Family Photo Fiddling

With the help of some photo editing software I was able to do something a little different for my Facebook cover picture.

It's remarkable to think that three years ago I was using the "five monkeys" picture. There is no way they would all fit in our bed like that today:

I also got the most recent pic of Mommy and Daddy for the profile photo. We still look pretty much the same as ever.

The Eight Year Old Half-Pint

It's hard to believe it was eight years ago that Josefina Janaro was surprisingly born (she wasn't expected until December). She was a tiny preemie who needed surgery (and then more surgery and seven months in the NICU). How grateful to God we are that she made it! Contrast these pictures: Josefina, eight years ago in the NICU (a few weeks old), and then today. She's still tiny, but she's doing great. You've come a long way kiddo! (And so have we all.)

You're old enough to help prepare your own birthday dinner:

And to adapt the recipe of the famous Jacques Pepin for your birthday dessert: Chocolate mousse cakes with apricot jam and whipped cream. [And something that Josefina calls "corn-yak." I think she means cognac.]

As for presents? It looks like Christmas around here!

Josefina has fun with her Uncle Walter... and her presents!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOJO!

I Shall Always Be a Teacher

Professor in his duds, 2003. Only a goatee back then.

Well, it's September already.

The older kids -- John Paul, Agnese, and Lucia -- are pretty much back to their normal school routine. At Chelsea Academy this means plenty of study, plenty of sports and other activities in the fresh air, plenty of formation in their faith, plenty of fun, and plenty of homework too. They also manage to eat and sleep, somehow. (Haha!)

John Paul is a Senior now. As parents have been saying since the beginning of the universe, "Where did our little baby go?" But there's not much time to think about that: too many things to do this year. The college application and discernment process is well underway already.

College...

The beginning of September makes me think of the many years when I had a normal academic routine, as a student and then as a teaching professor. There are advantages, certainly, to the "quieter" style of life that I now must live, not the least of which is the freedom to make my own schedule. But I miss being caught up in that great swell of activity and anticipation and "new beginnings" that are always in the air with the new academic year.

Sure, I'll continue to be "special resource associate and scholar in residence" at the John XXIII Montessori Center (which starts up in a couple of weeks). That means at least that I will be getting up early in the morning with everyone else and going to the Center's office. It will be a good change of atmosphere, but it's not the same. It's not my classroom. It's been over six years but I haven't stopped missing it.

Still, I remain a teacher, and not only "at heart." I have found new forums in which to teach, and new subjects too. And I remain a student. In these last several years I have studied and observed and learned so much, from books, from other media, from observation, from endurance, from the whole scope of this unusual life.

I am convinced that the best teachers are also perpetual students; they communicate to their own students the enthusiasm about what they are learning. The best way to guide the search for truth (in any area) is to be on it one's self. The teacher is the one who is at the head of the hike, looking for the hilltop through the laborious path, and when he comes to the top and sees the view, he shouts back to the others: "Come this way, it's here, look at this wonderful view!" The teacher is the one who wants to know all about what he is seeing, who studies the map so he can understand as much as possible -- not only for his own personal appreciation but also so that he can point it out to the others: "There is the river that flows into that lake where the old fort is, and beyond the horizon there is...."

The teacher is also the one who sees the next hill, and says, "now we have to climb this one!"

Phonics and Father's Day Gifts

My Father's Day Promissory Note

One of the presents I got for Father's Day was a certificate from one of my children (guess which one) offering to make me breakfast. I'm sure that anyone who has a child in the six year old range learning phonics will have no trouble reading those words in the picture on the left.

Sometimes I feel like kids using phonics come up with more intelligent spellings for English words than the "official" spellings. Unfortunately, we do have to mess with their minds until all the correct (and counter-intuitive) written arrangements of the letters of the English alphabet become habitual for them.

In their natural innocence, however (i.e. while they're still learning), little kids make plenty of "smart mistakes." So it is that my certificate states:

AL MAKe YOO BReKFiST iF i KEN 

Let's pass over the fact that we still need to work on when to use uppercase and lowercase letters. That sentence clearly says: "I'll make you breakfast if I can."

