visible rhetoric

There was some debate which raged in Facebook recently about celebrating Halloween with ugly masks and horrible makeup.  But since I joined Facebook with the sole purpose of updating myself as to what is happening around, I just listened and read comments as they came which turned quite nasty at some point.  But this is my two cents worth opinion.  Every culture in the world has its share of ghosts and ghost stories.  I for one thought that white ladies are residents of Iloilo or at least the Philippines until I saw in Discovery Channel that they also have a white lady in Vietnam and Thailand.  This preoccupation with Aswang I believe comes from our innate struggle to understand or even to find a solution on the problem of death, to come to terms with death.  Since day one in the womb of our mothers there has always been a preoccupation to survive, to want to hold on to life, to want to live as long as it takes.  Nevertheless someway, somehow we...

I would like to emphasize two things in these closing remarks.   First, there is a need to balance things and in the seminary program this is helped by identifying the different dimensions of formation which are CASA and the activities that fall underneath each dimension.   This balance is further made practicable by our schedule – there is a time for the activities falling under spiritual life, there is a time for academic life, for activities falling under apostolic life and there is a time for community life.   The dimensions establish balance and the daily schedule makes this balance concrete.   Individuals in our community become sick when they lose balance.   Our community becomes sick when a large part of individuals in our community loses their balance.   When you spend the whole night until the wee hours of the morning doing an assignment, and in the process miss your prayers in the morning or spend most of it asleep, then you lose balance. ...

Invitations were sent out but what came back were excuses.  What is an excuse?  An excuse means to justify and defend, to reason and to explain for the purpose of mitigating a fault or justifying a decision.  The people who were invited to the banquet have to find reasons for refusing the invitation.  They felt somehow that they need to justify their absence.  They felt somehow that they would certainly offend the king and so they have to provide reasons to justify their absence and therefore mitigate or lessen the kings anger, and therefore also lessen their guilt.  Only a person, a human person can do this, only a person can make excuses and only a person in fact feels obliged to make excuses.  Why, because when we were created our nature is such that we cannot do anything unreasonable, specifically we cannot do anything that is not reasonably good.  Antes kita magbuhat sang isa ka butang may rason gid kita kag ina nga rason sa aton panan...

Today we come to celebrate enduring fruits and to consecrate enduring endeavours.   What do anniversaries celebrate?   What do we affirm when we celebrate anniversaries?   In anniversaries we celebrate enduring values, we affirm enduring commitments, we renew enduring struggles.   There is a big difference between a contract and a covenant. In a contract, the terms are no longer binding when one party fails in his obligations.   A covenant is different however.   In a covenant when one party fails, the other party continues to remain faithful.   This is our relationship with God.   It is enduring no matter what.

I have seen your Facebook and your campaign against Halloween which nowadays seem to glorify evil and its minions including ghosts, zombies, vampires, Frankensteins, tamawo, mantyo, capri, mananangal, aswang, bagat and the like.  Actually every culture in the world has its share of ghost and ghost stories.  I for one thought that white ladies are residents of Iloilo or at least the Philippines until I saw in Discovery Channel that they also have a white lady in Vietnam and Thailand.  This preoccupation with aswang I believe comes from our innate struggle to understand or even to find a solution on the problem of death, to come to terms with death.  Since day one in the womb of our mothers there has always been a preoccupation to survive, to want to hold on to life, to want to live as long as it takes.  Nevertheless someway, somehow we will definitely meet the way of all mankind in our own time, in our own death.  For as long as we could not come in...

We come now to the second to the last article of the faith, the eleventh article which says, I believe in the resurrection of the body. When we die, and we will all die, our souls will be separated from our bodies.  But with the resurrection, our bodies and souls will be reunited again forever.

Have you done something unusual in your life in order to do what you believe Jesus is asking from you?   Have you done something unusual or even something outrageous for what you believe is the right things, for what you believe that wants you to do?   Recently there has been a barrage of unique, unusual and even outrageous things people do to propose a marriage – some popped the question, “will you marry me” in the middle of a busy airport, some did it by proposing 20,000 feet in the air, some did it by buying ads on TV and others did it on billboards, some asked Tom Cruise to do it for them and some have even proposed by making a privilege speech in the august halls of congress.   The crazy things we do for love. But back to the question – have you done something unusual for God, something ridiculous even, something people don’t expect you to do?