PAN DE LA SEMANA

5 th Sunday Year B February 8, 2015 DRUDGERY OR DELIGHT? Tension is the closest word I can find with regards to today’s readings. The opening salvo comes from Job, who is not exactly silent about his plaints and pleadings with the Lord, if not, complaints: “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?” Take it from the news we have been hearing of late. Attacks here and there ... Terrorism everywhere ... Corruption unabated in our beloved country and beyond ... Fake surveys from outfits that have a lot to gain – and lose, for that matter – should the winds of change blow our way. Grinding poverty for more and more people … sore lack of education for millions and millions … The list is tedious. Do we have anything right now to disprove Job and dispute his “survey findings?” Well, I do … Today’s readings do! And here is where the tension lies. Here is where the capacity to see beyond what we actually see – as part of the fabled Catho...

5 th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) February 5, 2012 I write even as I am in the midst of helping others make sense of their inner pains and hurts. During a lull in the processing that I conduct for a group of sisters and nurses engaged in helping those who are most excluded from mainstream society, I go to a different mode – the mode of the spiritual (as against the purely human, psychological mould) and reflect on the liturgy of the 5 th Sunday in Ordinary time, come February 5, 2012. But alas, there seems to be more of the same thing … at least at first blush. We hear Job with a long list of complaints and frustrations that sound very familiar to our very own experience. He does much more than just whine … he actually waxes desperate to a fault, as he declares in exasperation: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.” (first reading). The seeming hop...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections 5th Sunday in OrdinaryTime - Year B February 8, 2009 Two weeks ago, I reflected on the need for a sense of urgency in our lives, an urgency not in terms of being enslaved by the desire for the more, the better, the ultimate in our earthly concerns. I spoke of the need for a sense of urgency in the sense of getting the right perspective in life, knowing one’s priorities, operating on the right paradigms that put God and His Kingdom as first in the list, “for the world and its pleasures are fast drifting away.” Today, we are confronted with a similar challenge. There is a little air of apparent compulsion as we hear the Lord say “Let us go on to the other villages, that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” But this challenge is preceded by yet another paradox, an apparent contradiction in images, presented in the first reading by a figure of a tired and weary, complaining Job whose laments strike us to the ...