BIG C CATHOLICS

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 ) It is no secret that there is widespread distrust of authority these days, a distrust of our basic institutions and their leaders that, in many cases, arises from understandable reasons. In reaction, personal individualism has been advocated to such an extreme that for many people the only acceptable authority is the individual self. The only authority that I will allow to tell me what is right and what is wrong is myself. Many are therefore uncomfortable with idea of Christ as ruler. With the exception of a fascination with England’s royal family we balk at the idea of kings and queens, believing them to be either oppressive or no longer relevant. The titles of “lord” and “king” for Christ are unsettling for some folks because they believe that such titles are borrowed from oppressive and irrelevant systems of government. I am troubled by all of this hesitancy because it casts Christ as being a threat. But ...

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) "My world has come crashing down." You’ve heard those words spoken by others around you who have faced calamities, real or imagined. Many of you have, I am sure, in the midst of your own tears uttered those words. Every year at this time the Church has us deal with the apocalyptic, those terrible endings we face in our own personal lives, as well as cataclysmic endings of our collective civilizations and our human epochs and eras. History is replete with them. Questions and concerns about the end of the world abound in our day as they have throughout past. Is there an asteroid headed directly at us? Will the sun burn out? Will we all be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust? Concern about the end of the world and the coming of God’s Messiah was very intense when Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene. The wise men who came from the east following the star were concerned with that question. Many thought J...

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 ) 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 ) Back in the late 1700’s a man named John Newton, an alcoholic libertine and a man committed to destroy the Christian faith, was by the grace of God, rescued, restored, healed, and given the sight to see what he was and what God wanted him to be. He wrote a hymn with words you will recognize: "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see." We could spend the rest of this day discussing the various types and forms of blindness along with answering the question “Who is really blind, and who really sees?” From my perspective, the most debilitating form of blindness is that found in folks who think they see the truth when they really don’t. There’s no more pitiable form of blindness than one who thinks he or she has all of the right answers, who thinks he or she knows all that one needs to know about God, about Jesus Ch...