Since the strokes in my eyes in 2002, I’ve found that tears come pretty easily. However, I needed no such excuse when I first heard that Father Stan Janaites had died on Aug. 5. I cried again as I stood at his coffin in St. Joseph’s Church in Sykesville.
Stan was what every priest is called to be – another Christ. The words applied by Isaiah the prophet fit both Jesus and Stan: “He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with infirmity. … There was in him no stately bearing.” As Father Joe Bochenek so eloquently noted in the funeral homily, Father Stan really wanted to carry other peoples’ burdens for them. His life was a life for others.
Stan struggled with depression in his earlyl priestly life. I remember visiting him in the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph’s Hospital back in the 1970s. He said: “Joe, crazy is the right word. I can feel myself going, but I can’t stop myself.”
Yet, as with so many great people, Stan turned his pain into compassion. As a wounded healer, he used his brokenness to comfort the rest of us with our own brokenness.
Despite the burdens he carried, Stan enjoyed life. He loved beloved Leona literally until death. He was taking care of her when his own health deteriorated.
His quick wit was legendary. When he was chaplain at Springfield State Hospital, he was approached by a man who said: “I’m Jesus Christ. Give me a cigarette!” Father Stan replied: “If you’re Jesus Christ, make your own cigarettes!”
Stan loved to eat. Father George and I would sit at the supper table at St. Charles Parish in Pikesville, and marvel at how Stan would ‘inhale’ his macaroni and cheese. When I commented, Stan looked up over the top of his glasses and said: Joe, go to hell!”
When he was chaplain at Henryton State Hospital working with the developmentally disabled, he told of how patients would come to Communion and talk to him. Father Stan said: “I told them to shut their mouths and put out their tongues!” I said: “Stan, it’s impossible to shut your mouth and put out your tongue!” He looked at me and said: “Joe, go to hell!” But there was always a twinkle in his eye and a chuckle under his breath. Stan could be outrageous but never unkind.
Back in the 1980s I attended a diocesan workshop about saving for retirement. I asked Stan at the break if he was going to open an IRA. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and said: “This is why I’ll never need one.”
