visible rhetoric

Tonight we are celebrating Christmas, so Merry Christmas. I just want to emphasize this point because starting this night, it is officially Christmas. I say officially because some of us have already started greeting each other Merry Christmas way back November, and even as early as September we have already begun putting up our Christmas Trees and lanterns. That was the unofficial Christmas, otherwise known as the Filipino Christmas. Today it is officially Christmas and we are celebrating it after almost all our Christmas parties are over. We are after all a people known for postponing our grief, and anticipating our joys. Tonight if the calculations in the Mayan Calendar proved true, this will be our last Christmas. Do you know that? So you are not watching National Geographic. December 21, 2012, the next winter solstice, will also be the last for it will be the day when the world ends. Yes you heard me right. The world as we know it will end next year, 4 days short o...

I have a child. His name is Lorenzo Esperancilla. Now since I got your attention I would like to tell you that since I cannot bear a child, because obviously I do not have a womb, my only experience of a child leaping for joy was when I was carrying Lorenzo Esperancilla one day. While we were moving happily along we saw a butterfly, and immediately his gaze was transfixed at the butterfly jumping from one flower to the other. With him on my arms we ran after it trying to catch it. When the butterfly alighted on a flower we slowly sneaked behind it, and Lorenzo would reach out his arms to attempt to hold it. But every time his hand was just a few inches away, the butterfly would fly away. This would then excite him so much his whole body would quiver as he made some kind of a quick jump and squeal in excitement and joy. It seemed that every part of his body moved, then, a swift kick would follow. This happened three times and that joy was just so infectious even to me, an ad...

I have been speaking for at least three times now about the impossibilities surrounding the birth of the God made man. In our Christmas greetings with the bishops I spoke about the impossibilities of the incarnation in the sense that it is easier to believe that a God can raise his dead body to life, than to believe that a God, a pure spirit can become a body, a man. The mystery of the incarnation is just too amazing, too impossible a fact. Last Friday I talked about the impossibilities of the prophecy of Isaiah - how can a little child lead a young lion and a calf to graze together in the field, how can a lion eat grass with a cow - it is not just a lion eating grass but with a cow? The impossibilities presented by the season of advent are building up as we move on towards Christmas and I am afraid this might turn out into another Lito Lapid movie or Mission Impossible itself. Now these impossibilities are today acknowledged by Mary herself in our gospel. When the angel annou...

I was asked by his grace, the Archbishop to give the homily this morning. Specifically I was asked to say something about the man. Who was Msgr. Piamonte for me, how have I come to know him as a person? Let me start by saying that he was a real human person. He was a human person who gave me all the reasons to act towards him also in a humanly fashion. He gave me a reason to be proud of him, to be proud of my bishop especially after I read the first five pages of his voluminous dissertation of which I did not understand anything. It was all in Latin. He gave me a reason to fear him when at one point I was scolded right in front of the congregation who were singing the Gloria. I made the mistake of telling the people to remain standing while singing the Gloria when he wanted them and of course himself, to sit down because of his arthritis. He was really mad at me but in a very controlled way, but I can sense that he was almost shouting. All the while I was there standing in...

I chose our reading today to mark the end of our year together as family in the intimacy of this chapel. It is a reading that is echoed and re-echoed all throughout advent. It is a reading which begins and ends with a very important phrase which we should take to heart, a phrase which encapsulates the message of advent. The phrase is - on that day. This is a Christmas party and I would have wanted to speak about Christmas with its message of joy but I would like to resist the temptation and stick instead to the message of advent and recover its meaning for us in our Christian lives and most especially in our vocation as formators and teachers and in a special way in your life as seminarians, young as you are. On that day. What would life be for us without this perspective? What would life be without this manner of looking at our day to day life? What would life be for a formator who would only think of this year for example, or a teacher who would only consider this week in ...

