Christ is Risen, But What About Me?

How often does it happen that during Easter time we feel uneasy or troubled because we don't have the tangible joy we think we should?

Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and we all sing, "Alleluia!" and eat lamb and sweets. Then we eat leftovers. We sing "Alleluia" all week.

And now here we are, still plodding along.

I know that I'm not in ecstasy. I'm not marvelously changed, or at least I don't appear to be. I still have the same faults, the same incoherence, and the same sufferings. Some people may even face new or greater afflictions in this time of joy and celebration.

Is there any connection between the liturgical season of Easter and our "all too ordinary" lives with our daily troubles and stumbling and even catastrophies? Does it make any difference?

We hope that we have been moved closer to God in these weeks and months of prayer and penance, solemn commemoration and reaffirmation of faith, and perhaps we have felt this or seen it in some concrete ways. However, we may also feel "stuck" in circumstances that haven't turned out the way we expected them. We may think, "Christ is risen, but I'm still suffering!"

Maybe my life and sufferings are different from yours, but deep down we are all on the same road. We are all sinners, and we fall and try to get up over and over. We can also have periods in life when it's just like groping in the darkness or collapsing from exhaustion.

And we may ask ourselves, "Where is God, like really, as a source of help?"

Don't get discouraged during this time, even if it happens to be Easter time. Jesus in His wisdom and mercy is drawing us to Himself even when our lives seem like an empty tomb and we still don't feel like we know where He is.

When it seems to me that God is nowhere in my life, the only thing I can do is cry out for Him. And trust in Him. And it seems not to make anything feel better or solve anything. I just have to do it again and again, in so many aspects of my own life.

But He does answer, and He works in His time and His way. Sometimes I can see this, but other times it may take years to recognize the first hints of the mysterious work that He accomplishes, and a full understanding can only be found in eternal life. He always gives enough for that next small step on the path, however small and weak it may seem. He gives enough for each little step.

"Ah, but sometimes it all just seems unbearable!"

That's because it is unbearable.

Only Jesus can carry this kind of pain, this pain that is the journey of a human life into the depths of the Mystery of God. My pain, my life: only He knows it all the way through.

The only hope is to abandon everything to Him. "Jesus, I give myself to you. Take care of everything." Again and again, whatever, and wherever, and how, and why... "Jesus I abandon everything to you."

And Mary is always there. She is there to carry us all the way to Him.

I pray in this Easter season that all of you, my dear friends, will be held by the infinite gentleness and mercy of God. I pray that He will pour out His healing grace into all the places where it is needed.

I don't want to sound like I am ignoring the hard realities of life by kicking up a cloud of "religious talk." I really mean that there is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to bring these burdens, this life, this cry of the heart.

Jesus on the Cross. Jesus risen from the dead. 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 it to Him.

When I am Drowning, Lord, Save Me!

Today's gospel always strikes me. It's such a parable of our relationship with God. How frail we are, and how easy it is to forget, to falter, to lose confidence in God.

"O you of little faith," Jesus says, "why did you doubt?"

The compassion of God wants us to understand that there is never any real reason to give up on Him. There is never any circumstance in which He does not accompany us and draw us to hope in Him and abandon ourselves to Him.

Still, how easily we are overwhelmed by difficulties, and they are not only the great pains but also the ordinary frustrations we face every day. Even though we have seen His miracles of love, we must learn confidence again and again as we walk on the waters of life.

I can say many things about the meaning of suffering and about the fact that God knows all things and directs everything to the good, and yet, when it comes to my own trials I seem to lose sight of it all and start to flounder. My sufferings seem to be nothing else but humiliation; I feel like I am being crushed, or suffocated. And what is it after all—petty things! The voice of discouragement begins to creep in.

There is always the danger of discouragement. But God’s mercy is stronger, and I cry out to Him.

I am learning to trust Him because I have seen that He does not leave me alone. It is like that moment in Peter’s life when, after beginning to walk on the water, he panics and starts to sink. Jesus reaches out and grabs him.

