PAN DE LA SEMANA

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 22nd Sunday - Year A August 31, 2008 Readings: Jer 20:7-9 / Rom 12:1-2 / Mt 16:21-27 The language of today’s liturgy could be a little too graphic and straightforward for comfort. There is a whole lot of passion and emotion jutting out of every line, particularly in the first and third readings. The choice of words, particularly of Jeremiah, evokes the idea of paradox – two seemingly contradictory things put side by side and still capable of putting forth a meaning that goes beyond both elements of the paradox. Jeremiah’s words remind me of what we do when things do not go our way: we complain profusely. We cry out in protest. We make noise and we clamor for redress. Jeremiah’s language today is definitely one of complaint – and I have it on the authority of those who know Hebrew – rather coarse and brash. “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day, I am an object of laughter; every...

Catholic Homily/ Sunday Reflection / Gospel Reflection 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A There is something particularly striking in today’s response to the 1 st reading. Profuse in its expression of joy, the response acclaims God’s faithfulness, his kindness, his justice, and exalts him for the favors he has given. There is a note of definiteness to this profuse expression of thanksgiving and exultation in the Lord. Today’s readings give us enough reasons to join the psalmist in singing of the Lord’s goodness. When was the last time you could honestly feel with the grateful psalmist? When was the last time you really knew you were overflowing with gratitude to the Lord? Tough question for many of us, huh? Let me tell you how in my life I used to complain more than I thanked God – at least, as an initial reaction to something I never expected. As an enthusiastic, 21-year old professed brother, fresh from College, I, together with my companions, was avidly waiting...

Catholic Homily / Sunday Reflection / Gospel Reflection 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A June 22, 2008 All three readings, on close examination, strike very, very close to home base. They all speak of struggle. And they all sound so reassuring. They all refer to a God who inspires so much confidence, so like the God we spoke of last Trinity Sunday: gracious and merciful; slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity. To Him, we cry out today, led as much by human desperation, as by utter confidence and divine faith: LORD, IN YOUR GREAT LOVE, ANSWER ME . Who among us, in those quiet, desperate moments, at some time or other in our lives, have not identified with the psalmist who cries out to the Lord almost desperately? The pleading itself reflects a struggle deep within. The plea speaks of a person torn between despairing, and claiming that which he or she knows God has the power to give, or withhold. Who among us, in the midst of so many trials, caught between th...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 2nd Sunday of Easter/Easter Octave March 30, 2008 Easter Sunday has come full circle. During the so-called Easter octave (today being the “eighth day”), everyday from Easter Sunday to the 2nd Sunday of Easter, is meant to be each one a celebration of Easter day. Only in the next most important liturgical solemnity does the Church celebrate in full for all of eight days – the Christmas octave. The dramatic scenes of Holy Week have taken a back seat. The pall of semi gloom during the Paschal triduum has given way to the brilliance and ebullient joy of the Easter season. Even the receding color of Lenten purple, has exploded to the dazzling brilliance of Easter white, silver, and gold (or red, for the Chinese inspired cultures all over the world). The world of nature, at least in temperate zones, assumes an air of newness. It is now springtime, and the coming of spring evokes feelings and thoughts of new life, freshness, and invigorating vitality. In this...

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 4th Sunday of Lent - Year A Today’s liturgy smacks of contrasts: individuals being presented for office, but God choosing the least expected (1st reading); people wallowing once in darkness, but now being wrapped in light (2nd reading); and a blind man exposing people’s ultimate and real blindness far worse than the blind man’s own physical inability to see (Gospel). We are once more back to the realm of reversals, the world of Christian paradox, the arena of faith that transcends the predictable flow of logic and linear, cause-and-effect mode of thinking. We are once more back to the realm of Christian mystery that is represented most fully by the mystery of the cross. This mystery of the cross takes center place in our thoughts, in our prayers – in the liturgy all through the Lenten season. Of itself, Lent is one such big paradox, referred to by the liturgy as the “joyful season,” but a season during which we are told to think penance, prayer, almsg...

Catholic Homily/Reflection 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle A February 3, 2008 Last week, the liturgy did for us a “google” on discipleship. What we found led us to one basic idea that stuck out very clearly … disciples had to be “free” enough to follow. Among others, entanglements and enmeshments, whether psychological or physical, are meant to be left behind. The two pairs of brothers strike us with their prompt, interior complex-free response. They “left immediately their boat and their father and followed [the Lord].” Our google search this Sunday leads us to an additional, no less important, concept anent discipleship. Apart from being “free,” a would-be disciple, we are further reminded, has to be “light” enough, one who is not too heavily laden with stuff to start with, as to be sort of “needy,” one who is wanting in a certain way, one who can follow Zephaniah’s wise counsel: “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth … seek justice, seek humility.” Our postmodern (and post-...

Catholic Homily/Sunday Reflection 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A January 27, 2008 This Sunday, as the readings introduce us to the public life of Jesus, to his call to discipleship, a theme that will resonate in the next few Sundays, we are confronted with a very deep, but foundational question to answer on our own. Who do I belong to? The Corinthians offer us a sneak peek at human nature, specifically at our propensity for division, for bickering, for disunity, and all sorts of interpersonal strife and fractiousness. “I belong to Paul … I belong to Apollos … I belong to Christ.” Judging from the passion with which Paul writes to the factionalized members of the church of Corinth, then caught up in petty squabbling and inane “party politics,” it would not be hard to imagine what he is writing about as jutting straight out of our own personal and group experiences. Disunity and lack of oneness in so many aspects of our lives are an integral part of our human experience...