Right?

Well, let me tell you: this is our fifth child going through phonics and it works. Josefina is still catching up with her age level, but she is moving quickly. And a reasoning process is evident in these mistakes, such as "brekfist" which makes perfect intuitive sense. (Who would guess that the word break and the word fast, when combined, would spell breakfast [but be pronounced "brek-fist"]?)

Enough about phonics for now. On to the "brekfist," which turned out to be more like a snack or a light lunch when I redeemed my gift certificate the other day. Teresa and Josefina collaborated on the food preparation. I was even presented with a menu, from which I selected my favorite "Josefina specialty," cream cheese bread rolls, along with fried apples with cinnamon (by Teresa).

They laid it all out on the table in a lovely way. There were more food and drink options, and I probably should have made them work harder, but I'm just not a very big eater these days. Oh, and I already had my own cup of coffee.

My light repast, complete with folded napkin. A lot of cream cheese in those bread rolls too.

Disarmingly simple, but prepared with much love. And I must say, really yummy too! I also enjoyed the company of the two pretty young ladies at the table. Here they are:

I am truly blessed to be their father. 

One+One=Three? Something Happened!

Life is a mysterious and wonderful thing. On June 1, 1997, a baby was born. A baby boy. A child. A human person. We named him. John Paul Augustine Janaro.

John Paul Janaro, obviously not a newborn here, but still pretty new.

Everyone is always talking about relationships and feelings and compatibility and men and women and marriage and who should get married and who has rights to what, and on and on. We want to know how we can maximize the mutual satisfaction of this unique physical, emotional, interpersonal bond between two people who love each other so profoundly.

Marriage. We go into it crazy, thinking that nothing could be deeper than our love, and all we want to do is hold onto the deepness and make it even deeper. "Me and you. You and me...." So what happens?

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS!!!

Oh, you mean "children"? People think, "Oh yes, we'll have children too. Of course." But here's the thing: we didn't "have a child" on June 1, 1997.

Saying that is just not enough. Life is mysterious. It wasn't just "a child." It was John Paul. It was him -- this person, unprecedented, unrepeatable, unimaginable, his own self, John Paul Janaro.

Nine months before that day, a universe was created. The Word spoke, and this person -- this "someone," unique, unfathomable, lovable, destined to know and love and exist even after all the stars and galaxies have burned themselves out, to live forever -- this person was created. One day there was me and Eileen and our love for each other, and the next day there was this person.

And then, on June 1, after making himself known in many ways as he grew under the heart of his mother, he was born. He came forth into the light and breathed the air and screamed his head off.

It's a moment when you realize that this "love" thing is a total revolution. My gosh. You make choices. You get swept up in emotions. You love each other and you open your hearts, but you don't "make" anything. Something happens: you don't deserve it, you can't earn it, and when this someone is given to you, it becomes clear that you have been given to him.

Yes, it's "cute"! It's also a friggin' MIRACLE!

Birth is a milestone. It's not the beginning, and it's not the end, but it's a milestone in which a human person says, "Here I am!" Soon it becomes virtually impossible to imagine a universe in which this person did not exist.

Love seems to overthrow mathematics. Mathematics says 1+1=2. Love says 1+1=3. (I'm probably plagiarizing G. K. Chesterton here. Surely he said this somewhere, but I've seen the truth of it for myself. And he would agree that my words, therefore, are not a quotation but a happy coincidence. It 's not about his or my silly writings, but about the fact that life is amazing.)

Love says 1+1=3. Eileen+John=Eileen, John, & John Paul. And Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, Josefina, and the love that continues to shine in the world through them. Are numbers really good enough for what we're talking about here? Sure, you can count children, but real love keeps going on. It keeps being a surprise and a gift that we can't measure.

We don't deserve any "number" of children; each one of them is a gift to us, and we in turn become gift to each one of them. When John Paul became my son, I also changed: I became his father. And this happens again, in a unique way, with each child. We grow in the giving of love, we become gifts of love when we receive the gift of a person.

