PAN DE LA SEMANA

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] Solemnity of Mary Mother of God January 1, 2016 SON-TALK; MOTHER-TALK As the Son rises to our consciousness, so, too, does the figure of His Mother rise in our collective imagination and appreciation. Christmas Day, the time when the world bows in worship to the coming of the promised Messiah, is followed a full week after by the celebration in honor of the one through whom the human birth of the 2 nd Person of the Blessed Trinity came to happen. The Divine Son rises in His full human and divine nature. The Mother rises to the occasion and allows herself to be the necessary instrument for the miracle of the Incarnation to happen. This, my dear friends and readers, is what we honor Mary for essentially – for her unique role in the unfolding drama and story of salvation. That role is unrepeatable, even as it is humanly speaking, inconceivable. No less than St. Paul recognizes the depth of this mystery. He acknowledges...

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] Feast of   the Holy Family December 27, 2015 IN THE FATHER’S HOUSE Christmas is associated with family togetherness. My heart reached out to so many people who, on Christmas Eve, were trying their best still to catch a ride and go home to the provinces. All bus stations were filled to overflowing and the ports all over the country were no exception. Christmas without family is just an empty celebration, devoid of meaning, and can only be enjoyed from afar. One’s heart belongs to hearth and home, and home is where the kernel of family is, “in the Father’s house.” Today’s liturgy is about the “holy family.” It is prophetic to know that the life of the holy family shifted from simple to complicated just as soon as the child was born. After the foil and the tinsel and the romantic images have worn off, and envious insecure leaders like Herod already were entertaining crazy ideas, the complications began to set in. Led by Joseph,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1T26yw1Ltg   Solemnity of Mary Mother of God January 1, 2015 MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT! MARY MATTERS. Although we begin the New Year in the Philippines with a bang, we also begin it with a dose of essential dogma, all at the service of what really matters most, on the last day of Christmas Octave. Make no mistake about it. This solemnity is not about ushering in a new civil year. Neither is it about making Christmas veer off tangent by introducing someone who sort of “steals the show” from Christ, the Lord, the one and only Savior, the one and only Redeemer, the one and only Son of God. As a counselor myself, I am familiar with the concept of “reframing.” Basically, it means (among others) that when one wants to highlight the image, one also needs to consider the frame. A very good image set in an ugly frame would render the image less than the worth it deserves in the eyes of the be...

Feast of the Holy Family December 30, 2012 A PEOPLE IN WAITING; A PEOPLE IN SEARCH Everybody is now in search for the child … The wise men “from the east” wherever that is, have gone down in religious history as proverbially out in search for the newborn child or “king” as both Scripture, tradition and yore would have us understand. The shepherds out at night plying their trade, by far, the lowliest of them all, brought out the news to a waiting world. Angels, with their figurative trumpets blaring and wings a-fluttering, delivered, not just an SMS, mind you, but a full-length recital and a momentous proclamation of the glories of a wondrous and mysterious God, who at some point, decided to be one like us and became man in and through His Son Jesus, Emmanuel! His coming brought together an elderly man, a young woman, an elder woman and her equally elderly husband, who, like Mary the young woman, bore a child in her womb. Everybody the...

Solemnity of Mary Mother of God January 1, 2012 Readings : Nm 6:22-27 / Gal 4:4-7 / Lk 2:16-21 I write painstakingly using a Chinese keyboard, where I make tons of errors as I type. My new toy doesn’t have MS Office for MAC, so I have to make do with an ancient machine, with Chinese characters to boot! It is New Year, and many people mistakenly think it is a Church feast. It is not. Whilst it starts a new civil year, it just coincides with the octave of Christmas, which is the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. Last week, Christmas Day, the focus was on the Son, God who took on flesh for our salvation. Today, the focus is on the mother of the Son of God, through whose cooperation, the miracle of the Incarnation took place. This is both the historical and theological truth, the kind for which an entire people of faith pauses, stops, reflects, and celebrates with then full capabilities a community of faith can muster. It is just like Christmas today, which really means everyday th...

Feast of the Holy Family(A) December 26, 2010 Readings: Si 3:2-6.12-14 / Col 3:12-21 / Mt 2:13-15.19-23 Yesterday, Christmas Day, I spoke about an eclipse much like the lunar eclipse that people stayed up late for last week, mostly under the North American skies. I referred to what spiritual writers spoke of a whole lot over the last decade – the eclipse of God in the mainstream culture of postmodernity. God is effectively shunted aside by popular culture, the voice of His Church effectively muffled by the onrush of the postmodern forces of individualism, hedonism, and minimalism that Matthew Kelly wrote about so well in his book “Rediscovering Catholicism.” All three forces are formidable, to be sure. All three are real threats to a culture that was once a mainstay of people’s social and individual lives. For what was once Christian Europe, for example, the liturgical year was what shaped people’s lives, what gave it rhythm, and what directed the daily events of people for centuri...

Catholic Homily / Reflection FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY (C) December 27, 2009 The Feast of the Holy Family stands in stark contrast to what the current craze of the TV “infotainment” world offers what one program calls the “six continents” – REALITY TV! At a time when shows portray what media practitioners and purveyors of entertainment refer to as “reality as it is,” when slogans like “no holds barred” refer to more than just a carefully choreographed wrestling match, shows like “Survivor” now appear so tame compared to the new shows that continue to titillate the curiosity of viewers, shows that veritably leave nothing more to the imagination of patrons. In a “socially constructionist” inspired world, where reality is not so much what we perceive, as what we create or construct together, one wonders whether the usual excuse that purveyors limply say (we-just- create-shows-that-people-want-to-see kind of thinking), really holds water. But this is beside the point of this reflection for...