PAN DE LA SEMANA

--> Feast of the Santo Nino (A) January 19, 2014 ECHOES OF CHRISTMAS JOY;  REPERCUSSIONS OF CHRISTIAN ACTION It’s simply more fun in the Philippines in many ways. If one leaves aside the one-too-many tragedies that happen one after another, you can’t argue against the fact that we do know not only how to party, but also how to extend something beautiful much longer than the rest of the world. For one, our Christmas is the longest in the world. Broken apart only by the Feast of the Black Nazarene, most of us go out once again to party on just the week after, to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Child, the Santo Nino. It is not fun, though, to be caught up in a frenzy of misguided fanaticism … when even the center, summit and most important activity of all – the Holy Mass – is cut short by fanaticism gone wild and raucous as to stop the Mass midstream. It is not fun, too, when non-thinking crowds lose all good sense and t...

Feast of the Holy Child (Santo Nino) January 20, 2013 Readings: Is 9:1-6 / Eph 1:3-6.15-18 / Luke 2:41-52 BLEST WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL GIFT! It’s more fun in the Philippines! That, at least, is what our tourism people would like the world to believe. Why not? Where else do you find Christmas beginning in earnest in September and ending some time in mid January, with a little of Passion week sandwiched in between with the feast of the Black Nazarene? But I am being flippant here. It’s not just about fun. It’s all about being “blest with every spiritual gift!” And I am dead serious about it! Family psychologists in the Philippines have always been puzzled by this. Most mothers and fathers of fledgling families in the country are working and living elsewhere, far from their young, growing children, far from home that is more than just home, far from all that they grew familiar with. Darkness, you might say? Indeed! The dark...

Second Sunday of the Year (B) January 15, 2012 N.B. I post two different reflections today. One is for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, and the second is for the Feast of the Sto. Nino in the Philippines. INVITATION, REFLECTION, TRANSFORMATION The liturgy today opens with a rousing call. The young Samuel, probably being groomed to do something that is bigger than his young years, is roused from restful sleep not once, not twice, but thrice. Paul, for his part, issues a rousing challenge to the Corinthians to behave responsibly as members of the body of Christ. Two bystanders watching attentively are also roused by an excited announcement from John: “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The call addressed to the young Samuel fell not on deaf ears. Although being roused from one’s bed is no welcome thing for young people, the fact that he was sleeping in the temple precincts meant that there was, to start with, a certain openness, a certain readiness, a predisposition, an ...

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time(A) / Feast of the Santo Nino (Philippines) January 16, 2011 Readings: Is 49:3,5-6 / 1Cor 1:1-3 / Jn 1:29-34 (2nd Sunday) or Is 9:1-6 / Eph 1:3-6,15-18 / Mt 18:1-5,10 (Feast of the Santo Nino) I write from atop my perch over at Maloloj, at the Archdiocesan Retreat House of Guam. Working during the break from the proceedings of the clergy convocation, I find myself experiencing writer’s block, feeling myself totally devoid of all inspiration, inside my aircon-less room in the hot sultry Guam weather at its worst in early afternoon. My attention is occasionally captured by the placid sea just a couple of hundred feet from my window, out into the open Pacific, where storms that hit the Philippines or go to the northwesterly direction, are spawned. The sea reminds me of the vastness not only of creation but the vastness of the mission that we members of the clergy are indirectly talking about, even if it were not the primary agendum of the convocati...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection Feast of the Santo Niño (C) January 17, 2010 N.B. The following reflection is valid only for the Philippines where the Feast of the Holy Child (el Santo Nino) is celebrated every third Sunday of January. This year’s feast of the Santo Niño finds the whole Philippines once more caught up in a frenzy, as much of dancing and celebration in honor of the Child Jesus, as of a lot of political posturing, positioning, and an ongoing realignment of forces and the forging of new alliances in preparation for the forthcoming national elections. We are back once more to the Philippines’ much awaited event that comes our way every three years. As expected, this year’s elections promises to be “star-studded” in all senses of the term, as TV and movie “stars” cross over from the “make-believe” world of entertainment to one that is not any less detached from reality – the world of Philippine politics. As things are going this early in the race, politics Philippine styl...