BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Shortly after He began His public ministry, Jesus went back to His hometown of Nazareth. What happened there was very sad. All of the familiar things and people were there — but it was far from being a happy homecoming. They gave Him the cold shoulder and He ended up leaving Nazareth forever. As St. Luke gives the account, the people there in Nazareth froze Him out and then tried to throw Him over a cliff. Why? The whole episode seems terribly strange to you and me. How could an entire town treat Him that way? They were not incredibly mean spirited. St. Mark didn’t give us this account in order to vilify the people of Nazareth. His reason for reporting this event was probably to show us that they were not so very different from you and me. Here we find them standing face to face with God’s very Truth made flesh and blood for us. Here was God offering himself in His only-begotten Son to people just li

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) What happened to the twelve year old girl who was raised by Jesus from the dead? What happened in the life of the woman who was cured? And what happened to those who knew them? Surely the woman told the story of her healing to her children and grandchildren. Surely the girl’s teenage friends heard of her story and shared her story among their friends. We can only speculate about the impact these miracles had in the lives of those who knew the girl and the woman. Was there an effect of Christ’s miracles in the spiritual lives of the relatives and friends of the girl and the woman? The marvelous love God has shown us in our lives is intended to effect not simply ourselves alone but those around us as well. Our religion is communal, not just individual. Events make their impact on us. When we look around us we see that the war against terrorism is long and it will continue for quite some time. If you are

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Your doctor informs you that you have cancer. Your wife tells you she has been seeing another man. Your husband tells you he’s found a younger woman and is going to marry her. You son announces that he has AIDS. Your employer tells you that your job as been outsourced and your services will no longer be needed. Any number of events can bring your life crashing down. People of faith do not necessarily have trouble free and painless lives and people with little or no faith at all can be found living wonderful, prosperous, and problem free lives, or so it seems on the surface. Life’s blows come to us all no matter what things may seem like on the surface. If you look deeply into the lives of the rich and famous you will find loss, pain, and suffering. Moreover, if you look into the lives of great men and women you will find that most of them rose above pain, loss, and suffering and because of that struggl

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Our society, someone has declared, is suffering from “jumboitis”. We need the biggest military, the biggest car, the biggest guns, the biggest house, the biggest business, and so forth. We’ve got bigger and bigger buildings, cities, and even churches. “The bigger, the better” and “the more, the merrier” seem to be the adages that govern us. But are they really true? Many don’t think so. Including Jesus. In the Gospels we find Jesus giving high praise for just a cup of water, two copper coins, five measly old barley loves and two dried up fish, little children, crowds of only two or three being gathered together, and services rendered for even the least of our brothers and sisters. Today’s Gospel account has two brief parables, both about tiny things – little seeds. The first is apparently about wheat and the second about mustard seeds, the smallest of all seeds. The farmer¸ once he plants them, doesn’t

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 ) Imagine you are back in your parents’ home where you lived as a youngster and that you are exploring its attic filled with the many items collected from your family’s past history. Imagine yourself coming upon your grandmother’s trunk and how much you really want to discover what’s in it. To open it, however, you need to find a key. The same is true with sacred scripture… you need keys in order to open up its various passages. We need a key to open up what is hidden in the suffering, death, resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ to the to the right hand of the Father in heaven. For today’s scripture the key is found in understanding that there is chronos time and there is kairos time. Chronos time is linear and quantitative. It is human time; we humans measure things by it. Kairos time is God’s time. Scripture tells us “in the fullness of time God sent His only-begotten Son into our world.” Nor

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) One of my favorite passages in all of Sacred Scripture is contained in today’s Gospel account wherein we find Jesus saying, “I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends.” Jesus is saying something very beautiful in those words, something really wonderful about the humility of God, making us His friends. Some people prefer a God who is a sort of benevolent Emperor, a sort of plantation owner who provides for us as one would provide for his slaves. Other people want a God who gives clear laws, rules and regulations, one who sets our boundaries for us. Under such a God there are no hard decisions to make; no real thought given to the most creative responses we can make in any given situation. Under such a God, all one need do is simply follow the rules. Nevertheless, God continues to insist: “I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends.” That puts burdens on us. We have to figure out how to fully re

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) God has created us in His own image and likeness in order that we might share His care and love with others, particularly with those who, because of Jesus Christ, are no longer strangers to us, no longer our competitors. Christ’s love is not exclusive, it is inclusive. Do we, Christ’s followers, exclude others from our care and concern? Who did Jesus exclude? Who do we exclude? The root meaning of the word “religion” is this: “to bond together”, “to re-ligament” that which has been fractured, dislocated, and broken apart. To share Christ’s love means we should join Him in bringing us all back into a holistic union with each other, a holistic union with all of nature, with the world’s natural resources, with our world, and with God Himself. The work of religion goes way beyond our own private, personal and individualistic relationship with God. The work of religion and our response to God’s call moves us

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) It appears to me that in today’s gospel account Jesus isn’t talking about sheep. He isn’t suggesting that we are a bunch of totally dependent dumb sheep who don’t know where they are going or how to get there. He isn’t demeaning us or disrespecting us evening though in some aspects we do need God’s tender loving mercy and care. I know I do! No, I think rather He is calling us to care for those who in the great scheme of things are placed in our charge. He is calling us to have attitudes like those found in Him, the Good Shepherd of our souls. Anyone who is in charge of others is called by God to care for those placed in their charge. Who are they? They are parents and grandparents; they are teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, priests, ministers, and mentors. Are you responsible in any way for the well-being of others? If you are, Jesus is calling you to shepherd them as He shepherds us. Care? What ki

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