BIG C CATHOLICS

Fr. Charles Irvin  Senior Priest  Diocese of Lansing  ( Click here for today’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 J...

Memorial - February 10th It is certainly not unusual for siblings to develop similar interests or to spend time, either together or apart, pursuing the same activities. This is particularly true when the siblings are twins. Such was the case with St. Scholastica and her twin brother, St. Benedict. Between them, they helped found the tradition of Western monasticism, he for men and she for women, that persists to this day. Scholastica and Benedict were born into a wealthy Italian family in the town of Nursia in 480, and while twins are often close, the fact that their mother died in childbirth may have strengthened the bond between them even further. Little is known of the details of Scholastica’s early life, but she and her brother were raised in their father’s house until Benedict left for Rome to pursue his studies. Scholastica’s social class, young women often lived in their father’s home until they either married or entered religious life. We do know, thanks to the writi...

Optional Memorial - February 8th There are many types of slavery and also many types of freedom. For some, who appear outwardly free, the slavery is internal and has various guises, such as attitudes that entrap, hurtful emotions that have not healed, or addictions which cripple and bind. Then there are people who seem trapped, but who have actually achieved an inner freedom of spirit that nothing in the world can overcome. Saint Josephine Bakhita, who was born in the Darfur region of southern Sudan around 1868, belonged to the later. Her story began in slavery and ended in sainthood. No one knows what her parents had called her. The child, who would eventually be known as Josephine, was kidnapped by Arab slave traders when she was barely seven years old. It was they who gave her the name Bakhita which, ironically, means “fortunate” or “lucky.” For several years, her name appeared to be a cruel joke, as she was sold and resold, to an Arab chieftain and then to a Turkish milita...

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) It’s flu season. In many parishes the distribution of Communion under both species is discontinued until further notice, and people are encouraged to offer the Sign of Peace with a nod rather than a handshake. If you have the flu, you are expected to stay home rather than risk infecting people around you. You have heard the recent serious concerns about measles, and the controversy surrounding parents who decided not to have their children immunized. Before that it was Ebola. Before that it was AIDS. A sixty-five-year-old woman in India lives in a hut outside her village, and hasn’t had a visitor in at least 22 years. She has leprosy. People are afraid, even though they have been assured the disease is not communicable. Fear trumps science. In some parts of India leprosy is accepted as valid grounds for divorce — this in the...

By Father Thomas Mattison  Charles Dickens did a world of good by bringing the plight of Victorian children to the forefront of everyone’s consciousness; Tiny Tim, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Pip were real-life characters somewhere in that world. There they were seen and treated as tools and opportunities for unscrupulous and grasping grownups. But the swing of the pendulum went a degree or two too far – children suddenly became sentimentalized. When people like Churchill and W.C. Fields and Cardinal Newman had slighting things to say about the beauty, cuteness and innocence of children (respectively) they were pretty well tut-tutted as curmudgeons and misanthropes. This sentimentalizing of children is at the root of such things as the currently popular “right to a child” at any cost. You would think that a child was a new car or a better phone, to which one might also have a right, especially the thousands of frozen embryos whose ownership is often the sticking p...

People hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love more than the truth. They love truth when it shines warmly on them, and hate it when it rebukes them.   — St. Augustine of Hippo __________________________________________ Prayer for St. Augustine's Intercession Renew in your Church, we pray, O Lord, that spirit with which you endowed your Bishop Saint Augustine that, filled with the same spirit, and by his intercession, we may thirst for you, the sole fount of true wisdom, and seek you, the author of heavenly love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns, together with you, and with the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S.  Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America  (Leviticus 13:1-2 and 44-46; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)  St. Paul may appear to be vain when he writes, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” But he was, in fact, a good model of discipleship, and all of us are called, likewise, to be imitators of Christ, doing everything for the glory of God. Very recently I met a woman who had a wooden sculpture, a gift from a missionary Sister. It was carved by a leper, who gave it to the Sister to acknowledge his special gratitude, because she was the only person who had ever touched him. She was an imitator of Christ as we see him in today’s Gospel. His touch produced more than the physical healing. It was surely unexpected, perhaps even shocking, and, therefore, a very powerful sign, an example to follow. It was a healing and reconciling touch. Normally we think of reconciliation as the restoration of a relatio...