BIG C CATHOLICS

March 13, 2017 Today is the third day of the novena to Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary. We continue to pray for all husbands and fathers, that they increase in purity and strength. Let us pray especially for the ability and grace to practice chastity so that we may all grow in perfect love with God, in imitation of our Savior, Christ. Day 3 – St. Joseph, Husband of Mary Novena Saint Joseph, you are the faithful protector and intercessor of all who love and venerate you. You know that I have confidence in you and that, after Jesus and Mary, I come to you as an example for holiness, for you are especially close with God. Therefore, I humbly commend myself, with all who are dear to me and all that belong to me, to your intercession. I beg of you, by your love for Jesus and Mary, not to abandon me during life and to assist me at the hour of my death. Glorious Saint Joseph, spouse of the Immaculate Virgin, pray for me to have a pure, humble, charitable mind, and perfect

To understand how Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well portrayed in John’s Gospel was remarkable, we should first understand the Samaritan people and why they were so reviled. The Samaritans were a mixed population who worshipped God differently from the Jews. While they worshipped the one true God, they only held the first five Books of Moses to be Sacred Scripture; rejecting the rest of the Jewish testament. Also, they worshipped on Mount Gerizium in the Palestinian West Bank, not at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jews of Jesus’ time despised the Samaritans as heretics who defiled God’s words as spoken through his prophets. Even talking with a Samaritan would taint a self-respecting Jew, rendering him ritually unclean. The fact that Christ treated Samaritans like human beings was considered scandalous. The Samaritan woman was clearly a social outcast. Typically, women in first century Palestine gathered at the well in the morning to avoid the searing heat of t

Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) If you’ve heard the soundtrack for the Broadway show Les Miserables you may remember a song sung by Fantine that is a lament. She sings a sad song to her lost youth, her lost innocence, her lost beauty. It reflects a song many of us have in our hearts as she sings: "I had a dream that life would be So different than the hell I’m living, So different now than what it seemed, Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."  Once upon a time, way back in my early twenties, my heart was full of a song like that. I thought I wanted to die, my life would never be happy again. What causes us to sing a song like that, to be filled with despair? What murders our dreams? And what, perhaps, is killing your dreams – or the dreams of someone you know and love? The first reading in today’s Mass, the reading from the Jewish Testament’s Book of Exodus, presents us with a whole tribe of people feeling that

Great Saint Joseph, you were chosen by God to be the head of the Holy Family. Kindly look down upon us and bestow your fatherly protection upon our home. Model of the most lively faith, obtain for all the members of our family the grace to believe firmly what God has revealed and bear witness to our faith in all that we do. May we ever remain bound together for the salvation of souls, in order to fulfill our role in the great family of the Church and be reunited after this life in the happiness of heaven. Amen.  ____________________________________________________ Grant, we pray, almighty God, that by Saint Joseph's intercession your Church may constantly watch over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation, whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care. Saint Joseph, pray for us!

Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. Provincial Superior, La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for today’s readings ) All of us know people who have retired to Florida or Arizona or California, or even people from points south who have retired to New Hampshire or Vermont. But none of them moved because God told them to. Here we have Abram—at the age of 75, by the way—being told, by the Lord, to do what was unthinkable in his world, to leave country and family behind and go he knew not where. This was nothing like retirement. It was starting all over again. But he did it, because God made him a promise. The trade-off was this: God would gain a people who would worship him exclusively, and  Abraham, still childless at this point, would have more descendants than could ever be counted. God didn’t say it would be easy, and in fact it wasn’t easy for him or his descendants, down to this very day. In Lent perhaps more than at other times we think of “doin

March 12, 2017 Today is the second day of the novena to Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary. We pray especially for fathers, that they follow St. Joseph's example. Let us pray that they grow in holiness and grace. May they become ever more like St. Joseph, our Lady's protector, and foster father of our Redeemer. We also pray for couples struggling with infertility, widows, widowers, and single people seeking a spouse. Day 2 – St. Joseph, Husband of Mary Novena Saint Joseph, you are the faithful protector and intercessor of all who love and venerate you. You know that I have confidence in you and that, after Jesus and Mary, I come to you as an example for holiness, for you are especially close with God. Therefore, I humbly commend myself, with all who are dear to me and all that belong to me, to your intercession. I beg of you, by your love for Jesus and Mary, not to abandon me during life and to assist me at the hour of my death. Glorious Saint Joseph, spouse of the

(In 2017, Bl. Angela Salawa's feast is superseded by the Sunday liturgy.)  March 12th, the Church honors the humble simplicity and patient suffering of Blessed Angela Salawa served, who labored for Christ and Christ’s little ones with all her strength. Born in Siepraw, near Kraków, Poland, she was the 11th child of Bartlomiej and Ewa Salawa. In 1897, she moved to Kraków where her older sister Therese lived. Angela immediately began to gather together and instruct young women domestic workers. During World War I, she helped the prisoners of war without regard for their nationality or religion. The writings of Saint St. Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross provided her immense comfort and inspiration. Angela gave devoted service in caring for soldiers wounded in World War I. After 1918 her health did not permit her to exercise her customary apostolate. On one occasion, addressing herself to Christ, she wrote in her diary, "I want you to be adored as much as you w