“WHERE ARE YOUR HIDING PLACES?” (Mt 17:1-9): 17 February 2008 (Second Sunday of Lent)
Today’s Readings
In today’s gospel, our Lord goes to one of his favorite hiding places: the mountain. As we may have noticed in the gospels, every time the Lord gets too tired from his work, or whenever he needs to pray or to be alone, he often goes up a mountain to hide there, away from the crowds, bringing with him only his three closest disciples: Peter, James, and John.
“ARE YOUR WINGS TOO ENORMOUS?” (Mt 5:43-48): 16 February 2008 (Saturday)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude andLove in the Time of Cholera, has a bizarre short story called “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” It’s about an aging angel who literally fell from the sky. A couple found him struggling to get out of the mud. A neighbor pointed to the man’s enormous wings and told the couple that it had come to take their sick child away. Frightened, the couple locked the angel up in a chicken coop, but naturally, word quickly spread, and the entire village came to see the angel. The couple started charging an entrance fee and got very rich in the process.
“SHOULD I LEAVE THE CHURCH?” (Mt 5:20-26): 15 February 2008 (Friday)
Today’s Readings
As though she wasn’t controversial enough, Madonna came up with an allegedly sacrilegious music video for her song “Like a Prayer” in 1989. The video caused such a stir because aside from the usual display of Madonna’s sexuality, it used a lot of Catholic iconography like the crucifix, statues and pictures of saints, the stigmata, bleeding statues, and many others. Can’t really blame them. The video included one scene suggesting Madonna making love to a statue of a saint that came to life!
“SO, WHAT IF I SUPER SIZE ME?” (Mk 9:14-15): 08 February 2008 (Friday after Ash Wednesday)
In this day and age where every other person is on some kind of diet, the documentary “Super Size Me” comes as a shocker. After watching it, I couldn’t lay eyes on a Big Mac for at least six months (Actually, I’ve long stopped eating at McDonald’s for years!). The film, after all, documents thirty days in the life of filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, when he ate nothing but McDonald’s food three times a day. The result? He gained about 25 pounds and in the process, got liver damage. I guess that’s what you get for feasting on McDonald’s!
‘DO YOU ANSWER EVERY PRAYER?’ (Mt 7:7-12): 14 February 2008 (Valentine’s Day, Thursday)
Today’s Readings
In Lars von Trier’s 1996 film “Breaking the Waves,” Bess (played by Oscar-nominated Emily Watson) is a naive, simple-minded woman who has a strange way of praying. On her knees, she speaks to God, and responds to her own prayers as God in another, lower voice. For example, she asks God a question timidly, then she changes her voice–and facial expression–to answer the question.