BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings ) In today’s readings we encounter two very human realities. First there is indignation. James and John are angry that the Samaritans won’t let Jesus and his followers pass through. They are experiencing the New Testament equivalent of road rage! The recent Supreme Court decision affecting marriage has met with indignation as well. One might be tempted to call down fire from heaven, but then we would just be engaging in the “Biting and devouring” that St. Paul condemns in the second reading. Then there’s procrastination, which we find in two of Jesus’ potential disciples. They want to follow him, but not just yet. They’ll get to it. St. Paul tells us to “Live by the Spirit.” We resolve that we will, honest. Some day. When everything else is in place. It’s like thinking of all the things we will do when we retire. (Imagine a disciple saying, “I will follow you...

Salvation history is the active participation of God through human history in the salvation of mankind.  The culmination of salvation history is the person of Jesus Christ - His preaching, teaching, passion, death, and resurrection.  In every age, God works in concert with human beings to make the gospel message known throughout the world.  Human beings are incapable of saving ourselves.  Salvation, like eternal life, is a gift only God can give.    Let's go back to the very beginning.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived together in perfect harmony and happiness.  God and man, man and woman shared an intimacy we can only imagine.  We call this intimacy original intimacy .  Existing in perfect happiness, man's free will is preserved. If God had made us robots, loving only Him and serving only Him, we could not properly speaking be said to love.  Love by definition is a free choice. Enter the snake. ...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH In 1927, a 33-year-old Belgian scientist published an article with this title: “A homogenous Universe with constant mass and increasing radius explaining the radial velocity of extragalactic nebulae.” In 1946 he published a book, Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom. The scientist’s name was George Henry Joseph Edward Lemaitre. He was world famous and had many titles. He also had the title, “Father.” He was a Catholic priest. His theory became, and still is, the predominant scientific explanation today of the universe as we know it. In1949, an English astronomer, Fred Hoyle, who disagreed with Fr. Lemaitre’s theory, was explaining the theory in order to show why he didn’t accept it. In so doing, he gave the theory the name by which it has been know ever since: “THE BIG BANG!” We celebrate today another Big Bang, a totally different kind of Big Bang. Like the other, it explains everything, n...

Fr.  René Butler Thirty-five years ago, I worked at a college seminary. There was a seminarian whose parents divorced when he was young, because his father was an alcoholic, and now he was, just getting to know his father. Unfortunately I had to tell him a few months later that his father had died, beaten with a baseball bat. A number of priests from the seminary went to the funeral. But the Pastor said to us: “I can’t allow you to concelebrate. This guy was the town drunk. We don’t have more than one priest even for our good people. We can’t have so many for this guy!” This is similar to the Gospel story of the woman who wept at the feet of Jesus. The Pharisees were right about her. She was a sinner. In some notorious way she violated the Torah, the law of God. Everybody knew “who and what sort of woman” she was. The Pharisees even turned this against Jesus. He couldn’t be a real prophet after all, if he didn’t know who she was. Jesus didn’t care, because that was...