PAN DE LA SEMANA

26 th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C September 29, 2013 THE FOLLY OF SECURITY AND VAIN CONFIDENCE! The words of Amos are a stunner: “Woe to the complacent in Zion!” I am not a biblical scholar, nor do I intend to pretend to be one today, but there is surely something everyone can say about this stunning statement solely from its face value. One does not need to be a genetic scientist to confidently say this … “All you who feel so secure and vainly feel overconfident, take care!” Well, truth be told, Amos was talking to a very precise group of people who probably were getting it so good then in life: people who were “lying upon beds of ivory and stretched comfortably in their couches.” Was he taking potshots at the filthy rich of his times? Was he condemning those who wallowed in “brilliance and splendor” just because they could afford to? I have no answer for this. But I do have something to say about the rantings of Amos w...

GOOD FRIDAY (B) April 10, 2009 Celebration of the Lord's Passion / Paschal Triduum / Holy Week Reflections There is always a high price to pay for whatever one stands up for. One pays dearly for taking up a cause, a position, an advocacy of any sort. One can believe, more or less, something. One can take up an issue and choose to either be anemic about it, or totally taken up by it. The former, it may be said, pays mere lip service to a cause. The latter pays with so much more than cheap and canned words for it. The one who does more than give perfunctory and superficial support may be said to lack passion. And one who lacks passion lacks drive. And one who lacks drive can run away from anything when the going gets tough, and when one feels the heat of opposition from within and without. Back in my younger mountaineering days (it’s really more like glorified backpacking and trekking more than anything!), it was sort of easy to tell the difference between a committed applicant and o...