Not everyone has children. But the miracle of children and families is a sign that the nature of love is the gift. We become ourselves by giving ourselves. This call to love is vivid in the family, because there is this other person who calls me "Daddy" -- I didn't make him, he is a mystery, but he claims me as his father and I want to belong to him in this way; I want to be this gift to him. So it is with each and every child. A family is persons given to one another in this very particular way, through the self-giving love of a man and a woman who commit to each other so radically that they open up a space where new human persons might be created (not on demand, not "made to order," but as the free gift of the One who has fashioned and designed marital love with wisdom and goodness). This mysterious Freedom does not always give children to spouses, but the Gift is always being poured out in ways that are beyond them, their own ideas, and their plans. Spouses who love each other truly open a place, and we must believe that in each gift of spousal love "something happens" that is more that their love, and that makes their love grow.

Families are the sign that this Love is being poured out, everywhere. They are called to manifest in a particular way that we are all gifts to one another. The family is a place where I learn that every human person can say to me, "You are my brother." We are all given to one another in circumstances that we do not control -- circumstances that call upon us to give ourselves in specific ways, with works of love that always have mysterious fruit.

Not everyone has children. But children are a sign for all of us that if we open up our love it will be shaped into an unfathomable gift that is always beyond our calculation. Whatever our circumstances may be, if we truly give ourselves in love, even the most simple gesture is carried in the hands of the One who can do all things, and who always does what is good, who always brings forth beauty, who brings everything to fulfillment.

This life we live is a mysterious and wonderful and strange thing. Sometimes we don't understand it at all. Sometimes it seems unbearable, and we suffer. On the other side of suffering, however, we see (or we will see) that through it all we have been loved.

Our son John Paul has grown in ways we can see and measure. My gosh, he has grown! But the deeper things are beyond our measure. What we see is something that prompts us to entrust ourselves to the mystery that we are all loved, and to move forward in the desire to see the face of the One who loves us.

Wishing you many more Happy Birthdays, John Paul. Thank God for you!

So what grade should I give this paper?

Baseball at age seven.

And then age 12.

And today, at 17 and growing UP.

Summer is Beginning, and It Won't be Dull

She spies something BIG!

It is good for one's health to have a small person such as this dashing about, chirping, bending one's ear, and asking questions all day long. Now that the school year is over, I can look forward to a summer full of such invigorating company. Yes, the school year for our family is rapping up as Chelsea prepares for its graduation this weekend. John Paul is about to turn 17 and to become a rising senior; at this time next year he will be graduating.

I'm sure we'll have good times together as a family this summer. But the older kids will do their own things, and Teresa (even though she's still my little girl) will no doubt have her usual whirlwind social life. There will be visitors and excursions. Some of the family might travel. The horizons of our children continue to expand.

Meanwhile Eileen will get a bit of a break from the teaching grind, and we will be able to sit at the table and drink coffee together in the morning, slowly. How splendid. And Josefina will bounce through the whole of my day and I will not be able to keep from laughing.

Sometimes she sees my face and knows I'm gritting my teeth. She comes over and grabs my head and holds it, and then starts patting my head (even bopping it a bit) and says, "C'mon Daddy, c'mon Daddy...."

And I feel like I'm going to be okay.

There is this mysterious level of maturity in her, but even as I say that I feel that it sounds like an exaggeration. She is just a little kid, with all of a kid's fragility and a kid's personality taking shape. She needs my strength. They all do. O Lord, please give me the strength that they need from me.

Really, Josefina is an energetic, sometimes exasperating, always engaging child with an abundant and creative sense of humor.

In other words, she's an absolute hoot.

Thank God for her!

Of course, when we saw these cookies we just had to buy them!

The Janaro Family Goes to Washington

Heading to the big city

I promised a post and more pictures from our family fun day in Washington, D.C. last week, and with good reason. It was fun! Not like hold-on-to-the-edge-of-your-seats kind of fun. It was a day of being together and sharing in a little adventure.

