PAN DE LA SEMANA

3 rd Sunday of Lent (B) March 11, 2012 I generally don’t prefer eating out and patronizing big restaurant chains, even if they pass themselves off as “family restaurants” that offer sit-down dinners a la carte . Reason, you might ask? I don’t like having to choose from so many options, from starters to main courses; from sides to sauces and dips, to drinks and what appears to be an endless array of concoctions galore. Being basically of simple taste and simple, humble origins, I would rather go for simple dishes that already boast of everything in one, simple, uncomplicated platter. Postmodernity, they say, is a world caught up in an infinite variety of choices. Everything has become a fruit of a choice. One does not take things as given. One decides to have it, chooses to hold it, and opts to keep it. Cable TV has become the epitome of what the postmodern world of choices, and unbridled freedom devoid of any parameters, stands for. Truth also becomes a matter of choice, or preferen...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection 3rd Sunday of Lent - Year B March 15, 2009 We humans seem to have it in our heads clearly enough… the answer to evil is retribution. Anybody guilty of doing wrong ought to be punished. The more impulsive among us would demand immediate retribution, as in the case of capital punishment for “heinous crimes.” The more pacifist among us, especially those whose faiths have been hijacked by New Age doctrine would rather believe that the evil one does already has a built-in retribution mechanism in the very act itself. What goes around comes around, and it would just be a matter of time when karmic retribution would haunt the doer of the evil deed, so they say. The former takes the act of retribution actively into one’s own hands… “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth”… Revenge, many times violent, is the way to go for these people who think that every action demands an equal, (more often, it is unequal) and opposite reaction. This is behind the populari...