Carla Mae's Blog

We are in the Easter glow. We have just celebrated Mercy Sunday. Once more we are invited to stand with mouths open in wonder at what the resurrection of Jesus means for each of us.  We remember marveling in the past as we watched Star Wars when we heard the words, “Beam me up, Scotty!” Sci-fi worked its wonders when the human in the spaceship reappeared on the planet surface. We were watching a physics which we knew didn’t yet exist transport humans from one place to another. But this Easter season brings us a pledge of what does already exist. What does the risen Jesus, seen by over five hundred people, come to tell us? He comes to give us the first glimpse of a promise.  The risen Jesus is no ghost. He is a transformed human, wounds shining like badges of honor. He reveals a physics we know nothing of yet, a physics of what self-giving love does to the human being. He gave a glimpse of this to Peter, James, and John in the Transfiguration, when they could barely look ...

 Lent is more than half over. We are approaching Holy Week. The trees are starting to burst with buds. So, let’s reflect on trees…two of them.  The first is made of two crossbeams. It’s called the cross. It’s an instrument of execution, one of the most painful invented by humans. The victim slowly bleeds to death while suffocating. The weight of the torso so pulls the body downward that the lungs cannot fill with air.  Why are we reflecting on such a hideous image? Because our God, in the person of the Word-in-our-flesh, chose deliberately to suffer death this way. Not by firing squad, not by beheading.  Now why, you say, would the God of heaven and earth chose such a thing? Because history reveals that we do the most dastardly things to one another. This God-who-is-unconditional-love, is making a statement. This God has a final Word for us: “No matter what you do to one another, no matter how full of despair you are, no matter… I will be there loving you, and ...

 We’re going to take pause this month in our reflections on Francis’ Let Us Dream text. Several of you have been online for the Synodal Sessions for Religious Life sponsored by the National Catholic Reporter and the Global Sisters’ Forum. (I’ve seen your dear faces on-screen!) I’m going to pick up two significant questions that came from the March 31 session.   1.      Isn’t the Synodal Listening Process just moving the Church to be a Democracy where the majority rules? No. The Church is not a democracy in the sense the Greeks proposed it as a form of government. The Church is s Spirit- ocracy. It is a community permeated by the Holy Spirit where the charisms or Gifts of the Spirit are shining everywhere for those with eyes to see. Two of these communal gifts are infallibility and indefectibility. The first guides the Church to eventually discern the fuller truth on an issue, and the latter guides the Church to eventually discern how to shake off the...