Carla Mae's Blog

The Light of the World came to us in the Christmas Season.   That was Good News. But that infant Light grew up. As a migrant on the run, as a home-town boy, as the son of a skilled laborer, Jesus was pretty incognito. Then the people of his time tried pretty hard to put out the Light altogether. But the Love that fuels the light knew what to do with sin and death. It becomes fuel for forgiveness and mercy. Easter is a Sonburst that will never go out. Love has conquered sin and death. It’s done. Fragments, like the cut-up pieces of a snake, wiggle their way through history putting on a show of power. But don’t be fooled. It’s a lying seduction. Don’t be deceived when it shows up on the news. Shake your head when you hear about it in government or in business. No, the battle has been won. Now, what do we, who have that baptismal cross of oil gleaming on our foreheads, do about it? We settle in for the long haul doing Easter Ministry. We ‘put feet on the talk.’ Eas...

  Pope Francis gives us a pretty dismal picture in Chapter One of Fratelli tutti. In Chapter Two he offers us a familiar parable, that of the Good Samaritan. “A Stranger on the Road” is about a Jewish traveler on the road to Jericho, who gets mugged and left for dead. Jewish ritual leaders see him, look the other way and pass by. Along comes a despised Samaritan, a ‘mixed blood’ Jew who has intermarried with pagan heretics, and he stops and tends to the victim, all the while knowing full well that the victim probably hates him. Aware that Francis has written this text for all the people of the world, we can only imagine its effect on peoples of other faiths who have never heard this parable before. Yet all of us know the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But there’s the rub. Each of us has to decide whether to pass by or help what we see going on around us each day, says Francis. (#79) He wonders why “it took so long for the Church unequivocally to cond...

We’ve just come down from the mountain. The Second Sunday of Lent presents us with the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. But what goes up must come down, and this event is no exception. From Mount Tabor they go to Jerusalem. Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem where he will suffer and die. Why would the Church present us with the Transfiguration just as we begin the season of the passion?   I think it’s because we could never survive the rest of Lent if we didn’t know how the story will end. We’re given a preview of the ending. Jesus shines. He shows himself as the Light of the World. But all hell is going to break loose to snuff out that Light. These three poor apostles have no idea what they are in for. What they experienced on the mountain will be eclipsed: The Son will be darkened by death.   There is a method in the Church’s madness. Like the Beloved in the Song of Songs, she will go searching for her Lover. The sight of his face is fixed in her mem...

 As People of the Word we have been reflecting this past year on Pope Francis’ challenges to us on Hope. How can we proclaim a word of hope in these times? We have reflected on this great virtue, a power given us by that hidden Mystery of God we call “Father.” As the Father cannot be seen, so hope cannot yet see what it longs for. Yet we cannot be still. We preach the Word, in season and out, because if we don’t it burns within us, needing to get out to those around us. As Dominicans we learn in our formation that our first preaching is from the pulpit of our lives. Our lives speak. We bring a presence to the kitchen, the phone, and online. This is the first Word others hear. Then some among us write, speak, teach, or preach liturgically at liturgy. Pope Francis shocked the world with his Laudato si, where he called us all to recognize that we are one with all of creation, and need to care for it. Now he has again challenged the world with Fratelli tutti, where he ze...

A new Year has dawned, and in the midst of the pandemic’s hold we know healing is out there, hidden in the laboratories struggling to produce the help the world needs. So much is hidden in our day-to-day lives. Could this be the reason the Word who pressed our humanity to itself chose thirty years of hiddenness? It’s certainly not the way we would plan a redemption. Thirty years, and the only detail we have is when the child got ‘lost’ and caused his parents unbelievable pain? Perhaps there is more here than we might think as we hurry on through this little snatch of ordinary time to the great season of lent. But, to think of it, these hidden years of the life of Jesus have much to tell us. The liturgical readings of January might serve us well if we look for ‘hidden treasure.’ The ordinary is just so…ordinary. We take it for granted. We just do it. We do our laundry, we shop, we open mail, we brush our teeth, we make supper…and so on. But didn’t the Word do just the...

  We have entered the season of Advent. Its color is purple, but not the penitential purple of lent. It is the magenta or sapphire blue purple of longing. Advent is about the heartache of hope’s longing to find the One my heart loves .   The human family knows deep-down what it wants. It longs for peace. It longs for collaboration. It longs for healing. It longs for the communion that authentic relationship brings. ‘Advent’ means to come or coming to. So the obvious question is “When?” When will these things come, and who will bring them?    Various religious traditions have various answers. The answer given down through the ages in the Christian community called Church has been that only God can bring these things, and God will do this in the broad expanse of time: in the past, in the present, and in the future. But to answer this longing, God will have to enter time. God will have to endure its limitations, be bound by its step-by-step process, suff...

  What makes it possible, when all is chaos around us, when war is present, when the virus persists, when corruption abounds…to cling firmly in faith? We are told we are to trust. What makes it possible for us to do this? The sacred texts this month will speak of perseverance to the very end. We will be remembering our loved ones who have gone on into a type of life beyond our present experience. In the face of the losses that death inflicts upon us, what will prevent us from scattering like a flock of frightened sheep? One thing only…the assurance given us by the enduring presence of the Word. We are told to grab hold of him, to hide our frightened faces in his tunic, near to his heart. We are told to take refuge in the reality of a mystery many of us spend a good part of our lives trying to absorb. He will be with us, he says, until the end of the age. “You in me, and I in you,” he says. What would happen in my life if this day, this week, this month, I took that ...