BIG C CATHOLICS

There is no homily this week from Fr. Irvin. We present this homily from Deacon McDonald Deacon Michael McDonald Diocese of Albany ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Today's gospel passage which we just heard appears early in Mark's Gospel. It's right at the beginning, right as Jesus starts his ministry. He hits the ground running. He swings into action. He calls his first disciples. Crowds gather and begin to follow him. He cures people and he drives out evil spirits. And in that very close-knit world of the Mediterranean, where family membership and loyalty were prime – and gave a person identity – Jesus does the unthinkable. He leaves his family and he takes to the road preaching. His life changed so much that his own family thought he went mad. And they wind up saying what we sometimes say about members of our own family when they begin to stray a little bit. "That guy must be nuts." or “What's gotten into her?" Jesus was preaching that Go...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) God is love. Over and over again the bible tells that to us in both the Old and the New Testaments. The very first words in the bible are all about the Garden of Eden and God’s desire to “walk with,” be close to, Adam and Eve in that garden. Love seeks union and closeness with the beloved. It is unconquerable. Even after Adam and Eve sinned against God’s love He came right back and promised their descendants would have eventual reunion. Throughout the history of the Old Testament, He presented Himself to their descendants as a Good Shepherd, a caring God who would never abandon them. He could have condemned Adam and Eve. He could have condemned all who sinned against His love, but He didn’t. From His throne in heaven, He could have issued a decree that in one instant would have absolved every one of us from all our sins, past, present, and future. But He didn’t. Instead He came to us, personally came...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Back in 1992 a man by the name of Walker Percy wrote a book which he titled Lost in the Cosmos . In his book he presented an extraterrestrial being persistently signaling these questions to earthlings: “Do you read? What do you read? Are you in trouble? How did you get in trouble? If you are in trouble, have you sought help? If you did, did help come? If it did, did you accept it? What is the character of your consciousness? Are you conscious? Do you have a self? Do you know who you are? Do you know what you are doing? Do you love? Do you know how to love? Are you loved? Do you hate? Do you read me? Come back. Come back.” We have spent billions on space stations and will spend billions more. We devote enormous resources to our communications industry. We have built and will continue to build an information highway and a social network that has radically changed the way we live. But when it comes to di...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Some things cannot be proven to exist. Take love for example. We know it exists, but forensic science cannot prove it as a fact. If you ask the finest and most sophisticated science laboratory to give you a report on how love is constituted the report will never be given. It cannot be proven to exist in itself. It is found only in certain human behavioral characteristics. The same would be true of friendship. Like love, it cannot be proven to exist in and of itself, it can only be found and identified in the way humans behave with each other. Now the same is true with the Holy Spirit. That aspect of God, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, can only be discerned in the way God acts, discerned and “seen” in the actions of the Holy Spirit, more precisely in the interactions of the Holy Spirit with human beings. Speaking about the Holy Spirit is difficult because the Spirit of God transcends human cate...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Oscar Wilde was a much-celebrated Anglo-Irish literary figure, very witty… and very worldly. He once wrote: “I can resist everything but temptation.” He lived in total self-indulgence, ridiculed Victorian moral norms, and died in Paris of meningitis in the year 1900. His view of life aptly ushered in the 20th century, particularly the cultural rebellions of the 1960’s and 1970’s. There are many today who live as Oscar Wilde lived. They regard temptations as irrelevant, things representing what they regard as hypocritical middle class moral norms, norms that constrict us and deny us our freedom. We are to live, many claim, with only one self-indulgent moral norm: “If it feels good, do it. Anything is all right so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.” We could spend hours talking about questions dealing with the nature of evil. What is evil? What is the essence of evil? Why is there evil, anyway? My summary view...