Your Grace, your Excellency.   We come before you today as a community who rejoice at the coming of our Lord. We celebrate his coming not just in spirit, not in a burning bush, not in a pillar of fire and cloud mighty they might sound but we celebrate him as one coming to us in the flesh. This is the greatest of all miracles, a miracle greater than the resurrection itself. God can raise dead bodies to life, much more his own dead body to life. That is a miracle in itself but it is understandable from one who is the creator of life. If he can turn clay to life, why not a dead body? But a God, a pure spirit to become man - that is amazing to behold, too marvelous to comprehend, too sublime to fully fathom. This is what our greeting is all about. We express in songs and poetry, we express in drama and dance the joy which the mystery of the incarnation brings us. We are the community of St. Vincent Ferrer. We were established and sustained by your predece...

In the parable today Jesus is not praising or putting up as an example any of the two sons. The parable is merely showing us two very imperfect sons. Though one of the sons did better than the other, both of them did not bring joy to the father. The first son made a promise he did not meet. The other saddened his father when he denied immediately the latter’s request. However the message of the gospel can be found not only in what it mentions. It is also there on what it does not mention. The third son is never mentioned in this passage, but it is the son who said yes and did what he promised to do. He is the ideal son. Jesus is the obedient son, in whom the Father was well pleased. In the letter to the Hebrews, the author had quoted from the Psalm 40, which says, “a body you have prepared for me.” If it was a direct quotation it would have been, “an open ear you have given me.” But instead of saying and open ear, to signify God’s desire for obedience, he said, “a bod...

Today is G audete Sunday, a rest from the tediousness of a penitential season. It is called Gaudete Sunday because the Opening Antiphon or the Introit says, Gaudete, in Domino semper , rejoice in the Lord always. The liturgical color is rose to be precise, not pink, because rose is supposedly a combination of two colors, namely, violet and gold. Violet represents penance and gold represents joy. As we come closer to Christmas we keep the penitential spirit, the violet color of penance to prepare the way of the Lord, but beneath this penance is the excitement and joy of meeting the Lord represented by gold. The hiligaynon description for this day is more poetic and appropriate - tago nga kalipay - represented by the color rose, in contrast to hayag nga kalipay . But this joy will slowly reveal itself this week. In the universal church it will start on the 17th of December with the O Antiphons and in the Philippine Church it will start on the 16th with the Aguinaldo masses. ...

If there is one thing my father told me which I have not forgotten, it is a quotation. I don’t know whether he this made up himself or he borrowed it from somebody else, but one day he told us something like this, “if you cannot find a solution to the problem, then change the problem and if you cannot find an answer to the question, then change the question.” Last night this piece of wisdom came in handy. I was reflecting on our readings today which speak of rejoicing and of being joyful. In fact the readings on this third Sunday of Advent are not just asking us to rejoice but seem to compel us, force us to rejoice. And so I asked myself, what makes me happy, and what made me happy in life. To make it a little more relevant and interesting I asked myself, what were the things which made me happy when I was studying in Assumption. First, it made me terribly unhappy then that I wore a locally made Edwardson tennis shoes for school when my classmates were wearing imported Ad...

I would like to do some Catechesis today. Today we are celebrating the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, that is, we celebrate and express or proclaim joyfully our belief that Mary the Mother of our Savior was conceived without original sin. Mary was uniquely preserved by the grace of God, by the merits of her future Son, from the harm of original sin that affects all of us. So we ask, what is original sin of which Mary was preserved but which continues to affect us even now? What is this kind of sin which we call original? Many people today deny the presence of original sin, they do not believe in original sin anymore, or if they believe it, they take it for granted. But G.K. Chesterton said that this is one Christian doctrine that is most obvious - kabudlay tuod i-explain ang original sin, pero tam-an ka klaro nga ara ini sa aton kabuhi. The symptoms, the signs of the presence of this type of sin can be clearly seen in our thoughts, in our actions and in our relationsh...

The one sheep is always a dilemma in life. In today’s gospel the shepherd leaves the ninety nine in search of one lost sheep. He leaves the ninety nine by themselves and goes in search of the one that was lost. The 99 has to wait. The 99 has to be left behind. The 99 has to suffer the anxiety of being left without a shepherd in his effort to look for that one stupid sheep. This is the solution of Jesus and it is a hard act to follow. For in effect Jesus is teaching us that the community or family must always show willingness to suffer for the sake of an individual. That most often the community should be allowed to suffer for the sake of the individual. Think about this for a moment. This is not the way of the world, isn’t it? For the way of the world is this, the individual is expendable. We stay guard over the ninety nine and treat that one stupid sheep that strayed as a casualty of life, sometimes even a necessary casualty of life. For a fact, this is the way of the bu...

