PAN DE LA SEMANA

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] 3 rd Sunday OT_C FULFILLED RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! There was a motley crowd before Ezra like we are told in the first reading … men, women, and children.   We are told, furthermore, that “all the people listened attentively to the book of the Law.” No one was considered dispensable. Each one was deemed important and not disposable. But so, too, was the Word of the Lord. Every word, every phrase, every sentence counted. Every member, every part, every person counts, too, as far as all three readings are concerned. This much, St. Paul assures us: no part of the body that makes up one whole can say “I quit,” without affecting the totality, the whole, the integrity of the one body that makes up who everyone is, in God’s plan. Totality … integrity … wholeness … completenens … these are all words that come in handy in today’s reflection on the readings. This is the same integrity and fullness that the Word of the Lord carries …...

3 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A January 23, 2011 Readings: Is 8:23 – 9:3 / 1 Cor 1:10-13,17 / Mt 4:12-17 We simply cannot have enough of the Christmas spirit. Three weeks into ordinary time, just after the Christmas season (a long, long one in the Philippines!), we hear echoes of what we reflected on a whole lot, weeks and days before, during, and after Christmas (with an extra day to boot for us Pinoys, given the last hurrah we did on Santo Nino day, last Sunday!). The first reading once more speaks of light that shone in the darkness. Oozing with optimism, Isaiah prophesies what we long for and expect, in the spirit of Christian hope. He speaks of yokes on our shoulders being taken away, and rods of taskmasters being smashed. Anguish, he adds, will take wing, and darkness will be no more. As I write, I am tying to get a grip of the multiplicity of “yokes, poles, and rods” that an equally seemingly infinite number of “taskmasters” impose on so many peoples. I am trying ...