PAN DE LA SEMANA

Catholic Homily/Marian Reflection Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception December 8, 2008 N.B. I am posting a reflection I wrote in Long Range, NJ, USA back in November 28, 2006. Two words reverberate in my ear as I sit down to pen these reflections, while tucked quietly in this Atlantic coast retreat house of the Redemptorists ( Baltimore Province ): emptiness and fullness. The Song of the Virgin Mary, the Magnificat, constantly resounds in the silence. And the two seemingly contradictory concepts of utter emptiness and total fullness weave in and out of my mind caught up by the simple joy and utter peace of being washed away figuratively by the gentle waves that toss in and out of the shore, a few hundred yards from my bedroom window. A line from one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lesser known poems keeps on hitting me like waves that persistently wash ashore … “Myself unholy, from myself unholy, To the sweet living of m...

Catholic Reflection/Homily Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - December 8, 2007 So many people want to be recollected. But so few understand what it means. Still fewer do not know what it entails. The world keeps on telling us: Produce. Do something. Don’t just sit there; be productive. People who claim they want to be recollected often don’t really want to be recollected. What they really want is collect things, collect souvenirs. Just like people who spend their recollection day gathering up stuff to bring home from the gift shop, or taking pictures, especially the digital kind that you can easily crop, drop, or otherwise reject, without guilt, or dump into one’s digital dust bin of overflowing memories. For one reason or another, to be recollected is almost always seen as being hopelessly passive, wasting time gracefully, (and money, for one usually pays for an excursion to a monastery or retreat house), and waiting passively for the next talk or powerpoint presentation, or the...