PAN DE LA SEMANA

I would like to state right at the outset that this post is as much my contribution to Christmas celebration as my personal tribute to a former confrere RENAN LUTERIA. Rest in peace Renan! You touched many lives, including mine. May your example of selflessness live on in more young people! Christmas Day December 25, 2012 WHAT’S RIGHT ABOUT GIFT-GIVING ON CHRISTMAS DAY Anti-catholic haters abound these days. Yes, even, and especially on Christmas day. Some of them former Catholics themselves, whose very shallow understanding of what they claimed they believed in, was simply not enough for them to parry all the sloganeering and the proselytizing, they have one common line: What’s all the fuss about celebrating a commercialized Christmas? What does the flurry of gift-giving got to do with the second most solemn feast of the liturgical year? My answer is, simply everything! The question they ask seems to be “what’s wrong about gift-giving on Chris...

3 rd Sunday of Advent Year A December 12, 2010 They simply don’t seem to add up! Problems today … challenges here …  obstacles there … worries here, there, and everywhere … they don’t add up. No … if you think otherwise, you’re not odd. You are just one of us lesser mortals … at times cautious, many times afraid … and most times worried sick. At 55, I am worried about getting sick and unable to do what I mostly enjoy doing everyday. At any age, people everywhere worry about the future. Everywhere, people now, who know enough and are observant enough to take notice, do wax worrisome over the fast degradation of the only place we call home – mother earth! Take the case of people in the Marshall islands – the Mashallese – whose tiny island atolls are predicted to be the first to disappear with the rapid onset of global warming. Already now, shorelines are being reclaimed by the ocean, rocks and solid land are crumbling before the eyes of residents who now worry about their legal ...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Liturgical Reflections SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD January 4, 2008 In life, we do have experiences that more or less change the tone, or the direction of our lives. Certain events planned or unplanned that take place in the course of our growth and development either make us or break us…an experience of serious sickness, a life-threatening situation, an unexpected turn of events whether positive or negative, like an unexpected promotion, or a demotion for that matter… the birth of a first son or daughter for young or older couples…the coming of brilliant luminaries and leaders in the church and in society…The list is endless. The one point of commonality is the fact that such events, known to sociologists as “marker events” steer the course of our lives inextricably, irreversibly…for ever! One such event that changed the course of human history forever is the coming of the Messiah, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Today’s liturgy is a celebrat...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 3rd Sunday of Advent - Cycle B December 14,2008 A whole lot of joy pervades the Liturgy today. Traditionally, the Church has, for so long, set aside this third Sunday of Advent as a reflection on, an exhortation to, and as a paean to joy. Thus, the reason for its being known as Gaudete Sunday, from the word used by St. Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians in today’s second reading, right from the first sentence of the passage. This, we all know by now. We have heard this so often, year after year. But perhaps, what we have not heard as often is what should be behind all that joy; what should go together with that joy, and what one who is joyful ought to be doing, or in fact, really does in effect. If we are to go by that old scholastic philosophical dictum, bonum diffusivum sui, goodness is self-diffusive; the tendency of good is to spread itself, then today’s exhortation to joy is a clear and convincing example. Goodness comes in clusters, a...