BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Why was this church building built? If everyone who is here wrote down their answer and I read them all back to you, you might be surprised at some of the answers. The answer that is obvious to me might not be so obvious to some of you. Well, why then was this building built? My answer is that it was built to be a temple. It was not built just to be a meeting place, or an auditorium, or a theater where we go to experience a drama. A temple is a building that is purpose-built. Our church building here has one chief purpose, namely to immerse us in the drama of our relationship with God. Note that I said “our” relationship with God, not “my relationship with God.” While we may come here for private prayer, the main reason is because this where we as God’s family play out our roles in the great drama of God coming to us and our going back to God our Father. A temple is certainly a building dedicated t

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) If you read letters to the editor in newspapers, you will realize that many people have lost confidence in a loving God. Nowhere is this more forcefully indicated than in the debate over abortion and assisted suicide. Some have gone so far as to assert the Catholic Church wants people to suffer, that it’s a death dealing rather than a life-giving institution, and that it extols human pain and suffering. In the world of art this attitude is reflected in works of self-proclaimed “art” that, in just one instance, portray the crucifix, Christ nailed to the cross, immersed in a jar of human urine. Certainly all those who support partial birth abortion and “mercy killing”, along with others who advocate the position that we can terminate the lives of they declare to have a “miserable quality life”, vociferously oppose traditional Judeo-Christian teachings which hold that God and God alone gives life… tha

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) You and I have prayed The Lord’s Prayer countless numbers of times. In it we always ask God to “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Some translations of that famous prayer have it “and subject us not into the trial.” Just what is it that we are praying for? Well obviously there are various levels of temptation — some powerful and severe, others not so powerful and not so grave (not weighted with much gravity). Some temptations are of the flesh. Some temptations are of the spirit. Some involve passion… others involve cold calculation. Whatever a temptation’s quality or type may be, at whatever level, it is always a time of testing. Our resolve, our spiritual muscle, is being tested. And if our character is spiritually weak and flabby, without any muscle power at all, we will be a pushover for the devil. Jesus also had His times of trail. The first we know about was during His ti

February 14, 2024  "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return." On Ash Wednesday, Catholics receive ashes in the shape of a cross traced on the forehead. The rite evokes Saint Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15: 21 - 22) Adam’s sin condemned man to sin and death. But the instrument of our salvation, the cross, reminds us that in Christ, man is redeemed, and the gates of heaven are opened. The original injunction conferring ashes: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return," contrasts with the words of the Nicene Creed concerning the Incarnation: "For us men and for our salvation, he [Jesus] came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man." In becoming man, Christ assumed our iniquities: offering

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Today’s readings present us with the question “Why is there suffering?” For those of us who believe there is a God, the question then becomes “Why does God permit suffering? Does God inflict suffering upon us, as some scripture passages suggest, or is suffering permitted by God due to the nature of the world He has created? Given the fact that I have only ten or fifteen minutes in which to address those questions, I will not even attempt to answer them here. Any answers I might give you in this short period of time would be simplistic at best, thus inviting simplistic responses, all of which would not be helpful us and would only expose us to ridicule from those who do not believe in God at all. I will therefore deal today with the question “How do we respond to the fact of suffering?” Do we respond passively and simply stoically accept suffering when it comes our way, or do we actively face it and ev

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

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Saturday’s readings ) All of the shopping, all of the rushing about, all of the busy-ness of Christmas is now over. Today the streets are deserted. A quiet and peaceful stillness lays over all. Now the religious meaning of Christmas is allowed to emerge from beneath all of the mall music, the shopping, and the frantic preparations for this day. But to what do we turn our attention? To peace on earth toward men of good will? Yes, and something more.  To the sharing of love with family? Yes, and something more. To joining together with the ones we love? Yes, but more. Christmas is more than having a lovely time, more than family sharing, more than the so-called “happy holidays.” We celebrate today what so many are looking for. We focus our attention today on that which will give peace to many who are lonely, uneasy with themselves, and who are searching for meaning in their lives. The centerpiece of the Mass, the essence of C