PAN DE LA SEMANA

Pentecost Sunday (Year C) May 19, 2013 RECEIVE! RESPOND! RETURN! I would like to summarize today’s great feast in three words: received, responded to, and returned in kind. Pentecost is all about receiving. The Gospel passage is very clear. The Lord says, “receive the Holy Spirit.” Let us go direct to the point. Christian life is such because we are gifted. Christian life is characterized primarily with receiving something that is not ours by our own merit, but by grace. Today, the so-called birthday of the Church, we focus our sights on being gifted, on being recipients, on being enriched by the same God who created us, the same God who saved us, and the same God who now calls us to return what we received in kind. The internet world is awash in articles that point to a growing narcissism epidemic. More and more people, young and old alike, are   becoming self-centered and spoiled brats who think they are burgeoning “ce...

Ascension Sunday May 12, 2013 HE, GOING AWAY; WE, KEEPING TO HIS WAY! From the human viewpoint, Jesus’ death was a failure, a defeat. But God’s viewpoint, not ours, had the final say in the end. He rose from the dead. Today, God puts a definite period to this saga of seeming defeat. He ascends into heaven. In glory. In triumph. In joy. The Gospel of today tells us thus: “They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” (Lk 24:53) This image of disciples going their merry, grateful way is a far cry from the two disciples dejected and destined toward their Emmaus of despondency, no more than 40 days before. I would like to think of the Ascension of the Lord, among other things, as an image of the Lord’s going away … He takes leave of his beloved disciples. Physically, that is, not not much more. He says good-bye to them, but this is one good-bye that is not assoc...

6 th Sunday of Easter Year C May 5, 2013 PEACE, YES! TROUBLE, NO! A decade ago, I was deep in study once again, somewhere in the US East Coast. It was supposed to be a Catholic institution, but I soon found out that most students were not only not Catholic. Some were even anti-Catholic! One day, there was an imam who came to talk about his religion. Of course, he did talk about it, and in the process also talked against my religion, ever so subtly. I wouldn’t have minded that one, coming as it does from someone like him. But when a “Christian” deridingly asked me whether Catholics were Christians, I was definitely incensed. I wasn’t in the mood for peace at that moment. I was seething … like I was on so many other occasions in my life when my ego was stepped on, hurt, abused, or otherwise put down. It is hard to be at peace when being a Catholic nowadays is equated with so many unsavory terms … when being orthodox means you are the...

5 th Sunday of Easter Year C Apri 28, 2013 LOVE. SCARS. NEW. GLORY I start with a word puzzle. Mysterious. Cryptic. Self-contradictory … Love. Scars. New. Glory. Something new and something old; something that hurts and something that scars; something that wounds, but something that renews, and leads to the ultimate newness – glory with God ever ancient, ever new! This is the theme of today’s readings, 5 th Sunday of Easter. It’s an old story … if you change your life drastically, for the better that is, there will be haters and naysayers, doubters and cheerers, people who will drag you down, and people who will prop you up. This is what happened to Paul and Barnabas. Paul was an old hat at persecuting the Church. He was one difficult guy who made it even more difficult for the early followers of the Lord. But something new and something great happened to him. He was renewed and changed by a mystical experience. Th...

4 th Sunday of Easter Year C Good Shepherd Sunday April 21, 2013 ARE YOU ON SHUFFLE MODE? Listening is a lost art in our smartphone-dominated times. Wanna bet? Even the world of journalism is filled with noise, not news … studies and surveys, not truth … statistics and projections, not hard-nosed focus on what matters … reality shows, but not passionate dedication and commitment to face actual reality. Times there were when we excitedly spoke of “virtual reality.” It is ever present now …in your tablet, on your iPad, (or Haipads, for that matter!). But there is something more now … far more than just “virtual reality” – what is known now as “augmented reality.” Both the “trendies” and the “traddies” are guilty of it … they both talk of something real with a twist … a little exaggeration here; a small addition there … a gentle innuendo here; a subtle sarcasm there … So what does one have in the end? A truth, but augmented, modifie...

Third Sunday of Easter (Year C) April 14, 2013 AM LOVIN’ IT: BREAKFAST BY THE SHORE It’s one of those appearances of the Risen Lord that is sure to get you running for more … Why not? There’s free consultation for discouraged fishermen out on open water all night and catching nothing. They have been casting their net all night long presumably on only one side of the boat and the catch was simply elusive. They say it is always darkest just before dawn. But when dawn came and the sun’s rays were just about ready to appear in the horizon, someone more than the sun, more dazzling than the sun’s rays, and greater than the sun itself appeared, with some advice: “Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.” They did haul in more than they could handle. But there was something else they were not prepared to handle with ease – the sight of the Risen Lord! However, the disciples who were too focused on the catchi...

Second Sunday of Easter Year C April 7, 2013 THAT HIS SHADOW MIGHT FALL ON US! The night of March 13, I chose not to sleep. I decided to stay up and wait for the white smoke, as I had the hunch things would accelerate that night. Being seven hours ahead of Rome, it was time for bed. The white smoke came at more or less 2 AM. But when the shadow of the new Pope’s image fell on the whole world, brought by the miracle of mass communications and the internet in my case, going back to bed was out of the question. I was energized. I was excited. And I got a big boost to my faith as I saw the throngs at St. Peter’s square, show a groundswell of support for the new Bishop of Rome. Today, the readings all show this same energy, the same excitement, a similar jolt that comes from the Risen Lord. “Signs and wonders” were what the apostles did, and “a large number of people” also gathered to experience the same. For his part, John, who witnessed the Ri...