The Most Profound Darkness

"We watch full of hope

while awaiting His return,

when Easter will have

its full manifestation.

Sometimes

the darkness of night

seems to penetrate the soul;

sometimes we think:

'now there is nothing

to be done,'

and the heart no longer finds

the strength to love.

However, precisely in that darkness

Christ lights the fire of the love of God:

a flash breaks the darkness

and announces a new beginning.

Something begins in the most profound darkness

We know that the night is darkest

before the day begins.

However, precisely in the darkness,

it is Christ that conquers

and lights the fire of love.

The stone of sorrow is overturned

leaving space for hope."

~Pope Francis

"Spy Wednesday" Pancakes and Me on TV

Yes, we had pancakes for dinner.

No, I did not have thirty of them. But I had a good batch, with butter and honey.

This peculiar bit of "Catholic humor" where people mark Judas's betrayal by eating pancakes is a joke that we don't quite get. Really, pancakes aren't even silver.

Oh well, pancakes are pancakes, and one needs only the slightest excuse to eat them. And perhaps this humor holds onto the wild hope that Judas opened his heart in that final impenetrable moment as the noose was squeezing his neck. We can be certain that even in that moment, nothing was lacking to the mystery of the Divine mercy.

Still, God did not create us to be puppets or slaves. He wants to empower us to love Him freely, but He will not force His way into our hearts. Though we cannot rule out a miracle of mercy in his final moment, we can perceive from what we do know of Judas how the human person falls apart when he turns away from God.

And who among us is immune from the temptation to turn traitor under the weight of the mysterious ways of God? Lord, have mercy on all of us, sinners!

This morning I got a message from a friend saying that the priest who gave the homily for the morning Mass broadcast on the Eternal Word Television Network had mentioned my name. This was followed up by some phone calls, so Eileen and I decided to watch the replay of the broadcast this evening.

When the priest began to talk about "John Janaro writing about Judas," I was surprised and also a little confused. I wondered, "When the heck did I write about Judas?" But he cited the text at length, and then I remembered that I had written the reflection for last year's Magnificat "Lenten Companion" for Wednesday of Holy Week.

He gave a fine homily that was based on the text I wrote. I'm glad those texts are still helpful. I probably have a book's worth of Magnificat reflections from these seasonal issues and from the Scripture commentaries.

Of course, Eileen and I both had that funny "gosh, wow" feeling that our generation (at least) still gets from being on actual television. The proliferation of new media platforms in recent years has not yet taken away the glow of that peculiar vanity that only broadcast television can stir up.

Objectively speaking, however, it was an interesting reflection I wrote for last year's Holy Wednesday, so I'll reproduce it below.

Now I'm Gonna Get Serious About Lent... Before... it's... Over!

Okay, so much for "experiments in purple." It's rather a bit of a penance just to look at this murky graphic.

It's taken from a tweet I posted several years ago during Lent. I must have been having a "good Lent" that year. This year... eh, not so much.

These graphics illustrate that I will go to almost any lengths to do something else rather than pray or do actual good works! Honestly, I'm too distracted. I keep saying, "I'll get to it... right after I finish this one more thing!" It's not healthy. It's a bad attitude. And I have decided I'm going to change. I intend to start right after I finish this blog post.

Still, I do want to point out the artistic scheme (pathetic, I admit) that I have attempted to realize in the above graphic by taking two simple sentences of type and running them through the filters and color alterations of PaintNet as well as adding some further details, so that in the end they look like a 1970s tie dye tee shirt gone badly wrong.

I set the words in an oval background of varying shades of purple that moves inward from a tomb-like darkness to an orange bright. Most of this came through blundering with purple-ish filters, but then I saw a sepulchre theme emerging and also the Lenten journey from death to resurrection, from darkness to day, etcetera. So I sketched in the cross to span the opening.

Josefina said, "That's good, Daddy!" Well, she wouldn't just say that about anything. She must like it. On the other hand, she's eight years old. Hmmm.

"But I'm learning something about the software, maybe," I tell myself. Community freeware like PaintNet has lots of possibilities but also limitations, and the instructions are not always clear, at least to me. So it's a process of "learn-by-doing," and discovering how different tools work by... well... using them. I suppose I could call it "media research." Or I could call it "therapy" (because this kind of activity is a stress reducer, at least until it becomes its own obsession). In any case, I suppose it's preferable to wasting time reading political and ecclesiastical gossip on the Internet.

