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....
Category: Faith
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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Crossing the Rubicon of faith and reason (or what Athens has to do with Jerusalem)
One drizzly afternoon, I went to see my seminary contemporary of long ago, Msgr. Lito Maraya, at the Archdiocesan Shrine of Sto. Nino in Tacloban City, Leyte, to deliver pre-ordered copies of my book. After I handed him the books, he invited me for coffee and, of course, some kumustahan. “Glad that you came, pais,”...
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Pope Francis: Learn from the Transfiguration of Jesus
In his message for Lent 2023, which was released on Feb. 17, Pope Francis urged the faithful to “listen to Jesus” as he recalled God the Father’s command to the disciples during the Transfiguration. In the story, which is proclaimed every Second Sunday of Lent (March 5 this year), Jesus is transfigured on a mountain...
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Believing, praying and manifesting in 2023
With the coming of the new year, there’s no denying that sundry wishes and high hopes are again sprouting aplenty, ranging from the most trivial to the grandiose, even to the bizarre. The new year—or every new year, for that matter—offers no guarantee of smooth sailing. But it’s our natural inclination to crave what we...
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Press in denial: Recalling the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI
Even before I arrived in Rome in 2005 to cover the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the Eternal City was rife with talk on who would succeed him. If one would make a trope of the Colosseum and revive its fortunes but only in the imagination, it could stand for a betting arena, with a mob...