I would like to reflect on the prophet Isaiah, our first reading today. The prophecy of Isaiah begins with the words, on that day. On that day according to the estimation of biblical experts would be about 750 years more or less, the years spanning the time of Isaiah and Jesus. On that day, Isaiah said, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse. Jesse is the father of David, the first king of Israel, and the grandfather of Solomon, the son of David through Bathsheba, the second king. These were the best years of Israel, the years when Israel experienced prosperity, the years when the temple was built, the year when the territory of Israel reached its zenith. These were the years spanning the reign of Kings David and Solomon. And people in the time of Isaiah were longing for those good old days, the good old days which, in the time of Isaiah had become a mere stump - the stump of a once powerful, gigantic tree. What was once a great kingdom is nothing more than a stump - is...

I would like to reflect with you today on the word the end, tapos na, bow, the end. Jesus in our gospel talks about the time that will come. In greek this time that will come is called the eschaton, the end of time. For the seminarians, if you will reach theology you will have an interesting subject called eschatology, a subject which is very hard to spell but nevertheless interesting. There you will study our catholic beliefs on death, death and the beyond, you will study that phrase in the creed which says he will come again to judge the living and the dead, you will learn what heaven is, what hell is, and what purgatory is all about. In short you will talk about the end. In life we experience that there is always an end to everything that we do and even to everything that we love. During recreation we may still want to go on playing football, we are about to shoot the ball into the basket, but then the whistle of the referee blows, the bell ringer rings the bell for showers -...

I believe you must have remembered a peculiar story going around after that dreaded flooding brought about by typhoon Frank. For the sake of those who have not heard this story permit me to narrate it for you. Just a few days before typhoon Frank, a strange little boy went to a home in particular village in the city to ask for a drink of water. Since the boy was unfamiliar, a complete stranger in fact, the woman ignored him and sent him away. As the boy was leaving the woman thought she heard the boy say something about sending the village lots of water in the coming days because of her refusal to give him even just a glass. The woman however ignored the strange little boy. A few days later, so the story goes, the woman, realized to her surprise the meaning of the words she heard from the boy who came from nowhere, for true enough water came and it overwhelmed the city in a deluge few of us will ever forget. Frankly I do not believe the tale. But I just want to use the stor...

Our catholic faith teaches us that the bread consecrated in the mass becomes the body of Christ. Jesus becomes truly present in the bread that we consecrate, that the bread we receive in Holy Communion is really and truly Jesus. We call this the doctrine of the real presence - Christ is truly present. For as long as we are here on earth this is how real Christ can become for us. More than this however, our catholic faith also teaches us that this real presence of Jesus in the bread is not just real but also continuing. The presence of Jesus becomes so to say permanent in the bread. The bread which became of the body of Jesus does not turn back to bread after the mass - no, it continues to be the body of Christ. These are the two catholic doctrines that distinguish us from other Christian groups. We believe in the real presence of Jesus in the bread. And we believe in the continuing presence of Jesus in the bread. His presence is real. His real presence is permanent. This...

“If I have cheated anybody I will pay him back four times the amount.” This is what justice is all about. When we have sinned against justice we are required to make a restitution, we have to pay back what we owe. If I stole ten pesos, I have to pay back the ten pesos I stole, either outright to the person himself or secretly. If I defrauded someone, if I did not give somebody what is due to him, I am required by justice, I am required by morality to pay back what is due to the person I defrauded. Justice demands restitution. It is not enough that we confess our sins to the priest and receive absolution from him. It is not enough that we are sorry for the sins we have committed against justice. We have to pay it back. This is something we often forget in morality. Justice demands a restitution.

