Month: August 2018

Categories
HOMILIES

HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER

This homily is abased on John 6:51-58.

Last night someone who had gone to an anticipated Sunday Mass bumped into me and surprised me with his reaction.  He said:  “The Bread of Life?!  Again?!”

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He’s right.  This is the third Sunday that the Gospel reading has been about the Bread of Life–and what he doesn’t know yet is that it won’t be the last.  Next Sunday will still be about the Bread of Life!  I told him, “If you think listening to it for the nth time is hard, try writing a homily about it for the nth time!”

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Categories
PRAYERS

DISTASTE

This reflection is based on John 6:41-51).

I think you know what I mean when I say that today’s Gospel reminds me of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, “Sweeney Todd:  The Devil Barber of Fleet Street.”  All this talk about eating the Lord’s body and drinking his blood makes me think of Mrs. Nellie Lovett’s meat pies, whose secret ingredients are–of all things–the body parts of rich people murdered by Sweeney Todd.

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Categories
HOMILIES

HUNGER IN A TIME OF ABUNDANCE

bread-of-lifeThis homily is based on John 6:24-35.

Our Gospel today is literally good news. Our Lord makes us an important promise: “Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Jesus is not talking about physical hunger or physical thirst, obviously. Rather, he is referring to an existential hunger and thirst, that profound need that we occasionally sense in ourselves, a space that nothing the world offers can ever fill.

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Categories
HOMILIES

In Memory of Tita Bobing

This homily was delivered on the eve of the 40th day for Immaculada “Bobing” de Leon Garcia.

I heard of Tita Bobing long before I met her. When we were kids, her son Gary used to regale his friends with all sorts of stories about his mom, like the time she made him sing in front of our school principal and how she never forgave him because he had opted to sing a Nora Aunor song. But there were many other stories, mostly about how she raised and took care of her brood of children.

Needless to say, even before meeting her, Tita Bobing, for me, was already larger than life, 

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