I went to school in Washington, D.C. I worked there. I lived in the D.C. area. All of that was more than 20 years ago. I can't think of a time when the whole Janaro family -- all seven of us -- went into the city. All we did was go to a couple of museums and hang around the Mall (not a shopping mall, but the long park between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building).

I also grew up in cities, whereas my kids are small town and country born and raised. Which means that they are thrilled and amazed in ways that I will never understand, by activities such as riding the Metro.

"Wow, this is incredible!"

John Paul is veteran Metro rider, having gone to Nats & Caps games, but he still likes it.

Agnese and Teresa: there were plenty of seats but they wanted to stand just for fun!

Lucia looks cool, but if you can see her dimples you know she's having fun.

We got off at the "Smithsonian" station, had our lunch and goofed around a little. The Mall has a leisurely feel to it, even in the middle of the week. It doesn't feel like you're in the capital city of the most powerful nation in human history.

Agnese and the Washington Monument: Are we tourists or what?

John Paul is cool.

"Can we just have the picnic now, please?"

Okay, we eat and then we're off to the sculpture garden and the art museum. The sculpture garden is, well, interesting, with things like this metal tree:

If this ever blossoms, it really will be time for "the return of the king"!

John Paul explains the deep existential significance of this... umm... thingy.

Eileen at the Chagall mosaic, which is amazing (much better than this photo).

Inside the National Gallery of Art, we went through the regular (and quite remarkable) collection, and we were allowed to take pictures. So I took hundreds of pictures with my phone. It used to be, strictly, no pictures, but now you just click away. Phone pictures are not that great, but it's fun just setting them up, looking at the work from different angles, discovering details. And of course, sometimes you just stop and look.

Pictures of a few works that I might not have otherwise noticed, such as:

And many other beautiful works. We spent a lot of time on our feet, but there are plenty of lovely and atmospheric places in the Gallery to rest also:

Josefina relaxes by a fountain.

Then it was off to the Museum of Natural History. We didn't have too much time here (and by then I was out of gas, so I spent most of that time on a bench), but we did get to see THE DINOSAURS. Just in time too: this whole section is closed as of this week for renovations that will take several years.

Josefina thought the dinosaurs were creepy. It took some cajoling to get her to stand in front of one so I could take a picture. She enjoyed the smaller exhibits like the fossils:

"AHHHH! Do I have to smile?"

Prehistoric sea is more in the comfort zone. "Is that real?"

I realize that unless you are the grandparents of these children (Hi Dad, hi Mom!) you're bored by now, so it's time for us to go home:

Back out to the Mall. Clouds in the late afternoon.

Escalators are fun too!

I highly recommend doing lightly planned little trips with the family. Don't try to do too much and don't have huge expectations, but just enjoy what's there and enjoy being together. It's worth it.

Our Children are Made For God

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and children. Ah yes, the children. The vocation to participate in God's creative love for them extends to the "raising" of these children.

It’s hard enough to provide them with food and the needs of daily life. But our task as parents is greater than this. Each child is a person—a developing and expanding spiritual universe of understanding and love, of creativity, of searching and questioning and hunger. Their hunger is not just for bread, or for education, or for human affection. It is all these things, but—within and beyond all of this—it is a hunger for God.

How can my wife and I give them God?

The awareness that we are called to be instruments through which our children discover and experience the love of God as Father is truly overwhelming. Nevertheless, we see in the gospel that Jesus is always asking His disciples to do the impossible. After He finishes preaching to five thousand people, He tells His disciples to give them the food they need to eat for their journey home. "Feed these five thousand people!"

What do they have to give? They have seven loaves and a few fish. They have something, but it is clearly not enough.

We too have something: our own poor, selfish, struggling humanity. But there is something else we have, and—like the disciples—we keep forgetting it! We have Jesus!

My wife and I have Him in a particular way, precisely in the way that our children need to come to know Him, through the grace of the sacrament of marriage. Our marriage is the foundation for a communion of persons, and Jesus is at the center of that communion, so that we and the children can grow in the ways of self-giving love.

