Homilies (Page 27)

“Peace on Earth”: Every Life is Worth Celebrating and Defending Isaiah talks about the “beautiful feet” of those who announce the good tiding of peace to Israel. But what are human feet, when those feet belong to cadavers? What is the usefulness of voices, when human bodies are lifeless. What is the usefulness of a piece of good news to a ghost town? Announcing that “your God reigns” shows the importance of a people to be ruled and the reign of a God-King. Not to have subjects is to undermine and change the meaning of rulership and kingship. All these hing on the presence andRead More →

Show Your Creativity, Touch a Life, Make a Crèche/Crib! 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38 There was a Canadian couple living in Halifax, with three children. Their children grew up to go to universities far from home: one in Vancouver, another in Calgary and the third in Saskatoon. One Christmas, all the children, one after the other, called their parents to announce that they weren’t coming home for Christmas. A couple of days after the calls of the children, their father called them, one after the other, to announce to them in turns that he was divorcing their mother at Christmas,Read More →

You are What you Do: Jesus is Savior because He Saves! Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28 There is an area of our lives where lying or lies telling is almost impossible – it is the area of human behavior: you are what you do, you are how you behave; the society has got names for different things people do, and for the different ways people behave. If you cultivate the land, you are a farmer or a gardener, etc. If you have a child as a man, you’re a father, and if you are a woman, you are a mother. IfRead More →

Immaculate Conception is Possible, When Grace meets Gabriel! Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38 For those of us who have experienced failure, those threatened by the reality of sin and weaknesses of all sorts, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception turns the meaning of failure into second and third chances. Every failure becomes a hope for a better tomorrow, a catalyst to get up everyday, dust oneself off, and get going. When life is seen as a chain of opportunities that present themselves as multiple seconds, minutes and days, then, we just don’t celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception alone, we also celebrate our ownRead More →

A God who Plans: Plan as He Plans Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8 “He who fails to plan, plans to fail,” goes the popular saying. In our contemporary capitalistic economies, planning is essential. Countries and companies that plan normally have better results than others. One area of planning is budgeting. Two areas of budgeting are essential for success in all kinds of planning: expected income and expenditure. It is true that the money built into a budget could be from borrowed money, anticipated earnings or cash in hand. All the same, budgeting keeps one focused, resolute and pro-active, where budgeting is wellRead More →

Sunday of Hope: All is Grace because of God! Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37 Every single day, with the vicissitudes of light and darkness, dusk and dawn, change makes itself inevitable. The change that seems most perceptible to us is the ubiquity of sin, the inadequacies we notice in ourselves and the world around us. We seek for the just and the ideal, we rather experience iniquity; we attempt to work for a better society, a better tomorrow, yet our actions contribute to the wrongs we see, and not the good we desire. In a nutshell, humanity is broken, and itsRead More →

Christ the King or Destiny Sunday  Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46 With many hospices and caregiving centers under a lot of stress because of COVID-19, some of them have weathered the storm, thanks to quality and professional caregivers working in them; many others are either closed or have suffered multiple backlash for poor care-delivery to their inmates. Hospitals have recorded their fair share of quality life-saving care, but many doctors and nurses have quit for fear of safety for themselves and their loved ones. These scenarios help us to understand the quality care our first reading speaks of today—it is aboutRead More →

Relationship Sunday Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6; Matthew 25:14-30 Besides crying foul because of the association of this first reading with the exploitation of women, could one see something there other than exploitation? Is there some good news there that comes through the agency of women? A comparative analysis of the binary vocabulary of our first reading makes it a text on wisdom, the correlation between the human person and earthly social existence: she and her husband, she and her heart, good and evil, she and her life, her hands and the distaff, her fingers and the spindle, she and the poor, sheRead More →

Communion Sunday Wisdom 6:12-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13 In the history of humanity, American election is the most expensive, most protracted and most watched. Events of these past days have kept most Americans on their toes, watching anxiously for accuracy and validity of votes, searching for possible areas of litigation,  with conscientious reporting by journalists, spirited debates on air, in the streets and at homes around the election. Many Americans went from door to door to campaign for their political parties; the candidates themselves canvassed for votes by selling their manifestos. One has the sense of active participation by most Americans and non-Americans alike.Read More →