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 ...

 In section II of Pope Francis’ Let Us Dream: The Path To A Better Future, we ended last time in considering his concern for the voices and gifts of women. (See August Community Connections. ) Remember, he is building a point of view that provides the wisdom for some important ‘Choosing.’ Get ready. Francis is building up the qualities that equip us to tackle synodality. This is where he is going. Synodality is the focus of the whole end of section II. So, what is the bridge? The pope’s concern about the vital role women must play is but lead-in to two ideas that speak to the heart of the evening news: fraternity vs. individualism, and what he calls the “isolated conscience.”   Fraternity is “the sense of belonging to each other and to the whole of humanity…(It) is the capacity to come together and work together against a shared horizon of possibility…It’s a unity that allows people to serve as a body despite differences…preserves and respects plurality, inviting all to co...

 We’re in the second half of Ordinary Time, and sure enough, the Church brings us back to center: the Cross. It is not by chance that the Exaltation of the Cross is a central September feast. The whole of Ordinary Time is a formation in discipleship flowing from the Cross and Resurrection. So, what are the formation points for us this month? First, we’re reminded that we can’t be part-time disciples. We need full-time resolve. Then we are given the powerful parable of the Prodigal Son, to remind us that we are to be Reconcilers wherever our families, communities, work, or retirement take us. Then the last two Sundays make sure we understand where true riches lie…inwardly and outwardly in our public lives. But we are not to lose sight of the Cross. Why? Because the Cross is the fullness of revelation about God and ourselves. About God, because nowhere, in any other religion, is God revealed as hanging on a tree, dying. Here the hidden God is revealed through the Word...

In June we explored Part I: A Time to See of Francis’ Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. We learned that three conditions distort our vision of these times: They are narcissism, discouragement, and pessimism. Narcissism is drowning in your own image. Discouragement is seeing only what you’ve lost, and pessimism shuts the door on the future.  Once we’re wise to these three ‘dis-eases’ infecting our vision, and intentionally resolving to avoid them, we’re ready for Part II: A Time to Choose. Between the third step, to heal and repair, however, there is an important middle step. We need a firm set of criteria to guide us:      Knowing we are loved by God       Called to serve in solidarity       A healthy capacity for silent reflection, and      Places of refuge from the tyranny of the ‘urgent.’ Francis then takes us back to foundations: the Beatitudes and the Catholic Social Prin...

These weeks of Ordinary Time are full of challenge. Among these challenges are the qualities a disciple of Jesus will need. Foremost of these  is faith. Faith is a way of seeing. Either we are going to use the lens of fear and hopelessness that the culture would offer, or we are going to look ‘odd’ because we see life differently. We view events through a lens of faith with hope in the power of One who brings life even out of death . So, note the dimensions of faith in the texts of these August Sundays. First, we learn that faith means ‘being ready,’ for anything. It means that as long as we are ‘on the Way,’ in Jesus, we are safe even in the midst of trauma. Then we learn that faith will divide us from even family members who choose the fear lens. We will have to stand firm. Next we discover that some folks can be ‘in Jesus’ and not know it. They cling to God while Jesus is hidden from them. Finally, we learn that faith is humble. It does not strut around. It realize...

 We enter the ‘green’ time…the time called ‘ordinary.’ But it isn’t really ordinary at all, because we are no longer ordinary. We have renewed our baptismal new life through the Paschal celebration of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. We shine from inside out.  We have been formed for mission and witness during these past fifty days. The Spirit has come to mark us with our seal us a disciple. So now our task in this ‘ordinary’ time is to put on, bit by bit, what a disciple will need. Ordinary time is a school of discipleship. Week by week we say, “So this is what a disciple needs…!”  First come the big feasts: The Trinity, Corpus Christi, The Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart: Three Persons, One Body, and Two Hearts. The triune mystery lies hidden in all creation. One creature cannot be complete without another. The Body of Christ meets us everywhere, in deepest suffering, crying out to us. The hearts ask our deepest love as we live, move, breathe, and ser...