We need to ask for faith to recognize that He is with us as husband and wife, as father and mother, as two fragile, limited people, so that He can take us, and (yes, like the loaves) break us, and give Himself through us to our children and to everyone He entrusts to us.

Lord Jesus, give us faith to recognize Your presence in our lives every day, and increase our confidence that with You, nothing is impossible. In Your hands, may our poor humanity be transformed into the gift of Your love for each other and for our children.

The Most Important "Work" of Marriage

Lately there has been a lot of talk about marriage in the blog world (especially among Catholic Christians). Young couples enter into Christian marriage, perhaps, with starry eyes and optimism and even a bit of forgivable "overconfidence." We've been there, and felt that way. We know that time will teach them the hard work of married life, of unity and fidelity, of the experience of discord (even the Pope recently mentioned how "throwing plates around" is a normal experience of spousal argument).

But, above all, time (and their openness in faith and love) will allow them to experience the inexhaustible power of the grace of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus in the sacrament of marriage. The hope, of course, is that Christian newlyweds are prepared in such a way that they truly believe in this grace from the beginning. Nevertheless, the whole of married life is an ever deeper verification of the reality of the grace of marriage and it's superabundant adequacy to endure and to grow through a vast array of unimaginable circumstances.

All of this is very true. Older married couples can list circumstances of good times and bad, sickness and health, a million awkward things about sharing life right down to who hogs the blankets every night. We can talk about the importance of nurturing our unity through these circumstances and through communication and trust and forgiveness.

All of this is very true.

But there is something lacking in this conversation. Maybe we take it for granted because it's so obvious. Or perhaps because it's so unique, and so seemingly "beyond us" when we think about ourselves as married couples that it gets left out when we theorize about marriage.

Eileen and I would say after almost 18 years -- and through many trials involving work, money, my disability, illness, and such -- that the experience of our marriage is marked overwhelmingly by five very precise, very unique circumstances that unite us deeply and personally, in wonder and prayer, in fear and trembling.  

Their names are John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina.

In the old days this was called the primary end of marriage, articulated in what may seem to be less than soul stirring language as "the procreation and education of offspring" (I've never been keen on the word offspring. It makes me feel like we're bugs or something. How about another word, like children.)

Of course, husband and wife must love each other. But this unity is inseparable from the fruitfulness it engenders; it exists within that fruitfulness. The sacrament of marriage is the fountain of that most basic community of persons, the family. Even if spouses cannot procreate physically for some reason, their unity has an intrinsic fruitfulness of radical constructive hospitality that God will reveal to them (whether it be adoption, foster care, or some other special charism of giving to the larger community).

So marriage is about building up the relationship, the "two-becoming-one-flesh," the friendship, the mutual help, the fidelity. It's a relationship between two people, a husband and a wife. And yet, precisely insofar as it succeeds in really being a genuine spousal unity, it will transcend these two persons, it will "take flesh" in life -- and not only in the agreements about things like leaving the toilet seat up or down -- but above all in other living human beings, which means that if nature is unhindered these will be new human beings, new persons created by God within the radical openness to Him that spousal love entails.

Let me put it simply: marriage is about children. That doesn't mean reducing an interpersonal relationship to a mechanism for "reproduction," for cranking out offspring. It means that married love is radically at the disposal of God's creative action. Married love is procreative; it is God's instrument for engendering and fostering human community. It is interpersonal love, and that is why it includes the possibility of human reason discerning the will of God regarding all the NFP stuff, because married love must always be radically at the disposal of God's creative action, even when a given expression of love is not seeking to result in a child. After all, men and women don't produce babies. Rather, their love creates a space of psychosomatic unity within which God creates new human persons.

Thus marriage is the stuff of families, of children and then of grandchildren, of communities and eventually of peoples who encounter one another. And the sacrament of marriage in Christ builds up God's people, who go out into all the world bringing the gift of his love.

