PAN DE LA SEMANA

23 rd Sunday Year B September 9, 2012 TO ALL THOSE WHOSE HEARTS ARE FRIGHTENED! Truth to tell, we never run out of reasons, on occasion, to be scared. Just last week, a big quake jolted many people from Davao down south, all the way up north to Baguio City. Whilst it was powerful enough to jar everyone’s nerves, fortunately, it was too far off to sea to create what could very well have been great damage to life and property on a wide swath of Philippine territory. A few weeks after the Sendong tragedy last year in CDO and Iligan, I, together with a group of young priests on immersion and ongoing formation, was there for a few days. The sight of what used to be flourishing villages all washed away, or rammed to smithereens by logs that came cascading down the mountains of Bukidnon, made our hearts sink. But what really rended our hearts were stories of children, who, upon hearing the rains fall, would all be racked by intense panic and anxiety (...

nda Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 23 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Sept. 6, 2009 We live in a world and in times which tend to be exclusivistic. Groups and communities tend to exclude each other out. Different forms of boundaries, whether physical, psychological, economic, racial, religious and so many others, differentiate and exclude people for a variety of reasons, real or imagined. In many cultures, poverty is an almost automatic door closer to so many opportunities: a good education, for one, which leads to better opportunities, which lead to greater chances of creating wealth, finding the right connections, and getting the best that society can offer. For so many people in the world, through no fault of their own, it is simply a closed world, a world characterized by a multiplicity of closed doors and barred opportunities. There is good news today for all on both sides of such closed doors – those who shut them tight to others, and those who ...