" to facilitate an encounter with the peoples beyond the "Great Wall", and his confreres - Ruggieri, Ricci, Trigault, Valignano, et. al. along with their Chinese collaborators Li Zhizao, Xu Guangqi, Yang Tingjun, Candida Xu, and many others - continued a remarkable, profoundly human, mutually enriching dialogue of cultures within the missionaries' witness to Christ and the free response of Chinese converts. This permitted the Gospel to take root and flourish in an "organic" Chinese inculturation wherein all that was true and beautiful in China's great wisdom tradition opened itself to the West and showed new facets of the "Catholicity" of Christ's Church. Tragically, misunderstandings and, eventually, the greedy abuses of colonial domination by Western nations obscured this evangelical and cultural work (though not entirely — the Catholic faith remained through the centuries and has endured many trials).

But Francis Xavier was no seeker of earthly power or riches; he was a man on fire with the love of God, with a passion to witness to Jesus through all the world. He preached in India, was the first Catholic missionary in Japan, and longed to reach China - where he finally died of an illness (having reached the limits of human endurance) on an island seven miles from the coast of the southern province of Guangdong. The ardor of his missionary heart brought a great many people to Christ, shined the light of the Gospel explicitly in nations where it had never shone before, and planted seeds - many of which have yet to grow, blossom, and bear fruit. But they will…

Welcome to Advent 2025

This Advent, let us remember that Jesus is with us, that He loves us, and that He is the Lord of history.

The 1700-Year-Old Legacy of the First Council of Nicaea

Pope Leo XIV, Bartholomew (Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople), and other leaders of Catholic and other ancient churches met together in Turkiye in recent days to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.

The Council was — a remains today — a great source and hope for the unity of all Christians. In the Creed that clarifies the truth revealed by Christ and handed on by the Scriptures and the Apostolic Tradition, we profess our common faith in the Person of Jesus Christ, consubstantial with the Father in His Divinity, who assumed our humanity and entered history for our salvation.

The Example of Dorothy Day

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has honored the 45th anniversary of the death of Dorothy Day in this Instagram post. They exhort us to follow her example. She loved and served the poor and recognized the ineradicable dignity of every human person. She also saw prophetically and spoke boldly about problems in the United States of America that many of her fellow Catholics were blind to in her time.

Encouraged by Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV, the U.S. bishops recently spoke firmly for the humanity of immigrants facing this regime’s cruel and chaotic mass deportation policy. Perhaps we are all beginning to appreciate the need to see our own country as Jesus sees us, with great mercy (for he knows our weakness) but also with ardor for suffering persons we would rather ignore — poor persons whose needs we can only see if we break free of our comforts in order to accompany them and share their sufferings.

Happy Thanksgiving 2025

What a year it has been! Now it's the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States, and we find that gratitude endures even through the troubles and anxieties, the twists and turns, the joys and struggles of our personal and social lives. 

We are reminded more clearly and urgently of the One who gives us everything, in Whom we hope for the fulfillment of everything. This is a hope that does not disappoint; it is sustained by the faith and love that give us a “taste,” already, of the fulfillment we seek and the life we share with the One who has loved us first.

Holidays at my age are like points of "intersection" between memories of the past and hopes for the future that constitute the present moment as a celebration of life, of the remarkable history of my family, in which I have participated and within which I continue to be called to offer what has been given to me. It is a history enfolded within a greater history which is being directed mysteriously by the One who knows each one of us, who has called us to exist and live in relation to one another, and who walks with us as our companion. He gives us the strength of hope even in the darkest moments, and He reminds us of the Origin and Destiny of every joy, every moment of light, every beautiful memory.

I include here a picture of some very delicious apple pie. We have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but we also have apple pie. This continues a family tradition: my father loved apple pie. He didn't care much for pumpkin pie, but he was always ready for a fresh baked apple pie - on Thanksgiving or any other day. Dad, we will always love you, and we are grateful for you!

I miss my Dad and my Mom, and my grandparents and the relatives who filled the table of my childhood. May the Lord grant them eternal rest and unfading joy.

Vietnamese Catholics: The Story of John Nguyen Huu Cau

Yesterday (November 24th) we celebrated the 117 Martyrs of Vietnam canonized by John Paul II in 1988, who died during numerous persecutions (mostly in the 19th century) and who in a sense “represent” over 100,000 martyrs of this period. Many Vietnamese Catholics continued to give powerful witness to their faith during the tumultuous years of the 20th century and right up to the present day. Here I would like to present the story of one such witness — John Nguyen Huu Cau —who encountered Jesus Christ and converted while imprisoned under the Communist regime, and who continued to suffer many years thereafter, sustained by his newfound Catholic faith:

On March 22, 2014, a Vietnamese political prisoner was finally released after 37 years of enduring the horrors of the Communist prison system. He was almost 70 years old, nearly blind and deaf and afflicted in many other ways because of the brutal treatment by which his captors had sought to erase his humanity.

