PAN DE LA SEMANA

Corpus Christi (A) June 22, 2014 FOR REAL. FOR CERTAIN. FOR ALL TIME. FOREVER! Of late, there has been an increasing mistrust for fake food and everything fake from a certain country. Let us hide its identity under the name “China.” In my latest visit to Hong Kong, I was told that certain people in that country have mastered the art – and the business! – of producing fake everything: fake eggs, fake beef, fake milk, not to mention all the fake “signature” items that can be found everywhere where they sell cheap goods. In our country, we have fake public servants who actually serve no more than their own pockets, their family, their best interests, and definitely not the common weal. Let us also hide them under the collective title of “congressman or senator.” Of late, too, certain places I am very familiar with have also seen a number of fake priests, who do nothing more than sprinkle holy water to business establishments … for...

--> Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord – Year C June 2, 2013 ALL WE HAVE AND ALL WE NEED! Today is a day of miracles. I know it sounds far fetched, but I mean it. Everyday when Mass is celebrated counts as a day of miracles. Bread and wine are changed into Christ’s Body and Blood … that’s for sure! … sure enough for those who have faith, those who believe, those who take God seriously, and take Him for His Word. We all take some things very seriously. There are those of us who believe everything that mainstream media says, or all that our favorite celebrity endorses. There, too, are those who believe all survey outfits, or even any charlatan, “celebutante” or “cewebrity”  who happens to be “popular” enough to have a digital following. I have no problems about whom you believe or follow with dogged devotion. But I do propose to fellow believers to believe more on what God teaches us today. We have no less than God’s Word tod...

Solemnity of the Body & Blood of the Lord (A) June 26, 2011 There was a time the Solemnity of Corpus Christi was celebrated with solemn processions, Benedictions, and many benedictions at select stations all over the main thoroughfares of every parish everywhere.   Those were the days before clogged traffic blocked our streets … before sidewalks disappeared to Disneyland like, multi-colored lamp posts that would change with the change of administration … before religious pluralism and downright indifference took over our culture, and relegated purely “religious” matters, so called, to private chapels and oratories. The disappearance or waning of the practice, however, is not to say the faith in the Real Presence of the Eucharistic Lord is also gone. It is here. It is alive. It is real. And it is here to stay … more in our hearts, if not in our streets… more in our thoughts and minds, if not in practice. Come to think of it, the Real Presence of the Lord   unde...

SOLEMNITY OF MOST HOLY BODY & BLOOD OF THE LORD – YEAR A May 25, 2008 Reading 1 (Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a) Moses said to the people: "Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. "Do not forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers." Responsorial Psalm (Ps 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20) R. (12)...