But back to the subject of Lent: Ah yes, besides practicing some online discipline and giving up a few sweeties, well... I don't think I'll win any prizes this year.

And now Holy Week comes upon us. That was fast! The snow just melted. I still haven't spent all my Amazon gift card money that I got for Christmas! Holy Week, already?

A few weeks into Lent this year, I posted this graphic:

This seemed to resonate with many Catholic friends. Of all the things I've posted on social media, nothing has ever been "shared" as much as this Lent/Computer joke! Haha, oh boy... uh, gee... we're all in big trouble.

But really, I hope we've opened up a few places in our souls so that the love of God might work more deeply within us. Sometimes at the beginning of Lent we draw up a large list in the hope of arriving at perfection in six weeks (and most of our list has been scratched by Saint Patrick's day or has at least become "negotiable"). Then there are some of us who feel guilty because our friends have big lists and we... don't.

But these comparisons are not helpful, really. Every person has his or her own vocation, with its own challenges and steps. The most important thing is to take the step that this season places before us.

I tell my children to try to focus on one sacrifice, however "small" it may seem to be, and then be faithful to it. Offer one little piece of daily life, and commit yourself to that offering in freedom. It's not a matter of imposing new "personal laws" on yourself; the Church has penitential practices that are obligatory so that we have a minimal framework for our common life as Christian people. What we offer personally is offered for love, every day. Thus we learn to love a little more.

It is through love that we will begin to glimpse the beauty and goodness of the sacrifices that "law" requires, not only for the time of Lent and Holy Week, but also in the whole realm of morality and growing in Christian maturity. We will begin to glimpse, a little more, the beauty and goodness of the sacrifices and the suffering that life requires of us, and even sometimes imposes on us.

This is how penance becomes beautiful and Lent becomes a time of remembering God's presence. Holy Week is leading to the celebration of Easter, and this celebration is the greatest of all reminders. The whole of Lent would be pretty dark and hopeless if it didn't lead to the joy of Easter. And Easter is near.

Let us hope and pray for a greater attention during Holy Week, a more ardent love, precisely because Easter is near, the Paschal Mystery, the victory of God's Love over sin and death.

In a sense our whole lives are a "Lent" of preparation for our own death, to die with Jesus, so we might rise with Him in the forever-Easter of Love's gift, Love's triumph.

Have We Allowed the Seeds of Betrayal to Enter Our Hearts?

Giotto (14th c.), detail of Judas

Judas clearly chose to betray Jesus. This was no sudden impulse. It was a premeditated decision to sell his Master for money.

But why? Surely, Judas had once loved Jesus. He left everything to follow Him. How did this love die?

It probably began slowly. Perhaps what happened to Judas, in the beginning, was the same thing that happens so often to us.

As the fervor of his first love was tested, and as he began to realize that Jesus and His plan were not like his initial hopes, Judas allowed disappointment to creep into his love. Over time, his love for Jesus grew cold, even though he continued to “go through the motions” of discipleship.

As disappointment grew into bitterness, his heart turned to other loves: money, personal ambition, independence, perhaps even the desire to follow someone else. We don’t know.

But we face the same temptation to betray someone we love. Consider our commitment to our marriage. Time inevitably reveals that our spouse is different, and that God’s plan for our marriage is different than we first imagined. Here we are challenged: Will we trust in God, be faithful, and allow love to grow? Or will we give in to disappointment, begin to seek other loves, and slowly betray the other person (and God) even as we still “go through the motions”?

Father of love, protect our hearts from the disappointment that leads to betrayal, and grant us the faith to follow your mysterious and loving plan, rather than selfishly clinging to our own expectations. We ask this in the name of Jesus your Son, who has loved us to the end. Amen.

[Published in Magnificat Lenten Companion, 2014, p. 60]

Jesus, Death... and Taxes

And so, it's April 15th. Less than two hours to go.

If you are an American, no further comment is necessary. You know that today is a day of penance, even when it doesn't fall during Holy Week. Of course, not everyone waits until the last minute. Maybe you filed weeks ago. Maybe you're getting a refund.