When we speak about married life, let's not forget about family, about our children, or (as the nuptial blessing puts it) our childrens' children. The family is not in competition with the unity between the husband and wife; rather it is the place where that unity is most profoundly expressed and lived.

And children are never abstract. They are the history of the husband and wife loving each other in God. Eileen and I don't just have some anonymous "offspring." We have been given John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina. Each is loved uniquely by God, is uniquely His image and likeness, and is destined to live and love and share in His glory.

As Eileen and I journey together toward the Lord, our children remain the great, astonishing, incalculable surprises, the mysteries, the primary expressions and concrete engagement of our unity, and our most profound "common interest." In front of each of them, we remain in awe of God, and of each other.

On Parenting and Encounter

It's particularly hard to be a parent in the secularist culture of the Western world today. But Eileen and I have been blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends who support one another in the task of giving their kids a complete education.

We see all the dangers and frustrations and dead ends in our society; some of us have been down these paths in the past. But we also see many possibilities for goodness and beauty and solidarity in our society -- many perennial human possibilities but also many new possibilities opened up by all that is genuine in this emerging new epoch.

The forces of corruption are pervasive, as is the tremendous damage that is being done to persons, relationships, communities, and the civil order. It's only human for us to want to be "protective" of our children.

So we protect them, certainly, by setting certain prudent "boundaries," but also by living so as to build an environment, together with our friends and their children, that allows them to grow and develop through the normal stages of childhood and youth. We thus engage life not with a reactionary ideology, but from inside the positive dynamic of human nature and redeeming grace: the life Jesus generates among us because he is present with us.

We live with Jesus, within the context of the family, supportive institutions, and the sacramental life of the Church. From this context we introduce our kids, in a pedagogical way, to the great potential, the challenges, and the struggles of adult life in this society.

Do I mean something more here than simply that "we want to raise good kids"?

Well, certainly we want to raise good kids.

With the right pedagogy, we hope to help our children cultivate a generous personality, an authentic understanding and empathy, and a sense of responsibility based on the truth -- a solid moral character.

These are all realistic and admirable goals.

But there is a problem that might arise. I might be inclined to take as a "given" the very purpose of everything else in life, to assume it in such a way that I forget about it or it loses focus. I want an intellectual and moral formation for my kids. But as the Pope said, "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ." (And this is not Pope Francis speaking. This is Benedict XVI, and he says this over and over.)

I want to help my children to be open to the love of Jesus. I want them to encounter Jesus, to be drawn by his love, and to follow him in the paths of their vocations.

It's especially easy among us Christians to focus on raising good, morally strong kids who have the right ideas. It's easy for us to talk about Jesus and the Church and faith, but forget that he is present with us, that he is drawing the hearts of each and every one of our children and shaping their destiny according to the mystery of his wisdom and love.

Our children belong to God. It's easy to forget that as parents our vocation is to have stewardship over them, and the environment in which they awaken to life and hear his voice.

Of course we want our kids to be moral, but why? It is because we want them to respond in love to the God who gives himself to us in Jesus. This is what life is all about. Our primary task as parents is to prepare our children to encounter Jesus and follow him.

And I have failed so often (in 17+ years of parenting) to be the instrument of God's love to my children, but I pray and I beg Jesus to shine through even my weakness, to touch the hearts of my children and draw them to him, to enable them to know that he loves them personally and calls them to share in his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.

Our children have been created for this and given to us for this. How do we truly succeed in our task as parents?

I can only humble myself before the Lord and ask for his grace for my own life, for my wife and our marriage, and for our family. The infinite mercy of the heart of Jesus is my hope. May all our children encounter him in his mercy, and place their trust in him.

"The Janaro Family" Turns Sixteen Years Old

John Paul at maybe three or four months old.

So do you have a little baby in the house? On June 1, 1997 we had our first little baby at three o'clock in the morning. I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "Gee, it feels like it just happened yesterday!"

Actually, no. It doesn't feel that way at all. It was, in fact, sixteen years ago. Since then, I've lived half my adult life (note, I said "adult" life, which was preceded by 18 years of "pre-adult" life... you don't need to do the math). Four daughters have come after him, and many things have happened since then.