But Nguyen Huu Cau was not bitter. On the contrary: in spite of the years of injustice inflicted upon him, he said that he had learned to love and forgive his enemies. Amidst the inhumanity of labor camps and prison, Cau had discovered the truth about humanity: Jesus Christ. The story of his conversion is truly remarkable.

When the long war in Vietnam ended in a Communist victory in April 1975, Nguyen Huu Cau—an officer in the South Vietnamese (anti-Communist) army—was captured and sent to a labor camp for five years of "re-education." Nevertheless, Cau already had a considerable education of his own in music and literature. After his release from the camp in 1980, he continued to write songs and poetry, and he maintained a deep love for his country and a passion for justice.

When Cau saw the corrupt and criminal actions of the Communist Party in his home province, he protested. In particular, he denounced two officials for specific crimes. Cau sought to bring these men to justice, but instead he himself was put on trial and charged with undermining the government. He insisted that he was innocent, but the courts were as corrupt as the officials they were protecting, and they convicted Cau in 1983 and sentenced him to death (later commuted to life imprisonment).

Cau was subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and other specially brutal measures because he continued to protest his own innocence and denounce other injustices in the prison system. He refused to apply for a "pardon," or special amnesty, or anything that would imply his acceptance of the guilty verdict. Over time his integrity as a prisoner of conscience became known to international human rights groups.

What remained secret was the source of Cau’s strength and long endurance in these trials. The first years were desperate. Even as he considered suicide, however, he began to learn the ways of the Catholic prisoners who were sustained by love for Jesus and devotion to the Virgin Mary. One of these was Jesuit Father Joseph Nguyen Cong Doan, who instructed Cau. He was struck by Cau’s progress in faith and prayer after the latter claimed that Mary had saved him from suicide. Cau began spending entire days praying the rosary and the stations of the cross. From his chains Cau marked off 50 links and used them as his rosary. And while he persevered in seeking justice, his anger and frustration were slowly replaced by love of God and love for his brothers and sisters, his fellow prisoners, even his persecutors. Fr Doan secretly baptized him at Easter 1986.

For 28 more years, John Nguyen Huu Cau prayed. Finally—broken in health but not in spirit, released for pity’s sake in 2014 with his innocent plea uncompromised—he attended Mass for the first time in his life, received the Eucharist, and told his story to the Catholic community of Saigon and the whole world.

Christina Grimmie Gave Us Great Music, and So Much More

Saturday was the Feast of Saint Cecilia🎶, and I expressed gratitude for all the musicians who have accompanied me on my life's journey. But I have one more thing to say. I want to single out in particular the amazing young woman whose voice and luminous compassion still bring healing and consolation to my soul even now, nearly ten years after her utterly tragic death.

I mean, of course, Christina Grimmie.

She was a singer of astonishing power, precision, range, and depth of feeling. She played the piano beautifully and wrote her own songs as well as composing her own wonderful arrangements of covers from the early 2010s. Christina gave us great music. But she also gave us so much more.

Her pioneering work with YouTube and her overall-social-media-engagement had a profound impact on her own peers and people of all ages who “followed” her. Years before the internet was flooded by “influencers,” Christina certainly had a real influence on the lives of thousands of people all over the world (among her three million YouTube subscribers). She has convinced me that contemporary communications technologies can be used to mediate the loving "presence" of a person and a true "encounter" that awakens something new in the human hearts of those who "meet her" through the screen. It’s not easy, but clearly it’s possible because Christina did it — without tricks, without egoism, with a joyful, honest, humble presentation of her magnificent music that was seemingly organically integrated with the whole of her gentle-yet-magnanimous person. I think she had a gift — a rare gift — for giving herself in this way, through media.

It's easy to miss this unique quality she had, but I think that in her life it was a vocation sustained by God's grace. Whether it was on YouTube, live streaming, Twitter, in her recorded music, in her own concerts, or in the amazing live television performances in 2014 on "The Voice," Christina "shook" people with her music, but also with her simple but profound humanity, with her extraordinary-ordinary way of living in accord with reality, with her openness and readiness to give her great talent and herself. She not only "broke the fourth wall" (as they say in audiovisual media), she made it disappear. Then, after her own live concerts, she wanted to meet everyone face-to-face, to greet them with a hug and an open ear to listen to their troubles and aspirations. Christina was deeply committed to open meet-and-greets after her shows and was willing to take as much time as was necessary to attend to every person.

