BIG C CATHOLICS

René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) It must surely have happened to you that someone gave you as a gift something you already had. You expressed your thanks and later you exchanged the item, or “re-gifted” it. Imagine, however, if someone did that on purpose, giving you a book or DVD or membership, knowing full well that you already had it. Or what about this? I go into your home and take something I have already given you; you think it is lost forever; then I give it back again—as a gift! What could be stranger? And yet, that is exactly the scenario described in today’s first reading. Because of the Chosen People’s infidelity, God allowed their Holy City to be destroyed and sent them into exile. Now he inspires a pagan king to let the exiles return home and rebuild Jerusalem. He gives back the gift he originally gave and took away. What was the difference between the or

Optional Memorial - March 7th Women have always been important witnesses to the faith and to the sacredness and value of human life. On March 7th the Church honors Saints Perpetua and Felicity, two young mothers of the 3rd century who were martyred because they refused to renounce their Christian beliefs. They are mentioned in the first Eucharistic prayer at Mass and where highly venerated by the early Church. Saint Perpetua was born around 181 A.D. She was a 20-year-old married, well-educated noblewoman, who followed the path of her mother and was baptized a Christian. Her co-martyr, Felicity, was an expectant mother and catechumen who according to tradition was Perpetua’s slave. They both suffered at Carthage in the Roman province of Africa during the reign of Emperor Septimus in 203 A.D. After their arrest and imprisonment, Perpetua and Felicity were led to the amphitheater together alongside fellow professed Christians Revocatus, Felicitas, Saturninus, Secundulus and Satur

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, journalist, critic and Christian apologist. Chesterton converted from High Church Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1922. He authored nearly a hundred books and thousands of essays. Below he considers heterodoxy that is embraced as truth. Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. — G.K. Chersteron ________________________________ A Prayer in Darkness by G.K. Chesterton This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave,      Pity me not; but let the world be fed,      Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead, Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave. If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,      Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,      In sun and rain and fruit in season shown, The shining silence of the scorn of God. Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,      If I must travail in a night of wrath,      Thank God my tears wi

Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M. This man Nicodemus had a half-open mind as regards Jesus. He was moved by his teaching and miracles. He defended him when his companions were out to have Jesus arrested. He helped to have him properly buried when his enemies had him put to death, but that was as far as he went, apparently. There is no mention of him in the first Christian community of Jerusalem. What held him back, what kept him from giving himself fully to Jesus who spoke so kindly and told him so clearly that he himself was indeed a teacher who had come from God, that he had been offered by God as the sacrificial victim who would save the world? All Nicodemus had to do was to accept his word, "believe in him" and be baptized and he too would have eternal life. Why did he not do this? The answer is given in the beginning of his story "He came to Jesus by night." He was one of the leading Pharisees and evidently was afraid of what they would think of him had

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is called Laetare Sunday in the Extraordinary Form, since its theme is one of rejoicing and expectation that Easter is near. It occurs just over half way through the penitential season of Lent. Laetare Sunday, takes its name from the first word in the entrance antiphon (introit) for that Sunday’s Mass, "Rejoice" [Latin: laetare ]: "Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and come together all you that love her; rejoice with joy you that have been in sorrow: that you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of your consolation" (Isaiah: 66:10, 11). In anticipation of the joy of Easter, Laetare Sunday is meant to provide hope and encouragement as we progress towards the Paschal Feast. The great Solemnity of Easter for which we have been faithfully preparing prefigures our joy in Heaven, when we shall see God face to face. [Laetare Sunday is also the occasion of the second scrutiny in preparation for the baptism of adults at the Easter Vigil.] This day

Optional Memorial - March 4th  (In 2018, this feast is superseded by the Sunday liturgy.)  This patron saint of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia made his mark on the hearts of his people even during his teenage years. Though born into high nobility in 1458, Saint Casimir, third child and second son of the King of Poland, never sought worldly honors or wealth. He is often depicted in iconography as having three hands, which is meant to emphasize his exceptional generosity toward the poor. While Casimir was known to be particularly pious and disciplined, there is no doubt that his education at the hands of a Polish priest named Jan Dlugosz helped develop these traits even further. Dlugosz was strict and conservative in his teaching, and emphasized ethics, morality, and religious devotion in his young pupils (both Casimir and his brother Vladislaus II were entrusted to his care). As a result, Casimir spent long nights in prayer, often sleeping on the ground as a form of mortifica

René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) I am in charge here! I give the orders. Is that clear? Even if I really believed that, I would be well advised not to say it out loud. But let’s suppose I came into your home or place of work and said the same thing. It wouldn’t be long before somebody said, “And just who do you think you are?” In giving the Ten Commandments, God seems to have anticipated that very question. So he begins by stating, clearly and emphatically, just who he is: “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” And in case you missed it the first time, he says, three verses later, “I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.” The commandments that follow are really, really important, but these statements of who God is are more important still. They are the foundation of all the rest. Why not kill? Because I say so, and