BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Last Sunday’s Gospel account was about the disciples who were locked up in the Upper Room out of fear and Jesus’ appearance among them. Today’s Gospel account is about other disciples dejectedly walking from Jerusalem to a nearby hamlet called Emmaus and Jesus’ appearance among them also. It is curious to me is that in today’s account the important point revolves around recognition of Jesus. Here we find this group of disciples at first failing to recognize Jesus and in the end, they recognize Him. What happened? Why did they at first think He was a stranger and later come to realize who He really was? What seems to be controlling deals with the question of how we see people. Obviously, we’re not talking here about simply seeing with our eyes, we’re talking, rather, about seeing with our hearts. We’re dealing with seeing at deeper levels of knowing and understanding. That’s something we all know abou...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We just heard Jesus declaring to His apostles: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” After saying this he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit; for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” The importance of the work of the Holy Spirit needs to be seen. St. John in his gospel account tells us that as He expired Jesus “handed over His spirit.” What, then, of the Holy Spirit and Jesus? It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. In the eighth chapter of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans we hear St. Paul telling us: But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells within in you. It needs to be seen that God our Father in heaven sent...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Christ walks ahead of us into the mystery of evil. He knows suffering. All who suffer now have Him with us. Without giving us answers to why there is evil in the first place we are instead led by Jesus Christ to deal with suffering and death head on. The ultimate mystery is that sin has taken us all into rejection of God. It is prideful human rejection of God that is the root cause of all human suffering, separation from the source of our happiness, namely our turning away from the happiness of union with God. All of us have sinned; all of us are accomplices in bringing evil and the suffering that results in our world that results from it. How, then, are we to deal with it? Can we deal with it apart from Christ? The events of Holy Week give us answers. The voice in today’s first reading is the voice of the Old Testament’s Suffering Servant, the one who personifies not only the eventual Messiah but also...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) In Act 1, scene 4 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet we find Hamlet declaring: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” William Shakespeare writing in the late 16th Century had in inkling that moved him to bring us thoughts of realms beyond the world we live in. We are limited… our vision, our intelligence, and our beliefs about reality are limited. Can we definitively claim that there is no reality beyond that which we can see? In Celtic Britain and Ireland spiritual people spoke of Thin places, places, and times where the veil between this world and the world of reality beyond us is thin. When we find ourselves in such thin places, we sense the two worlds overlapping and bleeding into each other. Some recent novels have been written about such places, such overlapping encounters with a reality beyond what we can see and experience. Scientists and astrophysicis...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’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 historical and monumental sp...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) My dear brothers and sisters, all of our ideals, all of our dreams of what we want to be, and of what our world can be… all of our visions and understandings of God, and of God’s ways with us, are focused now on a child… God’s Anointed One, God’s Christ. For a child us born unto us, a son is given us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying powerless in a manger, there being no room for him elsewhere in our world for his birth. It is a sacred moment into which we now enter, a precious moment, a holy hour observed all over the world in Midnight Masses. Midnight Mass gathers so many different people in a lovely moment of peace and happiness – Blacks and Whites, Asians, Africans, Latinos and Anglos…. Catholics, both active and devout as well as marginal and estranged, Protestants, members of others great faiths, and even doubtful believers with hesitant faith. It is a transcendent moment when we suspend business...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Nazareth was one of the most insignificant villages in Judah. When Jesus was first assembling His apostles we find the following exchange between two of them as reported in St. John’s gospel: "Philip found Nathaniel and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” But Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” [John 1:45-45]" Christianity goes beyond doctrines, moral norms, and teachings. It goes beyond how we behave. While all of those things are important, we need to recognize that Christianity essentially involves vision… seeing things as God sees them… seeing things in God’s Light… recognizing reality and truth. Pontius Pilate during the trial of Jesus asked the central question. Truth is not something we establish, it come from outside of us; it’s somethi...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) “Are you the one who is to come, or do we look for another?” As you live out life as a Christian, trying to make the life of Jesus a reality in your own life, many are going to be observing you. In key moments, some people are going to be looking to you for help, hope maybe you’ll be their salvation, their way out. Very indirectly, perhaps very quietly, or perhaps quite directly, they might ask you: ARE YOU THE ONE WHO CAN HELP ME… WHO CAN BRING ME SALVATION IN THIS MESS… OR DO I LOOK FOR ANOTHER? You are a Christian. You openly and publicly bear the name of Christ… and you do it for all to see. You identify yourself as a Catholic. You attend Mass… receive the Sacraments. As a result people are going to look at you… to examine your actions… to look into your life. And they will ask you questions about why you are a Catholic. You have been baptized. You have been confirmed. As we heard John the Baptist de...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) What it means to be a family is undergoing a redefinition in our culture. No longer is the term “family” applied strictly to a household with mom, dad and the children all living together in the same home at the same time. As a matter of fact, what is known as the nuclear family is now in the minority. We have now various arrangements found in single parent families, in families in which the parents are of the same gender, and in families in which one parent is simply living with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. One major consequence is that children now must relate to multiple sets of parents, multiple sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles, or other adults who are not related to them by birth or blood. The Fourth Commandment, “Honor thy father and honor thy mother” is now strained, to say the least. How is that divine commandment, handed down on Mt. Sinai to Moses and the Israelites, to be applied in such dive...