PAN DE LA SEMANA

26 th Sunday Year A September 28, 2014 A PAST WORTH LOOKING INTO; A FUTURE WORTH AIMING FOR They say every saint had a past and every sinner has a future. Agree! St. Lorenzo Ruiz, for his glorious martyrdom in Japan, originally did not go there to seek for that cruel death. He had other motives. He had other plans. Not that were bad of themselves, but they definitely were not what eventually he suffered and died for. We all were children once upon a time. We all felt picked on by our parents, who always seemed to have a ready command or a quick errand for us children to do then. Who among us did not have a ready answer for either of them, or both? “Why me?” “Not again!” “I am busy!” “I got tons of homework to prepare for school!” What child did not answer thus, at least on a few occasions: “Yes, Dad. Count on me. I will do it later,” and then went his/her merry way playing games with neighborhood kids until he or she felt hungry? Wha...

  31 st Sunday Year C November 3, 2013 BROKEN BUT NOT BEATEN, FORLORN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN! I am afraid of heights. I fell from a tree once in my life, while doing  - you know – that childhood classic Batman stunt! (I will spare you the details!) But for one afraid of heights, I think I have done a mean feat climbing 14 Philippine mountains, one of them for more than 12 times! I am a small man, too, by any standard, including by current Philippine standards where children of people not any taller than me, end up being a lot taller than their progenies. (Did we do the Star margarine challenge right? Or we just didn’t have Cherifer “tangkad sagad” back then?) Today, I take comfort from the story of Zacchaeus. No … I don’t mean to gloat over his height (or the lack of it!). I meant, I take comfort from Zacchaeus, not because he was just as small as me, but because he was endowed with a big heart. He was willing to go out very lite...

Second Sunday of Easter Year C April 7, 2013 THAT HIS SHADOW MIGHT FALL ON US! The night of March 13, I chose not to sleep. I decided to stay up and wait for the white smoke, as I had the hunch things would accelerate that night. Being seven hours ahead of Rome, it was time for bed. The white smoke came at more or less 2 AM. But when the shadow of the new Pope’s image fell on the whole world, brought by the miracle of mass communications and the internet in my case, going back to bed was out of the question. I was energized. I was excited. And I got a big boost to my faith as I saw the throngs at St. Peter’s square, show a groundswell of support for the new Bishop of Rome. Today, the readings all show this same energy, the same excitement, a similar jolt that comes from the Risen Lord. “Signs and wonders” were what the apostles did, and “a large number of people” also gathered to experience the same. For his part, John, who witnessed the Ri...

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A January 30, 2011 The first reading from the Prophet Zephaniah seems like an acceptance of what is, a copping out to what is inevitable, a surrendering to what is ineluctable. Zephaniah speaks of a remnant, a few brave and steadfast souls, who will be a “people humble and lowly,” and who will “take refuge in the Lord.” I cannot but reflect on these words as I listened for a short while to whatever new Senate investigation (among many fruitless ones) was going on yesterday in the Philippines. As I heard the unexplainable amnesia of certain bigwigs of the Philippine armed forces, “the few, the brave, the chosen,” a growing sense of frustration and anger was welling up from within me. Isaiah’s words rang true. There is but a tiny remnant left in the sea of teeming humanity, created in God’s image and likeness,  that seems to fit the mold of a “people humble and lowly.” There is but a few now that can be singled out from the ranks of the bold and...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections 1st Sunday of Lent (C) February 21, 2010 We are back in the season of Lent, that time in the liturgical year when traditionally, we are expected to cut back on a whole lot of things, to make a “retreat,” as it were, so as to foster the threefold attitude and practice of “prayer, fasting and almsgiving.” All three are not supposed to be engaged in for their own sakes, but for God’s. They are not, on that score, “negative” acts, but on the contrary “affirmative” ones that ought to lead us closer to God. In the long tradition of the Church, such “ascetic practices,” at bottom, really answer our deep need for God (prayer), for a healthy and balanced love of self (fasting), and our duty as Christians to love others (almsgiving). Nowadays, the idea of giving up certain things is not a very hard concept to understand. Owing to the ongoing diet craze that go by various appellations (Atkins, South Beach, Diamonds, etc.), the idea of having to give up one’s c...

ASH WEDNESDAY February 17, 2010 The moon waxes and wanes; the tides ebb and flow. The sun rises from the east and sets on the western horizon; the winds blow in and blow out and carries with it freshness and fecundity, even as it brings sand, surf, soil, and sultriness to all and sundry. There are always two sides to every coin, two aspects to every question, and two apparently (at least initially) contradictory positions to every thing under the heavens. Qoheleth of old sang of this with poetic precision and searing insight … popularized by Pete Seeger many moons and suns ago … “to everything turn, turn, turn; there is a season turn, turn, turn … and a time for every purpose under heaven … a time to be born, a time to die …” I have it on the authority of developmental psychologists that maturity is basically the capacity to blend two seemingly opposing poles of one and the same continuum. One is either too generous or to...

N.B. This is my last posting in Manila before I fly to Guam for my new assignment. The succeeding postings will be done from Guam. Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B August 2, 2009 Surely two thousand years of history is long enough a time for the Church to learn quite a few lasting lessons. One of these is the need for us to lay aside the “sinful self” with all its unbridled desires and to allow grace to make of us all become what we originally all are by the express wish of God – images and likenesses of Him from whom we owe our existence. But alas, this same self, owing to the pull of sin called “concupiscence,” is all too prone to go the way of “selfish cravings” and even illicit desires. Our country is a pretty clear picture of selfish and conflicting desires on all fronts. Whilst I am not exactly a big fan of President GMA, I am aghast at the many times undeserved flak she is getting all in the name of a brand of politics that, really at ...