PAN DE LA SEMANA

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) July 18, 2010               I take my cue for today’s reflection from our response after the first reading: “He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” Traditional scholastic philosophy that reached its apex in the writings of St. Thomas speaks of justice as based on what is “due,” from the Latin word “debitum,” that is, what is “owed” to someone else. Biblical tradition as a whole, and the readings today, in particular, going far beyond what the scholastic treatise on justice demands, show us what this “due” is all about, and to whom it is owed – to widows, to the poor, to strangers, and to orphans … everyone who has no one else to rely on. God’s justice shines best in His compassion, His mercy, His loving-kindness. Today’s liturgy offers us a whole lot more on this issue of the “debitum.” It refers to a state of healthy tens...

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...