PAN DE LA SEMANA

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] July 19, 2015 – 16 th Sunday OT – B NOTHING MORE SHALL I WANT I have been mortally afraid quite a few times in my life – from childhood all the way to adulthood. The first time was some kind of a twilight zone experience. I was probably teetering on edge between toddlerhood to early childhood. I was midway between being fully asleep and being half awake. I don’t remember the details nor the images, but I do remember the fear and the trembling … alone in a dark room, while I heard terrifying sounds of gunfire and loud voices of people in the middle of the night. There were other occasions of “fear and trembling” that did not quite equal the terror of the first, but again, I still remember the feeling. As an adult, I still fear the unknown. I still fear getting sick and old and eventually dying – a reality that seems less and less far-fetched as time moves on. But my experience has taught me one thing beyond those fears. One ma...

[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD] 4th Sunday of Easter-April 26, 2015 NO LESS. NO ONE ELSE. Being one and being the same is a feat not easy to maintain in our times. We have various identities, depending on what age stratum we belong to. Digital natives who belong to the internet generation have more than one, and they all are evolving. Friendster identities have long since been gone and buried in digital cemeteries. My Space identities have followed suit, along with the likes of WAYN (Where are you now?) and so many attempts at defining the world in terms of cyber associations and organizations. We, digital migrants who were not thrown into the water of digital complexities early on, have now at least two: real identity and virtual identity. (Some of us still hold on to emails, and doggedly forward messages filled with images of fluttering butterflies! … Others have moved on tentatively to Facebook, even if a great many have little or no understanding about the phenomenon of “wa...

4 th Sunday Easter A May 11, 2014 THE VOICE Many years ago, when we were in High School, the official publication of the school was called very simply, “The Voice.” I did not think it was very creative back then, and neither did I fancy the idea that “The Voice” would attract hordes of readers other than those who wrote for it, their parents, and their close-in supporters. It was bland, nondescript, uninspired, and absolutely boring. But it did have a following. “The Voice” had a steady stream, albeit small, of readers. We loyalists heard and followed “The Voice” alright and it was the closest thing to having our own brand of “Readers’ Digest” that we all looked forward to perusing, years before facebook took all of it away. The Lord was not one to turn heads either. He came from a forlorn, forgotten place called Nazareth. And indeed, “what good could come from Nazareth?” But the Nazarean did have a voice alright. H...

16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) July 22, 2012 We all know what this means …  what St. Paul refers to as “the dividing wall of enmity” is so real, so true, so rampant, even in our times. We see it in the media network wars. We see it in the battle of the giant retailers, and shopping malls. The one which “got it all for us,” obviously wins hands down, with a 44 th poised to be built in a province that already boasts of two. We see it in the warring artificial “parties” in both houses of congress, and the equally artificial unity blocks born of convenience, rather than principle, of compromise, rather than moral conviction. We are a divided nation and people. We are a great lesson on how not to run a country, and a telling icon of perpetual divisiveness and disunity. But if the story that unfolds in the prophet Jeremiah’s book is an indication, then we ought to know that God is never happy with such a state of affairs. According to Jeremiah in today’s ...

4 th Sunday of Easter (A) May 15, 2011 I am old enough to look backward to more years than I can look forward to … I remember the old people of my youth who used to lament the fact that “young people ( that was us!) behaved differently than they used to.” They were complaining then, that  “times have changed.” Back in the day, we were introduced to Cicero’s famous oration against Catiline, way before Christ was born (63 BC) … Cicero railed against the times and customs of the day: O tempora! O Mores! He was beside himself with ill concealed disappointment as he thundered his rhetorical question: “ubinam gentium sumus!” “Where in the world are we?” Where in the world are we? Today’s readings essay a response … a reminder for who we really are, and where we really are … We are a sinful people, moving about in a world filled with the “contours of hopelessness,” brought about by sin and its effects on the soul otherwise created by God in His image and likeness! To say ove...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection 4th Sunday of Easter(C) April 25, 2010 Diversity is a fact of earthly life. The whole ecological system around which life on planet earth revolves, is based on healthy diversity. Without diversity and natural differences, the world would be a drab, dreary, uninteresting, and monotonous place. Why, a symphony would never merit being called as such if there were only one musical instrument playing one single melodic line in perfect unison and colorless uniformity! As is true for everything in this world, there is merit in diversity. There is beauty in a healthy mélange of different attributes, traits, and textures.   This is also where the beauty of what we believers refer to as the Church lies. This is the foundation of the glorious splendor of the multi-faceted mosaic that is the Church made up of different peoples, races, colors, and nations. This is the beauty of the “miraculous catch of 153 fishes” of last week’s gosp...