Brothers and sisters, the second preface of Advent, the one we read in the Mass today, articulates for us what our spirit should be like these days so that when He comes, He will find us watching in prayer, our hearts full of wonder and praise. So tonight, there is nothing new which will be […]
December 23, 2011
There’s a saying that goes: “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” In our Gospel reading this evening, we have a pregnant woman singing, so that got me thinking. Mary sings her magnificent song, the Magnificat, when she sees for herself the sign promised to her by the angel during the Annunciation. Her elderly […]
December 22, 2011
The evangelist Luke begins his record of the coming of Christ, the savior of the world… with the story of two women who, by all human standards, should never have had children. The first story centers on Elizabeth, a woman in her 60s or 70s or even 80s. All her life, she had never been […]
December 21, 2011
Our Pinoy Christmas is feast for the senses. Our eyes are dazzled by Christmas lights and colors. Our mouths and stomachs water over just the thought of moist bibingka, alcohol-lazed fruitcake, and whatever your families put on the noche buena table. But perhaps our sense of hearing is what is most fully loaded, listening to […]
December 20, 2011
It is not easy to preach today. Not with news of people missing and dying and bodies decaying. Not with a shortage of food and water — not in Africa or some other faraway place that is simply out of our reach or out of our league. This time, and so close to Christmas, suffering […]
December 19, 2011
What mostly attracts me, really, in the Annunciation story is not so much the grand plan of God through the angel for Mary to become the mother of the Son of God, or the fortunate fate of Mary as the one He has chosen. What I find touching here is the littleness of Mary – […]
December 18, 2011
This year is the 50th anniversary of what is arguably the best Hollywood film adaptation of a Broadway musical. That is West Side Story – which in turn is also an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is set in the 1950s in Upper West Side Manhattan, and instead of the Montagues and Capulets, […]
December 24, 2011
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