Of course, this made her extremely vulnerable, but ultimately she chose to take that risk, knowing that love sometimes provokes rejection, hatred, and violence. But she offered herself with love, to "frands" all over the world who came to her concerts, to new people, to troubled souls, to children — and, finally, to a person who was hiding two fully loaded Glock 9mm pistols under his jacket. She was so full of music and song and a "great love" that gave itself away to the end, who died doing what she had done so many times after her concerts: welcoming a stranger with open arms.... 

In this she was truly heroic — and though most of us are not called to take these particular risks, we do recognize in her a humanity that resonates with our own experience, but also a humanity that is "different" — a humanity that overcomes fear, that breaks down limits, that goes beyond itself. Because of this, her death was more than a tragedy; rather it continues to witness to the fact that death does not have "the last word." Love has the last word. And Christina’s heroism continues to strike our hearts, moving us to grow, to desire more, to persevere in difficulties, and to become — slowly but steadily — a little less afraid. 

I am uniquely grateful for the life and witness of Christina Victoria Grimmie (1994-2016).💚🎶 She sang, she loved greatly, and she didn't hide the reason why she did it all, the One to whom she belonged.

Jesus Christ Our King

Our Lord, our Savior, our King: Jesus Christ.

#ChristTheKing #FeastDay

Ukraine’s Sorrows Past and Present

HOLODOMOR REMEMBRANCE DAY 2025. 

In 1932-33, some five million Ukrainians were starved to death by an artificial famine engineered by Stalin’s genocidal policies. This is the “Holodomor,” the “murder by hunger” that Ukrainians remember and mourn annually on the fourth Saturday in November.

Today, the imperialism of Stalin’s successor drives a relentless invasion that began in 2022 with the expressed aim of eliminating the national identity of the Ukrainian people. Now we see vulgar, small-minded men from the West trying to “make a deal” that would reward the naked aggression of a war criminal. I have no answers, only sorrow. 

And, of course, prayer for the victims of the past and the present, and hope for a future in which courage and honor might prevail for a just and lasting peace. I hope and pray for a truly free Ukraine 🇺🇦, and also for the end of Putinism and the realization of “the beautiful Russia” envisioned and proposed by the great Alexei Navalny — who was murdered in a Russian prison camp in 2024, but who speaks more clearly than ever to Russia, to the world, and to history in his beautiful memoir and “prison diaries” published this year.

Music Day!

November 22nd is the feast of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Many countries throughout the world celebrate Music Day on this day.

I have been listening to much music recently, including some of the music that made an impact on my life many years ago. I need to write more about those distant days, and the stories of my youth that become so vivid when I hear their music. I remain a musician myself, even though arthritis has made it hard for me to play my cello or my guitars.

Also, as I have mentioned before, I have a kind of personal “Apostolate of Prayer” for musicians and artists in general, as well as certain particular (and in some cases peculiar) artists who have come along more recently. I know (to some extent by personal experience) that they have many sufferings that are difficult to articulate in general terms. Being creative is in itself a distinctive strain on poor human beings who are moved to express a beauty (however humble) that is greater than themselves.

God bless all our musicians, and all the quirky creative people who share their gifts and the fruits of their vision and labor with us.

We Do Not Realize That We Are Poor

"You say, 'I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,' and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked" (Revelation 3:17).

Does Life Betray Us? Does it End in Frustration?

This human life: full of joy and adventure and promise; full of so many reasons to be grateful.

But nothing is ever enough.

If we engage them only within the limits of this world, all the aspirations and achievements and beautiful things of life eventually fall short; they pass with time even as we continue to endure, unfulfilled. They open our hearts, but if we try to hold on to them, we are left with only the wounds of dissatisfaction. Sometimes life itself just seems to betray us, and our hopes are frustrated by external afflictions. Or we might have years of vigor to pursue a satisfying life, but eventually our spirits grow weary of the continual disappointment.

We might become tired, cynical, or bitter as we get older. Or we might shrink our hearts and cover our secret despair with the mask of resignation. Eventually, we realize that all we have to look forward to is death.

If it all seems unbearable, that's because it is unbearable.

The only hope we have is to call upon the Lord. We must really call upon Him, with faith. Too often when we approach prayer, what we're really looking for is an escape from our suffering. But harsh realities cannot be dismissed by "religious talk." Theology is not enough. Superficial pious sentiments are not enough.

