BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Senior Priest Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for today’s readings ) When you encounter paradox, you’re close to the heart of the Gospel, a message in which we are presented with two statements that seemingly contradict each other. So here, today, we find Jesus speaking about His cross, His path to glory through humiliation, life through death, good through evil. Nothing in human history is so totally paradoxical as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. About to be displayed in degradation, He speaks of His glory being revealed. In Roman times a crucifixion was supposed to be a public spectacle. Yet it is at the same time a personal matter for you and for me. Your salvation and mine are found in it. Yes, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary was a spectacular event. The characters were momentous. Rome was there in her imperial power. One of the world’s great religions was there in an hour of critical decision. Yet it is also true that this historica...

By Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33) My child, you have no idea how important it is to me that you allow me to forgive you. Please don’t put it off. Now is the acceptable time. Is there something from the distant past that you have never been able to confess? Now is the acceptable time. Come now, let us set things right. Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow. They will be totally washed away in the blood of my only Son, who willingly offered himself up for you. Through his suffering, through his obedience, he has paid the full price of your redemption. He is like the grain of wheat. When he died, he brought forth abundant fruit, to be shared by all. The free banquet of grace awaits you. I would like nothing better than to place my Law within you and write it on your heart. Just think! It would then be the most natural thing in t...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) “A body in motion tends to stay in motion, while a body at rest tends to stay at rest.” I’m sure many of you have heard that phrase used in an often-repeated TV commercial that has been airing recently. The phrase has caught my attention especially when I have been a couch potato watching more TV than I should. It’s the “staying at rest” that I am talking about because I am so often afflicted with laziness and lethargy. I resist getting in motion. Well, you may ask, what do those words and that thought have to do with the readings from today’s scripture passages that we just heard? Today is Laetare Sunday. Joy is its theme, joy because we are halfway through Lent and thus very close to the joy of Easter when our Elect will be baptized, confirmed and receive Holy Communion and our Candidates will be received into our Communion of Faith and likewise receive Holy Communion. There is joy, too, because...

Feast Day -  March 10th  (Scotland) March 11th, is the feast of Saint John Ogilvie (1579 – 1615), born in 1579, at Drum, Scotland. Walter Ogilvie was a Scottish noble who raised his son John in the state religion of Scotland, Calvinism. The Ogilvie family was partly Catholic and partly Presbyterian. John eventually converted to Catholicism at the age of 17 in Louvain, Belgium. He initially studied with the Benedictines, but joined the Jesuits in 1597, and was ordained in Paris in 1610. He was then sent to Rouen. Two French Jesuit missionaries returning from Scotland told him of the blatant persecution of Catholics there. He repeatedly requested assignment to Scotland where wholesale massacres of Catholics had taken place, but by this point the oppressors were searching more for priests than for those who attended Mass. The Jesuits were determined to minister to the oppressed Catholic laity. When captured, they were tortured for information, then hanged, dr...

Optional Memorial - March 9th  St. Frances of Rome wanted to be a nun, but her wealthy parents forced her into an arranged marriage with a solider. Her husband Lorenzo Ponziani served as commander of the papal armies. They lived happily together for forty years even though Lorenzo was frequently at war. Frances and her sister-in-law often visited the poor and the sick of the Eternal City giving out food and caring for the ill. Rome in the early 15th century was largely in ruins. Animals roamed the city freely and plague decimated the population. Two of Francis's and Lorenzo's children died from disease. Francis used her family’s wealth to establish a hospital. In 1425, on the feast of the Assumption of Mary, she founded the Oblates of Mary, an order of pious Christian women. The order was approved by Pope Eugene IV in 1433. Today it is known as the Oblates of St. Francis of Rome. Francis was graced with heroic virtue and mystical visions. With her husband's bless...

Saint John of God demonstrated extreme virtue, living self-imposed poverty and ministering tirelessly to the sick and poor. While serving others, in imitation of Our Lord, his great devotion to God and personal humility never wavered. Have charity first towards our own souls, cleansing them by confession and penance; then charity towards our neighbors and our brethren, wishing them that which we desire ourselves. — St. John of God ___________________________________________ O God, who filled Saint John of God with a spirit of compassion, grant, we pray, that, giving ourselves to works of charity, we may merit to be found among the elect in your Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Church observes the optional memorial of Saint John of God on March 8th. Of Portuguese descent, he was first a shepherd, a dealer and then a soldier. At the age of forty, he was converted, and devoted himself to the care of those sick in mind and body. John proved in various thankless tasks to be a true innovator and a saint of super-human virtue and compassion. He founded the Order of the Brothers Hospitallers, which bears his name. He died at Granada, Spain in 1550. St. John of God was so called because of the great love he had for others. That love was made manifest in the hospitals he established, some of which exist to this day. He once wrote “When I see so many of my brethren in poverty, and my neighbors suffering beyond their strength, and oppressed in mind or body by so many cares and am unable to help them, it causes me exceeding sorrow.” These words show that John of God shared the same love that God has; a love that is sorrowful in the face of human degradation, p...

