PAN DE LA SEMANA

1 st Sunday of Advent (B) November 27, 2011 A brand-new year is starting today in Church! A wisp of new wind blows towards a new direction, a fresh start, a renewed effort, at becoming what we are already on the way to being. We Christians know how to wait. We have been waiting, like the Israelites of old did. We are still actively waiting. In words borrowed from T.S. Eliot, we may sit still, but we are in point of fact, still moving … moving towards the fulfillment of what we have already started, though not yet fully and totally achieved. We are a people in waiting. We, too, are a people in motion. We are a people in exile, like the Israelites once, or twice, were, living in a foreign land, subjected to foreign powers, humbled beyond imagination, by potentates bigger than us, bigger than the world, bigger than life itself! But we are also a people on the move. Like the Biblical people of old, though crushed, we are not defeated. I have survived 13 ...

Ascension Sunday(A) June 5, 2011 I vividly remember a nightmare I had as a child. No, it did not have anything to do with monsters and goblins and ghouls, and ghosts. It had to do with the terror of being hopelessly alone, in the dark, with no one within arm’s length, no one to hear my silent screams. Being alone is not a very bright prospect. It could be unnerving, if not, terrifying. In this postmodern world of internet and media connectivity, via social networking sites and all, being alone is a curse. It is very reassuring to hear the Lord once more remind us: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” This is what ascension Sunday is all about. It is about taking leave, but promising abiding presence. Almost sounding contradictory, it is about the Lord saying “good-bye” but assuring us that he will, in the end, be always with us. But more than leaving and being present, the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord, is really a huge reminder of something truly i...