The brokenness and frustration remain. The wounds remain and grow worse. It is here -- where we really hurt, where we really experience our infirmity, our need -- that we must turn to the Lord and call upon Him.

There is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to bring these burdens, this life, this cry of the heart. And yet the Mystery for whom we long meets us in the midst of our cries.

Jesus is the God who has already come to be with us, and who waits for us in our sufferings.

Only Jesus can carry this kind of pain, this pain that challenges my identity, that reaches all the way to me as a person. This is human suffering, and only He knows it all the way through. He is the True Man, who has united Himself to every human being. He is also the True God, the only begotten Son of the Father, who alone knows the depths of every person because He is the Source who whispers each person into being, and the Way, the Truth, the Life who calls each one to their destiny. The Word became flesh, and made our sufferings His own on the Cross, joining them to His victory, which is the revelation, the giving, the pouring out of God's love.

This Love is the secret of all the beauty and goodness and all the promises and yearnings that awaken our hearts, only to increase our thirst. But Love has come into the world to be with us, so that we will never give up, so that we will persevere, holding on to Him, recognizing that everything belongs to Him.

This is the hope that changes and transforms life, that saves us. Where else can any of us go? We have to go to Him, and give ourselves to Him who is the Origin and Sustenance and Fulfillment of all things.

"The Church is Humanity Made True..."

"Christ makes himself known, makes himself accessible, and gives us his Spirit in the Church through the sacred scriptures, the sacraments, apostolic succession, but above all his Spirit meets us and invades our lives through the entire life of the Church. The Church is the universe touched, enlivened, and possessed by Christ through his Spirit. That is, the Church is humanity made true, unified by the presence of Christ through the re-creative energy of the mysterious Spirit of Pentecost." 

~Luigi Giussani

Autumn in the Land of Our Dreams

The colors of this Fall 2025 came briefly and now most of them are gone, thanks to the winds and the rain and the frost of ever-longer nights.

I have continued to digitally sculpt my Autumn photos, and I have more to add to the "Gallery." Some of these are "variations on a theme," as you might notice:

Mother Cabrini: Communicating the Love of Jesus

“I will go anywhere and do anything in order to communicate the love of Jesus” (Saint Francesca Cabrini). 

Mother Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants.

Christina Grimmie and the Radical Gift of Self

Christina Grimmie's soulful voice and joyful visage remain sources of healing and hope for many people who live in the fragmented, threatening, isolating social milieu of today's world.

The image below is "Christina Grimmie pictured as a Cartoon Hero." But she was not just a “cartoon hero” — she was a real hero. In a world where people are constantly taking one another down, Christina inspired people to work and aspire to greatness in developing their talents, and to give themselves and love one another every day. In a world where people more and more want to take other peoples' lives away, she gave her life. In at world where we are becoming more and more afraid of people different from us, and more and more afraid of each other, Christina embraced everyone unconditionally, and — in the end — opened her arms wide to “welcome the stranger”… 

That end came nine years and five months ago. 

Today, November 10, 2025 — in a world that has become even more frightening, a world that seems to be spiraling down into darkness — we need to remember Christina Grimmie, who loved greatly through all her life right up her final moment in this world.💚

A Very Old Cathedral on a Very Old Hill

November 9th commemorates the completion and dedication in the year 324 of the Basilica of St John the Baptist on the Lateran hill, in Rome! Following Constantine's edict of toleration that "legalized" Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313, the new Emperor donated this property (from the Laterani family) to the Church of Rome. The Christian people built the church 1701 years ago, and all the generations of their descendants have worshipped the Lord in this place ever since, with their priests and - of course - their bishop, the Pope.

Building a church to bring people together in the presence of God also deepens their unity with one another. "The house of God is the true house of humans," as one famous author puts it. "Where people just want to inhabit the earth by themselves it becomes uninhabitable. Nothing more is built up where humans only want to build by themselves and for themselves. But where...people let themselves be claimed by God,..where they pull back and part with their time and their space [for Him], there the house of the community is built, there...the impossible on earth becomes a present reality. The beauty of the cathedral does not stand in opposition to the theology of the cross but is its fruit. It was born from the willingness not to build one's city by oneself and for oneself" (Josef Ratzinger).

The Supreme Rule of the Church is Love

Words from Pope Leo XIV about the Christian community, where we are all called to serve one another.

Stay With Us, O Lord

[Here are some words from my own brief prayer and meditation.]

