Carla Mae's Blog

“…the Spirit of truth…will guide you to all truth.” John 16   Who is this Holy Spirit? We here in the West have very vague notions of the Holy Spirit. For some of us the Spirit is an afterthought in the Trinity…a “trailer-child,” or the dove that hovers over Jesus. But we sell ourselves short. This third Something in the divine Mystery is the actual love-gift of God given to us. Just as the Father is the Singer, and the Word is the Song, so the Spirit is the Singing. They are distinct but cannot be separated. Remove one, and the whole relationship falls apart. And more, this relational wonder is going on within us .   The Church uses wild and wonderful images to try to express this in human terms. There are eight powerful biblical images that refer to the Holy Spirit. The images point to functions , the actual activity of the Spirit in our lives.   The most common is the dove . The image speaks of comfort and peace. Then there is fire, which caut...

I will send you …the Spirit of Truth… John 15 As Dominicans, we are flexible indeed. We move like dancers taught by a founder who chose white for the color of the religious habit for his Order, symbol of grace, light, and the baptismal garment. Dominic is also the Doctor of Truth. But what is truth? (We sound like Pilate!) First and most important, for the Dominican, Truth is a person , not a proposition. Truth is not a statement of belief about God, about Jesus. It is far more. We are referring to the One who is Truth itself, the fullness of Truth. Once we realize our Dominican life is all about a relationship with a person, then we can ask again, “Risen Lord, what are you the Truth about ? Let’s take it step by step… Truth is the real…as known by the mind. Now what is real is real, whether we know it or not. But when we do know it, it gets inside us. We are bonded with it. Our mind is bonded with it. When we come to know this One who is the fullness of Truth, then we ar...