visible rhetoric

Today as in the day of our Baptism we will be sealed with a cross on our foreheads.  The only difference is, when we were baptized we were sealed with the oil of Chrism.  This time we will be sealed with ashes mixed in oil.  The parallelism is significant for the season of Lent which we begin today is in fact a reexamination, a looking back as to what we have done with the grace of baptism that was given us.  Have we lived faithfully our baptismal promises?  Have we become better Christians?  Have we been faithful to our vocation and mission in life? Have we loved God above all and loved our neighbor as ourselves? 

Suicide has been quiet common lately.   Kadamo ang mga nabati-an naton nga nag-suicide kag kadamo man kita question on the consequences of suicide - whether they are allowed catholic burial or not, whether they are allowed to be buried in Catholic cemeteries or not.   I believe this has been answered satisfactorily several times already and I don’t think we need to discuss this further.   But there is one question we fail to ask – why is suicide becoming quiet common?   Why do we hear it and therefore why is it happening more often than in the past?

Two points.  First point: I never came to know the real impact of our first reading if not for the stroke my mother suffered.  When I asked her if she knew who I was, she readily replied yes seemingly sure of herself.  But when I asked her my name, she looked at me intently and said I forgot.  And then I remembered our first reading today.  Only God remembers forever.  At a certain point in our life we will forget.  The book of Isaiah said even a mother can forget her child.  It is unthinkable In Isaiah’s time but even the unthinkable can happen, because at a certain point in our life our memories will fail us and we will forget.  Only God remembers forever. More than this however at a certain point in our life also we will be forgotten. We will be forgotten even by the people we love, at a certain point we will be forgotten by the people we helped, but the people we loved and cared for.  This is what one of the things that ...