Sometimes faith is easy. When things are going well, it is
easy to believe that God is close by, answering prayers and
holding us near. But what about times of trouble – when the
doctor gives bad news or, as in recent events, a natural
disaster sweeps us off our feet?
According to John Janaro, an associate professor emeritus of
theology at Christendom College in Front Royal, those times
are the ones where we can learn to rely on God all the more.
He learned this through personal experience after years of
struggling with mental and physical health issues. With the
help of prayer and a community of believing friends, he has
grown in his faith through it all and he thinks others can do
the same.
Growing up Catholic
Janaro was born in New York City on Jan. 2, 1963. He lived
there for nine years with his parents before they moved to
Pittsburgh, where he went to high school.
Although he grew up Catholic, Janaro says he did not feel
fully invested in his faith until he was 16, when he visited
his older brother at Christendom.
“When I first visited my brother, I found something I’d never
encountered before – a community of people in the Church for
whom Jesus Christ was something real and the most important
thing in their lives, and who at the same time had an
enormous amount of fun being together.”
It was during that visit that Janaro first realized that
Christianity is meant to be more than just an ideology, but
something that is lived.
Two years later, Janaro found himself back at Christendom as
a student. He pursued a double major in theology and history
and got serious in his quest to learn more about the Faith.
After college, Janaro studied theology as a lay student at
the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where he
earned a master’s of divinity and a licentiate in sacred
theology. He also studied at the Gregorian University in Rome
for a year.
During graduate school, Janaro found it difficult to adjust
to life outside of the devout bubble he had found at
Christendom. Realizing the importance of finding a Catholic
community, he became involved with Communion and Liberation,
a lay ecclesial movement in the Church. It was there that
Janaro was finally able to develop a mature faith.
“Really my faith became important to me in a mature way while
I was in grad school,” he said. “In adulthood, I could really
say, ‘Gosh, I can’t imagine living without my faith, living
my life without Christ, living without praying every
day.'”
During this time, Janaro was able to meet with the founder of
Communion and Liberation, Father Luigi Giussani, during a
trip to Italy.
“I spoke with him about my life and he asked me, ‘Why have
you been studying theology for all these years?’ I said,
‘Well, I might become a teacher someday,’ and he grabbed my
arm and looked me in the eye and said, ‘Be a teacher. You
will be a great teacher. You must be a teacher,'” Janaro
said. “It was very striking to have this told to me by
someone who founded a movement with 100,000 people in it all
over the world.”
When he returned from that trip, Janaro began putting out
résumés around the area for theology teaching
jobs. When a position opened at Christendom, he took the
job.
He started teaching in 1994, doing editorial work on the side
– working as the director of Christendom Press and the editor
of the Faith and Reason Journal. In 2000, he was promoted to
associate professor and he served a three-year term as chair
of the school’s theology department.
His personal life was flourishing as well. In 1996, he
married his wife, Eileen, whom he had maintained a
long-distance friendship with for years. In 1997, the couple
had their first child.
“A lot of stuff was happening really fast,” Janaro said. “It
was a very vigorous life and very stressful in a lot of ways,
with a lot of things to do. I loved it very much, but at the
same time there was something else – a parallel to all of
this.”
The struggles within
While his family was growing and his career was blossoming,
Janaro began struggling with health issues that had been
hiding under the surface for years. The stresses of finishing
graduate school and starting a new career spurred a mental
health crisis. He became overwhelmed with anxiety, depression
and obsessions – symptoms that he had struggled with since
childhood.
The year he took a job at Christendom was the first year he
decided to get psychological treatment and for the first
time, he found himself on medication. He’s been on them ever
since, periodically switching prescriptions to maintain
effectiveness.
“This is a reality in my life. It’s a reality in a lot of
people’s lives,” Janaro said. “A lot of people who seem happy
and normal are struggling with these kinds of problems, even
crippled by them.”
Then, in 1999, Janaro fell down the stairs. With the fall
came chronic leg pain that wouldn’t go away. After years of
tests and treatments and a resurgence in symptoms after
another fall in 2002, he received his true diagnosis in 2004
– acute Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness that can result in
problems with joints, organs and the central nervous system.
Janaro believes he must have been infected in 1988, when he
spent a lot of time hiking and at one point contracted a
strange flu. Since the symptoms went away and the disease was
not identified for years, it had worsened and become much
more difficult to treat.
Because of his health issues, Janaro took a sabbatical in
2004, returning to Christendom in the fall of 2006. In 2007,
his symptoms were triggered again because of stress following
the birth of his fifth child, who had a seven-month stay in
the neonatal intensive care unit after being born two months
early. Eventually, the increased intensity of his health
issues resulted in Janaro retiring at age 48 so he could
change his lifestyle and improve his health.
An ongoing faith
Through all his physical and mental health struggles, Janaro
says he has remained steadfast in his faith.
“I’ve come to find in the midst of these circumstances that
everything I believe about God is still true – even more
true,” he said. “God has not failed me. He continues to
sustain me.”
During this time, Janaro began writing poetry and reflections
about his faith, which he shared with his family and friends.
Eventually, Janaro decided to combine the reflections with
his own story as a book, Never Give Up: My Life and God’s
Mercy, which was published by Servant Books last
year.
“I thought to myself, there are so many people who are
suffering who have no voice, and I have a responsibility to
speak for them because I can,” Janaro said. “It kind of
inspired me that I have to talk about this – not just the
Lyme disease, but the depression and the
(obsessive-compulsive disorder). I have to talk about them
honestly and make people aware.”
Janaro believes it’s important for everyone to know that
mental illness is a disease and not a character flaw. It
should not be shameful to consider medication or therapy to
manage it.
“When I wrote it, I hoped that it would be a comfort, a
support and a strengthening for people who are sick in
various ways, and also a help to deepen the awareness of
people who don’t have any particular remarkable problems in
these areas. Everyone has problems somewhere,” Janaro
said.
For those readers with health problems like his, Janaro
suggests an increased dedication to prayer.
“Prayer is at the heart of life and we need to take that up,”
Janaro said. “People who are living with problems say they
can’t pray and that’s something I can’t believe is true.
Wherever you are, you can start praying. If you are mad at
God because He made you sick, if you even feel like you hate
God, you can start from there.
“I would tell anyone in suffering to turn that suffering
toward God, to turn that pain and that loneliness into a
prayer.”
As for Janaro, he is feeling healthier these days and thinks
his Lyme disease might be in remission. Still, he knows
there’s a probability that one day he will relapse and find
himself physically and mentally “in the hole” again.
“I know it could happen, and if it does, I’m more at peace
with that possibility because I know there’s a way to live,
even like that, that is not meaningless,” he said.
In the meantime, he counts on the support of his family,
friends and colleagues, who enrich his faith with their
lives.
“If I was just being Catholic and reading my books, I might
be pretty convinced intellectually, but I would feel pretty
disarmed in the world and in my own experiences,” Janaro
said. “And yet, I’m a part of a body that suffers together
and prays together and helps one another. And Christ is at
the head of that body and He’s really here. It makes a
difference.”
Get the book
John Janaro’s book, Never Give Up: My Life and God’s
Mercy, is available at servantbooks.org
.
