PAN DE LA SEMANA

20 th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C August 18, 2013 You know the kind … they come into your life and that of others and they don’t leave without getting you affected in a good way. They leave you all fired up; all geared for action … You find yourself raring to do more; be more, and dream for more, aim higher and do better in every way. They are called firebrands. They are also called visionaries. Some call them leaders. And these leaders are such because they are primarily servants. They do more than just talk. Talk is cheap, as they say. They talk the talk and walk their talk. And in the process, they show us the way to the higher, the greater, the nobler and the better. Leaders like them are not wishy-washy. Neither are they mere romantic dreamers who cannot do more than pen pushing. Like St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrated just a few days ago, they are ready and willing to lay down their lives like Christ did, for their sh...

3 rd Sunday Year C January 27, 2013 FULFILLED IN OUR HEARING! The people during Nehemiah’s time had a compelling reason to be emotional. The first reading says they were weeping as they listened to Nehemiah’s reading with attention and deep interest. Nehemiah, of course, was reading for hours on end the completed Book of the Law, known to Jews as the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. When was the last time, you and I wept over an attentive and rapt reading of Scripture? Was there ever a time when the words we read or heard so convicted us or so convinced us, and by their power, moved us in the same way as Nehemiah’s listeners were moved? Today, I stand before you and I start with a little confession. I confess that preaching has become of late an even harder task to do. It never was, in the first place. While Nehemiah read for hours, and people were moved by what he read, people now are moved by something else...