When I am drowning, this is the one thing and the essential thing: let Him grab me.

Edith Stein: Light in the Darkness of the World

Today the Roman calendar observes the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Edith Stein (1891-1942). Hers is a great story, from her Jewish roots, through atheism, to the search for truth in philosophy, to conversion to Christ in the Catholic Church, to teaching and advocating the dignity and vocation of women, to the cloister of Carmel where she continued to write philosophical and spiritual works, and finally to Auschwitz where she gave her life.

Edith Stein is a special saint and helper for the world we live in today. Her death in the Holocaust links her forever to her own Jewish people, whose endurance through all of history remains a mysterious sign of the irrevocable faithfulness of the gifts and the call of God (see Romans 11:29). She is also a martyr of charity, a witness to God's love for the human person, and to the fact that no state or society or human idea has the right to build itself on the dead bodies of other innocent human beings.

And especially, she is one of the children of Carmel, who wear the mantle of Elijah and listen for the still, small voice of the Lord, who know the hunger for God and the fire that comes from heaven. She knows what it means to search, and to find. She also knows the darkness -- the terrible affliction in this past century of a world that cannot find God and cannot find satisfaction or hope in anything else, a world that protests against its own nothingness by an endless spiral of violence.

She knows the darkness, and she knows that God is present there, not to be grasped by our human powers, but to reveal Himself as the companion of our weakness who leads us on hidden pathways through faith, hope, and love.

She knows human life in its frailty, summoned by the Mystery of God infinitely beyond itself, but also carried by Him day by day in the conquest of fear and the promise of hope. Her prayer speaks to everyone who travels the path of life:

"O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace" (Edith Stein [St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross]).

The Path of Little Cuts

John Janaro around the year 1992

I meant to post this a couple of days earlier, to correspond with its original date, but I haven't exactly been on the ball lately. Nevertheless, it turns out to be a happy delay. This little anecdote has some echoes of the theme of personal suffering as articulated by Msgr. Albacete in yesterday's post.

The young man who wrote these words in May of 1992 was still riding on the cloud of his recent success in the public presentation and defense of his complex theological thesis. He was full of the praise of the examining professors and the audience, and perhaps had begun to puff up with the feeling that he really was as "brilliant" as they seemed to think.

One may or may not be brilliant, but it is not helpful to allow one's self to become preoccupied with any kind of overconfidence, since it obscures the real smallness and fragility and radical neediness that constitutes our human condition, even the condition of someone who is a genius.

I've since learned that whatever brilliance I may have had was easily paralyzed by debilitating disease, and easily turned into a weapon against itself by neurological dysfunctions of the brain. The human person is fragile indeed, but also -- by the force of the implacable aspiration of a living vocation and the strength of Divine grace -- tenacious and adaptable, capable of refocusing and moving forward.

One learns, slowly, that self-satisfaction and pride choke off the true growth of the person, and that what is needed is a realistic assessment of one's capacities and a giving-over of everything to the wisdom and goodness of God, to follow the way that He leads.

As I said, one learns slowly -- for the most part. This lesson is a journey of trust, realism, and self-surrender.

I am still on that journey, 22 years after I wrote these words. I still have a scar on my finger from the injury I describe below. It was a small suffering, but it reminded me that I was on the road to transcendence, a long and arduous road.

Young John Janaro, May 14, 1992:

All That Lies at Hand

O God, O Jesus, O vivifying Spirit:

Without You I can do nothing.
Without You,
every moment is a crushing burden;
every trial pricks and stings my tired flesh.

Without You,
I do nothing;
I am nothing;
I am a huge, hollow hole of nothing.

O Lord my God;
O Jesus, Redeemer and Healer;
O Holy Spirit—Lord and Giver of Life:

With You
I can do all
that lies at hand

in the small space of today.

With You,
I can endure whatever weight
You ask me to bear in this moment,

trusting in Your wisdom and love.

--adapted from a passage in my book about the challenges of living with chronic debilitating illness: Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy (Published by Servant/Franciscan Media).