BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Paul Werley The Pittsburgh Oratory & Catholic Newman Center ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Without paying undue attention to anyone in particular, I just want to point out that there is a statistical possibility that at least one of us in this chapel may have a close friend, or at least an acquaintance, who is a Mount Everest expedition enthusiast. Such people might aspire to climb the world’s tallest mountain even though their knowledge about doing this Herculean undertaking is superficial and limited... Contrast this with a Sherpa. A Sherpa is a native Tibetan and an expert climber, who acts as a guide for hikers as they ascend Mt. Everest. If we should find ourselves on our first expedition and we had to choose between following the Mt. Everest enthusiast, also there for the first time, and following a Sherpa, who knows the mountain by heart, who would we choose to follow? Knowing the choice was a matter of life or death, who would we follow? Today, Jesus tells t...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) From time to time, I hear parents telling me about their attempts to guide their teenage sons and daughters. They are concerned about what their kids are doing after school with their friends. They are concerned, and rightly so, about what their kids are doing or not doing. But many times, these parents are scolded by their kids and told, “Stop judging me!” Too many times these retorts stop parents dead in their tracks, especially when they are reminded that Jesus told us not to judge others. What is really curious is to note how judgmental many people are, not just kids, especially when they tell others to stop judging! There’s something terribly ironic in that. The ones who complain about judging others are themselves judging! In today’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus telling us to, “Stop judging.” But at the same time, we must all remember that Jesus did, in fact, judge the behavior of others. Take what He...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We all know of people who, whenever they can, debunk religion, particularly Christianity. They tell us that the bible stories are fables, laugh at the story of the Wise Men, the star over Bethlehem, and ridicule belief about a virgin having a baby. These sophisticated despisers of religion take themselves very seriously and think it is their duty to liberate the ignorant masses from the influence of religion and faith. Let’s be honest. If Jesus were to live among us today, He would be considered to be more than strange. I mean, after all, here He is declaring how happy the poor are, how happy the hungry are, and how happy are those who are weeping. He goes on to say we are happy when we are spurned and rejected, even when we are abused. Then Jesus tells us that those who are rich are going to go hungry, those who are laughing now are going to really hurt, and those who are popular are going to be knocked off ...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Last Sunday’s Gospel account was about the disciples who were huddled in the Upper Room behind locked doors out of fear, and Jesus’ appearance among them. Today’s Gospel account is about another appearance of Jesus, this time with other disciples who were dejectedly walking from Jerusalem to a nearby hamlet called Emmaus. St. Augustine along with others of the Fathers of the Church suggest that Jesus didn’t want the disciples to recognize Him right away, that He wanted them to recognize Him in “the breaking of the bread.” Moreover Jesus, they believed, wanted the disciples to see and understand what the Jewish prophets had foretold in Scripture about how the Messiah was to be recognized. Hence Jesus spent some significant time opening up the Scriptures so they might see them in a new light, His light, and then recognize Him. We can easily overlook the importance Jesus placed on Scripture. He repeatedl...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Simon Peter was a fisherman. It was his livelihood. He wasn’t a sport fisherman, fishing simply because he liked to fish. His life and the lives of his family depended upon his skills and his talents in catching fish. Not only that but the livelihoods of the men who worked for him depended upon him, as well as the security and happiness of their family members. Peter knew what he was about because he had to. People depended on him. We find him in today’s gospel account in a moment of failure. We shouldn’t think it was his only failure. He probably encountered many other such moments in the years he had been in the business of fishing. Was this failure the last straw? Was this the final failure for him? Was he about to abandon his fishing business and start out all over again in a new business? We don’t know. But many of us do know the feeling; many of us have had moments of such profound doubt that we’ve bee...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) The Kingdom of God, always somewhat mysterious for us, was always on the mind of Jesus. There are almost one-hundred and fifty references to God’s Kingdom in the New Testament, fifty-two of them in St. Matthew’s gospel alone. The more Jesus spoke about the Kingdom the more it seemed to His listeners to be another-worldly place. Perhaps that’s because in a world gone insane, sane things seem to be unreal. In today gospel account Jesus referred to the Kingdom as a hidden treasure, a box filled with golden coins buried somewhere in a field. Likewise, He spoke of the Kingdom as a precious pearl, a jewel found by a businessman who astutely sold everything he owned in order to buy it. He spoke, too, of the Kingdom as a fishing net filled with fish both good and bad. Later He referred to the Kingdom as leaven in dough, as light, salt and seed. Likewise, He called it a ripe harvest, a royal feast and as a we...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) The classic format for writing a drama is to present it in three acts. So let’s look at today’s Gospel account in that format. Act I – Balancing the Books. We have here a debtor who owes his master ten thousand talents. Now a talent was an amount of money equal to one thousand denarii, and a denarius was a Roman silver coin equal to one day’s labor. Doing the arithmetic, the amount of the debt equaled ten million days’ wages. Responding to the debtor’s request the king, in an act of subtle sensitivity, changes the obligation from a debt to a loan. Did you notice that in the reading? It tells us: “Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.” What is striking is that the debtor didn’t ask for forgiveness, he asked only for time to pay it back. Was he nuts? He must have been! How could he possibly think he could pay back the huge obligation he owed his master? S...