Category: Faith

Home » Lifestyle » Faith
Post

Renewing faith and devotion to Our Lady of the Candles

ILOILO CITY—Years into her marriage, Maria Fe Villanueva Esquillo had been without a child. But her frustration and seeming endless waiting were eased somehow by her constant prayers and supplications to Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria (Our Lady of the Candles) at the Jaro Metropolitan Cathedral. “I asked for at least one child. Instead, the Lady...

Post

Finding LGBTQIA+ affirmation in Open Table MCC

Jun Torres was casually scrolling through Blued, a gay social network app, in May 2021 when a direct message caught his attention. He was being invited to an online worship service by the manager of the account of “a church for LGBT.” He followed the link to the Facebook page of Open Table Metropolitan Community...

Post

Arayat Rizalistas believe in superiority of spiritual education

Filipinos honor their heroes—the men and women who led or contributed to the country’s struggle for freedom against the Spanish colonizers—on the last Monday of August, which falls on Aug. 28 this year.   But for a group in Arayat, Pampanga, every day is spent in veneration of National Hero Jose Rizal. The group’s members do...

Post

Need help? There’s ‘Thank God It’s Wednesday’

KALIBO, Aklan—A conversation can do wonders. A safe space where people freely talk about their predicaments and anxieties to someone who listens intently without prejudice, offers advice whether solicited or un, and prays for their healing is therapeutic. Sometimes all one needs is to have one’s feelings validated, one’s thoughts articulated, and one’s actions understood....

Post

On a street in Brooklyn, prayer demonstrates power

NEW YORK CITY—It was May 11 and I had to be at the acupuncturist’s clinic by 2 p.m.  I left Manhattan and headed to Brooklyn at 1:15 p.m. I was by myself. I usually travel with my friend but she ran into train delays from where she was coming, and we decided to meet at...

Post

In Payatas, the Church helps widows and orphans pick up the pieces

The women are all business inside a tailoring shop a stone’s throw from Ina ng Lupang Pangako church in Payatas, Quezon City.  They work on fabrics and sewing machines to produce bags of all shapes and sizes—totes, “ecobags,” shoe bags, envelope bags, lunch bags, laundry bags. For six days of work a week, they take...

Post

Amid tensions, Jerusalem celebrates the King of Peace

While the Crucified Christ and the Risen Lord are the most dominant images of Jesus during Holy Week and the Easter Season (which runs until May 28, Pentecost Sunday), another image is that of the King of Peace entering Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt. Christians remember it as the Palm Sunday to start Holy Week.  The...

Post

It’s OK to lament, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!’

Minutes before he died on the cross, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: “Eli, Eli, la’ma sabach-tha’ni?”—“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!” (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34). This lament, considered Jesus’ fourth last word before he died, is one of the Seven Last Words, compiled from the passion and death narratives of...

Post

Holy Week is Prayer Week

‘Tis the season of prayer as we’re into the most hallowed part of the year, the Holy Week. There is no arguing it: We can never underestimate the immense power of prayer. Having spent a considerable number of years in a seminary and almost completing a priestly formation, I can only reminisce, with nostalgic yearning,...