BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) If you’ve heard the soundtrack for the Broadway show Les Misérables you may remember a song sung by Fantine that is a lament. She sings a sad song to her lost youth, her lost innocence, her lost beauty. It reflects a song many of us have in our hearts as she sings: "I had a dream that life would be So different than the hell I’m living, So different now than what it seemed, Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."  Once upon a time, way back in my early twenties, my heart was full of a song like that. I thought I wanted to die, my life would never be happy again. What causes us to sing a song like that, to be filled with despair? What murders our dreams? And what, perhaps, is killing your dreams – or the dreams of someone you know and love? The first reading in today’s Mass, the reading from the Jewish Testament’s Book of Exodus, presents us with a whole tribe of people feeling that

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” I have often pondered over the meaning of those final words in the Lord’s Prayer, and I want to pay some attention to them with you today. Throughout the centuries there has been any number of translations of the original Hebrew words that Jesus used when He taught the Lord’s Prayer. For instance, most of the original translations did not say “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Instead, the phrase was translated as, “And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  By the way, as an aside, just when or why the word “trespass” was substituted for the word “sin” is unknown to me. As for the phrase “but deliver us from evil” other ancient translations render it as: “And deliver us from the time of trial.” Still others render it “deliver us from the time of testing.” That being the cas

February 22, 2023  "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return." On Ash Wednesday, Catholics receive ashes in the shape of a cross traced on the forehead. The rite evokes Saint Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15: 21 - 22) Adam’s sin condemned man to sin and death. But the instrument of our salvation, the cross, reminds us that in Christ, man is redeemed, and the gates of heaven are opened. The original injunction conferring ashes: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return," contrasts with the words of the Nicene Creed concerning the Incarnation: "For us men and for our salvation, he [Jesus] came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man." In becoming man, Christ assumed our iniquities: offering

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Yogi Berra once said: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” Way back in 1865, Lewis Carroll published a novel for children. Alice in Wonderland was its name. In that novel we find Alice one day wandering around in a dream world. She stops and asks a cat: “Would you tell me, please, which way I should go from here?” The cat replies: “That depends a good deal on where you want to be.” Alice said: “Oh, I don’t much care.” With that the cat responds: “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.” But Alice persisted: “But I want to get somewhere.” Whereupon the cat, with a wry grin, said: “Oh, you are sure to do that!” We can be a lot like Alice, saying “Oh, it doesn’t much matter” to a whole lot of things. Like it doesn’t much matter which church you go to. It doesn’t much matter what you believe, and so forth. Pretty soon nothing muc

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) At many points in our lives, we all must face and deal with change, change that requires us to abandon old familiar patterns in which we live and move into new and unfamiliar ways of living. We seem at times to want change and when it occurs, we don’t like it, don’t want it. President Obama promised us change and we find ourselves now in the midst of changes. The collapse of our banking institutions has brought with it changes that are causing us a whole lot of stress. Obviously, our former spending based on credit is undergoing enormous change giving us new patterns of spending and habits of saving money. Fear, loss, anxiety, worry abound within us and around us as we face the joblessness that is on the rise. In times of change our emotions must cope with fear of the unknown. The loss of our sense of security forces us to muster up the courage and strength to enter into what changes bring to us in the

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) What is the worst four-letter word your child can use? Well, I can imagine some of the words that must have come to your minds. Let me now suggest that the worst four-letter word your child can use is the word can’t. The child who believes he can’t do math will likely not be able to be skilled in mathematics. The child who thinks she can’t compete in sports will likely not try. Both will miss out on the pleasures of success they might otherwise enjoy. Other four-letter words are vulgar and obscene; “can’t” is a deadly word… it deadens one’s spirit. If we tell ourselves that something is impossible then we will in practical effect make it impossible. If we tell ourselves we are unattractive, ugly and unlovable … well, that’s the way we will act and in doing so make ourselves unattractive to others. If we face life’s tasks with a predisposing despair, we will never be able to stop smoking, lose weight, ov