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Asking the right question is always critical if we want to arrive at good answers to what it is we seek or to the problems we face. With that in mind I want to ask us today: How much of your life and mine is governed by “we” and how much is it governed by “me?” That question is fundamental in our lives. Do I arrive at answers and base my decisions all by myself or with others? Do I live my life alone or with others? We need to see that all of life comes from God. We are made in God’s image and likeness. That being so we need to pay attention to the fundamental truth that God is a community of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each with their own characteristics but at the same time in mutual interdependency. Being excessively independent is not Godly. At times, we see ourselves and make our choices as autonomous individuals, accountable to no one else, all by ourselves. But isn’t it true tha...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We live in a strange world, don’t we? So many people begin things with good intentions, wonderful visions, and really want to make things better, both in their own lives and in the lives of others. Marx and Lenin, the fathers of communism, really wanted to make the lives of their countrymen better. We went to war in Vietnam with good intentions. Atomic energy was supposed to make the world a better place. But, as in so many great efforts, things are likely to eventually go wrong. The same is true in our own personal lives. People fall in love and get married with nothing but the best of intentions, with high hopes, with hearts filled with love, and with wonderful visions. Then, somewhere along the line, things turn sour. Life is mixture of good and evil. We are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. There’s much in our nation that is both good and bad. Our governmental officials are both good ...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) When it comes to facing failures in life, the farmer in today’s Gospel parable sounds a lot like many of us. We work hard, and only sometimes succeed. Most of the best things that we give to others are not by them well received. Most of what we want to plant in the lives of those around us doesn’t “take”; it doesn’t become rooted and permanently planted in their lives. All of us have to deal with failure, those areas where the best we’ve given to others comes up lacking, falling short of our hopes, our dreams, and our great expectations. There are some biblical commentators who suggest that the parable of Jesus we just heard was autobiographical. That may well be true. Jesus certainly had to face a whole lot of apparent failure. He knew full well the pain of failure: •  He was born and raised in Nazareth and his own hometown folks rejected Him. •  His own Hebrew countrymen rejected His me...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Always there is a connection between the first readings and the gospel accounts that the Church presents to us in the major celebrations of the Church’s liturgical year. Such is the case we find in today’s scripture passages and so I begin our reflections with the Old Testament prophet who was one of the Major Prophets found in the Hebrew Bible and who lived 600 years before Christ. When Jeremiah began his ministry the people of Israel had become so hardened by the numbing effects of their sinful ways that they no longer believed God, nor did they fear Him. Jeremiah preached for 40 years, and not once did he see any real success in changing or softening the hearts and minds of his stubborn, idolatrous people. The other prophets of Israel had witnessed some successes, at least for a little while, but not Jeremiah. He was speaking to a brick wall, to people who simply didn’t care about God or their religio...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Parables are teaching devices used by rabbis for instructional purposes. The wonderful thing about a parable is that we can identify ourselves with one or more of the characters in the story. Read one or hear one and it’s sort of like seeing yourself reflected back, perhaps as in a mirror with some fuzziness, not with a whole lot of precision, but the general image is there. “This one’s about me” is the usual reaction. You’ve just now heard one of the most famous of all of the parables used by Jesus. There are those on the right, and those on the left; there are the sheep and the goats, the saved and the damned. But everyone in each group is surprised! When, they ask, did we treat you, or not treat you, in these ways? And Jesus then tells them. What about you? Where do you see yourself in the story? Do you belong to those that care, the ones on the right, or those who simply didn’t have enough ...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We don’t often think of it, but the gospels are loaded with questions. Sometimes it seems like there are more questions than there are answers. Questions imply a quest, a search, and a hunger for knowledge. Genuine questions that is, not trick questions. The word “question” contains within it the word “quest.” That’s what Jesus liked… people who are in search for truth, who are questing for God. So we find Jesus in today’s gospel asking: “Who do you say that I am?” And we find Simon Peter answering the question by identifying Jesus as the Son of God. Evidently Peter recognized something deep within Jesus that was divine, someone coming from God. But Peter came to that as a consequence of Jesus asking him a question. Jesus in response sees something deep within Peter that Peter couldn’t see for himself. In a sense Jesus introduced Peter to himself. “Okay,” Jesus said, “you told me who I am. Now let ...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) The gospel accounts of last weekend, this weekend and next weekend are all taken from the 24th and 25th chapters of St. Matthew. The teachings presented in them by Christ are his last ones before he was to enter into Jerusalem and there be put to death. They are his final testament to his disciples, intended to guide them and us in the “already but not yet” time, that time between his presence here on earth and his Second Coming at the end of the world. These final teachings are therefore of great importance. And, when you plumb them to their depths, they are challenging – even menacing. Last week’s parable told us about the five wise and the five foolish virgins. The foolish ones did not look ahead and make provision for the coming of the bridegroom. They were guilty of the sin of presumption – presuming that in their lack of oil for their lamps the wise ones would provide for them. Their even great...