When I was first assigned by Msgr. Gamboa to the Seminary way back 1997, he specifically assigned me as the inspector. He called me an inspector. It was the old name of the prefect of discipline and it speaks very well of the nature of my work. As you very well know in some countries a policeman is also called an inspector and that I said is the nature of my work. I was to become the policeman of the seminarians who was expected to prevent crime, catch the criminals, interrogate suspect, send them to jail, in the case of the seminary, send them out, and I should see to it that the laws are observed with rigor. I was the seminary policeman and true enough, in time, some priests began calling me SPO1 Esperancilla. The work of a seminary inspector is practically second nature to me. People fear me and it comes quiet naturally. When the lectors of the cathedral at one time complained that they were afraid of me and they get nervous every time I said mass and they did the reading...

I have been assigned to a parish before I was told to go back to the seminary. One of the challenging things I have to do in that parish was to convince people that they are getting old. Imagine that! Some people just can’t realize by themselves that they are getting old. And I tell you it was difficult. So one time in a meeting of one of the religious organizations which I attended I told them quite frankly that almost all of the members are in their 70’s and 80’s, that some of them could no longer participate in the many processions that they were organizing and directing because they could no longer walk, that in five years time the organization will dwindle to half its present membership, and in ten years time their religious organization will go the way of the dinosaurs - extinction. So quite sternly I warned them that in their next monthly meeting, if they could not bring in new recruits and young blood in their organization, our opening prayer for the meeting will be the p...

At the end of the first semester and as we are about to start the second in two weeks time I would like to remind us all of the injunction of Christ to guard carefully our treasures lest a thief would come and carry off what we have so painstakingly worked for. Guard well the treasures of our house, of our community. You will ask, what are these treasures we have to guard so carefully, treasures we have so painstakingly worked for? There are three. First, guard the treasure of our brotherhood, this new sense of brotherhood.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Luke. He was a doctor by profession before he became a companion of St. Paul during his many journeys. That is why St. Luke is the patron saint of doctors. He is also the patron saint of artists most especially of painters because legend says that he was the first to have painted an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Most of all St. Luke is known because he wrote two books in the bible, in the new testament, the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the apostles. His version of the life of Jesus is unique. His is the Gospel which cites the most instances of the Blessed Virgin Mary – the annunciation, the birth of Jesus and many others. Thus if you want to know more about Mary, you have to read among others the gospel of Luke. This I believe might be the reason why legend would point to him as a painter, one who depicted in vivid detail the Blessed Mother.

Let me attempt to interpret what I could not do in this morning’s mass. Jesus said, give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give back to God what is God’s. Before saying this Jesus asked for a coin and he asked whose image and inscription is in the coin. The image they said is that of Tiberius with an inscription, "Tiberius Caesar, August Son of the Divine Augustus," and on the other side the inscription "Pontifex Maximus," meaning high priest, can be found. Whose image can be found in it? Then give it back to him. Who’s the authority that minted the coin? Then give it back to them. It is an acknowledgement that the state, our rulers have power of us. Indeed to a certain extent they have. Some of you might not feel it yet but we do. Do you know for example that our seminary has to pay tax? Yes we pay our taxes even though we are losing money every month and every year. And though we pay our teachers a pittance compared to what other schools pay their...

Jesus said, give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give back to God what is God’s. The real question however is, what is Caesar’s? Then another real question follows, what is God’s? Indeed the reply of Jesus was a clever one, a clever reply to a very tricky question. And the gospel described the reaction of the listeners as one of amazement. They were amazed at his reply. They were amazed at Jesus for evading a tricky question by producing an equally tricky reply. But the question is what did Jesus mean specifically? What is Caesar’s that I should render back to Caesar, and what is God’s that I should render back to God? The problem is Jesus did not go to the specifics, he did not elaborate, and I can only guess.

I would like to propose for our reflection today, not mainly the gospel but our responsorial Psalm. We have just read Psalm 23, the most famous, and I believe the most familiar psalm. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose, beside restful waters he leads me, he refreshes my soul.” Most often than not this psalm is read in funeral masses or in masses for the dead? Some even refer to it as a funeral psalm. But I believe Psalm 23 is more than just a Funeral Psalm. So I think it would be good to hear it before we die, or better still to be guided by it every day of our lives before our funeral.