Sometimes I'll come across a book and realize that its been 16 years since the last time I read it. That feels unusual. Light in August by William Faulkner... I just read that recently, didn't I? No, actually, I was reading it while we were waiting for John Paul to be born. That seems like "yesterday."

John Paul at the age of sixteen.

But with my son there is a relationship. There has been a certain intersubjectivity* (n.b. *large philosophical word) between father and son, and with the other members of the family. It is the history of a relationship and a larger context of relationships that has grown and changed from year to year. My own childhood years seem very long in my memory. In a way, his years seem long too, at least when I think of the time in terms of our relationship and the subsequent development of our family up until the present.

John Paul was born like a little boxer, shaking his fists and wailing but also looking me straight in the eye with what appeared to be a sense of awareness and intelligence. Smart little feller.

He was the beginning of our family. He was the one who made me look at myself for the first time and say, "I'm a father." It put fear and trembling into me.

We're all growing together. At every point, I feel a more profound sense of helplessness: "How am I going to be a father to this (these) child (children)?" Somehow, Eileen and I have found the resources for every stage thus far. We are flawed parents raising flawed children, but we are also blessed and lifted up by grace and carried all along the way.

What does a father do? I don't have a clear "formula;" its a gift that keeps unveiling itself. A father loves his wife, and is grateful for her. He spends a lot of time on his knees begging God for help. He tries to teach and love and discipline with a trust in the grace of vocation and the providence that makes a family, as well as a healthy awareness of the "organic" reality that nurtures, in time, both interrelationships and the individual uniqueness of each person in a family. He never gives up on paternal tenderness, even when he fails every day. He prays together with the family. He prays alone, for the family. He prays and works with his wife, and trusts above all in the grace of Jesus present through the sacrament they share in marriage.

He is aware of the failures of his children, he is patient, he instructs, he corrects, but always he forgives. He does his best to be a man, but doesn't try to prove his manhood in some artificial way, and doesn't get insecure about his own weaknesses, because everyone is weak... (and fathers will be confronted with their human weaknesses in so many ways). He doesn't withdraw or hide. He just keeps getting up again, and keeps working on it.

Real Life, Real People, Real Love

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).

The name of Jesus is a prayer. When I confess that Jesus is Lord, I am doing so much more than just saying words. I am expressing my commitment in a perceptible way. I am bearing witness. I am lifting up my soul in prayer to the One for whom everything has been created, the One who was born and died and rose from the dead, the One who established Himself as the center and the fulfillment of history, the One who draws all things to Himself, the One who has entered my life, my history, and has proven that the meaning of my life is to belong to Him.

I confess that Jesus is Lord.

He is my Lord. I exist for Him, in a world that exists for Him, this God who became a man and poured Himself out in love on the cross. He pours Himself out in love for me in this moment; He begs me to open my heart and let Him love me in this moment, so that He might fill me with His Spirit and free me to love Him and be transformed in His likeness and cry out "Abba!" This is life. God. Love.

My mouth. This is the reason my mouth was created: to say, "Jesus is Lord!"

For me, this is not an abstract idea. Jesus has grabbed hold of my real life. Every day I see faces that remind me that this is a fact. My confession of faith is not made in solitude. I belong to the Church, and this "Church" is not a faction, not an organization defined by some agenda. It is "living stones," it is real people.

Even as I type these words, I am not alone. The Church is in my living room. Here are six people who remind me that Jesus is Lord of this moment. We are a family. Sometimes we drive one another crazy and get frustrated. We are always falling short, and failing one another. Still, He is Lord, and He is changing us through this life. He is shaping our lives right now, in this moment. Here is this woman and these children (watching a hockey game, doing homework, driving a toy truck on the arm of my chair); without Jesus this moment would have been impossible. Without Jesus, we would not be together.

 

This moment is entirely the fruit of a history of belonging to Him.

