PAN DE LA SEMANA

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] 3 rd Sunday of Advent Year C December 13, 2015 DISTANCE & APATHY, VERSUS NEARNESS & ACTIVITY Our times seem to lead us to being apathetic and uncaring. The world has seen too much misery, too much violence, too much corruption from among people in high places that hardly anyone now seems to care enough to change the way things go. People are jaded, their hopes faded, their spirits sagging and their energies plummeting faster than the water tables underground are drying up. Without doubt, the next president of the country where I live will   again be a minority president, as most of those who don’t care anymore most likely will leave the elections to those who have learnt that it can be an alternative way to make money without really trying very hard, at the expense of an enlightened democracy, courtesy of moneyed politicians who are out there to serve the best interests, not of the common good, but of big businesses...

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] First Sunday of Advent – C November 29, 2015 WAITING, HOPING, DOING There is always an air of freshness and newness every time Advent sets in. And it is all in the readings. Today, first Sunday of cycle C, Jeremiah gives the opening salvo: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah.” And what Jeremiah says is all forward-looking: “Judah shall be safe and Israel shall dwell secure.” Historically though, the early Church that looked back and reflected on Jeremiah’s words was anything but secure. They were, in fact, uncertain, and the times were unstable. The fledgling Church was tossed in a swirling sea of political turmoil, wars, intense rivalry and talks of rebellion all over the Roman empire. It was the perfect time for them to hear of “signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and th...

Holy Saturday Waiting is so very hard to do nowadays. In our digital generation, internet-saturated times, everything is instant ... everything happens in real time ... We hate delayed telecasts. We abhor slow connections. We despise having to wait at all. But the coming of the definitive Word of victory is something worth waiting for!

2 nd Sunday of Advent (C) December 9, 2012 JOINING IN, INSTEAD OF WHINING! It is hard to write when one’s heart is filled with so many cares and concerns. As I write, 477 people have been confirmed dead and scores, if not hundreds, are yet missing in the aftermath of typhoon Bopha (Pablo) in Southern Philippines. As I tried to begin this reflection, reports say that another powerful earthquake struck Japan some place, with no details yet available. One literally feels a little like clutching at straws, trying to make sense out of so many seemingly non-sensical events that transpire right before our eyes, here, there, and everywhere. But Advent, among other things, has to do with expectation. Advent is about waiting. But Advent is also about anticipating what one is avidly and longingly waiting for. Advent is not about sitting down in a corner to twiddle one’s thumbs, and waiting in resignation for things to unfold, come what may, happen what might. Adve...

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 ...