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 Website: http://jdjansen.blogspot.com/
Profile: I'm the father of five and the husband of one. I'm Catholic. I'm a Chestertonian.
Recent posts by John Jansen:
By John Jansen on May 27th, 2010 | Category: Family Life, MarriageIf I recall, I think Rob had a post a while back encouraging the other Catholic Dads to share stories of how our lives had been influenced by a particular priest — what with this being the Year of the Priest and all.
In that vein, here’s my contribution.
Around Christmastime of 1999, during my senior year of college, I had dinner with a young priest I had met through some mutual friends. In the course of our conversation, at one point he asked if I’d considered the priesthood.
I’m glad he did, as I tend to think priests could do that sort of thing more often when talking with young men.
I replied that I had given some thought to the priesthood, but that I had recently started dating Jocelyn, and I felt that it was my vocation to marry. (Incidentally, we will celebrate our 9th anniversary on August 4 — which happens to be the feast of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.)
The priest, in turn, said something very wise, and which I have never forgotten: Whatever vocation you choose, you should feel that you’re giving up something.
He then went on to say that when he meets prospective seminarians who say they would never want to be married or have children, that’s a cause for concern. How much would they really be giving up by becoming a priest?
This priest’s counsel really gets at the nature of vocation. We ought not choose to live our lives the way we ourselves would want to live them, but rather we should choose to live our lives in accord with the way God wants us to live them — which always, always involves sacrifice on our part.
Some of the prophets
By John Jansen on April 12th, 2010 | Category: Culture Concerns, Marriage, SexThere’s an excellent column posted recently on National Review titled “Getting Serious about Pornography”.
It begins:
Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.
According to an online statistics firm, an estimated 40 million people use this drug on a regular basis. It doesn’t come in pill form. It can’t be smoked, injected, or snorted. And yet neurological data suggest its effects on the brain are strikingly similar to those of synthetic drugs. Indeed, two authorities on the neurochemistry of addiction, Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, claim it is the ability of this drug to influence all three pleasure systems in the brain — arousal, satiation, and fantasy — that makes it “the pièce de résistance among the addictions.”
It’s written by a psychologist whose husband abandoned her and their children in the wake of his long-term porn addiction.
Read the whole thing.
Mark Shea recently drew attention to some remarks by Mars Hill Pastor Mark Driscoll:
In Revelation (the last book of the New Testament), Jesus is a prize-fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is the guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.
Shea remarked: “I’m sure the guards in charge of the scourging at the pillar felt the same way. Surely, the measure of our worship is ‘Can I beat up Jesus?’”
His comment prompted me to recall this ancient Eastern icon:
Its name? Christ the Bridegroom.
Think about that for a minute, especially in light of the Events we will commemorate a few days from now.
I, like most men on their wedding day, went to great lengths to look my best.
And yet, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — the Bridegroom of bridegrooms — is here shown with His hands bound, stripped half naked, having just been scourged, crowned with thorns, and as a result so weak that He can’t even hold His head up straight.
Yes, Christ the Bridegroom, for He was preparing to perform the ultimate act of self-sacrificial love for His Bride the Church just a few hours later, the completion of which He would signal by crying out from the gibbet of the Cross words we rightly associate with marriage:
“It is consummated.”
Related
If you’ve never heard of Mark Driscoll, fellow Catholic Dads blogger Matt Yonke has some thoughts on his particular brand of “high octane Calvinism” here.
[Cross-posted at Lunch Break]
By John Jansen on March 3rd, 2010 | Category: Family Life, ParentingRecently, our seven-year old daughter Teresa — our firstborn child — learned to knit.
In itself, this is really no big deal, I suppose, given that it’s hardly unheard of for a child to know how to knit. But for me, as her dad, the thing that struck me about her newfound ability is that this is the first time I can recall that one of our children has acquired a skill that I don’t have.
From the time our kids are very young, we teach them to crawl, walk, talk, tie their shoes, read, etc., but these are all things that we ourselves know how to do. And still, to be sure, when our children have developed (or will develop) any of these basic skills, as their dad it has brought me great joy to behold each of these milestones, and will continue to do so.
But now that our children are beginning to learn skills that I myself don’t have, it has brought me even greater joy, and it has reminded me of the importance of our job as parents to instill in them a desire to discover and nurture their own God-given talents.
[Cross-posted at Lunch Break]
In the original version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (or rather, in the original version of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) the entry for Earth consisted of one word: “Harmless”.
In the revised edition, it was amended to: “Mostly harmless”.
Much the same could be said of the evolution of my attitude toward Halloween.
When I was a lad, I can’t recall having any awareness that Halloween was about anything other than innocent fun.
Then, at some point in childhood, I remember hearing some news report around Halloween time about Devil’s Night in Detroit. That’s not good, I thought.
And now, for the past several years, I’ve grown increasingly aware of the impossible-to-miss anti-Halloween sentiment among many Christians, both Catholic and Protestant.
This astounds me.
To be sure, the rampant commercialization of Halloween is not exactly a crowning cultural achievement, and there are ample examples of costumes that one would be hard pressed to argue are not imprudent to wear (for one of various reasons).
But to go argue that any sort of observance of Halloween per se is wrong is not a little ridiculous, especially considering that Halloween is, yea, a Christian holiday — and, even more specifically, a Catholic holiday.