René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) It must surely have happened to you that someone gave you as a gift something you already had. You expressed your thanks and later you exchanged the item, or “re-gifted” it. Imagine, however, if someone did that on purpose, giving you a book or DVD or membership, knowing full well that you already had it. Or what about this? I go into your home and take something I have already given you; you think it is lost forever; then I give it back again—as a gift! What could be stranger? And yet, that is exactly the scenario described in today’s first reading. Because of the Chosen People’s infidelity, God allowed their Holy City to be destroyed and sent them into exile. Now he inspires a pagan king to let the exiles return home and rebuild Jerusalem. He gives back the gift he originally gave and took away. What was the difference between the or...

Optional Memorial - March 7th Women have always been important witnesses to the faith and to the sacredness and value of human life. On March 7th the Church honors Saints Perpetua and Felicity, two young mothers of the 3rd century who were martyred because they refused to renounce their Christian beliefs. They are mentioned in the first Eucharistic prayer at Mass and where highly venerated by the early Church. Saint Perpetua was born around 181 A.D. She was a 20-year-old married, well-educated noblewoman, who followed the path of her mother and was baptized a Christian. Her co-martyr, Felicity, was an expectant mother and catechumen who according to tradition was Perpetua’s slave. They both suffered at Carthage in the Roman province of Africa during the reign of Emperor Septimus in 203 A.D. After their arrest and imprisonment, Perpetua and Felicity were led to the amphitheater together alongside fellow professed Christians Revocatus, Felicitas, Saturninus, Secundulus and...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, journalist, critic and Christian apologist. Chesterton converted from High Church Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1922. He authored nearly a hundred books and thousands of essays. Below he considers heterodoxy that is embraced as truth. Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. — G.K. Chersteron ________________________________ A Prayer in Darkness by G.K. Chesterton This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave,      Pity me not; but let the world be fed,      Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead, Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave. If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,      Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,      In sun and rain and fruit in season shown, The shining silence of the scorn of God. Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,   ...

Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M. This man Nicodemus had a half-open mind as regards Jesus. He was moved by his teaching and miracles. He defended him when his companions were out to have Jesus arrested. He helped to have him properly buried when his enemies had him put to death, but that was as far as he went, apparently. There is no mention of him in the first Christian community of Jerusalem. What held him back, what kept him from giving himself fully to Jesus who spoke so kindly and told him so clearly that he himself was indeed a teacher who had come from God, that he had been offered by God as the sacrificial victim who would save the world? All Nicodemus had to do was to accept his word, "believe in him" and be baptized and he too would have eternal life. Why did he not do this? The answer is given in the beginning of his story "He came to Jesus by night." He was one of the leading Pharisees and evidently was afraid of what they would think of him had...

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is called Laetare Sunday in the Extraordinary Form, since its theme is one of rejoicing and expectation that Easter is near. It occurs just over half way through the penitential season of Lent. Laetare Sunday, takes its name from the first word in the entrance antiphon (introit) for that Sunday’s Mass, "Rejoice" [Latin: laetare ]: "Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and come together all you that love her; rejoice with joy you that have been in sorrow: that you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of your consolation" (Isaiah: 66:10, 11). In anticipation of the joy of Easter, Laetare Sunday is meant to provide hope and encouragement as we progress towards the Paschal Feast. The great Solemnity of Easter for which we have been faithfully preparing prefigures our joy in Heaven, when we shall see God face to face. [Laetare Sunday is also the occasion of the second scrutiny in preparation for the baptism of adults at the Easter Vigil.] This day ...

Optional Memorial - March 4th  (In 2018, this feast is superseded by the Sunday liturgy.)  This patron saint of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia made his mark on the hearts of his people even during his teenage years. Though born into high nobility in 1458, Saint Casimir, third child and second son of the King of Poland, never sought worldly honors or wealth. He is often depicted in iconography as having three hands, which is meant to emphasize his exceptional generosity toward the poor. While Casimir was known to be particularly pious and disciplined, there is no doubt that his education at the hands of a Polish priest named Jan Dlugosz helped develop these traits even further. Dlugosz was strict and conservative in his teaching, and emphasized ethics, morality, and religious devotion in his young pupils (both Casimir and his brother Vladislaus II were entrusted to his care). As a result, Casimir spent long nights in prayer, often sleeping on the ground as a form of ...

René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) I am in charge here! I give the orders. Is that clear? Even if I really believed that, I would be well advised not to say it out loud. But let’s suppose I came into your home or place of work and said the same thing. It wouldn’t be long before somebody said, “And just who do you think you are?” In giving the Ten Commandments, God seems to have anticipated that very question. So he begins by stating, clearly and emphatically, just who he is: “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” And in case you missed it the first time, he says, three verses later, “I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.” The commandments that follow are really, really important, but these statements of who God is are more important still. They are the foundation of all the rest. Why not kill? Because I say so, and ...

Optional Memorial - March 3rd Our Lord said that it is "...easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:24).  Though such a thing is difficult, it is, however, not impossible, especially if the rich person, in this case, rich woman, sees their wealth as a gift from God, given to help bring about His kingdom on earth. For them, affluence is an opportunity. Such was the story of Saint Katharine Drexel. Born in Philadelphia into a family of wealth and privilege in 1858, Katharine had advantages that many people then, and even now, could only dream of. Her family’s fortune was made in banking. Her uncle Anthony founded Drexel University in Philadelphia. On her stepmother’s side, Katharine was a distant cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She received an excellent education, traveled widely in the United States and Europe, and, like other young women in her social class, made a grand debut i...