BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  I wonder how long I will be remembered after I die. I wonder, too, what I will be remembered for. Shakespeare wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” What would you like to be remembered for? What do you think you will actually be remembered for? You might have to write your memoirs to ensure that the answer to both questions is the same. What will guarantee that remembrance? Photos? Mementos? The day will surely come when someone will look at those pictures and say, “They should have written the names on the back.” And the mementos will end up in a box and someone for whom they no longer have meaning will one day discard them. A monument would be nice! The Statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial was sculpted by Daniel Chester French. It’s a “memorial” precisely because it guarantees that Linco...

  Fr.  René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings ) There is a stained-glass window in Blessed Trinity Church in Orlando, Florida, designed by James Piercey. It represents the Trinity, but is not easy to make out the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. With a little effort one can find the head of a dove near the center, and a hand above and behind it. They represent respectively the Spirit and the Father. It’s much harder to find the Son, a man’s face. Eventually you find the eyes, and the nose, mustache, and lips. But when you see the dove, you lose the face; when you see the face, you lose the hand, and none of them is completely delineated. All three are lost when you focus on colorful rays, which represent the one divine essence of all three Persons and fill the whole image. This image may not suit everyone’s taste, but I find it fascinating. I use it to illustrate the fact that although we attribute ce...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  Has it ever struck you as strange that the disciples were gathered “when the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,” i.e., on a Christian feast,? There couldn’t have been any Christian feasts yet, so soon after the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. The explanation is simple. The feast we celebrate today already existed long before the time of Jesus. It was not unlike our Thanksgiving, a harvest celebration, celebrated fifty days (seven weeks) after Passover. In the Old Testament it is called the Feast of Weeks. Be that as it may, for us Pentecost means only one thing: the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit’s first appearance in the Bible is in the second verse of the the first book: “The earth was formless and void... and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The Spirit’s last appearance in the Bible is ...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH (In New Hampshire the Solemnity of the Ascension was celebrated last Thursday. This homily is based on the readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter: Acts 1:12-14; 1 Peter 4:13-16; John 17:1-11.) ( Click here for today’s readings )  There is a saying you may have heard, which goes, “If you were accused of being a Christian, would they find enough evidence to convict you?” I don’t much like it, actually, because of its accusatory tone, but it certainly fits the context of today’s second reading from 1 Peter, which reflects a time when believers were in fact being punished for the crime of being Christians. There are not a lot of reliable statistics about the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, but there is ample evidence of the fact. For example, Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor in what is now northern Turkey, wrote the following to the Emperor Trajan around the year 111 AD: “In the case of t...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  All of us, at one time or another, have experienced deep disappointment. In this context, today’s words of St. Peter take on a special meaning: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” When I started my theology studies, that was the very first text quoted in my very first class. Forty-five years later, these words have not lost their resonance. The explanation we give for our hope will, ideally, be personal.   It really isn’t enough to say, “That’s what I was taught.”   Yes, of course there are reasons common to all believers, but we have our own reasons, too.   At some point, the hope we were taught became our own hope, probably at the moment when we realized that we really did believe in the Jesus Christ we profess in the creed.   Can you remember when that was? Maybe it happened gradually, ...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  In John’s Gospel, Jesus describes or, better, defines himself a number of times, in a variety of ways: “I am the bread of life... I am the light of the world... I am the resurrection and the life... I am the way, and the truth, and the life... I am the true vine.” Today we encountered another such saying. Without looking at it again, do you remember what it is? If you thought, “I am the good shepherd,” you are close, but that saying comes in the first verse after today’s Gospel. We will hear it next year. The correct response is, “I am the gate,” and Jesus says it twice. At first this might appear to be the least interesting of the whole list, the least illuminating. We are told he said this because “the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them” when he spoke about shepherds and sheep and thieves and robbers and gatekeepers and strangers. “I am the ...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Director, La Salette Shrine Enfield, NH ( Click here for today’s readings )  Don’t you hate ultimatums? Most of us have encountered (and maybe issued) them at one time or another. They usually begin with “unless” or “if” and threaten dire consequences if one’s expectations or demands are not met. Thomas issued an ultimatum, inflexible conditions that had to be met in order for him to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to the other Apostles. It would be interesting to speculate as to why Thomas refused to believe—interesting but pointless. Ultimatums generate frustration. Usually people throw up their hands and get angry. The inclination is to say, “Fine! Have it your way!” and then sit smug and wait for the inevitable comeuppance. Jesus did not take that attitude. On the contrary, he accepted Thomas as he was, and accommodated his weak faith. He gave a very gentle reproof, to the effect that it would have been ...