I’d be hard pressed to come up with any clearer thoughts on the day than those Sean Dailey articules here:
Anyway, today is Halloween, a most glorious holiday. A good Catholic holiday, for this is the day that we honor the age-old truth that the devil, like all who are besotted with pride, cannot stand being mocked. So we mock him, with silly costumes and mischievous pranks and door-to-door begging, and have a wild old time doing so. Tomorrow we go to Mass to honor the saints in the Church Triumphant
By John Jansen on October 27th, 2009 | Category: ParentingHow could anyone have ever known that there’s a connection between early exposure to TV and later problems with attention span?
Call it the perfect storm of parenting. Who doesn’t want to believe that there is a magical, wondrous, no-parental-guidance-required product that will turn their kids into Mensa members? The combination of our lack of time, our paranoia over our kids performance, and our faith in technology primed this generation of parents to accept the clever advertising around “Baby Einstein” as truth…
I’ve never seen any of the Baby Einstein DVDs, and as far as I know, our kids haven’t, either.
We did buy one of the Holy Baby DVDs a few years ago when our two oldest girls (now ages 5 and 6) were younger, but they only watched them a few times—largely, as I recall, because they weren’t much interested in it.
Just as well.
I’d be curious to hear from other Catholic Dads: How much, if any, time do you allow your little ones to watch videos of this ilk?
[Cross-posted at Lunch Break]
By John Jansen on August 14th, 2009 | Category: ParentingMy parents came in from Minneapolis yesterday, and they’ll be staying with us for the next week. (Happily, this will allow them to join us for the St. John Cantius Parish picnic this Sunday, which The Dutchman posted about yesterday.)
Knowing that our eldest daughter Teresa just learned to ride a bike a couple weeks ago, my mom had cut out a column for me that recently appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by one of my favorite writers, James Lileks, in which he reflected on his experience teaching his daughter to ride a bike:
No parent can teach a child to ride a bike without being overwhelmed with the accursed metaphorical nature of it all: You hold them as they practice, then take your hands off as they gain skill. You trotting alongside, ready to intercede should gravity make a play for your fragile little egg. Watch the turns. Don’t overcompensate. Keep your speed up. The skill is soon mastered, and she’s riding by herself. You stay there. She rides away, makes the turn, comes back.
“You know what this is?” I said, patting the frame. “Freedom.”
She rolled her eyes. From what?
Oh, it’ll come to you. And it’ll take you away. The moment I saw her pedal away I foresaw the nights I’d worry when she was late pedaling back to the house, after a glorious twilight tour of the world we want her to explore. The bike became the car; the car became college; college became the Future, where there aren’t helmet laws and you’re not leaning up against the car in the parking lot, thinking, well, worst-case scenario, I have Band-Aids in the glovebox.
But there isn’t an alternative. You teach them to ride; you teach them to go. You hope they wear a helmet and
By John Jansen on June 26th, 2009 | Category: Faith & SpiritualityAs today is the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva (the founder of Opus Dei), I’ve been looking for quotes from him to post on Facebook throughout the day as a way of exposing more people to his great writings (and ultimately, one hopes, to help bring them to a deeper relationship with Our Lord and His Church).
Here is one counsel of his I came across today for the first time:
Love sacrifice; it is a fountain of interior life. Love the Cross, which is an altar of sacrifice. Love pain, until you drink, as Christ did, the very dregs of the chalice.
This is one of those pieces of advice that illustrates with absolutely clarity why, in the midst of our world, really and truly following Our Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate alternative lifestyle—and, yea, the only one worth living.
As shocking as it sounds, we are indeed called to love pain, for in doing so we unite ourselves to Jesus.
Jesus loved; so too must we love if we want to be like Him. Jesus served; so too must we serve if we want to be like Him. Jesus suffered pain and humiliation; so too must we suffer pain and humiliation if we want to be like Him.
These words of St. Josemaria particularly struck me because I just recently finished reading The Soul of the Apostolate (which, btw, I highly recommend). Therein, the author, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, lists nine “levels” of the interior life, ranging from “hardened in sin” to “complete sanctity”. The latter, he says, have an “ardent thirst for sufferings and humiliations”.
At this point in my life, I cannot say I have an ardent thirst for sufferings and humiliations. But, please God, some day I will.
And, please God,
By John Jansen on May 8th, 2009 | Category: New BirthsOur son, Anthony Jacob, was born April 30 at our house at 3:45 a.m. He and my wife, Jocelyn, are both doing well.
I’ve posted some pictures on my blog.
This heathen child of ours will be cleansed from the filth of original sin in the waters of baptism this Sunday.
By John Jansen on April 24th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized I mentioned in passing in a post on this here weblog last month that my wife and I are expecting our fifth child.
Today, in fact, is the “official” due date, but with each passing minute, it seems less and less likely our child will be making his? her? debut today, so it appears we’re headed for overtime.
It occurred to me yesterday that it probably won’t be long after the baby is born before someone intrusively asks us if we are now “done”.
Personally speaking, we’ve been on the receiving end of this question many a time before, but I can’t for the life of me remember how long, on average, it takes after the birth of a child before it happens.
Do any of my fellow Catholic Dads have a better memory than I do?
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