BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Senior Priest Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for today’s readings ) Many people believe that living the Gospel message is unrealistic. Numerous times people have begun a conversation with me using the phrase: “Father, out there in the real world …” Their unspoken assumption is of course that because I am a priest I am somehow not in the real world. History has given us a number of philosophers and thinkers who have told us that Jesus was a beautiful man, possessing tenderness of heart, infinite sweetness, and universal charm. In other words they are saying that Jesus was an idealist who saw and lived life in an idealistic dream world, not as it really is. They like to talk about Jesus, admiring His ethical code and His moral standards while at the same time they are locating Jesus out of this world, out of touch with reality. I suspect there are some here in church who are here just now for a few moments of relief in order to get out of this world

Deësis mosaic, c. 1261, Hagia Sophia, Greek Orthodox Basilica, Istanbul  The Fifth Sunday in Easter, May 14, 2017 By Msgr. Bernard Bourgeois Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 33; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God; have faith also in me.” John 14:1 The Church is now in the midst of what is known as the Great Fifty Days, or the Easter Season. This sacred time began with the Easter Vigil Mass and will conclude Pentecost Sunday. Easter is the high point of the liturgical year. It is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most important moment of human history. Now, in the middle of May, it might seem that Easter and the joy it brought to the Church is a long time ago. The joy and festivity of Easter can wear off quickly when everyone returns to work, school, and life. Day-to-day living has a way of wearing the human person’s faith down. Life can become a matter of routine and even monotony. Suffering abounds, and

May 2nd, is the memorial of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296 – 373), the 4th century bishop, theologian, and Doctor of the Church who as a revered pillar of the Faith championed orthodoxy and the divinity of Christ against the heretical Arius (hence his title "Arius' ablest enemy"). He is a venerated Church Father. Most Catholics today have little idea what the term “Arianism” means. In the 4th century, however, it was the most pernicious heresy ever to be promulgated, and it threatened to destroy the Church's most essential beliefs about Jesus Christ. Arius, for whom the heresy is named, was a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, in the late 3rd century. He believed that, although Jesus was Lord and Savior, he was not equal to God the Father, but was merely the highest of all God’s creatures. In short, Arius denied the divinity of Christ. His teaching had divided the Church. Enter St. Athanasius. He too, was from Alexandria, having become Patriarch Archbishop

Christ’s assurance to the apostles is from the Last Supper discourses in John . If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.  — John 14: 15-20  ___________________________________________________ Pentecost Collect Prayer Almighty ever-living God, who willed the Paschal Mystery to be encompassed as a sign in fifty days, grant that from out of the scattered nations the confusion of many tongues may be gathered by heavenly grace into one great confession of your name, with the Holy Spirit. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever. Amen.

Appearence Behind Locked Doors , Duccio di Buoninsegna, c. 1308. Fr. Charles Irvin Senior Priest Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for today’s readings ) At the Last Supper, shortly before He suffered and died on the Cross, Jesus gave us the stupendous gift of His Body and Blood, now really and truly present to us in the Eucharist. He gave us this gift at the very core of His redemptive sacrifice for us. Then, when He rose from the dead, His very first act was breathe out Holy Spirit upon His apostles and into His Church. “Peace be with you,” He said to them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does that mean for us? Our Church leads us now into what we might call “The time of the handing over of the Spirit.” To examine the significance of that time let’s return to God’s first breathing forth His Holy Spirit, that life-giving creative act of God that we find in the

Fr. Charles Irvin Senior Priest Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for today’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.” Tha

August 6th, is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. It was declared a universal feast by Pope Callixtus III in 1456 to commemorate the victory of Christian forces at the Siege of Belgrade. The Transfiguration is found in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 17:1–9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28–36 describe it, and 2 Peter 1:16–18 refers to it). It is the only miracle involving Jesus exclusively. Prefiguring His Ascension and manifesting His Divinity, Jesus, is transfigured, becoming resplendent in glory upon Mt. Tabor. At that moment, Christ's interior Divinity and Beatific soul overflowed His body, so that Jesus shone as bright as the sun. The apostles Peter, who according to Aquinas, loved Jesus the most, James, who was the first of the Apostles to die for his faith, and John, who the Lord loved especially, were the only eyewitnesses. From the Gospel of Mark: Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transf

Fr. Thomas J. Lane S.T.D. Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, MD ( Click here for today’s readings ) "O Father who sought me O Son who bought me O Holy Spirit who taught me." That beautiful prayer to the Trinity is quoted in a book on Celtic prayer ( The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination page 43 by Esther de Waal). It expresses beautifully the different qualities of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. The Father sought us. That reminds me of Psalm 139, a beautiful Psalm about God seeking us and being present with us at all times. O Lord you search me and you know me, You know my resting and my rising, You discern my purpose from afar. You mark when I walk or lie down, All my ways lie open to you. Before ever a word is on my tongue You know it, O Lord through and through. Behind and before you besiege me, Your hand ever laid upon me. Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, To

The following is excerpted from Pope Francis' address to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia: God did not want to draw near to humanity other than through a home. God did not want any other name for himself than Emmanuel (cf. Mt 1:23). He is “God with us”. This was his desire from the beginning, his purpose, his constant effort: to say to us: “I am God with you, I am God for you”. He is the God who from the very beginning of creation said: “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). We can add: it is not good for woman to be alone, it is not good for children, the elderly or the young to be alone. It is not good. That is why a man leaves his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24). The two are meant to be a home, a family. From time immemorial, in the depths of our heart, we have heard those powerful words: it is not good for you to be alone. The family is the great blessing, the great gift of this “God w