Category: QUESTIONS

COPING WITH REJECTION (Mt 21:33-43):  05 October 2008 (Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

A TV spot from the “Foundation for A Better Life” tells a sad and familiar story:  A new girl looks tentatively around a crowded school cafeteria, food tray in hand.  After what feels like an eternity, she spots an empty seat and finds the courage to join a group of girls her age.  “Would it be okay if I sat here?” she asks.  All it takes is a look, and the new girl knows:  She is an intruder, an outsider, a leper. The group rises as one and leaves her quite abruptly alone with her food tray.

QUESTIONED BY A MONSTER MOVIE (Mt 21:28-32):  Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (28 September 2008)

Today’s Readings

Someone recently handed me a DVD of “Cloverfield,” a 2008 monster movie produced by JJ Abrams of the “Lost” TV series. I had seen the provocative trailer on the Internet weeks before the release, and wanted to know why its poster showed a headless Statue of Liberty standing before a burning Manhattan skyline.  I had been warned that watching it would make you dizzy because of its hand-held camera technique reminiscent of  “The Blairwitch Project.” Just the same I watched the movie the first chance I got.    

COUNTING LOOSE CHANGE (Mt 20:1-16a):  21 September 2008 (Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

Last night I got stuck in Metro Manila traffic and noticed that for some reason, there seemed to be more beggars and street children than usual.  Several beggars later, after giving the car window the customary taps to send them away, I wondered about the last time that I had actually given alms to a beggar.  I couldn’t remember when.  When I asked myself why, I realized it was because I usually didn’t carry coins in my pocket. Then it struck me:  Why do I help only when I have loose change to spare? 

KEEPING A LOW PROFILE (Jn 3:13-17):  14 September 2008 (Feast of the Triumph of the Cross)

Today’s Readings

Pieter Brueghel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” depicts the well-known story of a young boy who dons his manmade wings and, against the instruction of his inventor-father, flies too high and too close to the sun.  The result?  As expected, the heat of the sun melts the wax holding his wings together, and the reckless boy falls to his death.

GATHERING IN HIS NAME (Mt 18:15-20):  07 September 2008 (Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

A controversial short film by Mexican director,  Alonso Álvarez Barreda, won this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s online short film competition. Approximately five minutes long, the short film, “Historia de un Letrero” (or “Story of a Sign”), tells the story of a blind beggar sitting in a park with a sign that says, “Have pity!  I’m a blind man.”