The commitment of marriage and family does not have its source in my own generosity. I know very concretely that without Jesus, I would never find the courage to share my life with another human person, much less to surrender myself with this other person to the creative freedom of God so that new human persons might come into the world and experience love through us.

Without Jesus, this doesn't happen.

I am certain that those who aspire to live marriage and family in a true way are sustained by the grace of Jesus Christ. If they do not know His name explicitly, still it is His grace that engenders within their hearts the seeking, the hope, the longing to see the face that makes love possible. In that longing, that poverty, He draws them and sustains them and shapes their hearts and their voices so that one day they will sing the glory of His name.

I am certain of this. I know that without Jesus, my own life is impossible.

Without Jesus; without the Church and her enduring witness; without the supernatural strength of the sacraments; without the people (beginning with my own mother and father, my brother, and others--you know who you are) who confessed with their mouths and lived with their lives this faith, and who communicated to me a love of God that is greater than all my fears...without this reality I have no life.

I have seen life. I have seen with my own eyes that Jesus makes it possible to live a marriage and not be afraid of life, of children, of the mystery of children who need love that is greater than anyone can give.

I have lived with these people, who can give themselves in little gestures, who witness the love of God in their  goodness and their confusion, who struggle and endure and suffer and find joy. I know these people who are so inadequate and broken in themselves, but who are not defeated by their own failures; these people who find forgiveness and extend forgiveness and carry on with a hope that is greater than their weakness.

And I have known certain real people who love Jesus with a vividness that sacrifices everything in an exclusive commitment to Him, a commitment to speak His name to all, to go anywhere, to pour themselves out for persons they have never met....

Without the experience of such a love for Jesus and for me, my life would be nothing. I would have my solitude, my sickness, and the prison of my own thoughts. And a deep desperate cry to an unknown Someone: "please, come!"

Jesus is Lord.

I have seen this. And it is real life. I tell fun stories about my family, and we do have a lot of fun, but family life is hard. Its mysterious and overwhelming. Its messy. Its exhausting. Its a human family, and Jesus doesn't do magic. He doesn't make our humanity disappear; He embraces it and transforms it in His patience, in time.

The name of Jesus is not magic. There are many people who talk about Jesus and do stupid things. Even crazy things. There is nothing surprising about human failure.

The miracle is this life which amazes us, which makes us go forward, stumbling, falling, forgetting, being sorry, being forgiven, stumbling and going forward, convinced that He is with us and that His love is greater than everything.

I have seen a life that is only possible because He has conquered fear, He has conquered death. He has really, truly been raised from the dead, in transformed and glorified flesh and blood. I believe this in my heart. It is His flesh and blood and His glory that makes my own life. It conquers my weakness, renews my spirit, sustains my hope.

Hair, Hair, Everywhere

How do you even open this thing?

Slowly but surely, this is becoming a house full of women.

I am thinking this as I watch various heads of hair being combed and brushed, tied and untied, twirled and braided and unbraided. Hair, hair, hair, hair, long glorious rivers of hair. Mommy combs Lucia's hair while unweaving a tangle here and there (a process which Lucia seems to think is some form of torture). Teresa brushes it to one side, then swings it back, fiddles with it, brushes it again.

Josefina has gone to sleep. But earlier, she was perched above Mommy, behind her in the chair, "fixing" Mommy's hair. Josefina can still "perch" and wiggle her way into places already occupied by grown ups. The others are too big for that.

We're not going anywhere right now. Just sitting around the living room on a January evening.

Feminine mysteries. The bunching and braiding. The pins and clips that have to match with an outfit (huh?). Fuzzy hair bands all over the house (in various colors). Its destined to increase more and more as they grow (even though we're determined keep the bling level under control). I'm convinced that some of these hair gizmos defy the laws of physics.

How does that clip open? How does it stay shut?

We are a low frills family. Still, I think that each girl has her own bag just for hair stuff. (And the women reading this are saying, "of course, what's so complicated about all this?" But the men understand my perplexity.)

When John Paul's hair gets more than an inch long, all he wants is a haircut!