PAN DE LA SEMANA

1st Sunday of Advent - Year A November 27, 2016 IT IS NOW THE HOUR! The second and third readings' insistence, not without a tone of urgency, to "rise and shine" and "conduct ourselves properly as in the day," is striking. There is no mistaking it. It is urgent. It is important. And it is imperative that one gets to realize that, while waiting for something imminent and sure, one really has no time to lose, no moment to spare, no opportunity to waste and let go. The insistence can be summarized simply thus: it is now the hour! It is now the hour! Whilst it is true and obvious that in our days, people are hard pressed for time, and are quite incapable of waiting, it is also true that for many people in a mad rush towards something undefined, the sense of urgency can often be more a sign of neurotic attachment to being occupied and busy with something. People rush out of their work places, only to kill time in front of the TV screen, watching and gettin...

SHEPHERD, SERVANT, KING Another typhoon has visited us recently. Even now, as I talk, so many still have to pick up the scattered pieces of their lives, both literally and figuratively, to get up and face life anew, despite so much loss. I have experienced helping the very helpless after devastating storms a number of times in my life. I remember the feeling of being like those I was trying to help - helpless and dazed in apparent hopelessness. It felt so humbling ... being literally so helpless - in the face of so many needs, all urgent and all important. The magnitude of the destruction, in many cases, was unfathomable. Money doesn't grow on trees, and no one plucks it out of nowhere just when one needs it, no matter how urgent, no matter how important, no matter how noble. But at the same time, it felt so encouraging. The little that was available for everyone to do was precisely what the suffering millions needed. The power that was not anyone's innate resource wa...

OF SET-UPS, UPSETS, AND RESETS Last week, we alluded to the importance and necessity of having perspective. To have perspective is to have a frame on which to set a picture, a ground on which to locate a seemingly smaller reality. To have perspective is to be endowed with a point of view, to see the bigger picture, as it were, and not to miss the bigger forest for just a few trees. The seven brothers and their heroic mother of last week’s first reading, definitely had perspective. That perspective of faith in the resurrection was what gave them the courage, the strength, and the endurance to withstand a painful and cruel – grisly – death. On that score, the Sadducees, disbelieving as they were, of the resurrection, lacked the necessary perspective to see beyond earthly existence. Their ridiculous – if, impossible – scenario in the impertinent question posed to the Lord, betrayed their utter lack of perspective. This Sunday, we get to un...