Carla Mae's Blog

The great feasts are over…Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, Corpus Christ. Liturgically it’s a bit like Fourth of July when the fireworks disappear from the night sky. We enter Ordinary Time. Lush green appears on our vestments, and in our summer fields. It’s the growing time in the North Temperate Zone. Summer is here and the fields are lush with new life. Truly, this mirrors our grace-lives liturgically. All the wonders of an unspeakable love have been shown to us, and now it is quiet. In the fields of our hearts much unseen will be going on. The texts will be calling forth growth from the great Mysteries. New life, new growth, new challenges to our cranky old ego with its blaming-shaming-complaining-whining-worrying-withdrawing ways. Oh, yes…our egoism has a voice. We can listen for it. Three ugly sisters, and three feverish brothers. They need to be put to ‘bed’ and get a good long healing ‘sleep.’ In their place we welcome joy, cultivate constant pray...

St. Augustine (in the Office of Readings) reminds us that there are two ‘times’ during the Liturgical Year: the time before Easter and the time after Easter. These two times reflect the ‘Paschal Mystery’ in our lives. The time before Easter is a time of struggle and penance in faith; the time after Easter is a time of unbounded joy and hope in the promise of our future. So now we have celebrated the ‘big’ feasts. The Lord has risen and ascended, taking our humble transformed humanness with him to the throne of his Father. They have sent their common Spirit-Gift. The Spirit now dwells and burns like a holy Fire in the midst of the Church. What has Jesus been teaching them - and us - during this precious ‘time after Easter?’ He has been teaching us ‘Now you see me, now you don’t.’ He appears when they are together, especially at meals. Then he is gone, breaking the pattern of his former time with them. In former times he was always visible to them. Now he isn’t. So – he is ...

This is to be the new normal…after the resurrection, that is. There will be no usual physical presence, but the Risen One has found a way to be with us always. His presence is a realized hope in faith’s dark light. Pope Francis points out that this hope of our is communal. It is a ‘we.’ It is ours together. But if faith’s light is so dark, how are we going to know that this Risen One, who now is present in a new way in the depths of our hearts, is there? Is there some evidence we can point to? Some assurance? Francis says the Holy Spirit is the living sign of God’s hope. With Jesus we have a picture…we have a human form, but with the Spirit…? As Jesus is God’s Word in our human form, so the Spirit is God’ ‘hands.’ Seven beautiful scriptural images come to mind: Dove, Fire, Wind, Water, Oil, Blood, and Wine. Wherever they appear, there is Spirit-work going on. God is acting. So we can be on the watch in our own humble lives: these seven translate into comforting, c...

We are living in the glow of the fifty days; yes – fifty to top the forty days of lent. We live in the fifty days of wild joy. The words of the Easter Entrance Song still ring in our ears: “I am risen and still with you.” The One our hearts seek was not kidding. He will suffer, and then after three days, he will rise. Yes, and so will we. Why is it that in the midst of the wild joy of the fifty days of Easter, we wake up with the same pandemic limiting us, the same bills, the same laundry to be done? We are Christians, and as such we are pilgrims. We walk betwee n the now and the “not yet.” We live simultaneously in the struggles and ordinariness of time/space, and in the promises of the gospel. Sometimes we wonder what is really “real.” The answer to that is a simple “yes,” for they both are “real.” That is why the daily immersion in the Word is so important. It helps us “walk on water.” We don’t want to so sink into the pandemic, the bills, and the laundry that we d...

We have been reflecting these past months, on the power of hope in our lives, and especially as a Racine Dominican community ‘Rooted’ in hope. Francis, our present Catholic Shepherd, has much to say about this theological virtue. It is given us in baptism as a special power from our Father/Mother-God. Hope is a longing…it is a longing born of religious love, for something we do not yet see. It is an ache of the soul, a longing for the face of the God who is hidden, for our Father/Mother-God’s face is hidden from us. Faith is the gift of the Word, for it is a form of knowing, and Charity is the merciful and compassionate active love of God in us, a gift of the Spirit. But little hope just keeps vigil. It watches for the dawn it knows will come. It manifests a holy stubbornness, for it is the waiting that is so hard. This year, at the Saturday Easter Vigil in Rome, in the midst of a world pandemic and in the midst of the absence of a congregation before him, Pope Francis ha...

As Easter dawns upon us, as welcome as the blossoming of springtime, I am struck by the fact that so much of our salvation story takes place in a garden. There is the Garden of the Sinning in Genesis, when forbidden fruit was eaten from a tree. There is the Garden of Sorrow where Jesus suffers the agony of turning his human will to the will of his Father, to reverse the sinni ng. There is the Garden of Buria l, where they quickly bury Jesus, because the Sabbath is coming, without knowing it is just a temporary measure.  The n this Garden of Death and Buria l becomes the Garden of Life and Resurrection. The marvel, I think, is that all of these gardens exist wit hin us. We know about the sin thing. We know about the agony of struggle thing. We know about the deadening thing, But what does the life and resurrection thing look like? We ponder the Easter readings to find out. I suggest we position ourselves in the d oorway of our tombs and peek out as we peel the burial clothes fro...

We have the audacity of using the language of hope because of one remarkable fact: what we hope for is already here. Now, this is not your usual meaning of hope. I can hope for sunshine tomorrow, but it may or may not turn out that way. I can hope this crisis with the virus is soon over...but I’m not sure about what “soon” means. It may linger for several weeks or even months.  But the virtue of hope t hat Pope Francis is writing about ( On Hope , 2017), is remarkably different. As baptized Christians what we hope for is already present . We just don’t see it or experience it yet. Now, that is unbeatable assurance! The apostles in their early preaching were very clear. Because of the resurrection of Jesus, his overcoming of death, we will experience the same, for our baptism bonds us with him. This is the reason the early Christians greeted one another with “We shall always be with the Lord.”   This means that every loved one we part with in death, we will see again. It ...