BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) HEAR O ISRAEL, THE LORD IS OUR GOD, THE LORD ALONE! This cry struck a deep chord in the true sons and daughters of Israel. Throughout their long and turbulent history this cry always forced the Jewish people back to a consciousness of their origins and their national purpose. This was the cry of Moses when God first formed the Israelites into a nation. It is the First Commandment… the re-forming commandment when every restoration of Judaism was needed. There came a time when ideas and concepts about God and about who He was were attempted to be concretized. All such attempts, both long ago, and even now, fail. They fail because God is free to be who He is in His mystery and cannot be restricted by our human and limited conceptualizations. For instance, there came a time when the Jewish people saw God as exclusively identified with the Promised Land, with the land flowing with milk and honey. Only th

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Who’s in, and who’s out? That’s a question that cuts through so many areas in our lives these days especially in this political season. Here are a few for instance: What do the opinion polls tell us about the standings of those who are running for the presidency of the United States? Who’s in, and who’s out? How should we treat undocumented aliens? What benefits of U.S. citizenship should they enjoy, and what should they not be entitled to in our legal system and governmental social service programs? Who’s in, and who’s out? Which student applicants should be admitted and which should not be admitted to our public universities and what criteria should be applied to them? Some Catholics are busily concerned with “Who is a real Catholic and who is not?” Some Fundamentalist Christians are busily concerned with “Who is going to hell and who’s going to be saved?” Who’s “in” and who’s “out”? We he

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) They didn’t set out each day to change the world. They didn’t think of themselves as persons of power, people who could influence our culture and the powerful media elite or the sHomily for All Saints Day, November 1, 2024, Year Bhapers of public opinion. They didn’t want to do anything more than simply go to work, do their jobs, care for their families and maybe help a few other people besides. Most, if not all of them, would wince if anyone called them saints. Most if not all of them would rather be thought of as ordinary folks, people who just wanted to do their job and do it with caring concern for people other than themselves. So, then, what is holiness? And who are saints? Perhaps we need to change our mental pictures of who they are and how they behave. And perhaps, too, we should examine what we think God wants of us. These Beatitudes we just heard. Did we hear them or did we just listen to th

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Back in the late 1700’s a man named John Newton, an alcoholic libertine and a man committed to destroy the Christian faith, was by the grace of God, rescued, restored, healed, and given the sight to see what he was and what God wanted him to be. He wrote a hymn with words you will recognize: "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see." We could spend the rest of this day discussing the various types and forms of blindness along with answering the question “Who is really blind, and who really sees?” From my perspective, the most debilitating form of blindness is that found in folks who think they see the truth when they really don’t. There’s no more pitiable form of blindness than one who thinks he or she has all of the right answers, who thinks he or she knows all that one needs to know about God, about Jesus Ch

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) The gospel account we’ve just heard is part of St. Mark’s introduction of Jesus. It has to do with Jesus’ identity, as have the gospel accounts over the past few Sundays. From the Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord through the Sunday before Ash Wednesday St. Mark is presenting us with the question: “Who is this Jesus?” Mark’s answer? “The One who has come to bring outcasts back in.” He has come for the outcasts, the outsiders, the lepers, the sinners, and those we disdain. The great irony is that Jesus, the One who came for outcasts, Himself had to get out of town. Note that in several of these gospel accounts we’ve heard, St. Mark reports: “Jesus could no longer go openly into any town but had to stay outside in places where nobody lived.” That’s true even today in our surrounding culture. It is not politically correct, we are told, to talk about Jesus in public. He has to be kept from where

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) My life is nothing but drudgery; I am filled with sadness, tired of dealing with the mess other people have made of this world. Life is an unbearable burden. Will it ever end? Is there a God out there who cares what happens to us, or are we helpless pawns on some cosmic chessboard, only accidentally born? If God is so good, why does He allow us to experience pain, loss, terrible depression, and various disasters? Answering the question “why?” gets us into a long philosophical and theological discussion. Suffice it here to say that God has chosen to put us into an incomplete world, living in our own personal incomplete lives. But by His grace we have the enormous dignity to be His co-operators, to work with Him while investing our own love and determination into the task of bringing ourselves and our world into completion and wholeness. This is a great gift – an act of faith that God has made in us

Fr. Charles Irvin  Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings )  Two words in the Gospel account you just heard captured my attention… “astonished” and “amazed.” St. Mark reports that the people in Capernaum’s synagogue were astonished at Jesus’ teaching and all were amazed. So the question arises: Why? Why were they so astonished and amazed? After all they thought Jesus was a rabbi, someone who speaks God’s word, and they were, after all, in a synagogue, a place where one would expect to be hearing about what God had to say. So why were they so astonished and amazed? First of all we need to notice that this event occurred at the very beginning of Our Blessed Lord’s public ministry. St. Mark reports this event in the first chapter, twenty-first verse of his Gospel account. Jesus has just finished gathering His twelve apostles and was now “going public,” so to speak. Jesus had not as yet performed His dazzling miracles. He had not as yet cured the blind, healed the l