BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) From time to time it is good for us to stand back and look at The Big Picture, so I want to begin by doing that as I share some thoughts with you on this Solemnity of Pentecost. In ancient times God approached us through the Jewish prophets and through their major leaders such as Abraham and Moses. It was through Moses that God gave us His Ten Commandments, commandments that allowed us not only to live as God intended us to live but to live with each other in peace and communion. Then in the fullness of time God came to us in His Word made flesh, in His only begotten Son who became man and thus brought the nearness of God into our very own humanity. “ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ,” reports St. John in the Prologue to his gospel. After He lived among us, suffered and died for us, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, God came to us, and still does even now, in His Holy Spirit. From

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) The nights are warm now. Sometimes I step outside and looking up marvel at all of those stars sprinkled all over the night sky. In such moments I have asked myself if there is another parallel universe that we don’t see, one that has other dimensions not subject to human measurements of time, space, weight and volume. I think there is. Because of Jesus Christ I am certain there is. A long time ago there lived in England a holy man named St. Bede. He lived from 673-735A.D. Among the things he wrote are the following words he penned while meditating on the death of loved ones. “We seem to give them back to you, O God, who gave them first to us. Yet as you did not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return. Not as the world gives do you give. What you give you do not take away. For what is yours is also ours. We are yours and life is eternal. And love is immortal, and death is only a horizon, a

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) God did not come to us in Jesus Christ and then go away leaving us orphans. No. God our Father loves us and will never abandon us. This teaching allows us to better understand what Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel when He says “we” will come and dwell within the person who loves me. Jesus expands on that when He speaks of The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom He will send to His followers when He, Jesus, no longer walks among us as a human being. There is an intimate, personal relationship between Jesus, God our Father, and the Holy Spirit, so close that whatever one does the others with him do as well. Whenever God acts He acts triunely The Father sent Jesus into the world, so through Jesus and with Jesus God our Father will send the Advocate, the One who will be with us, not simply alongside us, but within us. God calls us to be temples of the Holy Spirit. Earlier in His discourse with His

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There are times when we tell ourselves that nothing’s new, that human nature doesn’t change, and that history simply repeats itself. The Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes tells us: What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun . [Ecclesiastes 1:9] Yet we also find ourselves seeking what is new. We greet each other with the question “What’s new?” We watch TV news, read newspapers, pay attention to advertisements, and look for new models of things we already have. Advertisements are loaded with words telling us of new products, or “new and improved” products that we can’t live without. The world of computers is filled with new gadgets, new programs, new downloads, and so forth. We seem to be obsessed with what’s new. Jesus used the word “new” many, many times in His discourses and teachings, all the time trying to get us to see the new creation, the new

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There are any number of words and phrases that we use so often that we no longer pay attention to their content. Take the Lord’s Prayer for instance. What do we really mean when we address God as our Father? Who do we include in our ; who do we exclude from our ? Today we just heard a phrase that we heard so many times: “Christ is the Good Shepherd who cares for his flock.” But what kind of a flock is it? Evidently it is made up of different kinds of sheep. There is a unity in God’s flock but there is diversity also, otherwise why would the Good Shepherd be going out looking for other sheep that Jesus indicates to be “not of this flock”? We value unity while at the same we value diversity. It’s a nice ideal but it is a difficult reality to attain. We have only to look at the problem of unity and diversity as we find it both in our own country and in our Church. “Who’s in and who’s out?” is the big issue

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Christ’s resurrection from the dead immediately caused controversy brought on by those who sought to suppress that event. That controversy continues even in our time some 2000 years later. There are those in our own times who for their own various reasons want to discredit the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The leaders of ISIS torture and put to death Christians who, like the Apostles, are witnesses to the resurrected Christ. Just the apostles told the members of the Sanhedrin, Christians in the Middle East are by their lives saying: “we are witnesses of these things.” Christ’s resurrection from the dead just won’t go away. The immediate reaction of the Jewish religious authorities is presented to us in the first reading of today’s Mass where it is reported: "When the captain and the court officers had brought the apostles in and made them stand before the Sanhedrin, the high priest que

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There’s a lot of skepticism in our world these days. We are skeptical about the war in Iraq: Is it a war against radical Islamic fundamentalism or is it a war between Arab and Western cultures? Is our political process for the election of our presidents fundamentally flawed? Just what is the role of our nation’s Supreme Court and our Constitution? Has globalization doomed the future of American jobs? Will what we have known to be marriage be radically morphed into a variety of mere civil unions? This skepticism is more than simple doubting or questioning. Skepticism cuts into reality itself. As he conducted his trial of Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate asked, “Truth? What is truth?” That was not the question of a person who is genuinely looking for an answer. That was the question of a skeptic. Questioners are less radical. One asks a question because one has faith that there is an answer. A question is a quest