PAN DE LA SEMANA

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections on the Liturgy Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord (Year B) If we go by the three recent youth surveys in the Philippines done on the national level, there is some reason for us to worry. And when I say “us” I mean priests, pastors, religion teachers, religious brothers and sisters, parents – the Philippine Church, as a whole. Less and less young people are approaching the sacraments, the surveys show. That means, less and less of them go to confession, and, that means, less and less of them go to communion. As Rector in our College-Seminary in Canlubang for eight years, and as educator there for another 7 years, both as a brother and as a young priest, I stood witness to the progressively growing unpopularity of confession and communion. It was almost like we had to beg the older adolescents in the college level, especially, to take advantage of the weekly opportunity to confess and the almost daily opportunity to receive holy communion. T...

SOLEMNITY OF MOST HOLY BODY & BLOOD OF THE LORD – YEAR A May 25, 2008 Reading 1 (Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a) Moses said to the people: "Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. "Do not forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers." Responsorial Psalm (Ps 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20) R. (12)...