Still, today is a day that we all must remember the fragility of our lives at the hands of the powers of this world. Even those who benefit from the system know that it is a ponderous, ambivalent, and sometimes capricious patron.

They say that there are two things that cannot be avoided in this life: Death and Taxes. It seems to me not insignificant that the One who embraced death for us all began His life by being enrolled in the census. The Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem with the help of the Roman imperial bureaucracy and its tax system.

Joseph the Builder paid taxes. Jesus paid them too, in the many years of His quiet labor. When God took human nature, He became one of the multitude in the empire of Caesar. He Himself bid us to pay lawful taxes, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17).

So today, even as we recognize Caesar's authority to tax our money, we remember also that we must render to God what belongs to God, our consciences. Yet God seems so far away when the forces of the world loom over us. It would seem like nothing for worldly power to crush the human conscience if it could not corrupt it.

And if there were nothing but worldly power and then death, what hope would we have? Where would we, who sin for the sake of convenience, find the strength to adhere to truth at all costs?

Only Jesus has defeated death, and in so doing has affirmed that the relationship of the human person to God is greater than every earthly power. Our strength is in Him.

Cherry Blossoms and Holy Week Together: Must I Be Sad?

If I take their picture, will they last forever?

The cherry blossoms are finally in their glory.

I saw the pictures from the banks of the Potomac river in Washington D.C., but we have them here too, 70 miles away, lining Main Street Front Royal and popping up in clusters, here and there, all over town.

They are always a sign that Spring is taking hold. Some types have the cherry streaks, but many are bright white, as if the touch of warm air has transformed the very snow into flowers.

I realize that the lovely weather of recent days is going to cool off this week, and even bring some frost. Poor folk in the northeast and midwest are even supposed to get more snow! Oh, but it will melt right up.

While life bursts all around us, we walk the path of Holy Week. Perhaps that seems incongruous. Spring has finally come, and now we must be gloomy and think about death?

At this time of year, life is new and fresh and full of promise, but only for a season. The promise is fulfilled in growth and fruit and harvest, and then there is the sleep of Winter again. The beauty of things wounds us with longing. It whispers "forever" to our hearts and then it fades. Perhaps we should just not think about all that and simply enjoy the flowers. Still, the flowers will fade. The time will pass. The "forever" that life whispers... where in this world can we find it?

Holy Week is not a time to brood upon death. Death haunts us all the time (whether we brood or not). Death presses everywhere against the limits of our lives, in the exhaustion of our paltry loves, in the inexorable advance of weakness as all the seasons pass and the beauties fade.

Holy Week does not come to haunt us with death. It comes to awaken us to a greater hope.

Palm Sunday: What Really Happened

Palm Sunday

"Exult greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
Behold: your king is coming to you,
a just savior is he,
Humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

--Zechariah 9:9

Would Jesus Have Made the Cover of TIME Magazine?

Inside the magazine: Dateline Jerusalem, April 13, 0033

Here He comes! Everyone in Jerusalem is talking about Him.

He was just voted the most popular and the most influential man in Israel for the past year, beating out both the high priest Caiaphas and Herod. He has been hailed as the Son of David, the King of Israel! He is the enormously popular new rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth.

At today's Jerusalem rally, adoring crowds roared, "Hosanna!"

"We really think that Jesus can make a difference. He'll change things around here," said one observer.

"Jesus is great," said another, "We've been waiting for this moment since that time in the desert when he multiplied the bread. Just think what this will do for the economy!"

"And we can stop worrying about affordable health care," said another, "because he can just cure everybody. Problem solved!"

There is still no official confirmation of the report that Jesus is about to declare his candidacy for "Messiah," but his approval ratings in the polls have never been higher. There is no doubt that the Jesus Effect is being felt everywhere. He is the most popular rabbi in the world.

Even the opposition seems to recognize the fact. Leading Pharisees are reportedly saying to one another, "You see that you [i.e. we] are gaining nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him" (John 12:19).

Nevertheless, the opposition coalition of Pharisees, scribes, and priests continues their nightly strategy sessions, and there are some reports that indicate they may have established contact with a disgruntled high ranking member of the Jesus Campaign. So this story may yet contain some surprises.

As of now, Pontius Pilate's office has made no comment.