BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) From Advent until now the readings and themes of our liturgies have all centered-on God’s coming to us. The underlying movement has been God seeking us out and offering Himself to us in His Son, in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. He is the Messiah first promised to the descendants of Adam and Eve after their Fall. In today’s Liturgy the basic movement shifts. Now it’s all about our seeking, specifically our seeking out God in His Christ, and by the word “our” I mean all of humanity. The Magi we need to note were not Jews. They were the representatives of the gentile nations and peoples. They were kings who were sages, wise men, visionaries, men who searched beyond what is obvious; searching into the mysterious non-scientific world in which we exist as distinguished from what is merely technical and material. The word "question" has the word "quest" tucked inside it, an idea that’s pre

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Some time ago I learned of a woman who as a child was crippled by polio. She became angry with God and was mean, nasty, and angry with everyone around her. She became a miserable human being. By chance one day she came into contact with members of a parish who gave her a whole lot of love. She returned to that parish every Sunday and eventually joined it because there she found a lot of love from a lot of people. Her frozen heart warmed up. She found the freedom to “walk the spiritual walk” even though her body remained crippled. As time went by, the parish entered into a campaign to raise funds. The woman surprised her family at that year’s family Thanksgiving Dinner by announcing that she was giving $45,000 to the parish in their building campaign. Her family was stunned. When they asked her where she was going to get all that money, she told them that throughout all her years since childhood she had

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) There is a hidden theme in today’s Liturgy that reverberates deep within us, a quality to the readings in this Mass that speaks to things at work deep within our hearts and souls. It is, I think, the vision that in a world filled with chaotic and terrible things there still exists the possibility of a good life, a life filled with justice, peace, goodness, wholesomeness, beauty and the things of God. Godliness is possible in a world where it seems to be almost impossible. At a time when the Jews were being held in captivity far distant from their homeland and Jerusalem we hear in today’s first reading the Prophet Baruch proclaim: "Up, Jerusalem! Stand upon the heights; look to the east and see your children gathered from the east and West at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be leveled. The windings shall

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) We spend enormous amounts of our resources, time, and energy on things that give us a sense of security. We buy expensive insurance policies to protect ourselves from any and every sort of disaster. We have high-tech alarm systems in our businesses, homes, and automobiles. Some of us work and even live in buildings surrounded with security fences. Closed circuit television eyes balefully stare at every living thing from the nooks and crannies of our habitats continually recording every movement. And still we are not secure. Moreover, no amount of money, protection systems, medical effort, or bodyguards can protect us from the ultimate confrontation we each will individually face. For each one of us, you along with me, will one day stand face to face before Christ at the end of our earthly existence. Yet we live our lives awash in distractions, busily engaged in a whole lot that’s seemingly very important to

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Jewish sages wrote the Book of Genesis as a series of meditations on the origin of the universe and the genesis of humankind. A popular form of Jewish writing was employed setting forth very profound ideas in simple forms of storytelling. Everything happened, they told us, because a caring and loving Creator in the beginning willed it so. All that has happened comes from His personal love and inner drive to share Himself. All lovers know of that inner drive. God did not create anything by chance – everything is purpose made, especially man and woman who are created in God’s own image and likeness so that He can share Himself with them as He does with no other creatures. He breathed His life, Genesis tells us, only into man and woman, not into His other creatures. Note that the creation of man was prior to the creation of any other form of life. Into man God breathed His Spirit, His very life and love. Th

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 ) 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