PAN DE LA SEMANA

26 th Sunday Year A September 28, 2014 A PAST WORTH LOOKING INTO; A FUTURE WORTH AIMING FOR They say every saint had a past and every sinner has a future. Agree! St. Lorenzo Ruiz, for his glorious martyrdom in Japan, originally did not go there to seek for that cruel death. He had other motives. He had other plans. Not that were bad of themselves, but they definitely were not what eventually he suffered and died for. We all were children once upon a time. We all felt picked on by our parents, who always seemed to have a ready command or a quick errand for us children to do then. Who among us did not have a ready answer for either of them, or both? “Why me?” “Not again!” “I am busy!” “I got tons of homework to prepare for school!” What child did not answer thus, at least on a few occasions: “Yes, Dad. Count on me. I will do it later,” and then went his/her merry way playing games with neighborhood kids until he or she felt hungry? Wha...

26 th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) September 26, 2011 Words are a dime a dozen. They come, not in mere jolting phrases, but in torrents in our days … via Facebook, Twitter, text, and broadcast. Columnists issue their daily columns, many of them full of venom; some full of honey, depending on who pays them more, or whose administration they want to build – or, in many cases – destroy! Ironically, I offer not much else as alternative. Preaching, evangelizing, teaching, passing on the Word of God, unfortunately, or fortunately, still all have to do with using the human word – the only way we humans know best to communicate, to connect, and to transform the world we are immersed in. Words flood our waking days, hours, and minutes. Most are empty words, vacuous threats, and spineless promises often meant to be broken. And this, for one simple reason … words are used, for the most part, only to communicate, to inform, but not to educate or to form. Words uttered and written no long...