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Over the past few decades, we’ve all become increasingly concerned with preserving and protecting the natural environment in which we live and upon which we must survive. Ecology has entered our vocabulary. We know now about rain forests, the ozone layer, global warming, and the toxic effluents generated by our means of production. Pollution is a terrible reality. We know, too, about our terrible rate of consumption of the world’s natural resources. A lot of evils and human suffering result from the way we live not only here in America but in other parts of the world as well. There is another problem equally as serious to which we’re giving some attention these days… that’s the toxic presence of moral pollution that’s pervasive in our culture and that’s threatening the future lives of our children and grandchildren. Living in a clean world involves more than simply what we’re doing to the material creati

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Plans. All of us are familiar with plans. There are family plans, school plans, plans at work, travel plans, game plans, and all sorts of other plans. Our days are lived out in them. Even our fun times are planned… sometimes over-planned. Some people can’t stand plans. They want things to be spontaneous and enjoy the surprises that can come when things are unplanned. Others can’t stand to do anything, and I mean anything, without a plan. They need structure; they go nuts without structures. The world in which we live these days, with all of its many demands, requires us to plan ahead. Few of us have the luxury of unplanned holidays and vacations. Most of us cannot get away unless we plan time for getting away from all the tasks that face us in our everyday weeks, months, and years. In today’s Gospel we heard about the apostles who had been out preaching and had come back to Jesus to report about a

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Today’s readings prompt me to share some thoughts with you about choices, decisions, and commitments. Each and every day we consider choices presented to us, and then make our decisions. There comes a moment when our consideration ends and we raise a choice to the level of our wills, and thereby make it a freely chosen decision. A decision can be of a short-term sort, or one intended to last over a long period of time, perhaps a lifetime decision carrying a permanent quality – a “forever” decision. Some of those permanent decisions are raised to the level of vows. They are given and placed in the hands of God; they are made and given in God’s presence, power, and love. Being human we all suffer from a weakness imbedded deep within us, namely the original sin depicted in the story of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Their resolve was weakened, their choices and decisions were corrupted, their willpower

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We are in ordinary time now. In the liturgies from Christmas until Pentecost we entered into all that God our Father has done for us, all that His Son has done for us in His birth, life, death, and resurrection. God has sent His Son among us not just to tell us that He loves us, but to share His very life with us. Now it is we who are sent, sent by the the Holy Spirit, who, because of Christ, the Father has sent to us. In today’s Gospel account we reflect on that event in which Jesus summoned the Twelve and first sent them out into their surrounding world. The account is not about something that happened long ago, it is about something that is happening to us in our lives. God, you see, is sending us. Being sent is a commission that occurs because of God’s initiative, not ours. Amos, about whom we heard in the first reading, protested that he was not a prophet. Said he: “I was no prophet, nor have I

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) When you love someone, you want to be a part of the life of the one you love. Love seeks union, a union of heart, mind, soul, and life with your beloved. You want to belong. So much of life, perhaps all of life, is about belonging, the belonging that takes us to family reunions, weddings, anniversaries, and all those other special moments when once again we experience and share in each other’s lives. Texting, twittering, e-mailing, cell phone chatting, and all manner of other modern methods of being a part of the lives of others now abound. But they do not bring real belonging. That impetus to belong is ancient, as old as humankind. We hear those ancient echoes in today’s first reading: Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven columns; she has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table. She has sent out her maidens; she calls from the heights out over the city:” Let w

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Recently I received an e-mail telling me about cactus plants, a topic that had not in the past provoked much interest on my part. After all, I pictured them to be gawkish and unattractive, although I have seen some cacti that appeared to have surrealistic heads and arms resembling human forms that exercised my imagination. Nevertheless, I read on. Pictures came as attachments to that e-mail, and when I opened them up and viewed those pictures, I was delighted to find that cacti produce stunningly beautiful blossoms, all of which brought me to reassess my judgments about cactus plants. Evidently there was a whole lot more to them than I thought. My “know-it-all” previous judgments about cacti completely blocked me from seeing the beauty that lay hidden within them. That lesson can be applied to the way we see people, especially people about whom we have a “know-it-all” attitude. All of us are familiar