PAN DE LA SEMANA

SOLEMNITY OF STS. PETER & PAUL June 29, 2014 COMPETING WELL, FINISHING, & KEEPING THE FAITH We live in times where multi-tasking seems to be the run of the day. We attend meetings left and right, but even as we try our best to follow all the proceedings, our smartphones are busy beeping, chirping, chiming or burping, as the case may be, calling our attention to a thousand-and-one concerns that are all collectively called “notifications.” We turn on the coffee-maker first thing in the morning, even as we boot our laptops, or pick up our tablets to look for the MMDA app that tells us what we already know – that traffic is bad like any other day, and that so-called alternate routes are simply make-believe alternate routes, for everyone has exactly the same idea! We begin so many tasks. We start so many campaigns. We call for so many rallies and sign up to so many petitions. We begin so many faddish diets and we enroll ourselves in ever...

--> 29 th Sunday Year C October 20, 2013 STICK TO THE PLAN! It is hard nowadays to stay the course. Every sea traveler knows this … every mountain climber is aware of the same. Everyone who goes to the malls understands this. You got to have a plan. You got to know what you need to buy, and nothing more, nothing else … lest you buy more than you really need, and a lot of what you really only want. Moses’ roving, traveling band was engaged in battle. The Amalekites were not exactly good neighbors, but expert marauders. Moses literally needed both hands. No, he didn’t have to fight himself. Already old then, he delegated the task to Joshua. But Moses did not exactly hie off to his tent of an office and play computer games. He got his hands full, very literally. He kept them raised … in prayer, mind you … with a little help from Aaron and Hur, very literally, too! Life is as hard as it can get at times. For us. For everyone. For all sons ...

16th Sunday in Ordinaty Time (A) July 17, 2011 CALLED TO BE, CALLED TO BECOME IN THIS VALLEY OF TEARS! Patience is what the readings lead me to reflect on today, even as I wait patiently for a delayed flight to Cebu, where a task awaits me over the weekend. Patience is what I needed to have all through the week, as once again, I saw how a powerful PR machinery has all but reduced the Catholic Church to a humiliating, defensive stance, beset by unfair, and, for the most part, untruthful, accusations involving two separate issues: SUVs or so-called luxury vehicles, and supposedly illegal receipt of funds from the state-run and state-owned lotteries. The accusations later turned out to be duds, inventions and machinations of a PR team that was apparently well-funded, who did their homeworks, and almost succeeded to pull off a caper consisting of half-truths and suggested associations with a much-hated and also much maligned former president. Despite the clarifications that ensu...