PAN DE LA SEMANA

23 rd Sunday Year A September 7, 2014 A CARING COMMUNITY: COMMAND AND CONSOLATION One of the goals of the ASEAN region, all ten countries that make it up, is to provide “a caring community.” Well, they still have a few months, before the AEC (Asean Economic Community) goes into full operation in the year 2015. By any standard, this is more than just a nice phrase to describe one of the three pillars of the ASEAN dream – PEOPLE ( in addition to PROSPERITY and PEACE)! But of course, given the three readings in today’s liturgy, it is easy to realize that it is not just a pipe dream of ASEAN, but a command from the Lord, repeated not twice, but thrice, in all three readings. Ezekiel gives the opening salvo. We are all meant to be “watchmen (or guardians) for the house of Israel.” As watchmen, we are expected to warn, admonish, counsel, or otherwise mentor others who might be straying off the beaten track. St. Paul, writing to t...

23 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) September 4, 2011 A lot of neonatal studies (research done on newly born babies) has shown that bonding with a primary caregiver, usually the biological mother, seals the future emotional well-being of the child in many and far-ranging ways. Emotional deficits happen where bonding does not take place at the right time, in the right doses, as it were. Other studies show just how much more powerful and solid that bonding is when both biological parents are there for the child, physically and psychologically. Two makes for a powerful pair. But everyone knows this is not just a matter of putting one and one together to make two.   It has to do with what goes on between those two, what transpires between those individuals, and what type and depth of bonding ensues between father and mother. Two may make a formidable pair, but love between the two, that is shared with the child is ultimately what seals the child’s future adjustmen...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 23rd Sunday Year A September 7, 2008 Readings: Ez 33:7-9 / Rom 13:8-10 / Mk 18:15-20 N.B. I am advancing this post for the 23rd Sunday as I am leaving tonight for Guam and I am not sure whether I can have access to the web. The postmodern, globalized world that prizes individualism, personal success and achievement above most everything else, causes many people to drift apart from one another. As a priest, having been exposed to a relative variety of situations in different places, one thing I realize is the fact that even in very small externally tightly packed enclaves within subdivisions and posh villages, or simple barrios all over the country, there is a growing phenomenon of communities becoming gradually estranged from each other. Gone are the days of communities whose members know exactly what is going on with each other’s families, when everybody’s concern is everybody’s business, when there is a lot of “feeling for” others in a lot of ways. ...