Stay with us, O Lord. Let us experience your love in our poor, bewildered human lives. Let us find strength in the presence of that love, the grace and strength that make us free to open up and give ourselves. May we discover the fulfillment of our freedom in this gift. 

Lord, let us especially know your mercy, for we are awkward in the giving of ourselves, and sometimes we fall into doubt and fear because we forget that we are loved by you. Let us be rooted in your mercy, and find there the courage to ask for and receive forgiveness. 

Enable us by your grace to offer ourselves each day, and not succumb to the great temptation to give up in the face of our failures and sins. Have mercy on us, forgive us, raise us up, strengthen us to continue on the path of loving you and loving our brothers and sisters.

Save us from our clumsiness, our ignorance, our foolishness, and our weakness; do not let the narrowness of our own egotistical selves be a scandal to us. Let it rather be an occasion for greater trust in your Merciful Love, which is the Source of all that we are and have and do. Change us and carry us beyond ourselves into the immeasurable spaces of your goodness and your glory.

You who have given us our freedom — and who sustain its vitality within us — Lord, you want so ardently to bring our freedom to fulfillment through your wisdom and love, so that we might freely love you and be transformed in you and come to dwell with you for all eternity. 

Preserve us from turning away from you. Draw our hearts to you, convert us and bring us your healing. Give us trust in you. Stay with us, O Lord. Never permit us to be separated from you.

Jesus, have mercy on us. Come, Holy Spirit.

A Passing Shadow

My days are like a passing shadow and I wither away like the grass. But you, O Lord, will endure for ever (Psalm 102:13).

Death and Hope

In these days and weeks, we remember all those who have gone before us. We pray for the eternal fulfillment of all those who have lived and died with Christ.

Our hope in the face of death is Jesus Christ.

For each one of us, our hope is that we will recognize Jesus in our own death: He who died for me and who "dies with me" — really it's more correct to say that I am going to "die His death." We pray that through His death and resurrection, we may be made worthy of eternal life.

The drama of life and death is to abandon ourselves totally and completely to Him, or at least to throw our whole selves — however wildly and desperately — upon His infinite mercy.

Hope in the face of death doesn't come from trying to isolate my "I" exclusively in the spiritual aspect of myself, while suppressing and devaluing the whole reality of being a bodily person. Sometimes we imagine that in death we become angels, and the human body is shed like a casing that never really belonged to us.

But that is not what we are. We are not “spirits trapped in bodies.”

I am a bodily person. My spiritual, immortal soul is also by nature the form of my body. My body is an aspect of me. That is why death, in itself, is such an impenetrable mystery.

But Jesus transforms death, and my hope is that in dying I will "lose myself" only to discover myself fully in Him. In death I shall "lose" my body of this present age in order to live fully, face to face with Infinite Love, as a member of Christ's mystical body (a member of "the Church Triumphant").

This is our hope.

We have hope in the ultimate fullness of His victory, which includes our own resurrection, and the resurrection of all who have gone before us (and those who will follow us), so that the God who is Love might indeed be all, in all. May He make us perfect through Jesus Christ, so that we might rejoice forever in His glory.

October 2025 Hasn't Shown Much "Natural" Color

We've nearly reached the end of October, and there are still lots of tired green leaves hanging onto the trees. Much of this month's weather was mild. But we're now feeling colder temperatures along with gray skies and drizzle. We may yet get more nice colors in November.

The leaves vary somewhat, but we haven't yet arrived at the time when you can just point your camera up and automatically get gorgeous pictures. The first three photos posted here give a sense of how the canopy beneath the trees looks (not to mention the broader vistas).

Not exactly dreamy looking. What this Autumn requires is some "imagination" ... and the help of the digital art tools of JJStudios. But digital art based on photographs has been changing rapidly during the 2020s, as the tools have been getting a complete makeover. Apps that I have worked with for years are getting suped up with new A.I. features that usually don't deliver what they promise, but that can spit out some unusual (even "trippy") shape-and-color variations.

The project of digital art is changing, and I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do to make something interesting (at least, interesting to me) with the bright and sometimes garish images that scarcely resemble the original photos I began with or the scenes that inspired them.

But there are possibilities. Images can be remixed from using a variety of filters and manual adjustments. There may be more scope for the imagination, if I can learn how to control these constantly changing prisms of style, color, and texture.

In any case, Autumn demands color. And we shall have color for our October 2025 virtual gallery. Some of these are funnier than others, all of them are "experimental," but none of them were simply products of the technology. I put time, effort, and significant constructive work into these pictures, trying to make something "different" with the materials that the tech made available to me. So here we go — Autumn “With a Boost,” October 2025: