Carla Mae's Blog

This year Christmas is on a Sunday. Yes, we are remembering the coming of the Christ in history, and the Church will be reminding us during this month of the final coming in majesty. The humanness and powerful images captivate our attention. Yet there is a subtle coming that can escape us if we do not intentionally heighten our awareness of it. The risen Christ in his transformed humanness meets us in a thousand disguises. His Easter message was “Now I will no longer be with you the former way. I will be wherever you are.” This nearness, this intimacy, can be unnerving, because it is so personal. He is always at my side. He accompanies me as I fold my laundry and brush my teeth. He holds me in grief. He guards me when I sleep. This mysterious ‘coming’ is something he decided long ago. It is I who am out and about. It is I who forget and mistakenly think I am alone. The result is often anxiety, worry, fear, and sadness. These unwanted guests are in my house all too often. But there is ...

  As preachers, we’ve been putting our ear to the heart of the Church, in listening to Pope Francis dream in print. He has led us back to the original spirit of the early Church…the synodal Church.   His book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future , has an epilogue. We’ll now take a look at his ‘last word.’ Sometimes a thinker gives us the summation of his/her thought in an Epilogue…!  Francis does not disappoint. He gives us two words, and they both identify us as ‘pilgrim.’ The two words are decenter and transcend. In giving us these final words, he distinguishes between someone going round and round in a labyrinth, and someone on a pilgrimage. The first can return to where one has started and remain the same. The pilgrim returns different. The pilgrim is changed.  To decenter means to intentionally shift from concentrating on myself to becoming more and more aware of everyone around me. In our time, this means resisting the narcissistic urge. Decentering ...