PAN DE LA SEMANA

--> 25 th Sunday Year C September 22, 2013 WISDOM IN TIMES OF CRISIS; PRUDENCE IN MOMENTS OF CHOICE The parable in today’s gospel passage definitely sounds weird to modern ears. What is the point of the story? Is it OK to spend what is not yours to get yourself off the hook, just as the steward (manager) did? Is it OK to bribe everyone with your fake generosity in order to earn friends just in case you end up being jobless? These are just two of the many possible questions we can ask about the strange story that only Luke reports. Let me premise my reflection by reminding you all of something we all know already … God can write straight with crooked lines. God’s ways are not man’s ways, and His teaching comes to us in a multiplicity of guises and a variety of packages, but the basic teaching is what we all need to understand, not the details, not the hows or the wherefores, but essentially the what. I am sure you have experienced the l...

28 th Sunday Year B October 14, 2012 PRAYING FOR PRUDENCE & GETTING  A WHOLE LOT MORE! Just about every six months, some new gadget is introduced into the volatile and highly competitive market. No sooner have many people saved up (or begged or borrowed from others) and bought the prized gizmo, than another one comes out to replace it. The compulsion to shop till you drop is all pervading, all encompassing. One feels compelled, not necessarily to have more, but to have something else, as W. Cavanaugh (2007) wisely writes. It is about having something that no one else has for the meantime, until they find enough courage to charge it once again to their piling debt, and buy the prized object with plastic money, charging it, for all intents and purposes, to one’s uncertain future. Before the ubiquitous pull of that “something else,” that “something unique” and “something different” that “few” individuals have, prudence, understood as practical w...

2 nd Sunday of Advent(B) December 4, 2011 Words of comfort open today’s liturgy: “Speak to the heart of Jerusalem!” – so says Isaiah. Addressing the seat of thought and wisdom, which is the “heart,” rather than the head, Isaiah reassures them of two things: one, all their debts have been paid for fully, and second, their suffering has come to an end! I am sure everyone can see and “feel” the impact of such a great news, if one places himself/herself in the shoes of a people thrown into bitter exile, not just once in their history. I am sure, too, how relieved one can be when, after undeservedly suffering so much in silence, one is finally vindicated and declared free from the burden of guilt or accusation. We all experience this every time we get reconciled to the Lord so many times. We all feel relieved after a well-spent time on retreat, and done reparation for our own personal sins. We feel we are granted a fresh lease on life and everything good associated with it. We feel en...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection 25 th Sunday in Ordinary Time –Year C Sept.19, 2010 There is a contemporary “ring” to all the scenarios described by the first and third readings today. They sound so real and current they could as well be said of what goes on in people’s lives, all over the world – the references to cheating on the side, to dishonesty, to a little manipulation with the figures, a minute adjustment with the scales, and putting to use one’s foresight, practical wisdom, and abilities to get maximum advantage for oneself. They sound so realistic and so contemporary that one is tempted to ask … so what’s wrong with being smart and using one’s talents to gain personal advantage? One even feels affirmed when one realizes that in the gospel parable, the Lord recounts how the master even “commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” One initially gets the impression that, for so long as one “prudently” thinks and plans ahead for one’s future gain, one ...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) February 14, 2010 One of Maslow’s so-called “self-actualizing characteristics” that separate the men from the boys, the mature from the immature, has to do with a sense of interior stability that makes a person stand his ground, as it were, and resist the sway of external influences. Said mature character trait enables a person to retain his “sense of inner truth,” his personal conviction, despite the powerful suggestions that come from the environment around him or her. Such a person, to use the famous Biblical phrase, at the risk of reducing its meaning somewhat, is one comparable to a “house built, not on sand, but on rock.” Without in any way being rigidly fanatic, the mature, flexible person knows his or her boundaries, or limits. Said limits are not like a cut and dried “demarcation line” like the Berlin wall of old, but a permeable area of flexibility and balance between two extreme poles, without rigidly stay...