PAN DE LA SEMANA

Ash Wednesday February 22, 2012 Lent is once more here. Once again, the Church, through the liturgical year, is educating us, reminding us, helping us move on to “higher ground,” sort of, and seek for higher things. Ash Wednesday ushers us into the holy season, a forty-day period of preparation for the Paschal Triduum, that leads to the “highest point” of our moral and spiritual striving – the Resurrection of the Lord! But before we can reach for the stars, we need to look at where we are. We need to do a reality check, and realize where our feet are planted. And in case you have forgotten it, they are planted solidly on terra firma – on earth, that tradition calls the “valley of tears.” But there is more than just tears to deal with as we enter into the holy season of Lent. Let today’s readings tell us … The prophet Joel reminds us of the need to “do penance,” on account of our sins. But he takes pains to define that penance … It is not just for show, not just for compliance. He t...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection 4 th Sunday of Lent (C) March 14, 2010 Sometimes I do love reading that glossy mag called “Consumer Reports.” I love the look of new products and I love even more the ratings the magazine gives to those same new products. The pictures are tantalizing; the products themselves are mesmerizing, and one wonders with all sorts of new things that come the consumers’ way, people can ever hope to be satisfied with what they have at the moment. The thing is, we all love new things. Who would not want to sport a new outfit on occasion? Who would not want to get the ultimate, the best, the newest, and the most chic? Even now, millions are drooling this early for the much awaited iPad of Apple, which makes all others pale in comparison, and gives Amazon’s “Kindle” a run for its money! A good journalist, as the name implies, is he or she who has the knack of getting the latest “sc...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections 1st Sunday of Lent (C) February 21, 2010 We are back in the season of Lent, that time in the liturgical year when traditionally, we are expected to cut back on a whole lot of things, to make a “retreat,” as it were, so as to foster the threefold attitude and practice of “prayer, fasting and almsgiving.” All three are not supposed to be engaged in for their own sakes, but for God’s. They are not, on that score, “negative” acts, but on the contrary “affirmative” ones that ought to lead us closer to God. In the long tradition of the Church, such “ascetic practices,” at bottom, really answer our deep need for God (prayer), for a healthy and balanced love of self (fasting), and our duty as Christians to love others (almsgiving). Nowadays, the idea of giving up certain things is not a very hard concept to understand. Owing to the ongoing diet craze that go by various appellations (Atkins, South Beach, Diamonds, etc.), the idea of having to give up one’s c...

