Carla Mae's Blog

With this month of September, as if taking a clue from the glorious Feast of the Assumption, the Marian Feasts appear. September 8th, the Birthday of Mary; the 12 th , the Holy Name of Mary; the 15 th , the Sorrows of Mary; the 24 th , the ancient feast of Our Lady of Ransom. The Marian tribute flows into October with the Feast of the Rosary on October 7. Why does the Church do this? Ask this of the readings… Nestled in this Green Formation-in-DiscipleshipTime, what role does the Mother of Jesus play in the fostering of our own discipleship? In our own formation? In our own spirituality? In the life of the Church? Fear not that she will replace her Son in our lives. But don’t miss the fact that she is given to us as the model of our own formation in discipleship. We look to our mother to see what we shall be. We look to her to see how one becomes a true disciple. Yes, she was conceived without the sin of Adam. The blood her Son would shed would intercept it…the blood she gave Him...

We’ve just celebrated a significant Revival in honor of the presence of the risen Jesus in the Eucharist. The reason for this effort is a survey that revealed many Catholics are no longer believing that the consecrated host holds the real presence of the risen Jesus. They learned it when they studied their catechism, but now, as science has taken center stage on TV, how are they to explain it in conversation? What might we say to our families and friends when they ask us about this? How might this month’s readings help us with this? We might begin by saying that the mystery of the incarnation really has three steps…down. First, our wild loving God in the person of the Word, stepped down into the Virgin’s womb. The Word fused itself with our DNA…our double helix. If that is not amazing enough, he took a second step…down. The Word in the humanness of Christ Jesus chose to enter the worst level of human suffering, death by execution by your very own kin. But there is a third step. The t...