PAN DE LA SEMANA

25 th Sunday Year A September 21, 2014 LATE, BUT LOVED NONETHELESS! Being late is a daily occurrence in the country where I was born, grew up in, and still chose to live in. Our culture was never a stickler for details like being on time, to start with. Time and space, like everything else, is considered relative, not absolute values, in our culture. We are a postmodern people living out certain values of a pre-modern setting. Those invited to parties are told to come at 8:00 PM, for example, but guests are really too early if they get to their place at 9:00 PM. Waterways, called “esteros” once upon a time, dotted the urban landscape decades or aeons ago, but are now nowhere to be found all over the bustling metropolis, covered over by so-called “developers” who did more than just develop the city. They enveloped everything, including those esteros with sellable “prime properties” for the unwary real estate buyers. Time seems not to be the best ally...

25 th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) Sept 18, 2011 There is some urgency in the tone with which Isaiah writes. “Seek the Lord,” he says, “while he may be found.” At first blush, he seems to tell us, to lose no time and do the most important thing – to find God, and repent: “Let the scoundrel forsake his ways, and the wicked his thoughts.” For Paul however, in his letter to the Philippians, time becomes secondary and takes a back seat to the same focus of Isaiah, and that is, finding the Lord, and being with Christ. When one finds Christ, everything, including earthly material time, takes the back seat. “For to me,” he writes, “life is Christ, and death is gain.” I write while on break together with my siblings (or what remains of us after both parents and others have all passed on) – a much awaited and, I should say, much deserved trip to Europe. We do this actually in honor and homage of both our parents whose hard work and vision made it possible for all six of us surviving siblin...

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A September 21, 2008 Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection Readings: Is 55:6-9 / Phil 1:20c-24 / Mt 20: 1-16a In these times of increasing unemployment and underemployment, when those who have jobs are underpaid (at least compared to the cost of living that continues to rise, along with the rise in prices of petrol), and when those who do have work are not doing the job he or she has trained for, there is apparently little good news in today’s gospel. In these times when due to underemployment in many countries, coupled with rising living standards, - all taking place as logical offshoots of globalization – not a few quizzical eyebrows would be raised in the face of the apparent injustice committed by the landowner of the gospel parable for today. Indeed, the world is mute witness to so much inequality. We have heard enough of CEOs of big corporations in America who retire – or are fired – with huge emoluments that are patently more than enough for them ...