ASH WEDNESDAY February 17, 2010 The moon waxes and wanes; the tides ebb and flow. The sun rises from the east and sets on the western horizon; the winds blow in and blow out and carries with it freshness and fecundity, even as it brings sand, surf, soil, and sultriness to all and sundry. There are always two sides to every coin, two aspects to every question, and two apparently (at least initially) contradictory positions to every thing under the heavens. Qoheleth of old sang of this with poetic precision and searing insight … popularized by Pete Seeger many moons and suns ago … “to everything turn, turn, turn; there is a season turn, turn, turn … and a time for every purpose under heaven … a time to be born, a time to die …” I have it on the authority of developmental psychologists that maturity is basically the capacity to blend two seemingly opposing poles of one and the same continuum. One is either too generous or to...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflections / Sunday Worship Guide 5th Sunday of Lent(B) March 29, 2009 Readings: Jer 31:31-34 / Heb 5:7-9 /Jn 12:20-33 The apostle Philip must have exuded some kind of inner resourcefulness that gave people around him the impression he could lead them to things or persons they were looking for. Today, we are told that some Greeks approached him asking for advice on where to find Jesus, saying to him, “We would like to see Jesus.” The same resourceful Philip, we are told elsewhere, was the one whom the Lord asked, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” (Jn 6:5) Philip, as practical as he was resourceful, had a ready answer: “Two hundred days wages would not be enough for each of them to have a little bit.” It turned out, however, that Andrew the fisherman, who had a quick eye for opportunity, was the one who “discovered” that there was a young man who had a few loaves and some fish with him. I have a couple of curious insights in today’s Gospel passage...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection 2nd Sunday of Lent (B) March 8, 2009 Something must be wrong here somewhere! God must be kidding. Or He must have missed some little detail somewhere. Why did He have to give, only to get it back cruelly after? Why the gift of Isaac to old Abraham and then ask him to do the ultimate sacrifice? It just does not make sense. There is simply no logic here, no rhyme, nor reason to it all. We all are familiar with these questions. Most of us, if not all – who have lived a life beyond celebrating birthdays with cake, clowns, chocolate, and cotton candies galore have gone face to face with the mystery of suffering, the unfathomable reality of pain and loss and disappointment and disillusionment. We know well enough by experience… that at times, things just do not add up; events in our lives just do not follow cut-and-dried rules, no matter how simplistically, at times, certain newfangled doctrines would try to explain them away so facetiously. Life, an...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflections 1st Sunday of Lent(B) March 1, 2009 There always seems to be something timely and current whenever we hear God’s Word. God’s Word always convicts us, confronts us, and engages us in a task that is concrete, here and now. Thre is simply no skirting around it, no deying, no running away from it. Today, we are told about chaos, confusion, wilderness, flood, sin, wild beasts, desert, temptation, and arrest, on the one hand. But we also hear about a covenant, about a promise, about inclusiveness. We are told about all creatures as being part of this inclusive promise from God, no one excluded. Absolutely! The promise from God was given in the heels of sin-induced destruction by flood. But as the creatures saved in the ark filed out into dry land, God, in His mercy promised a new covenant to be symbolized by the rainbow. Not only did God promise no more flood to destroy all mortal beings. He also included “every living creature” in this promised new covenan...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflections Ash Wednesday (Year B) Readings: Joel 2:12-18 / 2 Cor 5:20 - 6:2 / Mt 6:1-6, 16-18 A melange of powerful images confronts us as we “begin the discipline of Lent.” The prophet Joel speaks of “blowing the trumpet” and “calling for an assembly” in order to “proclaim a fast.” The rousing call has an air both of certainty and urgency, both springing from a firm conviction … “perhaps He will again relent, and leave behind him a blessing.” Joel’s conclusion is as certain as it is firm: “The Lord was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.” But the conclusion did not come from thin air. It came from the depths of pleadings and prayers, summed up in our response after the first reading: “Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.” The same air of plaintive pleadings and fervent prayer is shown in Paul’s reaching out to the Corinthians: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God … We appeal to you not to receive the grace of Go...

Catholic Homily/ Sunday Reflection Passion Sunday - Year A March 16, 2008 Today is the last Sunday of Lent. In a few days, we will enter into the holy triduum, the holiest of days that will culminate in the glorious celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. In the meantime, as we long for the “joys of Easter,” we are confronted with a deep experience of contrasts and an unmistakable situation of lights and shadows. We begin the liturgy today with a tinge of triumph, in an unmistakable tone of joy. Two disciples are sent on ahead to be an advanced party of sorts. They were told to prepare for what the “master” needed. Misreading the poetic parallelism of Zechariah’s language (9:9), the Matthean author speaks of two beasts of burden used by the Master: an ass and a colt. Whether he rode only on one or both is immaterial to the focus of the story: Jesus made a triumphant entry into Jerusalem as befits the people’s expectations of what he was perceived to be, the “Son of David,” the awaited ...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 5th Sunday of Lent - Year A March 9, 2008 Today, 5th Sunday of Lent, we are seemingly confronted with courage gone flat, hopes dashed, and dreams for a threesome family’s future togetherness gone forever, lost to the inevitability of physical death. The opening scene of our running movie feature today is one of death and decay – with no less than a graveyard as centerpiece, and with Ezekiel’s feeble-sounding oracles trying to rise above a very real and existential condition of humanity’s apparent common destiny of desolation. An unmistakable tinge of desolation is what we hear in Martha’s plaintive, faintly mocking and blaming tone, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We see traces of the complaint we heard Israelites of old in the desert wilderness tell Moses three Sundays back, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” The world is threatened with death all over. Prognostications of doom and destruction surround us from all sides –...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 3rd Sunday of Lent - Cycle A We all are familiar with the complaint. People who suffer in any way, healthy individuals who suddenly get seriously sick, faith-filled persons who, otherwise, have lived observant lives, cultivating a healthy fear of the Lord, who try their best to become what God expects them to be, at a moment of intense (and undeserved) trial and pain, are heard to mutter, as the desert wanderers of old murmured: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Is the Lord in our midst or not? This is the question of a heart confused by pain, the murmurings of a person hard-hit by suffering, the groans of one whose moorings of erstwhile certainty and security, are suddenly rattled and shaken by existential events not within anyone’s fondest dreams and designs. Is the Lord in our midst or not? When I, as a priest, behold the polarized confusion even in the so many so-called communities of faith, the factionalisms even in a Church neatly divided betwee...